Walkthrough

What is the Game?

The Dead of Night is a MUD, or text based internet game for multiple users. You play at the same time and in the same space as other people all over the world, gaining levels, doing quests, exploring, and roleplaying. There is no cost to play the game, and you can play as long as you like.


Connecting to the Game

Most new players connect to the game using windows telnet. This is done by going to the start menu, selecting Run, and entering telnet deadofnight.org 5000. However, that is not the best option because you aren't able to see what you're typing, the font is difficult to read, and there are many better alternatives available in the form of specially designed MUD clients.


The game can also be played with AIM, GoogleChat or another Instant Messenger that connects with jabber. The username to add to your instant messenger program are don.mud@jwchat.org or don.mud@jabber.org. This is useful as you can often bypass firewalls at school or university. However, the game doesn't look as good, so go with another option when you can. If you do use this option type in set brief on and set nohangprompt on, this will help make things less confusing.


Many MUD clients add color, display everything nicely, and reduce the amount of typing you need to do when you play the game. One free client that you can use is DoN client. It requires some .net libraries to be downloaded and installed (also available at http://deadofnight.org/?x=donclient).


But you don't really need a MUD client when you are first starting to play the game, and it may take a while to familiarize yourself with all of the options available in a MUD client. Any program that can make a telnet connection can be used to play the game. Putty is a recommended client and can be downloaded at http://www.putty.nl/latest/x86/putty.exe. Just type deadofnight.org under the "Host Name (or IP address)," and 5000 for the "Port," then click open. If you're using unix then simply typing telnet deadofnight.org 5000 works.


If you must use windows telnet, while running the telnet program type ctrl+], set localecho, and then press enter until you get back to the MUD. This will allow you to see what you're typing.


Creating a Character

When you first log in you'll be presented with a picture of a castle and be asked for a name. If you already have a character, just type in the name and the password to continue playing that character. Otherwise try some names until it says you're making a new character.


Sometimes the name you try is not allowed because a monster or another player is using the name already. The game also disallows numbers or symbols from being used in the name.


You will then be allowed choose the Race, Classes and Sex of your character. The gender of the character doesn't make much of a difference. For the purposes of this walkthrough we'll choose an easy class and race that is known to work well. For the race choose dwarf and for classes choose cleric warrior.


Type race dwarf, then type class warrior cleric, then type sex male, finally type done.


Information about the World and Yourself

Type set color on, now type set display on. Setting display on shows you some numbers "H:48 M:108 V:112 >." H stands for hitpoints, M stands for mana, V stands for movement. Now, type report to see your stats. This should match the numbers you saw earlier.


To find more info about yourself in score, type sc. Most importantly, it tells you the experience you have gained and how much is needed for the next level. Also, att will give you info about your character; however, you need to gain a few levels before you will be able to see all the information that is available.


Important commands
CommandShortExampleDescription
helphehelpShows help topics on just about all the spells, skills and subjects in the game.
scorescscShows the more important information about your character.
lookll in bagTyping look by itself will look at the room and show the description and exits. You can look at people or monster to find out more information. You can also look inside containers by typing l in followed by container name.
exitsexexitExits show you the directions you can move and the names of locations in those directions.
inventoryiiShows the items you are carrying in your inventory.
whowhwhoSShows a list of players that aren't hidden from you.


Useful commands
CommandShortExampleDescription
scanscascan northScan is used for looking around to see if any monsters or people are nearby. If you type scan, you will look in all directions. If you type scan followed by a direction, you will search in only that direction.
reportreprepYou say your hitpoints, mana and movement out loud.
timetitimeShows the time of day in the game.
readreareadAllows you to read books or brochures.


When testing out the command inventory, you may have seen a map and a newbie brochure. If you're following this walkthrough then these aren't as important, but they still contain some useful info not covered in this tutorial. If you feel inclined you can type look map to see the map your have in your inventory. It shows the starting town that you will eventually visit. Type read brochure to see the contents page of the newbie brochure, type read brochure 1 to look at chapter 1, and change the number to look at other chapters.


Let's Start Walking

You move around by typing north, south, east, west, up, and down. You can only move in a direction where there's an exit. If you type look you will see "Exits: up down," also if you type exits you will get similar info.


Type up and you will move up into the newbie training grounds. If you want, you can look around and learn much of the same info this walkthrough gives. However, it may be time to prepare for your first fight. Go up three more times until you reach the "Newbie Battle Ground."


Fighting and Getting Experience

If you want to gain levels and move up in the world, you will need to be able to fight and gain experience.


First, type wear all. This will equip the equipment you currently have and give you added protection and increased damage. If you want to remove an item, for example your cap, type remove cap. To wear it again, type wear cap. Good armor will help reduce the damage done to you, especially if you have a good shield which will help deflect blows. Using weapons is usually much more effective than hitting with your bare hands.


Next, type set flee 1000. By default, you flee when a monster does too much damage to you. However, you will likely find that the default flee setting will not cause you to flee from a fight until it is too late. With set flee 1000, you set yourself to automatically flee when you are injured with only a third of your maximum hitpoints remaining. During battle, you can type flee if you feel the battle is going badly and you don't want to take a risk waiting for your hitpoints to drop to a third. You aren't always successful when you try to flee, so if you know you won't win the fight, fleeing early is a good idea, in case you fail to flee the first time or two.


Type south to go south then type con monster. This is short for consider monster, and it gives a level comparison, hitpoint comparison, damage comparison, and tells you whether or not the monster may have some skills or spells. You can also type look monster; this is sometimes useful for finding out more about the monster.


Sometimes the name of the monster isn't as obvious as "monster." If you're confused about what you're supposed to be looking at or killing, you can type keywords to find out what the name of the creature or object is. Under "Mobiles:" you should see "wimpy monster -- a wimpy monster." This means that the description of the monster is "a wimpy monster," and using either kill wimpy or kill monster can be used to attack the monster.


Type kill monster; it should die very quickly. You should get a small amount of experience and when you type score you will see that the amount of exp you have scored has increased, while the experience points until next level has decreased.


After it is dead, type look in corpse to see what is inside the dead body. You don't need to do that all the time, you can just type get all corpse to get everything that you need without bothering to look.


Move north by typing north, and type scan. This will show you other monsters that you can kill and take the gold from. Kill the monsters and get everything from their corpses as you did for the wimpy monster. When you're done, go up until you reach the shop keeper.


I suggest using up all your money buying healing potions; type buy potion to buy a potion. Shops are useful, but aren't critical to gameplay, early on. To learn about the things you can do, type look sign, or if you're elsewhere in the world, type help shops.


Go up twice you should be in the same room as Healen. If you type con healen, it should say "Level comparison: You're certifiably INSANE!!" There are many things in the game world that outstrip you in power, and it's almost certain that at some stage you will end up dying. So it's probably good to experience what happens when you die. For those who don't want to try dying, here is a fairly decent description of what happens.


Type kill healen, and you will probably see something along these lines:


You miss Healen.
You catch Healen's attack using a shield.
You are dead! Sorry...
Your soul is wrenched away as reality shifts.

First thing to do is type look, you'll find yourself in the portal of creation. You will always return here whenever you die. Type stand, or you won't be able to move around. Whenever you die you leave behind all your gold and items, to get them back you need to go back to where you died and retrieve them. In this case you died at Healen who is at the room above the portal. To retrieve your stuff, go up then get all corpse.


Since you were level 1, you didn't lose a level or any experience from dying. When you are level 5 or above, you will lose a level and experience whenever you die.


After getting your things you need to wear all. You will probably find that all your equipment is out of order and perhaps you ended up holding the lantern instead of the shield. Type equipment to see what equipment you're wearing and inventory to see what stayed in your inventory. You'll probably need to remove lantern and wear shield.


Now type report, and you will probably find that your hitpoints are low. Whenever you die you usually ome back with 1 hitpoint which slowly regenerates as you heal. A good idea is to also type quaff potion. This will use up one of the healing potions you brought earlier and give you back your hitpoints.


Entering the Bigger World

Now it's time to see the wider world. Go down twice and you will reach Central Market Square. You should be able to look map and see the map of the city that you're in on the map you have in your inventory.


This is a more detailed map of the city you can also use. To view it, click http://www.deadofnight.org/images/pangaea.jpg and download it to your computer so you can read the labels from the map below.


Diagram 1

If ever you are lost, type exits and see if you recognize the name of any of the nearby rooms.


Depending on how fast you've been reading you may or may not have seen the messages:


"You are hungry."
"You are thirsty."

Hunger and thirst will not hurt you or weaken you in battle. What they will do is slow down the regeneration of hitpoints, mana and movement. You can eat bread and drink cup to take care of the problem; however, the fountains you see around the game take care of both hunger and thirst if you drink from them. There should be a fountain in Central Market where you first entered the city. If you drink twice from the fountain every time you pass by, hunger and thirst shouldn't be a big problem, and you won't need to worry too much about carrying food and water with you as you adventure.


Hunting in the Zoo

First, visit the Zoo. If you attempt to find out how to move around the city using one of the maps, the zoo can be found on the east (right) side of the map.


If you're having trouble getting there, it's south; east; east; east; east; east; east; east; south; south from the central market. Follow the green lines on the map below.


Diagram 2

Now, use all the killing skills you learned earlier to kill the animals at the zoo. Try to remember the way you came so you can go back to the market later.


Quick recap: check what equipment you are using by typing eq, use scan to look for monsters, use con to check their levels if unsure how powerful they are, hit the monster name to attack it, use keywords if you're having trouble figuring out the name of something, watch the H part of the "H:35 V:115 >" display to make sure you're not running out of hit points, and quaff healing or quaff potion to drink a healing potion. Typing score shows you your progress in getting exp to level. Note that the experience needed for the next level doesn't stop at zero, but goes negative when you can gain a level.


Eventually after killing enough you'll get "You have received enough exp to level." which means that you can gain a level and then more experience. If you keep killing things until you get the message "You must go train further before you can gain any more experience on your own," that means you've acquired the maximum experience you are able to without gaining a level.


Gaining a Level

Now that you have the experience to level, you should head back to Central Market by retracing your steps.


Then from Central Market, go to the warrior guild. It is west; north; west; west; west; south; south.


Diagram 3

Once you are in the Warrior Training Ground, type gain to gain your level.


At this time, you will gain access to many of the MUD channels, while previously you were only able to use the newbie channel. Whether you used it or not depends on whether someone asked if you needed help. If you want to talk to people before doing anything else scroll down to the socializing part of this tutorial, and come back to this part of the tutorial when you're finished.


When you gain, you get more powerful by getting more hit points, additional skills and greater strength against other creatures. You can also get more mana when you gain at a magic user guild. You can only gain at guilds for the classes you picked at the start of the game.


While you're at your guild, you can practice skills and spells. Type prac; when you type prac at a guild it displays a list of skills that you can learn at the guild as well as the number of practice sessions you have earned. Type prac kick and then prac bash so that you learn each of those skills once, using one practice session each time. To see what each of the skills do type help kick and help bash. You also have the ability compare which you can read about by typing help compare.


Go north of your guild, and type prac warrior. When you type prac followed by a class name, this shows the full range of skills that a warrior can obtain. Your other class is cleric so if you type prac cleric you can see the abilities that clerics get. You can look up any ability by using help, as explained earlier.


Now it's time to go and visit your other guild, the cleric guild. Hopefully you still have enough experience to level your cleric class (use score to check), if not then visit the zoo again for another experience gaining session. From the warrior guild it's north; north; east; north; north; north; east; north then you'll find yourself at the Inner Sanctum.


Diagram 4

First, type gain at the cleric guild, then type prac to see what skills are available. The two most important ones are cure light and prayer. Practice everything listed once, and use any remaining prac sessions you have to prac cure light, which is a useful healing spell.


Go back on to the Temple Antechamber marked by the big cross, on the map image. It's south; west; south of the Inner Sanctum.


Healing and Regenerating

Now, a little bit about healing hitpoints, and regenerating mana and movement.


The Temple Antechamber where you are standing now is a healing room. Hitpoints, mana and movement all regenerate at 4 times the normal rate, in healing rooms, so after a tough battle, when you're low on hitpoints, mana, and movement, it may be a good idea to come to the Temple Antechamber. To regenerate faster, you should make sure you drank from the fountain recently to be certain you are not hungry or thirsty.


Typing rest will help with regeneration, and typing sleep will help you regenerate even faster, although you lose the ability to see what is happening around you and to talk to people when asleep.


If you go to sleep, you need to type wake to wake up again, and then stand to get on your feet again. If you see the message "Nah...You feel too relaxed to do that." that means you're sitting down and need to type stand. When you're just resting you just need to stand, if you want to do something.


The clerical side that you chose got a special ability called prayer; if you practiced it as was suggested at the guild, you can use it to regenerate mana faster. Since you just learned the skill, it may take a few tries before you get it to work. Type pray repeatedly, until you start praying. If you see the message "You suddenly feel more insightful." it means that a skill that you just used has gotten a little better from practice, in this case, probably your prayer skill.


You probably don't need to regenerate mana just yet, so stand again.


The healing spell cure light can be used by typing cas 'cure li' and will regenerate some of your hit points. Again, you just learned this skill, so it might fail until you get more practice at it. Practicing it will sometimes give you the feeling more insightful message. If you got the message "'cure' is ambiguous, tell me more!" then you didn't put the apostrophes ' in when you typed cast 'cure light'. The apostrophe is needed for spells that have a space in their name, otherwise it isn't needed.


Talking and Socializing

Talking to other people is a big part of the game, and there are several ways to do it. First, type who to see if many people are around. If you see more than 5 people, there's a very good chance that someone isn't busy and will talk with you. When there are few people on, don't be disappointed if nobody replies, as the people around may be on a quest or busy hunting monsters.


Let's start with the gossip channel; you can talk on that channel by typing ooc followed by the message you want to write, for example ooc hello. The ooc channel is used for general purpose off topic talk. Channels like ooc are seen by almost everyone in the game, and two of the other important channels are rumor, which is used for roleplaying, and auction, which is used for buying and selling equipment.


If you're in the same room as another character (type look to see if there is anyone in the room with you), you can type say followed by the message. For example say hello. If the person you're talking to isn't on the who list, it may actually be a non-player, computer-generated person. Also remember that if the person you're speaking to is asleep, they won't see anything you're saying. Also, a person may be (AFK) which means that they are not at their computer.


Finally there is tell, which is a way to talk to just one person. The difficulty, sometimes, is finding out the name of the person you want to talk to. If someone recently spoke to you using tell, then you can reply to them by typing reply followed by message. Again, try not to get frustrated if people don't reply; this is a game, after all, and people don't watch their computers all of the time.


For more info, type help channels, help socials, help tell, or ask a few people about socializing and roleplaying. You can also use the newbie channel to ask questions about the various channels.


Exploring

You have the map of the main city, but the game is very big, with new places to explore being added all the time. In fact, even the best and oldest players haven't been to all the places in the game.


Try to get a "helm of sight" and "boots of levitation" as these will help you with exploring and getting around. Without a helm of sight you will sometimes find that you have entered a dark room in which you cannot see anything. This is most likely to happen at night. You can use a lantern, which will help to light up a room if you hold it (hold lantern) or drop (drop lantern) it on the ground.


If a certain room you're about to enter may be dangerous, type exits and scan, and that will give extra info on the nearby rooms.


Certain places are more dangerous than others, so try to rest in the temple with its bonus to healing. Resting in the temple can also help you get to know the other players, since many players come to the temple to regenerate and you can talk to them about where the best places to hunt are and what equipment to get.


Between the hours of 8pm and 5am corpses of dead monsters will rise as undead. These can be dangerous as they are aggressive towards the living, and several together can do serious damage. Fortunately, the undead will not rise in certain places, so if you find the undead difficult to combat, you can spend the night in civilized places, like town, that are protected.


When you have enough money, you can start buying recall scrolls at the scribe. These allow you to instantly teleport back to the local inn by typing recite and the scroll name, in this case recite recall. This is useful if you get lost or want to escape from danger.


For a general idea of the layout of the world and the territory available for exploration, please visit the Maps page, for some maps of the known continents.


More Help

This walkthrough covers just enough to get you started with the game. For more information, look at the help files in the game, and read the newbie brochure in your inventory by typing read brochure. You can also use the channels ooc or newbie to ask questions. Or look up specific information in the quick start guide.


Tips on the Warrior Cleric Combo

The good things about the warrior cleric combo is that it doesn't require much experience to play successfully, it is strong from level 1 to max levels, and it is somewhat flexible in its abilities.


Getting your weapons enchanted by a high level mage helps increase your damage. Use a shield until you get dual wield and parry when you reach level 10 warrior, then switch to an enchanted dagger for more damage; the shield helps deflect damage. Keep upgrading your armor, especially the body, legs and arms. Having good armor means that blows will get deflected more often.


For the first 10 levels, the most important skills are

on the cleric side:
AbilityLevelDescription
PrayerLevel 1Gives you bonus mana regeneration.
ArmorLevel 1It becomes more and more powerful the higher your level.
Healing SpellsLevel 1-10These are pretty obvious; you generally only use the most recent healing spell you learned.
Holy VeilLevel 7Allows you to hide from the undead, just be careful as it can fail when you fail a skill check or attack an undead.
HasteLevel 10Gives you an extra attack per round, and you only get 1 attack per round until level 11, so it doubles your attacks at level 10.

On the warrior side:
AbilityLevelDescription
DodgeLevel 4Allows you to avoid blows and thus reduces the amount of damage you take in battle.
ParryLevel 10This is a defense skill that deflects damage when you're holding a weapon or a shield offhand.
Dual wield Level 10You can use an offhand weapon to perform extra attacks, though offhand weapons aren't normally used for attacking.


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