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.

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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.

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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.

Chaos Portal Changes:

• When a navigator casts chaos portal, if their first attempt is a continent they will try again. This does not mean they won’t hit a continent room, it’s just a second chance not to. There is no new skill/spell for this, it is just part of the Chaos Portal spell. If a navigator wants the chance to land a continent, they can add the argument ‘continent’ to the cast.

• Blank chaos portals are now available as a tpspend option for 5 trivia points. The syntax is ‘tpspend bcp’.

• There are some new types of blank chaos portals. These are random when buying chaos portals with tpspend and when using ‘merge chaos’. They are also rare, and only a navigator can turn them into active CPs.Silver : Impossible to land on a continent, areas only. Still sets ownership.

Platinum : Chaos portal has a 50% chance for the target to be the room the navigator is standing in. Does not set ownership. When the room is not the room navigator is standing in, continent room still impossible.

Diamond : Chaos portal will always be to the room the navigator is standing in, will always turn into a golden cp and will not set ownership. These are incredibly rare, you may never see one. Then again, you could see one the day after reboot, all down to chance.

When using silver and platinum, existing chances for the final CP to be golden are not affected.

Ranger - Merge Chaos:

Nature is Chaos, Rangers understand Nature. Crafters in particular understand the chaotic nature of certain artificts found within Andolor and can recyle a small amount of magic from those artifacts into a
new creation.

Basically, the spell ‘Merge chaos’ allows a ranger to combine 5 existing chaos portals into a new blank chaos portal. Extremely powerful rangers may even be able to lower the number of portals required.

Great care must be taken when using this spell to make sure you don’t accidentally destroy CPs you don’t intend to. When you cast ‘merge chaos’ the code will check your inventory for 5 unkept chaos portals and list them. If you don’t have enough it will tell you. Study the list carefully and make sure these really are the portals you want to merge, then use the syntax cast ‘merge chaos’ confirm to complete the spell.

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Other Code - Main Changes:

Campaigns:

Superheros can now take a new campaign each day. There are some differences between SH campaigns and regular campaigns:

• There will be more targets to kill.
• Every now and then, the level range will be completely random and
  not restricted to SH mobs.
• The 24 hour timer starts from when you request a cp. So if you take
  more than a day to finish your current CP, you’ll be able to do another
  one right away.

Pk:

By default, a player using area attacks will no longer initiate PK with another player. Once you are in combat, they will work fine. A player should attack someone because they wan’t to, or in response to someone in-range attacking them - not get tricked into attacking massively higher level outlaws / raiders. If you want to make an area attack include ALL targets in the room including potential pk targets, add ‘all’ to the
cast - for example ‘cast ultrablast all’ or ‘charge n all’.

Spells/Skills modified for this are: Earthquake, Hand of Justice, Ice Storm, Ultrablast, Ice Cloud, Wrath of God, Call Lightning, Death Field, Fire Breath, Fire Rain, Purge, Toxic Cloud, Charge.

Goals:

Just one new goal this reboot - the infamous Helegear Sea converted by Ariel.

Navigator Spell:

Navigator has a new spell called ‘timeshifting’. When this spell is up, each time the player’s lag is checked, it has a chance to reduce the lag a little. The overall effect is that they will recover from spellups slightly faster, be able to cast in combat slightly faster, etc. The downside is that the Navigator can only manipulate time once - the ‘timeshift’ dodge does not work while this spell is up.

Other:

• Gamestat 10 shows subclasses of players online, broken out by primary
  class.
• Desolation at the high end of stats (>450) is now more powerful. You
  won’t notice any difference at lower stats. (Cordelia)
• Increased the base damage on Gaia’s Revenge a little.
• This was mentioned on general board a few days ago - reconnecting no
  longer bypasses any skill lag or lag from other commands. It does still
  clear client-side command queue, nothing I can do about that.
• Options to the goals command:
• goals notdone : Shows goals you haven’t completed yet. (Bremen)
  goals new : Goals you haven’t completed OR opened yet. (Atreidess)
• For quite a while you have been able to lock/unlock a door if the key for
  the door had been left in the room by another person. You can now do the
  same with container. (Tsubaki)
• Ravi now uses sayto instead of “say” for all feedback. (Cecil)
• Have renamed the ‘Craftsman’ skill to ‘Crafter’.
• Mobs in the room can prevent pick lock or bashdoor. This was also
  happening if the mob was a pet or charmed mob. Now fixed. (Sirene)
• Most v2 clanskills will now show sfail tags on not known or already
  affected. Most v1 clanskills that add affects are not actually considered
  ’skills’ by the code so there is no skill number to report. These are
  going to be more complex to change. (Ninja)
• If you have the identify wish, identifying an item by an means (appraise,
  bid, etc) will show the full information of the item. (Jaenelle)

Subclass skills and spells
The subclass project is now moving again. The first group to come in is below. The amount of new abilities each reboot will depend on time available and complexity of individual skills/spells, but you shouldsee steady progress now. Also, don’t assume a group of abilities coming in for a class mean it is considered done.

Note: Very abbreviated descriptions. For full information see the helpfiles on individual skills/spells.

Navigator:

The spell ‘beacon of homecoming‘ creates a beacon in the room that a navigator can return to by casting the ‘homecoming‘ spell.

The homecoming spell itself can be used from a norecall room but NOT a prison room. So, you can use a beacon to port into a prison room but not out of one. When a navigator uses homecoming, group members in the room are also transported. This is useful for groups, but also means you should take care when grouping with a navigator as you can never be sure where they will port you to.

The spell ‘beacon of light‘ creates a beacon in the room that allows a navigator to find a path to from anywhere in the same area. The path has to be huntable, but otherwise works just like ‘find’.

The skill ‘navigate‘ is used by navigators to find the path to their beacon in an area. The syntax is ‘navigate beacon‘. Although this is the only use for navigate right now I may add other things to it later on,
so might as well get people used to using the full syntax from the start.

The command ‘beacons‘ will show a navigator where their beacons are and the time remaining.

There is no recovery on homecoming/navigate, only on actually creating the beacons. Beacons also do not save so quitting / reboots will remove them.

Hunter:

The hunter subclass has the ability ‘pathfind pet‘. If their pet is in the area, and a path can be reached via hunt, it will be shown.

Necromancer:

Necromancy is a tricky business, the dead don’t always want to be brought back and often attack their would be master. Over the years a successful necromancer will become well practiced in dispatching the undead back to wherever dead things go.

Necromancer has a new attack spell called ‘necrocide‘. This spell is can only be used to harm a mob flagged undead or a vampire, but when used the damage type will always be whatever the target is the most vulnerable to. This not only increases damage, but means the chance of the spell being “saved” is also lower.

Necromancer has a new spell called ‘Detect Undead‘. When this spell is up, undead will show in the room with either (U) or (Undead) depending on your flag settings.

Evoker:

Odins Spear - basically immolate with lightning type damage. Not *all* subclass abilities need to be complex.

Oracle:

The spell ‘Eye of passage‘ will show which key opens a locked door. It only works on locked doors - even if an open door is usually locked. It does not work in clanhalls and you must be at least the level of the
low end of the area range for it to work.

The spell ‘Eye of discovery‘ can be cast on self or another target and will display a random unexplored room. It has a 30 minute recovery that is reduced a little by wisdom.

There was debate on whether to put these live at all yet. They are hardly going to incite everyone to rush to Oracle, but that doesn’t mean useful little additions can’t be added along the way.

Two new commands related to speedwalks were added to the MUD this morning:

Runto Command:

The runto command provides basic speedwalk capability using the directions listed in the ’speedwalks’ command.

When standing at the Aylor recall, typing ‘runto [area keyword]‘ will execute the speedwalk to that area.

From anywhere in an area that has find locations, ‘runto [find location]‘ will execute the speedwalk to that location. For example, from anywhere in Aylor you can type ‘runto bank’ to go directly to the bank.

As some find locations and area names/keywords overlap, the order of priority when using runto is:

- exact match on area keyword
- exact match on find location in current area
- partial match on area name/keyword
- abbreviation of find location in current area.

To see a list of speedwalks with keywords use ’speedwalks keywords’

To see a list of find locations in your area, use ‘find all’

Runprefix Command:

The runprefix command is used with runto to add default start commands before a ‘runto’ to an area is executed.

For example, if your default recall is a private manor and the path from your manor to Aylor recall is west then north, you could use:

runprefix run wn

This would mean that runto now works from your manor.

If you use an aard amulet with serial number 123456, you could make your runprefix:

runprefix hold (123456;enter

Because some clients will interpret the semicolon character themselves, you can also use a comma or tilde (~) in a run prefix and they will be converted to semi-colons.

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5 new goals were added:

Sundered Vale:
An aid worker has traveled from Aylor to the Vale to help out. Unfortunately, she doesn’t seem to be able to find her way through the destruction. Travel to the Sundered Vale and see if you can help.

Arisian Realm:
The city of Arisia has long prospered under the aegis of the Goddess, and her whims have steered the leaders of this fair city for centuries. Not so many years ago, Arisia rose up in war against her sister city, Eddore, in retaliation for offenses against the Goddess.

Now once again, the Goddess is displeased, and it’s up to a bold adventurer to find and solve the problem. Find your way to her sacred Sphere, and speak to the Crystal Dolphin who contains her power.

Unearthly Bonds:
The realm of Unearthly Bonds is a Guild where humans and dragons join together in lifelong partnership. The Guild House is spread over a large area containing a pristine lake, meadows, classrooms, and pavilions.

However, as with any place, a criminal element has taken root underground. Criminals venture forth, and now a necklace has gone missing. Should you choose to help, you will be deputized to find and return the stolen necklace.

Drageran Empire:
Welcome to the Empire. The land lives in a careful balance between peace and war. However something threatens to disrupt that balance. An assassin has appeared in the Empire. But who is the target? That is less clear. You are hereby recruited to find the assassin and rescue the target.

Aardwolf Zoological Park:
The Aardwolf Zoological Park is filled with wonderous animals of every sort. Ever wanted to come face to face with the Grendel, or pet the silky soft fur of a chinchilla? Well, now’s your chance.

Unfortunately, it’s vacation time for Aardwolf, and all the snotty, platter-faced brats and arrogant, snide teens are out in force at the zoo, and only one of the Zookeepers is doing his job. Head on over to the Manager’s office to see if you can lend a hand!

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Other Minor Changes:

• There is a new command called ‘glance’ which is basically the same as ‘look’ but does not show room desc or map. (Cera)
• Navigators casting doorway can now reach level 200/201 characters. All other checks still apply.
• Removed lag on ‘page’ when the target is yourself. (Rathik)
• With spelltags, true seeing was not giving ‘already affect’ tags when you alread have all the detects, making it constantly try to recast.

We had a full reboot this evening. The main reason for the reboot was some extensive upgrading done to the goal system. The new ‘tasklog’ system gets the goal interface overall close to where it needs to be. Time to move on and start subclasses again. In the meantime, the announcements posted in the MUD are:

Tasks Command:
The goal/task system has been rewritten to help with the problem of keeping
track of hints you get at various stages. The ‘tasks’ command now shows a
summary of hints as you unlock them, making it much easier to work with.
Full details on this can be seen at:

Background information on the taskhint system

To see the old abbreviated list, use the ‘tasklist’ command instead.

Additional new arguments to ‘tasks’ are:

tasks : see all open tasks.
tasks here : see open tasks in current area.
tasks : see open tasks for a goal.
tasks all : see all tasks for a goal.
tasks : see a single goal task.

Goals Command:
The ‘goals’ command now shows all visible goals (there are none hidden at
time of writing).

If the argument to goals exactly matches a goal keyword, you will still
get the goal detail page for that goal. Otherwise, new options are:

‘goals open’ : Show only open goals.
‘goals completed’ : Show only completed goals’.
‘goals [from] [to]‘ : Filter by level range.
‘goals ‘ : Search based on a name.

The default sort is by level, these options can be combined with any of
the above:

‘goals … byname’ : Sort by name.
‘goals … byrating’ : Sort by difficulty.

The number of goals completed also now shows in score under quest time.

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2 new areas were added:

Cloud City of Gnomalin:
Stories are told of an ancient race of short, stumpy little people who stole children and left gifts. The legend says that they were always about, but hidden from ordinary sight. Over the centuries their population diminished until most thought gnomes were the stuff of fantasy or the imaginary playmates of children. Recently, however, evidence of the existence of gnomes has appeared in the southern reaches of the mesolar. In the midst of a grassy field, a flattened area is sometimes occupied by a huge airship designed and constructed by the gnomes to transfer cargo and visitors to the city held within the clouds above. Quite amazingly, the city seems to hold together just fine, although the wind does cause slight shifts in the walls now and then. Venture forth, then, and brave the flight. The Cloud City of Gnomalin awaits you.

Adaldar:
Long ago, in the beginning of time, Mannyn the High God swept his hand across his realm, creating two powerful people who were to live in harmony with one another the Elves and the Trolls were born. Mannyn had 2 sons, Aethoryn and the eldest, Gleon. Mannyn, after countless centuries of ruling his domain, began to tire. He wanted to move out and see the world. He finally decided it was time to leave, he placed the control of his lands in the hands of his two sons, and quietly left. It wasn’t long before Gleon (being the Eldest) started to covet his brothers half, he felt that succession should have fallen completely into his hands. Gleon gathered the Trolls and formed them into an army, launching them against the elves. Aethoryn horrified by his brothers actions, quickly united the elvish tribes under one banner, and formed up for defense of the lands and cities.

War has raged for countless years, Manynn finally returned to reclaim his kingdom, but instead, he found a battlefield, he visited his sons, and after asking them what had happened, they ignored him, war continuesto rage.

The stock areas New Ofcol and Circus were removed. New Ofcol because Gnomalin replaces it, and Circus because it was linked in New Ofcol and the number of people using the area was close to zero. Removing all stock areas is still the plan, with the exception of Descent to Hell and the Underdark. There were both Farside areas which we have permission to continue using.

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2 new goals also came in this reboot:

The Dwarven Kingdom was redone by Arial to add a nice new low level goal.

The Amusement Park is different than most of the goals, it’s just meant to be fun on the rides. Most of the rides/games are also playable after you complete the goals.

Both of these goals also have unique rewards that you might not even notice what they are right away … but are very useful in a number of situations.

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Other Minor Changes:

• There is a new command called ‘rawcolors’. Turning this on will make the MUD send all output to you with color codes on. Useful for cut/ pasting with color, but I wouldn’t try to play that way.

• With spelltags, true seeing was not giving ‘already affect’ tags when you alread have all the detects, making it constantly try to recast.

Feedback welcome as always. Particularly interesting in your thoughts on the new ‘goals’ and ‘tasks’ commands. I personally found Hotel Orlando and All in a Fayke Day much more fun to go through with the task logs tracking the hints.

It’s been quite a day. We are now live on the new server at Softlayer in Dallas and not in the middle of Florida during hurricane season. The MUD’s new IP address is 208.43.193.234, but by the time anyone is reading this, aardmud.org DNS should have been updated for everyone.

The website was moved earlier in the week and the test port / builder’s port have been off site for a few weeks now. So this is it, once we get a comfort level with stability, the T1 can go. Overlapping costs for a month or two is a pain, but worth it to make sure the MUD is in good hands at Softlayer before being fully committed. The Aardwolf.com website and the test port are at Liquidweb in Lansing, Michigan. Hopefully this means a situation in which both are down would be extremely unusual.

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3 new goals also came in with the reboot:

• All in a Fayke Day which is a very detailed and complex quest and definitely earns its ‘difficult’ rating.

• ST:TNG which is smaller and more straightforward quest, but still has a couple of twists and an optional bonus extra.

• Rosewood Castle which is a remake of Amador to lose the Wheel of Time theme. Not that there is anything wrong with the Wheel of Time, but we’d like to work out the areas based on other’s intellectual property over time and it made sense to change this one while it was being converted for goals. ST:TNG on the other hand would be a complete rewrite of the area - that one can wait.

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Flash Client Improvements
We also put online some enhancements to the Flash client made by Matt Adcock:

• The client now supports ; for command separation, making it much more useful for pasting speedwalks into.

• There is a split-screen mode for reading scrollback more conveniently.

As always, feedback is welcome. Is anyone reading this, or is the time better spent on the MUD itself?

New Goals and Quests:

There are new goals and tasks in Childs Play, Peaceful Giant Village, Hotel Orlando and Faerie Tales 2.

These are generally more advanced than the goals so far (excluding the academy) and can require a lot more exploring to solve. Faerie Tales 2 in particular is difficult.

Read ‘help goal solving’ for tips if you really get stuff on a goal. Or just move on and try later. None of these HAVE to be solved to make it through the game.

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Other game changes this reboot include:

• The ‘goals’ command now has information on recommended level and relative difficulty (for the level) when you type ‘goals [goalname]

• There is a new command called ‘tags’ that allows you to put tags around various parts of game output to make scripting easier. Just ‘tags’ with no arguments to see a list. Sometimes you will want to connect from a different client - typing “tags off” will temporarily turn off your tags without losing your settings. Just use “tags on” to turn them back on.

• There is another new command called ’statmon’. This dumps out your stats in a format that is easy for clients to parse, after every prompt, or if prompts are off, whenever you would normally receive a prompt. See ‘help statmon’ for what the stats are in order.

Although it is not officially released, anyone who download the mushclient test and is comfortable with changing their connection settings to the live MUD instead should be able to use those tools now. The stat window relies on ’statmon’ being on. The map window requires maptags and ‘tags mapnames’ plus ‘tags mapexits’ to be on if you want those in your map window.

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A few other minor fixes made it in this reboot:

• Telekinesis was doing the wrong damage type. Now does bash damage as stated in the help. (Magish)

• Yell no longer goes through note write. (Bremem)

• Identify now shows duration on lights. (Kuw)

• When using something like ’school of horror’ as an argument to areas and speedwalks, the intent was always to match the whole string, not each word. Now fixed. Also, Speedwalks command will no longer search builder name. Areas command still does. (Dras)

• Fixed shortmap being off with tags captured - an extra blank line was being displayed so if you were redirecting the map elsewhere, you’d get an extra line between room desc and exits.

Feedback, comments, questions welcomed as always.