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Олег ОнопрієнкоGameDev Eng
23 December 2025, 10:24
2025-12-23
10 years of development, dozens of freelancers and no budget. How the biggest Lord of the Rings game modification was created
The Lord of the Rings has a huge fan base around the world, not only because of the work of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien, but also because of Peter Jackson's phenomenal film adaptation, which won 17 Oscars and still holds the record for the highest-grossing film of all time. As for video game adaptations, they experimented with different genres: from online MMO-RPGs to strategies with varying levels of quality. Most of the games came out after the films and have since become technically and morally obsolete. The latest game was released in 2017, and the developer's studio Monolith Productions was closed by Warner Bros. Games this year, and the Warner Bros. gaming division itself is in limbo after a deal with Netflix .
Fans have taken matters into their own hands and are creating various modifications for other games that transform them into the world of Middle-earth. However, only a single group of enthusiast modders managed to reverse engineer Total War: Attila and, after more than 10 years of hard work, have created a dream game - a turn-based strategy with battles of thousands of orcs, uruks, elves and humans in real time based on the works of Tolkien called Dawnless Days. We tell you about the largest modification ever made for Total War with comments from the developers.
The Lord of the Rings has a huge fan base around the world, not only because of the work of the same name by J. R. R. Tolkien, but also because of Peter Jackson's phenomenal film adaptation, which won 17 Oscars and still holds the record for the highest-grossing film of all time. As for video game adaptations, they experimented with different genres: from online MMO-RPGs to strategies with varying levels of quality. Most of the games came out after the films and have since become technically and morally obsolete. The latest game was released in 2017, and the developer's studio Monolith Productions was closed by Warner Bros. Games this year, and the Warner Bros. gaming division itself is in limbo after a deal with Netflix .
Fans have taken matters into their own hands and are creating various modifications for other games that transform them into the world of Middle-earth. However, only a single group of enthusiast modders managed to reverse engineer Total War: Attila and, after more than 10 years of hard work, have created a dream game - a turn-based strategy with battles of thousands of orcs, uruks, elves and humans in real time based on the works of Tolkien called Dawnless Days. We tell you about the largest modification ever made for Total War with comments from the developers.
How to make game mods
First, it's worth understanding what exactly modders change in games and why they choose a particular game as the basis for transforming it into something completely different. Let's start with the second question, which is also the most important: choosing a game for modification is the foundation on which the mod will be based, including a set of game mechanics specific to that game. That is, if you play a popular mod based on "Stalker" such as GAMMA or Anomaly , it will look like "Stalker", feel like "Stalker" and play like "Stalker".
Then modders change the graphics, textures, models, balance and create something new, but at the same time similar to the original. The size and scope of the changes depends on how flexible the game engine is to manipulation with game files, on the skill of the modder, the number of people working on the mod and whether they have enough time and desire to engage in development. Here the word development is used deliberately, making large modifications for games is like making a full-fledged game but with limited resources and without a salary. A whole galaxy of game dev specialists began their journey in the industry precisely as modders, especially when there were no free game engines like Unreal or Unity.
It is worth noting that modifications specifically for Total War and based on Tolkien's books have existed before. For example, for Medieval II: Total War, the popular Third Age modification was released, which transformed medieval Europe into Middle-earth. "Third Age" found its supporters and was recognized as the best modification for Total War for all time of the series' existence, which occupies the seventh place in the TOP 100 mods according to the most popular site for game modding moddb.com . The Dawnless Days team itself does not like when their creations are compared with Third Age. According to them, the mods are similar only in setting and nothing more.
Modifications based on The Lord of the Rings have also been released for games from other studios, including the most recent examples: LotR: Realms in Exile for Crusader Kings III and Tales from the Age of Men for Mount & Blade II: Bannerlord.
One mod to rule them all
Work on the mod began with the release of Total War: Rome 2 (2013) and went through a thorny path until Sega released Total War: Attila, which became more lenient towards modders, so the creators decided to transfer all the work to the new game. Initially, the modification had a more appropriate name for the setting: Rise of Mordor, but it had to be abandoned when the popularity of the mod drew the attention of intellectual property rights holders.
For the same reason, the modders rejected the possibility of porting the development to the Total War: Warhammer engine, which is more in line with fantasy mechanics, because Games Workshop, which owns the rights to the Warhammer brand, does not want third parties to poke around in the game's innards and turn goblin riders into Nazgul.
As one of the co-founders of the modding team, Mr. J, told dev.ua, the very idea of creating a modification based on The Lord of the Rings attracted many game developers who wanted to share their experiences. At the peak of development, more than 50 people worked on the mod, which is even more than in indie studios.
“As soon as we started to achieve good results, more experienced guys started to join us. It should be noted that if this was an unknown idea, and not as hyped as The Lord of the Rings, we would most likely not have achieved anything. The guys who joined are mostly freelancers, but there are also real professionals who work in game companies or fulfill orders from film companies. Many of them have completed specialized education in the field of game design, 3D art, animation. So, the team members gradually became advanced specialists,” said Mr. J.
Since the team has no funding, the modders initially searched for free character models on the Internet and, with the authors' permission, supplemented the modification with their edits. However, Mr. J noted that this idea did not work out, because remaking models is often more difficult than creating them from scratch. Eventually, this practice had to be abandoned.
“I think the most time-consuming part is the training. First we trained ourselves, then we trained some newbies who already had basic (and more) knowledge. A lot of time was spent organizing the entire development process. Even professionals need to explain the intricacies of the game engine and all its aspects,” said Mr. J.
However, the most difficult thing for modders was the global map. The studio that developed the original Total War, Creative Assembly, did not release an official mod kit for a long time, so that it would be possible to change the global map. Gamers even created a petition calling on the developers to open access to modifying the global map. While there was no official response, the modder team transferred Middle-earth to the map of Total War: Attila, which takes place in Europe in the early Middle Ages. So Mordor was located somewhere in Eastern Europe, just like in real life. Fortunately, already in the fifth year of development, Creative Assembly did release a global map editor, so the modder team began to carefully recreate the world of Middle-earth.
Map of the Mediterranean… that is, Middle-earth
While modders were working on the global map and related mechanics, real-time battles had already been implemented, so gamers could recreate the canonical battles of Tolkien's world. The implementation of battles was so successful that the mechanics from Dawnless Days began to be added to modifications for other games. So the aforementioned LotR: Realms in Exile mod, which has a well-developed strategic map of Middle-earth, but does not have the implementation of battles, was combined with battles from Dawnless Days. That is, fans got so confused that they combined two different modifications on radically different engines to get the most developed world of The Lord of the Rings.
So it begins. Version 1.0 release and community reaction
On December 1, 2025, the developers of Dawnless Days announced that after 10 years of development, the modification would be released. Despite the fact that the western part of Middle-earth, as well as some factions, were still in the development stage, there was no need to delay the release.
On December 12, Dawnless Days 1.0 was released to the public and immediately set a historic milestone — the number of concurrent players in Total War: Attila (which is required for the mod to work) reached 11,000 players, which is a record in the nine years since the game's release. For example, before the mod's release, Attila's online player count hovered around 3,000, and a peak of 26,000 players was recorded upon the release of the original game in 2015.
The first version of Dawnless Days allows players to play as nine different factions: five for the forces of Good (Rohan, Dane, Erebor, Gondor, Elves of the Woodland Kingdom) and four for the supporters of the dark forces (Mordor, Isengard, Easterlings, Eastern Tribes). Each of them has its own unique mechanics, for example, the elves need to cleanse the forest of the taint of evil, high levels of which give debuffs, Rohan must free himself from the madness of King Théoden, who is whispered in his ear by Saruman's servant Grim, and the Easterlings are in a civil tribal war.
The goal of the campaign is to unite the lands of Middle-earth under their banners by conquering the key citadels of the world and finding the One Ring of Power. Interestingly, the quest to find the One Ring is available to all factions and obtaining it grants the owner powerful bonuses. Despite the fact that in the world of Middle-earth there are only two factions that have a fleet in their army - Gondor and the pirates of Umbar, the team of modders still made naval units for these factions.
The ships of Gondor rush to help.
Players were delighted with the overall sophistication, number of mechanics, factions and units. In total, the dev.ua journalist spent about 25 hours completing the Isengard campaign, during which only a third of Middle-earth was explored. The mod turned out to be so successful that it plays at the level of a full-fledged game. The iconic battles on the detailed maps are especially cool. The night siege of Helm's Deep to the accompaniment of rain and the soundtrack from Jackson's films with the command of an army of thousands of Uruk-hai leaves a pleasant impression, especially when Gandalf, who fell and died in this campaign before Moria, does not come to Rohan's aid.
The white hand of Saruman grasped Helm's Deep
On the Nexus mod platform alone, the mod page has 2 million views and 167,000 unique downloads. And submods for the mod itself have already begun to be made by other developers.
There are of course some downsides to the mod, but they are more related to the technical side of Total War: Attila, which is considered one of the worst optimized games in the series. The game doesn't support multi-core processors, so even on the most powerful hardware it can lag. The mod developers even released a separate video explaining how to best optimize Attila before running the mod.
As for Creative Assembly themselves, they have not commented on the success of Dawnless Days, which is logical, since the mod uses intellectual property that they do not have the rights to use. The studio is currently not on the best of terms with its fans for many reasons, the vicissitudes of which are worth a separate large article.
However, Creative Assembly, during an event dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the Total War series, noted that they plan to return to their old games and modernize them, both technically and in terms of content, while the main part of the team is engaged in the development of Total War: MEDIEVAL III.
The Battle of the Five Armies for the Gold Mine of Gondor
Now the Dawnless Days development team, although relieved after many years of development and a warm reception from the community, does not stop there. Still need to add the western part of Middle-earth including Tolkien's main characters - hobbits, will also take on the balance of units, in particular archers, which are currently too strong and the rest of the unrealized but promised factions and mechanics. As the wizard Gandalf said, "The greatest adventure is yet to come."
