Volume I, Issue III *All MUD news thats fit to print* July 28, 1998
| Introduction | Some wanker removed everyone from the mailing list. The culprits have been dealt with. Despite the effort of some miscreants, I believe that you all have the best interests of the MUD at heart and we'll continue to try to make neat stuff for you to play with. Please let your fellow mudders know that they should resubscribe. |
| Mudlib Changes | Inventory saving has been updated. You should no longer get an error when you quit with more than 30 items in your inventory. The upper limit now is somewhere around 70, which should be more than enough. Encumberance has been made easier to deal with. Your score sheet will now show you how much weight you are carrying, and what your maximum allowed weight is. A scale will be put into Harborside sometime soon, so you can get an accurate picture of how much an item weighs. As we creator types have talked about for over a year, minimum wield levels and special wield conditions have been implemented. Before you get totally bummed about this, there is an upside for players. Minimum wield levels and special wield conditions will mean that there will be many more interesting weapon around, because we wont have to hide them deep inside of tough areas to make them rare. Look around at the monsters you are used to fighting or new monsters that you see and if they have a new weapon, odds are it is pretty cool. The true test will be if it has ansi color. We have decided to use ansi for only a few things; Lib stuff like exits, spells, and special attack messages. Remember that the jewel of judgement does not take special hit functions into account. Something that judges as 'okay' might kick butt against orcs or whatever. Almost all hit functions are limited by something. That means one weapon will only give the special attack against hobbits, while another will give the special attack against evil etc. One way to find out what the weapon is best for is to use detect magic on it. Most (but not all) of the weapons with hit functions will describe what they are good at when you cast detect magic upon them. The message 'No Obvious Exits' has been removed. If you dont see anything green, then there are no obvious exits (duh). If there are no obvious exits, it is time to look for unobvious ones, hidden doors, special actions, and the like.
Help files for my four favorite player commands have been added. Help for bug, idea, typo, and soul are now available. This is just the beginning, as I expect to rewrite the majority of the help very soon. |
| Did You Know | there is an ignore command? If someone is bugging you with tells or soul commands, just ignore them and forget about them. Syntax: ignore cracker unignore cracker
The nickname command exists? Great for people with unpronounceable names
That a loanshark has set up business in Harborside? In the alleys of Harm's Way you can find him. He'll lend you all the money you can carry, and the interest is not too bad. But woe unto them who forget to pay on time! |
| New Areas (We have been busy!) | The Isle of Shoals written by Xanax has been finished. Reachable by boat on the Andrea Gaile, this island has a lighthouse, some seagulls, and a secret. The Phoenix lair, written by Shwaine, utilizing some code by Kyuss has been opened. Best for parties and players over level 25, this area is based in part on an Infocom (tm) text adventure, there are some difficult puzzles to figure out to gain admittance. This area begins in the Old Library located in the Path Maze of Xanadu or from another undisclosed location. The Phoenix has stolen some of the Holy Items of the Sorital! Taria will give a nice reward to anyone returning these stolen items.
The Graveyard has been completed. Written by Darktoast, and utilizing some code written by Vampire and Ganga, the Graveyard is located near the Donut Shop in Newburyport. An evil Spectre Lord has caused the dead to rise again. This area is pretty detailed and holds several secrets. During the day it is suitable for level 5-10 players, at night it is quite a bit tougher. The Spectre Lord himself is pretty darned tough. You probably want to bring a Cleric or a Sorit with you when you check this place out. There is an item in there that will allow a player to change their title! |
| Area Changes | Sir Lenny the Bruce has replaced the mercenaries on the southern Twilight road, south of the carnival. He says some pretty offensive stuff, so if you are easily offended, stay away from him. He carries 2 nice new items, the Obsidian Platemail and the mighty Stormbringer.
The Dinosaur area by the Witch Doctor has been sweetened up a little bit. |
| Coming Soon | The Desert area, written by Chang, will undergo a rewrite. It will finally be the way he wanted it to be. A 450+ room Underdark domain should be opened within a month or so. The recent changes to the base room code are slowing down release of this area, as was the buggy chest/barrel code.
Special commands for single classed fighters are slated to be coded soon. |
| True Stories of the Bug Patrol | Chests and barrels now work! That means you can finally get some bolts for those Ballistas and loot Gilligans undersea chest.
Having just found out that resist spells dont work when cast from wand type items, we will be addressing the issue shortly. |