So, you've MUDed before, you understand the basic commands - No biggie. First, just read the room description in your starting room, then type: autoexit. From here, head east and simply continue along the path, reading through the descriptions.
Remember! HELP RULES, HELP LAW. Ignorance is no excuse.
After you've finished with this starting zone, either head down or recall, and from there just say "take me home", which will transport you to the newbie zone. Head downwards, and kill the monsters beneath you, then back up and to the north. You'll find yourself in the Dinosaur Zone, where you can wander around bashing weak mobs for decent experience points til' your hearts content.
Now, hey, how bout some better armor? This stuff from the dinos is a little poofy. At this point, it may be a good idea to use the newbie channel and ask someone to send you a 'pill of soulblade', which you can eat to create weapons. Or, you can simply learn the Soulblade spell yourself, for 5,000 exp, and cast it. Alright. Either return to the beginning of the Newbie Zone or recall and say "take me home" again, and from there head west and north. You'll find yourself in the Elysium. Wander around in there and kill each ghoul for their pieces of newbie equipment, it's really nice stuff. Warning:Suggested HP for hunting ghouls is roughly 500.
You're now on your way to becoming one of The Final Sunset's top killers. Keep at it. ;)
Now, let's see. You've never MUDed before, or maybe once or twice but you're still pretty shaky on the concepts. MUDs are made out of thousands of "rooms" with "room names" and "room descriptions." The long bit of text that just popped up to ya' is the room description of the room you've started out in.
In Vampire Wars: The Final Sunset, you can move six directions, up, down, west, north, east, south, but not in all rooms. The rooms on MUDs are a lot like real-life rooms. You walk east in all of 'em, you'll walk into a wall most of the time. So, to see where the exits for the room you're currently in, type autoexit, and then type look. Look brings up the room name, the room description and any objects, players or mobs in the room with you - and now it also shows you exits.
In the first room, you'll notice two exits, east and west. You'll want to head west initially, and read what each room description says, they're very informative and will supply you with the information you need to get goin'. Any questions you have, you can simply type: newbie
Think you've got the hang of it after reading those room descriptions and maybe voicin' a few problems on the newbie channel? Absolutely great. You can now refer to the "New to Vampire Wars?" section to get you going on hunting.
Mob: Mob means "movable object." These are the monsters and critters that inhabit the MUD; some are cute bunnies with floppy ears, others are winged dragons that could obliterate you in a single fireball.
PK: PK stands for playerkill, this is when one player kills another. Vampire Wars: The Final Sunset has a rather heavy PK element, but you won't have to worry about it for a while.
GM/Grand Master: As you've probably noticed by now, people on the MUD are constantly trying to "GM this stance, GM that weap". What this means is that they want to achieve maximum proficiency in either the stance mentioned or the weapon.
GS/Grand Sorcerer: Grand Sorcerer is the same as Grand Master, but for spell colours. When you achieve Grand Sorcerer in all colours (red, purple, yellow, green) you get a number of bonuses, which include the ability to teleport MUDwide instead of area-wide, random super-damaging spell attacks, the ability to portal across the entire MUD.
Decap/Cap: When one player decaps (decapitates) another, he does just that - knocks their head off to add to their status.
Mort: When you're morted, you're at -10 health, unable to move, speak, stand, cast heal on yourself, etc. You just have to wait for it to work it's way back up to 1. NOTE: You can only decapitate someone if they're mortally wounded.
Stake: When you stake someone (a vampire) it makes them mortal again, they lose all their Vampiric powers, disciplines, and are kicked out of their Clan. This can be fixed by simply getting rebitten into the clan, but it's still a pain to train your disciplines again.
Discipline: Different sets up Vampiric powers. (help discipline)
Home: Your home room is where you recall to, you can set it to somewhere elsewhere then Midgaard by entering the room you want it in and typing: home here.
Recall: Teleports you to your home room.
Avatar: When you reach twenty years of age, (6 mud hours after 17 years old, which is where you start) you can, if you should so desire, train avatar. This makes it possible for you to join a Vampire Clan, to playerkill (and to be playerkilled). When you're an Avatar you don't use up movement points, you don't get hungry/thirsty, and mobs cannot kill you.
Questing: See Questing section.
Experience: When you kill monsters, you gain experience points, which can be used to train a number of things, hp, mana, move, spells, etc.
Torso: Now, this is -not- fun. Being torso'd is when one or more players attack you, mort you, then keep attacking you, often with different kinds of weapons, breaking 24 of your ribs, chopping off your legs and arms, snapping your spine, breaking your neck, cracking your skull, cutting your throat and gouging out your eyes. As you can imagine, this is -really- hard to heal up from. What you wanna' do is chat that you need body parts and someone to help you, and the chances are someone will take pity and come on over. Note: This is only done to people if you piss them off, or if their clan is at war with yours. If this happens for no reason at all, then the people/person who did it is a jack-ass, and will probably be dealt a similar punishment by other players.
Hitroll: The odds of you hitting the target you're fighting.
Damroll: How much damage you do is based on your damroll.
AC: Armor class, lower the better.
Status: A player's status is his playerkill to playerdeath ratio. If you've killed five players, and been killed by two, you probably have a status of three.
STFU : (ess tee eff yoo) There's not really to much confusion on this one, but I've seen it once or twice. What this stands for is 'shut the fuck up'. If someone says this to you and they're stronger then you, then you might wanna close your trap. If they're weaker then you, go bloody annhilate them.
Commonly Used Words and Definitions
Remember, you can always message other players for help - Just because some of us are Vampires doesn't mean we're not friendly.