lensmoor mud
Have discovered another fantasy mud similar to alter aeon, materia magica, aardwolf and the like called lenzmoor. I'm only level 2 and like it a lot thus far. Its homepage lives at http://lensmoor.org and you can connect to it at lensmoor.org port 3500. Some of the noteworthy things about this mud are:
1. No rent! Quit from most places without having to rent.
2. A powerful parser: unlike most muds, the parser is pretty flexible and forgiving. For example, l gob is as valid as l goblin or help sanc works as short for help sanctuary.
3. Classless system. You get to choose to learn any of the dazzling array of 400 skills/spells that you want with the limiting factor being something called your skill cap. This represents the maximum amount of knowledge you can hold in various skills and spells. If the total of your skills/spells exceeds this skill cap, the least used skills attraphy to some extent. Age and wisdom give you bonuse s to skill caps and skills mastered at 100% are not subject to attraphy. The closest approximation to classes that exist on most other muds are something called specializations, which make it easier to use spells/skills falling within that specialization but makes it more difficult to learn and improve those outside specialization. Hence, specializing is only recommended after remort.
4. Advancement: you start from level 1 and can get to level 91 after which you can remort into a more powerful race or the same race with better stats. There is only 1 remort necessary as far as I'm aware though, so it isn't the insanity of doing it 63 times like in Aardwolf. Upon levelling, you get practices and trains. Trains are to improve your stats and practicing is well for skills/spells. It is highly recommended to learn skills/spells whenever possible from players as it saves up a lot on pracs. It will be necessary to quest to some extent for questpoints which can be converted t o trains. Its rather complex, so I'll leave it to you to read about it.
5. Advantage/disadvantage system: you get to pick optional combinations of over a dozen advantages and disadvantages and change them as many times as you like before level 5 after which it is expensive to modify. Advantages range from always being able to see all hidden exits, increased hp and mana regen while disadvantages range from being more vulnerable to magic, having trouble sleeping, having your wimpy set to 75% permamently and having reduced hp/mana regen. This can have significant gameplay effects and also modifies things like trains received per level. Recommendation is to play around with them before level 5 and ask players for recommendations as messing this up could make life miserable.
6. Well-written: the areas in this mud adhere to the theme and are fairly well-written. Each zone has a zone quest that you can complete for rewards and there may also be miniquests as well.
7. RP encouraged: RP is optional but encouraged without the strict and overbearing enforcement that exists on RP muds like those from Iron Realms entertainment.
8. Playerbase: when mudding yesterday, I observed a pretty steady average of 20 players logged on at any one time. The players were also pretty newbie friendly too.
9. Newbies below level 25 have their corpse transported to morgues usually near recall when they die which is handy. Death after that leaves a corpse with all your equipment in it. You also get to use equipment 10 levels higher than you up to level 30 which helps tremendously when starting out.
10. Crafting and customization: there's a pretty intricate crafting system and players can even develop characters devoted exclusively to crafting. It is also very inexpensive and easy to customize your equipment as well.
11. PK is available but optional.
12. The only thing that I'm uncomfortable with is how the game doesn't let you see the absolute value of your hp, mana and vitality. Even when you set a prompt, they appear as percentages of your total. Its not a gamebreaker though and most people might not be bothered with it; it can be worked around. You do get to see your base hp and mana so you can work forwards. Similarly, you don't see the absolute cost of spells but if you have a prompt and work out your max mana, it is possible to work backwards if you're so inclined.
13. Age is an IMPORTANT mechanic. You age 1 year every 25 hours in-game. With the exception of the increase in your skill cap, growing old has detrimental effects. The age which these effects start showing depends on your race. The psionic skill vigor and the divine 'restore youth' spell can negate the effects of age. Hence, it is highly recommended that if you need to idle for any extended length of time, you do a config ooc on or better yet have AFK aliased to do that.
14. Heros and sages: to advance to the highest levels of existance, one of the unique requirements that I can't recall seeing in other muds is to build a castle (your own area) that others can explore. I just thaught that this was worth mentioning as advancing into heroes/sages is also a test of your writing and creativity as well as the traditional grinding and allows you to leave your own mark on the mud.
If you decide to check out the game, here are some tips and resources for further reading:
1. check out the following resources:
official game guide (http://www.lensmoor.org/guides/) - covers topics like grouping roles, questing and character creation
Thurston's Notes (http://thurston.lensmooraddicts.net/) - a compendium of information such as race comparison tables, advantage/disadvantage calculators, guides, formulas, a crafting section, links to other resources and many
more.
wiki (http://www.lenswiki.net/wiki/Main_Page) - information about the game including a section with useful plugins for various clients.
2. The Lenzmoor continent is more newbie-friendly.
3. When you're in the newbie school, paste the following into your client to set a bunch of options for better accessibility (help config for info):
config color none
config lessspam on
config nootherhit on
config noothermiss on
config prompt none
config savetell on
config scroll 0
These are just options that are my personal preference:
auto level
config abbreviate off
config nohelp on
config nokiller on
config nooutlaw on
config viewinfo on
4. you get a learning bonus at levels 1-4, so recommendation I got from players is to max wisdom first as it increases your skill cap and also gives you more practices till level 8. After that, max int and follow the advice of the guides in the resource linnks above
5. Get the sstuff recommended in the decent starting equipment as soon as possible. I tried doing it with the sucky eq that the starting shops sell you and it was much much harder.
Hope the information helps and isn't too much of an overload. Hope to see you there!
URL: http://forum.audiogames.net/viewtopic.php?pid=152015#p152015
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