A Gameplay Guide for New Players

The first thing you should see upon entering the game is the first room in MUD School. This is where you want to be, especially if you have never played a MUD before. Even if you have, MUD school has everything you need to give your character that extra leg up on getting started - a trainer, a guildmaster, and monsters to kill with equipment and gold to loot.

This is a game, first and foremost, and of course all games have rules. Meat MUD Classic has more depth than your average game, and because of that there are a lot of rules to learn. This guide is intended to give you a good start, with the hopes that you will learn more as you play.

Quick HOWTO (for more detail read below):

1) Move through MUD school by the typing the directions: north east west south up down
2) Read all signs by typing: look sign
3) Train your character's attributes in Furey's Training Room
4) Kill monsters in MUD School to gain gold, equipment and experience
5) Get equipment from the corpse of a monster by typing: get all corpse
6) Put equipment on your character by typing: wear all
7) Use the wimpy command to automatically flee by typing: wimpy
8) Kill enough monsters to reach level 2 so you can save your character by typing: save
9) Return to Furey's Training Room to improve your attributes with each level OR
10) Visit Hatchet's Guild Room to begin practicing skills and spells after level 3
11) Use the help command for information on all available commands by typing: help
12) Locate food and eliminate your character's hunger messages by typing: eat [food]
13) Locate drink and eliminate your character's thirst messages by typing: drink [container]
14) If lost, 'recall' your starting point and return to it automatically by typing: recall

Detailed HOWTO:
The first step upon entering the game is to head north, and read the sign by typing at the prompt: look sign

Your prompt contains quick information that is useful to you as it tells you your character's status, and can be customized (for more information type: help prompt). By default it is broken up into three sets of numbers followed by letters. The first number followed by hp is your character's hit points, or life. The second number followed by m is your character's mana, or magic points. If you are a thief or warrior class this number will remain at 100 and should never change. The third number followed by mv is your movement, which can be diminished by varying amounts depending on the terrain, and also is reduced when you use the 'recall' command.

Movement is accomplished by typing the direction you wish to go at the prompt, and pressing the 'Enter' key on your keyboard. Available directions include: north, east, south, west, up and down. You will occasionally find these exits are blocked by a door. The name of the door can be anything (to open a door type: open [name of door]). Some doors are locked and will need a key. Warriors may be able to bash them down. Thieves may be able to pick the lock.

Wherever you see a sign in MUD school you should read it, because it will have helpful information that will make it easier for you to understand how a MUD works and what to do, not only to survive, but to improve your character and be capable of exploring the game in its entirety.

Two important rooms in MUD school are Furey's Training Room and Hatchet's Guild Room. Both of these rooms will allow you to help improve your character and therefore make the game easier to play (in a manner of speaking). In Furey's Training room you may train your character's attributes, including strength, intelligence, wisdom, dexterity, constitution, hit points, mana and movement points. The first five directly affect your character in different ways. Strength affects the amount of weight your character can carry and the amount of damage your character deals in hand-to-hand combat. Intelligence affects your characters ability to learn skills and spells, and also affects the regeneration of mana. Wisdom affects the number of practices earned each level, and affects the regeneration of mana along with intelligence. Dexterity affects your ability to dodge and parry attacks, and also your character's armor rating. Constitution affects the number of hit points gained each level, and also how quickly your character's hit points are regenerated.

Helpful hint #1: It is highly recommended to train your character's wisdom to 18 (scholarly) as quickly as possible so as to gain the maximum number of practices (5) each time your character gains a new level.

In Hatchet's Guild Room you may begin to learn the spells and skills pertaining to your character's class, after you reach level three. Each time you practice a spell or skill you will increase your chance of successfully performing it, up to a certain point. Practices and training both cost gold, so it is important to conserve your money to improve as you progress through the game.

Helpful hint #2: It is highly recommended to wait until your character's intelligence is 18 (astute) before practicing spells or skills so as to use the least number of practices for each. This will also give your character the opportunity to learn a spell or skill up to a 95% rating, which will make it easier to successfully cast the spell or perform the skill.

Once you have trained your character proceed to the next areas of the MUD which feature various rooms, some filled with monsters. In the Cage Room, you will have the opportunity to kill monsters that are carrying equipment your character may wear. As you proceed through each room, remember use the 'get all corpse' command as you kill each monster. This will give your character all the equipment and gold found in each corpse. Using the 'wear all' command will tell your character to wear the equipment taken. You may also use 'wear [item]' where [item] is the name of one of the pieces of equipment you have found. If you wish to take an item off, you can 'remove [item]' as well. Note that if you are wearing an item, and find a similar item, when you type 'wear [similar item]' it will replace the one you were previously wearing.

Helpful hint #3: You can turn on your autoloot function (type: help autoloot) to automatically take all equipment and gold from a monster's corpse as soon as it is dead.

Helpful hint #4: You can use the 'wield [weapon]' command or the 'wear [weapon]' command to equip a weapon. You will do this often during battle, as many monsters will DISARM you, forcing you to pick your weapon up from the ground (type: get all / type: get [weapon]), and equip it again (type: wear all / type: wear [weapon] / type: wield [weapon]). If you did not see a monster DISARM you, but you are punching the monster, you can assume you have been disarmed. Remember to pick up your weapon and equip it before moving to another room, or it may be picked up by a monster.

After killing the monsters in MUD School, proceed to the Arena to continue killing creatures that should be easy enough for you to handle at level 1. You must continue killing creatures until you reach level 2 before you can save your character.

IMPORTANT NOTE: If you do not reach level 2 and save before quitting Meat MUD Classic, you will have to create your character again, and start all over. This feature has been implemented into the game for two reasons - it prevents a large number of level 1 characters who will never be used again from filling up the storage space of the MUD server, and it makes it difficult for a single player to create numerous characters thereby eliminating potential character names.

Unfortunately, MUD school only covers some of the information you need to be successful at MUDding. To get a breakdown of all the commands available to you in the game, at any time you can access the "help menu" (see the image above, at the prompt type: help). The help menu will list all commands, and from that list you can choose different topics to look up. To look up a specific topic, at the prompt type: help [topic] (without the brackets, for example - to get details on your character, at the prompt type: help score).

The help menu is conveniently broken down into groups, including MOVEMENT, GROUP, OBJECTS, INFORMATION / COMMUNICATION, COMBAT and OTHER. You can look up help on any of the lower case commands listed beneath these category headers (type: help [command]).

As you play the game, you will receive messages on your screen that cause the text to jump up, either as a result of your input, or due to various other aspects of the game's mechanics (monster respawns, weather messages, dawn and dusk messages, etc) and the input and communications of other players. It will take a while to get used to this, especially if there are a number of players on the game at the same time. To minimize the 'spam' as it is typically called, you can disable your communication channels (type: help channel). Also you may wish to avoid reading help files in rooms that are filled with other players, and staying 'indoors' in the game world will eliminate weather and dusk / dawn messages.

After a while, you will notice 'You are hungry.' and 'You are thirsty.' messages are showing up in your score sheet. To eliminate these you can purchase a waterskin from a vendor in MUD school, and you can also eat the dismembered body parts of the monsters you slay. If that's too visceral to you, a quick exploration of the town of Midgaard will help you find the Baker, who sells pies. Two drinks of water and two pies will make you full. Not only will this eliminate the annoying messages, but it will also make it possible for your character to heal more quickly. (Note: Your character will suffer no penalties if he/she does not eat or drink. It is also possible to permanently remove the need to eat or drink at level 10 by purchasing "Banish" from the Secretary of Midgaard's Mayor, which will also permanently give you the regeneration bonuses without having to continue eating or drinking.)

Helpful hint #5: It is highly recommended that you take advantage of the 'wimpy' command. Each time you reach a level (and also as soon as you create a new character), when you type 'wimpy' the game will automatically pick a percentage of your available hit points as the limit to force you to run. If you have a wimpy setting of 4 hit points, and your total hit points drop to 4 or less in battle, your character will automatically attempt to flee from the room and prevent your opponent from killing you. Bear in mind there is a chance that you will be unable to flee - wimpy will not prevent you from dying 100% of the time. But it will make death less likely (for more details type: help wimpy).

As you explore the world of Meat MUD Classic it can become very easy to get lost. The simplest way to get back to where you started is to use the 'recall' command (type: recall). By sacrificing half of your movement points you will return to the Temple of Midgaard.

Helpful hint #6: Beware using the 'recall' command while in the middle of battle, for you will also lose 50 experience points, and there is a high chance of failure. In most cases it is better to flee first, and recall second (for more information type: help recall).

As you learn skills and spells, many of them can be used in battle. Skills can be used simply by typing the name of the skill. Spells must be cast. To cast a spell, type: cast '[spellname]' where [spellname] is the spell being cast. Make sure that you place a ' before and after the spellname, or else you will not be able to cast it. Only certain spells or skills can be used during battle.

You may also learn skills that allow the improved use of certain types of weapons, or magical instruments such as wands, staves, and scrolls (for more details type: help quaff).

Upon gaining a level, your character has some options for additional improvement. He or she may visit the priest of Furey in Furey's Training Room or the Sailor in Midgaard to increase vital statistics, or else visit the priest of Hatchet in Hatchet's Guild Room or the Guildmaster in the Midgaard Guild matching the character's class to practice skills and spells.

There is much more to the game than what has been covered in this article, but this should help your character on his or her way. Good luck!