MAPPING THE WATERWORKS

After what seemed like several months of relative somnolence, those remarkable artists at The Brasse.com have sprung back into action with another brilliant hand-drawn map, this time of the Waterworks in Moria. Though crammed with information about locations, mobs, allies and items, the Brasse maps have an uncanny ability to make highly complicated terrain look simple and easily navigable; many a baffled player has owed his continued sanity to the Brasse map of the Old Forest. The Waterworks map can be found here; see the link, below, for a full list of all those currently available.

MAP OF EAST ANGMAR

This is a very large (17,000 x 8,500 pixel) composite photomosaic map of East Angmar, from Garth Fornir to Carn Dum and Urugarth inclusive. It is in the form of a 32.5 MB JPEG file; once downloaded, it can be overwritten, printed, viewed onscreen and so forth.

You can download it from this link: http://rapidshare.com/files/140723301/Carn_Dum.jpg. Even if you don't have a Rapidshare account, it can be downloaded for free after a 30-second wait. Personally, I found it very helpful both for navigating and as a way of getting a sense of how the various parts of this very complex area relate to one another.

A NEW MAP OF MIDDLE-EARTH

Korrigan must be credited for discovering this excellent map of Middle-Earth, which apart from anything else makes the relationship of the various regions of Eriador accessible in the game much clearer. The map was produced by the brilliant young digital artist Jonatan Alvarsson; a visit to his website http://www.geckoartist.com/ is strongly recommended. Don't miss his trailer for an imaginary horror-adventure game, Alone.

It would be nice if Alvarsson could be talked into making a LOTRO-friendly version of his map, with all the extra locations added in...