Aardwolf MUD Blog

Imagine that playing Aardwolf is your job. Part of your performance review and salary is based on how well you interact with the other employees.

How would you treat people differently if that were true? Would you still act the way you do today with everyone you meet in Aardwolf? Could it still be fun if you had to give your “co-workers” a little common courtesy?

No? So how much could you change while still enjoying the game?

Give it a try, if enough people do, Aardwolf will be a better place. If everyone does, the internet will be a better place.

Don’t like this idea? Then d00d ur t3h sux!

Daze/Stun abilities redo:

Daze has been redone. It no longer prevents multicast. Being dazed means your effective skill in ANY skill or spell is reduced. Points of note about these changes are:

• Daze is bad for skill users as well as spell users.
• Having equipment to boost a skill % over 100 makes you less affected by daze for that skill.
• Daze is easier to tune by simply changing the degree of the effect.
• Weapon skills are also affected, but to a lesser degree.
• Weaponsmaster wish does NOT override this affect - your base skill is automatically 100%, but that does not mean other affects are ignored. With that being said, the daze penalty on weapon skills is slightly less when someone has weaponsmaster.

The affect that some skills have of making you ‘rest’ is gone and is replaced with a ’stunned’ effect - almost the same overall difference, but prevents bugginess with being able to walk away from a fight after being forced to rest etc. Skills that used to both daze and force rest now do just one or the other. Stunned is more annoying in some ways because you can’t do _anything_, but won’t mess up your weapon hits.

Skills that stun do not daze (if they ever did). The list is:

• Bash, Trip, Stun

Skills that daze do not stun (if they ever did): The list is:

• Shield Punch, Sweep, Black Root, Hammer, Bodycheck, Headbutt

Goal / Quest Interface Changes:

Several changes were made to improve usability of the ‘goals’ command:

• Typing ‘goals here’ will show goals in the current area only.
• Typing ‘goals stats’ will show how many times each goal has been started and completed. The ’stats’ option can be combined with other sort options, for example, ‘goals stats byname’.
• New sort options to goals - ‘bytaken’ and ‘bydone’. This means you can do ‘goals stats bytaken’ and ‘goals stats bydone’ to see sorted lists of goal stats.

Other upgrades and fixes this reboot:

• When the thief skills were converted to ‘nofail’, this was only applied to the damage part with the chances of landing special affects no higher or lower than before. The check on sweep for making a character ‘rest’ was missed and landing with every use. Now fixed. (Cadaver)
• Rather than having a single object key for campfires which makes it impossible to customize them, there is a new item type called ‘campfire’. The heal code has been changed to search for this item type rather than a specific item. Expect an announcement shortly with costs once this option is available.
• Using .s or .sn in note write will show the note header as well as content so far (Tymme).
• Using ‘fence all’ or ‘fence all.‘ will now show only items actually sold and not failed items. You will also see a summary of items sold and total value. (Mondaine/Atreidess). Using fence with a single item will still show the usual full output.
• Poker max buy-in is now 100m. (Nasdaq)
• Have lowered the timeout on assassinate a little.
• Changed the message on balor - it reduces health not ‘power’.
• Summoning someone will remove stealth. (Alessandrew)
• Check for improvement on ‘remove curse’ was only working for an item uncurse, not a player uncurse. Now fixed. (Orcwarrior)
• Aylorian Enchantment Clinic (weapon flags) is now included in ‘find’ and ‘runto’ with keyword “enchanter” and “wflag”. (Meeper)
• Both the note editor and description/lua prog editors have a new option. Entering “.sr” will show the content with raw color codes. This is only the actual data being edited - the headers are still colored. (Fiendish)
• Dissolve is now available at healers. Its cost is 100 gold @Wper level@w based on the player of the target. (Sezeku). The healers will now also show how much they are charging you.
• Ftalk was not showing channel tags when friends enter/leave the mud. (Alhena)
• Fixed an obscure crash causing bug in retreat/mobprogs if a mob tries to pull back a player who is retreating. (Domain)

Several new goals were added this reboot, there’s a nice variety of difficulty level and complexity in these goals, we hope you enjoy them.

Imperial City of Reme:

Welcome to the Grand City of Reme, where Justice, Mercy, and the Humane
treatment of seagulls is a distant memory. The Emperor has gone mad,
the Empress spends more on her dogs’ breakfasts than the yearly income
of a family of peasants, and seagulls have infested the place.
Want to help? The Priest of Claire is looking for a few brave souls who
might be able to clean up the city!


Land of the Beer Goblins:

Lying. Adultery. Alcoholism. These are considered the key traits of any
politician in this day and age. Though all it takes is crossing the wrong
person and one’s political career can be cut very, very short. Help aid
those who thirst for the blood of Brewington’s Mayor Laporta and the title
of “Beer Drinking Champion” and a lifetime’s supply of beer could be yours.


River of Despair:

The water flowing through this vast river is grey and bitterly cold.
It is the lifeblood and lifeforce of the Aquamarine King, and his
life is quickly running short. A brave adventurer might tiptoe
his way into the tunnels and caverns of the River of Despair, but
he will quickly find himself confronted by legions of spirits,
sprites and ghosts which have taken this place as their home.

The Aquamarine King isn’t happy about it, though, so visit him and
listen to his story to see how you might assist this unhappy monarch.


The Covenant of Mistridge:

Rumors have been quietly making their way around the realm about the
Covenant of Mistridge. Tales of dark magical experiments and insanity
crossed with a lack of leadership make for dark tales indeed. With few
friends to help but many troubles and trials to endure, Mistridge is a
problem looking for a solution. Only the brave and strong need go; the weak
will be grist to evil.


Snuckles Village:

On a cloudless night, a full moon hung majestically in the sky
illuminating Aardwolf. The northern winds blew cold through the realm
forcing many adventurers into their homes. As dawn approached, the ground
began to tremble as magic took hold of the land. Maps began to magically
recreate, memories were altered and roads were formed. As the magic
trembling stopped, it was as if nothing happened. Only, it wasn’t nothing.

A new forest came to be that night. It is almost as if the forest was
ripped out of its existing realm and was neatly tucked away off the trail.
It is a very colorful forest where each tree has leaves of its own color,
each different from the next. The forest is inhabited by faeries who keep
the forest colorful, full of growth and fight to keep the forest alive.
The forest is also inhabited by some strange creatures new to the realm
of Aardwolf. The creatures are yellow in color, medium in size and appear
to be very curious.

Stories ring through the land of this new forest and the creatures that
live there. It seems the creatures were ran out of their old land by
wolves. Unfortunately the wolves followed them and are now also roaming
the forest causing havoc and dismay. Rumor has it an evil wizard has
control of the wolves…

Can you be the one that helps Shay bring peace and order back to the forest?


Masquerade Island:

On a privately owned island, surrounded by shark-infested
waters, a party has been organised. However it is not just
any party, it is a Masquerade Ball. The owner of the island,
Lord Nassah, has invited everyone to attend his Ball. From
the smallest sprite, to the tallest giant, no one is excluded
from this Ball.

The only challenge you have to overcome is to venture
across the seas as he did not reveal the location of
the island.

The rumor floats in the air that the island is not so
safe lately. Are you brave enough to still attend the Ball?
Can you solve the mysteries that roam this island?

Other MUD changes this reboot - September 25th 2008:

• The Oracle spell ‘Eye of warning‘ allows a character to detect stealth in an area. It can only be cast by an oracle, not used from potions, but can be cast on others. There is also a recovery. Characters in stealth/stalk mode will show as (S) or (Stealth) depending whether or not you have ’shortflags’ on.
• You can no longer drop gold in an ‘air sector’ room.
• Vorpal had a 10 level cap on it. Raised it to 20.
• Since skills were changed to improve on success only the check on Death Blow was way too high, making it virtually impossible to improve. Now fixed.
• Goal counter in score was not being counted correctly. Now fixed. Also added a counter to the bottom of the ‘goals’ command to make this easier to check.
• The ‘ansi’ command is now a global alias for ‘color’.
• Beacon of homecoming had some special code to allow it to be used in certain flagged rooms even though they are nosummon. Beacon of light was missing this code, now added. This was originally reported because a Beacon of Light could not be added to Shadowlands entrance.
• Have increased the chances of trivia chaos portal to be a diamond one. They’re still vary rare though. Does anyone have one yet btw?
• Fixed a bug allowing ambush to duplicate affects when the recovery expires and you still have the first ambush.

New Area: Hatchling Aerie

Whispers abound about a far off mountain range where dragons are born and
bred. Many an adventurer has gone off in search of the treasure hidden there,
a Gem of great importance, only to never be heard from again. Already the
evil is spreading and there are rumors of dragons laying waste to a great
city. Can you succeed where others have failed and return all the gems to
their rightful owners? This is the first of the draconian ascent areas, and
replaces dragon tower.

4 other new goals were added:

Diamon Reach:

Travel through time in the Ruins of Diamond Reach to help the Baron by
lifting the temporal curse. Return to the Baron of the Future with proof
of your success in the past to claim your prize! Those who learn to deal
with the nature of the curse may eventually master it and bend it to their
will. While the possibilities are timeless, it all begins by taking the
initiative and investigating the results of what has already happened by
searching the ruins themselves.


Chaprenula’s Lab:

Nestled deep in a Mesolarian rainforest, you will find the tiny
principality of Albandi, so named after the Princes Albandi of
nine gloriously uninterrupted generations. Under pressure from
the current Prince Albandi IX, the Grand (and Mad) Wizard Chaprenula
has resolved to create a magical army to defend the tiny land and
subjugate its people. With the assistance of his naïve followers,
Chaprenula experiments with the living and the inanimate to create
creatures of remarkable diversity, and maniacal menace.

Is there no one in the realm with the know-how to rid the world of
Chaprenula’s abominable creations for once and for all?


Yggdrasil - The World Tree:

Long have the gods of Aegir planned for the final battle and defeat; their
Ragnarok. Not everyone is willing to give up. Even if Ragnarok is coming and
can’t be avoided, perhaps there is still something to be done. It may be the
Destiny of Yggdrasil to suffer defeat with the gods, but there are some
people who have an idea or two. Join forces with them and postphone Ragnarok.

It won’t be easy, but there’s likely to be great rewards to be found.


Gladiator’s Arena:

***********************************************************
Gladiator - glad·i·a·tor (noun)
1) A person, usually a professional combatant, a captive, or a slave,
trained to entertain the public by engaging in mortal combat with another
person or a wild animal in the Arena.
***********************************************************

All throughout history, Man (and most other races) have fought.
Wars, for virtually any reason (or often none at all) occur constantly,
and in every war a slew of Heroes are created. Most of these Heroes,
usually the best fighters of their time, went on to spend the rest of
their lives fighting for sport or show. These men were called Gladiators.

Even in times of peace, men honed their fighting skills, then fought
in competitions (often times lethal ones) for prizes or outright pay. These
men, too, were called Gladiators.

For thousands of years, Gladiators have been the most feared and
respected men of their times. These are the men most skilled at virtually
every form of combat, with every type of weapon and against every type
of foe imaginable. In many parts of the world, they are nearly a religion
unto themselves, worshipped as walking gods.

Over the millennia, as nations and empires rose and fell, one thing
has remained constant; the love of the sport.

In modern times, enormous stadiums have been built to house tens of
thousands as they watch the best Gladiators in the land compete in a myriad
of challenges, with the blood flowing freely. The greatest of these, the
Gladiator’s Arena, has stood like a nation unto itself for more decades
than any alive can remember, allowing Gladiators of all races to train or
compete to the delight of the enormous crowds of spectators. For a small
fee, of course…

This reboot brings in the long anticipated Thief class (bandit, assassin, venomist, ninja) changes. Test port feedback on these ranges from “OMG Major Nerf!” to “Long overdue” to “Not much of a nerf at all” to “The classes make much more sense now”.

You will notice that the very first item highlighted is the fact that all global free classchanges and rebuilds were reset, so if you’re in the thief class and really hate these changes you are welcome to try a different class with no charges or penalties.

• The global free classchange and free rebuild have been reset. Note these these are on/off flags - they do not “stack”.
• Backstab now has lag like any other skill. The recovery on it is gone. The lag is shorter than most skills, but is still there.
• Scorpion Sting is now called Scorpion Strike and is Ninja only. This skill is not applied to backstab hits.
• Balor Spittle is now venomist only. It’s recovery time can be reduced a little with higher dex.
• Only assassin can get the last enhanced backstab hit.
• Sweep can now be used on flying mobs if the player is also flying. Have also changed some of the messages on sweep so that it having a ‘daze’ chance makes more sense.
• Thief now gets enhanced damage at level 14.
• Most thief skills have a max damage they can do. This has been increased a little for each skill.
• Spiral now does the damage type of your primary weapon.
• Backstab is easier to land at lower levels/stats. Level difference is less important in chances to land. You will also notice failure less often at max stats.

There has been an additional change to almost all thief damage skills. Thief skills now work more like spells in that when they ‘fail’, they don’t fail completely. Damage is reduced and you don’t get a chance to get the special affect if they have one (such as poisons), but the damage part will still work.

Damage itself is pro-rated based on percent practiced as with attack spells. Some thief skills that were particularly hard to improve have had their chances increased some. The base damage and the chance to get the specials themselves are still based on the same stats.

Skills affected by this change have been marked nofail - they are:

• Green Death, Sweep, Spiral, Marbu Jet, Kobold Spray, Raven Scourge, Cobra Bane, Hydra Blood, Black Root, Burnt Marbu, Kobold Stench, Circle

Thief Subclass Additions

Several new thief subclass abilities were added this reboot. They are:

Bandit - Fence:
The bandit class has a new skill called ‘Fence’ that allows them to sell an item from anywhere. The maximum potential amount received for a fenced item is the default shop price, or 50% of it’s value.

Of that max potential, half is determined by your skill in fence and half is determined by dex and luck combined. Fence itself does not fail once you have the skill, unless the resulting amount comes out too low.

Items that could not normally be sold to a shopkeeper also cannot be fenced, and items over 20,000 gold in value are too expensive to be fenced. As this activity all takes place between thieves on the underground market, clan tax is avoided. You will also find that underground dealers don’t haggle, the price is the price. The good news is that crime really does pay, and they never run out of gold either.

The same syntax that works with ’sell’ also works with fence. Please be careful when fencing items, unlike selling to shops where you often have a chance to buy it back if you sell in error, fenced items are non-recoverable.

When selling items, bandit will have an automatic +10% chances of actually haggling. The haggle itself is no better (it can’t be because of buy/sell price overlap issues). Not intended to be a big deal, just a small bonus. I imagine most bandits will fence now anyway.

Bandit - Pilferage:
The new skill ‘Pilferage’ is an automatic bandit skill. Whenever looting gold from a mobile, a bandit has a chance to find additional gold on the corpse. The amount varies up to 30%, determined by skill percent and luck. If the bandit is leading a group with autoshare on, everyone gets their share of the increased amount.


Bandit - Haggle:
When selling items, bandit will have an automatic +10% chances of actually haggling. The haggle itself is no better (it can’t be because of buy/sell price overlap issues). Not intended to be a big deal, just a small bonus. I imagine most bandits will fence now anyway.


Bandit / Ninja / Assassin - Nimble Cunning:
The new skill ‘Nimble Cunning’ is available to bandit, ninja and assassin only. It is a low level skill which gives the user a slight boost in dex and luck.


Venomist - Cell Potential:
The new skill ‘Cell Potential’ is the same thing as Nimble Cunning, but for venomists only and also adds some con.


Assassin - Stalk:
The assassin skill ‘Stalk’ allows an assassin to sit in a room undetected. They will not be seen until either the skill wears off, they leave the room, they attack something or an oracle spell is used (see below).


Ninja - Stealth:
The ninja skill ‘Stealth’ is like ’stalk’ except it lasts until the ninja attacks something. A ninja in stealth also cannot be ambushed.

Notes on stealth/stalk:

• When a thief is in stealth/stalk mode, they do not appear in the ‘invisible’ count on who (otherwise ‘who room’ would give them away).
• You also do not see them entering/leaving the room.
• Mobs with progs that have detect hidden set can still see chars in stealth, othrerwise too many area quests will break. So can clanguards.
• When casting area attacks, if you cannot see someone because of stealth, they are not a valid target.
• Transportation spells DO remove stalk, they do not remove stealth.
• Interfering in a fight in a way that would normally trigger revenge will remove stealth.

Aardwolf MUD V3 - 6 month review

It has been 6 months since V3 of Aardwolf went live. Hard to believe that so much time has passed already. One of the most surprising things about V3 has been the general stability and lack of any major issues.

Anyone with MUD coding experience can imagine the potential nightmare of going live on a rewritten codebase with hundreds of active players. We have come out of it in great shape and the credit for that goes to the detailed and endless V3 testing process. The folks who helped with that know who they are, and we all owe you a big thank-you!

Looking at other progress in the past 6 months, the major updates to the mud since v3 are:


Lua / Mobprogs:

The integration of Lua with the MUD and the conversion of close to 4,000 old mobprogs to Lua is easily the biggest single project. Many players helped with converting the mobprogs to Lua and overall, the project has been a huge success. Lua itself is extremely lightweight, greatly extends the capabilities of the scripting system and is very stable. It is the first time ever I have not regretted not building Aardwolf with LPC from day one.


Goals:

The goal system originally came about because I needed to rewrite the mud school and wanted it to be more interactive with player progress tracked at each stage.

While developing the framework to track progress through the Academy I found myself thinking “It would be great if all area quests could use this”. Eventually, it turned into the goal system we have today.

The task hints came later, which was the last major feature to goals and made a huge difference in how goals are played.

At the time of writing we now have 41 goals live and plenty more to come. Not everyone sees the value in them, but overall they have been an extremely popular feature.


The Academy:

The academy itself has been very well received. Some players don’t like the fact that it takes so long to go through, but there’s a lot to cover.

We have also receive a lot of compliments from other mud admins on the depth of the academy. It is worth noting that with the framework now built into the mud, the academy itself is 100% Lua. In theory, any builder could create a new “academy” in their area.


Mushclient:

Mushclient was another “not planned” project, or at least not to the level we took it. I contacted Nick Gammon to see if he would mind me releasing an “Aardwolf version” of Mushclient which would basically be mushclient+some plugs pre-installed to help new users play the MUD.

Nick got interested in the project himself and made many changes to Mushclient and actually even wrote most of the plugins. The telnet options and tags systems also came out of this project.

Since the first release of the Aardwolf version, Mushclient itself has had some fantastic upgrades including the addition of many image handling and processing commands, clickable hotspots and hovering windows. The second release of the Aardwolf version will be some time away, but will be worth the wait.


Blog:

Creation of this blog. I’m still not convinced it is worth it in terms of time spent updating it that could be spent on the mud itself, but will give it at least 6 months. Readership is very low and feedback is non-existent.


Areas:

Several new areas and stock area replacements were added: Onyx Bazaar, Rosewood Castle, Cloud city of Gnomalin, Adaldar. Many other areas were significantly tidied up or remodeled for their goals.


Subclasses:

At the time of writing this, 20 new subclass skills/spells have been added, which means we’re only just beginning the full implementation - subclasses will be the main focus of the next 6 months. Many of these are so much more than ‘just a new skill’. For example, the chaos portal changes were a full rewrite of the chaos portal system. Ambush is a whole new type of affect. Navigate and Pathfind use pathfinding code that was new in v3.


Server Move:

Although the impact on the player base is (hopefully) minimal, moving servers is always a huge task. It always sounds like something that shouldn’t be, but it is.

Moving the mud itself is the least complicated part other than the volume of data. The website, clients, pictures pages, etc etc are all very time consuming. Getting the servers out of Orlando into a more stable environment was worth it though.


Everything else:

The sections above are just the bigger single changes. There has been so much more, some of the highlights include: runto/runprefix, identify wish, ice ages + auto-qreset, many updates to support room and object scripts in lua, autopk toggle, ignore on channels, the gold/other values for > 2 billion, glance, rawcolors and hundreds of minor fixes. (Side note, my own personal favorite as a player is ‘runto’).

Challenges/Disappointments

It is great to list the things we’ve been able to do, but also worth a look at the things that didn’t work out so well.


Player base:

Almost all MUDs have had a tough year in terms of reducing player base. I’m not sure why this year in particular as most of the big popular MMOs have been out for a while now. Players leave a MUD for many reasons, and those reasons often have nothing to do with the MUD itself - family, work, other hobbies, etc. The idea of playing a text game is so alien to the average teenager today that we just don’t get the backfill of new users as older players naturally move on.

I do strongly believe MUDs have a lot to offer, if I didn’t I’d put up a 404 page and be done. The MUD is still very actively developed and we have so much more to come. We need to figure out how to reach others who might be interested in MUDs. Word of mouth is still the best advertisement there is - so tell your friends!

None of this is to discount the fact that some players do leave MUDs for reasons to do with the MUD itself. Their tastes change, there are changes in the MUD they don’t like, or they don’t think progress is being made quickly enough. This last one I’m sure is quite common with some of the folks who left Aardwolf over the last year. Unfortunately, it was a necessary evil while V3 was developed. But it is done and we’re past it now.


Participation:

There was a time when almost everyone built the MUD, it was a community effort. That seems to be shifting more and more towards “entertain me!”. That isn’t necessarily a problem in itself, but we’ve had a hard time engaging people in building, helping test new features, creating graphics, writing guides and whatever else needs to be done. If you’re a player of Aardwolf and interested in helping with any of these things, please contact Lasher on the personal board.


Subclasses:

While a good start has been made on subclasses and it is moving now, I wish we were further ahead. This has taken way too long. 6 months from now I hope to be able to say we’re close to done .


Client:

The client itself is a great start for new users. The challenge here is having to prioritize (and subclasses win) … it is going to be a while before we get to fully convert the plug ins in the original version of the client to take advantage of the mini-windows and other features recently added to Mushclient.

Looking Ahead:

As already mentioned, subclasses are the main focus for the next 6 months. The rest of this is a list of “things we’d like to do”. In no specific order and with no guarantees:

• More PK games / action. Subclass abilities themselves will go a long way towards this.
• More “end game” activities. This is vague. It’s hard to come up with features that will last indefinitely (such as campaigns) vs a one-time event that eventually everyone has done and you’re back to square one just a year later.
• Further work on the client.
• Integrate the forums with the web.
• Experiment with some graphical maps overlayed in the Mushclient mini-windows.
• Build out races - v3 has a lot of potential for races that is not currently being used.
• Find new ways to promote and attract people to Aardwolf.

Would love to hear your feedback on this post in particular. What have we missed on the achievements/disappointments lists? What are some of the high and low points for you on Aardwolf in the past 6 months? What would you have liked to see mentioned that isn’t?

Important MUD changes this reboot - September 8th 2008:

Just a small update as this reboot was not scheduled - it was an emergency reboot to resolve a connection/DNS issue that was causing some players to be unable to login.

• The very first time a character superheroes, it will be free of charge. They will see a banner reminding them of the importance of questing on their next remort.
• When casting spells that have a primary class set, the stats that determine multi-cast chances have changed. The affect of luck has not changed and the chance of bonus casts for using a primary spell vs non-primary have not changed. If a spell has no primary stat set, int is the default. Skills are not affected by this - skills already use whatever stat makes the most sense for them.
• Too much overlap with Divinator and the other cleric/paladin subclasses. Changed the subclass name to ‘Inquisitor’. Feel free to read up on the term and suggest some nice evil skills/spells. Divinator had unique spells or skills, so this should not matter in terms of abilities.
• Increased the base damage on the ranger rainbow spell a little.

New Immortals

Citron, JustMe and Lumina are now immortals. Congratulations to them - we are sure they will be great additions to the Aardwolf admin team!

Important MUD changes this reboot - September 5th 2008:

• It is now impossible to gain exp while linkdead.
• Have lowered the cost of reowning a chaos portal from 3tp to 2tp. No reason other than to help the market for them a little now there’s more around.
• Changed Psi primary stat back to luck.
• When you have someone on ignore, you will no longer see them on channels. They do still show in history. ‘Say’ is not considered a channel.
• The ‘gills’ wish will now allow you to move across water without flying or needing a boat.
• Removed the code from SH campaigns that occasionally gives a wider level
  range. The idea was worth a try but didn’t work out - too many level locks
  in mobprogs etc messing it up.
• ‘Goals’ will now show ‘Locked’ next to unopened goals you are out of
  range for.
• There is a new object flag ’saveable’ - makes an item saveable regardless of level but it DOES still count towards item limit. Only 205 or higher can set this on an item and it will only be allowed on “once only ever” items or a very strong reason why some other item should have it.
• Skin will no longer create items with color codes in the keywords
• Fixed a bug in charge allowing negative moves if you initiated it with
  moves between 200 and 249.
• Thanks to Fiendish who went through and assigned coordinates to the actual areas, bigmap can now be used while inside an area and will show the location of that are on the continent. You will show as * rather than * which indicates you are inside an area.
• The ‘coordinates’ command will also show when you are inside an area the has coordinates assigned.
• If you have coordinates tags on and coordinates can be displayed based on the area you are in, they will now be shown.
• Ambush will no longer fire while fighting - being engaged in combat
  actually cancels an existing ambush in the same way that moving does.
  Because of this, I have lowered the recovery time on it.
• Gaias Revenge cannot be reflected with spirit shield. It can still be
  absorbed by another ranger.

New Priest Subclass Ability - Rehallow:

Priest has a new spell similar called ‘rehallow’ that will allow
them to improve a hallowed light slightly. Extremely wise priests may
be able to improve the item further from time to time. Unlike reskin
this does not rearrange that stats, just randomly adds to one of them.
As a hallowed light always has at least one stat (hitroll), this spell
will always do something. As with reskin, recommended time to cast is
after all other enchants are done as rehallow checks/respects no stat
max settings.

3 new goals were added:

The Graveyard:

The Graveyard used to be a fine resting place. Over the years, Henry has worked hard and well. Now, though, he is not able to keep evil creatures and all kind of riff-raff out. If you’re looking for a career in graveyard management and funeral directing, drop by for a visit with Henry. Just listen to what he has to say. You might find the opportunity irrestible.

Gold Rush:

The City of Gold needs your help! The fighting between Marshall James and Mad Dog Jake is really starting to cause problems, and all they want is someone to get rid of one of these brothers. So head on out to the Gold Rush and see what you can do for Quanah Jones and the other citizens of this city.

Desert Doom:

Desert Doom is a dusty barren place full of warring tribes. These
tribes are the sons of Ajid, the ones peaceful ruler of this realm.
Do you think you have what it takes to restore peace to this
war torn arid place? Seek out Tryk, the collector of spirits to test
your skills.

Important MUD changes this reboot - August 23rd 2008:

• Auto assisting in PK has been moved out from regular auto assist and
  there is a new command ‘autopk’ that defaults to off. You need
  both autoassist flags on to assist in a PK fight.
• A lot of subclass skills are going to affect PK and an Avenger having
  revenge on you won’t be pleasant, loopholes to trick people in pk/revenge
  need closing so that PK can expand further.
• The requirement to be outside for Gaia’s revenge to kick in has been
  removed. This is a pretty large buff to Ranger.
• I have put the Psi primary stat back to int. This is the most important
  stat for a psi - having it be luck just for the sake of being different
  doesn’t make sense.
• Two new tags ‘roomchars’ and ‘roomobjs’ that wrap around the
  character and object lists in a room. If a room has no characters or
  objects you still see tags - if you are capturing this to another window
  you’ll want to capture the fact that there is nothing in the current
  room.
• Runto will now show the location it is heading to.

New Area: The Abyssal Caverns of Sahuagin

For centuries, there have been rumors of a vast city found in the lower
depths of the ocean inhabited by a cruel and brutal race known as the
Sahuagin. These monstrous sea devils will often attack and capture
merchants or sailors traveling on the seas between the continents of
Aardwolf. There are stories here and there of a rare case of a survivor
escaping the cold, wet cells of the Sahuagin. The dark whispers of endless
days of torture, cannibalism, and captives being fed alive to sharks cause
you to shiver with revulsion. The Sahuagin have a particular hatred towards
the peaceful aquatic elves that also inhabit the oceans. In a recent
skirmish between the elves and the Sahuagin, the Elvish king was captured
and dragged down to the underwater lairs. His fate his unknown, but it is
suspected that he is still being kept alive for entertainment purposes.
Hundreds of elves have died while raiding the dark meandering caverns,
desperately searching for their king. But, time is running out if the
stories of brutal torture are true. The elves are in dire need of help.

3 other new goals were added:

The Desert Prison:

Ever want a career in the King’s Dungeon Keepers? Over at Desert Prison,
there’s a job - right at the top, Superintendant. Naturally, it won’t be
easy, the tests are hard and many, the hours long and the pay short. Still,
if you’re looking to do a job well, talk to the people in the village.
Chances are they’ll be just as eager as you are.

Empire of Aiighialla:

If you are one looking for great power, travel to the rift of Ziminiar. Walk
the Imperial road and seek out a wise assemblyman in the city of bandraoi.

Jungles of Verume:

In the vast Jungles of Verume you can discover many histories of the people
of Ushak, a lizard civilization that has existed for many ages. Once they
survived on warfare, now they strive to live a life of peace. On the other
side of the island the Tabaxi, a race of humanoid cats live a life of
leisure and relaxation. They spend their days playing pranks and tormenting
the lives of the children of Ushak. The day remains for proof of the King to
be found and all hope restored.

Subclass skills and spells
Several new subclass abilities were added this week. Details below:

Necromancer:

The spells ‘Strike undead‘ and ‘Blast undead‘ are like lower level versions of necrocide - they will always target the mobs lowest resistance and only work against undead.

Avenger:

The Avenger class has a new spell called Righteous Anger‘. While affected by this spell, all damage done by an avenger against someone who has wronged them will be doubled. The spell can be cast while in combat.

Shaman:

Shaman has a new ability called ‘Gaias Focus‘ which allows the Shaman to fix the damage type done by Gaias Revenge to one of the four types that are usually randomly chosen. It cannot be cast while Gaias revenge itself is up, but otherwise there is no recovery on it. The 4 damtypes are air, earth, cold and water. Syntax: cast ‘gaias focus’

Not new spells, but the durations of Totem Force and Totem Guidance have been increased to the point that Shaman with high wis and con will have periods during which the two can overlap.

Crafter:

While all rangers have the ability to skin corpses to make their own armor, experienced crafters are able to study the construction of a previously skinned piece of armor and rearrange it. A crafter will usually find a way to improve any skinned item, regardless of other enchantments that may have been placed on it. Once a crafter has studied and rearranged a skinned item it cannot be improved further.

The skill ‘reskin‘ randomly rearranges the stats on a skinned item and adds a random stat. The real value of this is that it will work no matter what other enchants have been used. It sets the recharged flag on the item - was no point using up a flag when recharged will work just fine for this. You must be at least the level of the item to reskin it.

Hunter:

The hunter class has a new skill called ambush‘. To use this skill, type ‘ambush [target]‘ - if a player or mob with the name [target] enters the room you will attempt to attack them. Abbreviations do not count, the full name or keyword must be used (on a mob with multiple keywords, only one full keyword is necessary). Normal attack restrictions apply so the attempt to attack them can fail for many reasons.

If the ranger moves while ambushing, the affect is removed. The ambush affect is also removed after an attempt on a target whether it is successful or not. You will notice that ‘affects’ shows the target of the ambush - this is the first affect of that type.

In terms of the target entering the room - ambush is checked when a character walks into a room, when a character arrives via a portal and when a mob resets. This does mean that you can attempt to ambush a mob that does not exist yet and will attack it upon repop.

If more than one character is attempting to ambush the same target in a room, the last one to walk into the room (regardless of order of ambush itself) goes first.

When a character is ambushed, they are incapacitated for a period of time based on their con and luck vs the ambushers con and luck, but a minimum of 5 seconds. A hunter cannot ambush another hunter - keep in mind that some mobs are hunters, and other mobs will _sometimes_ be hunters (if not assigned subclass is random at repop).

Oracle:

Oracle has a new spell called ‘Sense Danger‘ that has a change to show ambushes in an area. There is a chance to ’save’ the spell. When the spell is saved, the Oracle will still sense danger of some kind, but will not be able to determine specifics. As other features are added to the game that fit in this spell they will be added, right now it just detects ambushes.