If you are new to MUDs, we urge you to spend 5 minutes on reading this guide. It may prevent a lot of frustration for the first time players unfamiliar with online games of the Multi User Dungeon type. Based on your experience with this type of game, you can click on one of the links below to skip certain parts of the guide.
Most games of this type work in roughly the same way. You "become" a character in a fantasy world, inhabited by thousands of computer controlled persons and monsters. It is up to YOU to decide what kind of person you want to become in the game.
How powerful a player is, is represented by a "level" system. The higher the level, the more powerful the player. New players usually start at level 1. Players gain levels, and thus in increase their power, with "experience points". Experience points are gained by defeating monsters and completing quests in the game. As you increase in level and power, if you keep fighting the same monsters they will become easier for you to defeat because your power grows, but the monsters will give less experience points too. This means, that as you increase in level you must also find new monsters to fight, or eventually they will give you no experience points at all.
In addition to level, characters also have certain abilities, skills and perhaps even spells. When your character raise in level, he gains points he can use to increase these abilities, skills and spells with. This is done in your guild; use the online help system in the game to learn the details. Eventually, your character may "max out" his current guild, which means he has learned all that the guild can possibly teach him. It is then time to move on to the next guild, and learn new things.
A player has three "pools" of energy, called hitpoints, endurance and mana. The amount in these pools varies as they are "used" in certain ways. For instance, moving around will "cost" you endurance points, so will performing other heavy physical activities. If you run out of endurance you will not be able to do that thing again until you have rested enough to regain some endurance points. The hitpoints represent your physical health, any damage done to you by weapon or magic will "cost" you hitpoints, and so, your current hitpoint number will decrease. If your hitpoints ever reach 0 or down to -10, you are knocked to the ground unable to do anything and may bleed too death without help. If you go below -10 you will die and go to Valhalla for a few minutes until you regain your physical form, and then you must go get your items from your corpse. In Valheru MUD, death is only temporary. The mana pool represents your magical "battery power", without sufficient mana, you cannot cast any spells, and each time you cast a spell, it will cost you mana. Hitpoints, endurance and mana is regained in over time; the regain rate can be increased by resting, and may even be further increased by resting in certain sacred areas, or by means of skills such as meditation.
Magical items, always a welcome addition to any adventurer's equipment list. A magical axe may help you better hit your opponent and increase the damage you do. Magic armour and shields can help you stay alive long enough to kill your enemy. The more powerful of the magical item are usually acquired through quests or by defeating powerful monsters, often in groups of players working together.
So how do I WIN this game? One way to put it is that you are winning every time you gain a level or learn something new, increasing your power and knowledge. Experienced players also know the best places to hunt, what magical items to use and where to get them. The veteran players are usually very helpful in answering questions the new players may have, and perhaps suggest places to go for hunting, or quests to complete. You will be getting a lot of new friends in no time at all.
You don't need to know very much to get started, the only critical things you need to know about is communication with other players, movement and perhaps combat if you really want to start swinging that blade as soon as possible.
Whether you connect to the game by telnet, the java interface or a client like zMud, each time you log on to Valheru MUD you will see the login screen.
If you are a new player, you must enter the name you want your character to have in the game. In order to stay true to the medieval atmosphere and environment, we have a fairly strict name policy. Players ignoring this will be asked to make a new character instead, with a name that is more acceptable.
We have a big player database, so there is always the chance that someone else has already created a character using the name you want to use for yours. If you are asked for a password the first time you try to log in with a new character, it means that someone else is already using that name for one of his characters. If this happens, just reconnect to the game and use another name for your character.
You have now logged in with a new unique name, and you must provide a new password for this characters account. Write the password down, some clients have the ability to remember your password for you and even log you into the game automatically. Let's call this character Ingolf.
You will be asked to verity your password, optionally you can provide your mothers maiden name or email so we can verify your identity in case you forget your password. After this, you must select the sex of your character.
Next is your race. Your race influences your starting abilities, as well as how hard (in practice points) it is to increase them. All races are well balanced, so that none are stronger or weaker than others, but the things they do well, or not so well, are different. So for instance, a race may be good at casting spells because they have high mental abilities, but could then be weak in hand to hand combat because their physical abilities were lower than average. Type Help or just H to learn more.
Personality, or alignment as it is called in some games, is not as important in Valheru MUD as it is in many other games. The reason is that we allow your good-evil balance to change based on your actions, rather than forcing the player to stick with a certain personality permanently. Your personality influences the behaviour of computer-controlled characters; it may restrict or allow you to wear certain magical items. Being evil will not make guards attack you or shopkeepers refuse to trade with you.
Last, but very critical for how you are going to play your first levels is the selection of your characters class. There are a lot more classes in the game than the 4 starting classes here. When you complete your training in one guild, you can then move on to the next one you wish to join.
If you are uncertain about what class you want to play, we suggest you start as fighter as this is the easiest class to play. Fighters do no use spells and there is no requirement for special tactics other than smacking your enemy on the head with your weapon and hopefully do more damage to him than he does to you. Thieves do not cast spells either.
When you have selected your class, you may be given a few tips for new players, see things added to the news section and some general information, but you will end up with the last part of the login screen as shown below. For now, simply type 1 to enter the game.
You are now actually in the game, with all the other players, and your screen will probably be scrolling really fast, much faster than you can read. Don't worry about that. With the java interface or a MUD client, or even with telnet, you can always scroll up to see what was written if it disappears faster than you can read it. You should be seeing something like this:
Don't mind the stuff in red, you are only seeing that because this is a new character and you are being enrolled in various competitions. What you see is a description of how the location you are at right now looks. All places have descriptions, and when there are people and things there, they are added to the description of the place, so you will know they are there.
At the top is the title of the place, in this case "Temple of Udgaard". Next you see the actual room description. All available exits are shown in bright cyan colour. This is all you will see if the room is empty. However, here, it is not. Any items lying around or placed in the room will be mentioned, and after that any characters, that is, both players and computer controlled characters. Names of players and monsters are usually printed in magenta colour. At the bottom is your mana (m), endurance (e) and hitpoints(h).
Interaction is done through commands. You type in a command, press the enter key, and the game will respond and inform you what happens. You can get a complete list of all the commands in the game by typing "commands". There is help available for all commands, to read help on a subject, type "help <subject>. For instance, if you want to know about combat, you would type "help combat". We will go through a few of the essential commands you must how to use in the game.
To talk to other players at your current location (the people you see mentioned in the room description), you must use the "say" command like this "say <message>". Example, you type "say hello folks." and people near you will get the message "Ingolf says, 'hello folks.' " (if your name happens to be Ingolf). Remember, for people to hear you when you use the say command, you must be at the same place. To see anyone at the same place as you, use the "look" command, this will "refresh" the area description, including the listing of any persons or items near you.
You can also "shout" command to let everyone in the game hear what you have to say, it is used just like the say command, you type "shout <message>", and everyone in the game will hear your message.
For more private conversations, you can use the "tell" command, which is a little different from say and shout. It is used like this "tell <player> <message>". So if you wanted to tell a player by the name Sofus something, you could type something like this "tell sofus Can I borrow 5 gold pieces please?", and only Sofus, no matter where in the game he was, would see your message on his screen.
Movement is very simple, pick one of the "Exits:" you see listed in the room description and walk that way. To walk a certain way, just use the direction itself as a command, so if you wanted to go south, you would type "south" (or just "s") and hit enter, and instantly you have moved to a new place, with a new room description, new exits and perhaps new players or monsters. If you don't like the new place, you can usually just walk in the opposite direction and you will end up where you came from.
When you first enter the game, don't be overwhelmed if the text seems to move too quickly for you to read, just scroll back if you need to. If you are inexperienced at playing MUDs, we advice you to read the handbook you have been given, and talk to our automated newbie guide. He will take you through a series of lessons where you can learn more details about how the game works. You do not have to do all the lessons in one stretch, you can do them one at a time when you feel like it. Doing all the lessons takes about an hour, in which you will learn anything from how to trade with the shopkeepers, engage in combat, you will be given a tour of the local village, learn how equipment works and much much more. Again, we urge you to take the tour, it is time well spent, and it will make the game a lot more fun, and a lot less confusing. Our newbie guide is a state of the art voice activated model, you must use the "say" command when you are in the game to activate him. Simply type "say help me newbie guide" for this.