Tips For Beginners

First and foremost, welcome to CLOK! We hope you enjoy your stay, however long it may be. Things may be a little confusing in the beginning, particularly if you've never played a text-based MUD/MUSH. We've tried to design CLOK to be as logical as possible and avoid over-complicating things. Below are some general tips to get you started.

Rework Disclaimer

Please note that the game is currently in the process of a large scale overhaul in many areas and that this guide is outdated and may not be fully updated for some time.

The look and examine commands will be very useful for figuring out how things work. Looking at NPCs will tell you if they're a trainer, a guild recruiter, et cetera. Use examine to examine items and discover if they have any particular functionality, and to know which verbs to use for them (words that work as commands are generally highlighted in bright cyan).

CLOK is an RP-enforced MUD. This means that we expect characters to act in character. There are methods to interact and communicate with other players out of character. If you haven't played a MUD before or haven't played an RP-enforced one, you'll want to examine policy 1 in game and check out the handy role play guide.

Starting Towns

You start in one of three towns, chosen after you complete character creation and the tutorial.

• Shadgard is a southern settlement with prominent copper mines. Their primary exports are copper and bronze and as such, they do not have many, if any, pieces of iron armor or weaponry for sale. Shadgard is notable for having many trainers within its walls, offering a plethora of skills to the public, and for their firearms. This is an excellent starting location, as it offers access to plenty of the basic needs, as well as being close to several guilds. Unfortunately, it's location at the base of a mountainous region and being nestled in a well defended canyon makes it a rather cold place to live. You'll want to make sure you've the know how and resources to stay warm.
• Haiban is a town settled between Mistral Lake and Shadgard. It is the home to the Western Coalition. It is a welcome sight to any craftsmen, and some of the most skilled live here. It is also the guild headquarters of the Artisans and Mercenaries.
• Mistral Lake is a town to the far north, settled within some ruins and is pretty neutral, allowing almost anyone in. They are known to be assaulted by Canim on a regular basis, and as such, they have locked down their bridge and opened a barge for safer travel. A private ferry can be rented for a mere 10 riln if you don't wish to wait. Mistral Lake is known for having iron mines and the lake upon which it resides, making it a good fishing spot. The Mummers Camp used to be located near this town until it was raided.
• Corvus is no longer a starting town and must be accessed via RP.

Tip: Each settlement offers amenities and some offer luxuries other do not. These are best found out about IC, though every major settlement has a bank to store your riln and items!

Highlights

All NPCs will be highlighted in a certain color, depending on their relationship with you. If an NPC is highlighted in yellow, it is either hostile or neutral towards you. You can usually distinguish if this critter is going to be hostile or not by their names. Bob the shopkeeper isn't going to attack you if he's yellow more than likely, but Billy the bandit might. If an NPC is highlighted in green, the NPC is friendly toward you, and may offer aid, information or services to you that it wouldn't otherwise. GM character names will be highlighted in cyan, and they will also show up as GM [Name], for example GM Rias.

Player characters will be highlighted in blue, but they can also be red. This will be the case if that particular player has you on their enemy list.

Command words will be highlighted in cyan, hinting players toward which commands to use. This is particularly prevalent on the various informative signs around the game, but also often appears in command messaging, item descriptions and other messaging instances.

Items in room descriptions that can be interacted with in some way are highlighted in green. Note that this doesn't apply to items listed in the "You also notice ..." section, since all items there can be interacted with.

Starting Out

You start out with some basic supplies - clothes, a torch, some firestones, and a travel ration, as well as 200 riln. A few ways to make some money in the beginning:

• Forage up some medicinal herbs and sell them at the market. When in the wilderness, off the main road, you can type survey to identify herbs available in an area and type forage to pick them. Herbs vary by climate and terrain, and take some time to grow back after a room has been fully foraged.
• Mining for ore in the mines (note: there is no publicly available mine in Mistral Lake). You'll need a mining pick for this, so you'll need to save some money from other activities and buy one at the blacksmith shop. Once you've got a mining pick in hand, head into a mine, find a suitable room to mine in, this can be done by typing survey, and type mine. When you get some ore, you can either sell it raw at the town market, or you can smelt it in the furnace at the blacksmith workyard first in order to make it worth a bit more. Simply put the ore in the furnace and pull the bellows, then wait for the furnace to cool and take out the smelted metal bars. This is slow starting, but one of the best ways to make riln in the long run.
• Fell some logs. Like mining, logging will require a tool - in this case, a logging axe, also from the blacksmith shop. Save up for one via other activities and take it out to any forested area in the wilderness, then type fell to start chopping trees. Once you've felled a tree, you'll need to chop off the branches. You can sell logs at the town market, or take them to a sawmill. This requires an investment and can not be done without a handcart or wagon.

Tip: If you can save up 200 riln, you can order a handcart at the General Store which can be pulled along into the mines or the forest to make gathering and carting the heavy raw materials much easier and efficient!

Lastly, don't forget to look in the crate in the Town Commons for spare supplies. The crate is community storage and is often stocked by more experienced adventurers to help supply newer folk, so feel free to take things from it, as long as you plan to put them to use. Taking items from the crate just to sell them at the pawnshop is generally frowned upon.

Exploring

If you plan on going exploring, you'll definitely want some torches or candles for exploring dark areas, and some firestones to light them with. While holding a torch in one hand and the firestones in the other, simply type light torch to light the torch. You don't want to put a burning torch in your backpack, so before stowing it, extinguish the torch by typing extinguish torch. You'll also want to pack some food so you don't end up starving out in the wilderness somewhere. Travel rations provide high nutrition and several bites, though they're a bit bland - you can order some at any general goods shop. If you end up without food out in the boonies, you can always try to forage for food in the wild.

• World Maps are also available in the general store in any major town. These are viewable in ASCII and provide you with an updated view of the currently released world as a whole. Additionally, you can use the map command with them at many of the landmarks in the Lost Lands for help navigating the wilderness.

Some area maps can be found in the Maps category.

Combat

If you plan on battling the various critters and monsters out there, you'll obviously need a weapon, as well. You can generally find weapons and armor in either a blacksmith's shop or decidated armory and weapons shops, as well as pawnshops and the crate in town commons. You can even club things with a torch in a pinch, and torches actually make fairly decent weapons if used while lit. To attack something, simply type attack [target], where "[target]" is the name of whatever it is you want to attack. Ranged weapons users would instead fire, and casters would cast instead of attacking.

If you wish to auto-attack any present hostiles until there are none left or you manually stop yourself from attacking, you can battle with a melee weapon, barrage with a ranged weapon, or trance while channeling elemancy (such as pyromancy).

You can adjust your tactics in various ways, such as focusing only on dodging (and therefore not trying to parry or block). This not only increases your chances to dodge by quite a bit, but is also handy for training up specific defensive skills.

You can also change which position you attempt to stay at. You can attempt to avoid combat, stay at ranged distance or attempt to engage any present hostiles. If you are running through dangerous territory, it's a good idea to switch your position to avoid encounters. Certain actions will automatically change your position, or at least attempt to - attacking with a melee weapon will automatically switch you to engage position. Firing with a ranged weapon will switch you to ranged if you were previously at avoid - if you were instead previously in the engage position and are currently under attack, you will attempt to break the engagement and retreat to a ranged position automatically in order to fire.

For more information, check the combat wiki page.

Still Lost?

There are mentors in game as well; feel free to ask on question or chat for more specialized help! Additionally, you can join the Discord to view GM announcements, updates to the BBS and updates to the Trello site, as well as access in-game chat logs and speak into the game's global chat channels via the bot's automated sending. Visit this link to join the Discord server. The Trello site is located here.