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Re: Class Resources/Aishia M-M-MULTIPOSTS!!

There, play nicely friends. You're all beautiful people, etc. etc.

Buford

A system being sold for real-life money is against Aetolia's Terms of Service. Asking for credits for your system is entirely valid, assuming of course you're not trying to resell those credits for real bux.

4. License. Subject to all of the Terms, the Company hereby
grants you a personal, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to access the
Services and to use the Services solely for your personal entertainment
purposes. You may not use the Services to generate revenue for yourself or any
third party, in any way, without prior written permission from the Company.

With that said, I'll be closing this thread.

Hadrak

Re: Vocalizing (Announce 2577)

I think what is most important going forward is to remember lycans have the right to bear arms.

Aishia

Welcome Midkemians: Advice, tips, and comparisons for your new life in Aetolia

We're sorry to see that your time in Midkemia had to come to a close. It can be a little confusing trying another Iron Realms game, but we hope you'll give Aetolia a try! Sapience is a significantly different land from Triagia, and here are a few of the most important discrepancies you'll want to be aware of.

ARTIFACTS

- Artifacts must be purchased in credits or iron coins (with few notable exceptions), and cannot be rented. Otherwise, they work similarly to how you're used to.

- Iron Coins are our equivalent of Ishapian tokens.

CITIES

Which city will become your home? Aetolia has four city-states to choose from, with many striking similarities to your old Triagian haunts.

- Bloodloch, the city of Undeath, strength, and grisly might. This city of Shadow will remind you of Sar-Sargoth, with its scheming vampiric houses, slaves to torture or drink from, and emphasis on conquest and power.

- Duiran, the untamed commune of the wild Heartwood. Fans of Elvandar might find much familiar in the Spirit-aligned Duiran, though rather than a monarchy, Duiran Council boasts a diplomatic structure similar to the rest of the cities.

- Enorian, coastal jewel of the east, foundation of the Church. Former residents of Krondor will most likely flock to this city of Spirit, though be warned - this is a city of justice and purity, and the citizens do not often suffer corruption or darkness.

- Spinesreach, the fierce Republic of the savage north. Though this city is Shadow-aligned, it does not have much of an analogue to Midkemia. Spinesreach is only loosely aligned with the nefarious aims of its fairweather ally, Bloodloch, and espouses the pursuits of research, trade, and prosperity.

RACES

- Unlike Midkemia, races in Aetolia aren't tied to a specific city, and any race can join any city.

- That said, some cities may be less welcoming of certain races. For example, a Nazetu probably won't be very welcome in Enorian.

CULTS

- There are no Cults in Aetolia - rather, we have Divine Orders (HELP ORDERS)!

- Divine Orders are formal organizations of worship managed by the Gods Themselves. Though the associated God may change, there is only ever one Order for one God.

- Each God tends to associate with a certain alignment (also called a tether), and though Their tenets can be open to interpretation, it is typically frowned on for, say, an Enorianite to worship Chakrasul (HELP GODS).

- To gain access to an Order, you must first join the God's Congregation (HELP CONGREGATION). How you advance from there is up to Them!

CURING

- Curing is much more complex in Aetolia, being focused on several different balances, such as herbs/organ slices, pipe smoking, and the application of salves. Read HELP CURING, as there's a lot to learn!

- Most notably, the element of randomness is not as present. Many afflictions are cured by a specific curative, and will cure in the exact same order each time. Your offense must be planned around this order!

- Although you are free to use your own solution, Aetolia comes with a free, built-in curing system called First Aid that is VERY powerful, and includes a lot of customization. HELP FIRSTAID will tell you everything you need to know!

ESTATES

- Referred to as houses, or sometimes castles, player houses are purchased with an initial credit investment (HELP CASTLES), then expanded with the stone commodity. Gold is used to rename/redescribe rooms of your house.

- There is no common hub to access houses from. All houses, whether inside the walls of a city, village, or out in the wilderness, are placed like any other building, so plan where you want yours accordingly!

HUNGER, THIRST, & WEARINESS

- Your character will hunger and tire, though you will find you can go for far longer periods between meals and rest.

- At level 80, your need to eat or sleep will vanish entirely, save for certain skills that inflict these conditions on you.

- Aetolians are very well hydrated and never need to drink!

MOVEMENT, NAVIGATION, & EXPLORATION

- Finding your way around a new world can be confusing! Luckily Aetolia has a landmark system (which has useful destinations such as shops) and built-in pathfinding.

- You can PATH FIND to find a route to where you want to go and then PATH GO.

- Valid destinations include a room number, landmark, area name, CITY, GUILD and more! Check HELP PATHFINDING.

- LANDMARKS will show you a list of global landmarks. If you're standing inside a city, it'll show you some city-specific landmarks as well.

- The endurance cost to move from place to place is practically negligible.

- Travel tends to be very speedy - skilled or well-equipped characters can move across entire continents in mere seconds!

- Numerous skills exist to jump between rooms instantly, such as Portals, Wormholes, and Deliverance.

- Exploration does not grant you experience in Aetolia.

PVP/PK

Aetolia's rules on PVP engagements with other players is somewhat more strict. Most notably:

- There is no "open PVP" at all times - certain conditions (ylem harvesting, Hunting Grounds, etc.) do open players up for free PK, but in general, combat is expected to be a necessary, in-character action.

- Repeatedly killing someone without good reason is frowned upon. The rule of thumb is that one death is acceptable; any more and you need another reason!

- Killing your enemy because he insulted you is good; killing him just because he's your enemy is bad.

- You should always read HELP PK and ensure that you understand it.

SPECIALIZATION

- There is no class specialization in Aetolia, although some skillsets do allow for degrees of customization, such as choosing a Mastery in Battlefury.

STATS

- Your character's stats are not as integral to the performance of your skills, though they are still important!

- More often than not, the effectiveness of your abilities is determined by the relevant skill rank (see HELP SKILLRANKS).

- Stats are independent of what race you pick, and we use a statpack system instead that determines your stats. You can pick any statpack for any race.

- Stats are changed by switching statpacks (HELP STATPACKS), reaching a given level as certain races, or gaining enhancements (HELP ENHANCEMENTS). You do not gain stats with each level.

- See HELP STATS for more information.

STEALTH & DETECTION

- Many skills and defences allow you to discern the location of other characters, such as Farsight or Scent, or the Thirdeye defence. These are commonly available, so don't be surprised that your foes can hunt you down!

- Normal stealth might be far weaker than what you are used to, and can be defeated by numerous vision-based defences (Heatsight, Lifevision, etc.).

- However, the Phasing skill, available to the Syssin class, is an extremely powerful means of hiding from other players, similar to Deepshroud.

THEFT

- Theft is very difficult to do in Aetolia, and is very uncommon. That doesn't mean you shouldn't secure your belongings!

- As with any Iron Realms MUD, leaving your goods around a house or stockroom can still be a liability, and you should always ensure you are not being followed.

- It is impossible to have your gold stolen, and is safe to leave out in your inventory.

TIME

- Aetolia uses a slower time scale, just like Midkemia, with one day being equivalent to four real life hours, and one week equaling one real life day.

TATTOOS

- Tattoos in Aetolia function almost identical to how they do in Midkemia, although with different names/functions. Here's some of the Tattoos you'll probably want on your character.

Mindseye: Allows you to see and hear while blind and deaf. Very useful!
Cloak: This tattoo prevents people from summoning you with the Brazier tattoo, and is considered a staple defence for combat.
Moss: Passively clots your bleeding damage.
Boar: Passively regenerates your health.
Shield: Will prevent most attacks against you, but can be bypassed. Drops if you move or make a hostile action.

- Most players will be able to assist you with obtaining them if you ask over your guild or city channel, but failing that you can PATH FIND TATTOOS to locate a NPC who can ink them for you - for a cost!

VAMPIRISM

- Vampirism in Aetolia is very common-place and is not at all rare like it is in Midkemia.

- Becoming a vampire tends to be a permanent choice - a cure is possible, but lengthy.

- Vampires are shadow-aligned, and are very much unwelcome in Duiran and Enorian.

- Vampires may be feared and reviled, but not everywhere! Vampires enjoy power and prestige in the city of Bloodloch, and do not hide their identities.

CRAFTING & MERCANTILE SKILLS

- There are three tiers in our crafting system, which offer opportunities for merchantry and further customizing your world and character.

Mercantile skills: There are presently four Mercantile skills. You can only have one at a time. These are Concoctions (cures for the living), Reanimation (cures for the Undead), Forging (creation and customization of armour, weapons, and shields), and Toxicology (venoms).

Tradeskills: These cost 100 credits and an additional lesson investment. These include: Tailoring, Jewelcraft, Furniture, Woodcraft, Cooking, Brewing.

Talents: These have a credit cost and no lesson investment. These include: Linguistics, Barding, Taxidermy, Pyrotechnics, Fletching, and more! (HELP TALENTS).

Remember, for any questions you might have, you can always ask on the Newbie channel, or ask here on the forums!

Razmael

Re: Short COMBAT Questions

Suffice to say the Pools will never hand out combat mechanics like that. Anyone claiming otherwise is being intentionally - and quite frankly, harmfully - deceitful in undermining the integrity of the PK system.

Artifact powers are reserved for auctions, artifact sales, and the artifact purchase system.

Tedrunai

Re: LOVE

If you're enjoying the Festival, here's a shameless plug to vote! Especially for our dear Producer who is up at ungodly hours (and sacrificing Pokemon time) to oversee all these events.

VOTE!

Tedrunai

Guide to time zones

I know people (me being one of them) are sometimes struggling with the different time measurements in and out of the game, so I made this guide.

It turns out that the Aetolian weekdays are static, making it easier to refer to which days of the week one might be most likely to be around. For example, Teani would be more likely to be awake and aware on a Tisday or Falsday, while Kinsday appearances would be very scarce. During RL weekends, certain Quensday appearances are also likely, especially if planned ahead, making Gosdays less likely.

I hope you find this helpful in some way!
*DISCLAIMER: it might not be perfectly accurate, but it's close enough, I think!

Teani

Re: Announce #2535 Duiran

Regarding Metagaming: Metagaming is a tricky thing. There are different kinds (agreeing OOCly when a scene should move on to the next, using pastebin for designs rather than putting them into IC letters, OOC tells arranging when to schedule things, versus gathering votes via third party mediums), and different avenues (both in game and outside of it).

While some methods are accepted by the community and others generally frowned upon, there is nothing in the ToS against metagaming. Additionally, with the use of third party mediums (such as Skype), it is incredibly difficult to monitor, and pastebins are easily doctored so they become a tricky ground of he-said-she-said.

To note, after a quick search on the Achaean, MKO, and Lusternian sites - none have a help file that mentions Metagaming (however Aetolia does!).

From HELP OOC:

Q: Are there other types of OOC behavior I should know about?

A: Allowing information that your character would not reasonably know to affect their actions; referred to as 'metagaming', is another type of OOC behavior to avoid. In example, if another player told you in a chat window about something a mutual friend did, and in turn, your character approached the friend and asked about it, this is an instance of metagaming. While this example is benign, the affects of metagaming can and often do escalate to staggering lengths. While metagaming is hard to police and not as obvious as other OOC actions, we depend upon players themselves to be careful about separating OOC knowledge from character's knowledge. That said, help scrolls and honors are considered general knowledge.

However, HELP SECONDS and HELP HARASSMENT remain in effect (and HELP HARASSMENT was recently updated).

Regarding Issuing: Please, please issue (or ISSUE ME as Teani pointed out) if you feel an abuse is going on. While the administration has some tools to monitor things, there is no real all-seeing-all-knowing eye. Also, when you issue, provide as much data as you can. Also remember that when issues are being looked at, they are looked at in a wider lense, so incorporate more than your experience alone.

Even with just 20 people logged in, what is being expected would require at least one person dedicated solely to watching the commands of every single person (even if exported into individual windows), which includes all bashing, combat, help spam, crafting, random chatter on all clans and webs, well as some things that we would really rather NOT watch, especially in your private havens and homes. Ahem. This is also something that the majority 'upstairs' would not be permitted to do, as it would negate the necessary policy change from 9/2015. It is a similar problem when processing issues, the big boys having to weed through the backlog to gauge what has happened (thus the lengthy turnaround times for some).

Other aspects regarding issuing require a bit more from you, the players. Harassment's a pretty common word thrown around, as an example - however in many of these cases, no one's clearly told the person in question to desist and leave them alone ("You're mean" and "I don't agree with you" or "You're stupid" do NOT constitute "Stop talking to me I am done."). IGNORE is also a pretty powerful tool, even if it makes communal discussions a bit difficult if the person in question is involved (and could be employed en-masse if the community feels blacklisting someone is appropriate).

Finally, just as you are protected by the rules in many ways, we are also bound to them. Even if we personally feel that someone is behaving in a way we don't approve of, we are also bound to the ToS and larger IRE mandates. If you feel that the rules are inadequate - discuss them and how to improve them. Provide criteria for the lines you would like to have drawn, and how you would like situations handled. While I cannot guarantee that they would be implemented as-is, I at least am more than happy to look it over and lobby for better clarification, even if only with the weight of a volunteer.

Antehe

So You Want to Make a System

So you want to make a system! Good for you - writing your own system can be incredibly rewarding and, perhaps far more importantly, you'll learn a lot of intracacies and nuance about combat and its mechanics that a lot of people don't.

As someone who recently completed a system of my own, I found it really difficult to find the resources I needed - no centralized list of information or important components. Plenty of people willing to help, sure, but I rarely knew what questions to ask or where to begin. Composition was a slow, tedious process of guess and check, spotty, half-finished work, and constant revision that could have been easily avoided.

That's why I decided to write up this little guide for future system-builders! Hopefully others will find this useful and informative.

First things first, you should be aware of your options. Creating a new curing system from scratch is an arduous thing. Aetolia has a lot of mechanics all working at once and juggling them all is a big challenge. I spent over a week cloistered into a single spot just writing and writing, and that's really not very fun. You should understand from the beginning what an investment in time and effort you're taking on, and have no delusions about its completion.

In the interim, you have a few tools available to you. There's the in-game firstaid mechanic, which is a reasonably effective system and will definitely get you by. If nothing else, you should use this initially just to get a feel for how things work - how quickly combats goes and how many moving parts there is. Firstaid has a few caveats, however. It won't handle many of the class-specific defenses, for example, and is rigid in method priority (it will always use herbs before tree tattoo). It also won't make use of skill-based extras you may have, like fitness.

Second, there's a free system available called Source. It has some of the same minor flaws firstaid does, but is easier to adapt, especially for someone ambitious enough to undertake a totally new system. It does, however, come without the gratification of creating something yourself. Consider getting Source for inspiration, or even just to extract trigger lines.

If you're reading this, though, you're probably ready to move past these initial tools and come up with your own work. So let's move on to that!

Before starting, there are a few key things you'll want to keep in mind as you consider design and structure, before actually creating anything at all. Those include, but may not be limited to:
- Aeon. This is an affliction that delays all actions taken by 1.5 seconds. It won't prevent the actions, but you'll need to do some research to handle this well, without duplicating or complicating things.
- Stupidity, and concussion. Both of these afflictions can cause actions to 'fumble' and be 'eaten', canceling their effects. You'll want to track what you attempt to send, so you can re-send it if this occurs.
- Concoctions vs reanimation. Aetolia features two parallel but distinct sets of curatives, one for living, and one for the undead. Consider making a toggle and associating the related curatives in a table somewhere, or simple making your system specifically for either type.
- Illusions. These may not be terribly common, but keep their existence in the back of your mind as you write. Small, structural checks can prevent a lot of tedium later on as you learn what to watch for. Use color triggers when possible, and multi-line captures when they make sense.
- Use toggles. Not just one, but many. Several things, such as waking/standing, clotting bleeding, and maintaining certain defenses, may be situational. Better to have more toggles than you use than fewer than you need.
- GMCP. It's this awesome thing that silently delivers a ton of information between your client and the game. If you're not familiar with GMCP, look it up! It's definitely worth reading up on.

With these things in mind, here's a largely comprehensive list of features you'll want to work on.
- Curing afflictions. Obviously, this is the primary objective. You'll probably want to account for:
o Eating herbs/organs.
o Smoking (and lighting) pipes or flicking and injecting tinctures.
o Applying salves/poultices.
o Sipping affliction-curing elixirs/serums (like immunity/calmatiive).
o Touching a tree tattoo.
o Using the FOCUS ability.
o Consider CONFIG AFFLICTION_VIEW ON to dramatically simplify tracking what you have and don't.
o Consider CONFIG SIMPLE_DIAG as well.
o AFFLICT LIST is an excellent resource, as is AFFLICT VIEW.
- Handling other conditions. These will include:
o Waking and standing if asleep or prone.
o Writhing from entanglements.
o Pulling out thorns.
o Handling limb damage - this really requires its own sub-section!
o Sipping health or mana elixirs.
o Eating moss as needed.
o Clotting to reduce bleeding (with attention to your mana level).
- Raising and maintaining defenses. A number of these can be gotten from non-specific sources, like concoctions (or organs, etc, if undead) or tattoos.
o The cloak and mindseye tattoos are fairly mandatory to maintain.
o The deafness and blindness defenses require and consume herb/organ balance to raise.
o The thirdeye, instawake, deathsight, and insomnia defenses are granted by herbs/organs that don't take herb balance.
o The hardened skin defense is gained by applying the sileris herb or bone.
o The insulation defense is gained by applying caloric salve/fumeae poultice.
o The venom, temperance, speed, and levitation defenses are gained from elixirs/poultices.
o You may also have other defenses from various skills, both general and class-specific.
- Optional additions - lots of other neat little things frequently included in curing systems.
o A GUI! Consider at least a window to capture chat and one to display the map.
o Some form of targeting and aliases for PvP, as much or little automated as you like.
o Affliction or limb damage tracking, or both - for your target, not yourself.
o Bashing, something that picks out NPC targets and uses your basic attacks on them.
o Echoes, colors, and alerts. Tons of things that are important to spot quickly. You might even consider replacing much of the text you see in combat with easier to read lines, perhaps even coded by color for quick skimming. Fights can move so fast.

There are tons of other things you might include in your dream system, like tracking or announcing important events to your web, handling some trade-related complexities like brewing concoctions, or anything else you can think of. This guide is only intended to compile all the essentials in one place for easy viewing, to get people started and aware of what questions to ask as they get to work.

Hopefully it's helpful!

Callister