The Odyssey of a n00b

Part one - Getting to Grips

By Miath, (the second)

So ... how did I begin my descent into the seedy underworld that is MUD2?
I'm sure you all want to know ... and as usual I'm dieing to talk about it. <G>

I was once a happy, carefree troll in the land of Midgard playing Dark Age of Camelot, a pretty MMORPG with lots of colour and graphics. One might even say I was gleeful ... My pal Rich, better known to all of you as Thwomp the rampaging warlock (possibly mage by now), continued to speak of this Multi User Dungeon that he spent a small proportion of his life playing. I asked a mutual acquaintance what this MUD thing was having never heard the term before.

"What's a MUD?

It's a bloody text adventure ...

Go north pick up ball...
*I don't understand...
Take ball
*I don't understand...
Shove the ball where the sun don't shine...
*Now that's not very nice....

A bolt of lightning strikes you, you are dead... GAME OVER

*You should learn some manners

QUIT QUIT QUIT QUIT QUIT and play Quake 3".

A text adventure? I laughed for ages. I ripped it out of Thwompy for weeks. And then, something happened ...

I was playing DAOC, I was bored I kept getting killed when Rich came online as his alter ego Goodgulf. We chatted for a while and I told him of my boredom. He asked if I wanted to play MUD with him and I thought why not ... What else was I going to do?

So he told me to go to www.mudii.co.uk and log in through the telnet whatsit thingamy bob and whatnot and I signed up for an account and after some teething troubles (logging in as a guest and complaining my account didn't work when I was in fact putting too many zeroes after the Z), I was sat in an Elizabethan Tearoom holding a cup of tea. Nobody was around except for Thwomp who told me he thought I was never going to arrive. Then he promptly left and returned as Khaos.

So there I was, a ream of text above my screen and I am barely starting to read it when Khaos is yelling at me to drink my tea and go north ...

drink tea
*You don't drink tea, you sip it.

Grrrrr... I can see what this is going to be like.

So I sip my tea, I get my free point and I head out into the world. I am told that everything is swirling ... but my imagination has been destroyed by TV so that's no good. I appear in some non descript woods, and Khaos is nowhere to be seen. I start to get a bit worried when I get a little tell pop up saying: "Type zw until u get to the swamp, then go north till u reach the rapids."

So. .. I did, I did as I was told and soon enough I was with Khaos at the rapids. I was told about the rapids being a meeting place, then he says:
"Type acc Khaos."
Alright I say and I do
. All of a sudden I have text REELING up the screen, I can't read it and I can't keep up, my eyes start to hurt and it's all become a blur of words and garble ...
Just as I think my head's about to pop it all stops and Khaos starts talking to me like nothing has happened.

"Dood ... wtf was that??"
"What?"
"WHAT JUST HAPPENED!?!"

And so it was with a baptism by fire that I entered the world of MUD2. I had the "mobs" explained to me, (a term from DAOC too thankfully), I had the value command explained for both treasure and nasty evil creatures that wanted to bite my bum off, I learnt about swamping.

"Where do you sell stuff then?"
"You don't, you take it to the swamp."
"The swamp?"
"Yeah go to the swamp and type Dr T..."
"Who's Doctor T...?"

And I learnt about weapons and which to use... and of course which not to use, especially when laden with treasure ...

"k mo f wp"
*You are not strong enough to wield the club.
"Not strong enough? what the...."
*The ram looks angrily at you...

Skip ahead a few seconds ...

*Not updating persona

"You f***ing piece of s*** I hate this f***ing game
I'm gonna kill you f***ing b***tard RAM!!!!!!"

... And after a few days of pain and suffering, firefly carnage and being gang banged by goblins, I had a shiny, new superhero :) Okay I admit it was almost entirely thanks to Gilgamesh allowing me to acc him on his personal one-man army assaults on the dwarfs but either way ...
I was well pleased.

But in the back of my mind I knew what I wanted ... I could hear it calling from the top of the north mountain. The forbidden touchstone.

Miath the protector: "Rich when can I touch the stone?"
Thwomp the warlock: "Look for the last time, if u do it before champion you'll die. alright? So stfu!"

Champion ... champion was so many thousand points away ... too many points for someone who had to beg for glows,(circle not withstanding, I'm a lazy bum).

I was thinking about it ... I was gonna do it ... I was definitely gonna do it ... LOOK! A Rabbits foot! That's a sign! An omen! Good luck, well not for the rabbit but hey! His loss, my gain!

I headed for the north mountain looking for the touchstone. I knew it was wrong, I knew it was forbidden but that's what made it so tempting. I wanted it so badly. I went into the cave of stars (okay I circled the mountain 5 times trying to get to the top and also explored for about 15 minutes before I found it), and I stayed there reading the text over and over.

It was do or die... superhero was the highest I had ever been before, was I really gonna throw it all away? Just for the outside chance that I might become a Magic User?

Damn right I was.

I touched the stone ... A flash of light ... magic coursing through my veins and no head explosion? It's looking good! And so Miath the superhero became Miath the spellbinder... and nobody was there to congratulate me :( Ah well ... c'est la vie. Now nothing could stop me! I was the Mighty Miath on the path to Wizdom! I felt indestructible,but of course such is the way with these things that it was not to be.

To be continued ...
(If you lot are remotely interested ...)

Comments and shameless compliments to Miath, zenadsl6247@zen.co.uk