Midnight Sun ...a medieval adventure under a neversetting sun.

Welcome to Midnight Sun. This document is designed to help you get on your feet so you can get around in our world.

Text in these blocks is an example of what you might actually see on the screen.

Commands you can (literally!) type are presented like this. Commands are always sent by pressing the Enter key.

After you have created your character you enter our world inside the Central Castle. As the name already implies this is the center of our world. An example of what you could see on your screen is this:

The black text is a description of the place (also called room) that you are standing in. Room descriptions are automatically shown to you when you enter a room. Once you are inside a room you can always ask for the description again by typing:

Since this is a command you will use A LOT, there is also a shorter version for this command:

Now let's look at the last 4 red lines and the one blue line. In general anything after the line with the exits points to other items or living beings that are present in the room besides yourself (from now on called 'objects'). In this case there are 4 living beings in the room and one item (A bird's beak). You can have a closer look at any of those objects by using the command 'look at'. To look for instance closer at the bird's beak you could type:

The line directly under the room description always tells you how you can leave this place and 'walk' to another. In this case:

Navigation usually takes place in compass directions as mentioned here. In this case there are 4 ways to leave this room. Depending on the direction you walk you will enter another room. If you read the room description, you will notice that it describes "the magnificent building to the south, the adventurers guildhouse" If you want to walk in that direction you simply type:

The same applies to any other 'exit' mentioned in that line.
All compass directions also have a short version (n, ne, e, se, s, sw, w, nw) that works in the same way as the long one.

Note: The line with the exits uses the word 'obvious'. Some rooms may have more exits than you can see at first sight. In these cases you will have to use other methods to find those exits.

After you enter the room to the south, you get the description of the new place in which you are standing. Depending on who is there you will see at least the following three items:

This is a good time to get yourself hooked up with a newbie book and a map. Level 1 players younger than 10 hours can also take one of the dragon orbs, which can be used for safe transport back to the Central Castle if you get lost. You can pick up items that are in a room by using the get command. So type the following:

Note: To get rid of items you can 'drop' them again. In most cases, it is better to sell your items, since then you will get some money for them.

Ok, now that we've looked at the room description, the exits and the objects in the room, it is time to concentrate a bit on ourselves. There are two important commands that you can use to get information about yourself.

The first command will list all the objects that you are currently carrying around and how much money you have on hand.

Just as you can look at things in a room you can also look at things you are carrying:

      This magical map shows you where you are in the CC. 
                Use 'tear map' to get rid of it.
                                  
     *********      CENTRAL       CASTLE       *********
    *Tower  of*-------------|   |-------------*Tower  of*
    * Dragons *--+--------+-|   |-+--------+--* Justice *
    *         *  | Post   |       | Castle |  *         *
     ****   **   | Office |       |  Shop  |   **   ****
     | |         |        |       |        |         | |
     | |         +---  ---+       +---  ---+         | |
     | |                                             | |
     | +-------+                             +-------+ |
     | | Quest |   Square  Square   Square   |  Pub  | |
     | |           of      of       of               | |
     | | Hall  |   Gossip  Arrivals Trades   |       | |
     | +-------+                             +---+   + |
     | |                    _____                |   | |
     | |                   /-----\               +---+ |
     | |           +------o o   o o------+           | |
     ****   **    / Adventurers    |      \    **   ****
    *         *   | Guild    >X<          |   *         *
    *Tower of *---+-----------------------+---*Tower of *
    * Lords   *-------------------------------*the Spire*
     *********                                 *********
                   >X< = You are here.

The second command will give you detailed information about your character and how you feel:

You are level 1 and extremely far from raising your stats.
You are physically feeling very well and mentally exhausted.
You are puny, stiff, feebleminded, sickly, gullible and abhorrent.
You are 3 minutes 36 seconds old.
You are neutral and touchy (0 deaths and 0 kills).
You are unencumbered.
Wimpy set: high.
You have 30 coins.

We will explain what all of this means later on.
For now let's focus on communicating.

One of the reasons muds can be so much fun is the fact the you are not playing alone. A whole range of people from all over the world are playing with you. When you wander around the rooms you will run into them. There is a wide variety of commands that make it possible to interact with other players. We'll deal with the most important ones here.

First of all the 'say' command. You can type any text you like after the say command. After hitting 'Enter' everybody who is present in the same room as you will be able to see the text that you typed.

Other people in the room will still see what you said, but they will also notice that you were saying it to Eddy. If for instance Ydde says something to Eddy you will see:

So far so good. You now know how to talk to people in the same room. You can also talk to people that are not in the same room, as long as they are connected to the game. To do this, you use the 'tell' command.

Using the tell command, (normally) only the person to whom you address the message can see it. If you try to send a tell to somebody who is not connected to the game you will see the following line:

Note: It will cost you a bit of mental power to use tell. More details regarding mental later on.

You can also use the 'novice' channel, which is accessible to players up to level 3 and where older players (level 13 and above) can answer your questions.

Players or wizards answering you on the novice channel will have their names prepended with Helper and Wizard respectively:

To emote on the novice channel, add one more 'e' to the channel command (rule of thumb for most channels in the game), followed by your emote.

If for whatever reason you get stuck with commands or run into game errors, you can use a special command 'wizcall'. The text you type after 'wizcall' will be broadcast to all coders that are currently connected to the game.

Note: Coders are only allowed to help you if you experience game errors or if you have questions with using certain commands. They cannot help you get things or find places. Questions like that should be asked to other players.

Last but not least, you can communicate over various channels. Depending on what channel you use some people will hear it and others won't. For instance, if you join a guild you will get access to that guild's channel. Anything you say on that channel will be heard by all your fellow guild members. One channel is special in that everybody currently connected will hear it: 'shout'. Shout is, however, very expensive to use - it requires a lot of mental. Also, excessive use of the shout channel is usually frowned upon.

This should get you started on communications. Once you settle a bit you might want to look into the following commands: reply, telll, telle, ', ,, shoutl, shoute, whisper.

As a new player you start out, no disrespect :), as a little and rather weak character. Your character is made up out of 6 different statistics (stats). These stats are the following:

Note: Not each and every raise in a particular stat will lead to a new description. However, each and every raise will improve your ability in that area.

In order to grow as a character you need to increase your stats. You can do that by earning 'experience'. Experience can be earned by either fighting 'monsters' or by solving 'quests'. 'Quests' are puzzles that you can solve throughout the game. More about quests later on. 'Monsters' are computer controlled livings that can talk, walk and fight just like you can. They are also often referred to as NPCs (which stands for non-player characters).

How to fight NPCs is described in the next chapter, for now it's important to know that you gain experience from it. After you have successfully defeated a number of opponents, you will have earned enough experience to increase one of your stats. In order to check if you have earned enough experience yet, use the score command described earlier. The first line of the score command will show something like:

The first line in the score command will always inform you of how far you are from raising your stats.

To raise a stat you have to go the 'Adventurers guild'. This room is located 1 south from the Square of Arrivals (SoA) where you started when you logged on. (It is the room where you got your newbie book and map.)

So now you know what you need to make your character better. Let's have a look at how to actually go about doing it.

When you engage in combat your 'physical' health becomes extremely important. If your physical health drops below 0, you die. Dying sounds rather drastic and to some extent it is. Dying does not mean that you will lose your character. It means that you character will lose a part of the experience you have earned. This is something almost every player will experience over time, but also the main thing everybody tries to avoid. When you are engaged in combat, always keep a sharp eye on your physical state.

Before you start to think about fighting, you should know about a very important command. Type the following command:

Syntax: wimpy <setting> or wimpy <direction>
Valid settings: off,very low,low,medium,high,very high.
Valid directions: Any obvious exit.
Check 'help command wimpy' for further information.

The wimpy command is a life saver. Depending on how high you have your wimpy set it will automatically make you run away if your physical drops below a certain point.

Note: Wimpy does not ALWAYS work, so you should never rely fully on wimpy to save you. Wimpy is intended to help you when you are having a bad network connection.

By setting your wimpy in a certain direction, the wimpy command will attempt to first make you run away in that direction.

You can always check your current wimpy settings in the output of the score command.

Another important thing to think about before rushing into combat is protecting yourself. You can imagine that when you walk around without any armour, you will be an easy prey for your opponents. Also running around without a weapon leaves you with nothing but your bare hands. Yes you can fight with your bare hands, but it is not very effective. So let's find ourselves some equipment to use. From the Square of Arrivals where you started, go 5 times north (if you have moved 1 south as described earlier, you need to go north 6 times). Here you will find:

The newbie guard will help new adventurers with some starting equipment. After the guard has given you some items, have a look at them with the 'inventory' command discussed earlier.

You are carrying:
Kindergarden Schooluniform.
Wooden butterknife.
A magical map of the Central Castle.
The newbie book.

The mere fact that you carry those items around does NOT mean that you are actually using them to aid you during combat. In order to use armour or clothing to protect you, you will first have 'wear' it. In order to use a weapon to fight with, you have to 'wield' the weapon.

You are carrying:
Kindergarden Schooluniform (worn on chest).
Wooden butterknife (wielded with one hand).

Note the part (worn on chest). Your body consist of a number of bodyparts like head, neck, chest, legs etc. The uniform is worn on your chest. This covers your chest and you will not be able to wear another armour on your chest. You can however still wear other armours, for instance boots. Some armours will protect more bodyparts than just the one they are worn on. To check how well protected you are, use the following command:

Protected bodyparts:
Head :
Neck :
Chest : schooluniform
Back :
Arms :
Waist :
Legs :

At this point you don't have to worry too much about not having all bodyparts protected. Realize that the chest is one of the biggest bodyparts you have and thus opponents are most likely to hit you there.

We have already mentioned that physical is really important to watch during combat. To assist you in that there is a special command (hp) that will toggle your health bar. This bar was set on for you when your character was created. Whenever your current physical or mental state changes you will see a health bar like this:

If you now 'look' you will notice a corpse lying on the floor in the room. This corpse will hold anything your opponent had on him when he was alive. You can now takes those items from the corpse. This is how you can find new equipment to use or how you can make money. Use the following command to get items from something (in this case a corpse):

If you are still standing next to the newbie guard, you can walk east to enter an area that is well suited and safe for young players to hunt in. You may actually find the viper used in this example. Maybe you should go have some fun now and return to this page later. :)

During combat you will be hurt by your opponent and may need to heal before you can fight again. When you are not fighting, you will automatically heal slowly over time. You can speed up this process by either eating food or by drinking. You may find opponents that will carry some food or drinks for you to use after you killed them, but most of the times you will have to find a pub where you can buy drinks. If you look at the map you are carrying, you will see a pub that is located in the Central Castle.

Note: The pub owner will charge you for your drinks, so you will need to have money to pay for them!

If you look at the map again, you will also see the shop. In the shop you can sell items that you looted from corpses.

Quest are basically puzzles. It's up to you if you will solve quests; and, if so, which of the over 60 we currently have you will choose. Solving a quest will reward you with experience and it will affect your 'brutality'. Your brutality is a rating that's based on your total experience vs your quest experience. The worse the rating is, the less experience you will gain from killing monsters. So even though solving quests is not required, it will help you a lot in advancing.

A list of all quests is written down in the questbook which can be found 2 west from the Square of Arrivals. Or, you can read it on the website. The questbook will give you information about the different quests that are available and (if you are logged on with your account) it will show you which ones you have solved.

Before you stop playing, you are strongly advised to sell any items you are carrying. When you leave the game, any items you carry will fall to the floor and won't be in your inventory when you log on again. Any experience or money you have however will be saved. To leave the game type:

One of the things you will have to do (after playing a bit) is determine if you want to join a guild - and if so, which one. You start the game being a guildless adventurer. Adventurers have no special abilities such as the casting of magical spells. Each of the guilds in Midnight Sun has distinct abilities based upon different themes. Almost all players will join a guild as it greatly enhances their abilities. As long as you are below level 5, you can switch guilds for free. After that you will pay an experience penalty for leaving a guild.

To join a guild you will have to accomplish a small task (a puzzle or quest) to actually make it into the guild. Feel free to ask people about their guild before picking the one you like.

Besides this document there is a range of other sources you can turn to for help. The first source is the help system. Midnight Sun has an advanced help system that is available both inside the game and on this website (you need to be logged in to access it). The very first help page you should read is:

This will explain how the help system works and how you can use it. As an extra remark here: If the text exceeds 25 lines, the output is interrupted so it won't scroll off your screen. You will then see the following line:

This line is an input prompt. When in this mode, you cannot type 'normal' commands. If you hit the enter button, the next 25 lines will be shown. If you type q followed by Enter, you will stop showing the document and will return to the normal prompt where you can type commands again.

It's our advice that you also have a look at the website version of the help. Simply going over all the commands that are available to you will teach you a lot of what is possible. No need to do this right away, but going there at some point is not a bad idea.

Since this is a multiplayer game, there are a lot of other people besides you, so the second place to look for help is other players. All of them started out just like you and had to learn how to play the game. Don't hesitate to ask them for advice. You will find that most are willing to answer your questions.

The last group you can turn to for help are the immortals. In the end they are just players like you are, but they have a different task. They no longer play the game, but develop code for it. It's not allowed for wizards to tell you where to find places and they also cannot give you things. However, if you have questions about commands or game concepts, they are a useful resource.

Congratulations, you made it to the end of this guide. Now you are ready to enter the realms. Have fun!