General Game Facts for Newbs

So you want to play Realms of Despair huh? You must hate yourself.

Gameplay

Leveling

• The game has tonnnns of worthless dead areas and gear that aren't worth your time.
  • Learning what is what will take you some time, as a lowbie, and again as an Avatar.

This can be fun, and I suggest leveling up a bit with your basic newb eq and then asking other for where to go explore to find some useful gear. Spend some time with that before worrying about really anything, just explore, have fun, find shit.

Right now the game is basically psuedo-broken as far as leveling is concerned. There's a few areas worth your time that you have to sit in and grind for a long time, it's not worth it to go around and try different areas/mobs. Just ask people where to go, the list of good places is quite short.

Avatar

At level 50 game play consists of one thing:

• Hack and Slash stuff for gear:
  • Some mobs permit you to have multiple characters logged in and helping (i.e. they have no ip check on characters)
    • This is calling being 'multi' or a mob being 'multiable' and there's lots of neat tactics you can do.
    • Example: Your mage casts immobilize on a mob while your 3 other characters whack it to death.
  • Some mobs DO check how many characters are connected from your IP and punish or slay you if you're not ip1.
    • You need to make friends, join a guild or order, and group up.

In the end-game, here's what the rest of us are doing:

• Have farmed and scribed and brewed up all the items, scrolls, and potions you will need. Store these on storage characters, or in your guild, order, or house.

• Have multiple sets of spellbots (mage and cleric triggered to cast spells on you) drag those around to different runs.

• Have least one of every Class character, plus special things based on align or 'paths' available to some classes.

• Have a ton of useful aliases and triggers. If you aren't going to do this, I hope you can type REALLY fast and your wife is either deaf or has already divorced you.

Then hack bigger mobs by yourself or with friends, over and over, for gear.

A Note On Scripting

Outright botting is not permitted, however, you can set up a shit fuck ton of aliases/triggers/macros/etc and really help yourself out. It significantly behooves you to do this. Aliases to recall, reset, restock, refavor, speedwalk places, switch gear, quaff potions, complete repetitive tasks faster than you'll ever be able to type, and automatically manage fighting. You can play without these, but you'll honestly be acting a fool compared to everyone else who's basically just mindlessly punching alises/macro's and letting triggers do the work while they watch old episodes of Star Trek TNG and scroll reddit on their phone.

Do NOT script a full automated bot, or anything that runs without you actually at the helm. Make your typing life easier, get reaction times to computational speeds, that's all.

Here's a handy trigger idea for leveling . . .

#TRIGGER {Your strike} {strike}

Characters

You are going to need to level EVERY class character, and really multiple of each. Ideally in your arsenal you have:

• Storage characters
  • Fighters (Warriors/Paladin/Rangers) have 25 STR and can carry 1000lbs. You'll need several.
• Mage+Cleric set to cast all the buff spells on you. Multiple sets are convenient to move around.
• One of every other class
• Specializations:
  • There are 7 Mage paths
  • There are 3 Cleric pathsand one you may want both devout and evil align of some.
• Eventually, 'armies' of 8 of a class you can walk around and wreck house with. (8 barbarians = "Barb Army")

Notably Barbarian is totally different. They have a different entrance area and 'hometown' so that's a change of pace for ya once you're sick of releveling the normal shit.

Stats

Your stats are going to end up being best set based on what equipment you can get as an Avatar. You'll likely have to remake characters with better stats once you get into the game and actually know what equipment you can get. A lot of people will tell you to set some stat high for a class, but then in the end, you find that there's ample equipment for that class with that stat and you're way too loaded on it, and should have put stats in other places that aren't supplemented by equipment as much. Anyways, its not a huge deal until you're into the game and have made a few characters so, just try your best for now. If people say to set stats like it actually matters, take that with a grain of salt until you're a more experienced player who knows more about what eq you will ACTUALLY be wearing as an avatar.

For example, Clerics need high Int and Wis, but all the cleric gear has tons of it, you actually don't need to set the base stats very high to max those.

Mechanics

The game is a hack and slash, and the 2 mechanics directly tied to combat that comprise the entirety of the gameplay as an avatar are quaffing heals, and issuing attacks. Combo with the mob/loot situation: "rare pops", and that all she wrote folks.

There ARE some puzzles in the game, some tricky business you have to read and figure out, but, that's the minority.

Healing

The healing mechanic is made difficult due to the fact that you become 'full' after quaffing potions. How many is based on your CON stat, but suffice to say its between 6 and 14, and historically, was 8. A lot of people still run on 8.

So you quaff 8 potions, and have drink from a magic spring. You'll make those with a potion/spell or stave. Spam a ton of heal commands and drink spring, over and over, until you beat the mob or die.

Attacking

The attack mechanic is made difficult due to the lag/wait state that happens after you attack. Different attacks cause different length wait-states, between 1-5 seconds, during which you are taking damage, and cannot do anything else.

Loot

Mobs exist in static locations, and have static loot. However, they have pops. Sometimes fairly often, sometimes extremely rare. The end-game becomes killing a mob 300 times to get that rare pop.

Grind

SOooooo that means that MOOSTT of the time you will doing this:

superhit dragon
....You are stuck in wait-state for between 1-5 seconds, taking damage.....
heal
heal 
heal
heal
heal
heal
heal
heal
drink spring
superhit dragon again
....repeat for 5 minutes...

The Dragon is DEAD!!
<no pop>

Despair....

Reset and Repeat.

Real Examples

In practice, you'll be jumping around your different chars to do nearly anything. Here's some examples:

Multi Example

So, here's an idea of how you'll be using your many characters in the end to go get some junk:

• Step 1: Take a mage/cleric/warrior/barbarian character as a group out to the area (fully stocked)
• Step 2: Use the mage/cleric to buff up your warrior and barb
• Step 3: Send the mage inside to sleep a few mobs, back him out to your camp.
• Step 4: Send your barb inside, past the sleeping mobs, to mob #1. Kill him. Return to camp.
• Step 5: Send your warrior in, do some commands to get a hidden key or two to get deeper into the area
• Step 6: Use the warriors 'stun' command to fight and kill the mobs you are after. Hope for pops. Return.
• Step 7: Wait for the area to repop, then repeat this whole process.

Run Example

• Step 1: Make 6 friends.
• Step 2: All stock up and head out, bringing spellbots, storages, killers, etc to the run camp spot.
• Step 3: Log clerics to kill the first guy
• Step 4: 5 Log warriors, solve the puzzle and go kill the second guy, while 1 guy maps a maze
• Step 5: Log some other class and all meet up inside the place
• Step 5: One guy does some crap to open the path forward
• Step 6: Kill guy3, return to camp.
• Step 7: Log some other class and run back in
• Step 8: Fight guy4, halfway through, some people flee out and switch to other characters
• Step 9: Hope for sweet pops
• Step 10: Despair. Repeat.

On The Subject Of Gold

We have a problem with gold in this game. Well, no, the game doesn't have a problem but some people do.

The only true need for gold is to buy potions.

Let's say that again, this time much slower and louder.

THE ONLY TRUE NEED FOR GOLD IS TO BUY POTIONS

Remember these words.

There used to big economy in this game, when we had a player base of 300 people on at all times. People would farm different gear, and buy/sell stuff for gold all the time. That was 20 years ago. Since then, everyone left, everything got documented, and mostly everyone returned to just playing the game directly themselves, getting their own stuff, using all their characters and all the available tactics to do so fairly easily. There's not really many secrets anymore, there's far more tactics that can be used, most gear is quite attainable at this point.

Some people are stuck in the past, and spend a ton of time farming gold and buying gear. Like, VASTLY more time farming gold than going to get gear.

As a new player, and especially as a returning player, you may perceive this and think buying gear is normal and the way to go. Stop right there.

Yes, you'll probably need to farm a tiny bit of gold to fund your potions, but you CAN gear yourself and you CAN farm mobs with decent loot and decent gold. Farming lowbie mobs mindlessly for gold is a huge waste of your time this day in age.

If you can make friends and join a running group, you won't need gold at all. You'll go kill for literally everything you want, and sell whatever you have left over, and be a billionaire relatively quickly.

I returned to the game after 20 years. I used to farm gold and was afraid to try stuff on my own. Its why I quit the game in the first place cuz that was boring as fuck. When I came back I decided to say screw it and start throwing myself at mobs for gear instead of farming gold. I figured why not, I'm not really dedicated to this game anymore and mays well just see whats possible. Guess what - everything is fucking way easier than you think. Try shit solo, or make some friends and jump in. I ended up running with multiple different groups, having all kinds of cool gear, selling a lot extra, and quickly got rich without ever farming a single gold coin.

Don't fall into the 'buy stuff' trap. The game is a hack and slash to obtain gear - that's the fucking game, go play it.

Most of the mob notes on Rodpedia are super out of date. There's mobs on there that says a mob requires 1 tank, 3 hitters, 2 clerics that you can easily kill on a solo Pally. I highly suggest you just start throwing yourself at things. Provided the area is not no-supplicate, who cares, go try, go die, and figure it out. THAT'S THE FUCKING FUN OF THE GAME.

At no point did the creators of DikuMUD or Thoric say "Here's what I'm going to create! A game where people can go slaughter level 10 mobs for gold repetatively and then buy loot! It'll be soooo fuuunnnn!". Nope. The game is killing mobs for loot. You should try it.