Newbie FAQ
Basics
(Note: If you're seeking help on the Newbie Line, type 'help newb') It's not always the newbies that surprise us with questions. What is perfectly clear to one person isn't always followed by another. As a result, we find ourselves answering these 'Frequently Asked Questions' several times over. If you have any general questions that you can neither answer for yourself nor find answers in the help menus, please ask a newbie helper (type 'newb -w'), and they will be glad to help. The following is a short list of our most frequently asked questions, which will be updated as needed. ------------STARTING---------- Q: What is this thing? What is a MUD? Where are the graphics? A: This is a MUD, which means it's a text-based multi user game. There are no graphics. You see room descriptions by reading them and take actions by typing the action you wish to take, for instance to jump you would type 'jump' and to look at something you would type 'look'. Q: I'm a newbie, just starting out, and I'm finding it hard to start out. Where can I go to get started? A: Reading this help file would be a great start. You can ask any other questions on the newbie help line using the 'newb' command. There are a few places every newbie should know about: * Newbie's End is at the very southern end of Foundation, or 'north' from Shala's welcome room. You'll also find a bin with equipment that people donate to newbies here and baskets which may have helpful items at Mario's, to the east. * The Center of Town (COT) is 1 step north, 1 west, 3 north, 1 east, and 1 north from the Newbie's End. Many directions are given from COT, so it helps to know where it is. * Gemini's store is 1 step east from COT. Gemini offers you competitive prices for any equipment you might find on your adventures. You may also buy equipment that other players have sold to Gemini. * There is a blacksmith shop 1 south, 1 east, and one step south again from COT. The blacksmith can make you certain equipment for a price. As a newbie you won't be able to use the best equipment he has to offer. * Foundation bank is straight north of the center of town. The Foundation pub is straight south of here, where you can find all sorts of diversions. * There is also a 'dmap found' feature you may access. It shows you a rough map of Foundation including where you are (if you're currently in Foundation) and all of the places listed above. You can get a similar map of Newbieland with 'dmap newb'. You may wish to make your own map on paper to help you learn your way around. Also even in Foundation and Newbieland there are unmapped rooms and even areas worth exploring. You'll find this mud is absolutely huge and a good map is indispensable. * Alternatively, you may also type 'help foundation' and 'help newbieland' for full visual layouts of those areas. -------------FIGHTING------------ Q: Where can I kill things and how do I do it? A: You should probably start killing things in the Newbie Tower forest. Later, as you get some levels and stats, you may want to move to the mirror areas. You kill things by typing 'kill <thing>'. For instance, to kill a bunny you would type 'kill bunny'. It's generally not a good idea to attack anything in Foundation because they tend to be much bigger than they look. You can use the 'consider' power to see how good of a chance you have of killing an enemy. Q: How do I heal? A: There are several ways to heal: * Time: you will naturally regain hit points and spell points as time passes. This is the slowest but cheapest way to heal. * Salve: As an adventurer you have the ability to use the materials around you to make a salve to bandage your wounds. You can type 'salve' as often as once per round to recover your health. -----------EQUIPMENT----------- Q: Where do I get and how do I use equipment? A: * You can get newbie equipment in a few ways: 1) Finding Veteran Drake in the Newbie Tower and typing 'equip'. 2) Find Jocelyn just before the Newbie Tower within Newbieland and enlist the help of one of her brownies. You may type 'enlist nezbit' to receive a brownie, and then type 'nezbit giveme' to get free equipment from it. 3) Entering the Newbie Tutorial offered by Jocelyn and getting equipment from within the Journal. The newbie equipment is free, always there, and weightless, but it doesn't hit that hard or protect you that well. * Sometimes other newbies or larger players drop off much better equipment in the newbie bin at Newbie's End. If you type 'look at bin' it will give you instructions on how to get or donate stuff to the bin. * If you have money, you can get stuff from the Smithy or Gemini's Shop in Foundation. Note that you can't use everything they sell as a newbie. * You can also get equipment off of various NPCs (monsters) within the various areas. Some have good equipment for the taking. You need only to defeat them and snatch their gear. * To wear armor or a shield type 'wear <item>' where '<item>' is the thing you want to wear (i.e. 'wear shield' to wear a shield). You can shortcut and wear everything you have by typing 'wear all'. To wield a weapon type 'wield <weapon>'. Q: Is this sword better than that sword? (or armor or whatever) A: In general the best way to determine which a weapon or armor is better is to try both and find out. Some guilds have a power to get some information about how good weapons or armor are for them, but even they will have very vague information that may or may not also be true for you. Q: My equipment disappeared? or How can I keep my equipment through a reboot? A: The 3S system does not maintain equipment across reboots or logins. Your best bet is to locate your favorite equipment or get a friend to help you get that coveted special thing right after reboot. Q: Where can I get a light source? A: The best newbie light source is the Ring of Light which can be found on the Weary Peasants within the Peasant Farm mirror. You may also be able to find something at Gemini's Shop in Foundation. -----------ADVANCEMENT---------- Q: I've gotten some equipment and gone around killing some things. How can I tell whether I am making any progress? A: Type 'score'. You'll see a number of indexes that are of great importance to you. Here's a brief explanation of what you'll see. * First you'll see your level. Your level is a measure of how far you've progressed in the game. * Second you will see your experience points. You use experience points to advance both your level and your stats. You gain experience points for killing monsters and sometimes for completing quests. * Third you'll see the amount of gold coins you have. This is how much money you have to spend. * Fourth you'll see your hit points and your spell points. Your hit points are how you stay alive. Every time you get injured your hit points go down. When your hit point index gets below zero you die. Dying is a Bad Thing(tm). Spell points are used when you use 'tell', or for a variety of objects and powers that you will obtain in the lands or when joining a full guild. * Fifth you'll see your stats. 3S has six different stats. Each of them costs experience points. The six are strength, wisdom, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, and charisma. It isn't easy to explain what every stat does because they do different (even if sometimes similar) things depending on which guild you end up joining. But some of them will do the same thing no matter what guild you join. Strength determines how much you can carry, constitution determines how many hit points you have, and intelligence determines how many spell points you have. In general, Strength is how hard you hit a monster and dexterity influences how often you hit (or are hit) by a monster. See 'info stats' for more information on stats. Q: I have experience points. Where and how should I spend them? A: You can advance your levels and stats at the Advancement Room in Newbieland, or remotely. Type 'rcost' to see how much xp you have to spend and how expensive each stat as well as each level is. To advance a stat type 'advance <stat you wish you raise>' and to advance a level just simply type 'advance'. You can also advance skills with advance: for example, 'advance combat.weapons.sword'. Three things to remember: * As a rule, always advance all the stats you can before advancing a level. For now, levels won't do you all that much good. Stats, on the other hand, determine how well you are able to do in certain spheres (such as hitting or taking damage). * You are free to advance any stat in any way you desire. As a warning... even though they are both quite important in certain guilds, intelligence and charisma will do you little good as a newbie. * Once you join a guild, you'll be doing this in a designated room in your guild. ----------DEATH------------ Q: What happens if I die? A: Dying is not much fun. First, everything on your body is left on your corpse in the same room as the monster that killed you (including any gold you are carrying). Next, you will get to meet Death and enjoy a very memorable trip through his lands. Eventually, Death will drop you off in a tomb. Once you've gone up, up, and west you will find that you've been reincarnated at the Foundation morgue and that you've lost some stats and some xp (see 'help death' for more information). This is the sole penalty for dying, and can be made up through going back out there and regaining your lost points. Be careful though, right after you die, the monster who killed you will still be aggressive to you - make sure you heal yourself before you attempt to go recover your equipment and gold, as well as ensure you have fully recovered from any death sickness. Q: How can I keep from dying? A: The easiest way is to pay attention and be careful! But, the mud does give you a few things to help you in this goal. First, and most important, you can set yourself to automatically flee from combat when your hit points fall beneath a certain percentage of your maximum. This is done by typing 'wimpy <xx>'. Additionally, you can type 'autohp' to turn on a bar which will tell you how many hit points you have during each round of combat. This makes it easier to watch your own status. Note: wimpy does not always work, so use it only as a last resort, it is always better to choose to leave combat yourself than to have wimpy force you. -------GUILDS---------- Q: What is a guild? A: A guild is a profession, lifestyle, or even form of being that lets you as a member do special things. Each guild has unique abilities and privileges that only its members can use. These abilities can often be quite powerful and you are well-advised to join one. You won't be able to join a guild until you reach level 5. Q: How do I join a guild? A: It depends on the guild, but for most, you just need to find the guild entrance and type 'join'. If you have trouble, you can always check with someone in the guild to get more guidance. Q: How can I find out more about the guilds on 3scapes? A: The easiest way is to simply ask. If you type 'players' or 'finger' you'll see a list of every player on and what guild they are in. If you type 'players <name of guild>' you'll see all the players in that particular guild. For a list of all the guilds on 3scapes type 'help guilds'. You can get some information on each guild by typing 'help <guild_name>' (for example, 'help monk'). The best way to find out is to ask. Players on 3scapes are VERY enthusiastic about their guilds and will be glad to tell you about them. You can also find out additional information about the different guilds on the 3scapes/Three Kingdoms web page at 3k.org. Q: I just reached level 5. Why am I so popular and why is everyone trying to get me to join their guild? I'm also getting a message asking me to either 'accept' or 'decline' to join certain guilds. What's going on? A: As I said before, people on 3S are VERY enthusiastic about their guilds. They naturally want to get as many people as possible to join their guilds. However, certain guilds reward people for recruiting new members. This causes some people to be quite aggressive in recruiting hapless newbies. Do not join ANY guild before you've asked around and explored all your options. Also do not be afraid to decline an offer to join a guild you are not ready to join. They'll be glad to extend an offer to you at a later time. Conversely if a particular player has been extra friendly towards you and you are joining their guild, make sure that they recruit you into their guild. They may be rewarded for it. Q: What happens if I leave a guild? A: You lose all progress you've made in the guild, which is much of your power if you've been playing it long. Other than that, there is no mud-wide penalty, though guilds may impose their own penalty on leaving. -----------MONEY----------- Q: How can I get coins? A: You can either get coins by taking them from monsters that have coins, which as a newbie you will mainly find in the mirror areas, or by selling corpses at the morgue which is located in Foundation. Some NPCs will reward you with coins for carrying out tasks. The Deputy Mayor of Foundation is one. ------QUESTS-------- Q: What is a quest? A: Why, only the epitome of fun, the utmost joy a mud can offer. A quest list at your local adventurer (or other) guild can show you a synopsis of the plethora of quests 3scapes has to offer. And remember, it's against policy to ask for info on how to solve quests. Please don't ask, and more importantly, please do not divulge any information on how to do quests. After all, it spoils the fun. For more information, see 'help quest'. Q: What are quest points? A: You probably notice that I left out one particular index in explaining the 'score' command and that is quest points. Each time you complete a quest you'll earn a certain number of quest points. In order to see how many quest points you need to obtain before these powers become available, type 'required' in the Advancement Room. You can also type 'list' there to get a complete list of all the available quests. You can also type 'questlist' anywhere and get the same results. Q: Do I have to quest? A: No. You must complete the Newbie Academy before you can get level 10, but other than that you have no obligation to complete any quests. It would help you to learn the mud better to explore, and you do get significant benefits for getting enough quest points to achieve highmortal status, but except for the Academy, you don't have to complete quests to advance. Please note that once you get level 5, you will no longer be able to do any quests in Newbieland, so if you want to get highmortal eventually, it would be best to do the newbie quests early. Q: How do I start questing? A: In a sense you are always questing on 3scapes, whether you want to or not. If you carefully explore the areas 3scapes has to offer, you'll stumble unknowingly into a quest or two. You can find out what quests are available by typing 'questlist'. You'll see all the quests listed by quest number, quest name and the number of quest points they offer. To obtain a number of small hints about a quest and where in the mud that quest is located, type 'questlist <number of the quest on the quest list>'. Here are a few hints to help you quest: * Map. Some of the areas on this mud are huge and it is hard to remember which rooms you have already explored. It can also be real easy to get lost. * Examine everything you see in the room description of each room. Let me repeat that in capital letters. EXAMINE EVERYTHING YOU SEE. If you see a flower, examine it. If you see petals on the flower, examine that. If the flower is dirty, examine the dirt. Searching implicit nouns is important to some quests, and not always intuitive. Quest solutions are lying all over the mud if only you take the time to look. You should also try a magical word that can unlock many mysteries on this mud. 'Search' You should not only 'examine' everything you see, but 'search' as well. * Try to manipulate objects that you see in a room. If there is a television in the room, try turning it on. If you have two pieces of bread and there is a toaster, why not try to 'toast bread'? Often you may know the correct thing you need to do but are unsure about how to express it in the appropriate syntax. Sometimes you may just be trying to do something that the code doesn't support (translation: you can't do it, you don't need to do it), but sometimes you'll need to put on your thinking cap and think of different ways of expressing the same thought. * Try to talk to the non-player characters (NPCs, sometimes more simply called monsters) in the quest area. It's usually as easy as typing 'say hello' or 'say hi' when you are in the same room as the monster. If it speaks back to you, try saying other things to it, it might have some useful information for you. * Don't assume that everywhere you can go will be plainly marked. Sometimes your searching will uncover hidden exits, but other times you may just have to try going in a particular direction and see if that works. For instance, if you see that there is a "flimsy covering on the wall to the east" but have no east direction, you might try going east anyway. Maybe you can push through that flimsy covering! * Do not ask anyone for help on a quest except for perhaps the original coder of the quest. The only exception is you may party (work on a quest together) with other people on CERTAIN quests. Please check the quest description ('questlist <number of quest') first. The wizards on this mud are a paranoid bunch, so please don't go around asking for quest solutions, you will eventually get caught. If you are having a lot of problems with a quest, try mailing the original coder. A number of wizards are pretty good about trying to help you out. For more information type 'help questhelp'. * Try to do ALL the newbie quests in Newbieland. Once you advance above level 4 you'll never be able to enter Newbie Land again. While you may not need the extra 10 quest points now, you may regret having not gotten them later. * For more information read 'help method'. Q: How long do I have to wait for a quest to reset? A: Most quests can be solved multiple times during a reboot. However, if someone has recently solved a quest, you may have to wait for certain items or monsters to automatically reappear. This may take as long as 30-40 minutes. -----------THIS DOESN'T WORK--------- Q: Is this thing bugged? A: Probably not. Unless it's obscenely new code, the chances that any well-established, player-tested, mother-approved piece of code is bugged are very, very low. It's probably just that you're not thinking along the right track. If you're absolutely sure that you've encountered a bug (the game will tell you that explicitly 90% of the time) please type 'bug' and a brief explanation of what's troubling you, all on the same line so the problem, if there is one, can be fixed. Q: All of a sudden, one of the commands I have done a billion times before like 'look' or 'north' or 'say' or whatever doesn't work, and just goes 'What ?' when I type it. Am I bugged? A: Type 'help alias' at the prompt. Strangely enough, many players decide to alias the most basic commands as other things that don't work in all instances. If you've ruled out a poorly- constructed alias as the error and the command STILL doesn't work, then please ask a wizard to help. Remember, Neophytes are not allowed to help mortals. Also the upper admin is often busy doing other things. Try asking a wizard with the word "wizard" in their title on the 'who' list. Q: Why can't I see what I'm typing? A: Windows telnet has echo turned off by default. To fix this you can either download another client, such as Portal, or ask how to fix your version of Windows on the newbie line.