* R HP:Healthy MV:Fresh > help newbie
NEWBIE "NEWBIE FAQ" BEGINNER
This covers the basic knowledge that you need to get started on mudding. Topics covered include:
What's a mud?
A mud, which stands for multi-user dungeon, is an interactive game played over the internet in which you move about and perform actions, and which anyone with telnet is able to access. Telnet is simply a different way to use the internet, and there are plenty of places on the net to download the necessary software. Muds first started in 1978, and at the last count there were over 1,000 muds out there, all of which work in a different way. One thing that they all have in common is that other than the connection to the internet, muds are absolutely free, and are sustained by the amount of time and energy that all the players, and immortals (builders, coders and implementors) put into it. All muds are different, and this faq concentrates on the Wheel of Time mud, at www.wotmud.com.
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Starting out
Starting out on a mud is quite confusing, especially as a beginner (newbie). When you first connect, you are prompted for a name, race, sex, profession, and as a learner you should really choose a human warrior. Why? because you'll die less, but more of that later. Choose different if you will, but this guide is predicated upon choosing a human warrior. The name that you choose is entirely up to you, but something in character will stand you in good stead. By this I mean a name like those in the books, although the really special names are barred, as they are used in the game itself already. Also, we don't want 50 Rands running around.
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Rules of the game
Like any game, there are rules, and you should have a look at these before you start, to prevent later misunderstandings. In the game, 'help rules' shows you what they are, although a copy of them can be found at the homepage at http://wot.mudservices.com/index.html. In fact, if you're not familiar with the Wheel of Time novels, then the homepage is well worth a look, as it gives more information about the game. Even better, read the books.
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Online help
Inside the game itself there are a lot of help files, and entering the command 'help' shows you them all. To access the information you type 'help topic', where topic stands for the headings as seen on the help command. It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of these. If you decide that you like mudding, spend an hour or so early on sometime and run them through systematically, and you'll save yourself immense grief later.
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First commands
After creating the character, you'll find yourself in a room called the "Circle of Light". There is a board in that room, which is worth having a look at as it is there that mortals make comments about the game. To read it, enter 'look board' and 'read xx'. From here, you can go to various places in the world, and going down will take you to Caemlyn, for example. Those of you that know the books will realize that Caemlyn is the biggest city in the world, and it is where you should go as a human warrior to start out. Before you do, remember to 'tell guardian kit', which gets you a newbie kit, a gift from the immorts to help you on your way. The command 'inventory' will show you our gift. Then, 'wear all' will put the clothes on your body, so you don't wander around in splendid nudity. The command to hold the weapon is 'wield', so 'wield sword' makes you ready for combat. Then type 'prompt all', which shows you your status and 'autoexit', which always shows you the exits from all the rooms that you visit.
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Levels, practices
The way a mud works is by levels, attained by killing creatures, thus gaining 'experience'. The point of levels is that you gain practices when you gain a level, which allows you to improve your fighting abilities. Killing a pheasant, for example, gets you about 99 experience points; kill ten or so of those at level 1 and you'll get the message "you gain a level", and thus become level 2, and so on. Each level becomes progressively harder, as you can see by the command 'level', but you gain more skills, so it all balances out. After you've levelled, you'll want to use these newly-gained practices. The guy who teaches you to fight better in Caemlyn, the appropriately-named "Master of the Sword of the Queen's Guards" is your man. To find him, go north from the Central Square, and into to the eastern part of the palace in Caemlyn's Inner City. Type 'practice' once you've found him, and you'll see the choices of weaponskills that you can learn. For level 1 characters, a couple of shield parry ('prac shield parry') and a few bladeforms ('prac medium blades') is generally considered a good idea. After more higher levels bash, kick, or from the ranger's guild, search, are all useful.
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Considering mobs
As a level 1, you'll have to find the right type of creatures to kill (creatures on muds are known as mobs). You'll appreciate that trying to kill the Dreadlord, one of the toughest and meanest mobs, as a beginner at level 1, is not an especially wise idea, and won't increase your life expectancy. The way to judge what to try and kill is to consider the mob, and act on the message. Considering a pheasant ('con pheasant'), for example, tells you something along the lines of "easy", so go for it. One thing to remember is that you have to be in the same room as the mob to con it though.
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The Bad Guys
Like any mythical world there are good guys and bad guys, although the Wheel of Time is rather more complex. Again, there is a better introduction at the homepage, and an even better one in the books themselves, written by Robert Jordan. Basically, fades, trollocs and darkfriends are intensely evil, and will kill anything or anyone, especially humans. Always remember that. Male channelers are considered dodgy, especially by female channelers.
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The Good Guys
All that stands between the world and it's breaking are the forces of good, Whitecloaks, the Aiel and Aes Sedai (female channelers). All these are divided into various clans, each of which have various characteristics. There is animosity between some of these clans; the homepage will tell you more.
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Daytime and nightime
Like any real world there are daytimes and nightimes, and it gets dark at night. If you find yourself unable to see anything all of a sudden, then it's worth checking the time ('time'), and holding a lantern or torch if appropriate ('hold lantern'). Beware, light sources do run out, so remove it ('remove lantern') as soon as it becomes daytime, otherwise you'll end up in the situation that I used to have all the time when I first started, namely stuck in the middle of nowhere with a dead lantern, low hps, and some damm boar kicking my butt. This can get quite exciting.
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Killing
So you've conned a mob, and you want to fight it. After typing 'kill xxx', The thing to watch out for is your hit points (hps), which shows how healthy you are. If your hps goes down faster than the mob's, then it is probably a good idea to abandon the fight and flee.
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Fleeing
Enter flee during a fight, and you flee in a random direction. Sometimes you fail though, so try until you succeed. You can set the level at which you'll automatically flee by the command 'change wimpy xx', where xx represents the numerical hps value at which you'll flee. A good wimpy level to set would be about 40% of your maximum. To find out your highest possible hit points, enter 'score', it is contained in that information.
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Moods
Moods can be controlled too, and 'change mood brave' makes you brave (so you take a risk, possibly hit harder, but defend less well), whilst 'change mood wimpy' makes you defend better, but also makes it less likely that you'll inflict juicy damage on a mob.
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Losing a fight
If, when losing the fight, you don't flee in time, you will be killed, which loses you a lot of exp and makes you end up back at the Circle of Light, in a bad state and nude. Try to avoid this. It is not a pleasant experience. Besides the loss of exp, you only have one day to get all that you own back from your corpse.
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Winning a fight
This feels much better than losing. If you have survived to kill the mob, you'll make some exp. 'score' tells you your new score, and 'trophy' tells you what you've killed up to then. Well done-keep at it :)
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Grouping
It is hard to kill things on your own, so if you can join a group it will help you. Joining a group is actually the secret of mudding, as it makes it all the more fun, and levels come easier. Using the command 'who' to see who is visible, use 'tell xxx Hi, feel like grouping?' or something like that, where xxx is a mortal's playername. It is more fun to group with people that are roughly your own level, and works better when different types combine to make up the group (i.e a ranger, channeler, thief and warrior).
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Classes
Each class has different attributes. Warriors hit hard, defend well and generally survive better than other classes, ideal for beginners. Rangers track the enemy and know the lie of the land, and thieves have great dexterity and guile. Until the highest of levels, channelers are frail, weak, and can barely defend themselves.
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Narrate
'Narrate' is a very useful skill in finding a group, as everybody on your (in this case human) side of the game will hear your message if they have their narrate channels on. Try 'narrate I'm new here-any groups going?'. However, it is often abused, and nothing winds up an experienced player or immortal more than narrates such as "whine I lost a level whine it's not fair whine life's not fair whine I hate life whine I'm quitting forever whine". So use it sparingly, take the rough with the smooth, and you'll soon get everybody's respect and friendship. Feel free to ask around, see if there is anyone helping newbies or making a group, and then go to them.
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Getting around
To move around in a mud, you enter the direction that you wish to go in. Channelers can travel, but this has risks of its own. Whatever you do, avoid deathtraps at all costs. They are rooms that will instantly kill you. There are a few of these around; if you see the room name "A horribly dark deep freezing cold gurgling pool that is deadly dangerous" on 'exit' ('exit' tells you roomnames nearby) then yes, that's probably a deathtrap. Best avoided. If you want to avoid this room, and you're not sure that it really is a deathtrap, then look west (if west is the direction of the room) and the description given should give you a further clue. Don't worry, they don't exist in the major towns, but keep an eye out for them :). If you get lost in a maze then you can use 'search west/up' to look for a hidden exit, but you'll need to practice search first, a ranger skill, at Vatrin, who lives in the a hut near the Outer Road of Caemlyn, on the east of the town. Well worth practising once, just in case.
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Buffering
Once you're in the same room as the group leader, type 'follow xxx' (xxx is the groupleader's name), ask them to group you, and 'assist xxx' during a fight. Careful, as a low level, that you don't accidentally become the buffer, which is group member that becomes the default target any hostile mobs, usually the person immediately named after the leader on the 'group' command. As a newbie, the person who levels you will often become your mentor or best friend on the mud, so it is a good idea to pay attention to what they say; sit when they say sit, and so on. They will thank you if you bring enough food and water, and wear boots, before setting out on a long trip.
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Soloing
Say you can't find a group. Well, there are some good areas to start, with nice low-level mobs that will help you get exp on your own. The Braem Wood is near to Caemlyn, and the way to get there is by going west through the city to the West Gate, then following the Caemlyn Road all the way west for about 35 rooms, through the small town of Four Kings, and then heading north once the Braem Wood appears in the room descriptions. The area is replete with pheasants and such, one example of a mob that doesn't flee, so you should be able to kill them easily. If you start out in Emond's Field, the Two Rivers area, then again, go west out of the village, cross the Wagon Bridge and go into the Westwood, north from Quarry Road, another good area to solo.
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Eating
Like in real life, you regenerate hps or mps by resting or sleeping with a full belly and without thirst. Eating and drinking are vital, as you won't regenerate hps or mps without them. There is a lot of food lying around for you to find, so if you see mutton, then 'get mutton' and 'eat mutton', but you can also buy it at a grocer's shop or in a bar.
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Drinking
To drink water from a bottle you 'drink bottle', and to fill it at a well, or fountain, or pond, you 'fill bottle well/fountain/pond'.
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Aliases
These two commands are excellent examples of commands to alias, a way of lessening the demands on your typing. 'alias db drink bottle' means that you'll only need to enter db instead of drink bottle. Lots of commands are already abbreviated in the game automatically, like k ('kill') You have 20 that you can set yourself; flee and exits are a good start.
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Socials
Socials are commands you can use to emulate social interaction. In a mud, you can smile, glare, even hop. The messages that other players see are quite funny, and you can often tell the more experienced mudder from the beginner by the amount of clever and appropriate socials they use.
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Movement points
Mps (movement points) work like hps, but they measure how tired you are, ie how much further you can walk. Each time you enter a room it costs you mps, though every minute (tic) you regenerate them. Basically, hps and mps are both a balancing act. A third variation on this theme is mana, the source for channeling spells, the juggling of which makes a channeler's life yet ore difficult.
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Sleep
You'll often see a fighter sleep near a mob, to regenerate hps for the next fight. The command 'sleep' lets you sleep, but it has a disadvantage, namely the normal messages that you have whilst awake get suspended, until you 'wake'. You can be attacked whilst asleep, so choose the place carefully. After you wake up, remember to 'stand'.
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Money
To buy things and to rent, you need money, the bane of all our lives. There is plenty of money around, and a high-level character will usually spare you some coppers if you ask him or her nicely, or perform some menial task for them. By level 5 you shiould be able to kill villagers, farmers and townsfolk, all of whom carry money. As a low-level, the way to actually make money is to sell clothes and weapons back to the shops, so if you see a lot of dead mobs around make sure that you 'look in corpse' to see what's inside, 'get coins corpse' to loot it for cash and 'get shirt/shield/shoes corpse' to get things to sell. Scavenging from a group of higher-level players is frowned upon, although if you ask them nicely to have some of the less useful stuff from a corpse, and they usually help. A sack to carry it all will also help, as your hands will get full quite quickly. Be ingenious! Offer to sing a song for everyone ('sing'), and people may give you money as a reward or to shut you up. You can even steal, a thief skill, but whatever you do, don't get caught.
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Buying and selling
Go to the grocer, use 'list' to see what's for sale, and use 'buy sack' to buy one. In the same vein, once you've got lots of sellable goodies, go to the armourer or weaponshop and 'sell shirt', or whatever item you have. To find where they are, there is a banner in Caemlyn's Central Square (l banner, 1 down from the 'Circle of Light', which has a map of the town on it)
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Renting
'Rent', is how you finish your session, keeping your equipment for the next time you log on. Whatever you do don't type quit, as you'll lose all your equipment and money, and there is no way to get them back. In Caemlyn, you'll need to find the Queen's Blessing, west along the Wide Boulevard north of Central Square, with Basel the innkeeper, and there you type 'offer', which shows you the cost to rent, and if you can afford it, 'rent'. As a newbie, with little equipment, it should not cost much, but you may not have enough cash, so drop something or sell it. At higher levels, with better equipment, the cost increases significantly.
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This, really, is the basic information that you need to start playing. You're bound to have more questions, and other players and immortals are there to help. Remember, the more courtesy you show them, the better they'll respond; treat them in the same way that you would wish to be treated. Mudding is a great hoot, especially if you get some lab buddies (people connecting to the mud from the same lab) and you all hunt at the same time. If mortals spread the good word, get as many players as possible, then we immortals will do our bit. We'll make the best mud going.
Happy hunting :)
-:Written by Aldieb, of wot.mudservices.com 1234:-
18/7/97
