Anyway, I thought I'd write a few tips here for new players of the MUD, so that perhaps they'll find it easier to start out on the MUD. They're in no particular order:
1) Please go through the newbie grounds. They might not be pleasant, and you might not need to learn how to MUD, but you get some gear from there, which might last quite a while even at a bit higher levels. Equipment always helps.
2) Learn skills. On the MUD, you only need to practice a skill once, then bring it up through use. You meet Jak the newbie trainer at the newbie grounds, and he teaches skills you'll want to have, like dodge, parry, riding, a weaponskill of a choice and survival.
You can practice some of these by fighting the animals in the newbie grounds. You can butcher animals with a dagger, so keep a dagger with you even if it's not your main choice of a weapon.
3) Combat. There are many elements in combat, but when you're starting out, it's best to keep it simple. You've got position and posture. Position is your distance from your enemy, and posture is how aggressively you're trying to attack your opponent. 1 is full defense and 5 is full offense. If you're starting out, I recommend using full defense.
There are three positions: Front, Middle and Rear. Weapons have ranges, and work best at certain positions, like front with daggers, but when you're starting out, you want to be as far away from your opponent as possible, so stick with rear and full defensive until your defensive skills have gone up a bit. After that, test and try out what works best for you.
You can also alter your oppositions position, although you can't alter their posture. If you've got the skill named 'kick', you may 'kick torso' to send your opponent back in their position, possibly giving you better defensive capabilities.
4) Wimpy. Set this to half your hps, each level you level up, until you're confident of your abilities. It will save your life, especially when it's laggy. Syntax is wimpy [number], where [number] is the health at which you start to try running away at.
If you're level 15 or lower, when you die, you get to keep your items. However, if you're higher than that, upon death, your equipment stays in the corpse and you'll need to find your corpse again to reclaim your equipment.
5) Hunger/thirst. Always eat and drink (water) if you're hungry or thirsty. Even if you can't die of hunger, you will regen so slowly when you're in either of these states or both. Don't be the person who dies because they had no moves to flee out because of having been hungry or thirsty.
6) You can wield two weapons (if they're one handed) at the same time. To be efficient with this, you will need the skill named dual wield.
7) Don't hesitate to ask for help! Gossip is an excellent channel to ask help on, questions or just talk. It's the only OOC channel we've got, so might as well make use of it. Players of this MUD tend to be very helpful and friendly, so no need to be afraid that they will bite or bark.
Also, if you've got a problem that other players cannot help you with, the immortals are in general quite nice people and will help you if you ask them politely.
8) The MUD has stats. No, you can't see the stats, and supposedly they play very little part in the MUD. So don't worry about stats! The only stat you might think about helping you are talents. Help talent explains them to quite detail. However, talents aren't exactly what you 'need' to succeed in the MUD. Trust me, I know.
9) Camp command. It's an excellent command if you're in the dark (or it's night) and you want to know what's in the room you're in. It'll make a campfire (or a bonfire, if you keep feeding it with camp), thus a light to the room.
10) Map command. It displays your surroundings in a ASCII-format. It's good way of determining where you are at. Also, if you've got colors on (and usercolors with the usercolor command), it's colorful!
11) Oil flasks. They're excellent choice instead of buying a new lantern when your old one runs out. You can fill lanterns with 'fill lantern x' where x is the container you're filling it from. It needs to be oil, though, otherwise it doesn't work.
12) Exits command. It allows you to see the names of the rooms you can enter. It's extremely helpful if you need to determine what might be in the next room you're walking..
13) Scan command. It allows you to see what's around you, atleast when it comes to living things. It doesn't pick up things if they're in darkness, or hidden, but it's useful when you're hunting and want to avoid aggroes during the day. Oh, and you look 'further' by scanning a direction.
14) Light-levels. The MUD has a unique system of determining what you see. Light-level plays a huge part in this. If the room is fully light, you can see objects, mobs, room description, exits and similiar. If it's a bit dark, you can just see the room description and exits and mobs. If it's even more dark, you can just see the room description, exits and 'something is here'. If it's completely dark, you might not see anything.
If you're trying to find your corpse in the darkness, make sure you get a light. Otherwise, you might not see your corpse since it's too dark.
15) Join a Clan. Clans are a nice thing, usually providing you with master skils (skills past 70%) and in some cases, equipment. If you can't seem to find a clan you're really interested in, you can try to get in touch with an immortal and see if they can guide you further in your path in finding a approriate clan.
16) The maximal length of your personal description is 237 characters. That's the functional maximum value. Characters is a bit less than 237--the formatting (/f, /fi) takes up character space. It ends up being something like 233, maybe 235. (Information provided by Zaralle)
Seeing how this post is becoming extremely long, I'll stop here. If you've got questions and you see me online or send me a PM here, I'll tryo answer your question!