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NEWBIE GUDIE & MUCH MORE


First of all, the Discworld MUD (Multi User Dungeon/Domain) is a text-based environment. This means that you will constantly have to read and write a lot. The "multi" refers to the fact that there are lots of people all on at the same time. These are real people with real emotions, like yourself, so treat them accordingly.

Whenever you are unsure of something on the mud, try using "help <subject>", where subject is the thing you are unsure of. There are a lot of help files that the creators have put a lot of time into writing, and reading them may save you the trouble of having to ask. Most players, myself included, don't mind answering a question or two, but there can be such a thing as too many questions, so it's better if you read the help file first, and then ask if there is something that is still unclear. Everything marked in this colour below, should have a help file. Try "help here" to get help about the functions of a room you are standing in. Using syntax <command> can be very useful as well.

What I've written below is based on experiences with my characters, reading help files, what other players have said and common sense. Any comments, complaints and/or additions are welcome. I am not a PK, and I don't know much about it, so some of these rules might not apply to interaction involving only player killers.


Some basics to start with - Setup of things

Exploring and moving around - Where am I, where can I go?

Communication - A great way of avoiding, and solving, misunderstandings

Appearance and image - Who are you, what do you want to share with us?

Fighting - Who to fight, When to fight

Corpses - Looting and Burying

Damaged equipment - Armour, Clothes, Jewellery, Tools and Weapons

Skills - Advancing, learning and teaching

Guild Commands - What are they and how do I learn them

Guild Points (gp) - What are they and how do you use them?

Lost and Found - Keeping track of your belongings

Economy - Money, banks and money changers

Alias and nicknames - Making your mudding easier

Mortality - About death and dying

Quests - What, where and how

Help and Ideas - Ways to get help, to report errors



Setup of things - Commands, colours, and options.
Typing "help command_list" will give you the most common and basic commands that you can use on the MUD. All of them have seperate help files to have a look at. Yes, I did say it is a lot to read. To use colours you need to use the term command, after which you can try colours. Rows and cols will let you handle how the text from the MUD is displayed on your screen.

For a whole bunch of settings, you have the options command. Use 'options' or 'options <subject>' to see what they are and how to change them. Many of these things can be set in other ways, but here they are neatly tucked together. A favourite of mine is "options input ambiguous=off" (You can refer to x, instead of x 1, when you have more than one x). Read more about it with 'help parser'.

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Exploring and moving around - Where am I, where can I go?
The most usual way to move around is by walking, and it's the absolute best way to explore and learn about an area. Exploring is for the most part fun and a good learning experience of how things look and work. In each room there is a line of text that lists the exits from that room, which might look like this: There are two obvious exits: north and east. You can sometimes discover exits that are not "obvious" by reading, searching and exploring the things in a room. To move in a direction, just type the name of the exit. If you are unsure about entering a room, look in that direction first, e.g. "look north".

When you leave cities and towns you may see exits like "journey west". These will take you several rooms in one direction, but you can still walk like normal by just using west etc. These are called terrain rooms. In terrain you can use the map command to see where you are. Beware of rivers!

There are other ways to travel as well, available foremost to the members of a specific guild. Priests can passage to other places, by way of a "passaging room". Witches can fly to places and people using their brooms. Wizards can create portals which you walk through like a door and end up in another place. If you walk into a room with a portal, the door will be listed among the other exits in that room. It may not be a very smart move to walk through one of those without knowing where it leads though. Too see where it leads you can use "look enter door". The wizard might consider it rude if you use his portal without asking, but if he's not there and the door is left "operational", it's up to you.

There are also carriages that can take you between places and travel agents for even longer journeys. The further you go and the more you explore, it might be a good idea to have a map. You can make a map yourself if you like, or have a look at the maps on either the atlas part of the Discworld Mud's homepage or right here on my pages. They are built differently so you might even want to use both.

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Communication - A great way of avoiding, and solving, misunderstandings
Communication is a key to the MUD and it is a big part of the experience. Since it is text only, what you write and how you write it is very important, it's all the information other people have about you. Take your time when typing and make sure it says what you mean. Anyone can make spelling mistakes, but it's another thing to use strange shorthand that people won't understand and/or ignore. If you type out the words, use the shift key (where appropriate) and use question marks for questions I can guarantee that you will get more responses from people. The MUD is a very big place, so it also helps a lot if say where you are, when you are asking someone for help.

There are several different ways to communicate on the Discworld MUD, among them are say, lsay, tell, shout and using a talker. Say is used to let anyone in the same room hear you. There is also sayto, which let's you direct a say to a chosen person. Lsay is used to say something loudly. Perhaps the most useful way to communicate is using tells. With a tell you can talk to any player logged on, whether they are in the same room or on the other "side" of the disc. Then there is shout, which is heard over quite a large area, but in general not very usefull.

Another way to communicate is to get a talker, which let's you chat on several chat channels. You can get a talker in the shop that is just 2 east, 1 south of outside the Drum in Ankh-Morpork (read help talker for places to buy talkers in other areas), either by exchanging the voucher you got when you started your character or by buying a stick. "Help talker" and "syntax talker" will let you use it to the fullest.

Remember that the talker is a public channel and that you should not use foul language, send spammy messages or ask/reveal quest info on it. Same goes for most of the other ways of communicating, of course. If you talk with a friend using tells or on a club channel you may, of course, set other levels of tolerans for language. Using soul commands is a great part of communicating and showing each other how we feel. Use "look soul" to see all available souls. There is everything from bow, smile, wave and grin to lick, streak, yulil and wedgie.

You also have the various boards on which you can talk and discuss various things with everyone. There are two ways to access these boards. One is to find them on the disc, the guild boards are found in the various guilds and a few of them can be found in the Patricians Palace. The other way, which is the only way I've ever read the boards, is to go to the MUD's homepage and log in with your name and password just as you do on the MUD. After you have logged in, look under "Playing" for Bullentine Boards. Apart from the boards you can also take a look at families, clubs, councils and newspapers there.

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Appearance and image - Who are you, what do you want to share with us?
To find out more about a player, you can use finger, refer and whois/whoami. Your finger info is more personal and may include real name, email, homepage address and more. To set your finger, use "chfn". To set your refer, use "alias .reference <Your text>". To see a persons finger/refer info, use "finger/refer <player>".

There is also describe, with which you set a line that will describe you to players who look at you. That line also appears in your refer info. The first word of your describing line will always be he or she (depending on the characters gender), but the rest is changeable. Type e.g. "describe is a mad hatter." to get the line "He/She is a mad hatter." To check your describe, just look at yourself. You may also describe individual body parts, but remeber that if you e.g. are wearing gloves, they can't see your hands.

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Fighting - Who to fight, When to fight
Before you attack an npc (non-player character), you might want to stop and consider that npc, by using "consider <name of npc>". It will give you a rough estimate of how you might do in a fight against that npc. Consider is mostly based on comparing your hp's (hit points) though, so you might be able to defeat the npc even if it considers much tougher than you. Read "help consider" to see which messages there are.

If you are unsure about a fight, set your wimpy to a higher number. Use "wimpy <number>" to seet it between 0 and 30% of your hitpoints. If you have 1000 hp's and wimpy set at 30 percent, it means you will automatically run away in a random direction when your hp's get to, or below, 300. Don't forget that some npc's follow you, so be ready to flee further in that case. Lost hp will regenerate over time, unless you heal yourself in some other way. You can also use different tactics in a fight. You can pick attitude (5 different), response (dodge and/or parry) and more.

Never attack npc's in a room where another player is already standing. If you want to attack, then ask first. Or you can  just move along to find other npc's. Never ever join in a fight either, unless you are asked to do so. In some dangerous areas there are npc's that will automaticly attack players, and in those cases it can be difficult to know how to act. Whatever happens though, always try to settle the matter by talking to each other. You might even end up with a new friend!

Note that there are 2 types of npcs. One type is those that come in great numbers, like rats, sailors, mercenaries etc. The other kind are unique npcs, like Carrot, Cohen and Granny Weatherwax, to name a few. The unique npcs often have a special purpose in the game, so please don't kill them. Don't kill shopkeepers either, since they don't give any xp, you can't loot the shop and it would only make it harder for people who wanted to use the shop.

If you want to fight other players, read about playerkilling. You will have to register to become a playerkiller, after which you can steal from and kill other playerkillers, as well as get stolen from and be killed by them... The pk community might deal with gits and troublemakers in their own way, but you can't always count on others. You can't go back once you go pk, so make sure you know what you are doing.

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Corpses - Looting and Burying
When you kill an npc, you might want to take some stuff from the corpse, either to use yourself, or to sell at a general store. You can then use "get/take <item(s)> from corpse". To get a body part from a corpse, use the same line, but hold a dagger or knife in your hand. Also remember to bury the corpse when you are done with it, it's needed to get all the xp your kill is worth.

If you come upon a corpse that you didn't kill, and there is either another player in that room or something tells you that someone may not be finished with the corpse, do not touch it. You won't get any xp from burying it, that only goes to the player who made the kill. The only result would be ruining it for the other player, because he might have wanted to get stuff from the corpse. If you have an interest in the corpse, ask the other player before you do anything.

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Damaged equipment - Armour, Clothes, Jewellery, Tools and Weapons
Your equipment works better the better condition it's in. To check the condition of something, use "condition <item(s)>". To check one particular type of equipment, you can use "condition <weapons/swords/armours/helmets/clothes/robes/jewellery/rings/tools/shovels>" etc. The best use of condition there is though, is "condition all damaged", which ignores the items in excellent shape, hopefully making the list a lot shorter...  ;-)

Weapons, armour and tools can be repaired in a smithy. You need the command fix, and money to pay for the materials you use. You need 10 levels of the skill crafts.smithing to learn fix. The higher the bonus in the skill that applies to the object you are trying to repair, the greater chance you will succeed in fixing the item, and the less it will cost you. Use "skills crafts" to see the different smithing skills and how good you are in them. Jewellery is also repaired with the fix command, but not all smithies are set up to deal with jewellery, but some jewellery shops are.

As for clothes, there are a few places that can help, like the stall with the npc Chyne in NW Bes Pelargic, but you can also buy and use a needle and threads. Leather items can be fixed with the command leatherwork , learned at 10 levels of crafts.materials, when you are in a Tannery. There are tanneries in most larger areas, including the Plaza of Broken Moons in Ankh-Morpork and Rhinu Road in Bes Pelargic. Even leather can be sewn, but you need a sturdier needle and stronger threads. We also have the repair command, learned at 10 levels of crafts.carpentry, which is used for items made of wood. Wood weapons and shields may still be fixed in smithies though, which helps as the places to do woodwork are limited.

Don't forget that you can always ask another player if they can help you repair an item, that not suggesting they are always able, willing and have time to do it. Failing anything else, you can always choose to throw away the old and buy new instead. Not recommended in real life, but on the Discworld MUD it really works!

The different conditions that items can be in are, from worst to best, the following (This list is not complete, help is welcome.):
A complete wreck, Atrocious, Very poor, Rather poor, Poor, Fairly poor, Fairly good, Decent, Good,Rather good, Very good and Excellent.

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Skills - Advancing, learning and teaching
Skills are separated into 6 different trees: Covert, Crafts, Faith, Fighting, Magic and Other. To see all your skills, type "skills", or to see a separate tree, "skills <covert/crafts/etc.>". They are called skill trees because the skills are set up like a tree, with different branches going into different skills. For fighting (fi), the main skill is just plain fighting, then it branches into 6 skills. One of these six skills are called melee (fi.me) which itself turns into 8 branches, of which one is dagger (fi.me.da). Now you can't get any further in the tree, you have found the basic skills. The level of a non-basic skill is the average of the skills under it.

When you begin learning a skill tree, you have to start with the main skill. If you want to advance just one particular basic skill, you have to make your way there by getting 5 levels for each branch, to get to advance the next. You'd need 5 levels of fighting to let you advance fi.me, 10 fi.me to let you advance fi.me.da and so on... If you try to advance a basic skill without having the necessary skills in the upper skills, it will give you a message that "you are not high enough in the outer skills to advance <skill>". You can stick to advancing just the main skill if you wish. You will be forced to advance the basic skills separately aftera while, but by then you'll have enough levels not to have to worry about outer skills. Advancing a skill at your guild costs experience points (xp) and money.

Every guild/specialization has it's own special skills, called primaries., which can be advanced to level 300. If you are not sure what your primaries are, you can see them with "skills primaries" or with "info" when in an advancement room in your guild. All other skills are limited in advancement in the guild, varying between 10 and 50 levels as the maximum. To see how far you can advance the skills in a tree, type "cost <covert/crafts/all/etc.>" in your guild's advancement room.

When you can't learn more of a skill in your guild (you have reached guild max), there are two ways for you to advance skills outside the guild, by teaching yourself or learning from others. There is no level limit or money cost this way, but the xp cost will increase. Teaching yourself costs more xp than learning from other players. For another player to teach you a skill, their estimated teaching bonus (ETB) has to be higher than your bonus in the skill. ETB is the average of the bonus in the taught skill and the bonus in the other.teaching.xx that matches the skill tree. I'll give an example: If you have a bonus of 200 in other.health and a bonus of 100 in other.teaching other, your ETB for other health will be 150. This means you can teach other.health to players with a bonus of less than 150 in other.health. Use "teach bonus <skill>" to see your ETB of a skill.

Another way to gain a level is by the automatic taskmaster (tm) system. Every time you use a skill there is a small chance that you will get a tm, which means you get one level in that skill for no cost. When you get a tm, a yellow line of text will appear and say that "You feel better at..." or something similar. You can't get tm's in all skills and you get less tm's the higher your skill/bonus is though. It's not a reliable way to advance your skills, but I find it to be the most enjoyable :-)

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Guild commands - What are they and how do I learn them
Guild commands are special actions that are based on one or more skills and that use gp(see next subject) when peformed. They require that you have a certain level in a skill to learn them and many are limited to certain guilds. Commands which are strongly linked to your primary skills will most likely be taught to you in your guild. It will either be taught automagicly when you reach the right level or by asking a special npc in that guild to teach you. Just because your guild does not teach you a command does not mean that you can not learn it, but you need  to learn the command in another way - from other players.

It is not enough to just know a command to be able to teach it to another player, you must also have advanced a bit past the level you needed to learn it at (sometimes it's double the level of learning it, but it varies). If you are too low level to teach the command, you will get a message saying so. Trying to teach a command to a player that does not have high enough skills to learn it will also give a message. Also, some commands are limited to one or more guilds.

Type "commands" to see which commands you know and read "help <command>" to learn about a command.

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Guild Points (gp) - What are they and how do you use them?
Guildpoints, or gp, is the "energy/mana" of the MUD. Just walking around doing normal things does not affect them, but when you start doing things that rely on a skill, they come into play. Commands, see above, are an example of things that use gp. Not all actions are listed as commands though, e.g. cast, perform and climb, but they do rely on skills, which means they use gp.

Every skill tree has the 'xx.points' basic skill, which decides how many gp you have of that kind (e.g. fighting gp or faith gp). Type "gp" to see how many gp you can use in the different skill trees. You will get a message if you do try do to something for which you lack enough gp and then you need to wait for the gp to regenerate before you can do it.

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Lost and Found - Keeping track of your belongings
Knowing what is yours and what belongs to someone else is very good. On the west end of the Street of Cunning Artificers in Ankh-Morpork there is an engraver who can engrave your weapons and armours. On the east end of the same street there is an Embroidery where you can do the same with your clothes. This way you can just read an item to know which is yours. There are also engravers in Bes Pelargic and KLK. They all engrave in their own languages.

In the Lost Property Office, also located on the Street of Cunning Artificers in AM, you can register your items. If someone then finds your lost item and deposits it there, you will get a mail to come pick it up. Quest items that are personal are automagicly registred there. Other items you have to register yourself, for a fee of 5 dollars per item.

It's not a good idea to carry around too much stuff, it will eventually get you burdened and your dexterity will suffer from it. If you wear a backpack or a satchel you can put stuff in them to relieve yourself of some of the weight. A better way is to put the things you don't currently need in a vault. There are vaults in Ankh-Morpork, Ohulan Cutash, Khot-Lip-Khin and Bes Pelargic which can hold your stuff. It costs very little to open an account at a vault, and even less to enter the vault to get or deposit something. Vaults have drawers, holes or similar in which you put your items. Dropping stuff on the ground in a vault will not save them.

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Economy - Money, banks and money changers
Banks on the Discworld charges a small percentage on what you deposit, and does not give any interest, but they are very useful when it comes to getting money in a different currency and not having to carry all your money around with you. The Lancrastian Farmers Cooperative Bank has offices in Ankh-Morpork, Ohulan Cutash and Lancre Town. This means you can deposit dollars in A-M and withdraw them as crowns in Lancre or vice versa. Bings bank works the same way for their offices is A-M, Sto Lat and Hillshire, while the KLK branch stands by itself. Some player shops also has bank services.

At some point you might wanna change a bunch of small coins into something worth more (like pence to dollars) or exchange coins to another currency. This you can do at a money changer. What services and currencies the different money changers has varies from place to place, just read the sign.

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Alias and nicknames - Making your mudding easier
Tired of typing those long names that some people insist on, everytime you want to communicate with that them? Create a nickname! Type "nickname <name> <nickname>", like "nickname pinkfish pf" and then just use the nickname. Remember not to use nicknames that you might want to use in other situations, it might cause you to be unable to do a thing. If that happens you can remove the nickname, with "dnickname <nickname>".

An alias can be a great help when there is something you use often and don't want to have to retype again and again and again. You make them by using the pattern "alias <name of alias> <what the alias should do>". An example of a small and very useful alias is "alias sb score brief". When you type sb, it will execute the command score brief. You can also insert arguments into an alias, like "alias ge tell $*$ Good evening!". If you did that, "ge airk" would give you the result "You tell Airk: Good evening!". As with the nicknames, don't pick a name for an alias that might clash with some other use of the word. An alias like "alias sit shout I'm tired!", would mean that you couldn't use the soul "sit" anymore. To remove an alias, use "unalias <name of alias>".

The best use might be when you set an alias to use something automaticly unless you specify an argument. With the "alias cru crush $arg:soldier$ with weapon" you can just type 'cru' to crush a solider, or 'cru <x>' to crush x. Use a ';' to put several commands in the same alias, like "alias kk kill $arg:soldier$; crush $arg:soldier$ with weapon".

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Mortality - About death and dying
Dying is a natural thing, on the Discworld MUD it can even be unnatural, but it's death nonetheless. When you die you become a ghost, and THE PERSON WHO TALKS LIKE THIS pays you a visit. To live again you will need someone who can raise or resurrect you. The difference between them is that resurrect also restores some of the xp you had when you die. There are a few npc's that can raise you, like Harry in the Temple of Small Gods in Ankh-Morpork and Ptamney in the temple of Sessifet in Djelibeybi, among others. If you want to be resurrected, you need a priest of Pishe. If you ask one to help you, do it politely.

When you start a character it has 8 lives to begin with (the current one and 7 extra). You can buy more lives by going to the fountain of Pishe in the Temple of Small Gods i Ankh-Morpork and using "toss royal into pool". The first few lives will cost 2-3 royals, then the cost will increase.

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Quests - What, where and how
Quests are fun and you can get money, items and xp for doing them. Some quests might require things like money, skills and knowledge to do, but what almost all of them require is patience *grin*. If you can't seem to get anywhere, try something different, or go do something else, then come back and try again.

There are quests all over the disc. Explore your surroundings and you will find lots of things that may be quests. Some npc's that you meet might ask you for help and/or respond to certain phrases or words that you say. You can use things like look, read, push and search in a room and you might find something to do with a quest, or something that is not a quest, but that still can be useful. You will also discover how much work the creators have put into every room on the MUD.

You get quest points (qp) for doing quests. To see how many qp's you have, use "score verbose". If you want to check which quests you have done, use "score quests" to see them in the order you did them, or "score quests sorted" to see them in alphabetical order.

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Help and Ideas - Liaisons, "bug", "idea", reading boards
The newbie channel is the first support when starting a new character. You may ask about game functions and how to get started, simply by typing "newbie <message>". An example: "newbie How do I find the Womble please?" Please do read the help files and signs first though, as many questions will be answered by them. Also try to do things a few ways before you ask. Either it will work, or it will not, so you have nothing to lose. "Syntax <x>" is your friend!

By typing "helpers" you can see a list of players who have chosen to be assigned as newbie helpers. They can chat on the newbie channel and also help you out in tells. These players are not there to help you get xp or buy you items, but to help out with questions and possibly other things if they happen to be close by. There are also special creators called liaisons. Unlike the other creators, their job is to help out with problems you may encounter, such things as other players can't help you with. Type "liaisons" to see which are on. In contacting either helpers or liaisons, please be polite and type so it can be read and understood.

For things that are wrong, but not in a hurry or vital for you, there is a command called bug. Use it to report things that seem to be bugs. If you have an idea for anything that you would like to see in the game or something already in the game that you have an idea for, use the command idea to let the creators know. There is also typo to report spelling mistakes.

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Airk - December 2005