Changes
DESCRIPTION
ENTRANCE
MAPS
ROOMS AND PLACES
TROLLS HEAD PUB
GEN STORE
WEAPONS
NAVIGATION IN THE INNER SHADES
NPCs in the Shades..
As most of you know; in Outer shades, there are only muggers. In the maze,
there are fighters and trolls as well. And they are all much thougher.
MAKING CASH
MAKING XP
SHADES FOR THE NEWBIE
HOW TO BEHAVE
STRATEGY
Outer Shades
Inner Shades, the Maze
Additionaly; When you kill a mugger, he might carry inventory, stolen goods,
from other players. Check the corpse before you bury it, and if they carry a
weapon they don't normaly use, then keep it and try to give it back to its
owner, if you know whos it is. Don't bury other players primary weapons.
Specially not you priests.
GROUPING
SKILLS
WEAPONS, ARMOUR.
UPCOMING CHANGES
This place changes every now
and then. Once, the Shades was much
easyer. It was my favourite idling place and mony/xp source. It has
now been changed. My guide for the old Shades can be found for
sentimental reasons
here. These changes took place somewhere around 2001, so if you have started mudding later, you don't know what you have missed...
Last change of importance was a change in the fighting system that made unarmed
NPC much better on fighting than before. This upgraded the trolls further.
The Shades are divided in two areas, known as
"inner" and "outer" Shades. Inner Shades also go under the name "The
maze" since it is just that, a maze. The maze is hard to find your way
in using no map, and have much harder NPCs, so that's the real hard
place to live in. They auto-attack you in inner Shades too.
Cockbill Street is not a part of The Shades. You will be safe there. Trolls head pub is also a safe place.
There is one room referred to as "entrance". It is
the room you can see on both maps below, the one in the western-most
part of inner shades.
Inner Shades.
Inner and outer
Shades
Some rooms needs some lines to be described more verbose.
One of the 3 rooms
in this pub is dark, unless someone have a light-source. The npc Jak
is found here. You can sell things to him, using the syntax "fence
In Trolls head pub you can also find
four relativly peace-full trolls, and a dart board.
Now the
obvious question is: how to get in there? To do that, you must know
the magic word. Creators changes that from time to time, but reading
grafitti on the walls will give you the words. Read graffiti on a wall
in outer shades to get the string, then go to the door outside and say
that string. Then the door will be unlocked for a few seconds.
The gen store at Cockbill Street is now an anaconda shop. I have
yet to update the map. Once I sold lots of loot here, those days are over.
The Shades mutates from time to time. The last deal was to use blunt weapons.
Now two things have changed. First, the skills are difrent, so it now goes
"Use mace, polearm or misc weapons, but only those types that does not break".
As a rule of thumb; if the weapon fits in the old blunt type weapon class,
then fine, use it. Secondly, troll skinn does not deal that much of a damage to
weapons as they used to do. You now can kill a troll without hurting your axe.
The new deal goes; Use weapons from the old blunt class, or pay close atention
to the health of your playtoys. On top of this; use highest class weapons in
here, profesional gear. If you can't handle them, you are to weak to enter the
Maze anyway. You need the best stuff to get the job done here, it's no newbie
area.
In the inner Shades you will
find that there is no east, west etc, but numbers. Exits are numbered
from 1 and up, maximum 8 exits. One room have exits 1, 2, 3 and
w. This room is referred to as the Shades entrance. Type the correct
number, if you don't you're lost and it will, in my experience, take
10-20 steps to leave the maze by pure luck. And luck is short of in
Shades. If all npc's are killed or you know how to handle it, then its
OK, but if not...
If you get lost there is a big chance you will
come to a room with 8 exits. There is only one room with 8 exits, and
from there escape sequence is 1, 1. That is two numbers to bear in
mind if you wanna go farming in the maze. It really is a life saver.
The ideal way of harvesting cash here is to loot (and know what to loot) and
then sell the stuff, or fence it rather, to Jak. He keeps out in the Trolls
Head Pub. He will buy weapons, jewellery and armours, but pays most for
weapons. Fence your jewelery to Sol at the thives guild, he pays about 10%
more. Fencing the loot from an Outer Shades mugger, stillos and hauberk, pays
from 4 to 15 dollars, depending on quality. They also use to carry 2 dollars
and some pences in their pouch. By experience you will learn what pays for
the effort and what not.
The Sahdes pays out well in terms of XP
nowadays. You can expect some 7-8 kxp for each mortal blow you deal. Worth
mentioning is that trolls takes the most time to rid, but gives the same
amount of xp, so I say they are timeconsuming for the work you pay on them,
very ungreatfull.
No. Just don't do it. Not untill you
get some decent skills in offensive and defensive fighting. But when
you got that, you can start considering the Shades. But, will you
survive there? Do you have the skills to gain the xp and money that
resides there? There is only one way to find out. Try it.
I
recommend to go one or two steps into the outer shades and wait for a
mugger to come. Be prepared to run west out to Short street. Then,
when the mugger shows up, he will attack you. Make sure you got the
"monitor" option on. This will tell you your hp and gp every time you
are hit or hit someone. That is a very good thing. Now, if you find
out you lose hp fast, leave Shades and improve your character. Redo
last step till you are sure you can survive by your self in outer
Shades.
Next step is to see if you will make it in inner
Shades. Now, inner Shades is lots harder, so don't try it if you just
manage to deal with the muggers in outer shades. One way to find out
is to group with someone stronger, a warrior or a priest for
example. This way you will find out how much stronger you must become
to survive Shades.
MUD is a social experience. In real life, you
try to not be rude to other peoples. This applies to the Shades as
well. In order not to steal things, such as kills, and thus xp, from
other players you need some manners. For example, do not kill other
players kills, do not loot their corpses or bury them.
However, in
Shades, as well as in Gloomy, Ramtops Mountain and other places, NPC's
attack players on sight. And you must have the right to be in, or at
least cross, the room. But doing so, the NPC will attack you, and you
will fight back, if you want or not.
To solve this dilemma you
need to take care of your actions. If you enter a room where a fight
goes on, leave that room. If you kill the NPC before you manage to
leave, a simple excuse will do the trick. Do not bury the corpse or
loot it. If in doubt if a NPC "belongs" to somebody, ask that
player.
Grouping is a nice way to solve the issue of market
competition. If you and another guy is hunting that area, group and
share the xp. You get more in total, and kills the monsters faster. If
you offer to group and gets a denial, then there is nothing to do.
In the Maze, you can not look ahead, and also, if a NPC leaves the
room, you have no way of telling through what exit, so the only thing
you can do when you face a fellow mudder in there is to tell him/her
what exit you will leave out and then do it.
If you and another
player come into a conflict about a kill and it was a misstake,
somebody did not know it belonged to somebody else etc, then try to
make it out without becoming blood enemy. I have been ignored by a
player here when he belived I did things I did not. That's not fun,
but it happens. Accidents takes place, try to make it out as friends,
and if you did the mistake, appologise and offer to make it out. A
friend is better than a few kxp. Friendship last longer.
Inner and outer Shades are diffrent and requires
individual ways of thinking. You can't apply the same aproach in inner
and outer Shades. Overpowered warriors or groups is off course
excluded.
In the outer shades you will only have to deal with muggers. They also have
the same uniform set of gear; two stiletoes and a hauberk. These cuties like to
use covert tactics on you. Favourite is to snatch your weapon, and sneak away
2 rooms, then they go into a higher form of hiding and dissapere. After a
while, they get visible again, if you have the ot.pe skills to see them. For
this reason, either have the skills to counter the snatching thing, or do not
hold weapons in your hand while sneaking around. Enter the room with the
mugger, attack it, hold your weapon. Countermeassures to this is high ot.pe
and unarmed combat.
Also, they like to ambush. Attack, sneak away. You follow, they attack and you lose. With enough relevant skills you will only lose a few hundred hp, no big
deal if you can cure that.
The Maze contains the same style muggers as outer shades and you will have to
face the same tactics as to them. An top of this, there are also trolls,
fighters and more muggers. Also, several of them in the same room is common.
How are you going to do in a maze like this?
First off all: don't. You will die.
Ok, so you've convinced
yourself you are strong enough. Up to you, I myself have never died
there yet (since the changes), but I also never stay there long.
First of all, get a map. Unless you are a powerful warrior or in a
party, you will need it. After you found the map, study it. Then make
sure you can see it while you play. Keep an eye on the map and where
you go. Don't get lost.
Now remember that you can't look in to the
next room to see what room you think is best for you. Also, you can't
tell where the NPC went when he left you behind. No point trying to
follow. One fruitfull thing to do is to go one stepp in and stay
there. The NPCs will come to you.
If you feel you are even better
than that, or are in a large group, then just walk about, but remember
to be caresfull with directions and locations.
All this is rules
you have to follow to survive in there, but the better and stronger
you (and your group) is, the less heed you will have to pay them.
While in combat I recommend you concentrate on an npc. I have an alias
"kill $*$;concentrate $*$". This will aim all your strikes on one
target, which will make you kill your opponents faster. Even if there
is only one npc in the room this is a good habit; npc's may walk in
from other rooms. If there are several npcs in the room, focus the
weakest one.
I have two aliases,
"brave" and "chicken" that sets my wimpy to 0 and 25 percent,
respectively. In Shades you don't want any wimpy. Because if, when you
reach wimpy level, you will run around and not be able to perform any
form of controlled action. You will die then. I did.
I use to prefeer the group of a strong warrior and
a skillfull priest. This is still good, but in shades, my bet is for a
group as large as possible. The maze is one of the hardest place in the game
open for players. Be as many as possible.
Still, I think one
priest and then warriors. Say 2 warriors on every priest, thats good
nuf. You will need that extra healing, shielding, fumbling and, after
the Maze is clean, divine hand to Gloomy. Wizards are useful to. They can blow
things up.
The primary skill is OT.HE. Having a good
health you will get time to run if you understand you cant win. For an
experienced coward running is the most useful skill, and HP gives you
time to use it. How much HP you needs depends on how much HP-loss you
can deal with; The more HP-loss you can avoid per minute, the less HP
you need.
FI.ME.* You need a usefull primary and possibly secondary weapon style.
You can't have to much. Mace and an ornate warhammer is so cool in here, but
more styles work here.
FI.CO.SP.WE is for commands like "strike" and
"crush" (you didn't know that ehr?) The locals have some dodging
skills so to use those commands you might need some bonus.h. If you rely
on attack commands beyond just "kill" get this skill as high as possible.
PARRY. In my opinion, the combination of parry and heavy armour is
the key to survivial in here. You will get powerfull hammerfalls on your body,
better learn how to deal with it. Just don't forget to set response on parry.
You can use block/dodge instead if you wanna, but I vouch for parry in this
area.
FI.SP.TA This skill is a geberal fighting improver that is extra
important when fighting in groups. This is a skill you can't afford not to
have.
Crafts.smithing.black to level 10 or higher. This is good when
your blunt reaches "very good shape", so you can fix it again. Unless
you got the worm sword. And of course your armour may be broken as well.
ot.pe and unarmed fighting So the muggers don't snatch your weapon.
When it comes to armour the deal is easy;
the more you can carry, the more you punishment you will be able to
take. Just take care so you don't get burdened, you will then lose one
dex, witch is used it fighting. Clothes wont last long here. I am a
gappic priest who can mend stuff just by a command line, and I have
lost my heavy brown cloak several times here. (At least 3 times)
When it comes to weapons there is more to say. Before stuff changed, you just
needed the best blunt style weapon avilable. Now you have more freedom of
choise. Be sure to pick the best there are and be cool. My personal
recomendation is mace skills and an ornate warhammer. I use it alot and it is
great in the shades.
Changes of the Shades are in the pipe. I have some information that the current system with inner/outer Shades will be changed. Instead, the Shades will just be harder the deeper in you get. The Maze will be changed too, to a "harder to map" style.