Mozû is no more. I would like to tell you he died a death befitting his orc supervillain status, or that my revenge has given me some measure of peace. Neither of those things are true. The truth is that the final moments of Mozû the Blight have disgraced us both. This is how it went down…

After the original post detailing my humiliating struggles with the over-buffed orc captain, I got plenty of advice from other Shadow of War players on how to turn the tables. Many suggested enlisting a drake (not the rapping kind) to roast Mozû from above, while others shamefully proposed finding a way to knock him off a cliff. A developer at Monolith who wrote much of the orc dialogue even DM'd me on Twitter with some cockamamie plan involving poisonous spiders exploding from a bonfire. 

I figured he was probably on Mozû's payroll and ignored that idea.

The plan takes shape

Two nights ago, Mozû ambushed and defeated me again, despite the fact I was wearing a poison-resistant cloak in a bid to mitigate the effect of his bombs. This victory raised his level to 33, and made me ditch my policy of only fighting Mozû mano-a-orco. The answer to beating an asshole bully is to find a bigger group assholes, and so I began a recruitment drive. I hunted and dominated the most powerful orcs I could find, in particular looking for those with poisoned weapons in order to exploit Mozû's only significant weakness.

Last night I felt ready. Thanks to some time in the fighting pits, my motley crue of greenskinned scum ranged from level 22 to 26. Individually, nowhere near as strong as Mozû, but together? We had a chance. I queued up the Nemesis mission as usual, but this time issued kill commands to my three best orcs.

• Narûg the Reaper: My highest level orc, with a nasty trick up his sleeve.
• Snafû King-Slayer: Missing one arm but wields a poison axe with the other. 
• Kûga the Obvious: Mounted on a caragor, which can't hurt for crowd control.  

I also assigned Ishmoz of the Spiders to be my bodyguard, who I could summon just before the battle, partly because he attacks with poison weapons, but mainly because the dude wears a hood of cobwebs and I figured Mozû might not be about that life. This particular mission was designated a supply raid, and I arrive to find Narûg confronting Mozû and his crew. I am immediately struck by an inadvertent piece of planning genius on my part. Narûg has the Decoys perk, so is always accompanied by three doppelgangers to confuse the enemy. Sure enough these help tie up Mozû's retinue perfectly. 

We all wade in and holy shit Mozû is immediately coated in gloopy green poison. In fact, pretty much everyone is poisoned, but the key thing is Mozû is already at half health. I join the fray and land a few lusty blows. In the chaos a grog barrel explodes, taking out a couple of Narûg's body doubles, but I ignore the inferno and keep swinging. This is it. Mozû is finally on his knees. He makes a little speech about how I've got my revenge at last, up comes the finish him button prompt, and… I whiff.

In my excitement to take some of those swanky Ansel screenshots, I accidentally switched from controller to keyboard and mouse. Mozû makes his exit. An on-screen icon tells me he's now about 2,000 ft away, so I set off in pursuit. When I arrive I realize my mistake. My bodyguard is on cooldown and I haven't set up my other orc ambushers either. I make a decent fist of the fight, getting Mozû down to about a third before his poison bombs do their deadly work. And now he's level 34.

This defeat actually doesn't feel too bad because I know I can correct those mistakes. More importantly, I know know he can beaten. Excited, I set up another Nemesis mission with the same team, this time letting Snafû take point to really ram the advantage home. The mission generated is a duel, and the bad news for Mozu is that we will most certainly not be observing Queensbury Rules. In fact it's more like a scene from Oz. My guys jam Mozû against a wall and set about shanking him. His health is shredded in seconds. I sprint over trying to get the final blow, but am still a few feet away when the slo-mo kicks in."Snafû King-Slayer killed Mozû the Blight." It's over. He's gone.

The orcs go back into their idle animations and start to disperse. Mozû's lies on the ground, the legendary sword he dropped floating over his now inert body. Instantly I feel like this was a huge mistake. Mozû's death should have been more spectacular. I needed to hear him spit out some final words before I made like a deranged sushi chef on his limbs. I already know that the rest of my playthrough will be robbed of the electric tension I felt when taking every step in Mordor, knowing that the big sack of shit could put in an appearance at any time.

But just as I'm almost overwhelmed by unexpected melancholy for my dead tormentor, I remember Mozû's speech from that first failed kill prompt. "You might think you've beaten me, ranger, but wait until you meet my brother." Of course! Mozû has the Blood Brother perk. That means that somewhere out there his sibling is plotting revenge, and it's bound to be terrible. 

I pray with all my heart that his brother is called Bozû, and that I meet him soon.

The growing ubiquity of loot boxes continues to stoke outrage. And while concern over microtransactions is warranted, I think the weeks of anger we saw directed at Middle-earth: Shadow of War was focused on the wrong thing.

Yes, it's uncool that loot boxes have oozed into singleplayer games, and yet another of the major games of 2017. That sucks. As Wes argued in our staff discussion last week, loot boxes threaten to homogenize the reward systems of dissimilar games into a samey, randomized mush.

But buried beneath the internet fury about Shadow of War was the fact that, actually, you don't need to interact with loot boxes at all in order to enjoy or complete it, as multiple reviewers made clear. This anger even drowned out arguably more egregious microtransactions, like the two-hour booster 'potion' you can purchase to double the rate that Talion earns experience, pure heresy in a grindy, open-world RPG.

The real reason these loot boxes are repulsive is that they allow people to bypass the most fun part of Middle-earth: Shadow of War: cultivating rivalries. 

When you unbox an orc from a war chest and add them to your army, you haven't had to hunt, fight, and outwit that orc. You don't have a history with them, because they're instantly loyal to you. You don't have to interrogate pathetic orc worms in order to reveal their weaknesses. You don't kill them, only to have them [dramatic camera spin] cheat death and reappear. You don't even get to hear them speak—a huge part of that orc's personality, as we learned last week. 

These moments are what make Shadow of War a good videogame, and Monolith and Warner Bros.' decision to build a way to sidestep them is a self-inflicted wound on the game's design. Boxed orcs are strangers, but Shadow of War forces them upon you as friends. 

Organic, free-range orcs are better for you

The biggest payoff of the mechanics, missions, and orc personalities that make up the Nemesis system is the decision to kill, shame, or convert an orc captain into a loyal soldier. You've dueled with one of these lieutenants and cut down a bunch of their minions, eventually whittling them down to a weakened state. You're holding their fate in your hands—the culmination of possibly hours of gameplay. There's selfish relief in gutting them right there and then, excising them from the map. On the other hand, it's delightful to bring them over to your side, flipping one of Sauron's chess pieces into an asset you'll use against him.

When you buy a boxed orc, you're missing out on this payoff entirely. There's no beginning, middle, and end to your story with that character. It's the same reason that I feel nothing when XCOM 2 hands me a high-level soldier as a mission reward in the late game—why would I make a random newcomer part of my A Team when I've spent hours investing in characters I carefully made myself?

But even worse, Shadow of War's boxed orcs undermine your connection with the rest of your army. Whole systems of the game are built around upgrading your orcs. You can send them on missions to kill other captains, or level them up by making them fight in Pokémon-style arena battles. You do this stuff to prepare for Shadow of War's fortress stronghold battles, for which you handpick a few orc captains to fight alongside you, bringing their unique attributes to bear against an enemy overlord, his warchiefs, and the defenses of the fort.

Fortress battles are challenging and chaotic. Your captains are spread out across a relatively large area, and you can lose track of them as they fight independently. Deciding which orc to bring means weighing whose life you're potentially willing to sacrifice to complete a major mission, a life that you might've invested hours into leveling and bonding with.

But alternatively, you can spend some in-game currency, crack open a war chest, and instantly get an orc that's leveled proportionately to your campaign progress, because the contents of Shadow of War's boxes scale with your level. In this way the the whole system undercuts the fun risks you'd otherwise have to make: I can drop some Mirian and instantly get one or more ready-to-fight, disposable captains. Losing an orc I love is one of my favorite moments in Mordor because you usually walk away with a story of bravery or martyrdom.

The anger at loot boxes is rational, but as it often does, the internet's collective criticism missed the point. Shadow of War's loot boxes aren't bad because they monetize orcs, weapons, and armor, they're bad because they circumvent the essence of what makes the game interesting: being bullied by assholes like Mozû the Blight, befriending them, and then then losing them forever in a heroic castle siege. 

War never changes, as the saying goes, and soon it will never end, either—at least, not in Middle-earth: Shadow of War. Monolith revealed in a recent livesteam that "infinite Shadow Wars," which will provide endless fort defense at the end of the game, will be released alongside the Slaughter Tribe Nemesis expansion. 

Shadow Wars is basically an end-game sequence in which the forces of Mordor launch counter-attacks against fortresses held by the good guys. (That's you.) It sounds like a terrible grind to get the game's "real" ending, but apparently a lot of players quite like it, and they want the option to carry it on indefinitely. Monolith said during the stream that the option is "coming very quickly," although a specific date wasn't revealed. 

Eurogamer said that the Infinite Shadow Wars mode will be released as part of a free update (the Slaughter Tribe DLC is part of the $40 "expansion pass"), but the video clip doesn't specify one way or the other so I've reached out to confirm, and will update when I have a reply. While you wait, catch up with Tim's tragic tale of humiliation, defeat, and rage-quits at the hands of Mozû the Blight, "Fuck this one particular orc."

Let me begin by warning that for the rest of the piece I will be relaxing our usual rules regarding bad language. I am doing so to tell you that Mozû the Blight is a motherfucker. I first meet this orc captain, and absolute scumbag, as part of the Arena quest in Minas Ithril. Mozû is the final opponent, and from his dialogue I think he's actually an undefeated nemesis enemy imported from my Shadow of Mordor save file, which would at least explain his insane smorgasboard of resistances and abilities. These are what makes Mozû such an asshole to fight. 

He's immune to arrows, fire, ice, quickly adapts to being vaulted over, and regularly emits disorientating howls—but that's definitely not the full list. Consequently, landing any sort of blow on the bastard is a nightmare. He also has a metric ton of health, which I swear at one point was regenerating. The only thing that reliably hurts him is poison, which is how I eventually beat him (after multiple failures) thanks to figuring out I have a lower level weapon that randomly inflicts poison on crits.

Making a monster

A few hours later, Mozû is back. This isn't unusual for Shadow of War's captains, as those with the 'Death Defying' perk will keep coming at you, much like talkative boomerangs. Due to his previous poisoning, Mozû's face now looks like the aftermath of a fire in a chemistry lab, but otherwise he's in good spirits. I naively forget about his annoying combination of abilities and enter the fight on autopilot, treating him like the other captains I've been dispatching. Big mistake. More than a dozen orc grunts swarm around us, I can't get his health low enough, and eventually I lose.

Only you don't just lose to Mozû. Instead of getting a quick-time prompt for a saving parry when you're weak, instead you get 'Humiliated', which is another of his infuriating abilities. The upshot of being humiliated is that you get to keep your life, but you don't get the health boost from a successfully blocked death strike. Instead you're thrown back into the fray with a sliver of health, which in my case usually leads to another loss. 

Okay, fine. Next time I'll go in better prepared, use the surroundings to my advantage, maybe blow some stuff up... But if anything it goes even worse next time. Mozû chalks up another win, and I have to listen to him bang on about how great he is and how much I suck, all while his cronies chant "Mo-Zu! Mo-Zu!" Also bear in mind that each time we battle Mozû runs his smug mouth during the intro, whenever he humiliates me, and at the end of the fight. So with all that goading, it doesn't take long before I am, in Hearthstone terms, completely on tilt.

I keep queuing up the nemesis mission to challenge Mozû, keep playing more recklessly, and keep losing. After each fight he levels up and I don't, further decreasing my odds of beating him. It doesn't help that Mozû starts reacting with disbelief that I'm still coming back for more. And, I am ashamed to type it now, but the truth is I probably lose half-a-dozen times in a row before taking a break.

Tilting intensifies

At that point I decide to take the mature approach, leaving Mozû alone for the time being so I can come back once I'm overleveled. In a rare act of patience, I actually complete an entire other region, after which I feel like a confident, independent ranger. It turns out these feelings are misplaced. I return to Minas Ithril only to find that Mozû has leveled up in lockstep with me. No matter. I've learned so much on my travels, and unlocked crucial new skills, which should make for a fairer fight. 

Nope.

Mozû has also learned new tricks. In a bitter irony, despite the fact his sole fear is being poisoned, Mozû has seemingly taken a crash course in poison bomb making at Mordor University and these almost one-shot me. I try a few more times, face flushed with increasing fury, at the end of which Mozû has reached level 31, is laughing harder than ever, and I'm still marooned at level 24. I feel actual shame as I depart for another region.

Once there, it's probably only five minutes before the prick turns up. "Ranger! Didn't think you could escape, did you? I've followed you for miles…" Holy shit, this guy. Let me enjoy my videogame! I go to bed livid, wondering if Mozû is out there online terrorizing anyone else as part of the game's vendetta missions. Perhaps we could form a support society. 

Two things will happen in the next 48 hours. Either 1) I work out a way to finally overcome Mozû. I refuse to recruit him into my army, because of the embarrassment of having him help me, and I certainly won't send a follower to assassinate him, not that I have any powerful enough ones. Or 2) I delete Shadow of War and go back to complaining about card games. Note that this article will be updated accordingly. Meanwhile, feel free to suggest advice in the comments below (on the assumption that I already know I need to git gud). More practical advice is desperately needed. Mozû must die.

One of my favorite things about Middle-earth: Shadow of War so far are its variety of mission types. I've just hit Act II and completed my first fortress siege, a multi-stage battle where you bring your loyal (read: magi-psychically dominated into loyalty and subservience) orcs into battle against a powerful overlord, who is served by multiple war chief lieutenants.

To prepare for that big battle, I commanded one of my orcs to fight the bodyguard orc of one of the war chiefs. If your orc defeats this bodyguard, Shadow of War gives them the opportunity to become a spy, and ambush that war chief if and when you go to fight them.

But these "Infiltration" missions have a catch: you can't participate. It's a contest between two orcs to see who's the better fighter, and see who deserves the job of bodyguard more. Now that I've played a little more, I've also discovered an area called the Fight Pits, where you can essentially level-grind your orcs against one another or enemies.

On my first Infiltration mission, I sent in secret agent Stakûga the Molten against an unknown orc in the video above, hoping that his flaming spear and non-flaming shield would be enough. Infiltrations are timed fights, and you can move the camera around a little, but otherwise have zero control over the outcome. I watched with trepidation as Stakûga absorbed a few shield bashes early in the fight, becoming dazed. I don't have kids, but I feel like in this moment I understood why some parents lose their minds at recreational children's sports games. It's stressful to watch your orc fail to plunge his flaming spear into the gut of his enemy, while the flaming spear sits there, aflame and ready to impale. 

Anyway, the Fight Pits and Infiltration missions are a nice break from Shadow of War's otherwise dense list of things to do, as Andy mentions in our review. Below, a PCG editor and Heat Signature dev Tom Francis shares an Infiltration battle much funnier than mine.

There are a few ways to earn Mirian fast in Shadow of War. Check out the handy video guide above, created by our friends at GamesRadar. It explains the five easiest ways to earn Mirian in the game, none of which are too tricky to do, plus it offers tips on timings to get the most out of your orc army.

The pointers here include selling loot, tracking down orcs who are guaranteed to drop decent amounts of Mirian, sending your orcs to do battle and more. As you get deeper into the campaign, this guide should help you gather all the resources you need to progress. 

If you're right at the start of the game, though, be sure to check out our separate beginner's tips to Shadow of War. 

Amid the divisive loot box trend, PC players have been finding their own way to deal, foremost in Middle-earth: Shadow of War. By using Cheat Engine scripts to give themselves unlimited Mirian, some players have found it's possible to buy a infinite supply of loot and war chests, drowning themselves in uruks and gear. In the NeoGAF thread that tipped us off, members are going back and forth on the ethics of the exploit, and sharing methods for pulling it off. 

To be clear, Miriam is not the premium currency that requires real money to purchase, and the silver tier of chests do not reward legendary uruks or gear—those are saved for crates you need to buy with Gold, the premium currency. But you can still accrue a formidable army and enough powerful gear to take on Shadow of War's greatest challenges with ease. 

[Update: We've been told that silver war and loot chests can reward legendary items and uruks. They're just not guaranteed like the higher tiers, which means with enough persistence, the silver tier exploit can entirely supplant any need for the higher tier, premium boxes.]

The cheat is made possible using third-party tools like Cheat Engine to manipulate the game files, a common practice until the advent of online-everythings and microtransations. It's an especially strange cheat since the ability to give yourself infinite uruk friends and gear makes the presence of premium loot boxes in a single-player game stand out as totally unnecessary. They're there to make money. That's no surprise, but the exploit diminishes the value proposition of the premium crates, which are already a questionable addition.

But is changing the value of a free in-game currency using cheats to earn unlimited digital items wrong if it shares the same market and item pool with the premium currency and loot? Is it theft, or is it up-up-down-down-left-right-left-right-B-A?

With microtransactions effectively tripling the value of the game industry in recent years, I wouldn't be surprised to see publishers take action against such exploits, even if cheat codes and digging through game files are an ages old hobbyist tradition. 

We don't condone altering game files without first considering the effects it could have on your save files and any possible legal repercussions. To get clarification on the latter point, we've reached out to WB and will update if we get a response.

While games as a service doesn’t have the best of reputations, contributing to countless debates over DLC, season passes and, most recently, loot boxes, a recent study reveals that a lot of us have eagerly bought into the model, and as a result, the value of the industry has tripled. 

Monetisation services company Digital River recently published a report titled ‘Defend Your Kingdom: What Game Publishers Need to Know About Monetization & Fraud’ which found that even premium games—as in not free-to-play—benefited significantly from DLC and microtransactions. 

“In 2016, a quarter of all digital revenue from PC games with an upfront cost came from additional content,” the report reads. Though it also notes that consumers now expect more for less, and the model has been a reaction to that. 

"Consumers are less willing to pay $60 for a boxed game and instead choose titles with a steady stream of new content," the report said. "Publishers seek to meet these expectations and have adopted a 'games as a service' model, releasing fewer titles over time while keeping players engaged longer with regular updates and add-ons."

As players are turned into long-term customers, buying loot crates and expansions instead of splashing out on the occasional expensive game, revenue per user is expected to grow twice as fast as the rest of the market, explains the report.

You can read the full report, which also explores the impact of fraud and key resellers, here.

Cheers, GamesIndustry.biz 

Middle-earth: Shadow of War’s fortresses might have strong defences, but the game doesn’t. Monolith’s Orc-slaying open-world game uses Denuvo anti-tamper software, and once again it’s been cracked in a single day, letting pirates get access to it almost straight away. 

Denuvo’s appeal, for publishers looking to protect their game, was that the Austrian developer originally boasted that it made games extremely hard to crack, and at first it was tougher nut, taking a month for the first game to be cracked. Since it appeared a few years ago, however, the time between a game’s launch and it being cracked has shrunk considerably. 

Several high profile releases, including Total War: Warhammer 2, have been cracked in a day as well, so the case for using it has become increasingly flimsy. With it no longer being guaranteed to stop piracy, even temporarily, it’s looking more and more like a waste of money, and player goodwill, since it also imposes several restrictions on legitimate users, like limiting activations on different PCs. 

Last year, Denuvo Software Solutions boasted that some publishers were only considering PC versions of console titles because of the DRMs previous success, when it was still stopping pirates, though the link between piracy and sales is questionable. Indeed, a recently published EU Commission report couldn’t find robust evidence of a link at all. 

If publishers want to keep using DRM, they may have to start looking elsewhere. 

Cheers, DSOG.

The Singer is an orc musician that will hunt you down and sing to you in Middle-earth: Shadow of War. I mean, he'll also try to kill you—but he'll do it with a surprisingly durable lute, grappling with your sword as he delivers this rhyming couplet right in your face:

You may have heard of one like meThat prances, dances and sings with gleeWherever the strife, the Singer is thereHe slaughters and slays with such merry flairI sing this song with all my breathTake heed, for this interlude ends with your death

I know we're all concerned about loot boxes, but Shadow of War players should also be worried about being lute-boxed.

Credit to Gamesradar.com senior news editor Rachel Weber, who tipped me off to the existence of this singing orc this morning in the office. Rachel encountered him in Minas Tirith early in her campaign ("He seems fun, but he is THE WORST," says Ms. Weber). I found the above video footage of 'Shaká' (he seems to draw from Shadow of War's normal pool of orc names) on the Serious Gaming channel, who also ran into him inside the opening area of Shadow of War.

Like other orc captains, The Singer will (or has a chance to) 'cheat death' and make a second appearance at a higher level. When he appears again, he sings this quick encore:

You tried and failed to kill the SingerYou did not get a caragor dinner

(...Is that a PUBG reference? "A character bursting into song is the most lore-accurate thing about Shadow of War," remarks PCG indie channel editor Jody Macgregor.) 

Other than The Singer, PC Gamer associate editor James Davenport says he's encountered at least one more unusual orc captain in Pûg the Friendly, who shows up and wants to chat instead of fight. When you defeat him, he reappears with bandages and even more fearful apologies.

I don't care what Celebrimbor is whispering in my ear throughout Shadow of War—my new goal for my campaign is to recruit one of these weirdos into my personal orc army.