From LSWiki

New player guide as I envision it. Don't know if I'll ever actually write this out properly but this is the outline.

I'm writing this guide partly as an attempt to coalesce and update the combined wisdom of Vet's Newbie Help, First Steps, Newbie Ramblings, Boggotin's Guide and my own personal experience into a format that's more appealing to strangers on the internet. And partly just because I have the arrogance to think I can do a better job than them.

This guide is aimed at being a first impression, linked from the front page, visible to randos who know nothing about LS. As such it should answer the most immediate questions at the very top. What is Lost Souls, Is it free, Will it try to fuck me with anti-consumer dark patterns, is it primarily PvP or PvE, why play a mud, why this mud in particular?

After the Immediately Pertinent Questions, we go into game mechanics in decreasing importance.

The first will be bare essential must reads, the information should be inline and immediate. This section is the most like our existing newbie guides, but substantially shorter. How to move, How to ask for help, How to look at things. Should be ~3 minutes to read, and should make sense to total strangers to muds.

The second section is something a little different from what most of our newbie guides do. I want to make a series of annotated chargen command blocks that make thematically bland, but immediately useful characters that can tackle low tier content with as minimal input as possible. I haven't experimented enough with this to verify, but I believe it should be possible to go from atman menu, to proficiently killing hmb bravos with zero player decisions.

The next three sections should act as bulleted lists of brief help articles topped by a recommended aliases list, ideally with good wiki interconnectivity. Will experiment with wiki formatting, each of them could potentially be a category. A lot of the entries in this list will already have in game help files, which will definitely be included in these docs, if I could up the help file interconnectivity and OOC accessibility I would, but I don't get to do that so I'm doing it here.

The third section is a bare essentials guide to murder, basically covering all the incarnoi settings that affect combat and what to expect when you type the kill command. Strangers can skim this to get an idea of what combat looks like, new players can read it in depth to figure out how to stop sucking at it. Players not interested in murder can skip this section

The fourth section should cover every other game mechanic a player is liable to encounter on their first day. A stranger should get an impression like "wow this game's got a lotta stuff", but it should be brief enough for a first-day player to consult it whenever some relevant thing happens to them in game.

The fifth section will be an okay what next section that's more freeform. Basically what do I do? what's the point? what are my goals type stuff.

Basically I want this guide to hit three major audiences.

• I want total strangers who've never played LS, or any mud for that matter to look at it and go "wow looks interesting, lots of mechanics and interesting suff that modern/graphical games don't/can't do. perhaps I'll give it a shot.
• Brand new players should have the choice of either reading the guide in order and learning/inputting commands as they go, or of using a quickstart chargen to immediately have a guilded/specced/slightly trained character with several QoL aliases that can at least kick bill in the nuts without dying/being exhausted/stunned from pleasure/other hilarious but unintuitive emergent behaviours of intersecting systems of simulationist wankery.
• New players in their first couple weeks should use this guide as a launching page into many more topic-specific pages that help them figure out wtf they are doing and hero their first character.

Contents 1 What is lost souls? 1.1 How much does it cost? 1.2 How much time does it cost to play? 1.3 Is there permadeath? 1.4 What kind of game is lost souls? 1.5 Why play a MUD in 2021? 1.6 Why is LS the best game that never gets old? 1.7 How do I Start Playing? 2 Things you absolutely must know to begin playing 3 This guide is already too long, I want to kill something 4 Things that you probably need to know before you type kill 5 Things players will absolutely encounter pretty shortly after starting 6 Okay what now?

What is lost souls?

It's a mud from like, the early 90s or something? I dunno.

How much does it cost?

It is absolutely free to play.

There are lux options to make characters stronger which makes us theoretically p2w but only for certain definitions of winning.

-link to lux benefice section blahblah

How much time does it cost to play?

As much or as little as you want. There are a couple mechanics that time-gate character advancement. And a couple mechanics that require real-time maintenance. But they are completely optional. There are no FOMO exploiting dailies or anything like that.

Is there permadeath?

Only if you want there to be.

-link to section about death, lives, etc.

What kind of game is lost souls?

It's mostly a murderhobo simulator with a bit more emphasis on the simulator than most other games of its type. Character building is complicate, satisfy, and varied. There are many different flavour of murderhobo and a couple different flavours of pacifist.

Why play a MUD in 2021?

Because development is easier on a game with no graphics, and you can do much more interesting stuff that would be prohibitively expensive to ever animate.

Also maybe you like automation, scripting, etc. Or are blind, have a good imagination, or otherwise don't care about pictures.

Why is LS the best game that never gets old?

Because the developers put out great content. Lots of lore stuff or whatever. The game systems are deep, engaging, and crunchy af. The prioritization of simulationist wankery over gameplay experience. The small but engaged community of weirdos, I dunno.

How do I Start Playing?

mushclient, tintin++, cmud, terminal, I dunno

connect on lostsouls.org:23

Things you absolutely must know to begin playing

• neophyte/newbie, ooc, say, tell, players are helpful, ask them questions
• Don't kill stuff yet, you're not ready
• look, info, help
• movement, repetition, go, and determine location
• score

This guide is already too long, I want to kill something

I want to deviate from the typical newbie guide stuff here and make some pages with some copy/paste blocks that start from the atman menu, and end with a guilded/specced/equipped starter character with starter aliases and some quickwalks to murderhobo areas they can conceivably fight in, as well as some trainers to spend money at. Literally the only decisions they should make is which page they choose, and their name.

Things that you probably need to know before you type kill

Combat is automatic and realtime, it consists of you trading blows with your opponent(s) based on each of your personal combat settings. Guilds/associations/items and artifacts grant you access to more interesting activated powers, maneuvers, and even new combat modes.

• wield/hold/wear
• attacks/defenses and ratings
• skills and skill trainers
• specialty access
• combat settings (mode, effort, scatter, aim, strike, chase, hunting, resolve, flee)
• hp, show limbs and health, treat me/rest/meditate (what's my hp?)

Things players will absolutely encounter pretty shortly after starting

• character creation (race, size, homeland, attribute ranges)
• elude/stealth/holding weapons/flight/endurance (why am I so slow?)
• going places/getting unlost
• trainers/teachers and essential skills
• exploration (why did I just randomly level up?)
• term/depiction/filtering
• advancement attribute development, new specs
• money
• items and keeping
• quests
• death and dismemberment
• lives and permadeath
• languages (why wont this npc respond to me?)
• aliases (every section will have recommended aliases, but will also redirect to this, which is a whole ass other guide)
• hunger food/drink (why are my max hp/end going down and my max sp going up?)
• traveler challenges, and incarnoi bots
• traits/effects
• mental illness/afflictions
• identifying things and memory
• alignment/ethics
• show/help/report
• session/caption/description/personal lore
• scrying
• terrain following/safe movement
• set/show

Okay what now?

• using and contributing to this wiki
• Murder isn't nice and I don't like it, what is there to do?
• guilds/associations stuff
• Item availability (the good items) and artifact accessability
• empathic bonds
• character optimization for being real good at murderhobo
• lux stuff
• non companion management, particularly guildable ones