Author Archive | pato

Bloodwash Hills

Named for the red stones which cover the surface of these ancient mounds, the Bloodwash Hills are now home to a tribe of vicious gnolls. Spurned by the orcs of Brithbarad, whom they claim saw them as a threat, the tribe has built itself a fortified encampment deep in the woods just on the far western side of the region, which is located somewhere off the northern Black Hills. Reliable information beyond that is sparse, as the tribe seems to make a habit of eating anyone who ventures that direction. They have claimed the hills and the giant wildebeest native to the area as their own, and do not take kindly to visitors. And so now, the venerable hills have earned their dark name again, but for a much more sinister reason.

Hakk

Hakk is an ancient, sprawling city located on the southern edge of the Sea of Stars. Though long famed for its mercantile traditions, in recent years something has changed with this once grand city. The old Hakkian nobility was ousted by new Masters, a mysterious group who rules Hakk with an iron hand. The maritime mercantile district is still open to visitors, but access to the rest of the city is restricted to outsiders. The famed gardens (Oren’s Garden) next to the city are in some state of disrepair, but seem to be of little interest to those ruling the city presently.

Merchant’s District/Dock – Many fine items are for sale here, and all visitors are welcome. Just don’t run afoul of the local constables.

Hakk Sewers and Dungeon – [Level 60+] Legend has it that being banished to the Dungeon was tantamount to an execution, but slower and more painful. Confusing, cursed, and soaked through with fecal matter, the Dungeons of Hakk are purported to be the last resting place of three dethroned Hakkian kings and countless other scoundrels. It is unclear how the current Masters of Hakk are using the Dungeons, but its a sure bet they are well aware of them.

Hakk Master’s Way – [Level 85+] – The Masters of Hakk have barricaded themselves in their giant underground palace. All who dare approach have already forfeited their bodies, their property, and their souls. The crawl to the Master’s chambers will require defeating hosts of beasts, an army of berserk slaves, and the Master’s hand-picked emissaries. Oh, but think of the treasure!

Remorting now produces points called essence. Essence is the accumulated power of your life force, or atman, in the universe of TFE. Essence can be at rest (available to use), can be channeled into characters (allocated), or can be expended permanently. One way to spend essence is to unlock classes. The following are new classes that are unlockable using essence:

Reaver

Recently, its been noted that a few of the deities are making their presence a bit more known in the world. In particular, reavers of Ulthi have been seen traveling the realm sowing destruction and chaos. The large temple to Ulthi in Denab-Knur seems to be their de facto headquarters. Morr’s harbingers, minstrels dedicated to the Death god, make regular appearances sporting large weaponry and singing new songs of battle.

Legate

The Legate of Kerog are an ancient order of warriors dedicated to spreading the worship of Kerog through careful study of his domain – warfare. To this end, the legate study esoteric techniques of melee dating back time immemorial. Legates are weapon specialists that develop a concentration with one weapon type, but can later expand their expertise to other weapon types as they gain experience. Because legates require a limberness and quickness beyond those of a mere warrior, they must wear lighter armors on their body, their arms, and their legs.

Harbinger

Harbingers of Morr are bards dedicated to spreading the worship and exaltation of Morr. As all living beings will eventually be shepherded into the afterlife with his grace, harbingers take it upon themselves to sing his praises to those who will listen, and to bring those who defy his glory into his loving embrace with all possible haste. Unlike most other bards, harbingers do not eschew the usage of large weaponry. In fact, they have developed unique talents which rely on the use of two-handed weapons such as Morr’s reach, Morr’s gentle touch, and Morr’s comforting embrace. Borrowing from their warrior brethren, harbingers also gain cleave, great cleave, and even charge. Harbingers further distinguish themselves from boring one-town, one-song troubadours with slightly different dances, an affinity for shadows, and a lack of the combat attunement skills. Obviously, they regard the bardic practices of sneaking and hiding as nothing but cowardice.

New Area: Western Expanse

West of the orc enclave Brithbarad lie the Western Expanses – a wild area teeming with dangerous creatures and untamed geography. Many an orc, both youth and veteran, have ventured into the expanses to bring home a trophy of their valor. Few have returned, and those barely clinging to life. Thangmar, the orc ranger of Brithbarad, is able to direct those interested to the Expanses.

Skill Changes

The scan skill has been renamed ‘far scan’. Opt autoscan has been retired and replaced by scan -o (see help scan for more information) – you now have more granular control over how scan, far scan, and autoscan behave. Scan output can be tweaked as well to make parsing easier (see scan -d).

We have added the concept of a binary skills: abilities that you either have or you don’t. Cartography has been converted into a binary skill (practice points have been refunded if you had this skill). Cartography will not cost practice points (future quest planned) but other binary skills may require practice points. Expect practice point costs of binary skills to be higher, generally speaking. When binary skills have no practice point cost they are not included in your pool for improve/prac point calculation. Binary skills have no chance to improve and will not generate practice points when used.

The ‘scan’ skill has been renamed to ‘far scan’ and is now a binary skill. Practice points have been refunded if you practiced/improved the old scan skill beyond the new far scan prac costs.

When the bash or charge skills are at level 10+ they no longer have a chance to cause you to fall, though they still can fail.

When the paladin changes occurred last year changes were also made to shields (for any class). This was not clearly announced before so I wanted to put some details out there now: Previously when a shield block could occur (after dodge, tumble, parry, guard, etc) there was a 25% chance to block OR a % chance based on the shield’s AC and shield block/strike. The problem we found was that almost no shields in the game made any difference in this check and it nearly always used the 25% rate. This was adjusted so that shield AC + shield related skills make a more meaningful difference in the rate.

When berserk, focus, or spin kick are used with repertoire these skills should now occur first. (previously you might go berserk after an attack or two) Messages were also cleaned up.

Thieves now get an off-hand backstab skill (skewer).

The searching skill has been updated to make it possible/realistic to improve the skill. This involved a change to the skill itself as well as a review and modification of many room actions throughout the game. There are now 350+ search actions across the game that can improve the skill.

In many cases making an action improve searching was a subjective decision but generally it is possible to improve searching with actions that have a chance to load an item once per area reset such as the haystack in Pennan. The command in these cases is usually search but not always. Actions related to picking fruit that can be executed multiple times or are used to take things obvious to the reader in the room description are not eligible.

GMCP Changes/GA Signal

We have enabled the GA signal (go ahead). GA is a telnet protocol control character that tells the client that the game is done sending output and can respond in some way (sending input, processing triggers, etc.).

With the GA signal in place it should no longer be necessary to add an extra “carriage return” (%) character at the end of your prompt if you use Mudlet or TinTin (may apply to other clients but I did not test beyond these two). These clients force the next line of output onto a new line after a GA signal even if there has been no line break sent.

If you use Mudlet, turn off this option: Preferences window -> Main display -> Fix unnecessary linebreaks on GA servers (You need to reconnect for changing this option to take effect)

GMCP value “Room.Info.vnum” has been replaced by “Room.Info.num” and “Room.Info.terrain” has been replaced by “Room.Info.environment”. These changes are to help TFE be more compatible with the standard “IRE” mapping script for Mudlet. “vnum” and “terrain” will continue to work for now but will be removed entirely in the future. Please update your scripts.

Wind/weather changes in a room should cause a GMCP update. If you find situations where this does not occur please post details on the bugs board.

Other Changes

Abandoned pets now have a chance to disappear when the room/area resets that they were abandoned in.

Plant-based creatures now leave “remains” instead of a corpse. This change happened awhile back but was bugged such that all dead plant corpses were “remains of a plant”. This has been fixed, for example if you kill the gigantic eggplant the corpse will be “the remains of a gigantic eggplant”.

Items that have a command associated with them now show available commands when you look at the item. For example looking at a cotton seed will tell you the command to use the item is ‘plant’. This doesn’t always work especially on area specific items – I would appreciate you pointing out missing commands on the bugs board so this feature can be improved.

-Pato

Orangebeen has been tirelessly working with Shooth and Igghy to create numerous (200+) new and interesting druid augments for you to discover. These items are now in the game. While working on this project we also did an analysis of the original set of augments and found some issues which required correcting. This means there may be more augments in the original set than were known and/or previously augmentable items now have additional methods of augmentation.

Character descriptions (incl. keywords/appearance) are now stored at the account level. This will allow you to save previously approved descriptions for future use. If you remort and your new character has the same sex/race as one of your previously used descriptions you can select that description and become automatically approved. As this may make descriptions more permanent we will be asking avatars to review previously approved descriptions to make sure they follow the established guidelines. I ask for your cooperation if an avatar should contact you about revising your description

Quest information stored on characters has been limited to the quest vnum and a status value. This has been changed so that a copy of the quest is stored on each character when the quest is assigned. This will allow builders to create more dynamic quests and potentially repeatable quests. The infrastructure was also added to store quest related dialog from NPCs on a character’s quest instance. No quests currently use this but we will work on converting existing quests in the future. The most visible change to you today is the quest command itself (interface has been updated).

Avatar permissions are now set at the account level. This will allow avatars to perform approvals from any character on their account. It will also allow avatar permission to carry over after a remort.

An adjustment has been made to how the thief skill escape improves or
generates practice points. The effect should be less undesirable practice
points from this skill.

The monk skill spin kick has been added to the repertoire command as a toggleable, automatic skill. Let’s call this an experimental change for now. If you try it out please post feedback.

-Pato

Containers in rooms, worn, or in your inventory can be searched using the syntax: look in <container> for <item keyword>

Rooms themselves can be searched in a similar way:
look for <item keyword>

I hope it is clear enough that this is NOT the same as the search command, the searching skill, or ‘finding’ things in a room through commands like ‘take chalk’ based on the room description. Note: this is based on existing feature ‘balance -s ‘ that searches your bank.

Looking at a single item (look <item>) will now tell you the number of the item number from your catalog if you have it.

The ‘ask’ command can now be used with shopkeepers to get more information (identify text into your catalog) on items they are selling or can custom. This is not perfect (there are cases when an existing ‘ask’ would prevent the identify text from showing + probably cases where a shopkeeper really shouldn’t know all of the details). I wanted to get it into the game anyway to try it out and to get some feedback.

The lay hands skill has been lowered to level 10. Expect more changes to paladins in the near future.

Mages in Chiiron, Medienne, and Voaleth are now offering a service to recharge wands. There is some chance of failure, however, which destroys the wand. The chance to blow up increases with recharges. To see what services are offered by a mob, use the ‘service’ command while in the room with them.

Additionally, level requirements on many wands has dropped significantly, and generally they have more base charges.

Druid storm spells can no longer be stacked on top of each other. Higher level storms will overtake weaker storms – casting blizzard in a room with a squall will dissipate the squall and replace it with a blizzard. Casting the same type of storm will either oppose it (if its not aligned with you) or add to its duration (if it is). Casting a lower level storm in the midst of a higher level storm is restricted.

Druid storm spells now have a maximum number of affected mobs. This value increases as skill with the spell goes up, but tops out at… something.

Also, damage on tempest, and to a lesser extent tornado, has been lowered.

-Pato

Two new kinds of skills have been added to the class.

First, there are now four dances (physical skills) which a bard can learn that allow them a small chance to automatically (and immediately) cast a spell on an opponent in the middle of combat. These spells include slow, faerie fire, sleep, and fear. There is no mana cost involved. Which dances are active at any point are configurable through the new repertoire command. (Also useful for other skills – and the list is growing.) An important note: these dances may only occur when a bard dodges or parries an attack.

Check out wayward waltz, flamboyant fandango, perilous pirouette, and terrifying tarantella.

Second, a new series of sonic damage spells were added. These spells are prepped, but cannot be cast. While in combat, there is a chance that one of the bard’s prepped sonic spells will fire. Two of the spells in this series are capable of damaging more than one opponent – and those spells are more likely to fire when fighting multiple foes.

See offnote, caterwaul, disharmony, cacophony, and dissonance.

A new summons spell, song of the fae, is also on offer for those interested.

Finally, a new condition has been added – concussed. Some of the bard’s higher level sonic attacks (and also those from the combat attunement series) are capable of concussing foes.

These additions come with some new quests, and at least one new probably useless quest reward.

Bear with us as we find bugs and fix them, make tweaks, etc. However, I think it is solid enough at this point to open anyone interested.

Shooth

Please update the hostname used by your client to connect to TFE: mud.theforestsedge.com

If your client supports secure connections, use port 3999, otherwise 4000.

Do not use the IP to connect.

-Pato

Edit: A few people have asked so thought I would provide some context about this. MUDs traditionally have used the telnet protocol which sends/receive data in plaintext over your network and over the internet. This potentially exposes things like your password, email address, account name, things you say, etc.

More modern MUD clients include a ‘secure’ option which allows you to connect to the game in a way that encrypts the data sent to/from your client and the game. This is similar to ‘https’ for web sites. Connecting in this way requires that the hostname be used as well as a different port.

Use of the hostname instead of IP also helps us avoid disruption should we need to move the game to another server or if the IP our host assigns changes for some reason.

GMCP – Some clients support the ability for a game to send information to the client that doesn’t show up on the screen using a protocol called GMCP. TFE now supports this in a limited capacity.

If you are using Mudlet, type: lua display(gmcp) to see if you are receiving the data. You can use this data for the mapper, triggers, etc.

See ‘help GMCP’ for more information.

Channels – Separate communication command for groups “gstatus” – use it for group commands like pfull and to report cure counts. The idea is to free up gtell for actual chatting. (See also: cstatus)

opt reverse and opt info.time now also apply to channel history.

Accessibility – opt reduce.ascii.art will remove some of the repetitive characters (dashes on the who command for example) to help screen readers – see also help accessibility

Corpses – The time it takes player corpses to rot has been extended to ~3 real world
days. This also applies to pets. (empty/looted corpses will rot faster)

Auction – Lots on the auction block will now remain there for some time (days) until they are bid on. Once a lot has a bid the normal countdown will begin. The time column on the auction display will show minutes/seconds remaining abbreviated as m and s.

Discord is a free chat application designed for people who play games. You can access it from an app on your phone, app on your computer, or just the web.

We are now integrating some TFE channels with Discord channels. This means you can post something in the game and have it show up in Discord. People in Discord can post things and have them show up in the game.

This is currently an experimental feature. It might not work. Messages might get lost. We might have to turn it off. Use at your own risk.

Channels currently integrated: OOC, Atalk, Newbie, Ctell

FAQ

Q: How do I use this?
A: Start here: https://discord.gg/dPFet8x — Create a Discord account if you don’t already have one. Instructions in the #readme channel will help you complete the process.

Q: Why do I have to link my Discord account to my TFE account?
A: This allows us to do cool things. For example: only clan members will be able to view the clan channel for ctell. Permissions are managed automatically by TFE.

Q: Do I have to be logged in to TFE to chat on Discord?
A: No! You can stay in touch with TFE by chatting on Discord without logging in to the game.

Q: Why can’t I change my nickname in Discord?
A: This was debated but we decided to lock nicknames in Discord as your TFE account name. The thinking was this would help make it clear who is speaking. If you change your TFE account name, your nickname will change in Discord. Your TFE account name can be changed by logging in from the game main menu, then choosing option 4.

Q: Why do chats appear from my TFE account name in Discord and not the player name?
A: This is a result of the account system changes from April 2018 (see previous announcement). Your Discord account is linked to your TFE account, not specific characters, so the name displayed there is your TFE account name. Expect your TFE account name to become more prevalent as we roll out other features that operate on the account-level like this one.

The accounts concept will be returning to TFE on April 8th. See my in-game announcements notes for details.

The game will shut down at about 8 AM CDT (UTC-5) on April 8th.

Accounts will be created automatically. Your characters will be grouped into an account based on the email address on the character.

Your account name and password will be the same as your most recently logged in character’s name and password.

To access the game you will enter your account name and password, then enter the name of the character you wish to play.

Your account name will be public on each character via the ‘whois’ command unless you set the incognito option on those characters.

See the other note for more details. If you have trouble accessing your characters during the transition, try the recovery menu first, then email tfe /at/ theforestsedge.com with your character name(s) for help.

-Pato