Thee Compleete Guyde to thee Shades


Page updated 27 oct, 2002. Hopes this will be enough.
Updated again may 26, 2004.
Intro
The Shades is a place found in Ankh-Morpork. Its considered a xp harvest area and is highly dangerous. In my own oppinion, it is one of the most dangerous area in the entire mud. This guide will provide you with all information on how to survive in there, how to get your kills, and how to behave towards other players.

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.

DESCRIPTION
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.

ENTRANCE
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.

MAPS


Inner Shades.

Inner and outer Shades

ROOMS AND PLACES
Some rooms needs some lines to be described more verbose.

TROLLS HEAD PUB
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 to jak" and say 'yes' or just 'y' when he tells you what he will pay you, or nod to him. He will pay more cash than a gen store, provided you got some skills in the ot.va tree. However Jak specialises in weapons, armours and jewelry.
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.

GEN STORE
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.

WEAPONS
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.

NAVIGATION IN THE INNER SHADES
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.

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
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.

MAKING XP
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.

SHADES FOR THE NEWBIE
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.

HOW TO BEHAVE
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.

STRATEGY
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.

Outer Shades
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.

Inner Shades, the Maze
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.

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
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.

SKILLS
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.

WEAPONS, ARMOUR.
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.

UPCOMING CHANGES
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.

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