ELEPHANT MUD NEWS

Elephant Mud News from 2004

July - September

Evil Alignment and Murder
A small change to how the alignment system works which plugs a loophole
used by certain naughty people:

In order to murder indiscriminately, you have to be Evil, and being Evil has some downsides. For example other people can attack you, and coming back to life can be more expensive. Some people have got *just* the
nasty side of Evil, committed a murder, and then got *just* back the nice
side meaning that they cannot be attacked.

Now when you commit a murder you will stay Evil for a days login time. During this time your alignment cannot get any better than Evil (although it can get worse!), meaning you must live the life of the evildoer for a while before being able to come back to the side of Good. Of course - not everyone will WANT to come to the side of Good anyway :)

Once this 24 hour period has expired you can change your alignment again
as normal. (21st Sept 2004)

Caravans Missing
News has come in that several families around the realms are growing concerned. Skilled miners, employed to work upon a silver mine in the area of Rathowen, have not been in touch for a while. The owners of the mine have stated that nothing is wrong however, and that communication is just difficult due to the frozen conditions along with the frequent blizzards.

A report from the far northern reaches of the Realm has reached even the ears of Lord Rhaleth Draken who posted the following warning:

A merchants wagon heading to the newly reopened silver mine near Rathowen has not returned back. While this in itself would not be cause for concern in those dangerous and treacherous snows, this is the third such caravan to have gone missing in the last month, and there has been no contact with the mine during this time either.

I urge all travelling in the frozen wilds to be careful, as there may be bandits, or worse, roaming the area. (6th Sept 2004)

Elephant Mudlympic Final Results
After the final event of the 50AE Mudlympic Games, the medal table looks like this:

(29th August 2004)

Change to guild changing
You can now change guild at any level. You will immediately be dropped to level 1, much as if you had died down. You will not, however, suffer your hp/mp etc being mangled by so doing. Instead, your hp/mp, stats and skills
will be set to that of a starting character of your race. You will have slightly better stats than a brand new character, and any age bonuses you have received will be preserved. You will also retain enough experience points to advance back to level 5 (or your old level if lower), so you can immediately advance back up.

In effect this is a way to die down without dying, thus avoiding all the
unpleasant side effects that happen when you do. It is simple and quick.
Not only that it will wipe out any hp/mp you have lost from dying in the
past - giving you a clean slate, but you will also retain money, family, quests etc. The net effect is that you will be in vastly better shape than under the old system of dying down!

To do this, you no longer use your guild commands, but instead go and speak to Loman Kell in the Drakenwood Keep. He will perform the ritual on your behalf, setting you back to a guild-less Adventurer.

For people who are multi-guilded, you will continue to use the guild commands as before, but in addition you can now leave your secondary guild at the Drakenwood Adventurer's Guild (where you find the Adventurer's Board).

In addition we have also allowed people to drop back to level 1 in exactly the same way but without changing guild. This will be of great value for people who have quests, deeds, money, family, mail etc etc, but who wish to wipe away any mistakes they made due to dying lots, or in other ways getting themselves a little messed up!

Full details can be found on the main board. (27th August 2004)

Change to hps/mps
Some significant changes have been made to the way hps and mps are effected by training stats, advancing, changing races etc. A brief summary has been included below. The full explanation can be found on the main baord.

1. The hp, mp and stamina with which you start are now directly dependent upon your starting stats. Race only impacts upon it in so far as it impacts on your 'base' stats.
   
   
2. Instead of getting a bonus from your con or wisdom when you advance, you: Now gain the bonus as soon as you up your con or wisdom. This means that you don't have to max your con and wisdom each level for fear of losing out.
   
   This will have a major effect on gameplay - do you advance with lower hp but more quickly? Do you advance your con and get the immediate benefit? Something in between? This is made all the more significant at low levels by the next point.
   
   
3. Every single point by which your con or wisdom goes up or down will now affect your hp, mp and stamina. It is not just above 14 (for a bonus) or below 8 (for a penalty). Each and every point you improve will have an instant effect. This will have a dramatic effect on low level players. Also the bonus will not be just 1 hp per point. On the contrary it can be quite significant as your con and wisdom start to rise.
   
   
4. Changing race has no impact whatsoever on your hp, mp etc other than that caused by the change in your stats. Thus a change from a human to a giant will see your hp rise and mp drop.
   
   

5. Under the new system if you go die and drop a level and then go back up you will lose only 1 hp/mp. You will not lose any more than this under any circumstance (assuming you put your con back up if it dropped!)

   While this is of great benefit to everyone, the flip side is that you
   will always lose this 1hp/1mp when you die, not just if you drop levels. (19th August 2004)
   

Wizard Promotions
Moloch has managed to code his area and get it through our approval system and online within one month, a speedy turn around if ever we saw one. With this he has been promoted from the rank of Apprentice to that of Wizard making him a fully fledged member of the Wiz team of Elephant Mud, and meaning I have to write something nice about him for the website! Well done Moloch!

Also celebrating this week is Eversor who's efforts have earned him a promotion to the highly respected rank of Senior Wizard.

This constant, steady progress demonstrates what an active and enthusiastic team of Wizards we are lucky enough to have on Ele. Contratulations for them both! (15th August 2004)

Fishy Goings on at the Docks!
Gordon is a poor old fisherman who, until recently, sailed out of the Drakenwood Docks each day. Recently, however, he has been too terrified to leave the safety of the docks after seeing his friend Alfred pulled beneath the waves by a pack of sea zombies. Word on the street is that he's looking for adventurers to see what happened to Alfred. (15th August 2004)

Introducing the 50AE Mudlympic Games!

BREAKING NEWS *** The opening ceremony was hi-jacked by envoys of Aerdy sent to steal the Mudlympic Torch. As a result the Ceremony had to be postponed. Lord Rhaleth Draken announced today that the torch had been recovered and the openeing ceremonly will instead take place on Sunday 15th August 2004 at 8pm BST. ***

A competition of the like never before seen in the Western Realms, allowing
all seven guilds to compete against one another in a number of different and varying events taking place over the course of two Mud months.

The guild whose members acquire the most medals will be hailed as the
overall champions of the 50AE Mudlympic Games and will be rewarded accordingly.

Details of exactly when each event is to occur will be unveiled shortly.

The opening ceremony will take place on Saturday 14th August at 8pm BST in the purpose-built stadium (within the Mudlympic Village). In order to greater strengthen ties with our new-found friends in Valena the village has been built on their copious plains. A special stage coach will be laid on to transport participants and observers to the area to avoid over-crowding the existing route.

The opening ceremony is set to be *the* event of the year with all the key figures from our the Realms due to attend. We do hope that you will join us to celebrate the opening of the first ever Mudlympic Games! (12th August 2004)

Drakenwood Times OUT NOW!
Get yourself down to Aaron in the Market Square and purchase a copy of the Western Realm's leading news paper, the Drakenwood Times. Issue Seven has finally made it to print and it's jam packed with news and views from around the realms. Keep up with the latest fashion trends, holiday locations, gossip and intrigue, Guild news and try your hand at our crossword with a chance to win a cash prize! (18th July 2004)

Threes a crowd
On Elephant Mud we allow each player to have a maximum of two registered characters.

Many of you become attached to your characters, but may also wish to explore the realms in a different guise. Currently your options are to either rid one of your two characters or perhaps even die down to restart. This is not necessarily something that you feel happy doing.

We have considered this matter long and hard and have decided to reward
those of you who have reached Heroic status with your primary character
with the opportunity to create and play a third character.

In all practical ways this third character will behave as second characters do at present. You will still need to register it to avoid falling foul of the rules on illegal multiple characters and you will still only be able to vote with your primary character.

So, if your primary character is a hero and you wish to start a new third character, simply create the character and submit a 'req' (this will check to make sure you comply with the above criteria) and await a response from Admin and then off you go! (11th July 2004)

Murder in mind
On Elephant Mud we have two legal systems. The realms are ruled by the Council who have the ability to create and enforce laws of the land. The rules of the game, however are created and policed by the Wizards. Council laws may be broken, if you are prepared to play the role of the criminal. Breaking Wizard laws however is a foolish thing to do for it can result in loss of experience points, banning or even the deletion of your character!

With this in mind two changes have been made to the wizard laws regarding murder.

1) You are now physically prevented from making a second attack. We believe that prevention is better than cure and if we wish there to be a 1 pk per week limit we will help enforce that in code rather than via punishments. Up until now only the 3rd and above attacks were physicall prevented.

2) There must be at LEAST 24 hours worth of login time between murders in addition to a weeks actual time. For most people, who play 4 or more
hours a day on average, this is totally unnoticable. Likewise if you are
not trying to commit murders every week on the dot (which we strongly
recommend against!), you will not even notice this. However what it means
is that you cannot murder, log off for a week, log back on and murder
again before logging off once more. If you wish to be a murderer you must
be an active one, fleeing from Council and your peers and skulking in
shadows, not just logging off to stay safe. (5th July 2004)

Spooky Behaviour
Ghosts are now only able to move about the mud by floating.

Floating costs no stamina, but is a little slow, so cannot be used to cover
rooms quickly. Of course, one may always 'float home' as before to get
immediately back to your guild (or normal place you login).

Water seems to interfere with this process, so ghosts are effectively
landlocked. Obviously 'float home' will thus be vital if you die at sea. For
this reason we strongly recommend that you never set your start location
in the great oceans, or you will need someone to come to YOU to resurrect you!

Finally it has been noted by some that exploring as a ghost, while still
useful in many circumstances, will not now increase the amount of the mud
that you have officially visited. One needs to visit places in a more tangible
form for your exploration percentage to rise.

It has often been said that stamina as a ghost was a major problem, so hopefully this will completely alleviate this.(3rd July 2004)

>Back to ARCHIVE NEWS
>Back to MAIN NEWS
>Back to NEWS

Just wanna play?
Email webmaster@elephant.org with any questions about this site.