(Ab)usable features.

[Booger]

Back to today:

Since weight is something that affects you (fighting ability, loot carry ability, walking ability,...) it's good to carry as little as possible. I never walk around with food, since it does weigh a bit, you can go for a long time before getting hungry, and I get a much more varied and tasty bits from my prey.
Drink is a bit worse, though, especially since it doesn't last as long. But luckily the winery in Green Oaks can provide you with weightless wine. I have no idea how he manages it - some old family recipe? Very convenient. Just buy a hundred bottles and you can stay drunk for days. I'd suggest the apple wine, since it is the cheapest one.

If you rely on spells and enjoy non-alcoholic liquid, the cheapest is probably to use bottles or such, and fill up from a fountain or well or similar. However, if you want to minimize encumbrance and are prepared to pay a little, the pub in Green Oaks sells weightless water, tea & nectar.

I have yet to find any weightless food. Perhaps there are such things out there too?

For people in need of skulls or other body parts that should preferably weigh as little as possible, I can recommend Nikolon and Gastol in Sparkle library. They weigh only 0.12 kg each, and their body parts weigh (naturally) a lot less.

[Booger]

Genesis in the old days:

* The game accepted some special characters, one of chich was the delete-left character. So (for simplicity, I'll use "#" as this special character) you could eg "say #############You feel sick.".
This would show up, to others as "Booger says: ", which would immediately be deleted (if you had a slow link you could actually see this) and replaced with just "You feel sick."
Some simple "alias echo say #############%%" and you had your own echo-command, allowing you to eg "echo Death tells you: 'SOON YOU'LL BE MINE!'" or even "echo You die!"
This was more than certain clients could handle, so some people lost connection when I used this echo. Eventually it got fixed.

* One of the quests gave a book as reward. I think it had a couple of spells. You couldn't solve the quest more than once, but this was checked by seeing if you had that book or not. The book was no-drop, no-give etc, but if you really didn't want to have it, it had the option "tear book", which destroyed it... and then you could solve the quest again... and again... and again...

* Two other quests... actually puzzles. They gave quest xp but were so small they weren't considered real quests. You could solve them more than once (they respawned every hour or so), which the immortals knew and were ok with. One was some go-problems which might still be around. Anyway, after solving it a few times now and then, when passing by, a friend suggested some more focus on it. We created a character, Lysita, which automatically logged in every half hour and went to solve these two quests. Also picked up a few items that spawned on the ground, and sold them, before quitting.
We left her mostly alone, but checked in on her after three months. By then she was an "Adept", which might not seem too impressing today, but that was 1/3 of the xp needed to apply for immortalhood. So 6 more months and Genesis could have its first robot-made immortal. The sold items had given enough money, to max all skills, but the main target use would have been either to test dangerous things, or for PvP. Since all xp was quest-xp, dying would make no difference to her.
But a month later she just disappeared. No idea what happened. She was just gone. Well, easy come easy go. We just started a new one. Took a couple of weeks and then we got a mail from the immortals that either Lysita never sets her foot on Genesis again, or our computer club will be banned from Genesis.
Bye bye, Lysita.
EDIT: Found the puzzles. The go puzzles are in the middle of Hobbiton, Shire. The other puzzle was a broken sawmill in the north part of Hobbiton. Both puzzles can still be solved, but none give any xp (quest nor general).

[Ilrahil]

So load up with as much junk as you can carry, go to that nasty dragon that is just slightly too tough for you, hand over everything you have (except the gear you use for damage & protection yourself) and attack. Piece o' cake! And it would be both unfair and unrealistic if the npc:s would _not_ be affected by what they are carrying, so don't even try to change the rules for them.
And this, people, is why npc:s no longer accept gifts from strangers (if you find one that does, try overload him and see if he becomes easier to kill).

You can still do this with at least one big npc, by piling corpses around that they then pick up.

Edited to add: You still have to be big enough to move corpses.

[Booger]

And back to today:

Here's a little task for anyone who would like to try his/her own skills in finding (ab)usable features: the Amulet of Diminution!
This neat little item shows a lot of promise. (un)Fortunately it is very well coded. A number of possibilities (enter lowbie-portals, loot lowbie-boxes, training skills cheaper or over allowed max) have turned out to not work. A few things work that I have great use for but most of you probably don't care about (possibility to become hungry/thirsty fast, having a fixed con that can be used for testing health-related things).
Still, this amulet shows a lot of possibilities, for whoever can figure them out.
For those of you who don't know, this amulet can be bought at the Enchanter's Workshop in Sparkle. Putting it on will reduce your stats to a fixed, low number, and reduce a number of skills (combat-related) to superior layman. Stuffness, Soak, Intox, Moves and mana keep their values, unless they are higher than max, in which case they are set to max. So if you have everything at max, putting on the amulet will keep everything at max, but removing the amulet again will make you feel hungry, thirsty, mentally drained and more sober. Hp is kept at the same percentage of max, so if you are hurt when putting the amulet on, you will still be hurt, and when taking it off again you will also still be hurt.
Wearing imbuements that boosts your skills will have no effect on your skills, as long as you wear the amulet. Wearing imbuements that boosts your stats, though, will affect your stats. Whether this is intentional, overlooked, or unwanted but deemed too much work to bother fixing, I don't know.

So, can you figure out any way to (ab)use the powers of this amulet? I know one, which I will reveal later. It was poorly tested, and has been reported, so it might not work. But that's not important. What's important is to come up with ideas on how to use things, so give it a thought. Perhaps you can come up with something that nobody else have thought of?

[Booger]

You can still do this with at least one big npc, by piling corpses around that they then pick up.
Edited to add: You still have to be big enough to move corpses.

Ahh! I knew there'd be some creatures left that could be loaded up in some way.
Corpses range in weight from 3 grams to 105 kg (that I know of sofar), so it's just about finding the right bodies. And even at my level (Great adventurer) I can lift a corpse of 105 kg.

[Arcon]

When I was a squire I noticed a very strange way of conquering areas in Krynn. I mailed a couple of wizards and made a bug report about it, but I still think it hasn't been fixed. In short, I managed to conquer every area in Krynn in less then 5 min. And I think it is still possible. I am sure a lot of people knows about it.
Lets see if it gets fixed.

[Ilrahil]

It still is possible. You have to run through the areas you have conquered at arma to spawn your npc's or they can just be conquered. Navarre is aware of the system but I think he is leaving it until he revamps the conquer system.

[Strider]

Yes, this falls under everyone knows, most everyone enjoys and it is supposed to work this way, but I ask you all to at least entertain the notion that NPC discipline failure against attacking someone big enough is one of the more (ab)usable features against mobs and I believe that there have been some regional attempts at corrections.

From a pure game-play perspective, how do you argue in favor of portions of the world getting suddenly easier by removing the need to fight multiple opponents at a time to clear a room or the danger of stumbling into a fight for which one is ill prepared? Now, a strong argument can be made to stop NPCs from auto-attacking those outside their weight-class in order to potentially preserve them for smaller players, but this should neither allow one to pick apart a mob, nor protect one when one is lamed. Yes, I am arguing that if your health, mana, fatigue and perhaps even your equipment condition or sobriety should be considered when NPCs try to decide if they should try to pick you off.

From the in-world perspective, it often makes even less sense. Anything with enough imagination to be too scared to attack won't stand there while you're working your way down the line, it will either flee or take it's best chance at winning by ganging up on you as best they can. Similarly, any foe that would attack on sight, is more likely to do so when they see you at a disadvantage.

If corrections are implemented, taking your weaknesses into account is probably easiest and best done globally while mob behavior might be best left regional, perhaps with a couple easily added templates, like a) "always assist faction", b) "flee and stay gone", or c) "flee en masse to assistance". Admittedly, b and c pose their own issues.

[Alorrana]

I frequently abuse the hobbits in shire..

does that count ?

[Earth]

a) "always assist faction", b) "flee and stay gone", or c) "flee en masse to assistance". Admittedly, b and c pose their own issues.

Yeah...c) would be interesting.

Remember that scene from the third Matrix movie when Neo was fighting all those agent Smith clones on that basketball court until he had to flee by flying away? Would be interesting to see here in Genesis. The longer you stay the more creatures arrive. Eventually, they will probably wear you down...