History and Introduction:
Welcome to the Crimson Brigade. As a member of this guild,
you have many abilities, and probably equally many questions.
This book will, hopefully, answer some of those questions.
The guild is the oldest continually active guild in all
of Batmud. The Fighters guild was created by Franco Colombo, in
early 1991. Through time, the guild has undergone many changes,
the most obvious was the change in name and form to the Crimson
Brigade. Franco remains the GuildMaster ArchWizard to this day.
The guild is also one of the largest guilds in the game, with many
members on the game at any time. As the name implies, we are a
guild of fighters. We hack and slash our way through monsters,
with all the finesse that training can provide.
The rest of this book is filled with information to help
the starting Brigade member, and perhaps even a few of the older
ones who have forgotten a thing or two ;). This includes the
basic commands that the guild gives, and general batmudding
information.
Introduction to help:
The first thing that any member should do is look at your
belt. It is your guild symbol, and you will always have it
when you enter the game. Wear it with pride, it's a powerful
piece of armour. You'll notice the 'chelp' command is printed
on it, try that out, chelp is very useful. There are then several
commands that deal with the mud in general that you should be
aware of. Help set, help money, party help, help battle, help
skills. In each of these cases, one should also read all related
helps that are listed. Help set is very useful for a Crimson, be
sure to understand that one well.
After you've read through and understand all these helps,
use gms to introduce yourself to the rest of your guildmembers.
GMS stands for Guild Message System. It is a channel that allows
you to speak to the members of the guild. To use it, type 'gms
', where is the message you wish to relay. This is the
source of the echoes in your head, which you may have already
experienced. To see a list of who is listening to the channel,
try a plain "gms" with no message, that will list all members and
whether or not they are listening to the channel.
Notes on the Party system:
In batmud, it is necessary for players to work together to
achieve success. Bat has an advanced partying system, it is
essential to all fighters to be able to run a party. Party help
is the command to get the help file, understand it and its related
helps thoroughly. What the help does not list is party convention
and etiquette. If you are a older player reading this, you can
skim, but newbies ought listen up. In a party, it is important
that there be some measure of command. The party leader will
typically be the person with the most hit points, in most cases,
this will be you. In order to run a profitable and smooth party,
it is important for the leader to know the abilities of the party
members, and that they be directed well on when and where to use
those abilities. Respect should be given to older players, that
is, a young fighter ought not try to directly undermine a much
higher level party member, as the high leveler has the experience
the fighter may lack. In most cases, however, it is up to the
party leader to decide what to do in touchy situations: it is the
fighter's ability or lack thereof in this area that determines if
the fighter is truly a talented player.
Notes on a Fighter's skills:
A fighter's skills are the base of all power. It is
important to become familiar with the core set of skills, and
since you have found the library, you most likely know the
location of the guild trainroom. There, a fighter can list the
skills available to him or her, and care should be taken to read
the helps on these skills. A quick list of the skills with which
every fighter should be intimately knowledgeable:
*Attack
*Stun _____________________________
*Shield bash |KEY: |
*Negate offhand penalty | * -- Combat skills, deal |
*Push/Bash/Kick/Strikes | with offensive attack |
*Battlecry | |
)Dodge | ) -- Non-combat, defensive |
)Parry | skills. |
)Consider |_____________________________|
)Stunned maneuvers
)Tumbling attack
**Weapon skills
Push/Bash/Kick/Strikes[slash, pound, stab, impale, and
cleave] skills are a progression of special attacks that the
Crimson uses in combat. Each does different damage, a relative
idea of damage caused by each skill is given by their cost. As
the cost of skills rises, in general, so its potential damage does
too, with the strikes being the highest.
Battlecry is a powerful attack used to start a battle. If
successful, it hits your opponent a vicious strike to start
combat.
Dodge and Parry do just as they say. Dodge is affected by
carried weight, a heavily weighted fighter cannot dodge as
effectively as one who carries little. Parry, similarly, has
drawbacks also. In order to concentrate on parrying blows, one's
offensive attacks must be relaxed. Consequently, using parry
takes away from your attack skill. How intensely you concentrate
on the parry skill is governed by the "parry" command. The level
of concentration can be set from 0-51.
Stun and Stunned maneuvers are opposite skills. Stun will,
as is easily guessed, stun your opponent for a period of time,
governed by the stunner's proficiency at the skill. However,
monster can also stun, and this is the one thing that all
fighters, even the most mighty, fear. A poorly timed stun by a
foe can have dire consequences. To avoid that, one may train the
stunned maneuvers skill, which gives the ability to shake off such
a stun. Of course, such a skill is very difficult, both to train
and to execute.
Consider, as is plainly obvious, allows the fighter to take a
moment to assess a foe, to see what level of difficulty it may be.
This is a rough estimate, and ought not be takes at its word
exactly, but it does give a fairly good impression of how a
potential foe might fight. This skill is HIGHLY recommended by
the guild for lower level fighters.
Weapon skills are a class of skills, one for each weapon
type. 'Polearms' and 'long blades', for example. These skills
govern how well you can use a certain weapon. A fighter must have
proficiency in a weapon in order to use it properly. The Batmud
weapon system is outlined in terms of relative strengths of each
class of weapon in the file 'help weapons'.
For each of these skills there is a help file, in the general
form 'help skill '. Help skill attack, for example. The
help files will hopefully answer any questions you might have.
For more on skills, try 'list skills all', you will be shown a
list of every skill in the game. To get help on any particular
skill, just use the help skill format I listed above.
Notes on Crimson Structure:
The crimson structure is roughly a tree of guilds, outlined
below.
Crimson Light Infantry
|
Crimson Heavy Infantry
|
____________Crimson Senior Infantry_____________
/ / | \ \
/ S /P E C I | A L T \I E S \
/ / | \ \
Axes Polearms Long Blades Short Blades Bludgeons
| | | | |
| | D I V I | S I O N| S |
|_________|_______________|______________|_____________|
{Weaponsmasters} {Tacticians} {Defenders}
[Note: At this time, the Tacticians guild is not open.]
[If this changes, I shall update the book.]
To advance in the tree, if is often required of you to advance
through lower levels of the guild structure. For more
information, go to the individual guild's room and look at the
info file.
General notes to new players:
Being a newbie at Batmud isn't always easy. The way players
are set up here, there is a very large difference in power from a
high level player to a newbie, and such power takes a long time to
acquire. Consequently, it is often the case that newbies are
seemingly ignored by highlevelers. There are ways that this
problem can be helped a bit, and a few tips on Batmud etiquette
follow.
First, when dealing with high level players, be polite, even
if it kills you. ;) Sometimes, you'll want to kill them rather
than thank them, but it's often better to let something that makes
you angry go, rather than start a feud that you cannot win.
Second, be persistent, don't give up immediately if you get
no response back from a tell. Often times, a person can be busy,
and simply misses an isolated tell. If you get no response in a
minute or 2, try telling again, asking if they are busy. Most
highlevelers will respond, if you give them a second.
Third, don't push it ;). If a high leveler truly is ignoring
you, it's often best to leave them alone, as they probably have a
reason they aren't answering. If no response in the first couple
of tells, wait a while before you try again.
Fourth, use all the resources that you can. Batmud has many
channels that can be used to get general information. You needn't
ask the highest level player on the game where you can go find
food, anyone above 15th level ought be able to tell you that, try
using the bat channel or the guild(gms) channel. Fighters on the
gms line are usually quite talkative and helpful, it's quite
likely that you will get a response from them. Other resources
that can help you are help files(which have been mentioned a
lot...but not without reason, they are the #1 source for
information, even if a bit boring) and the news system.
The news system is also very important in terms of keeping
atop of the current events in he mud. News, though perhaps not
essential to the newbie at batmud, can be very useful. The layout
is much the same as many other news readers, and has help files
for those who are unfamiliar with it.
Fifth, explore the town and the guild hall, and use the "map"
command. Many valuable services are within the town and guild,
from inexpensive food and weapons at the guild hall to healing
purchased at the hospital to torches bought at Tinker's toolshop.
A close familiarity with the guild hall and the city is essential
to a player's success. A rule of thumb for survival in the city:
if it looks dangerous, it probably is. There is not much in the
city that will attack you, but use caution, strange things can
happen.
[ NOTE: at the time of this writing, the guildhall is not open.
If this changes, I shall take this note out.]
Notes on Channel Etiquette:
A major part of communication at Batmud is the channel
system. They are extremely useful, and extremely numerous. In
general it is considered bad form to repeat something over and
over on a channel. For example, if you die, and are angry, it is
unwise(though possibly satisfying) to 'bat DAMN!' more than once
or twice, as it is rather 'noisy', as it were, to the other
players. Also, it is generally better to conduct personal
arguments through tells rather than on a public line.
Some channels, such as Bat and Chat, are designed for general
purpose conversation, anywhere from RL sports to what armours you
prefer, these channels have it all. Since this is how they were
designed, it's best to stay within these confines, that is, keep
sales auctions to the sales line, and keep conversations to the
Bat or chat lines. It may seem while you read this help that it's
a minor point, but, experienced players will see that in fact it
can be quite annoying to have a debate about if TNG is better than
old Trek on the Sales line. ;)
Notes on Equipment:
A character's equipment is important to his or her survival.
To see what items you are currently carrying, there are 2
commands, 'i' and 'eq'. 'i', short for inventory, shows all that
you carry in your hands. 'eq', short for equipment, shows what
you are currently using(wearing, wielding).
All fighters rely heavily on their equipment. Some races
have better natural armour classes or barehanded weapon classes,
but compared to that which equipment will provide, these
considerations are small. Armours and weapons can be damaged and
break apart, to repair our armours and weapons, we must go outside
our own abilities to other guilds, such as the blacksmiths guild,
or to a repair shop in the city.
Characters at Batmud have the ability to save their equipment
over a game reset. This can be accomplished in three main ways:
Crash Recovery System(CRS), rent shop in the city, or player
castles.
CRS is a system that(hopefully) will save your skin in the
event of a game crash. When the game comes back up, with a bit of
luck(CRS is not infallible, unfortunately), a character will have
all items on his or her character when the character was last
saved before the game went down. This is not really a way to
save eq over a reboot, but only a crash, which, with luck, will
not occur.
The rent shop is a place in town where a player can rent
space to save items over a reboot. The system is fairly simple,
for detailed information, go to the rent shop[see the map, as
mentioned above] and look at the signs/posters that are there.
Player castles are the most common and complex method to save
eq. The subject of player castles is an enormous one, and there
is an entire cave, with several shops, dedicated to the purchasing
and customization of one's castle. The cave shop is located just
north of the city, for more detailed information, go there and
explore. Castles are largely the domain of higher level
characters, and require a HUGE initial investment, but they bear
mentioning here, as they are so important to life at Batmud.
Getting around Batmud:
Fighters, who have no real talent for magic, are generally
forced to rely on their feet to get around. Mapping is helpful to
some people, to remember how to get from point A to point B; Bat
is very large(For more info on bat navigation, see my other book
titled 'The outworld map'). Be sure to investigate the 'walk'
command, it is very important if you are planning any long walk
through the outworld. There are, however, a few other ways to get
around Bat. The most important, and the only alternative to
walking that will be mentioned here, is the tree system.
The trees are located in key positions throughout the
outworld, and offer transport from location to location for a fee
in gold the size of which is decided by the owner of that tree.
The tree system makes a network of interconnected locations that
may take more than one transport to get from point A to point C,
as not all trees are connected to all others.
Notes on Food:
Characters at Bat need to consume food. When you type
'score', it will list your current hunger status. If you become
less than satiated, and you do not eat to avoid becoming
'FAMISHED', you will begin to lose weight, i.e., your size stat
will decrease, and eventually, you will start to lose hit points.
The benefits of a good meal are obvious. There are many ways to
get the food you need in the game. In the Guild Hall itself, Enzo
the baker makes a very filling loaf of bread, and he keeps the
price nice and low for the Fighters. The city proper has a
bakery, and a restaurant in which to purchase foodstuffs. Several
guilds, including crimson, have the ability to get food, either
through spells or through skills(tinning, hunting). The supply
of food is quite high, it is just a matter of making sure you do
not leave yourself stranded in some maze with no food, as the
consequences can be nasty.
Final notes:
Becoming a high-level player at Batmud is not easy or fast.
As it stands when this book was written, to be a top 100 player,
you must be above level 40. However, with persistence and some
luck(and taking some of the advice given in this book), it is not
unachievable. The information given here is far from complete,
there is much else to be learned, and much more after that, which
cannot be learned through help files, but only by experience.
Things like:
- knowing when to pull a party out of combat on a last-second
decision
- knowing what is a reasonable syntax for a command in a new
area(which can sometime be very difficult to decipher!)
- knowing how to create and execute new strategies in a combat
situation
- knowing, because it will happen, when you cannot win a fight,
and to retreat to save your hide.
All of this and more is possible to learn, if you are willing to
put in the effort to do so.
Yari Shidosha, the Captain of Fighters (Noble Friend)