chapter 3 "Your Health and Abilities" In the previous chapter you learned the basics of getting around and taking care of yourself. It's important also to care *for* yourself, and this chapter describes the various aspects of your body's state and what abilities you may have. The command that tells you almost everything you need to know is "stat". This diplays a whole lot of stuff, perhaps some of it completely unfamiliar. Let's start at the top, using my output as an example. First line: ---------- %^CYAN%^Cratylus aka Cratylus the unaccomplished, level 10 male human Explorer%^RESET%^ Here you see my short name, my name with title, my level, my gender, my race, and my class. Let's go over each. * short name: What a person would use to address you. "look at cratylus", for example. * name with title: This displays my title. Creators can have whatever title they want. Players can only have the titles they earn. As a player, a title is usually earned when you are promoted a level or complete a quest, though it is not always so on every mud. * level: This is a measure of your overall experience, expertise, and all-around game status. Being promoted a level means your skills, health, and vital statistics increase. This often means you can handle tougher monsters, for example, or tackle more challenging quests, learn new spells, and so on. * gender: This has no effect on your status. It is a cosmetic feature of your body that is only useful to you in the social context of your fellow mud players. * race: In Dead Souls, race has nothing to do with your local genetic makeup on planet Earth. In the mud, "race" refers to what one typically would call "species" in real-life. An example of a race other than human might be "orc" or "feline". Not all races are available for players. Once you have chosen a race to play, it is in theory possible to change it, but there is a nonzero chance you'll hose up your player file and lose your character forever. Besides, it's up to your local admins whether race changing is permitted on your mud. Different races have different abilities. Elves see better in darkness, for example. Orcs are stronger than some other humanoids, but dumber, too (which does affect gameplay). * class: This can be considered an occupational specialty. In the real world you have plumbers, doctors, soldiers, etc. In the mud world, we can have explorers, fighters, mages, and the like. Each class brings its own unique advantages and disadvantages to your gameplay. A fighter can really kick more butt in melee combat than a mage, but a mage gets to cast powerful spells. Explorers are a middle of the road class that gives you a bit of everything without specializing in anything. Next line: ---------- %^CYAN%^Alive / Awake%^RESET%^ It is indeed possible for your virtual body to cease life functions. When this happens your spirit speeds off to the land of the dead, where you drift until you decide to "regenerate" and regain your physical form. Except for some special magical items, anything you were carrying when you died is with that dead body, so it's a good idea to rush your new body back to the scene of the fatality and get your stuff back before someone else grabs it. Death is not only inconvenient, it also incurs major penalties on your statistics, so it should be avoided. It is also possible to sleep. If you are drunk and asleep, your injuries will heal more quickly. It's magic, don't worry about the logic behind it. If you are attacked while sleeping, you will wake up. You can force yourself awake, too, but it's a bit tedious. Next line: --------- %^CYAN%^Health: 350/350 Magic: 560/560 Stamina: 400/400 Carry: 1184/1300%^RESET%^ In each case, the number on the left of the slash indicates the current level, and the number on the right indicates what the maximum is. health: When I am 100% healthy, I have a total of 350 hp. If my hp ever reach 0 or less (!), I die. Poison and illness can cause hp's to gradually decrease, and although with time my hp's will normally return to 350 as I heal, poison and illness can slow down that healing or even cause me to die. Injury in combat is the most common source of hp loss, though spells, falls, and other adverse events can cause you injury or death. magic: I cast magic missile! Spell casting takes a toll on your magical abilities, and mp measure how much magic you've got left in you at any given point. Like hp, mp gradually grow back to your max if you avoid spellcasting for a while. stamina: Fighting is tough work, and swinging around swords while getting bashed with hammers really takes a lot out of a guy. Therefore keep an eye on this stat while you're fighting, because if it gets too low you will collapse and be unable to do anything for a while. carry: Objects have mass, and your body is of limited size and strength. My carry capacity is 0 when I carry nothing, and 1300 when I can carry no more. Creators are allowed to exceed their bodies' carry capacity, but players cannot. Next line: --------- %^CYAN%^Food: 0 Drink: 0 Alcohol: 0 Caffeine: 0 Poison: 0 %^RESET%^ These are pretty self-explanatory. Alcohol is good for healing, bad for fighting. Food and drink also help speed healing. Poison has the opposite effect. Caffeine can speed up your combat slightly, but tends to prevent full rest. You will not die from lack of food or lack of drink, but you will do better with a body not starved for nutrients. Your maximum load for any of these is not fixed, and varies depending on many factors, such as level, endurance, etc. Next line: --------- %^CYAN%^Training Points: 0 Quest Points: 0 Experience Points: 50 %^RESET%^ Training points can be cashed in with special NPC's called trainers, who can help you improve some skills. A trainer that specializes in fighting might be able to raise your "blade attack" skill, for example. you earn training points when you are promoted a level. Quest points are awarded when you complete a quest. In the default version of Dead Souls, you cannot advance past a certain player level unless you earn some qp's. Read the sign in the adventurers guild for more details on this. Experience points can be awarded for various reasons: completing a quest, solving a puzzle, winning a contest. Most often you will receive xp after killing an NPC. The amount of xp awarded will depend on the level of the NPC. Like qp, xp are needed to qualify for level advancement. Limb section: ------------ Remember how wearing armor requires the right body parts? Well here they are, and this is their health. You can issue the "body" command for a quicker self-check. Let's look at what the numbers mean with an example: %^CYAN%^left leg (2) 160/160%^RESET%^ Obviously the first item identifies the limb in question. The (2) is a kind of "importance score", indicating how critical a body part is. If this number is (1), like the head, it means that losing that limb causes immediate death. The number on the right side of the slash indicates the hit point damage you may receive on that limb before it is severed. The number on the left is how many of those hits you have left. It doesn't mean my leg has 160 of my hitpoints. If that were true, my hit points would add up to a heck of a lot more than 350. This means that if I've lost, say, 200hp fighting a troll, and 159hp of those hits were on my left leg, getting hit there again means I lose my left leg. I would then collapse and have to crawl away to seek medical attention. Wearing armor on your limbs is a great way to minimize the danger of this happening. Skills section: -------------- Let's review skills by examining one of mine: %^CYAN%^blade attack (1) 00% - 20/24%^RESET%^ This measures how likely I am to hit an opponent when I use a blade, and how good a hit it was. The number (1) means that this is a skill critical to my class. If an explorer can't swing a sword, he oughta think about another line of work. The 00% means I have thus far earned no blade attack experience toward achieving the next level of this skill. The 20 is my current proficiency level. The 24 is the maximum level I can reach at my current player level and with my current stats. What's all this mean? Well, if I practice a lot of blade attacking, that 00% will gradually climb up to 99, and one more point causes me to go from a level 20 slicer of things to a level 21 slicer of things. This increases my likelihood of hitting my target in the future. Meaning, in short, practice a skill, and you'll get better at it. Of course, if my blade attack level reaches 24, I can advance my blade attack skills no further until my player level rises. Stats section: ------------- Remember these from Dungeons & Dragons? No? Well these vital statistics measure your general giftedness in that feature of your body. Let's look at one of mine: %^CYAN%^coordination (2) 42/42%^RESET%^ Coordination is one of those important stats for fighting and such. The more coordinated you are, the more likely you are to hit your target. The (2) indicates that this stat is important to my class, but not critical. This influences its effect on my skills. 42/42 means that my coordination is not currently impaired. If someone cast a "stumble" spell on me, for example, this might look more like 30/42, and if I were drunk, it would look very shabby indeed. New characters should avail themselves of the "customize" command. When you create a character, you are assigned stats based on random numbers modified by the race you choose. For example, humans are physically weaker than other races, so you might have a strength of 15 as a human, whereas a dwarf might expect something like 42. On the other hand, humans tend to be quite smart, and so your human character might have a high intelligence stat, and the dwarf a substantially lower one. To balance out stats that are grossly unfair, new characters are given 15 points to spend to add to their stats. As a human with 15 strength, you might choose to throw all your customization points into strength, adding up to a whopping 30. Or you might choose to distribute points among your stats in a manner most suited to your playing style. For syntax and details, type: help customize Last section: ------------ "Cratylus has amassed a net worth of 11 gold." means that when you add up the money in my bank accounts and the money I'm carrying, converted to gold, I have 11 gold to my name. It looks bad, but gold is actually quite valuable in the default Dead Souls economy. "Money on hand: 79 dollars, 34 silver" means that this is the amount of money I'm carrying. Don't forget that the amount of money you are carrying affects your overall carry capacity. Gold is an especially heavy currency. Final notes: ----------- "stat" is a great command to get thorough information about yourself. It is, however, quite a screenful. Briefer reports can be viewed with the following commands: %^GREEN%^body%^RESET%^ %^GREEN%^skills%^RESET%^ %^GREEN%^stats%^RESET%^ %^GREEN%^score%^RESET%^ %^GREEN%^status%^RESET%^