The Shades is a place found in Ankh-Morpork. Its considered a xp harvest area and is highly dangerous. 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. Maps, skills, equipment, its all listed here. (When I'm done, at least)

DESCRIPTION
The Shades is 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 thats the real hard place to live in. They auto-attack you in Shades too, both inner and outer.
Short Street is not a part of The Shades. You will be safe there.

EXIT
There is one room referred to as "exit". 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.

EXIT
It can be said about this place that it is a safe place. I have never seen any NPCs from inner or outer Shades enter this room.

TROLLS HEAD PUB
How to get in here i cant tell. I am a priest, so i passage in. 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. 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 peace-full trolls, and a dart board.
Now the obvious question is: how to get in there? To do that, go to the room outside Trolls Head and say "alfred sent me". Then the door will be unlocked for about 10 seconds.

GEN STORE
The gen store at Short Street is situated just outside the outer Shades. This is the place to sell your loot. Or, if you need a long/bastard sword, a Hauberk or a shield they are never short of here.

USE BLUNT
I'm often asked "What is the best weapon for use in the Shades?" In the outer Shades you can do with anything that kills. I don't consider me to be a great fighter, but i deal with the muggers in there easily. In the inner Shades though, you need blunt. No swords. No katanas. No axes, stilettos, sabres. Blunt. And blunt only. In Shades, there is trolls. And they destroy anything that is not blunt. I've noticed a difference between excellent and very good condition on my war-hammer, then just imagine when your katana is in atrocious condition.
You may think you can be smart and use swords etc when fighting non-trolls, and shift to blunt when a troll joins the game, or simply not fight the trolls at all, but trust me, sooner or later you will make the mistake. You will.
Also, if you have the Worm Sword, and its trained to max, then you can use it. Even blunt weapons decay when fighting trolls (only lots slower) but the Worm is safe, it never needs fixing.

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 exit. 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 7, 1. That is two numbers to bear in mind if you wanna go farming in the maze. It really is a life saver.

NPC'S LISTED.

NPC	Equipment	Difficulty*	Location
Muggers**	Long sword Hauberk Shield	Somewhat hard. No problem for a skilled mudder.	Outer Shades
Muggers**	Bastard sword Hauberk	Slightly harder than muggers with shields	Outer Shades
Muggers	Bastard sword Hauberk	Harder than muggers without shields in outer Shades	Inner Shades
Fighters	Bastard sword Hauberk	Harder than muggers	Inner Shades
Troll	Hauberk	Hardest of them all. Takes long time to kill	Inner Shades

*Its not easy to write down how hard an npc is to kill. This list gives you a hint of how much harder one npc is compared to another. I do not take the responsibility of anyone who dies from reading this list and attacking to hard NPCs. :c) I will perform some experiments to closer examine how hard each npc is to kill etc, so this section may be updated in the future.
**Muggers in outer Shades sometimes hides. You will need some ot.pe to find them. They may also make surprise attacks when you don't expect it. "A mugger comes out of hiding."

MAKING CASH
The Shades can also be used to get cash. Sometimes i feel i get money faster than xp in there. Kill, loot and sell in the nearby gen store. After cleaning out the maze there will normally be many hauberks and quite a few bastard swords laying around. Carry them to the exit and drop them there. Then make an alias to walk to the gen store and sell the items. Also an alias for dropping swords and hauberks after the looting will be frequently used if you use Shades as a money farm. Shields (only in outer Shades muggers) are to cheap to be worth it, i perform major shield on me with them. Cash for newbies that is.

MAKING XP
What's to say here? You get xp from killing things. And lose them if you die. No pain no gain. One thing worth mentioning: The trolls takes lots of time to kill for those of us with no super power skills. Compared with the amount of xp given for a kill, trolls gives the lowest time/xp exchange in the entire Shades.
What more? Group to kill faster, thats a good tip too.

SHADES FOR THE NEWBIE
If you are a newbie you may ask your self if Shades is anything for you? If you will survive etc. 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.

LOOK AHEAD
In the maze there is a command that is very useful to use: "l". Its an abrevation which stands for "look". Only one key to strike, not hard. Try it some time. If you ad a number to that, such as "l 1" you get a look into the room that got number 1. This will help you to know if there is anything in there. Smart, right?
"But i am a skilled warrior, i can kill anything with my mighty worm sword, i don't need to look ahead! Ugh!" If you say that, i recommend you to read the "How to behave" section below, and even the "Strategy" part. There is more than just kill, there is making friends (and keeping them) and survive as well.

HOW TO BEHAVE
Some players lives in the conviction that they are the only ones who ever goes to the Shades. They also believes they can survive limitless amounts of NPCs. They are wrong. One very annoying thing in Shades maze is when you are fighting some npc's and another player enters the room. The npc will attack him and you may lose the kill. This is refereed to as "kill steal" and is considered to have a high git factor. To see your 5 muggers in "very bad condition" walk away into another room ain't fun. You don't want it to happen to you, don't do it to others. Therefore, look ahead "see above section" before entering a room. That will tell you if there is any player in progress. Its considered polite. Be polite. It also gives you a hint of what there is to see in terms of other npc's to. That can be a life saver.

STRATEGY
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, for those of us who cant fight back 3 trolls, 6 fighters and 4 muggers at once, we have to play by some sort of tactics. My way of playing is the same all the time. I look into each room to find the one with the lowest resistance. Say room 1 have two trolls and room 2 have 3 muggers, then i go to room 2, because 3 muggers is lots easier to kill than 2 trolls. This way i get rid of the Shades inhabitants one by one, starting with the weakest.
Some of the NPCs in here walk about. So if you start up with say 2 muggers, you may as well have 3 trolls after a short while. This makes it more important to take out groups as fast as you can, starting with the weakest.
It is not uncommon that players, due to mistakes or inexperience runs around in here, collecting a group of trolls, fighters and muggers that follows them. When they have reached the exit, all those NPCs are left in the room next to it, as they don't enter the exit. They will then be stocked there until they are killed, or a weeboot.
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. See list above for ratings.
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.

UN-KNITTING KNOTS
As mentioned above, you may get the problem with npcs stocked in a room, blocking it. Say you don't wanna fight that troll as he takes to much time. I have found out that if you calm an npc that don't leave a room, he might start walking again.
If there are more than one npc in the room they will not be able to calm. This as auto-attacking npcs join in a fight if they see one, even if calmed. An alternative way is to run in through the Shades. Search a map for a path with, say, 5 steps through the maze, then type in the sequence, speed-walking the route. You do have a chance to outrun them somewhere half-ways. But this is risky, i have died doing this.

GROUPING
In my experience grouping is the fastest way of making xp here (and elsewhere) Any combination is better than one sole player, but the most efficient is (i think anyway) one priest and one warrior. The warrior supply the overall killing power, while the priest, although a bad warrior in most cases, perform several important tasks. He shields (a major shield with fa.ri.de.se outmaxed and a bless is so cool) and cures any wounds. Also he add some extra fighting to the group, and he can passage to Gloomy forest when Shades is empty. This is xp lined up for you to pick.

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.
BLUNT. I got a bonus around 170. Its slow killing, but it works. In my case (i got a sucky warrior-rearrange [I'm a priest]) a new bonus costs aprox 150000 xp. I rather TM then... Don't mind getting here with a bonus below 150.
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. My humble bonus of 74 is mediocre for strike and useless for crush. If you rely on attack commands beyond just "kill" get this skill above 150 at least.
PARRY. Parry is really a good thing, it don't kill, but its defensive, and you use it. I've got my first 2 parry TM's here in just a short period after me advancing it to a bonus aprox 100. Just don't forget to set response on parry.
Dodging ain't important; no-one in here uses special attacks against you, so this skill don't matter.
Crafts.smithing.black.weapons to level 10 or higher. This is good when your blunt reaches "very good shape", so you can fix it again.

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. You have about half a dozen of weapons to choose between here. The rest of all the weapons of the Disc is lesser good. I have a lot of research to do before i can tell what weapons who is best, but here is my not yet completed list of preferred weapons in the Shades.

Weapon	Enchanted	Capacity	Price	Where to get it?	Comments
Ornate warhammer	Yes	Good**	760 AMD	T-Shop	Must be guild level 150 Sometimes steal kills. Has a nice acid strike
Worm sword	Yes	As good as the warhammer	Hard work	Quest item	Must be trained, 600 kills. Has 12 commands. Scabbard available in a quest* Don't need fix
Tachibo	No	Somewhat worse than warhammer. One can hold 2 tachibos, if blades are removed.	140 AMD	W.H.L Martial Arts Shop AM	Also has a blade within.
Retribution	??	??	??	T-shop	Must have good alignment
Woden Staff	No	Not as good as warhammer/worm sword.	??	??	A good choise for a weapon that is so easy to get.

*So goes the rumor.
**How good is "good" then? Hard to tell.

Up one level