Newbie Central: Areas of The LandNewbie Central is where people relatively new to MUD2 can find information that ought to be useful. MUD2 is a daunting enough place as it is, and I'm sure many new players feel overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information it provides. It comes thick and fast and is completely disorganised, which is off-putting enough for anyone. What do you really need to know and what can you safely ignore? That's where Newbie Central is intended to be of help. Everyone was a newbie once - even the wizzes were newbies! We all know what it was like. The articles in Newbie Central are aimed at players who have got to grips with the utter basics, like speaking and basic movement, because those have to be dealt with in the game itself. First-timers are not likely to go away and read Muddled Times before setting foot in the Elizabethan tearoom. People who have jumped this first hurdle, though, will normally be on the look-out for anything that can help and therefore may be persuaded that looking here is an option. Enough of the preamble! The topic of this first Newbie Central is getting about.
 The Land is a big place, and it's very easy to get lost. However, it's not too hard to get found again if you know what you're doing. What you need to learn are a few important landmarks, and how to get to them from anywhere you might accidentally wander. There are four places which you can use to get your bearings:
The RoadWhen you leave the tearoom, you'll appear randomly on the road somewhere. Why randomly? Because if you always started in the same place, all those nasty killer types would just stand waiting for you there and whack you before you know it. The road runs east/west, progressively getting in better condition as it goes. This means that if you see beaten track, you know you're at the west; it then proceeds as narrow road, badly-paved road, ford and driveway. At this point, it rises up a hill and disappears among olive groves, only to re-emerge as the north/south Dally Lane for its final segment. You'll come to know all these parts of the road intimately as you play. A lot of newbie-friendly stuff is nearby, too, so you can explore without getting hopelessly off of the, um, beaten track.
The FordOne of the things I like about MUD2 is the out command. The effect of this is to move you one room in the direction of the ford across river. If you keep using the out direction, this is where you'll normally end up. There are some places it won't work from, but they're very far-flung. It even works in the graveyard (but not the maze of hedges). If you ever get lost, you should therefore type out until you come to somewhere you recognise. Normally this will be the road, but if you don't want to do it a room at a time you can string your commands together. MUD2 allows you to separate commands with dots, so typing o.o is like typing two os, which is to say two outs. It gets better in that if you miss out the command between dots altogether, it repeats the last command you input. You can therefore type o.......... and it will move you out ten times! With this kind of movement power available, many players who just want to get back to civilisation will simply type o...... then keep hitting control-L (which repeats the entire previous line) until they end up at the ford. Great!
The Narrow Road Between LandsThere are two limitations with the out command. One is that it stops at the lawn, which is no great problem, and the other is that it stops at the narrow road between lands if you happen to be carrying something. As you usually are carrying something, this means it acts as a block. You can get past it easily enough by doing s.e, which is south then east. If you're anywhere in the western side of the wall that runs north/south in the game, repeated outs will get you here, and it's actually a convenient place; it's much handier for some of the treasure centres than the ford is (another 6 rooms to the east). It also doesn't suffer from a problem that makes the ford rather annoying: the effects of rain. If it's raining, the ford swells with water and you get hurt when you cross it. Unless you have a boat, you therefore don't want to visit the ford too often. However, you do want to use o........ because it's so darned convenient. Well, if you're west of the wall you can, so long as you're holding something! You end up at the NRBL.
The SwampThere are four principal ways to get points: kill some creature or player (newbies can forget this option!); eat or drink something palatable; stay in the game for periods of half an hour without quitting; drop some treasure in the swamp. Most people go for the last of those, which means they really need to know where the swamp is. Conveniently, there's a swamp direction available, which works like out except its final destination is the swamp, rather than the ford. The abbreviation is zw, so people who have stuff they want to score for will usually just type zw......... a few times until they get there. There are actually two places you can end up, the treacherous swamp to the west and the fuming swamp to the east. They're adjacent, though, so that's not a problem. What can be a problem is that swamp doesn't work from as many rooms as out, especially underground in the mine or the cave. You therefore often find that you have to do out a few times before swamp becomes available; if this lands you at the NRBL, s.... will get you to the swamp, you don't have to use zw..... Hey, that extra character could make all the difference! Some of the links to the swamp from the part of The Land east of the wall cross the river, which swells up and becomes impassable when it's raining; this can be a little tiresome at times. Oh, and there's one other annoying thing about the swamp: if you enter it carrying anything aflame, you'll blow yourself up with the marsh gases. Alternative light sources to lit sticks will be discussed in a future column :-) . So those are the landmarks! Once you feel you know where these are, you can explore safe in the knowledge that you can get back to where your maps begin :-) . Speaking of maps...
MapMapping is something which needs an article unto itself, but in terms of getting about you really only need a feel for where the main "areas" of the game are in relation to one another. There is a map in the game, which lives in the cottage (w..s..e.. from the NRBL gets you to the study where it's normally to be found); it's rather basic, but it does give you a reasonable overview. To save you the bother of drawing it yourself, I've done it for you and added a little more detail (but not too much - I don't want to spoil your fun!). Although this map is a big file (nearly 100K), readers with reasonably modern browsers can click on the various bits of it to find out more details of what's there of interest from a newbie's perspective. Note that it does not cover any of the substantial underground areas of The Land; these are really not places that newbies should be visiting.
ExercisesThese are meant to be attempted when it's not raining, unless you're feeling really confident :-) . You don't have to do them in order, but they do get increasingly harder. If something blocks your way and you get lost, put what you've learned so far to good use and get back to somewhere familiar.
Next TimeTrinkets and treasure!
This article orginally appeared in the February 1999 edition of Witch?... click here to return to the front page.
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