INCLUDE_DATA

Aardwolf MUD Blog

Aardwolf MUD General News and Updates.
 

Location: Home


Autokeep command, nodesc option, other changes.

August 24, 2010 Author: Lasher Category: MUD News


Game changes in this update:

  • There is a new ‘autokeep’ command. When set to on this will cause items bought from a store to automatically be kept.
  • The limits for ‘ownedwhere’ and ‘ownedcarry’ have been increased to 500 each.
  • If you are low level and get a campaign mob such as the academy where you might level out of range and be unable to reach the mob, you will now receive a warning. Mobs restricted by specific scripts of their own won’t be covered by this, but most others should.
  • I increased the default compare score on damage from +2 to +4 per extra point of damage.
  • The ‘nodesc’ option added to look will allow you to look at a player or mob without seeing their description. For example, ‘look lasher nodesc’.
  • Cleaned up the output when typing ‘battlecry’ with no other arguments.
    • - Will explicitly show when no battlecry is set.
    • - Will show the ‘appears as’ when one *is* set.
    • - Tidied up the syntax a little.
    • - You can now also use ‘clear battlecry’ to clear it.
  • Mobs that are so low level you don’t get exp for them will no longer shift your alignment.



Bug fixes in this update:

  • The ‘who options’ were not working correctly when abbreviated. Now fixed.
  • Fixed the clan column not quite being enough in rankings. Also modified powerup colums in rank 16 and 17 to be wider and removed ‘gquests’ from these 2 rankings to keep it under 80 characters wide.
  • When a room is checked for brightness levels it now defaults to inside unless explicitly flagged outside - this makes it consistent with the ‘weather’ command, ranger spells etc. It should also help with some rooms needing more than 1 light to see in them (although some others are intentionally set this way).
  • Tempering a weapon belonging to your spouse should have the same str+dex requirement as if it belonged to you.
  • Eqsearch will never normally replace a piece of Aard equipment. I changed this for weapons so that if there are higher scoring items in stores than your current Aard weapon, they will still be shown.
  • Checks in the ’skin’ command were out of order making it possible to destroy the corpse with a typo such as ’skin sleves’. Now fixed.
  • Goal files will now be saved immediately when a goal is started. This already happens when a goal is completed, but because of a couple of crashes we ended up with a higher number completed than started on some goals.
  • When casting ‘cancel’, you will receive a different message if you have no affects that can actually be cancelled vs just having no affects at all.
  • Using reinforce was adding weight to an item without increasing the player weight carried, which means weight was lowered by the wrong amount when dropping the item.

New Quests - Killing Fields, Blighted Tundra and Kimr’s Farm

August 24, 2010 Author: Lasher Category: MUD News

Area Replacement and Goal - Kimr’s Farm:

The once peaceful and vibrant farm has a problem with the local wildlife, particularly the weeds and ants!

Visit the owner, Kimr, to see how you may assist him.

Level Range         : 1 to 5
Goal Difficulty     : Easy
Goal Recommended at : 1
Goal Converter      : Lasher
Area Author         : Domain

This area replaces The Orchard.


Area Replacement and Goal - The Blighted Tundra of Andarin

The Plains of Andarin were once the most fertile and lush plains in the lands. Renowned for stunning vistas and beautiful flowers, the main feature of the landscape was a huge tree known simply as the Tree of Sodrus. The tree was so tall that it reached up to heaven, and that if you could climb to the top you could speak with the gods. People used to travel far and wide to visit this spiritual tree. Not only was the Plains a spiritual center but a magical center as well as it was the meeting place of several vertexes of power. As such mages travelled to practice their magics in this place of power. But then came a terrible winter which ravaged the countryside.

Generations passed, and the winter that came to these land years ago remains - enduring and unending. What once was beautiful fields of lush green grass, are now dead fields of snow and ice. This eternal winter is killing the people of the plains. The Chieftain believes he has discovered the source of the eternal winter. Will you help him?

Level Range         : 35 to 60
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : Level 40
Goal Converter      : Domain
Area Author         : Domain

Note: This area replaces the Pirate Ship.


New Goal - The Killing Fields:

It has only been a short time since you caused all kinds of chaos in The Den Of Thieves. Now you have followed word that Jumpsteady has survived and is in dire need of help. This is your chance at redemption, it is time to show these thieves that you can be useful in their fight against Damian.

Level Range         : 60 to 80
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : 60
Goal Converter      : Madrox/Lumina
Area Author         : Madrox

Note:
This goal cannot be opened until after you have completed the goal for Den Of Thieves.

GMCP in Aardwolf MUD

July 27, 2010 Author: Lasher Category: MUD News

In a comment on the previous post regarding GMCP and MSDP in muds, I stated that “I do fully reserve the right to turn around in 2 weeks time and declare that I was completely wrong”. Well, this isn’t quite that, but close.

After experimenting more with GMCP and MSDP, I think I am going to move ahead with just GMCP. MSDP is a fine protocol and either could do the job, but there is already both CMUD GMCP support and Mudlet GMCP support out of the box. There is also a Mushclient GMCP plugin and a Tintin++ GMCP script already written.

Some of my earlier reasons to implement MSDP alongside GMCP are discussed below.

  • Sending all data in a set even when only 1 or 2 items have changed is ineffecient:

    I’m not sure how much this ever mattered with MCCP, but assuming it does matter, the default GMCP implementation in CMud caches data. If you send values for ‘hp’ and ‘hpmax’ in one package, then later on only send a value for ‘hp’, the %gmcp.char.vitals.hpmax is still available in CMud.

    So, this leaves open the option to send:

    char.vitals { "hp": 44857, "mana": 50154, "moves": 41754,
    "maxhp": 50159, "maxmana": 50154, "maxmoves": 41754 }

    Or if only two values have changed:

    char.vitals { "hp": 44850, "mana": 50153 }

    Mushclient can work the same way. Presumably in Mudlet this would be just a case of storing the data in a lua table.

    Making this assumption for GMCP puts more work back on the server side to track individual variable changes, but that was necessary for MSDP anyway.

  • JSON is inefficient (compared to pure compiled C parsing binary data):

    This is probably still true looking at absolute numbers. However, after configuring Jansson in my local development port I was able to decode a JSON object with 9 attributes including a nested array and a nested object 125,000 times per second.

    By comparion, I can only view my equipment just under 20,000 times a second (it takes 51 microseconds). Seems performance on the server isn’t a concern after all for the types of message we will be receiving.

  • The “standards” process itself didn’t go too well:

    Still true, still disappointed it didn’t work out better. Putting emotion aside, so what? It is what it is and looking forward it makes sense to go with the protocol with the widest client support.

  • The protocol is “kind of” JSON:

    Another “so what?”. I wish this part of the discussion had been resolved, but it wasn’t. If a parser allows the other side to be a little less flexible with the standard it just doesn’t matter. As long as the parsers inside the clients accept the JSON we send, we’re good.

Once again, I want to be clear that there is nothing wrong with MSDP. It could just as easily do the job. I could sit here and flip-flop for weeks on which one to go with and neither would be “wrong”. It’s time to just pick something and move forward. GMCP has wider support and the initials concerns with it are lessened. There are other advantages outside of traditional MUD activities to supporting JSON, but that’s a different post sometime int the future.

For a preview of the work we have done on GMCP so far, check out GMCP in Aardwolf MUD. The arrangement of which tags are in which messages will almost definitely change, so please pay attention to that disclaimer.

This is also the best time to provide feedback - once people start to write plugins based on our tags it will be much harder to change them. At least unlike with the fixed format ’statmon’, it will be easy to add to them without breaking existing scripts.

Raiding timeout changes, soldier perk, other MUD updates.

July 16, 2010 Author: Lasher Category: MUD News

Clan Raiding - Defender Timeout Change:

The idea of a timeout for outside defenders during a raid, combined with a max of 5 outside defenders in the maze at a time, has never quite worked correctly. The timer is on each individial player so there is nothing to prevent a large group of defenders from “cycling” through the maze 5 at a time with no timeout.

This change is based around the idea of having a timer on “defender slots” as well as the individual timer. When a defender tries to enter the maze, their person defend timeout will be checked and an additional check made to see if there is an open “defender slot”.

  • The number of defender slots does not have to equal the number of defenders allowed in the maze. It has been set to 6 but can be changed at any time without a reboot. The number of defender slots now shows in ‘raid timers’.
  • The defender timeout itself has been lowered from 8 minutes to 6 minutes.
  • The command ‘defend timers’ or ‘defend slots’ will show each of the defender time slots and whether or not there is a current timer.

Game Code Changes:

  • With their advance military discipline in weapons, a soldier is able to dual wield weapons regardless of weight. This is not a skill, more of a soldier subclass “perk”.
  • The change to blindness duration affected the ability to use it to deal with aggro mobs. Have put the duration back to what it was when used against mobs.
  • When using ‘give all’, the messages have now been collapsed for multiple items, so instead of seeing ‘You give a sword to Razor’ 5 times, you would see ‘You give 5 * sword to Razor’. Maybe someday we’ll add a “plural” field to all items, but this will work for now.
  • There is a new ‘title reset’ option which will reset your title to the default for your current subclass. Using ‘title default’ also works.
  • The lag on attempting to use ‘charge’ while already fighting has been reduced, but not removed completely.
  • Quite a few of the ‘who’ filters that could not be abbreviated such as ‘who friend’ now can.

Game Bug Fixes:

Most of these are not very important but I try to do a few every reboot anyway otherwise they get posted and will never be acted on as the list just grows:

  • Clanadmin recruit will now check tier when checking if a player is below level 15 or not.
  • When you classchange or subclass change, if you have the default title for your class, it will automatically change to the new default.
  • Using the ‘dust devil’ spell with no name was not working, now fixed.
  • Fixed a bug with getting ‘container is now empty’ message twice when using gulp.
  • When you get a message that someone added or removed you as a friend, you will now always see their name regardless of visibility.
  • The lines for ‘quietspell’ and ‘quietsell’ were showing incorrectly in ‘config all’. I wonder how many people even know about most of the options in ‘config all’.
  • Using ’socials [search]‘ to search for socials will now also search the social name.
  • You will no see a brief message when combat cancels a ‘hidden’ or stealth affect. Unlike invis, others in the room do not see anything.
  • There was a bug in doorway and gate where you would get the message ‘that target is not in your clan’ when trying to doorway from a PK room. The correct behavior here is to prevent dooring _in to_ a PK target in a PK room.
  • Using ‘compare’ with ‘wearable’ and ‘bags’ in the same filter would not look inside non-wearable bags. Now fixed.

Weather Observatory, Nanjiki Ruins and Olde Worlde Carnivale Goals

July 16, 2010 Author: Lasher Category: MUD News

New Area and Goal - The Weather Observatory:

In the mountains of Gelidus near the Elfin Bay there is a Weather Observatory. The Weather Observatory serves two major purposes. It provides a learning environment for young weather beings. Sometimes a small cloud may arrive and from its time here decide it wants to be a rainbow instead.

The other purpose is to provide a place where those interested in weather can come to observe weather more easily than in the field. There are a few things that the observatory staff could use some help completing.

Level Range         : 20 to 40
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : Level 25 (for low tiers)
Goal Converter      : Zafirah
Area Author         : Zafirah

New Goal - Nanjiki Ruins:

Deep in the heart of the Amazonian rainforest lies an ancient ruin, ravaged by the winds of time. It is said that a once powerful race dwelled there, before some event felled their civilisation and regressed its members to a much more primitive form. Not much is known about when or why - some say a spell gone catastrophically wrong, others theorise a virulent plague.

One thing is for sure though, rumours are starting to spread about endless riches and treasures found hidden in the ruins, and the explorers and looters have started to flock in search of the ancient civilisation’s wonders. Not much is to be found above the surface, but some have dared to venture beneath, where strange creatures teem.

Might you be the one with the luck and pluck, to discover the secrets untold?

Level Range         : 140 to 160
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : Level 160
Goal Converter      : Redryn
Area Author         : Kahr

New Goal - Olde Worlde Carnivale:

PUBLIC ANNOUNCEMENT*THE CARNIVALE IS IN TOWN!

Rejoice my friends for now you have relief from those long dull days of watching the buffalo roam and bandits wander. Forget your troubles and put all thoughts of those back taxes aside, for now is the time for merriment and laughter.

There is something for everyone. Try your hand at whittle, play quarters in the bar, get your fortune told. Simply have a fun day at the Carnivale!

Level range         : 1 - 35
Goal Difficulty     : Easy
Goal recommended at : Level 10
Goal Converter      : Zarifah and Justme
Area Author         : Zendalonii

Mud standards - telnet options - not a standard yet.

July 12, 2010 Author: Lasher Category: MUD News

It has been a couple of years now since we worked on handling data exchange between the MUD and client using telnet option negotiation. With hindsight, using telnet option 102 for this was probably a mistake as we have since learned that ATCP could have done the same thing, so could ZMP, and a number of other options. The existing support for ‘102′ in the Aardwolf code will remain in place, but no further work will be done on it.

Fast forward to the beginning of 2010. The mud community realizes we need better interfaces and an important part of that is new standards for client/server exchange. I was excited to be invited to mudstandards.org earlier this year to take part in discussions to design exactly that.

Authors of several clients were already on board including Mushclient, Zmud/Cmud, Mudlet, Tintin++ and possibly others. Admins of several large MUDs were involved and authors of a number of MUD codebases. I really thought we’d come up with something useful.

Trying to avoid laying blame anywhere in particular, what we ended up with was (100% in my opinion only):

  • A failed attempt at standards. Two major client authors in disagreement to the point that each declares they are leaving the forum.
  • Many other community members left with the impression that mudstandards.org was only ever created to “rubber stamp IRE ideas”. As this is an opinion piece anyway, I think it’s ok to state that I do think IRE and everyone else involved started out with a good faith attempt to have open discussions leading to a widely adopted standard. It quickly became obvious that agreement was not going to be reached anytime soon if ever. IRE just had to move forward with something, much the same way as we now are.
  • A draft protocol called GMCP, or ATCP2, depending who you ask. There is even argument over the name.
  • No built-in support for ATCP2 in Mushclient, basic support in Cmud and full support in Mudlet. All come with lots of disclaimers that the standard is still very subject to change.
  • Protocol itself is “kind of” JSON. “Kind of JSON” to me is a waste of time. I don’t like the bloat of JSON but it does have the advantage of being a standard. The Facebook API uses JSON, a number of other large services use JSON. There is value in sucking up the bloat and going with a JSON based protocol, if we stick to the standard strictly. If we don’t, I might as well do what I always do and go-it-alone with a streamlined but completely proprietary approach.

So here I am, wanting to work on a new version of our Mushclient, wanting to work on some Flex stuff, and with no clearer picture of which protocol to use. This is one of those situations where being a smaller MUD would be better, we’d just choose what we choose and nobody would care. Our experience with the “102″ protocol has shown that whatever we pick people are going to request that client authors support it and it will become something of a rogue “standard” even if that was never the intent.

One thing I have seen that looks very promising is MSDP which very nicely covers everything we wanted to do with the “102″ protocol originally, is very expandable, does not have the JSON overhead of ATCP2/GMCP and will be both easy to implement and easy to modify our existing scripts for. The downside of this protocol is very limited support in most clients and MUDs and if we wanted to use the protocol to exchange binary data, the values ‘1′ and ‘2′ need to be wrapped or escaped somehow.

Even MSDP has issues (for us). If I’m going to avoid JSON to avoid overhead then I’m going to avoid overhead. I’m not going to use variables like “EXPERIENCE_TNL” when just “TNL” will do. If another MUD has other meanings for TNL so what? Does it matter with compression? Possibly not, but if we’re forsaking a standard for efficiency then we might as well optimize the efficiency on day 1 when it’s easiest. The MSDP protocol does support this though, and the variables listed are suggestions and guidelines only.

So far I’m leaning towards using MSDP for all the work I do myself and for the client/server communication with the new Mushclient package then implementing ATCP2/GMCP longer term for the more general client support.

Maybe MSDP will gain more traction and this won’t be necessary, or maybe future discussions will be more successful and the two protocols will merge. I wouldn’t count on it. In the meantime, we need to move ahead with something, knowing it isn’t perfect but is better than what we have today and is a whole lot better than nothing.

I wrote this because of many queries about what we plan to do. Most of these queries come from Aardwolf players, but a good number of them come from client authors and other, hmmm, “interested third parties”. Some people a very passionate about this stuff - there is no intent to offend anyone here, only to pick what I believe is the best approach for us right now and to explain the reasoning behind it in one place that we can refer people to.

Nothing written here is set in stone, feedback appreciated…

Blacksmith Subclass Changes, Hammerforge Skill.

June 29, 2010 Author: Lasher Category: MUD News

Blacksmith Subclass Changes:

Quite a few changes were made to the blacksmith subclass in this update, details are below.

  • The current ‘hammer’ combat skill has been renamed to ‘hammering blow’. The command for it is still ‘hammer’ though.
  • There is a new weapon type ‘hammer’. It is blacksmith only and is not part of weaponsmaster. Main advantage with this for Blacksmiths is that you can only parry a weapon type you are skilled in.
  • Using ‘outfit’ should now give blacksmiths the hammer rather than a sword, and a newbie blacksmith will start with 90% hammer skill.
  • There is a new skill called ‘Hammerforge’. This skill can only be used in a forge and allows a blacksmith to convert any metal based weapon their level or lower to a Hammer. There is no option to convert a hammer back to something else, that part still requires tp. For the purposes of this spell, “level” is the level of item you can use, not your actual level.
  • The average damage increased by ‘temper’ has been increased slightly, along with the duration of the temper affect. Note that ore quality is very important here, no matter how high your stats are it won’t matter if you’re using basic low level items from aylor - say basic low level ore for basic low level equipment.
  • A blacksmith wielding a hammer will do up to 2 additional hits when using the ‘hammer’ skill.
  • Temper can now only be used on items that are metal rather than hard coded weapon types. This was always originally intended (and is in the helpfile) but wasn’t done at first because we hadn’t assigned all the object materials. For the purposes of temper, all aard weapons are considered ‘metal’ even if identify does not show that.
  • A blacksmith examining inventory or viewing items in the room will see a (T) or (Tempered) on tempered items, depending on their shortflag settings.
  • There is a new type of ore in inferno. It’s better than all the rest.

Cataclysm Quest, PVP changes, other MUD updates.

June 29, 2010 Author: Lasher Category: MUD News

Cataclysm Goal:

Ancient tales still survive today, about the world as it was once known. It was a time of chaos. Horrible climate changes, random layouts, dogs and cats living together- mass hysteria! This is one such tale of the first major changes, a small preview of what was to come in the following ages. The author is unknown, yet the story continues to survive.

The world has finally settled. The great cataclysm is over.

After many years in peaceful existence the people of this world started to experiment with magical methods of travel. One great wizard stumbled across an ancient text which described a spell called The Great Portal. This wizard and his fellow mages studied this text until they believed they fully understood the nature of the great portal. A spell which would allow one to travel between worlds. On the day of Thunder the wizards set out to test this spell and gain fame and fortune. Little did they know that the spell was actually an evil device long ago created by the Demon Lord Valkur. Upon the casting of the spell the wizards stood in awe at the shimmering portal of light which opened before them.

Then a strange figure stepped through and gazed around. This figure smiled a wicked smile and with one point of his finger destroyed the wizards where they stood. Thus began the cataclysm! Valkur’s demon hordes ravaged the land around the portal for days, bring mayhem and destruction to everything they could find. Word quickly spread to the Great Kingdoms of the land of the great bane the wizards had brought upon the world. Soon Solace, Thalos, and the lost kingdoms of Ofcol and Midgaard marched their armies of proud troops across the continent to battle this foe. The two forces met just to the west of the city of Solace.

The forces battled for two straight weeks, until the clerics and mages of the land gathered enough magical force to strike down the Demon Lord, but

Valkur would not fall so easily as his body was being torn apart by the magics he attempted to destroy the world, but alas he did not have enough strength left after maintaining the strength of his army during the fight. Instead of destroying the world, he only managed to sever the massive continent into smaller fragments. The remainder of the demon forces scattered through out the newly formed western continent awaiting their lord’s return. Even though the forces of good were victorious, Valkur’s evil presence still looms over the world. Swamps and evil creatures arose from the dark woods and the great kingdom of Thalos sank into the sea leaving only a portion of the culture surviving. Some still say that Valkur was not destroyed on that glorious day, only that the wizards and clerics destroyed his body, leaving his evil soul to roam about the world seeking a way to return and exact his revenge.

The demons have been summoned, and now the people fighting for their lives. Can you stop the demonic invasion before it is too late?

Goal Difficulty          : Medium
Goal Recommended at:     : 195
Goal Converter           : Domain
Area Author              : Baktosh

Game changes in this update:

A lot of smaller changes in this one, but some of them are important and affect PVP:

  • The ‘attr’ and ’stats’ commands where not picking up the new higher train ranges in the 70-130 range, so some of their numbers were wrong after the last reboot. Now fixed.
  • Mobs in the range of 1 to 4 levels below your level will now have slightly higher exp. If you’re having trouble leveling, particularly as a single class, you might find the ‘worried about the idea’ mobs a more practical way to level now.
  • The duration of blindness from the blindness spell has been reduced, by a lot. Just no point forcing someone to walk around with 20 minutes blindness long after a fight is completed.
  • If two or more mobs were fighting player A, and player B killed the mob player A was aimed at, player A would be taken out of combat even though other mobs in the room are attacking them. This has now been resolved.
  • There is now a ‘containers’ option to compare. When doing, for example, ‘compare sword all’, using ‘compare sword all containers’ will show a slightly different display and compare to items inside all your containers. You can also combine this with ‘wearable’ to show only items wearable right now. ‘Bags’ also works as a shorter version.
  • Parry should have always been partly based on your knowledge in both your own weapon skill and that of the attacker. This was not working and has now been fixed. Parry against an unarmed mob has not changed, but parry against a mob wielding a weapon, or a player, is affected. In the case of an unarmed player, the ‘hand to hand’ skill counts for the ‘knowledge in attackers skill’ portion. When a player is dual wielding, it is the weapon type of the dual weapon that counts.
  • Higher constitution will now help reduce the affect of Desecration in PvP. Player vs Mob is unchanged and even max con is going to leave less than half your total sanc bonus intact, but it should help a little at least.
  • When using ‘market bid’ or ‘bid’ to identify items for sale, you were not always getting the full identify. Now fixed.
  • Using the syntax ‘friend online’ will show only friends that are online right now.
  • You can no longer use ’setwanted’ on linkdead players.
  • Quest time will now show when using the ‘group’ command. If the group member is already on a quest, the value will be shown in green with an asterisk next to it. In this case the time shown is time remaining to complete the quest.
  • You cannot have the @@, * or % characters in a pet name. Change was made in pet shop buying, dust devil, summon elemental and call warhorse. Please let me know if any were missed.
  • Casting curative spells such as cure blindness and cure disease is always less effective when fighting. This is still the case, but I’ve reduced the penalty a little. You’ll find this matters far less as your int / wis increases and at max int/wis there’s almost no difference.
  • The messages on ambush have been tidied up a little and will now show after the room name and info is shown. Before this change it was too easy to miss the fact that you got ambushed because the message appeared before the room desc etc.
  • Fixed a bug in ambush that only matches on either a whole name or one keyword. For example, with mob keyword ‘elite red guard’, ambush ‘elite’ or any single keyword would work, but ‘ambush elite guard’ would not. Note that you can’t abbreviate mob keywords for ambush and that is intentional, this was a different issue.
  • Now that pray is only seen by helpers, imms and advisors it makes sense for channel that determined whether or not you see prays be ‘helper’ rather than ‘immtalk’. This change has been made.
  • Advisors now have access to the ‘findcorpse’ command.
  • Using ‘learned’ or ‘practice’ now shows the number of training sessions available at the end in addition to practices.
  • When using ‘lottery tickets’ or ‘lottery prizes’, you will now see how many tickets you can still buy in this draw.
  • Target being in a global quest, or your clan at war with the targets clan, was prevent ‘hunt’ from working during lasertag. This should not be the case during lasertag, now fixed.
  • Using ‘tags’ with no argument will now show at the bottom whether or not the global tags (tags on/off) option is on.

PK changes, Corpse Retrievals, Friend Lists, others.

June 05, 2010 Author: Lasher Category: MUD News


Game changes in this update:

The main changes in this update are the extra information on friend list, free corpse retrievals, options to remove pk grace period/half exp. A large number of other changes and bug fixes also made, see the detail below.


Training Costs:

The max you can train at each level has been flattened out a little. Instead of 1 per level up to 100 then 3 per level after, it is now:

        Level 1-70   : 1 per level.
        Level 71-130 : 2 per level.
        Level 131-201: 3 per level.

This doesn’t change the overall max, just increases the cap slightly in that 71-129 range.


Friend List Changes:

There are two new options to ‘friend’:

'friend laston'     : Show when friends were last on.
'friend ago'        : Same thing, but showing time since last on.

The ‘flist’ command is now also a global alias for ‘friend’.


PK Grace Period / Half exp timer:

The ‘half exp’ after being PKed was never intended to be a penalty for PK, but rather a downside to having the PK grace period. The PK grace period itself was only added for if someone is being griefed and needs a few minutes to kill a quest mob etc. So, making the pk grace period optional and the half exp along with it seems reasonable. There is now a ‘nograce’ command that will toggle this. It shows in config, but only when using ‘config all’.

For one-time use rather than a toggle, there is also the option to do ‘pkstats nograce’ which will reset a grace period already on you to clear at the next tick.


Corpse Retrievals:

The Ivarian Priestess 4 north of Aylor recall now has the ability to do corpse retrievals similar to the way ‘tpspend corpse’ works. Each player may use this service up to 3 times, ever. It does not reset at tier and cannot be reset in any way. This is intended to help newer players but does not expire, so each player already in the game also has their 3 turns to use. Not adding any ‘newbie morgue’ or easy ‘cr for gold’ option, this is it.


Other Game Changes:

  • The impact that being blinded has on your chances to hit and your chances to dodge has been reduced slightly.
  • If you are wielding two weapons when using ‘eqsearch all’, only weapons half the weight of your primary or less will show for recommended items in the dual wield location. Basically, only items you can actually use with your main weapon. When using ‘eqsearch [wielded]‘ to find all items, they will still show regardless of weight, see next item.
  • When using ‘eqsearch [wearloc]‘ or ‘eqsearch [item]‘, the weight of the item will now also show.
  • When using ‘eqsearch [wearloc]‘ or ‘eqsearch [item]‘, the base version of the item you are already using will no longer be excluded. This is so that you can see the difference in points (if any) between the copy of the item you own and the base item.
  • Anyone tier0, r0 and less than level 200 trying to train hp, mana or moves will see a warning and be required to use the ‘confirm’ option to continue.
  • Fixed a bug with retreat causing multiple attackers to stop fighting even when the skill failed under some scenarios such as retreating in air sector without flight.
  • The ’showskill’ command will now indicate when you are viewing a skill or spell you have ignored using ‘forgetskill’.
  • The ‘help cr’ file has been updated and modernized. The first 3 times a player dies, they will be referred to this helpfile.
  • If someone attempts to follow you and you have nofollow on, you will now receive a message. Main reason for the change was that some goals require a mob to follow you and, prior to this change, you’d have no idea the mob was trying and failing. To prevent this from being used to spam other players, you can no longer follow someone who is ignoring you.
  • Using area keyword in ‘runto’ was case sensitive and should not have been. For example, ‘runto Stronghold’ did not work.
  • The message ‘You didn’t find a corpse suitable for consumption.’ was missing if the room did have items but none of them happened to be a corpse. Now fixed.

Mount Dunoir and Wedded Bliss Quests (Goals)

June 05, 2010 Author: Lasher Category: MUD News

New Goal - Mount Dunoir (formerly Shayol Gul):

The evil and powerful mage Bhazhat from his prison collects and resurrects minions of evil in an attempt to escape from his centuries of imprisonment and rule the world. Can Cheoj and his allies prevent such an event from happening? Can you help them before it is too late?

Level Range           : 200+
Goal Difficulty       : Difficult
Goal Recommended at   : 201
Goal Converter        : Paramore & Zafirah
Author                : Zafirah

New Goal - Wedded Bliss:

A typical everything-must-be-perfect wedding you ask?

Just show the bride how unhappy the guests are, and she’ll shriek even harder! But she wants a perfect wedding with a not-so-perfect husband, and maybe you should help. She’ll learn her lesson…

Level Range         : 80 to 100
Goal Difficulty     : Easy
Goal Recommended at : Level  85
Goal Converter      : Tikuranari
Area Author         : Windjammer & Jaenelle