January 17, 1999
What is Equipment?
Equipment, also referred to as eq, is a term that refers to items which you
can wear, hold, and wield. Different pieces of equipment fit into different
'slots', or locations on your body. You can only wear one piece of equipment
in each slot, but some parts of your body (fingers for example) have two
slots, which means you can wear two rings at the same time. Too see what you
are wearing in each slot, type EQ. This will also show you the slots where
you have nothing on at all. Try to make sure you have something for each slot
to get the best of your equipment.
The purpose of equipment is to modify one or more of your many different stats, including AC, health points, mana, and saving_spell. Without equipment people in Medievia would be pretty weak - almost all your power comes from the equipment you are wearing. This is why choosing the right combination of equipment for you is essential to success in Medievia. If you want to have the highest hp possible you would wear a very different set of equipment than you would if you wanted high mana. No matter what your goal, one of the first things you should be shooting for is getting -100 AC (type REPORT to see your current AC). Fighting will be a lot easier with -100 AC, since mobs won't hit you anywhere near as often.
Each piece of equipment is unique. There are many different kinds of equipment in Medievia to fit into each of the different slots. Beyond that, Medievia has a unique system called 'tweaking', which means that a specific kind of equipment can load (be automatically created by the MUD) with a range of stats. This is why the prices of the same type of equipment may vary widely - the better tweaks are often very rare, and people will pay a lot of money for them.
The Donation Room
Located just east of recall in Medievia City, the donation room is the
collection spot for all the equipment players have donated. The equipment
lies on the floor, just waiting for someone who needs it. As a newer player you
can get lots of good equipment here, and the best part is that it's free! This
is a good time to mention another of Medievia's features. The game will
calculate the value of the equipment you are wearing, and will put a red --->
by an item it thinks is better than what you have on. This is a good way to
quickly pick out some good items from the huge list of possible choices in the
donation room. Be warned, this feature is currently far from perfect - it will
often recommend items that really are worse for you than what you have on. This
is especially true when you are aiming for a specific goal and you want, for
example, all +hp equipment. Use the arrows and X's (which indicate that you
can't use the equipment because of your level, class, or alignment) to help you
out, but remember always to ID the equipment and decide for yourself. The
spellcasting classes (cleric and mage) have to especially carefully about
judging by the arrows, since the game tends to weight equipment heavily towards
+HR and +DR. These stats have little to no effects upon a spellcaster, so be
especially sure to check out plenty of eq that don't have arrows. As a mage a
+60 mana sword is much more useful than one that provides +6 DR, even though
the game may think the +DR sword is better.
There is an identifying machine in the donation room as well. Once you've picked up some promising-looking equipment, PULL equipment name to identify it. If you decide that you want it, WEAR, HOLD, or WIELD it to begin using it. If you decide you don't want to use it, please drop it back in the donation room so that other people can have a chance to use it. If you're adventuring and you find a good piece of equipment that you aren't going to use, DONATE it (HELP DONATE to learn how it works)!
Understanding Identify
You can tell what particular effects a piece of equipment will have on you
and into what slot on your body it will fit by identifying it. There are many
ways to identify objects. If you are getting equipment that has been donated,
you can pick it up and PULL LEVER [itemname] in the donation room to have it
identified for you. Items on auction can be identified for free (see the
section on auction below). There are objects that have the identify spell
stored on them, such as scrolls of identify. You can buy these on auction or
find them on the corpses of mobs you kill. If you're a cleric or a mage,
practice the identity spell and you can cast it on items in your inventory.
When you cast identify, you'll get a short paragraph describing all the qualities of that item. It may seem confusing at first, but each value actually has a very simple meaning. Here is an example identify of an item, explained line by line:
Object: a wooden staff, inlaid with brass [staff wooden] This line shows the name of the object you are identifying. The words in the brackets after it are the keywords you can use with it. For example, typing PUT STAFF IN BAG would mean the same as PUT WOODEN IN BAG.
Item Type: WEAPON Effects: MAGIC ANTI-EVIL The first part of this line tells you what kind of object this is. There are several object types, including ARMOR, WORN, WEAPON, and LIGHT.
The second part shows the effects on this item. There are many different types of effects, including MAGIC (shows an aura with the detect magic spell), NO_RENT (disappears from your inventory when you camp or rent), INVISIBLE (you can't see it unless you have the detect invisible spell), and NOBITS (no restrictions at all). Many items are either ANTI-EVIL (AE) or ANTI-GOOD (AG), and some are even ANTI-NEUTRAL (AN). If you are an alignment that is not allowed by that equipment, you won't be able to wear it. This means that if you are an evil character, you will not be able to wear AG or AN items. REPORT to see your alignment - it goes from -1000 (most evil) to 1000 (most good), with neutral in the middle. For equipment, the shift point between neutral and good for is 350 (evil is at -350). Keep alignment in mind when selecting equipment - stuff that you cannot wear is of no use to you. Also keep an eye on your alignment while hunting, since if you have a lot of anti-align equipment on and you shift alignment a lot of it will become unusable until you can change your alignment back.
Equipable Location(s): TAKE WIELD :
This tells you what slot the item fits into. It matches up with the list of
slots you get with the
Weight: 17 Value: 270 Level Restriction: 25
The weight value represents how much the object weighs. If you type SCORE you
can see how much weight you are currently carrying and what your maximum
weight is. If you have low strength you may have to consider the weight of
the object. By casting +strength spells or wearing +strength equipment you
can increase the amount of weight you can hold, often useful in places where
you need to carry a lot. Be careful that you don't lose your +strength though
- if your strength suddenly drops you likely won't be able to pick up
anything more until you drop a lot of equipment. The weight also determines
how many items can fit into a container - each container has a set weight
limit, so heavy items will take up a lot more space than light ones.
The value is what Medievia considers to be the worth of the item (in gold
coins). If you choose to sell items at the shop you receive 2/3 of the value
(there are some towns that pay more, experiment for yourself and see where to
get the best price). Med's value is often far off the commonly-accepted
player value of equipment, so don't rely on it too much.
The level restriction is the minimum required level for you to use that
object. In this case, if you weren't level 25, you couldn't use the object.
The object appears to be in perfect pristine condition.
Days Left: 184
These two lines represent deterioration, another piece of code unique to
Medievia. Over time, equipment begins to wear. This is represented as a
decrease in the stats of the item. Eventually, the equipment crumbles away
to its base statistics. This upper line represents the condition of the
equipment in text, the lower line shows the exact amount of days left before
it begins to crumble. There is a short period during which the equipment
begins to crumble, then it reverts back to its base stats (often much lower
than its tweaked stats) with an infinite deterioration. If you have a really
expensive and hard to obtain item that you don't want to lose, it can be
egged. This involves using your eggs (HELP EGGS) to add 30 more days to the
objects life. A single piece of equipment can only be egged 12 times.
Attributes: ANTI_THIEF ANTI_WARRIOR
Besides being anti-alignment, equipment can also be restricted from being
used by a certain class: Anti-Warrior (AW), Anti-Thief (AT), Anti-Cleric (AC)
and Anti-Mage (AM). You cannot use equipment anti- to your current class. For
example, a current class warrior or thief would not be able to use this
particular piece of equipment.
The TWO_HANDED attribute (which only appears on weapons) means that the
weapon will take up both of your hands. This means that while you are
wielding a twohanded weapon you will not be able to use a shield or an
offhand weapon. There are both pros and cons to using a twohanded weapon.
Twohanders most often deal better damage and/or have better affects. On the
other hand, you don't get the -AC and affects from wearing a shield, and as a
warrior or thief you are unable to wield an offhand weapon. Work it out and
make a choice - you must decide for yourself if it is worth it to use a
particular twohanded weapon, since every situation is slightly different.
MultiSlot Item: LEGS ARMS
Multislot equipment is special in that it takes up more than one location on
your body. If a piece of equipment is multislot, then you will see this line
in identify. Multislot eq takes up all of the slots listed in multislot, as
well as the base slot. This means that if this particular piece of equipment
was TAKE BODY, then when you wore it three of your equipment slots would be
taken up: body, arms, and legs. HELP MULTISLOT for more information.
Damage Dice of 4d8
This is a line that is unique to weapons. It represents the base potential
amount of damage that can be inflicted by this weapon each hit. For example,
4d8 means that there are 4 dice with 8 sides each. For each hit, the four
dice are rolled and results of the faces added together. It is better to have
more dice with fewer sides than it is to have less dice with more sides. With
more sides you have a slightly higher potential amount, but your average will
be lower. Think of it this way: would you rather be rolling a die with 100
sides, or 100 dies with 1 side?
AC-apply of 7
This is a line which is unique to armor (many types of equipment affect AC,
but armor is the only type with AC-apply). AC-apply is really quite simple:
the AC-apply for the equipment is multiplied by a number depending on which
slot it is worn in. The resulting figure is subtracted from your AC, just
like if the equipment had a -AC affect. Equipment worn in the body slot has a
multiplier of 3. Most other locations simply have a multiplier of 1.
Affects:
-3 to SAVING_SPELL
+20 to MANA
-10 to AC
This is the real key to the item - its effects. This is how the equipment
will modify your stats. There are many different things to be modified. Some
of the more basic include mana, hitpoints, hitroll and damroll, AC, and
saving_spell. In general, positive is better, except for with the saving
throws (including AC). This item, for example, adds +20 to mana, which means
you will have 20 greater total mana when wearing this equipment. It also has
a -3 saving_spell, which is good. Saving_spell helps to protect you from
other character's and mob's spells, the lower the roll the better. Its -10 AC
is subtracted from your current AC, allowing you to better avoid enemy
attacks.
Auctioning in Medievia is very simple. The auctioneer has a piece of
equipment they are interested in selling, so they auction it with a set
minimum price. Items that have been auctioned appear in one of five
letter-identified spaces. If you have setauction on (HELP SETAUCTION), you'll
see a message that an item is up for bidding, along with a short summary of
its stats. Type BID ? to see a list of what is currently up for bid, along
with its current bid and the bidder. Type BIDletter ? to see more detailed
information on that particular object. If you like it, BID # to make a bid -
but you'll have to outbid everyone else who's interested! If you want to see
the full selection of commands, read HELP AUCTION and its related files.
A tip for auction: it's actually to your benefit not to bid in the minimum
increments. If someone has already bid at the minimum price, start out by
bidding a little below what you consider the equipment to be worth. The
minimum bidding price is the difference between the last bid and the earlier
bid, so if anyone else wants to make a bid they'll have to go far over the
normal price. If the price gets over a million there is an extra surcharge
added, though, which can change your calculations (this is why many times
you'll see an item first going up on auction with a minimum bid of 999,999).
For example, we'll say that I see a particular ring go up on auction that I
feel is worth 20,000 to me. Someone else bids the minimum bid of 1,000, and
another follows with a bid of 2,000. Now, I could bid 3,000, the minimum, but
that would leave me in a bad position. It is very likely that someone else
would bid over me with 4,000, starting a long bidding war. Instead, I should
bid around 15,000, which would force anyone who wanted to beat me to bid
28,000. It is much less likely now that I will be overbid, and I still paid
less than 20,000 for the ring. You may not save money every time, but over
the long run a little bidding strategy can save you a lot of time, money and
increase the chances of you getting that equipment you just have to have.
Medievia has many ways of sorting and keeping track of equipment, auction,
looting, and more. For more information on these ways to enhance your time in
Med, check out HELP SETITEM (indicates item condition), HELP SETFILTER
(filters out certain auction eq), HELP SETJUNK (keeps you from picking up
junk from corpses), HELP SORTEQ (sorts your inventory), and finally, HELP
MODE (allows the creation of eq modes). These commands are all extremely
useful, and there's no point in merely repeating the information provided in
the help files.
Once you've spent a while in Medievia, you may want to make a donation. Not
only will you be putting your money towards a great cause, you can get some
excellent equipment as a return! Donation equipment (which is very different
from donated equipment) is the best in the game. Not only that, but the
majority of the donation equipment fits into its own slots, offering you
better stats and new abilities while still allowing you to use all your
normal equipment. Look at HELP DONATION for specific information about each
of the items.
There are many good sources of information about specific equipment out
there. Check out some of the clan web sites or Harag's Hoard for stats on
many different types of equipment. However, the ultimate source of
information is personal experience - keep an eye on the equipment on auction
to get an idea of what's out there, and always try to identify anything you
find on mobs that you haven't seen before. You should always be looking at
your mobs corpses' anyway, as you could find elemental stones, earth
crystals, or dragon crystals, which are rare items that will bring you a lot
of money on auction.
I hope this article helped you better understand the fundamentals of
equipment. If you have any comments or questions, please mudmail me.
Getting Equipment On Auction
After about levels 10-15, most of the donation equipment you picked up will
begin to become outdated. Auction is the major source of equipment after
level 15. To get equipment off auction you'll need gold - sometimes a lot of
it. There are many ways to get money, such as trade runs and wagering on
herobattles, but I won't go into them here - there are plenty of other
excellent articles that cover those topics. Don't worry, you don't have to
carry around a lot of cash on your person if you want to buy off auction,
since the price of the item is taken out of your bank account.
Other Sources of Information
After level 15, you will certainly want to begin looking into joining a clan.
Clans have many benefits. One of them is as a source of equipment and
information about what you might want to strive for. There are several
MUDSlinger articles about how to find a good clan - spend the time and effort
to do your research, you won't regret it. Once you're in a clan, you can gain
equipment points for your clan (HELP CLANRANKING) by looting equipment from
high-level mobs you kill.