You begin your journey in Lands of Myst by creating a character. The choice of character will determine your abilities and skill/spells you will be able to play. For example, a Warrior is obviously good for combat, standing in front of their group and ‘tanking’ the combat, while the Mage in the back casts offensive spells and Cleric casts defensive spells.
Character Creation
It’s always a good idea to plan your character. What is their name? How do you envision them kicking butt? Are they male or female? Are they evil, neutral or good aligned?
After selecting a character name and setting your password, you will be prompted to select your race. Each race is different and have their individual benefits and drawbacks. A troll for example, would make a poor cleric. Lands of Myst presently offers the following races:
- Human
- They are the most common race. Humans level up 5% faster.
- Drow
- The drow are dark elves. They have infravision, which allows them to see in dark. The drow are intelligent and wise like their elvish cousins.
- Elf
- Intelligent, wise and agile, Elves make great archers and spell casters. Like the drow, elves also have infravision.
- Goblin
- These are small, quick and tough little squirts. As such, they automatically avoid 3% of all hits.
- Dwarf
- Short, stout and wise creatures, Dwarves are an excellent option to almost any class. Dwarves absorb 5% of all incoming damage.
- Gnome
- Gnomes are known to be small, agile and very intelligent. They have infravision and make excellent thieves and casters.
- Ogre
- Large, strong and not too smart. Ogres deal 5% more damage. As such, they make excellent warriors. Clerics? Not so much…
- Halfling
- Being very quick, charming and smart beings, halflings are a great option for nearly any class. They are able to sneak around foes, and as such, do not trigger aggressive mobs.
- Troll
- Trolls are big and strong but like the Ogre, not very smart. Trolls have a 20% hitpoint regeneration bonus.
- Orc
- Large and ugly killing machines. No hunger, thirst or poison effect, ever.
- Pixie
- Tiny, agile and intelligent. Absorb 25% of all spell damage.
- Norseman
- Courageous and defiant. 2% chance to one-hit slay any stronger opponent.
After selecting your race, you will need to choose a class. This defines how you will play your character. Will you be on the front lines, leading your allies into battle? Will you be hanging back, destroying your foes from a distance? Or perhaps you will be off to the side of the battle, providing buffs and heals for your allies. At present, LoM offers the following classes. More information can be found by typing ? [class] (e.g., “? Warrior” without quotes).
- Warrior – A fighter, trusting nothing but their weapon.
- Mage – The ruler of mystical energies, offensive spell-caster.
- Cleric – Powerful priests serving their deity, defensive spell-caster.
- Druid – The protector of Nature elements, balanced spell-caster.
- Thief – Relies on surprise, trickery, and stealth.
- Monk – Master of the unarmed combat.
- Ranger – Elite forest trooper with some spell-casting abilities.
- Dual class – Play any two classes combined. Takes 1.75x more exp to level.
The last thing you need to do for your character is to distribute your “stat points.” If you’re a fan of table-top games, this is a common “point buy” system where increasing a stat costs a certain number of “points.” A word of caution: these are your base stats and they do not change in the game. Once set, you can only increase a stat by wearing gear.
You will start off with about 223 points to buy stats with. If you have a caster, you will want higher intelligence and wisdom. If you are a warrior, strength and constitution are your most important stats.
- To find more information about a stat, type ? and the letter for the stat (e.g. “? S” without quotes).
- To increase a stat, type the letter for the stat and hit enter. Then type how much you want to increase that stat and hit enter.
Getting started
We recommend that you read and try all of the information herein to get yourself acquainted with the basic mechanics of the game.
When you are ready, check the donation room which is east of your starting location (Temple of Midgaard) and GET and WEAR any items you find interesting. By typing IDENTIFY after you pick themup, you will be able to see the attributes of the item.
Then proceed to the MUD school which is down from Temple of Midgaard. Walk through the school and read room descriptions, they will give you useful hints about what to do next.
Your first goal will be the finish the school and slay the diploma beast at the end. It will give you your first useful item – mud school diploma. When you hold it, it will increase your wisdom by one. Increased wisdom will give you more practice points when you level up. You want to find other items that will max out your stats (max is +5 compared to your natural stat) when you level up.
You level up when you accumulate enough experience. Typically you gain experience by slaying monsters, doing quests etc. SCORE command will tell you how much experience you need to reach your next level.
You can also lose experience for example when you die or flee from combat. Until you are level 7, you will not lose experience when dying.
When you die your corpse will remain on the ground and you will have to go back to retrieve your equipment or gather it again.
Basic commands
Once you enter the game, you should get familiar with some basic commands:
- score – see information about your character
- who – see who is online right now
- inv – inventory carried
- wear [item] – wears an item or “wear all”
- eq – show equipment worn
- l – short for ‘look’ prints current room information
- n, e, s, w, u, d – type the first letter of direction to move that way
- gossip – send a message that everyone can see
- prac – show skills/spells available for practice at your current level
- help [command] – gives information on any command, or by itself gives a list.
- commands – for a list of all available commands except so called socials.
- socials – for an overview of them. Socials are commands to help you express emotions towards other player. For example ‘smile’ will tell other players in the same room as you that you are smiling.
- toggle – this will give you a list of automatic commands that you can turn off and on, such as “autogold” which will loot gold from your defeated enemies.
- recall – a command that will immediately move your character to the Temple of Midgaard from nearly anywhere in the realm.
Myst School and Adventuring
You will need to begin your adventure at the entrance to the Myst school, one DOWN from the staring location (the recall location). This mini-area is designed to teach you the basics of LoM, including commands and how to begin adventuring.
Once you reach the end of Myst School, you will “recall” to the Temple of Midgaard. This room is one “down” from the NPC Yoda, a questgiver.
It is highly recommended that after completing Myst school that you visit Yoda to begin a quest. Quests help you become familiar with areas, familiar with the layout of the realm and offers you rewards for completing quests. In addition to quest points, which can be used to buy powerful items, you will earn a bit of experience and gold with every completed quest.
Groups and Guilds
It is not unusual that people belonging to different classes, by joining their efforts and combining their skills, find their chances of survival and progress greatly improved. Indeed, a team consisting of members from a combo of classes can be an extremely powerful unit; capable of opening doors without keys, creating food supplies out of nothing, and destroying an enemy in several different ways. It is not advisable for a new player to offend the members of such a group!
Groups are a great way to level up faster. To initiate a group another character needs to FOLLOW you, and then you can ‘group all’. Typing GROUP will show your existing group. Experience is split among members of the group proportional to their level.
In order to learn the tricks of your specific trade, you need to find your GUILD, which may take a little exploring. However, you can usually find a guild in any reasonably populated city – for the map of your starting city Midgaard type ‘help midgaard’. Once you’ve found it, you need to look up your guildmaster and PRACTICE.
Equipment
It is never wise to travel without the proper equipment. You may purchase this in the SHOPS found in any larger city, or you may be lucky and find some left around, dropped by someone who doesn’t need it anymore, for one reason or another. Always check the donation room, which is found east of your starting location.
Combat
Before combat, it is generally a good idea to “consider” the monster by typing “consider [mob name].” This will give you an estimate of your odds of defeating the monster. “Bring some friends” or “Need a lot of luck” generally means you probably should not attack it. However, once you have the consider skill practiced, this information becomes more detailed as shown below.
Eventually you will enter combat by typing ‘k [monster name]’. If their hitpoints reach zero they will be slain and you will gain experience points. If the combat is not going your way, you can always FLEE. As a word of caution, if you FLEE, there is a chance to panic and drop the weapon you are using. If you need to FLEE, it would be a good idea to remove your weapon beforehand. To set the number of hitpoint to flee automatically use the WIMP command. If you die you can go back to your corpse and get everything (‘get all corpse’).
Death
There are two things that are certain in life: death and taxes. LoM does not have taxes so you can be certain that at some point your character will die. Luckily, Midgaard has a morgue where you can pick up your corpse and equipment for a small fee. Otherwise, or if you cannot afford the fee, you will have to re-gear yourself by visiting Myst School, donation or the several vendors in Midgaard.
About Staying Fit – Eating and Drinking
At one time or another, you’ll see the message “You are hungry”. This means that it’s time to find something edible before too long. People don’t starve to death in this world, so have no fear. However, when you are hungry, you do not build up lost energy, so eventually you’ll be unable to do anything but sit around and feel sorry for yourself, until someone comes by. Then, you can only hope that it’s a benevolent person, rather than a greedy thief or a warrior lusting for blood.
Communications
You already learned about GOSSIP command which sends your message to everyone. In addition you can use:
- SAY which is seen by everyone in the same room as you
- TELL [name] to send a direct message to someone, and REPLY to reply to same
- GTELL to speak to your group
General hints
- See help on the GROUP command.
- See help on the CONSIDER command.
- See help on SLEEPING.
- See help on your class (mage, cleric, warrior, thief, druid, monk, ranger)
Move on to advanced help now.