Help getting started

This article is about how to get started in BatMUD, similar help is found ingame behind 'help getting started'. If you don't have a clue what BatMUD is, read first about BatMUD.

Information

First you should try the games builtin help. You access it by simply writing 'help <topic>' or to see help structure 'help help'. You can also search the help files with 'hsearch <topic>'.

Newbie, the channel

If the help files don't seem to answer your question, the newbie channel is the place to try next. You use it by simply writing 'newbie <your message>'. Be warned tough, that asking questions that are answered in help files gets you smart aleck comments.

Newbie helpers

Newbie helpers are mortals who have chosen the status and are (somewhat) obliged to answer to the questions newcomers have. They usually also answer less keen answers quite helpfully, sometimes even in a humane way. You recognize them from the 'the Helper' addition after their name before the newbie channel tag. See 'help newbie helpers' for more info.

News

The in-game discussions, News system is essential for getting information about the recent news in the mud. Suprisingly, 'help news' shows you the commands how to use it. If you happen to log in and notice that something seems to be 'wrong', the first thing to do is to check 'inform last' and then head to read news in inform and general.

Note that you can also read the news at Bat's homepage.

Things todo

The world of BatMUD is wide, long and deep. Truly. If you have experience with (MMO)RPG's and tough those have lot to do, you just found sea after swimming in a bathtube. There is no right or wrong way to play BatMUD (except if asked from certain players) but there sure are numerous ways to achive whatever you are dreaming of. Depending your game style and ambitions, here is short list of commands and things that might intrest you. They are in no means complete but things that a newcommer might feel handy or should simply know.

Achievers

There is numerous things to achive, be it a master merchant, archmage, leader of your race, leader of your guild, to get a big ship, have rare items, kill powerfull monsters or do next to impossible quests. One thing common to them all is that you gain a rank that you can use. 'who min 90' gives a hint about the available ranks, none easilly achived but some more harder than others.

There is over 100 quests in the game, not including guild quests, plus hidden quests. Altough the number might seem small, there is handfull of people in the whole history of BatMUD that has made them all or nearly all of them. Not that you need to be Einstein to figure them out, but YOU do need to figure them out. Giving out information about quests is considered to be bad in every countable way, asking such on public channels most surely results to mockery. It is totally ok to ask muscle power to do things but asking what to do next, is not the way to go in bat. If the immortals feel that secrets of a quest is reveal to public, not learned, the quest has high propability to be changed.

The game has events, things that hapen only for time to time or if begged enough from a immortal to run 'em. These have usually rewards, some mudwide ones others remarkable personal ones. One of them is bloodbath, a event where simply survining is a achivement.

Rebirth is a process that gives you access to more races, status among players and it resets all your previous achivements. It can be done three times and in a way is considered to be a way to start the game with a new character. Altough it is used to gain more power, it is out of the grasp from anyone with under 150m totals.

When you see colorfull spamm about monster names with number after them, you are looking at Kerbholz echo's. It is a item that can be used to brag about your killing success or to ismply keep track what you have killed and how many times. In anycase it is a item that indicates that the person has Rebirthed and has over 300M totals.

Explorers

Simply exploring the gameworld is a easy and relatively safe way to gain experience. Both experience to your character and to your self about the game. This becomes hazardous when you enter a room that has a aggressive, aka agro, monster. Such monsters are usually lited with red. Default coloring for things with 'ansi' are the followings:

aggrmons light_red

armours light_magenta

items light_blue

player light_cyan

regmons light_green

weapons light_yellow

Besides simple directional commands (nw,n,ne,w,e,sw,s,s) using capital letters will make you walk in that direction until hit a different ground or you have moved 20 squares.

You can 'travel' along roads until the road ends or it does not have a clear direction anymore.

Portals in player citys can 'transport' you to the continents capital, ferry or to your starting location. This can cost you so better look at the portal before using it.

If you are naked, you can easilly change continents by Whirling Portal's that are found in capitals. Simply 'portal calythien/church/esiris/lorenchia/rilynttar/shadowkeep' while being in the same room with it.

The map in batclient gives excellent idea where you are wordwise and this wiki has information more closely about the areas.

Socializers

Without friends and other players BatMUd is reduced to the level of a upgraded online nethack. Keeping eye of your friends is easy with the 'friends' command. It will show how many of your friends are online right now and it will inform you if they come online.

There is around 200 active channels for any kind of talk and gossip. From porn to politics. You name it, we have it.

To explore the world together with your friends you can create partys that other players can join. This is done by 'create party <name of the party>' and joining it is done by 'party join'. Only one can be leader of the party at any given time and he can force others to follow him also. Partying makes moving from one spot to another lot easier and also lets the more fragile members to stand behind a stronger one in combat.

Killers

If you didn't take the battletutorial when you started the game in pleasantville, thats a good place to start.

Most important command in this point of view is the 'kill <target>'. You use your weapons best to your skills automaticly and in some point either one of you either die or flee.

To see in what shape someone is, 'scan' it or use the builtin short command 'x'. If you are facing multiple opponents or not in combat, use target version of the same command 'scan <target>' or 'x <target>'. You can also 'scan/x all' but it wont work until in combat.

Closely related command is 'consider <target>' and the skill consider that is used by 'use consider at <target>'. Using this will save you from he need of the next one.

If and when you die you loose big chunk of the loose, unused exp you are carrying. Addition to that someone needs to rais you from the dead or resurect you or give you a new body. The first one having shortest after death effects while the last one saves most of your gained experience, but the haras penaltys ending only after 6h's of real life time. Finding that someone is done trough the ghost channel by simply asking nicely. If your under 30 you can also take from athalon instead of a player, but he can't offer you a new body. After deciding what way to take 'accept rais/ress/new body from <player>'. You can also 'pray' but thats the worst way to get back to life as you loose all your unused experience and might suffer from permanent stat loss.

After something dies, you can 'loot' it to gain its posession.

And after that dispose the corpse in some way like with 'dig grave' as corpses might wake up as undeads. These reanimated monsters are lot tougher and also quite poor in exp wise.

Do not 'wear' weapons as then you are holding them, not using them. You need to 'wield' weapons to use them effectively. Altough it makes little sense how one could hold a sword in any other than effective way, this is the way the immortals have made it.

Regaldes if you are after the life of an NPC or another player, weapons that are used play big role in surviving. In general, the bigger and heavier your weapon is the more damage you will do with it. Also you need skill to swing your steel and such skills are axes, bludgeons, long blades, polearms and short blades. Those two combined with good strenght produce unhealty ammounts of damage. Some weapons have magical abilitys that make them lot better but those usually have prices with at least five digits, best ones going for several million's. Best place to look for new weapon is damogran, auctioneer and sales channel, in that order.

Altough offensive is best defensive lack of armour gets you killed lot faster than you might hope. Armours are roughly divided to ones that take up only one slot in your body and to those that take up multiple slots. Multislotters usually give (lot) better armour cowerage and protection but are othervise inferior comapred to covering yourself with separate armour pieces. Altough it makes little sense why fullplate is considered to be one piece of armour instead of a collection of separate pieces and way of wearing armour, this is the way the immortals have made it.