Movement

Most movement in Elysium is that which occurs when moving between locations. To perform the most basic of operations as to move in a direction, you merely have to type the compass direction you wish to move in. There are twelve basic directions, 'north', 'south', 'east', 'west', 'northeast', 'southeast', 'northwest', 'southwest', 'in', 'out', 'up' and 'down'. These can usually be shortened to one or two letters, such as 'n' for 'north', or 'se' for 'southeast'. You may in your travels find other directions that these, but they are very rare.

Often movement is not in one of the standard directions, but is instead through a certain thing, such as a gateway. Whilst normal doors and city gates can be traversed using normal directions, some gateways and objects require you to 'enter <object>' in order to move through or into them.

There are numerous things which may prevent you moving; these include broken limbs, closed doors and being held or bound. There is usually a method to overcome these problems, the most important is that used to free yourself when held or bound. This is achieved by use of the 'struggle' command, which may take a few tries before you succeed in freeing yourself.

Movement takes up vitality, which you will recover slowly over time. Moving too fast will usually result in damage from exhaustion.

Finding Your Way

Until you learn your way around Elysium, you will find the 'directions' command very useful. This command can be used to tell you which direction to go to get to particular landmarks, such as a guild tutor or the gates of a nearby city.

Using Doors

Some locations will be partitioned by doors, which may be opened and closed by typing 'open door <direction of door>' and 'close door <direction of door>'. That is if they are not locked. You can only lock and unlock a door which you have the key to. 'unlock door <direction of door>' and 'lock door <direction of door>' allows you to do just that. You can automate the process of unlocking and locking doors by setting the option 'options doors relock'.

If you ever end up with lots of keys, you may want to inscribe a cryptic description of what door the key opens. type 'keydesc <inventory number of key> <description>'. For example, 'keydesc 1041 magic' would inscribe the key in your inventory with id number 1041 with 'magic' - which may be your guildhouse at the Sorcerors of Light.

To copy a key which you have, you will need to ask the owner of a metalsmith industry.

Your Inventory and Objects

Most objects in Elysium can be manipulated and moved using a standard set of commands. 'get <object>' will allow you to move objects from your current location to your inventory, 'drop <object>' will similarly move objects from your inventory to your location, 'inventory', which can be shortened to 'inven' or simply 'i' will list the objects which you are holding. You can also use 'put <object> in <object>' to place one object into another, and 'give <object> to <person>' to pass objects around.

There is also a command, 'id', which lists the identification number of each object in your location. This number can be used instead of the object name, and is useful when trying to distinguish between two almost identical objects. The command 'id inven' performs the same task on your inventory. Alternatively you can also refer to items as 2 or 3 etc to refer to the second or third example of that item, e.g. 'get backpack 2' will pick up the second backpack on the floor.

Another commonly used command is 'examine <object/player/creature name>', which allows you to more closely inspect items and people. This command often reveals interesting details you might otherwise be unaware of.

Seeing Your Location

The most important command for seeing around is the 'look' command. This allows you to surmise the location you are in, including the directional exits and objects present. Adding a direction after the command, in the form 'look <direction>' will allow you to look in that direction. You can find out the kind of terrain you are standing within by use of the 'glance' command. The terrain you stand upon can determine many things, such as what kind of creatures are likely to live here.

The other important aspect in this area is the 'brief' command. You invoke this with either 'brief on' or 'brief off', which will turn the brief mode on and off respectively. When brief mode is on, you will not see the longer descriptions of the rooms.

Status

The 'status' command can tell you lots of important and sometimes essential information about yourself. These include your health and mana levels, as well as your maximum levels in those areas, certain information about your city, order and guild status, your hunger, thirst and tiredness levels, your age and date of birth, the language you are speaking, and much more. It is usually advisable to check your status often. A more succinct status showing only your health and mana can be seen by typing 'vitals'.

Listing Other Players

A number of commands are available for listing other players who are active in Elysium, the most basic of which is 'who', which lists all other players. Most of the other player listing commands follow the basic format of a letter prefixing the word who which indicates what kind of players the command would list. These include 'cwho', where the c stands for citizens, which lists citizens of your city, 'owho', where the o stands for order, which lists other members of your religious order, and 'gwho', where the g stands for guild, which lists other members of your guild.

Skills and Abilities

You can list your skills by use of the 'skills' command, and by typing 'skills <skill name>' you can list the individual abilities which you know within that skill. You can find the syntax of how to use most abilities just by typing the name of the ability, though some skills require a prefix before the ability name. When this applies, there will be a message telling you so when you type 'skills <skill name>'. If you are uncertain about how to use the abilities in a particular skill, typing 'help <skill name>' will generally give you more information

When you first start out in Elysium, you will only know the skill 'General'. To view the abilities you know within the General skill, type 'skills general'. You will be presented with a list of abilities, which you simply need to type the name of to use. For example, 'diagnose' will be one of those listed, and by typing it, you will give yourself a brief diagnosis of any obvious ailments.

As you live out your life within Elysium, you accumulate lessons, which may be seen by typing 'status' or simply 'lessons'. You may use these lessons in studying with either a guild tutor, if you belong to a guild, with another Elysium player, or one of the wandering NPC tutors.

Guild tutors only know the skills which the guild you belong to teaches, although they are always available to teach you, within the confines of the guild house. Players on the other hand can only teach what they know. Wandering NPC tutors can usually teach one skill, which is often a common skill, which you can have as many as you want, though core skills are limited to six skill groups.

Learning from a Guild Tutor

To learn from a guild tutor, you must first choose which ability amongst the skills he or she teaches, you wish to learn. Type 'learn list from <skill name>' while in the same location as your guild tutor to see a list of abilities you may learn in the near future. Next to each ability description, it tells you the number of lessons required to learn that ability. If you do not have enough lessons, you must wait a while until you are ready to learn such a complicated spell or manoeuvre.

Once you have found an ability that you wish to learn amongst those on offer to you by the guild tutor, type 'learn <ability name> from <skill name>' and your guild tutor will teach you all you need to know about that ability, removing the cost in lessons from your accumulated lessons. The main guild tutor who is usually based in the guild house will not charge for this service, though guild heads can place additional guild tutors in other locations, and these may charge a small amount of coins.

Learning from Another Player

If the guild tutor does not teach what you would like to learn, you should try to find a player who would be willing to teach you the secrets of his profession. Not all players will be willing to teach you, and some may be restricted from doing so by their guilds, but if you find a friendly and willing teacher most skills can be taught in this way.

To learn from another player, you must study with them by typing 'study <player name>'. The player you wish to teach you will then either accept your plea, or reject it. Once the study session commences, the player who is teaching should type 'teach <ability name> from <skill name>'. You will then be shown the ability name that the teacher is willing to teach you. You may accept or decline his offer. You may learn not only new abilities, but also new skill groups from a player, and so he is not limited to teaching you abilities within the skills that you already know of. Remember, that learning from a player still uses up some of your accumulated lessons, and costs 50% more in lessons than if you were learning from a guild tutor, since players are not as skilled at teaching.

Communication

The most wide spread method of communicating is used to send messages to all those in your present location. This is achieved by typing 'say <message>'. Other commonly used methods are 'shout <message>' which will allow all in Elysium to hear your message, and 'tell <player name> <message>' which will send your message to an individual person, regardless of where they are in Elysium. If you want to talk out of character you can use span class="redtext">'ooc <message>' which works similarly to shouting.

You can express yourself using not only words, but also emotions. There is no definitive list of all the emotions you can portray, although 'help socials' lists a number of them. One example of an emotion would be 'smile', which will cause everyone in your location to see you smile.

If you wish to design your own, custom emotion, type 'emote <emotion you wish to show'. For example, if you were called Wysyx , and you typed 'emote claps his hands merrily, and jumps up and down.', everyone in your location would see: Wysyx claps his hands merrily, and jumps up and down.

You could also use 'ems <emotion you wish to show>', to show ownership. For examine, if Wysyx typed 'ems teeth chatter in the biting cold winds.', then everyone in his location would see 'Wysyx's teeth chatter in the biting cold winds.'

Emotes can also be directed. If Wysyx was in a room with Ghoti and Pewter, and Wysyx typed 'emote smiles, and congratulates /pewter', Pewter would see: 'Wysyx smiles and congratulates you', while Ghoti would see 'Wysyx smiles and congratulates Pewter'.

When speaking to those in your own location, you may choose to speak to them in a different language to normal. You can list languages you know by typing 'languages', and may swap between languages by typing 'speak <language>'. Everyone understands the language of common, whilst racial languages are in general only understood by those races which speak them, although it is possible to learn another language.

There are also four special methods to communicate with the gods of Elysium; Two of them are in-role methods, and are 'wish <message>', which sends a message to all gods to read at their leisure, and 'pray <god name> <message>', which leaves a message for the specified god. These methods may be used to reach a god even if they are not present in Elysium.

The other two methods are 'bug <bug description>' and 'idea <idea description>', which are used to submit bug reports and ideas respectively.

The BB

Elysium contains a Bulletin Board (known as the BB), which is split into several categories:

General

Any player may post messages onto the GeneralBB, although the message itself should be in-role (written as your character, not as a player). Newcomers are advised to start reading from the last message onwards, unless they wish to indulge themselves in some of Elysium's history, since the GeneralBB contains many messages which were posted a long, long time ago. The GeneralBB is often used to discuss politics, advertise new shops and services, and talk about events within Elysium in general.

News

The NewsBB is unique in that only the administration of Elysium may post messages there. It contains descriptions of new features which are added to Elysium, and updates on the rules of Elysium. It is highly recommended that new players read the NewsBB from start to finish, since you may inadvertantly break a rule which is described there, and ignorance of a rule is not accepted as an excuse for breaking it.

City

Each city has its own CityBB, which any citizen may post into. If you are a Karinthian citizen, you will only be able to post and read from the Karinthian CityBB. Usually, the CityBB contains matters of interest to citizens only, such as new city laws, policy announcements and how events affect the city.

Order

There are many gods and goddesses within Elysium, and each deity has an Order of mortals which help carry out his or her aims. The OrderBB is a discussion forum for an individual Order. Members of Gralnak's Order may only read and post on Gralnak's OrderBB for example. The OrderBB usually contains discussion of Elysium's events, and how they relate to the order, as well as commands from the God or high ranking members of the Order.

Guild

The final type of BB is the GuildBB. Each guild in Elysium has its own GuildBB which members of the guild can read and post to. The GuildBB contains players discussion of the guild, and ideas for how the abilities which the guild teaches may be used. Any rules enforced by the guildhead would also be posted here.

Using the BB

To enter the BB, type 'bb'. You will need to wait about 10 seconds, before the menu comes up giving you the current status of the BB. It will list how many messages there are in each of the above categories, and which messages you have read up to. If one of the above categories does not appear, such as Order, that will be because you do not belong to an Order.

If this is your first time within the BB, you will be placed within the GeneralBB. You may switch categories at any time by typing '<category>bb', e.g. 'newsbb'.

To go backwards and forwards through the messages, type 'next' and 'previous'. To read a specific message number, type 'read <message number>'. To post a message into the current category you are within, type 'post'. Make sure you are within a relevant category to the message you wish to post; Don't post messages which you intend to be read by citizens of your city into the GeneralBB, they should be in the CityBB.

To leave the BB, type 'quit'.

Elysium Mail

The final way in which a player may communicate is through the use of the Elysium mail system. It costs 10 gold coins to mail someone, but its advantage over the other communication methods is that the person you are mailing does not need to be online. They will be told that your message is waiting to be read when they next enter the world, and may keep it stored away for future reference if they so wish. Type 'mail <player name>' to start mailing that player. Instructions on how to use the mail system will be given after you type the command.

Reading Mail & Deleting It

When you first log in, if you have new mail waiting to be read, you will be warned. To see what mail you have in your mailbox at any time, type 'checkmail'. To read a message type 'readmail <message number>'. Unless you wish to keep the message for future reference, it is advised that you delete it using 'deletemail <message number>', so as not to clog up your mail box.

Interacting with NPCs (Non-Player Characters)

NPCs may manifest themselves in many forms. Put simply, an NPC is a creature which is not controlled by a player. Depending on the NPC, you can attempt to communicate with them by typing 'greet <npc name>'. Not every NPC will talk back - if you tried to greet an crocodile, you shouldn't expect much of a civilized response.

Refusing Gifts

Should you wish to not accept any items or gold which is handed to you by another player, you can type:

'refuse money' and 'refuse items'

To accept either one more type:

'accept money' or 'accept items'

Leaving Elysium

When you wish to leave Elysium, type 'quit'. It takes roughly ten seconds before your character will leave the land; This is to prevent players from quitting in the middle of combat. If you simply disconnect your telnet/mud client, you will still be forced to wait the ten seconds before your character leaves, except you will have no control over them during this time. For that reason, it is highly recommended that you type 'quit', rather than disconnect.

ANSI Colour

Elysium has a ANSI colour system which can be experienced by those with telnet or mud clients with ANSI colour. To determine whether your client has ANSI colour, type 'ansi test'. If you see a line of colours, then type 'ansi on' to turn ANSI colour on. It can be turned off at any time by typing 'ansi off'.

The Prompt

When you first start in Elysium, you will notice that when Elysium is ready to receive input from you, you will be presented with a > at the left of your screen. This is the prompt, and may be customized to show you your current health and mana (magical reserve) levels. Type 'prompt <prompt type>', where <prompt type> is a number between 1 and 3.

• Prompt 1: Basic prompt, showing neither health or mana.
• Prompt 2: This prompt gives you your current health level.
• Prompt 3: This prompt gives you your current health and mana level.

Changing Your Password

If you wish to change your password, type 'passwd <old password> <new password>'. Be careful with your password, for if you were to forget it you may lose access to your character.