Guide to The Basics

### How does it work?

TorilMUD is played by entering a series of commands and arguments, that result in output from the game in the form of text relating what your commands, or actions have done to the world around you. This is the premise of this type of game.

#### Movement

Movement in it's most raw form is done simply by entering one of the 6 available directions as a command.

* North, East, South, West, Up, and Down

Movement costs Movement Points, and the cost of moving can change depending on environmental factors, like Terrain, and Wind. Movement is represented on the Prompt display as a fractional number showing remaining/maximum movement.

There are other ways to move around the game as well. Such as:

* Entering a Portal
	+ Many objects in the game may act as a portal. The most common is simply described as a portal, but some "portals" or "teleportation devices" may appear as mundane objects, like doors, gates, crystal balls, etc. and may typically be interacted with by using verb-like commands, such as "Enter Door" "Jump Gate" or "Look Orb."
* Following a Player
	+ Typically in group scenarios, one or more players may "Follow" another player, who would then use standard movement commands to move around the game, and the following characters will simply move with them as they do, without requiring any input.
* Skills
	+ Some skills affect movement, in that they may hinder, or aid movement in some fashion.
		- Track - Will attempt to locate a nearby named target, such as a player or mob, and automatically move toward that target.
		- Shadow - A Rogue Skill that allows one to follow a target around, similarly to the normal use of "Follow," except that the shadowing character will follow 1 room behind, "attempting to tail without being seen."

#### Items and Equipment

Items are the bread and butter of improving your character. They provide boosts to things such as your armor class, your raw attributes (strength, dexterity, charisma, etc), your Hit Points, and Movement Points, Damage, etc.

Items can be obtained a number of ways:

* Buying from a Shop
* Killing mobs
* Completing quests

Generally as a new player you want to try to acquire as much armor class as you can. Contrary to most stat logic, Armor Class is better the more negative it is, as this number applies a negative modifier to the enemies attempt to hit you. From there you can build up stats like damage, and hit points.

Many different types of items exist in the game.

* Armor
* Weapons
* Bags (Containers)
* Food/Water
* Potions
* Spell Scrolls/Wands/Staves
* and many more...

#### Spellcasting

Spells and Powers go hand in hand, but this will be a basic instruction for new players on how the spell casting system works in Toril. Combat and Equipment Powers will be explained in the Combat section of this guide, and more detailed information might be found on the Powers page.

The 'Cast' system is what the game ran with for most of it's first 20 years or so. It's mostly irrelevant and is being phased out over time, as it has been replaced with the new 'Powers' system that was created to allow easier creation and handling of new spells and abilities for other big changes to the game. NPCs still use the 'Cast' system, but Players are almost entirely reliant on the new 'Power' system. They are essentially the same in practice, save for replacing Cast with Power in the command syntax, and the fact that Powers have a built in short alias that can be used to more easily cast a spell.

There are two systems within the Powers Framework that handle how spells are prepared and expended. One system pertains to the melee/spellcaster hybrid classes (Paladin, Blackguard, Ranger, Hexblade) and the other pertains to the full spellcaster classes (Mages and Priests).

Spells and Powers that you have access to can be seen by typing 'powers list' and information on a particular power can be found by typing 'powers info <power name>'. In both powers list, and powers info, the Alias for the power can be seen enclosed by square brackets [ ] following the name of the spell. For example, Magic Missile's alias is 'mg'. shown as [mg ] in powers list, or [mg] in powers info.

The hybrid classes have an allotted number of spellcasting charges available based on character level that can be used to cast any spell they have available of the appropriate Spell Circle. That charge begins to refill over several minutes (Actual time depends on the level of the spell slot used) as soon as the spell is cast, you can see the amount of time left for the next charge to refill by typing 'Spells'. It's important to know that all charges are renewed concurrently, not sequentially. That means that if a Paladin casts Healing Light (2nd Circle), and Holy Sword (3rd Circle) within moments of each other, both spell circles will begin recovering their charges at the same time, which differs from traditional spellcaster classes who prepare spells much quicker (seconds vs minutes), but one at a time in a sequential order. It's also worth noting, that spells of the same circle cast in relatively quick succession also cause both charges of that circle to regenerate concurrently. For example, if a paladin casts Healing Light, and 10 seconds later casts Healing Light, the 2nd charge will regenerate 10 seconds after the first.

Full spellcaster classes have a number of slots with which to prepare a list of predetermined spells which they can manage outside of combat. Priests (Druid, Cleric, Shaman) must 'pray' for their spells, and similarly Mages (Invoker, Illusionist, Enchanter, Elementalist, Necromancer, Lich) 'memorize' or 'mem' their spells before they can be used. This is done by typing 'pray/mem' followed by the name of the spell or the spell alias, the spell is then entered into a queue to be prepared for future use. You can see this queue as well as spells you already have prepared by typing 'pray/mem'. Once you have a spell, or several spells in the queue, you can 'rest' and 'pray/mem' to begin preparing them, or 'prepare/prep' which does both the rest and pray/mem in one command rather than two. The time remaining to prepare the next spell as well as to prepare up to a particular point in the preparation queue is denoted next to the name of the spell as seen when typing 'pray/mem'. The pray/mem commands are also used to view currently prepared spells, which are shown at the beginning of the output, sorted by spell circle. Once you have spells prepared, you can cast them as described in the next paragraph.

Regardless of which preparation method your class uses for spells, the execution, or casting process, is the same. Spells are cast by invoking them using the ***power '<spellname>' <target>*** syntax or using the built in alias of the spell in the ***<power alias> <target>*** syntax, which is arguably much simpler. Though some people prefer to use their own aliases which may conflict with other commands in the game or their own scripts and settings, thus the first syntax can be used to facilitate that need.

So lets go through an example of how to prepare to cast the mage spell Magic Missile on a Ferret that you might find in the game.

1. 'mem Magic Missile' or 'mem mg'
2. 'prepare'
3. wait for the spell to be prepared (when you see: You have finished memorizing Magic Missile.)
4. power 'magic missile' ferret -OR- mg ferret

Once you begin casting a spell, you simply wait for it to go off, different spells have different casting times. Longer casting times may cause a countdown to be displayed denoting time left to complete the spell, that is a repeating line of asterisks that gets shorter each time until the spell goes off.

NOTE: Sometimes when you memorize a spell, you might attempt to cast it and the game will tell you that you do not have that spell memorized. Check the name of the spell in the list on pray/mem, it should be in Proper Case. Meaning that the first letter of each word is capitalized. (i.e. Magic Missile, not magic missile) This is a bug caused by trying to queue the spell using shorthand (mag missile), which queues up the OLD cast version of the spell, which cannot be used by the new powers framework. If this is the case, simply "forget <spellname>" and memorize it using the full name of the spell (magic missile) and when it appears in your list in proper case it should work fine.