Aardwolf MUD Blog

List of changes made to Aardwolf MUD on Feb 5th 2011:

• The way in which defenders are checked on entering a clanhall has been changed. Note 276, 277 and 286 on the raiding board have more info, but basically the change is that the number of defender timeout slots in use plus the number of defenders already in the area has to be lower than the number of defender timer slots to be allowed to enter.
• There is a new channel option ‘*dice’. For example, using ‘gte *dice 5 7′ will roll 5 dice with 7 sides each and report the results to the channel. Useful for lots of things. One idea in groups is to dice for who gets first pick of the best loot etc. The message will appear with (Dice) before it so that it is impossible to emote.
• When using ‘heal mana’, you will now see a message when your mana is fully refreshed.
• The ‘wangrp’ channel will now show the Remorts/Class/Tiers of others next to their align.
• If you have a %c as the last character in your prompt and have promptflags on, the promptflags info will now show inline with your prompt rather than on another line.
• Fixed a bug with GMCP group info getting truncated on larger groups of 20+ people. As a reminder, this is the Mushclient group plugin:

New Goal - Kingdom of Ahner:

The Kingdom of Ahner has fallen; through deceit and treachery, King Ahner himself has been betrayed and, with his queen, cast down and imprisoned within the jails of the castle. The King’s army, known as the Oreh, have been forced out of the kingdom. A new army, known as the Dullurds, have taken control, led by the Dullurd King and Cyrus Dirroh.

As the Oreh prepared to make a counterstrike against the Dullurds, two other armies have joined the fray; the Gorlab and the Nilbog. War has ravaged the once lovely Kingdom, leaving it a bloody and horrific sight.

The Oreh are strategizing one final strike, to wipe out the hostile armies of the Gorlab, the Nilbog and Dullurds, defeat Cyrus and restore order back to their homeland. The Oreh leader, Michael the Hare, is looking for someone to help him in his endeavors. Will that be you, adventurer?

Level Range         : 20 to 50
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : Level 45
Goal Converters     : Escobar & Paramore
Area Authors        : Zendalonii

Up ahead you hear some hammering and see the city’s official employment advisor busy hanging a new poster. Noticing the lint in your pockets you rush up to see what’s available.

Hear ye, hear ye!

Mayor Darkon Stills humbly requests the aid of any and all persons daring enough to undertake a semi-heroic and definitely life-threatening task for paltry rewards. His village is in dire straits, and wishes you to know that he has issued a decree enforcing house arrest on all its citizenry until the threat has been tended to.

Though not wishing to engage in blackmailing, or any other such underhanded tactics, he kindly wishes for you to consider how long you think his village’s citizens can survive without fresh food and water.

Level Range         : 95 to 115
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : Level 115
Goal Converter      : Paramore
Area Author         : Calabus

New Friend List Options:

• There is a new ‘nofriend‘ command that will prevent others from friending you. This does not apply if they are already on your friend list and are just adding you back.
• New Syntax ‘friend reject [person] [reason]‘ will remove someone from your friend wannabe list and give them a reason. The reason why is optional. Nothing to prevent them just re-adding you but if that becomes a problem you can ‘ignore’ them.

Other Game Updates:

• Using ‘quit check’ will now show all items that you cannot save with and the reason why. For example (Fake test items):

     [200] (Clanonly) - Rune Stone of Athenas' Might
     [  0] (Key)      - an important-looking key
     [ 15] (Raided)   - Icequake
     [  1] (Nosave)   - an Aylorian Sword

  Just using ‘quit’ will also warn, as it used to do with items too high level.

• There is a new ‘attack’ filter for skills - it lists skills/spells that cause you to have an additional attack compared to if you didn’t have the skill/spells. This includes the obvious ‘attack’ skills plus haste and lightspeed. Did not add enhanced damage/scorpion sting - they don’t cause attacks, they just increase them. Same with weapon skills.
• There is a new ‘passive’ filter for skills - it lists skills/spells that work automatically.
• There is a new object flag called ‘iskey’ that flags an item as a key even if it is not type key. The only affect of this flag is that the item will be picked up by keyloot, it does not affect loading/saving etc. Will leave it up to builders whether or not they want to add this to their own areas, but recommending that special imm items such as scrabble pieces start to include it.
• If you try to invite someone into a group who is already in a different group, they will now receive a message like ‘Lasher tried to invite you to join group: kill all mortals!’
• Potential buy will show the cost of the next point after each buy.
• Runto ‘ft2′ will now also work for ftii (Salvanas). Using ‘Runto Deaths’ (no apostrophe) will also work for Deaths Manor. I basically added the ability for an area to have a second keyword used for ‘runto’ only, so if there are others that could really use this please post them.

GMCP Changes:

• GMCP Channels will now show player name for most chats. It generally will not show it for information about the player rather than their actual communication - for example, login/logoff, auction messages etc are not tagged with player name.
• When a player is no longer in a group a slightly different GMCP message will now be sent - the group name will be empty and a “reason” field will show why (Mrykul). For example:

     group { "groupname": "", "reason": "quit" }

  If you have been using the test version of the plugin Fiendish made for monitoring a group, this will crash it until a fix is made.

• GMCP base info now includes tier.

Bug Fixes:

• Earthquake and Lightning Strike messages will no longer appear while in note write. (Escobar). As a reminder, nospam also turns off these messages completely.
• The ‘learned’ command is supposed to show skills you have practiced as much as you can with their percentage in red. This had been adjusted to 85 percent even for people without the new wish. Should be fixed now.
• Level 200s were getting the ‘can take another campaign’ message even though they can’t - this doesn’t kick in until level 201.

New Area and Goal - Empyrean, Streets of Downfall:

In Sarcoph’s empire, all roads eventually lead to the imperial city. Those who survive the journey through the Great Eastern Desert and the foothills of the Demon’s Halo range will lay eyes on the seat of Sarcoph’s power. But the city itself is no safer than the path to it. No, it is the residence of Ignorance, Treason, Voracity, Might, and Delusion. It is Empyrean, and its alleys are the streets of downfall.

Level Range         : 170 to 200
Goal Difficulty     : Difficult
Goal Recommended at : Level 199
Goal Converters     : Paramore & Dras
Area Authors        : Paramore & Falkon

The Path of the Believer is where a believer will begin the first steps of prayer, fasting, and meditation. They will visit the temples along the path and commune with the gods. However one of the temples has been subverted. The priest there is preparing to summon hordes of evil unto the inhabitants, and they are in grave danger. Will you find a way to save the them, or will you leave the inhabitants to their fate?

Level Range         : 1 to 10
Goal Difficulty     : Easy
Goal Recommended at : Level 5
Goal Converter      : Ageha
Area Author         : Domain

Baya, the marsh witch has a problem. Her former maid servant, Siskriya has stolen her book of ancient flesh magic, and without it, she cannot balance the cycle of death in the marsh. Siskriya has gone deep into hiding and is being protected by several marsh inhabitants, enemies of Baya, or just convenient idiots.

The maid who wants to become the new marsh witch has used her powers of persuasion, and her pale innocent looking face to beguile and convert many of the more powerful people in the marsh, you’ll need to seek them out, and stop their protection at any cost.

To succeed, you’ll need to be as wise as a serpent, and as gentle as a small posse of axe wielding, magic throwing enraged barbarians. Hold on tight, because this will only end in blood.

Level range         : 105 to 125
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : Level 125
Goal Conversion     : Ayon
Area Author         : Pursia & Falkon

New Superhero Area - Crynn’s Church:

Not too long ago, Crynn, a priest of Ayla, lost his faith after being cursed and left to die within Inferno. He was granted a second chance, a chance to redeem himself and start a new era, a better era of a better deity. He would not be granted the power of a God, but he became one himself.

“I found a strange parchment within one of the continents standing upon a small altar with candles burning upon it. As I read this strange language, I felt the world shift, and heard the gods scream in agony. It was a pleasurable experience, so I continued to read….” - Extracted from Crynn’s Diary during the Year of the Snake.

Crynn was granted the power of a god, so he no longer needed one to use his spells in the name of others. Demons from the underworld found this piece of information and tried to get Crynn to sell his soul to them, but the tides turned as Crynn used his new devastating powers to enslave them. Not long after this, rangers from Ranger Heaven started wailing at their brothers being taken prisoner as well, and sent for the rangers still walking with us to go investigate. No feedback has been given yet, which means they must not have made it past the church doors that Crynn had brought up, the church where all these demons are bound to the mortal world to work as slaves for the mad priest.

Level Range         : 195 to 201
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : Level 200
Goal Min Level      : Level 195
Goal Max Level      : Level 201

Game Changes this reboot:

Several changes were included in this reboot:

• Graffiti that is over a year old can no longer be removed. If it’s been around for that long it is considered part of our history and should be preserved. This does not apply in clanhalls using the ‘clanpays’ option and imms can still manually remove graffiti if you feel there is a special exception.
• Superhero campaigns are now every 4 hours rather than 23 hours. This is not going to change again … if you’re stuck at t9 and want faster campaigns, use redo. You will now receive a notification on tick when your timer has expired and you can do another campaign.
• It used to be impossible to follow someone who wasn’t the group leader so the prompt variables for leader hp always made sense. With it now being possible to follow someone in the group other than the leader, there are two new prompt options:

       %o   : HP of person you are following.
       %O   : HP percent of person you are following.

These only work if you are in the same group, otherwise you could just follow anyone to get their stats. This should also fix the bug with %l/%L not working after following someone other than the leader.

• Using ‘group promote’ does the same thing as leader, and using ‘group reject’ does the same thing as ‘group kick’.
• Skill gain messages will now show the percentage in the skill.
• This isnt implemented yet, but if you start to see refences to ‘rebuild trains’ appear, this is explained at the bottom of ‘help instinct’.

Bug fixes:
And the usual batch of fixes:

• Suicides will now go to info pk rather than info deaths.
• Fixed (again) an issue with using socials targeting another person on channels - GMCP was getting the names confused.
• GMCP.maxstats will now be sent when gaining a bonus stat on level or powerup increases.
• Enrage will now increase a little more regularly.
• The wear/hold/shield change made last reboot was not working correctly with the portal wish. Now fixed.
• Color codes in the group name will no longer throw the heading of ‘group’ out of line.
• Visibility should no longer affect gamestat, with invis imms being the only exception.
• ‘List inv’ and ‘list ‘ will now show the correct item number to buy the item rather than always starting at 1.
• Summon life / summon death messages should no longer appear with repop tags.
• Potential ‘cost’ works in addition to ‘potential costs’, and the option is now shown with the syntax.

Several other changes went live in today’s reboot, including new wishes:

• There is a new ‘spellup3‘ wish that has two main affects:
  • Halves the lag on “spellup” skills, when not used in combat.
  • This applies to both success and failure.
  • Halves again the lag on failed casts of spells.
    You have to have the spellup2 wish before you can buy spellup3.
• There is a new ‘scholar‘ wish that allows you to practice skills to 85% instead of 75%.
• There is a ‘potential costs’ option that will show you cost and accumulative cost from 0 through 450. Not adding ‘pot costs ‘ because the time is better spent elsewhere.
• Have changed the way ‘wear’ (and hold) work when trying to wear or hold a portal/shield. No change to ‘wear all’, but if you specify the exact item using ‘wear portal’ and ‘wear shield’ then a dual wielded weapon @Rwill@w be removed and replaced. Note this applies with portals only if you don’t already have the portal wish.
• The ‘Zombify’ spell will now give a different message when it fails because the mob is immune to shadow damage type.
• The duration of the ‘fireproof’ flag cast on objects is now fixed rather than random.
• There is a new ‘repop’ tag option - now GMCP, just plain old text tags. It has no closing tag, just a 1 line {repop} prefix. It can also be toggled using telnet option 21 (help telopts) for anyone still using that.
• New who option ‘who consented’ will show people that have given you permission to loot their corpse. Mostly useful for helpers/advisors and people doing CRs.

• Group accept will now work regardless of visibility. You’ll still see “someone” in the message, but will be part of the group.
• The 25 character limit on group names no longer includes color codes.
• GMCP will now send ‘worth’ after selling an item back to the store.
• Recon will no longer fail when it is at 100%.
• Frenzy and Berserk will now update GMCP Stats. Replacing a weapon with only hr/dr will also do the same.
• The ‘Cobra Bane’ skill was doing energy damage type instead of poison. Now fixed.

Area Replacement and Goal - Rebellion of the Nix:

The Nixie, spirits of the water, forever jealous of land-dwellers, have for generations summoned men, women and children to their deaths by drowning. Now, random attacks on ships and beachcombers are not enough. A rebellious group of Nix have declared war upon the land, seeking to submerge and drown entire cities. The beleaguered city of Rhodus is the last bastion of hope for the Molyneuxans. They alone understand the power of the Wyverns, and how to awaken them to do battle against the Nixie and their music-driven devilment. An old adventurer, known to frequent the Chequered Owl, has plenty of tales to tell, having lately escaped the Nixie invasion, barely with his life.

Area Level Range    : 150 to 190
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : Level 190
Goal Converter      : Lumina (original by Jernau)
Area Author         : Lumina (original by Jernau)

Masteries - New enhancement feature for higher levels

Aardwolf adventurers can become so practiced in the art of a particular physical damage type or magical focus that any damage they inflict of that type gains an automatic increase.

Masteries are earned by spending quest points and gold at a suitable trainer.

Syntax:   masteries         : See current mastery levels:
          mastery buy type  : See cost of next point in a specific type.
          mastery costs     : Table of costs up to 250.

Important Notes:

• Mastery points are not percentages. There is no max to how high a mastery can be trained but the affect of each additional point of mastery decreases the higher it gets.

  For example, a permanent 5% increase in a damage type requires 17 points of mastery, 10% requires 38 points, 20% requires 104 points and 30% requires 260. 30% is the practical max, the theoretical max is 40% at 1000 points but would require 10 million qps to reach.

• Masteries save over tiers, once they are bought they are kept forever. There is currently no way to reassign them.
• This is a very expensive damage bonus intended for higher levels. If you do not yet have a good collection of quest equipment or wishes, your quest points are almost definitely better spent in those areas. It might be worth getting a few percent in your favorite damtype, but otherwise save these until later.

Aardwolf MUD clients - New version of Mushclient in test

It’s been a long time since the Aardwolf Mushclient package was updated and we now have a new version available for test. This version makes extensive use of Miniwindows and GMCP. It also uses the GMCP mapper and the map is pre-loaded with the continents and a bunch of lower level areas. The miniwindows and the main window can all be dragged around and resized as necessary to suit your screen size and layout preferences.

This version does not have an installer program, it is just a zip file that you can unzip to any directory and run from there. You can also unzip it to a flash drive. Unlike the previous version, it will not mess with any existing version of Mushclient on your computer.

We are currently looking for people to download and try this version out before making it official, particularly if you are using the older version of the Aardwolf Mushclient package. We will be updating the documentation on the website shortly, but using it is pretty easy, particularly if you read the banner displayed when first starting the client.

Please post any issues or questions to the tech board. If you are trying the client and have nothing to report, please post anyway just so we know it’s getting looked at.

The test client can be downloaded from:

More information on the GMCP mapper and commands available can be seen at:

Many people have contributed to the code in these plugins over the last couple of years including Bast, Swalec, Madcatz, Blainer and no doubt lots of other names we’re forgetting.

Special thanks also to Fiendish for putting all this together and making it all work in a logical and consistent way, plus making many enhancements of his own. Special thanks also to Nick Gammon of course, both for writing Mushclient in the first place and for the many tweaks he made to help this all work.

Keepall wish removed:

The ‘keepall’ wish has been removed. Everyone can now save equipment regardless of level. If you had the keepall wish, it has been removed from your character and the keepall wish base cost of 7,000 qp plus your current adjustment cost (minus 350 for keepall itself) has been refunded. Your adjustment cost for future wishes has also been reduced by 350.

Depending on when you bought the wish, current adjustment cost may not cover the full amount that the keepall wish affected the cost of other wishes bought after it. Consider that the cost of having had the use of the wish in the meantime as the longer ago you bought the wish the more this amount is likely to be. Thanks to Newname for the suggestion on the better way to do this refund — it was previously the 7,000 base qps only.

New Stat-Boosting Feature - Potential:

Adventurers with significant experience in questing may convert some of that experience into enhancing the potential of their character. The effect of enhanced potential is that total stats can be trained higher than usual.

Enhanced potential is preserved across remorts and tiers and applies through an entire remort. For example, if you have 5 points of potential, your max trainable stats will be whatever it would normally be plus 5.

The cost to increase potential is based on quest points and increases with each point gained. The first point costs just 100 quest points, but rises quickly.

Important Notes:

This feature does not give you a stat increase - it gives you an increase in the max stats that you can train. You still have to train the stats.
• The increase in max that a single stat can be trained is instinct divided by 6 and is rounded up.
• The absolute max of 400 in a single stat and 2400 in total still stands. The increase in individual stat max is only useful up to level 201.

Area Replacement and Goal - Jotunheim:

Long ago the jotuns were powerful beings who did battle with gods. Much reduced since then, the jotuns disappeared from the world. Now brave adventurers have found them high up in the mountains. The jotuns are gathering their strength to once again go forth and destroy the gods. Odin has come in disguise to request their help, but Seeing you, he asks for you to find his spear due to his history with them. Do you dare search the mountains for Odin, risking the jotuns’ wrath?

Area Level Range    : 1 to 40
Goal Difficulty     : Easy
Goal Recommended at : 35
Goal Converter      : Domain
Area Author         : Domain

This area replaces ‘Rats Lair’.

There was never a town more staid, stolid and stationary than the town of Gwillimberry (where the welcoming signpost states ‘Welcome to Gwillimberry, where Life Stands Still!). Life standing still, as you can imagine, can be quite dull, but for the Gwillimberries, nothing is more desirable than to maintain the present as it was in the past and as it should, in the future, continue to be.

The greatest pride of the Gwillimberries, other than their complete lack of imagination, is their Botanical Gardens, located at the edge of town, on the property of Squire Bramblewhipper of Gwillimberry Hall. There, beauty is sameness, uniqueness to be plucked and ground under heel. Perfection is exemplified by row after row of roses, each fist sized at full bloom, thornless and barely emitting the smallest iota of uniqueness in color, size or scent. However, a terrible tragedy has struck! The town is infested by vermin that threaten not just the botanical garden, but the very livelihood of the citizens of Gwillimberry. Is there a way to get rid of the pestilence and bring back the predictable sameness that all Gwillimberries cherish?

Level Range         : 190 to 201
Goal Difficulty     : Medium
Goal Recommended at : 201
Goal Converter      : Lumina
Area Author         : Lumina (original layout by Kalince)

This area replaces ‘Shadar Logoth’

Other Changes this Reboot

• The ‘echocommands’ command is now live on this port also - just a little config option to help script writers see that they are sending to the MUD.
• Fixed a bug with ‘invite’ and ‘ring on/off’ that would give invalid messages if you have no manor, rather than just telling you that.
• Using ‘clanal [clan1] [clan2]‘ to see the status of two specific clans now works. It was validated for but had never actually been coded until now.

Elementalist Spells:

Three new elementalist spells were added this reboot:

• Earthen Hammer
• Air Skewer
• Ice Daggers

Each of these is a higher level attack spell doing the damage type implied by the spell name.

Other Changes:

Couple of other changes that made it into this update:

• Each clan can now have a separate message when suiciding. Unlike the other clan messages, this one uses the same codes as socials so can contain things like $e for ‘he’, $m for ‘himself’, $d for the clan deity name, etc. See ‘help new social’ for a list of these. For example:

  $n curses $d as $e kills $mself.

  Becomes (for Lasher):

  INFO: Lasher curses Ivar as he kills himself.

  Only the lower case version is available for suicide msgs as there is no ‘other’ char. Will modify other clan event messages to work this way once this one is more tested and settled.

• The ‘aliases’ command now includes a count.

Fairly large number of minor fixes and updates added this reboot:

• When using ‘eqsearch ‘ the code that displays currently worn items and their score was broken. Now fixed.
• A group must have at least one visible character, a name like just @@w is no longer allowed.
• ‘Vote list’ will no longer be misaligned when the vote description contains colors.
• You can no longer challenge someone who is ignoring you.
• The new group auto messages now have channel tags where appropriate.
• Experience gained from double exp was not counting towards a group total experience gained. Now fixed.
• Because of a bug with visibility, you were able to scan into a dark and see the mobs even though you wouldn’t be able to see them if you were in that room. The opposite was also true - if you were in a dark room you wouldn’t be able to scan and see mobs in a room next to you, even though that room is bright. This might have other effects in various commands as the check is now whether the room of the _target_ is dark rather than your own room. Obviously none of this matters if you can see in the dark.
• Most GMCP channels should show pretitles now if the receiver has pretitles on. Please post those that do not, but make sure the regular channel does show them too - not all of them do by design.
• GMCP channels should now correctly show while in note mode and/or the editor.
• Pacify with no mobs in the room did not give any message at all. Now fixed.
• GMCP vitals messages will no longer be sent after movement if no move points were used (no stats changed). Aylor is the best place to see this as movement there has zero cost.
• The ‘where’ command will no longer have broken spacing when a mob name has colors in it.