Newbie Guide
GETTING STARTED ON VAMPIRE WARS: CLASSIC
Vampire Wars: Classic is a MUD. In order to play you need a telnet client. If you are not new to the world of MUDDING, there are a wide variety of telnet/mud clients available to use, such as gmud, zmud, mud maker, Tintin, WinTin, MudPortal, Cmud, and classic telnet. If you are completely new to Vampire Wars, this game as an exciting and always evolving game that involves PK (player killing) as well as questing. The biggest things to remember: STOP, LOOK, LISTEN, and respect the admin! They put alot of time and effort into this game so that we can enjoy it!
Upon entering the game for the very first time, you will find yourself in an area designed to help players new to Vampire Wars based muds learn more about the game. Upon wandering through the area, you will find that the description for each room describes a bit about the rules and functions of the game. Asides from reading the room descriptions and the help files that they refer to, please be sure to read: HELP CLAIM, HELP VAMPIRE, HELP AVATAR. These are very important functions of the game to help you play successfully.
When you find the newbie guardian, there is a pill lying on the ground. GET PILL. Eat it, for it shall provide you with a weapon for your early ventures. Soul weapons are vampiric weapons, meaning that they drain a little bit of hp, mana, and move from monsters and your enemies and add it to refreshing your stats instead. Once the weapons appear in your hands, type WEAR SOUL twice. This will actually arm you with the weapon. After eating the pill, move west and then north. There is a mob there called Keeper of the Elysium. Kill him, and type GET ALL CORPSE. Then move west and north yet again. There is a hallway and on each side is a room with a mob. A different type of ghoul. Move back and forth across the hall killing these ghouls and getting everything from their corpses. Each time you get newbie eq from them, WEAR ALL. Keep moving progressively north until you can no longer move north. Then move east twice, then south. This will take you into another hallway of ghouls. When you have killed each ghoul, type EQ. You should have a total of 17 pieces of equipment. When you have the 17 pieces of equipment, type RECALL.
There are a few places that brand new player can start off gaining experience points. I recommend at first, moving 2s,6e,d,s, into the dwarven daycare. Stance up into the crane or bull stance by typing stance crane or stance bull. These stances will help you in battle. See the STANCE help file in game for more information about stances. Each time you go to kill a monster in a new room, be sure to stance. Use your first 2,000 experience points to train hp. If you die, you can type call all and all of the equipment except the soul weapons will come back to you, you can always recall and say 'Take me home' to get back to the Elysium for new weapon pills for a while. Once you have a couple of hundred hit points, you can move into other areas to bash.
WHERE TO GO
One great area for brand new players to start off at is the Pryor Public School. To get there, recall and move 2s3w6s3e2n2e3n. This will put you directly inside of the school building where there are typically plenty of harmless little school children and annoying teachers for you to devour. If you move outside of the building, take care to not kill the kidnapper or guards right away. Once you have saved up 10,000 experience points, type REM SOUL two times. Then claim soul, followed by claim 2.soul . By claiming equipment, when you die you will simply need to type CALL ALL to bring the items back to your inventory. Some items, usually harder to get ones and the newbie gear, are autoclaim, meaning that you don't need experience points to claim them. Continue to bash the school for a while, focusing first on hp. Then gradually balance out by training mana and move as well.
After obtaining better hp, mana, and move other areas for the 1k across or less player to bash will include: DWARVEN DAYCARE, ELEMENTAL CANYON, DWARVEN MINES, TAR ZAROTH ARENA, and FAIRY REALMS. Mind the giants and leprechauns, they're a bit on the evil side. Remember to stance as well.
Once you have killed enough mobs to reach about 1,500 hit points, 1,500 mana points, 1,500 move points, have some spells and most immunities trained up... You may wish to consider becoming an avatar. (Refer to HELP AVATAR) Being an avatar has many benefits. Being an avatar means that you can quest, hunt, your mob deaths don't count against your score, and you could become a vampire. But being an avatar also means that you are also vulnerable to being status killed - or Player Killed. When you get decapitated, you get player killed. You will lose all of the experience points that you currently have. You will temporarily lose some str, wis, con, dex, and int attributes, as well as one immunity that you will need to retrain.
BECOMING A VAMPIRE
Once you are an avatar or maybe even sooner, Vampire clans will begin to check you out and you might wish to start inquiring about them. You can find out who is a member of what clan simply by asking on the chat or newbie channels, or you can also use the locate spell... c 'locate' toreador, c 'locate' gangrel, etc. The person wearing a belt with those names in the title should be a member of the clan. Some important things to remember about being a vampire are that you can use the regen command -- You type regen a few times and it regenerates your hit points, mana, and move. You also will be given access to a clanhall, as well as a clanchannel and the vampiretalk channel. Some important things to keep in mind when joining a clan are: Are those players active? Are they helpful towards new players and smaller clan members? What are the playing styles of people already in those clans... Are they quiet or do they chatter a lot of senseless garbage and piss off other players? Each clan may have its own individual requirements to join. These can vary GREATLY. Be sure to ask ahead of time what the clan that you hope to join will require and expect of you.
When you have joined a clan, you will need to find out where your clanhall is and how to get there, as well as get a blood source ... This is usually a blood rod which can be purchased for 10 quest points OR you can use the spell c 'create spring'. Another important thing to remember is that a vampire who does not have Golconda (inner peace, 0 beast on your score sheet) will take damage from the sun. The higher your beast, the more damage you take in the sunlight. But you will also do harder attacks. The lower your beast, the less hard your hits are, but the less damage you take from the sun.
Also when you become a vampire, you will be granted what are called clan disciplines. Clan disciplines, clandisc for short, are the powers gives a vampire most of their special strengths and abilities. Immediately after being bit, you should type fangs, then truesight. Fangs allow you an extra bite/hit while in combat. Obtenebration, celerity, fortitude and auspex are good cland disciplines to start with (HELP DISCIPLINE). Auspex gives you TRUESIGHT, the ability to see invisible and hidden things without having to cast spells. It also gives you SCRY, which allows you to see an unshielded player who is also not in the shadowplane almost anywhere in the game. Obtenebration allows for a player to have both shadowsight and shadowplane.. Which are quite useful at small sizes for questing. Some rules of thumb and courtesies to keep in mind are.. Not to whine, don't exp/quest bot, don't consistently bug bigger players for eq, quest items, etc. You can always ask another player for assistance or leave a message on your clan forums for help. Most players will gladly help others, but some will not. Do not expect others to do all of the work for you.
PK
Different players have different PK styles and different clans have different rules about how and when to PK. It is a good idea to check into a clan's PK expectations and rules before joining. Some clans do not allow the hunting of allied clan members, but allow PK between members of their respective clans if it is an agreed upon fight in the PK Arena. Some clans will not tolerate members who decapitate (PK) another player that they did not mortally wound themselves. When Player A mortally wounds Player B, and Player C comes along and decapitates Player B, this is often times referred to as a 'FEED' or a cheap cap. For some individuals, if Player A is mortally wounded by a monster, escapes, and is then decapitated immediately by Player B, this may be considered offensive as an escape cap or a cheap cap. Some players will not fight in the arena at all and will make you hunt them, while other players yet consider hunting to be cheap. The best thing that a player can do is to know their clannies well, but to know their enemies best of all.
Once you have mortally wounded another player, you may proceed to kill them. Wield a sword and type DECAP PLAYER, replacing the word player with their name accordingly. Then you will need to crack their skull. Type remove weapon, get head, wear head, crack head. Many people crack heads at the EXECUTIONER for quick disposal. If you do not want to move to the EXECUTIONER, cast the guardian spell. Proceed to order the guardian to eat the brain and kill the guardian.
To stake another player, remove weapon two times. Wear weapon, wear stake, stake player name. Be warned, many clans do not take the staking of a clan member lightly and often demand that there be a GOOD reason for staking a person. Staking another player may come at a price, so think carefully before you do this. When a player is staked, they return to a non-vampire state. They cannot enter their clanhall without assistance. They will lose all of their vampiric powers and their ability to regen, until another clan member bites them once again, restoring their vampiric state.
ATTRIBUTES and SPELLS
Attributes are strength, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, and intelligence. Each of these things will affect the overall quality of your character as they directly affect hitroll, damroll, the ability to concentrate for spell casting, and armor class. Each player starts with these things when they create their character and then using experience points, will need to train them up to 18. The maximum amount of each attribute is 25. Players will need to find/use items with larger numbers of attributes on them or begin questing in order to build up attributes to the maximum. STRENGTH is probably the single, most important attribute. Some equipment will have negative attributes on them, will others will add attributes.
Practicing spells will also be very important. In the game, players can see a list of available spells by typing PRAC1 and PRAC2. It is not necessary to learn each individual spell, however, the majority of them will be a very important and necessary part of a good gaming experience. The best and earliest spells to learn are locate, heal, mend, clot, regenerate, detect hidden, detect invis, earthquake, gas, and spellproof.
Becoming a grand sorcerer of all spell colors is also a very important part of the game. This allows for some advantages in fighting against mobs or other players. It will take several hours of game play to reach GS in each of the five spell colors. Some players get to GS all by sitting around spamming spells in a room. Others cast spells while they bash to move them up. The recommended spells to train are PEEK for purple, MAGIC MISSLE for red, DETECT HIDDEN for green, CREATE WATER <object> for yellow, and either HEAL or FLY for blue.
WEAPONS
Vampire Wars features a huge variety of weapons, each with its own distinctions. Some weapons add nothing, while others may add hitroll, damroll, and a spell. Others may subtract from a player's attributes. Many clans will require that players have a certain number of weapons GRAND MASTERED before joining the clan. Weapons have different "levels" of training and ease of use. In the game, type HELP SSKILL and a list of each notch of ability will appear. GRAND MASTER is the maximum level of learning for that weapon type.
Weapon types include:
HIT, SLICE, STAB, SLASH, WHIP, CLAW, BLAST, POUND, CRUSH, GREP, BITE, PIERCE, and SUCK.
When searching for a weapon of each type, simply cast the identify spell on each weapon to see what type of weapon that it is.
LEVEL or BASIC
This useful command will list how advanced each player is in their weapon, stance, and spell training.
SCORE
This command will show a players in game age, attributes, stats, mob deaths and mob kills, player deaths and player kills, as well as the amount of weight that they are carrying, the number of primal points that they have, their beast score, alignment, hitroll, damroll, AC, and the number of quest points that they have. These commands will also show a player's status, current consecutive player kills, position, experience points, amount of gold in the bank, and whether or not their wimpy level is set, as well as autogold, autoexit, and autoloot. No other players will be able to see another player's SCORE screen. A player's listing on the PLAYERS LEAGUE as well as information obtained by using the FINGER command may be indicative of a player's current skill and ability.
