Helpful tips, commands, etc. that aren't always easy to find

[Lemuel]

Section 1: Read all signs and plaques

Fortunately, extremely few of the signs in CLOK are there for nothing; therefore, what's written on them is to be taken seriously by the game community. (Note that the town post boards have numerous and varied player character's opinions and thus don't fall into this category.)
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Section 2: Commands not necessarily familiar to players of other MUDs

Here are a number of Commands and terms you may not have encountered in other games:

In this game, the staff are referred to as GameMasters, which are the coders, referees, developers, NPC controllers, etc. Type in Guru to see the current list of GameMasters (abbreviated as GMs)

To ask about the workings of a game, such as "What do I do to locate herbs in the wilderness?", use the Question command. If you want to review the ten most recent items that went on this Question channel, type in Qlog 10 or qhistory 10

The channel for OOC discussion such as the latest film out there is the Chat channel. If you want to review the seven most recent items that went on the Chat channel, type in Clog 7 or chistory 7

The global in-Character communications channel is the ESP channel. You start off in CLOK with 'a tiny gray crystal pendant' with a limited lifespan (turning into a colorless transparent crystal pendant when it is spent), an early goal for your character is to obtain a permanent small clear crystal pendant from your local post office. This permanent crystal will also enable you to select a unique color for your ESP messages instead of plain gray

The Who command tells you the number of players connected to the MUD at the present time, and the Users command lists for you the names of players who chose to remain connected to the chat channel (Option 5). Those players who chose not to be on the chat channel will not have their name displayed anywhere, but will be counted among the number of the "Logged-in:" persons when you type in Who . To see the list of users who are connected to the question channel, type in Users Question

For in-game helpfiles, sometimes you type help <command> to view it, sometimes it's <command> help; but more often, you type just the <command> word alone with nothing after to invoke help on the subject. For example, type Teach. To get a list of commands, type help commands. To get a list of 'Socials' (roleplaying verbs), type Help RP.

Type Policy to learn how to keep yourself out of trouble with the admins and other players by following the game rules. Use Policy 1, Policy 2, etc.
Also Read all in-game signs to keep yourself out of in-game trouble

To perform many tasks, you will need to first select an appropriate ability using the ABILity command. For example, if you want to do mining, fishing, logging, and/or farming, you will have to first select and learn Apprentice of the Land using the Ability command. You type in ability show to get a list of available abilitires to you. Amongst your list, you might see 26: Apprentice of the Land* , and you would respond with ability learn 26. If this is indeed the ability you want, then you would conclude with ability learn 26 confirm . After learning an ability, the list of remaining abilities will be renumbered on your next ability show. A few tasks, such as foraging, or taking a branch and whittling something with it, requires no ability, you can just go ahead and do them

Note that in learning an ability, the process is unfortunately very OOC for the most part and can be learned anywhere on the fly. The only time it is done in a role-playing consistant way is for guild-only abilities, where you have to go into a guildmaster's room and ask guildmaster name for Abil

color=blue]eat fooditem all[/color] to eat the entire food item in one go. You boost your character's morale if you eat sit-down food (sold in restaurants) bite by bite, 1% per bite to a maximum of 5% for 5 bites, so that would be a better option for sit-down food than eating it all in one bite. If you do not eat, your character will eventually perish from hunger. (Note: in this MUD, you do not need to drink any water to survive, but if take one drink of water from a drinkholder you receive a skillgain bonus of 5% due to morale, so carry a canteen, waterskin, or flask). If you remain in a room indicated as (gathering spot) long enough, you get a morale bonus of up to +25%. The morale command is useful here

Injured? Those wounds won't mend themselves. If you have scrapes or light wounds, bandage them and they will heal. If bleeding, bandage the bleeding body part to temporarily preserve you until you make into an infirmary, which can be found in your town and in most hamlets. Infirmaries also sell the bandages, and you should memorize where the nearest infirmary is. Lemuel always keeps more than 20 bandages on hand at all times, in case of emergencies. If you keep a spare 8 bandages (preferably in a different colour) in a closed container separate from the stock of regular bandages you carry, it will become glaringly apparent when you have only 8 remaining to get you back to town.

Take First Aid lessons from other players or NPC healers at least to get your bandaging skills past 200...bandaging is very inaccurate and inefficient when you start out with 0 skill in first aid. Note that you can practice this skill on NPC patients at any infirmary

Hands - shows the contents of right and left hands, and you can also Swap the items in your hands

If you hold an item, you can type in Weigh item to get an approximate weight of that item. For more accuracy, find something of similar weight in a shop that you can see the exact weight of with the List item_number command, hold that in one hand with the item you're unsure of in the other hand, and type in Compare

Commands giving you ready info on your character include Score, Health, Status, ENCumbrance, Effects, Morale, Hunger, Task, Guild, Position, Aim, and Tactics.

inventory slots, warmth clothing, and armor gives you info as to what your character has on, and where.
INVentory versus Look me - the former shows everything you're carrying/wearing, the latter is as others see you, without showing items hidden under layers of other items
Type Food to display all items of food you have on you. In the same manner, you can type Weapons, Ammo, Herbs, and Bandage to see the quantities and location of these respective items in your inventory. As an alternative to the latter, you can type Count followed by an item type, such as Count Bandage. Note: the game currently does not with these commands reveal the presence of items placed in a container that is then inside another container.

[Stow item is a shorthand way of putting the item into a preset container. You can also Stash . Use Stow set and Stash set to define these target containers

The Sheath command works similarly, but is for weapons into a set sheath, scabbard, haft-frog, etc.
To unsheath a weapon, don't use draw (draw is all about drawing a picture in CLOK) but rather Get My shortsword, Get My bronze dagger, etc.
To pick up an item that is specifically not on your character's person, Get Notmy item

If you Pick <container>, your character will reach in and pull out the first item in that container. Shuffle <container> randomizes the order of the items in said container.

If you go foraging commodities like herbs, you have the option of keeping one hand free and holding a container in the other,
or you can wear the container and type in forage autostash container_name
If you want to forage a number of items and have them go directly to the ground, use the syntax with 'ground' such as forage branch ground or forage stone ground
Likewise, if you go mining, you can begin by typing in something like mine autostash handcart
Then if you go hunting game and want to skin pelts, you can begin by typing in skin autostash container_name
So far, there are no other activities than these three that the autostash command works on, so you will have to use transfer after fishing, butchering, and other similar collection activities

If you are mining or underground with a wagon, you can Hang Lantern to have a convenient light source that frees up a hand. To take it off, type in Remove Lantern from Wagon. Hang currently doesn't work on handcarts or workcarts, unfortunately

Transfer is a convenient way to move a lot of items from one container to another
for example, you can transfer 5 meat from ground to my satchel
or Empty backpack in wagon will empty your held backpack into another open container, in this case, a wagon
An alternate syntax to the above line is transfer all from my backpack to wagon

Tell playername messagetext is the command to communicate directly (OOC only) with another player

When in the same room as another player, if you sayto playername messagetext or '::playername messagetext, it uses a social command to indicate which person in your room you are speaking to. This is IC

type Tone to get a list of spoken tones for IC talking, such as cheerful, angry, soft, etc. Also, Speech is a similar command. To get a list of 'Socials' (roleplaying verbs), type help rp.

There is a Friends list and an Enemies list that you might find helpful. Note: Do not add anyone to your Enemies List unless you are willing to attack them on sight (intentionally or accidentally) wherever you may meet them - if it's in a town or settled area, you get in trouble with the locals and you won't like it

When you meet someone, type friend add their_name to add them to your list (a reminder to yourself) and also use the command friend promote their_name up to four times to adjust the degree of friendship you have with them. This is recommended because the output of the above-mentioned social commands are adjusted to reflect the degree of friendship your character has with theirs. Also available: friend demote their_name. Remember, when you walk into a room and it shows another character's name, your character doesn't know that name until they have have that name introduced to them in-game by someone, such as, "Hello, my name is Lemuel." or "That gentleman sitting over there is Alph."

The syntaxes for group with others in this game are: Recruit character_name, a social that asks that character to join you, Join character_name; the command to join a character's group and begin following them; Group is the command that shows all the individuals in the same group as you; Disband will dissolve the group; if are the group leader and you want to remove only one individual from your group, use Group Remove character_name; and if you are in someone else's group and want to leave it, you can either type in Leave or move in any direction away from that group. When you buy a horse (and you'll need at least 1 riding lesson in order to mount) and want the horse to follow you as you walk, use the command Lead horse_name to add it to your group and thus follow you around.

The Profile command enables you to see some of the other characters' information, if they have chosen to reveal those items. The Achievements command is strictly used for OOC amusement, as is the Title command. Some players chose to make up a paragraph of biographical info about their character, use the Bio command to access this or create a biography for your character

There is a helpful note command. Try it out by typing in note add The more effective swords for beginners are cutlass, rapier, shortsword, sabre, longsword, falchion . Then, type in note view . You can also type note by itself

Also helpful:

note add S H A D G A R D // H A I B A N // V A T N F J A L L // V A E L G R A T E N // W Y R V A R D N // D W A E D N. W Y R // T S E. G A I Y A N

note add Smelting: 3 copper + 1 tin makes Bronze / 3 copper + 1 zinc makes Brass / 3 iron + 1 coal makes Steel / 3 tin + 1 copper makes Pewter

note add Gem Cut options: baguette, brilliant, cushion, emerald, marquise, mazarin, mogul, octagon, oval, pear, princess, radiant, rectangular, regent, rosette, round, single, square, star, step, table, tapered, teardrop, thin, trilliant

Use the Request command to request help with a technical problem in the game, and for more urgent problems, use the Report command eg, my character is frozen in one room and cannot move
If there is no response, it means no GM is available so you would have to send an e-mail to support@clokmud.com
See also the GURU command, and the Commands command, ie, command ritual

WANDer - another way to GO WILDerness

use Survey in the wilderness or mine to scan for resources that might be available in that room, such as herbs, trees, fish, ore types, sticks for firewood, and so on. Using Survey more than once might reveal other resources you didn't notice the first time. You can be specific and survey plants, survey minerals, or survey fish...it is a faster way to look for only the specified resource

Other commands besides Survey giving you information about the particular room your character is occupying are: Area, Weather, Look Sky, Environment, Occupants, Exits, and Peer <direction>.

PEER: To see into the next room, type Peer <direction> to see the unhidden contents of that next room before entering it. Peer also works nicely for most exits that are some noun other than a direction, eg.
- use Peer door to see what's through that door
- use Peer out to see through an 'out' exit, if there is one
- use Peer stairs or Peer ladder to see what's up or down the stairs or ladder, etc
- use Peer wilderness (you must type out 'wilderness' fully) to peer what's out in the wilderness when you are in a town, etc.

When in a forest or other applicable wilderness area, first hide, then hunt to seek game animals or birds you can try to kill for meat, pelts, etc.

type Camp get directions on how to build and light a campfire, including the use of tinder. If you have a frying pan, you can then Cook meat, fish, and other food over a campfire or an existing in-town fire source, eg. a brazier

Bundle and Gather help you to manage quantities of certain items all at once, such as sticks, sinews, etc. Note: to remove one unit from a bundle of sticks, type Get 1 stick.

Two items in a room are the same? To access the second one, try GET 2 <item> or GET OTHER <item>

Use attack or kill to melee fight for one combat round.
Use Battle to keep on fighting each round until you enter another command

Press - a mode of melee attack where you hopefully prevent the opponent from fleeing for about 5 seconds - use on mobs that are more likely to flee than stay and fight

Other combat commands usable by anyone are: Punch, Kick, Jab, Shove. See http://clok.contrarium.net/index.php?title=Combat for more details

Target - to single out which opponent your combat will be against

Ready to try bow-and-arrow? You hold the bow in one hand, with the other hand empty. Keep your arrows in an open container on you. The same concept works with sling and stones
Use fire to shoot only once target.
Use Barrage to keep on reloading & firing each round until you enter another command
When done your combat, use Gather Arrow to quickly restock your missiles.
Either way, the game code will automatically take an arrow from your open container and nock it for the shot
The same general pattern works for firearms...you hold your flintlock in one hand, shots in an open container...except you have the extra pre-step of loading powder into your flintlock pistol before each shot

Type gather shot to collect your firearms munitions, gather stones for sling munitions, and
gather hurled to quickly collect any hurled weapons such as daggers, javelins, etc

To use barrage on hurled weapons, first, hold the weapon in the right hand and type hurl set. You can then put that weapon in an open container and the barrage command will each round grab one such hurl set weapon and throw it at your opponent

Return - When you've come to the end of your playing session and need to logout, if you have a handcart or wagon, take it back where you bought it and Return it for most of your money back. If you don't, someone else will likely return it and get the money

In CLOK, unlike in some MUDs, its not mandatory to find an inn to RENT or otherwise logout at. You can just type in Quit. If you have a handcart you should Return it first, as above, and if you have a horse, you should either mount it or stable it prior to Quit. Beyond that, you don't need to be in any special place to end your play session, other than, you cannot Quit in combat...either flee from combat or slay your foes in that room then Quit


Note that in most cases, the first few letters of each word is sufficient to execute the command; sometimes as few as one letter for each word is sufficient. Example, instead of GO GATE, type G G. For BANDAGE MY LEFT HAND, type BAND MY L HAND
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Section 3: Before leaving town: Items you'll want to have, things you'll want to do

Bare minimum items you'll want to acquire before leaving town: map, at least 30 bandages (can be bought from the infirmary), sufficient extra food

A Lost Lands map is only 20 riln - buy one usually at a general store, who also sells travel rations. Holding a map and typing in Map can be helpful

But before buying, check the Community Crate to see if other adventurers have donated any of these for newcomers. If you are fortunate enough to see a clear crystal pendant in there, take it and wear it; it will connect you to the telepathic network (an IC channel)

In my own experience, the injuries seem to most frequently hit the legs, arms, and chest, so if I could only afford a few armor items, I would go for some greaves, vambraces, and a cuirass or breastplate of some sort

Select the right container for your weapon: in CLOK, certain items for sale at the Tanner's hold specific weapons. If you have a sword, buy a scabbard (beltworn) or baldric (shoulderworn) to put it in. If you have a dagger, buy a sheath. For a quarterstaff, a polearm, or a flail, buy a pole harness; and for a smaller chained weapon, or a hafted weapon, buy a haft-frog. A flintlock goes in a holster. If you have a bow, just wear it when not in use, as it slings nicely over your shoulder without a case. Put arrows in a quiver or other open container, and when you fire, the game automatically takes an arrow from your container and fires it. Check out the Sheath command mentioned above

When you acquire some more cash, you can shop for better weapons/armor

Weapons choices: If you decide to role-play a combatant-style character, and are selecting a weapon, keep in mind that a number of weapons are not suited to the novice warrior. Many if not most new recruits to CLOK are lured in to buy a Greatsword or similar heavy sword requiring two hands. They are soon disappointed by two characteristics of this choice of weapon: It usually misses, leading to unsuccessful melees and additionally, unsuccessful skill gains in swords and melee, as these skills only improve on a successful hit; plus, their character is quickly exhausted using this clumsy, heavy weapon and is forced to flee. In general, you should not begin your combat career using any weapon that strikes at most once per melee round...this includes swords requiring two hands, the sledgehammer, the greataxe, and all chained weapons...all this will mostly miss, won't lead to the skill improvements you want, and will quickly exhaust you.

As of the latest update to this file, your most successful starter swords are the six on this following list: cutlass, rapier, shortsword, sabre, longsword, falchion. All other swords in the game will give you less successful results...why not get rid of the others and buy one of the listed six. (I'm speaking as a player of 7 years who has tried out every sword possible.)

For hafted weapons, avoid the greataxe and sledgehammer, and instead get one that strikes twice per round such as handaxe, hatchet, or mace.

Likewise, with polearms, start out with something that strikes up to twice per round: tridents, spears, or glaives can hit twice

Things you'll want to do before leaving town:

Lessons: if you intend to do some combat, you'll want a melee lesson and/or one in your weapon (eg dagger, archery, polearm, etc). You also want one or several First Aid lessons off the bat, and Dodge. Note: if you intend to do some logging or mining, you may indeed find yourself in some surprise combat, so take these lessons for those trades, too

Ask other player characters if they will give you lessons for free - many will so do for newcomers. You will have to ask for lessons and other character-to-character assistance IC (In-Character), not with OOC

One skill that is definitely under-valued by many newcomers is the First Aid skill. If you play a character that is in any sort of a combat role, you need to be taking First Aid lessons at least until your skill is over 300-400 or so. When you finish a battle, as well as looting and burying the foe, you'll need to type in bandage me several times to work through your lesson and prevent lesser wounds from becoming bad wounds. If you chose not to take this advice, your character will end up wasting a large chunk of his time fleeing to infirmaries, and/or dead.

Note that the patients in an infirmary can be bandaged and you gain first aid gains by doing so.

Then, after you've purchased some items and had some lessons as mentioned above, you'll most certainly want to go the town's BANK and deposit most of your money, or keep it inside a container like a backpack or pouch. Should you meet with death, all your riln in hand (not in a container) will be dropped on the ground and possibly unrecoverable, but all riln deposited in a bank or put in a container will be safe

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Section 4: I got killed! Dealing with Death, and some Preventions:

Sooner or later in CLOK, a character gets killed. When this happens to you, it doesn't end your character's career or your fun.

We can keep the death experience from being dark and frustrating by bringing you to right to the primary two back-to-life options you have, which are as follows:

Death Option 1: You can look around in the land of the dead to locate the bell, then type in look bell to cause the death-knell bell to toll throughout the lands, providing a mental image of the location you died to other player characters. (The other characters had to have attached a murky blue-black crystal to their pendants to receive this death-knell image - most senior players have this.) Should another player character wish to signal to you that he intends to retrieve your fallen remains and bring it to a church where a monk can bring you back to life, you will receive a message that your sense of awareness is being tinged by the rescuing player's ESP color. The following four protocols are understood throughout the Lost Lands:

* Your sense of awareness is briefly tinged with the color Lemon-Yellow. The sense of awareness pulses with the feeling of searching for something lost. *

This tinge means, I am heading out to locate your corpse

* Your sense of awareness is briefly tinged with the color Lemon-Yellow. The sense of awareness pulses with the feeling of having found something. *

This tinge means, I have located your corpse and have begun to drag it back to a town where I'll bring it to a church or a monk PC

* Your sense of awareness is briefly tinged with the color Lemon-Yellow. The sense of awareness pulses with the feeling of bringing new life to something that has lost it. *

This message means, You have been brought to the church (or to a PC monk) and are on the verge of being raised

* Your sense of awareness is briefly tinged with the color Lemon-Yellow. The sense of awareness pulses with the feeling of failing to find what you were searching for. *

Least common is this last tinge, this is used in the case where the recovering party has to signal his need to abort recovery. If a different color is making this failing tinge than the character who tinged originally, it likely means the original would-be rescuer was killed in the attempt. Usually if it comes to this failing tinge, the living are telling you recovery is not possible and your only remaining avenue is to look for help from the NPC in the Land of the Dead.


In my experience, it takes about 4 more minutes to come back to life after you receive the above-mentioned 'bringing new life' tinge.

If you obtain a murky blue-black crystal, attach it to your small clear crystal pendant and type esp rescue to get a condensed form of the above

Death Option 2: You can type be sent back by a certain NPC in the death zone. Depending on where you "fell" (died) and who else is logged in, this NPC may be your quickest option to get back in the game and back to normal. If you have tolled the bell twice by looking at it, and no one has indicated and rescue intent by tinging over the first 4 minutes or so, this is likely your best bet. You can't ask others how to do this, you have to figure it out.

If you go with this second option (sometimes called an NPC Return) then players in the land of the living with pendants will receive this message:

* Your sense of awareness is briefly tinged with the color gray. The sense of awareness pulses with the feeling of something being found which has just now been returned to a place of safety.*


Regardless if you chose Option 1 or 2, when you come back, you will be starving and will need to eat a couple of meals or about 4 travel rations before going about your business. If you have none and are in the wilderness, much of what you forage is edible. All riln you carried that you did not put in a container gets dropped where you fell, but it will remain in a pile on the ground where you fell until you or someone else picks it up


Now some ways to avoid the most preventable deaths new players seem to fall prey to:

Starving - Carry food in the wilderness, or if desperate, forage...because you can eat the berries and most herbs you forage.

Bleeding to death: Don't forget to buy bandages before you travel.

Freezing: If you are freezing to death, Go in any building, structure, cave, mineshaft, or what have you that's not outdoors, because most of these provide relief from freezing. Buildings with a lit fireplace, brazier, or stove will thaw you out even quicker (for example, in the gatehouse at the north of Shadgard). You can build a campfire in the wilderness to prevent a freezing death there, but in my experience, if the freezing has already begun, you likely won't be able to complete the campfire in time.
Type warmth clothing to get info about your current clothing levels and needs. Check a donation crate for warmer articles of clothing.

Being attacked in the wilderness: The majority of foes in the wilderness that attack you on sight can be walked away from before they do too much damage to you. Just type a direction, or type flee. When going through the Ebonwood Pass, join patrolman for the protection against lethal assailants.

Should you find yourself dying and think there is no way in your situation to prevent it, it is recommended that you try to walk to the nearest road or landmark before expiring. Your remains will be easier to locate and retrieve than if randomly "out in the woods".


Horse Death: When you leave a horse alive somewhere and logout, before long the nearest stable located roughly to your horse will retrieve it and put it in their stables, sending you a letter as to where it is. However, if your horse is slain in battle, it will reappear in a wounded state in the last stable that you actively stabled it in; in other words, the last stable you took it into and actually typed in stable horse. You will not get a letter from the stables in the case of horse death. You will have to remember which of the stables it is, go there and retrieve it, then immediately stable it for a higher fee (to cover the vet bills), then you will have to wait a bit for the horse to heal up inside the stables before retrieving it again. I suppose if you can find a monk to go into that stables with you, then he or she can heal it up right away.

When you buy a new equine, take right away it to a stables and actively stable it with stable horse. If you do not, when it gets killed, it will be stuck in cyber limbo and will not appear in any stable anywhere currently due to a bug. You will have to contact the GMs to get your equine to reappear - contact the GMs either by using the Request command or by emailing support@clokmud.com

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Section 5: Choosing your 'class' (called a guild) and race

Choosing a guild: Unlike many other MUDs, instead of a 'class', your character will have the option of choosing to join one of a number of available Guilds, or none at all. The beauty of CLOK is you don't have to choose right away. In fact, I recommend that you play for several weeks (at least) without choosing any, and in the meantime, you can ask different players for their opinions. There are lots of things you can do in CLOK without joining a guild - you can earn money (called 'riln') by engaging in any of a number of professions such as foraging herbs, fishing, farming, logging, mining, etc. Note that a few guilds are hard to join and need an extended period of role play to enter.

Choosing a race: Naturally, you do have to choose a race at character creation. Restudy the list of races and be sure you are in the race that's 'you' for this mud. A couple of weeks is not a big investment in time to scrap your existing and re-start a new character if you think you've initially chosen one with a race that you can't wholeheartedly role-play. The list of races and their traits are available here:

http://clok.contrarium.net/index.php?title=Races

A frequently asked question is, How can I delete this character and restart him? While you can always create any new character, the character you have already created is not deleteable by any means. In other words, once a character name is taken, it's taken forever, and you have to select a new name for a new character.
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Section 6: Overall career tips:

Note that certain professions make decent money, but only if you have the benefit of a riding horse and wagon to employ in the work. Without the horse and wagon, these activities yield meager gains per hour. To avoid discouragement, it would be better to engage in the profession that is lucrative without horse and wagon, which is, foraging herbs. Then when the needed 7000 riln is raised to buy a horse and rent a wagon, professions like mining or logging become a much more feasible way to make cash. 7000 riln can be raised in under ten hours of steady herb foraging. Don't forget to Return the wagon or cart where you bought it at your session end. I understand that there are some players that just don't want to do that and they jump right into the logging or mining, and that is your choice to do so; but if you do, just be aware that it's you who have chosen to do things the hard, slow way and that's not the game's fault

The premise of trades and professions is that you start off incompetent in all fields of endeavour. Too many newcomers come in and think that in a day or two, they will be able to craft decent items. You have to remember that skilling up is a long-term thing. To put it quite conscisely, you will need to work on a craft for several weeks (with lessons) to begin to see the decent results you want. For a few select skills like skinning, it takes double or more that amount of time. There's no point asking others, "What skill level do I need to reach to not produce junk when I craft?" There is no definitive answer than what was just mentioned, you need to be patient and work at it for several weeks with lessons. If that is too long for you, you're not going to get anywhere in this (or likely any other) MUD. Fortunately, most of the time some other player character will give you a free lesson or two if you ask.

A number of weapons in combat, like the sling, the whip, and others, are similar in that the results in battle are no good to start with, and after several weeks of practice with lessons, really start to take off. Same with the First Aid skill.

Some trades can have two components that enable you to work off two lessons at once. For example, you could get a stack of small branches, and take lessons in woodworking and fletching, then as you carve arrows, you will work through both lessons at the same time. You can also do the same with Forging: General and a forging subspecialty, eg. Forging: Armor and work though both to improve both at the same time.


CLOK is set up as a "Crime-does-not-pay" world. It is best to not attack or steal from players or NPC mobs or their pets in town - if you so do, your reputation in that town will be diminished, leading to huge fines and possible banishment...the locals may thereafter be hostile to you on sight. The punishments included with banishment are surprisingly severe, including seizure of all items in your bank vault and/or on your person! You won't like this. Do your killing and stealing outside of civilized towns and settlements. Note that some actions a fellow PC wouldn't mind are considered hostile by NPC's, like using magic to wash off an NPC. Note that aggravating a guild comes with IC punishments too.

Should you find yourself on land occupied by scarecrows, flee out of there as quickly as you can. There are harsh RP repercussions for annoying scarecrows. Same for trespassing in the Stone Canyon, an area clearly marked with a sign. Leave the Bowtruckles alone, too. In fact, make it a point to read all the signs, notices, posters, and plaques in this game, because few or no signs are useless ones - they contain information that your character needs to Read

Thinking of petting a bison? Socializing with bison might not be such a good idea.

Keep a list somewhere of all the characters your own character has personally met and been introduced by name to. In game, you can use the Note command or friend add to accomplish this. Treat all other characters as total strangers, eg. your character doesn't know even their name, even though you can see the name on screen. This includes on the ESP channels. You might use an electronic list in your MUD client, a notepad, or you might find the Friends list to be a helpful vehicle to assist you in recalling exactly which other characters your character actually knows IC

CLOK really isn't much of a swimming game. If you are walking around the great outdoors and try to walk into a river, the code base will give you the misleading message, "You'll have to swim to go there." Rivers cannot be traversed, really, by swimming. Look around for the bridge instead. You can swim in lakes and bath houses and the like. Swimming has a peculiar skill level "soft cap" of about 10.12 and you cannot progress it beyond that.


Share the link to this helpfile with other new players

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Section 7: Rule-of-Thumb for In Character (IC) speaking.

The three usual modes of IC communications with other players is speaking to them while standing in the same room, using telepathy via an ESP pendant, and writing & sending them a letter at a Post Office

When communicating to another player any of these three modes, a good rule is to use no words that do not appear in literature written before 1900; for example, do not use the terms newbie, space shuttle, internet, television, and so forth when IC. Do not use smilies, or acronyms such as TTYL, U instead of 'you', LOL, etc. as these do not appear in older literature either. Also avoid earth-bound proper names like Confucius, Europe, Australian, Bowie Knife, Saturday, January, St Patrick's Day, dollar, etc. Type Policy 1 for a bit more on all this

Be careful when encountering another player, to check your list to see if you've ever met them IC before. This includes the ESP channels

As mentioned above, you will have to ask for character-to-character assistance ICly, not with Chat or Tells

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Section 8: Protecting Yourself from Loss to Other Player Characters.

Generally speaking, other player characters don't (or can not) take your property in this game. Here is a list of the preventions to the three most common (by far) ways other PC's have been known to make off with your money and valuables. Take responsibility to practice these preventions and you'll spare yourself loss grief.

(1) Put most of your riln in the bank or in a container. Note that if your character dies, any "loose riln" (riln you haven't put into a pouch or other container) drops in a pile to the ground for any schmuck to come along and help himself to. By making bank deposits and putting excess riln into a container, the riln stays in there. For example, to stow away 160 riln, type put 160 riln in my pouch, and then, as suggested next, close my pouch.

(2) Prevent Picked "Pockets" by closing your containers. Note that riln and any item of a tiny or small size in an open container may be pilfered by a pickpocket character. Develop a routine where you close backpacks, pouches, sheaths, and any containers containing your riln and valuable tiny and small items, especially when entering a town /urban area - the preferred venue of the pickpocket. Lots of rare and expensive daggers and knives are stolen right out of uncloseable sheaths...find a leatherworker to craft you a sheath you can close. Buy a closeable holster for your flintlock. Note that medium and larger items are not pilferable by pickpockets, so don't worry about looking for a closeable pole harness to protect your flail.

(3) Don't leave your Handcart or Wagon standing around...empty it and Return it when you are done playing and logging out. If you take your cart or wagon back to the place that sells them, use the Return command to get a refund back of about 90% of its purchase price, making it in effect a rental. If you don't, another PC is liable to Return it and keep the refund for himself, along with helping himself to its contents. Yes, this does indeed happen in CLOK, and it stings if you let it happen to you. Also, if you mount your horse just before you Quit, you avoid a 100 riln auto-stabling service fee.


One loss not caused by other player characters occurs when items are left on the ground while all players have walked away. Items left on the ground in CLOK are subject to what is called OOCly the "Janitor" system. If you leave an item on the ground for a while, when you come back, it will be gone. There are only a few exceptions to this.

In player houses, and very few other rooms in the MUD, items on the floor are never janitored.

When you hide and drop an item, that item is also now hidden and not subject to janitoring.

A certain few items are never janitored anywhere, whether they are hidden or not. These items include barrels with water in them, light and heat sources on the ground such as lanterns and candles (as long as they remain lit), lockblade traps; handcarts, workcarts, and wagons; logs, wood blocks, player character's corpses, and piles of riln.

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Section 9: In-Character Etiquette.

There are a number of discourteous actions your character can engage in that will inconvenience others. Here are some examples:

Don't use the forage command to collect only some of the herbs in a room. If, for example, you collect all the comfrey in that one room, and leave the bitterleaf and Naiah's Tears unforaged, those two herbs are said to take over the area. What happens is that the room won't reset and the comfrey in that room won't regrow until the other herbs are first all foraged out, then a bit of time passes to allow for regrowth.

Don't cut down trees just to have them lie there and rot. If you fell a tree, chop it up and use the branches and logs to sell or carve and saw with. Don't fell a second tree until after you've first chopped the tree already on the ground into logs and heaved those logs into your handcart or wagon. Don't chop a log into blocks and just leave them as they don't get janitored and you've just left a mess that won't go away.

Don't fell too many trees or hunt too much in one area (use the Area command).

Don't leave a mess of lockboxes, bark shavings, animal fat, etc somewhere on the floor in a town or entrance to the town. Litter is not classy. The GM's have installed some trash barrels in the towns so you can act like a civilized human and put the trash in there.

Likewise, if you mine in a public (town) mine, the expectation is that you will clean up after yourself. Don't leave veins of lead, quartz or other minerals exposed when you're done, mine it out before you leave so that no veins are showing. Don't cause a pile of rubble then leave it for someone else to dig out, dig it yourself.

Don't go into somebody else's private mine (their name is on the stake) without their express permission.

Don't use the Community Donation Crates for trash....nobody else wants that canvas raincoat either, so put it in the trash barrel, please. With so many new players coming in and taking what they want from the crates, you can rest assured that if nobody takes a crate item in a week, it's near-certainly a worthless item and it belongs instead in the trash barrel.

Don't hide and drop superfluous items, such as arrows and low value items from lockboxes, then just walk away. These items never get janitored by the code base and accumulate unnecessarily and slow down the game processor. Either take them away with you, or drop them while not hidden, so they can automatically vanish and not burden the CPU.

Don't kill named NPC's...these NPC''s don't just re-pop as they might in other MUD's, they are gone. Other players depend on these named NPC's for training, etc. and we all lose out when you eliminate one. To do so is to disrupt the enjoyment of CLOK for other players, which is against policy and subject to banning.

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Section 10: Inferior options.

Not all weapons and abilities you can chose from are created equal. I would like to spare you from wasting your time on these when there are better choices:

Weapons

Staff/Quarterstaff - a do-little-but-parry weapon

Estoc: As originally created, it was a decent blade on a par with the current cutlass; it has been since dulled down by the GMs to the point where no one who tries it keeps using it for long. It has the best chink odds of any sword, but only one attack to a rapier or shortsword's three attacks with three chances to chink. Destination: Pawnshop.

Warsword - I'm not sure which war this was made for. This mob-pop-only blade doesn't do much damage. Shelve it next to the Estoc.

Falcata - An artisan can craft you one, but it doesn't do much damage either. Spotted mainly in pawnshops and community crates

Broadsword - It's a good sword...but... almost every other sword (other than the three duds just mentioned) is better than the broadsword

Spear - weighs 6 pounds when it should weigh 3. If encumbrance is an issue, choose a Pike or a Trident instead, which do as much or more damage with less weight. Go figure.

Maul - This heavy hafted weapon makes you think, "I'm better off with a crafted sledgehammer"

Crossbow - by the time you acquire the 60,000 riln needed to waste on the purchase of a crossbow, you'll know you could shoot two or three arrows from a bow, or hurl as many javelins in the same mount of time as it takes to reload that clunker. Plus, you'll know that there is no crossbow trainer to buy lessons from. There is no ability called Weapon Specialization: Crossbows. What you won't know until after you drop the price of a house is that you'll usually get noticed by foes when you reload from hiding, and that if you're attacked during a 10 second reload phase, you're liable to drop your bolt and have to begin reloading from scratch.

Firearms - Stealth and gunpowder don't mix. Chose firearms only if you have little interest in skilling up your stealth.

Abilities

You only have a limited number of ability slots. You probably don't want to spend those slots on these:

Leatherworking: Exotic - Leather armor degrades from high quality to average very quickly in CLOK. The leather scale armor produced by this ability protects you little better than basic leather, and is soon reduced to shop quality anyway.

Melee: flurry - the disadvantage to this is that it clears your aim. The only good use for this I've found is against a large number of squirrels, beetles, and other small, numerous foes that can be killed in a single strike .

Revolver fanning - your gun will need to be in the repair shop a lot with this. Perhaps it has some use to characters with high firearms / marksmanship scores, but of dubious value to lower-skilled characters.

Coup de Mort - this mercenary ability works mainly when you don't need it; e.g. when the foe is almost dead anyway and a normal combat shot would likely do the trick

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Appendix 1.: How to correctly spell town names and guilds

Here is a table of some names, often badly mispelled in game, that you can resort to to get the correct spelling of:

Shadgard is spelled S H A D G A R D .
Haiban - H A I B A N .
Mistral Lake - M I S T R A L .
The Corvus Outpost - C O R V U S .
The dangerous Vatnfjall Ruins - V A T N F J A L L .
Valeria, located at the Western Crossroads - V A L E R I A .

Some guild names:
Dwaedn Wyr - D W A E D N. W Y R .
The Wyrvardn - W Y R V A R D N .
The Harbingers of Aranas - H A R B I N G E R S. O F. A R A N A S .
The Elemancers - E L E M A N C E R S .
Tse Gaiyan - T S E. G A I Y A N .
The Utasa - U T A S A .
The Udemi - U D E M I .

Miscellaneous:
a sprig of Naia's tears (a herb with tear-shaped leaves) - N A I A apostrophe S
urumi (a whip-sword) - U R U M I .
khopesh (an Egyptian-style sickle-sword) - K H O P E S H .

You can copy and paste the following Note command to have handy access to the most common mispelled ones:

note add S H A D G A R D // H A I B A N // V A T N F J A L L // V A E L G R A T E N // W Y R V A R D N // D W A E D N. W Y R // T S E. G A I Y A N
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Appendix 2.: Weapon and Armour Quality bonuses


When you obtain a weapon or armour that is better than average quality, it provides your character with combat bonuses. If CLOK were based on a d20 system, it would be +1, +2, and +3 for Above-Average, Exquisite (aka Superior), and Masterfully-Crafted respectively. But since it's a percentile system, the bonuses are plus 5%, plus 10%, and plus 15%. I've never used any Legendary items, so I am unsure about them but presumably they give you better than plus 15%.

Armor and weapons that are poorer than average give a penalty to the user. The best place for these poorer than average items is the trash barrel, as you can purchase average quality items in the various weapons and armour shops in town.

In the case of leather crafted containers, better than average qualities provide the character with better capacities for those backpacks, satchels, etc. Note there is a weight bug with these items and with assorted weapons "sheaths'"(when you fill them they seem to retain their full weight after you remove items from them) so the value of these crafted containers is mixed. Starting backpacks and store bought ones don't seem to suffer from this bug, as far as I can tell.
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Appendix 3.: Known Issues / Glitches / Bugs / Things to be avoided:

• Inaccurate and/or misleading Information in some helpfiles - Mostly cases of obsolete information that was true at one time but no longer is. For example, if you type Help Blacksmithing, the helpfile that appears (at the time of this edit) will tell you about using the vice to merge the hilt and the haft together. The vice command was eliminated well over a year ago with the introduction of a newer forging system. Another example is in Abilities Describe for Weapons Specialization where it is implied that all weapons specializations unlock further abilities with that weapon type, when in fact only swords, archery, and firearms have any additional abilities to be unlocked. Note that the CLOK wiki also contains obsolete and misleading information in various places...volunteers needed!

• Crafted Leather Armor - I have to recommend that you avoid spending money on having another player craft you a suit of leather or leather scale armor. It might be a passable choice if your character avoids melee combat (for example, an archer or weapon hurler), but for persons regularly getting hit, crafted leather armor will get damaged and it will soon degrade, soon as in a couple of days or so. Due to some quirk in CLOK, a scuffed leather armor of Superior or Exquisite quality can instantly degrade to Average during a repair. In order to make that leather or fur armor, many animals have to be killed and successfully skinned, leading to a high cost. It's really not worth it, the system as it is, to pay so much for so short-lived a product. There remains some limited value in crafting leather armor, as average quality fur armor has a warmth value in the cold weather, and a few body parts, like head and neck, get hit seldom enough so that if you are reasonably on top of it, can be repaired before they become degradeable...remember, you can repair armor and weapons before they are showing any "scuffed" or "scratched" adjective and thus avoid degrades this way. Store bough leather armors, although average, are easily repairable and replaceable, so you don't lose much there.

• Crafted Container and sheath/scabbard, et al Bug - As noted in the previous appendix here is some bug with these items, including crafted pole harnesses and holsters and any other weapon-holder that makes it start out at a light weight, then when you put your weapon in it and after remove the weapon, the weapon-holder retains the heavier weight of the holder with the weapon in it. A workaround might be, remove the weapon or items from the container or weapon-holder, and type in, for example, Transfer all from scabbard to ground

• Widely-varying Weights of Clothing and Equipment - The weights assigned to items are all over the map to the points point where it often doesn't make sense. Some backpacks weight 4 pounds, and some only weigh 1, for example. The Compare command is useful here. Shop around for lighter weight shirts, cloaks, pants, footwear, etc in different towns. Note that for some items on some races, the clothing and packs your character enters the game with are the light ones.

• The Gaslight Swamp - If you go in here, there is a chance your character will get stuck in a glitch room that he can never walk out of...each time he leaves out of one of the exits, he immediately pops back into that same swamp room. Then some swamp beast will soon come along and kill your character. Then you will want someone to come in and try to rescue you, which if they do so will subject them to the chance of getting stuck in the same glitch. Do everyone a favour, and stay out of the swamp, unless you stay strictly on the Blackstone Road, and use the NPC depart route if you do happen to fall in the off-road swamp area.

• Targeting problems with steeds - For some reason unbeknownst to me, the adjectives in horse strings are treated as nouns. Thus, is there is a black-maned chestnut horse in the room and then a tall man, and you try to interact with the man, the game will consider "man" to be the first three letters of "maned" and will target the horse. So if you enter, Sayto Man, Where are you going tomorrow?, the result will be as follows: Speaking to a black-maned chestnut horse, you ask, "Where are you going tomorrow?"

• When you buy a new steed, take right away it to a stables and actively pay the 30 or 15 riln to stable it. If you do not, when it gets killed, it will be stuck in cyber limbo and will not appear in any stable anywhere currently due to a bug. You will have to contact the GMs to get your equine to reappear - contact the GMs either by using the Request command or by emailing support@clokmud.com

• Horseshoes that won't actually go on horses - A few legacy characters attended a Grum Festival about 4 years ago and bought sets of horseshoes that fit onto their horse like a clothing item (and they are only for looks). Then there are the horseshoes that blacksmith player characters make on the anvil. These latter are duds as far as trying to put on your horse - they can only be used for artisan tasks and to sell for profit at the market.

• Changing Post Offices - It says that when you re-assign your mail delivery to another town, it takes 1 bell to process the change and in the mean time, you can pick up your mail at the former post office. But you can't. Your mail will be nowhere for that one bell, uncollectable until you can pick it up at the new post office.

• Wearing a vest or torso armor along with a coat - If you type in Inv Slots, it tells you which worn items your character has on, and where. When you put on additional articles of clothing, it makes no difference in which order you put them on...with one exception. If you have a garment in the "coat" slot, you must first remove that before you can wear an item that goes into the "cuirass" slot, be it a waistcoat, breastplate, or what have you.

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This file last updated 2021-01-03
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You benefited at least somewhat from this helpfile - be a good sport and share it with newcomers too

For the official CLOK Wiki help file for beginners, click here: http://clok.contrarium.net/index.php?ti ... _Beginners

[Lemuel]

Why I made the above helpfile text: I have played extensively four other MUDs before. When I joined CLOK, I gradually became aware there were some commands, policies, and ideas that did not exist on these other games, and it took time (some, an inordinate amount of time) to stumble across them and use them.

For example, in my first week of playing, I tried to Scan into another room. Scan didn't work as it did in other MUDs, and I pursued it no further. It was at least 3 months later, while looking at a BBS post, that I discovered there was such a thing as the Peer command that did in CLOK what Scan did in other games. I know there is a help commands that produces a long list of commands available, but seeing the word 'peer' amongst the 150 or more other commands was not helpful, as in my experience 'peer' existed as a social command and in CLOK (perhaps unfortunately) it is both a social command and a searching command - what I am saying, is that having Peer on that long list did not help me to connect it to the Scan command of other MUDs.

Other commands also took me an inordinately long time to discover. For instance, I only discovered there was such a thing as a 'friends' list after 6 long months of play, and it took another month after that to discover the 'enemies' list.

So in order to spare newcomers the loss in playing a long time without as full a range of commands as possible (as I did) I provide the above-posted file. A couple of commands I was in fact quite familiar with from other games, such as TELL, but I included them in the same post because I've heard them asked frequently by newcomers. I invite any constructive critique of my text, especially with regards to Section 5.

[Anna]

Holy crap this is awesome. So much stuff I didn't know that added a TON of quality of life to play. Is there any way this could go onto the main site as a guide?

[Mirazia]

Whilst Lun has written a very detailed and excellent guide to the basics of CLOK (viewtopic.php?f=6&t=5738) this is also a very good simplistic guide with a few more good points (read signs people!)

[Lemuel]

A good deal of the helpfile was obsolete due to game changes, so today I gave it a shot at updating the information. There may be something left behind that is no longer correct due to changes in the game code or policies, if you notice something, please let me know.

[Lemuel]

Some recent additions/changes:

January 3 - Added a paragraph explaining it takes several weeks with a craft to get decent results. Added a section on In-Game Etiquette. Added a section explaining the Janitor system. Added a paragraph discussing Swimming. The value of First Aid lessons. Numerous other little touch-ups of the text.

December 13 - Added at the beginning the correct spellings for CLOK towns, and other frequently mispelled words

November 8 -

• Added the lantern on wagon commands Hang Lantern and Remove Lantern from Wagon
• Added some details on how to use the Ability command to learn a new ability
  
  October 23 - Added the container commands Pick and Shuffle
  
  June 26 - To see the list of users who are connected to the question channel, type in Users Question
  
  June 22 - A small paragraph was added advising the value of using the friend promote command, as it impacts social output
  
  June 19 - A paragraph was added to advise newcomers how to navigate around the mechanics of Horse Death.

[Jirato]

Thanks Lemuel, I appreciate you maintaining this post.

[Bryce]

Gotta agree, kudos to Lemuel for making and maintaining this. It's helped a lot of people, and I like looking over the updates to see what new nuggets of info are in there.

[Lemuel]

Gotta agree, kudos to Lemuel for making and maintaining this. It's helped a lot of people, and I like looking over the updates to see what new nuggets of info are in there.

Thank you, Rias and Bryce, and if you or anyone else notices an error or obsolete information in the helpfile, please let me know so I can keep things accurate.