New Area and Goal - The Fire Swamp:

Through a deadly valley pass between two cliffs lies the even deadlier Fire Swamp. The swamp itself is home to amazing creatures as well as many perils. How the swamp got its name is not so surprising, but the everlasting war between the fire and water of the swamp continues on. Currently, the river holds sway over the land, but the fire lizards that call this place home want to turn it over to their namesake. If you wish to help the fire lizards, seek out the will-o’-the-wisp.

New Goal - The Fables City of Stone:

The fabled city of stone is under siege. You must choose if your destiny will be one of good or evil. Choose wisely which side you will aid in the coming battle. Spies run rampant, and turncoats are around every corner. So which will you choose.

---

Spellup and Forgetskill Commands:


The code for the built in ’spellup’ command has been made a little smarter:

• Skills can be considered ’same as’, so it will only attempt to cast one of them (default order is by skill#). For example, on this port sanctuary and biofeedback are considered the same. I’m sure some spells that should be flagged were missed in this, so please post as necessary on bugs.
• Skills/spells can be flagged as setting an affect and will not be cast by ’spellup’ if you already have that affect. Sanctuary is a good example of this.
• It will now handle skills. I have to set the command name on those skills where the command does not exactly match the name, otherwise they should be good to go.

There is a new command calls ‘forgetskill’ (forgetspell) also works. You can use this to add/remove a list of up to 30 skills and spells that will be considered ‘forgotten’. A ‘forgotten’ skill:

• Will not be auto-cast by the spellup command.
• Will not appear in ‘practice’ - does still show in ‘learned’.
• Will not show in the ’skills’ and ’spells’ command unless ‘all’ option is used.
• When they DO show in skills/spells, will show in blue.

One way to use this, for example if you have protection good and evil and want your spellup command always to use prot good, simply put protection evil on the list. This isn’t necessary in reverse because they are already flagged mutually exclusive for ’spellup’ and it defaults to protection evil first.

---

Other MUD changes this reboot - December 22nd 2008:

• The Tree of Life area has an extension that will be particularly interesting to Necromancers.
• The max trains you can get while gaining a level (ie, not a powerup) has been increased. On average, going from 1 to 201 will yield around 20% more trains.
• Land of the Fire Newts has been removed - it was a stock area.
• When testing for ’saves’ versus a spell, the affect of STR on the part of the caster and the affect of CON on the victim has been reduced. This will make int/wis more important in whether or not a spell is saved while Con (target) and Str (attacker) now have about the same affect as luck. Level difference also now counts for less which is either good or bad depending what you’re attacking.
• Whenever a spell is cast on you, there is a strength of the spell associated with it which factors into how hard it is to cancel/cure. Whenever you try to cure one of these spells and fail, the strength of the spell is reduced, so eventually you will succeed. This is just some background info. The change is that the amount of reduction on each failed cast has been doubled. Unlike the curative change, this one DOES apply to dispels - so each time someone fails to dispel you the amount the spells are weakened is higher. Overall effect is that this change has no affect on the first time you try to cancel/cure/dispel, but will make subsequent attempts increasingly easier.
• Casting curative spells on yourself such as dissolve will be harder to succeed while in combat. No change out of combat.
• Made a couple of changes to the ‘owned’ command:
  • If an item is in a container, and you are carrying it, owned will show the container rather than the area.
  • If an item you’re carrying is not in a container, nothing is shown you (hopefully) already know the area you’re in.
  • If an item is on the floor, the room name is shown in red.
• Note numbers will now wrap at 999,999 instead of 99,999. Not a big deal, more preparation for a bigger change. The number of lines in a note is now shown in note list as it used to be in V2.
• When an item has the magic flag, it cannot be created with major/minor creation. Sometimes items get into the game without the magic flag that should have it, and when the base item is fixed, existing copies of the item already in the game are not always caught. Major/Minor creation will now check if the base item as well as the instance of an item you are carrying has the magic flag.
• Reduced the lag on the ‘heal’ command a little.

Feedback always welcome, not sure if anyone is even still reading this.

Important MUD changes this reboot - December 30th 2008:

In addition to the changes listed below, an important player file update was made this reboot. Objects, rooms and skills are now stored in compressed format. This has been heavily reviewed on the test port but please let us know of any issues. Compressing files this way will allow us to store more pfile info in the future by lowering overall disk i/o - disk access is currently out largest bottleneck.

---

New Necromancer Subclass Ability - Zombify:

The necromancer spell ‘zombify’ can be used to corrupt the soul of mobs, effectively turning them undead. Once a mob has been zombified, the necromancer bonuses from spells such as strike undead, blast undead and necrocide will work against those targets. This spell does not work against players, clan guards or mobs already undead. The save is based on shadow damage type, so mobs immune to shadow are also immune to zombify.

---

New Priest Subclass Ability - Pray for Absolution:

There is a new priest spell called ‘pray for absolution’. For an appropriate tithe, a priest can cast this at any time and be forgiven for their sins. For a cost of 25 gold for each point of alignment shift, the priest’s alignment will be set to 2500.

---

New Harmer Subclass Ability - Pray for Damnation:

There is a new harmer spell called ‘pray for damnation’. The harmers god demands payment in blood rather than gold. If the caster does not have enough health to sacrifice, their prayers are ignored. For a cost of 5 hit points per alignment shift, the harmer’s alignment will be set to -2500. This means that only larger players can move from 2500 to -2500 as it requires a 25,000 hp sacrifice.

---

Other code changes this reboot

• Have modified the Psi skill ‘timeshifting’ so that it doesn’t block the Timeshift dodge, but approximately halves its success rate. Timeshifting is under-appreciated, the lowered lag on ALL commands (including attacks) really can make a difference over time.
• The Knight subclass no longer has any lag on a successful charge.
• After casting Eye of Warning or using Entrap, a character will have a 5 minute ‘noquit’ affect. When the game is rebooting or an ice-age is pending, these events override the ‘noquit’ affect and allow you to quit anyway.
• Clan guards have been changed a little:
  • Their stats are now even, wis/con and luck are no longer lower than other stats.
  • Their primary class is random, so is their subclass within their primary class.
  • Their actual stat amounts are no longer randomized (although it was only ever within a +/- 10% range. This is not apply to hp, mana or moves - they are still random within a range similar to the old ‘dice’ ranges.
• Increased the effectiveness of the ’sharp’ flag some.
• Tell triggers and speech triggers will now ignore the following characters: ! . ‘ ” ; , . This includes the speechexact and tellexact triggers. The exception is where a prog has an “all” trigger and then the builder is doing the speech compare within the prog itself. This means that, for example, if a trigger is ‘leave!’ then ‘leave’ or ‘leave.’ will also trigger it. The question mark was intentionally left out of this.
• Fixed a bug in spell fail tags - spells such as inertial barrier that can only be cast on self would report an {sfail} tag with the second parameter implying it had been cast on another.

This reboot brings in two completely new areas and accompanying goals, along with a handful of code changes. For players getting their Aardwolf news from the blog exclusively, please note that Santa has also made a visit and will be handing out gifts in Aylor for the next few days. There is also news further down on the merging of the test and building ports.

New Area and Goal - Realm of Deneria:

The small province of Deneria, was founded by settlers from the royal state of Fal’Shara. Many years ago, they left their previous home to avoid the invasion of the Artificiers. They finally found a nice place to settle, and the realm of Deneria was born. After some time had passed, many things popped up: The church of Miad’Bir, the druids to the south, and the secretive order of the Nuril. It was shortly after Ceol came into power that strange things started happening. People were dying, many violent creatures (such as kobolds, orcs and goblins) had invaded the forests, and an amythest dragon moving in. Things weren’t right, and suspicion was laid on Ceol.

New Area and Goal - Ketu Uplands:

Past the scarred autumn lands lies a place in turmoil. The nomadic Ketu people have wandered the cliffs and uplands for generation, making camp where they will, never staying for long. But the blight of the autumn lands has slowly begun to seep north eating at the trees, twisting and transforming it into something disgusting. Meanwhile, a great evil has migrated into the caverns, shaking the rock with its piercing cry. Its presence has brought others, lured in by its call and the prospect of blood.

The Ketu are becoming fewer in number. At first, they were safe in their uplands, free from the evil lurking below. But increasingly, the monsters become more and more brazen, staging attacks and raids on the Ketu encampments. As their people dwindle, they face a difficult decision: stay, and risk destruction; or leave, and allow their ancestral lands to fall to ruin.

---

Other MUD changes this reboot - December 22nd 2008:

• There are some changes to setwanted, mostly related to non-pk players using it. If you setwanted someone and you are unclanned or in a non-pk clan, you will receive a new affect that allows others to use setwanted on you for a period of 24 hours. This does not apply when you use setwanted on someone you already have revenge on, or when you use setwanted on yourself.

You can see players who have this affect using ‘who setwanted’. It does not show regular clanned players who can always be setwanted.

• The first free superhero is now a ‘quiet’ superhero. If someone particularly wants to pay for it to trigger double exp they can still use ’superhero loud’. The banner for a first time superhero has changed slightly to reflect this.

Builder/immortal related changes:

• ‘Who builder’ now works.
• Mpdump now shows the program code with line numbers. To see the prog without numbers, append the argument ‘nolines’.
• The ‘mptriggers’ command now shows the new trigger types.

---

News on combining builder and test ports:
We are finally ready to start combining the building and test ports. All edit commands on the builder’s port are about to be disabled. If you have an area on the builder’s port that you are actively working, please contact me to arrange for the area to be moved to the test port.

The builder’s port tends to get neglected and usually has fewer people around to ask for help with lua and general building. As there are more people around on the test port, and the test port gets lua/building fixes before anywhere else, hopefully this will make things a little easier for the builders.

It also makes it easier to bring areas live as there we will only have to be concerned with keeping things in sync between two ports, not 3. Then there’s the obvious benefit of running one less copy of the MUD on the server.

If you have an inactive area that you’re interested in picking up again if there are more people around to ask for help then drop us a note on personal.


As always, your feedback, comments and questions on this update are welcomed.

It’s been a while since our last reboot due to some “offline” issues consuming available time. Things are moving again now and 7 new goals came live today. There will also a few code changes, skip to the end of the post if you’re only interested in those:

The Old Cathedral:

The senior priest of the old cathedral, Aaron, is old and weak. He doesn’t
get around as well as he would wish. There are beings who would like to
takeover the cathedral for their own warped purposes. Although the reward
for a good deed done well may be a well done good deed…Aaron might be
able to reward the faithful who helps him.

Qong:

Qong! Is it country or creature? Or the sound of a gong? Perhaps you
have heard it in legend and song? If you find yourself lost on a sparkling
sea, and a gigantic shadow falls upon thee, well then look up and see.
Climb into the citadel, floating over the waves, and unravel the ruler from
rabble and slaves. Solve the riddle of Qong and welcome the day when all of
its wealth is a short wok away.

Who is the true big cheese in Qong? Is it Qong? Is it Jack? Take a spin
with a salesman through Qong, find the big cheese, and then return to him
again with a savory morsel of a similar substance to achieve your goal.

Lake Sen’narre:

The tritons of Sen’narre Lake are an old race. They understand the waters
like no one else. There is much to learn from them, and the elder is happy
to talk to visitors. In your quest for knowledge, you can put his teachings
to use as you explore the rest of the lake and surrounding land. But do not
neglect the other water-dwellers, for the simplest of creatures may
sometimes reveal ancient secrets, even without the aid of speech.

ShadowLands:

Beyond the vast wastelands that are the Shadowlands, the clans of Rokugan
gather in their camps, planning their next move against the evil army of
Fu-Leng.

Ye Ronins, warriors without daimyo, return to your home, and find a place
once again amongst your people.

Council of the Wyrm (1):

Ages ago, in a lost era, Aldanon, the death dragon and his minions ruled the
world through terror and fear while Abazel, the Great Demon unleashed his
creations upon the world. The creatures of good rose against the forces
of evil and sealed them in the Council of Wyrm. There to remain contained
until heroes could destroy them. All the heroes to date have failed. Do you
think you’re ready to become a hero?

Council of the Wyrm (2):

A good dragon is rumored to have been trapped within the Council of Wyrm.
After coming to Wyrm to help destroy the evil, and bring peace to the land,
the dragon was trapped. Help the dragon escape the evil of Wyrm if you choose.

But be warned, it won’t be quick or easy.

The Den of Thieves:

On one of your adventures into the town of Dortmund you hear some
nice gossip going around. They say the tunnel under the mountain is
finally finished and open for business. Not one to miss out, you
decide to go check it out for yourself. Upon arrival you see quite
a few toll workers, yet all signs read that the toll is optional.
You decide not to spare any change until you see what was built and
on that note you step inside. Within the cold walls are various
travelers and surprisingly, a large amount of thieves. Too many
for your taste as you can feel your gold grow lighter. You decide to
find out who runs this tunnel system and head for the office. When
you arrive you come face to face with the notorious thief, Jumpsteady.
Now realizing you stumbled on nothing less than the thief stronghold
you flee as fast as you can from this place

Do you dare to travel the tunnels the thieves claim. Face the
legend that is Jumpsteady and see how it all began. Watch the events
that unfolded years before the Killing Fields incident. The invasion,
the battle, the loss. Learn the true origins here, and the coming
of the Lotus Saga, if you dare…

Help Wanted

The Den Of Thieves, or as Aylor likes to call it, the Marsh and
Dragon Road Tunnel System is hosting a parade for the great Ivar. The
man who is organizing this event is shrouded in great mystery. He seeks
your help in making sure the thieves don’t spoil his grand celebration.

---

Other MUD changes this reboot - December 6th 2008:

• Using ‘tell -h’ will no longer reset your ‘replay’ counter. This was causing problems because if you did ‘tell -h 2′ with 5 tells outstanding, the other three might never be seen.
• Have extended the amount of time that notes survive on most boards. Personal is now 28 days (was 14). Ideas/feedback went from 30 to 60. Some of the less ’serious’ boards went from 10 days to 30 days.
• You can no longer get a defender flag if you are in the clan that is being raided.
• You cannot take or use items owned by others when they are online, but you can if they are not in the game (to give friends a chance to rescue equipment etc). There was a bug in that if you made yourself unable to see the person online, the code acted as if they were offline allowing you to take/use the item. Now fixed.

Classchange command:
There is a new option to classchange. Adding ‘noskills’ anywhere in the command will do the following:

• Skills that you have in both classes will NOT be reset.
• You receive no practices.

This basically results in loss of practices put into skills in your current class that you will not have in your new class, but does remove the need to repractice everything in the new class. After chatting with a few people it seems this option / idea is more popular than I thought.

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.

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.