Genesis Forums

Hello everyone,

The new guy here again, trying to understand the game.

I have a few questions with which you all could perhaps help me:

1) How do the quests work ? Is there a 100% chance that the available quests from the orbs are fully functional code-wise ?

2) How does quest-exp affect overall growth ? I know about the brute system, but still would like to have more information regarding growth. Meaning, is it possible at all to reach, for example, the highest level (myth) with the quests in the game ? I've been reading the forums for any information about it, and read that some quests gave more qexp in the past - is this something from which we new players are affected ? I mean, are they only big because of it (the players) ?

3) As a fighter character, which stats should I concentrate on in order to better acquire the skills offered by my guild ? Is it a stat or level cap ?

4) How does the money system work ? Is killing and selling the only way to make money for skills ?

5) A question to the wizards: are all the quests really doable ?

6) Is there a way to know in advance which areas require a good align and which an evil ? It was pretty harsh to have been murdered once by guards for being evil aligned without a warning.

On another topic, but still a valid question:

The development path for a fighter is pretty straight forward. You start, you grab a sword, you join the Cadets, you train, and then try to develop yourself further. How does this path differ for a player who wants to be a caster ? I guess the academics are there, but what about afterwards ? Does a character directly join a caster occ guild after being in the academics and reaching, lets say, adventurer, or does he have to deal with guildlessness and/or join a "free to join" guild like the mercenaries in order to put on some muscle before attempting a caster occ ? And, should a move like this make sense ? I mean, lets take for example a gnome (good intelligence stats?), who joins the magical side of the cadets, and then graduates - would it make sense to develop fighting skills in the mercenaries when he clearly wants to be a caster character ? Should this person concentrate on magic stats from the beginning, or balance them out until a certain level ?

I'm asking all of this because these are the questions which have been posed to me by a couple of friends from the university who see me playing on breaks and, being interested in fantasy yet also developers like me, are therefore interested in the game mechanics and inner workings as well.

I think I'll be bringing at least 2-3 friends over from college now in about two weeks. We're now in finals, but afterwards we have 3 months off, and they found the Mud fun when they saw me playing, so they want to give it a try as well, just not during finals because otherwise their GPA will significantly drop, as mine has

Thanks for your help in advance, and sorry for any typos. I'm writing this in haste in a short break

Aristos wrote:Hello everyone,

The new guy here again, trying to understand the game.

I have a few questions with which you all could perhaps help me:

1) How do the quests work ? Is there a 100% chance that the available quests from the orbs are fully functional code-wise ?

2) How does quest-exp affect overall growth ? I know about the brute system, but still would like to have more information regarding growth. Meaning, is it possible at all to reach, for example, the highest level (myth) with the quests in the game ? I've been reading the forums for any information about it, and read that some quests gave more qexp in the past - is this something from which we new players are affected ? I mean, are they only big because of it (the players) ?

3) As a fighter character, which stats should I concentrate on in order to better acquire the skills offered by my guild ? Is it a stat or level cap ?

4) How does the money system work ? Is killing and selling the only way to make money for skills ?

5) A question to the wizards: are all the quests really doable ?

6) Is there a way to know in advance which areas require a good align and which an evil ? It was pretty harsh to have been murdered once by guards for being evil aligned without a warning.

On another topic, but still a valid question:

The development path for a fighter is pretty straight forward. You start, you grab a sword, you join the Cadets, you train, and then try to develop yourself further. How does this path differ for a player who wants to be a caster ? I guess the academics are there, but what about afterwards ? Does a character directly join a caster occ guild after being in the academics and reaching, lets say, adventurer, or does he have to deal with guildlessness and/or join a "free to join" guild like the mercenaries in order to put on some muscle before attempting a caster occ ? And, should a move like this make sense ? I mean, lets take for example a gnome (good intelligence stats?), who joins the magical side of the cadets, and then graduates - would it make sense to develop fighting skills in the mercenaries when he clearly wants to be a caster character ? Should this person concentrate on magic stats from the beginning, or balance them out until a certain level ?

I'm asking all of this because these are the questions which have been posed to me by a couple of friends from the university who see me playing on breaks and, being interested in fantasy yet also developers like me, are therefore interested in the game mechanics and inner workings as well.

I think I'll be bringing at least 2-3 friends over from college now in about two weeks. We're now in finals, but afterwards we have 3 months off, and they found the Mud fun when they saw me playing, so they want to give it a try as well, just not during finals because otherwise their GPA will significantly drop, as mine has

Thanks for your help in advance, and sorry for any typos. I'm writing this in haste in a short break

1. Yes, all quests in the orbs are functional and solvable! If you're having trouble with something it may be that it can only be solved once per game reboot, but hopefully there are no such quests around anymore. Many used to be that way, but I think they're all fixed now. Sometimes you cant solve them because someone else recently finished it and it hasnt rebooted yet, but that usually doesnt take very long. (a few hours at most).

2. Very few active characters have "old" quest XP, and even if some do there is a cap on quest XP that is slightly above the XP you can get as a new character. So if you solve all quests in the orbs, you'll be one of the characters with most quest XP in the game, including very old characters with XP from old, now closed, quests. Most current myths do not have that much XP, since very few have solved ALL quests, and most arent old enough to have XP from closed quests. It's a very long time ago that any substantial quest was closed I think. Not many characters around since then! Yes, you need to quest some to be able to grow really big, but you dont need to solve them all. Far from. Combat XP is still the key to becoming myth.

3. Not exactly sure what you're asking here!?! When you're small you sometimes cant train skills because you're not smart enough, you need intelligence for that. But for a fighter in general it's best to focus on strength, dexterity and constitution. Your intelligence and wisdom will fairly soon be good enough anyway even if you dont focus on them. Str, dex and con are all important stats and its hard to say which one is best. I personally think for most purposes fairly even physical stats is good for a fighter. About caps, you cant train any skill above Superior Guru, (100 skillevels). But it depends on the guild you're in whats the maximum for that guild, most have only Superior guru in one or two skills. Without a guild at all the cap is Superior Layman for most skills. As for stats, there is no final cap at all. However, it'll get harder and harder to become bigger the bigger you get... when you're a myth, progress will be MUCH slower then when youre small. Eventually it will be so slow its basically no use to try to grow... or so they say. I never became that big!

4. Killing and selling stuff is the most common way to make money. However finding and selling herbs is also a decent way to make money, especially when you're small. You can also become a smith and forge items and sell for money. Another way is to improve your pick pocketing skills and steal coins from NPCs and/or players. A popular way is also to find good pieces of equipment or imbuements and sell on the auction house to other players. So there's plenty of ways to earn money, but killing and selling stuff probably the easiest.

5. I am not a wizard, but I have solved all quests, so yes. All quests are solvable. Although some are really hard and suffer from some annoying syntaxes or are somewhat illogical... and others are really good experiences. Just like the rest of the world the quality of quests is dependent on the quality of the work of the wizard who created them. Some are great, some are less great. If you get stuck somewhere, feel free to mail me ingame if you need a hint or something! A big part of questing in Genesis is social, make friends, ask around, etc... solving every quest all by yourself will be VERY hard. Dont be afraid to ask people!

6. Not really... some places have signs or other warnings... some dont... Most areas are safe for most aligns though. Gondor and Ithilien are especially dangerous places with little warnings and sometimes hunting enemies. And being a goblin is usually pretty hard in many areas... regardless of align. Thats the drawback for being a goblin, who have great physical stats, but generally hated by lots of NPCs. But again, ask around if you wanna be safe, but most areas are actually pretty safe. And dying isnt so bad when youre small anyway... you recover pretty quickly after learning the hard way.

Nice you got friends who wanna try to our Mud too!

As for caster vs fighter... well its really up to you I think. Most people usually join a free to join guild like mercenaries and gain some stats before deciding on their path in life I think. But it doesnt mean you have to... some join a caster guild early on too and stay there... As for stats... well thats also up to you. Some like even stats, some like to focus everything on one or two stats. I honestly dont know whats best... personally if I wanted to become a caster from the start I'd probably pick elf or gnome and go "all in" on intelligence and wisdom. But you will be very weak when taking hits if you do... it may also depend on the guild you want to join, and how you play, which stats are best. If you quickly drain your mana, tons of intelligence is probably a good thing. If you rarely run out of mana, maybe you dont need immense intelligence and you can benefit from having some physical stats. It's not an easy choice to make and even the most experienced players debate these types of questions, and all have their own theories... Thats part of the fun I think.

1) You do the quest and get qxp. Qxp lowers your brute making it easier to gain more combat xp. I would assume all the quests in the orbs are doable for you. BUT be careful with possible align/race restrictions.

2) I am a legend and violent. I have not finished all the quests in the orbs and I have very few(if at all) quests you can not do AND I have lost qxp as a punishment so I can not reach the qxp cap. So the answer would be Yes, with a lot of work and time you can become a myth with the current quests. But not on just qxp. You will need a lot of combat xp as well.

3) This is up to you. Str will make you less burdened and make you hit harder. Dex helps you avoid getting hit and makes it easier for you to hit others and Con gives you health. You chose how you want to balance it and if you want to be a tanker or pure damage. It also depends on your guild, some specials are based of one stat or another so you might want to concentrate on those as well. The thing is that it is not common knowledge which stat unless they mention it in your guilds helpfile.

4) You kill-loot-sell is the basis of genesis economy but now a new version has appeared. kill-find imbuement-sell imbuement for a bunch on money. You can of course search for herbs and sell them but that would be slower. Some tasks earns you a bit of coins a well. And you can sell rat corpses in Pelargir I think.

5) (I'm not a wizard) With time, effort and if you don't mind chaning race, align and guilds a bunch of time I think you can do all possible quests. Remember that not all quests appear in the orbs. guru/entrance quests for other guilds won't appear on your orb.

6) With experience and listen to what people say but otherwise being shot to death by MT/MM guards or charged by knights etc are all basic Genesis deaths and you have to accept it. Don't be afraid of Lars, he is a friendly guy. Besides, you are not a real genesis player until you have all the scars


Genesis is not like other games. There is no "path" for a fighter or a caster. With a bunch of deaths you can change your stats 100% almost. You can go from a super strong gobbo killing machine to a weak elf with control over the arcane powers thanks to that. So any mistake you make you can undo if you don't mind deaths/ change of race. But to be honest it is much more fun to have some flaws in your character.

This is how I understand the game and others might not agree and I could of course be totally wrong. But I hope it helped anyway


ps Damn you Kiara , now I just seem to repeating a bunch of things

Arcon: Yes, I beat you to it!:) Kenders are always the quickest!

arcon wrote:Remember that not all quests appear in the orbs. guru/entrance quests for other guilds won't appear on your orb.

They appear when solved though. Maybe they appear before you solve them too? Once you're in the appropriate guild? It seems to be that only quests you can solve appear in the orbs. Like if you become too big to solve one of them (rare) newbie quests, they will disappear from the orbs when you're too big. At leasts that what I think. It does seem the orbs are at least slightly individual, but I havent fully figured out exactly how...

But we're talking about a handful of quests all in all now, and very special cases. In general, 99% of quests listed in the orbs are the same for everyone, except guild specific quests and the possible newbie/age related quest, which are also very few. Like one or two at most I think...

But! There's one more type of quest XP not listed in the orbs, and that is special quest XP you get from events, and the quest XP you get from our two repeating quests from the market place in Sparkle (on wednesdays), and from the chef in the Sparkle Inn (fridays). As I understand, I think they will appear in the orbs if you reach the maximum possible XP from those quests, but I think nobody has yet? I think Gorboth has said something like that at some point... I think! A wizard can probably clarify this...

Quest XP from events is nice though. Events are fun! Not sure if you have experienced one yet Aristos?

You're right Kiara ... Both the Wednesday Market Quest and the Friday Herb Quest will appear as completed in quest orbs once you have done them the maximum number of times. I can't remember how many that is, but I believe the calculation was something like having to do the quest without missing a single week for many years before reaching that point.

There is one other thing to mention about quests ... there are places in the game where content was created that was intended to lead to a quest, but that never became fully realized due to a wizard going inactive or losing interest in that particular project. Because of this, you might, here and there, find npcs or situations that will lead you to believe that you've found a quest but which simply don't go anywhere. This isn't all that common, but it does exist. I remember growling in frustration when I finally broke down and asked Kithkanan about the harpsichord (if I recall correctly) in the Terel mansion, and his response was "quest that never got finished being coded." Booo! (heh ... I'm still bitter. I wanted a harpsichord quest!)

G.

p.s. I could be totally misremembering the harpsichord. I just realized that was literally 20 years ago this Spring. Sheesh.

gorboth wrote: I remember growling in frustration when I finally broke down and asked Kithkanan about the harpsichord (if I recall correctly) in the Terel mansion, and his response was "quest that never got finished being coded." Booo! (heh ... I'm still bitter. I wanted a harpsichord quest!)

G.

p.s. I could be totally misremembering the harpsichord. I just realized that was literally 20 years ago this Spring. Sheesh..

Or the resurrection soul chair at the wheel in the Haunted house, or the slingshot in the toy chest. Terel's got far to many unfinished really intricate cool quests. The five different blue swords scattered throughout. Terel's got far to many unfinished really intricate cool quests. Bring Benton Back!

Thanks everyone for your detailed and very helpful answers! I think I know have a better idea of how it works, and will be able to be a bit more skillful in my playstyle. I'm sure more questions will pop up later, so don't think you've gotten rid of me yet

See you on the Mud !

arcon wrote:1) You do the quest and get qxp. Qxp lowers your brute making it easier to gain more combat xp. I would assume all the quests in the orbs are doable for you. BUT be careful with possible align/race restrictions.

2) I am a legend and violent. I have not finished all the quests in the orbs and I have very few(if at all) quests you can not do AND I have lost qxp as a punishment so I can not reach the qxp cap. So the answer would be Yes, with a lot of work and time you can become a myth with the current quests. But not on just qxp. You will need a lot of combat xp as well.

3) This is up to you. Str will make you less burdened and make you hit harder. Dex helps you avoid getting hit and makes it easier for you to hit others and Con gives you health. You chose how you want to balance it and if you want to be a tanker or pure damage. It also depends on your guild, some specials are based of one stat or another so you might want to concentrate on those as well. The thing is that it is not common knowledge which stat unless they mention it in your guilds helpfile.

4) You kill-loot-sell is the basis of genesis economy but now a new version has appeared. kill-find imbuement-sell imbuement for a bunch on money. You can of course search for herbs and sell them but that would be slower. Some tasks earns you a bit of coins a well. And you can sell rat corpses in Pelargir I think.

5) (I'm not a wizard) With time, effort and if you don't mind chaning race, align and guilds a bunch of time I think you can do all possible quests. Remember that not all quests appear in the orbs. guru/entrance quests for other guilds won't appear on your orb.

6) With experience and listen to what people say but otherwise being shot to death by MT/MM guards or charged by knights etc are all basic Genesis deaths and you have to accept it. Don't be afraid of Lars, he is a friendly guy. Besides, you are not a real genesis player until you have all the scars


Genesis is not like other games. There is no "path" for a fighter or a caster. With a bunch of deaths you can change your stats 100% almost. You can go from a super strong gobbo killing machine to a weak elf with control over the arcane powers thanks to that. So any mistake you make you can undo if you don't mind deaths/ change of race. But to be honest it is much more fun to have some flaws in your character.

This is how I understand the game and others might not agree and I could of course be totally wrong. But I hope it helped anyway


ps Damn you Kiara , now I just seem to repeating a bunch of things

This is a very interesting idea. Here's the thing: last Mud I played was in the 90's, and I remember that dying once or twice was OK, but after too many deaths, your character was more or less screwed up, which is why I was wary of dying here in Genesis. I don't mind the time spent on regaining stats/xp, but I wouldn't want to think I'd have to start with another body again from the start.

I'm here for the long run. It's an honour to be here amongst you guys, in the unending world of Genesis!

1) There are players that have solved all the quests. Therefore, unless there's been changes in the game that broke a quest, you should be able to solve all of them.
2) Doing quests is optional, of course, but without doing quests your character growth speed will be limited. Quests help lower your brute, which gives you more combat xp for every kill.
3) It is not possible to reach myth just by doing quests. It's possible to reach myth without doing all the quests or even most of them. Some players do very minimal quests and still reach very high levels. It just takes longer and a bit more dedication. Not that myth is something you need to shoot for - plenty of other great goals in the game.
4) Join a craft guild for great ways to earn money. There are certain herbs that give some great returns for the time spent hunting for them. Being a gardener helps with this a lot. Imbuements and the auction house have been mentioned, and they're often one of the easiest ways to get money if you find something valuable. Plenty of players in the game who are willing to throw money around for the extra boosts you may find. Finally, don't forget that joining the Beggar's Club and finding some members of the Rich Men's Club may be a good way to get money quickly.
5) All quests in the quest orb are doable. You won't be able to do certain quests depending on alignment, race, guild, or size restrictions. A perfect example of this is the tutorial quests on Tutori Isle. Given you're bigger and you can't get there, you can't do those quests if you didn't complete them.
6) Certain guilds have the ability to discern good or evil. That's the best way to discover alignment in the game yourself without actually doing the killing. Another way is to just discuss with guild members or others in the game. That's what makes Genesis great - the community of players that are willing to help and engage.
7) Becoming an Academic is a great introduction into the world of spellcasting. If you want to be a caster, you should join them and understand some of the hardships compared to being a melee fighter. You can then stay in the guild and apply for any of the other caster guilds. There's no need to go guildless while you wait. There may be size restrictions on joining, however.

petros wrote:...
4) Join a craft guild for great ways to earn money. There are certain herbs that give some great returns for the time spent hunting for them. Being a gardener helps with this a lot. Imbuements and the auction house have been mentioned, and they're often one of the easiest ways to get money if you find something valuable. Plenty of players in the game who are willing to throw money around for the extra boosts you may find. Finally, don't forget that joining the Beggar's Club and finding some members of the Rich Men's Club may be a good way to get money quickly.
....

Being a member of said club need to remind people that you need to be rather small to be accepted as member.