4

FIGHTING IN MUD

One of the first things you'll learn in MUD is how to kill things. MUD is a very violent game, and pacifists never live long (with the notable exception of Innocence the Witch, who never killed anyone on her rise to wizdom!). Monsters and other players can be very hostile indeed. There are many weapons that you can use in MUD, ranging from large sticks to magical longswords. The specifics vary from one MUD to another but the Essex version has such weapons as: longsword, broadsword, chain (made of solid gold), axes, épéé, rapier and burning torches. The syntax for using any of these weapons is very simple, all you type is:

KILL <monster/player> WITH <weapon>

Then you're propelled into a fearsome battle with your enemy. MUD itself takes over at the fighting once you've attacked something (or when you're attacked). It takes into account any weapons used and the combatants' attributes when calculating the blows, each of which, whether it strikes home or lands harmlessly, will be described to you. A persona who has been attacked has the option of retaliating with any weapons on his or her person (if they can type fast enough!). Combat in MUD is a very serious business, with a lot of points involved. If you're slain in combat, half your points are lost forever, that being the price of resurrection (in earlier versions you had to restart completely as a novice!).

Conflicts do not have to end in death, you can flee from the battle by typing:

FLEE <direction>

Retreat involves dropping everything you're carrying and the loss of a few points, but that's decidedly better than being slain. Discretion is the better part of valour.

It's your stamina that determines how long you can hold up in a fight. Every time you're hit, it drops by a few points, and if it goes below zero, you die. Fighting leaves your persona ina somewhat battered state, and it's always wise to spend some time recuperating after every fight. There are several ways to regain stamina, the easiest of which is going to sleep. The longer you sleep, the more points you recover (until you're fully healed), but it's a time-consuming process and you leave yourself open to attack while doing so. A faster way to recover stamina is to eat a wafer. Found deep in the dwarfen realm, these wafers have great healing properties: one wafter can restore up to forty points of stamina. If you quit the game, one point of stamina is recovered per minute, so by playing two characters regularly, you can swap if one of them is in danger of dying and you don't want to stop playing the game. Another advantage to this, is that if one of your personas is killed, you won't be completely without the advantages that come with owning a high level persona.

A gang of players is quite difficult to overcome, and players often find it beneficial to form one of their own. Such terror tactics aren't too common as most players aren't willing to co-operate to that extent, but, when they are used, gangs are deadly! The easiest way to keep a mob out of your hair is to join a group, and this leads to "wars" between rival factions of MUD players. Some versions of MUD allow a third character type known as the "berserker". The future of this character type is in doubt as its only purpose in life is to kill things. Indeed, they don't score points for dropping treasure in the swamp, only for killing monsters and/or other players (some drop treasure in the swamp anyway, just to anoy other players and incite them to violence). A berserker has increased attributes, does slightly better in combat and receives more points for killing something than the average character. When berserkers get enough points to be classes as wizards (a very rare thing), they aren't given wizardly powers but instead a strength and stamina of two hundred points each, twice the maximum of any other character. A beserker wizard is a very, very dangerous character and should be avoided at all costs.

The validity of the beserker character has been questioned many times, by MUD's followers. They seem to appear whenever wizards decide to get rid of someone, and the game can get very difficult if not impossible. On the other hand, the presence of beserkers ensures that only the most skillful players ever reach the rank of wizard. It's a two-way argument, but beserkers aren't allowed in the version of MUD now running at Essex University or on Compunet (much to the discomfiture of some). Oslo University's MUD (running since mud-1984) allows berserkers, and the game's "wizards" take great delight in using their berserkers to wreak havoc. Especially dangerous is Slayer, the berserker wizard of Knut Borges, who has already been killed off several times. Every time he reappears, having been worked up quickly by Knut, to hack (and slay) again! It's worth noting that many people (who are not wizards) prefer the Norwegian game, to the domestic one despite its greater difficulty.

One of the oldest tricks in MUD is to summon someone and then attack them when they appear before you. It's a very nasty (but effective) system, as summoning someone also forces them to drop all their equipment (and weapons) and the summonee has nothing to defend themself with. You can guard against this by keeping a firestone in your possession, as it protects you from spells of summoning. If a player casts a successful summoning spell on you, and you're in possession of a stone it will tell you about the attempt, and you'll know who to look out for in the future. If the worst happens and you are summoned, then type FLEE OUT. If you think your persona will last long enough, you can try stealing the weapon of your attacker and then retaliating with it. Its not often a successful tactic, but if you do pull it off, you feel a kind of poetic justice and your attacker is bound to feel a little put out by it as well.

The summoning spell and others are very useful when fighting in MUD. You can also cripple your victims, or send them to sleep before going after them, and you'll have quite an advantage. The spells in MUD, how to use them and their effects are detailed in the next chapter.