Newbie Guide Guilds and Practicing
Newbie Guide Guilds and Practicing
This guide written and published by p(Baca/Endo)
“It is perilous to study too deeply the arts of the Enemy, for good or for ill.”
Elrond, JRRT, The Fellowship of the Ring
This guide is all about practicing and the different guilds in the game.
Many parts of this guild reference to the MUME help pages which can be found at:
Bold words can be looked up in the games help files. Like help practice.
Contents
- 1 Improvements by Leveling and not Practicing
- 2 Practice Makes Perfect (or at least better!)
- 3 Guilds
- 4 Types of Guilds
- 5 Difficulty of Increasing Skills and Spells
- 6 Skills in Guilds
- 7 Combat Skill Ratio
- 8 Guild Issues You Could Encounter
- 9 Abilities For Each Skill
- 10 Guilds and Guild Masters
- 11 Abilities in MUME
- 12 Subraces and Skills
- 13 Teaching and Learning
- 14 Pure Class vs Combo Class
- 15 Practicing Cross Class
- 16 Benefits of Maxing... or Not
- 17 Decay Skills or Spells
- 18 Practice Reset
- 19 Character Class
Improvements by Leveling and not Practicing
As you level up in the game, the following stats will simply improve as your levels increase, no practices or guilds are needed:
Your hit points will go up.
Mana costs for spells will go down, chance to backfire slightly will go down.
Spell casting speed will very slightly get shorter and shorter.
Your OB% (offensive bonus) will go up, slowly.
Practice Makes Perfect (or at least better!)
You start the game with practices. Every time you gain a level, you get more practices. Practices are what you spend at guilds to get better at a skill or spell. If you type practice outside of a guild, you will see how many practices you have to spend. Practice will show you a list of all the skills or spells you know. It will also estimate how well you know them, from awful to superb.
1 - 16%: Awful 17 - 29%: Bad 30 - 39%: Poor 40 - 62%: Average 63 - 69%: Fair 70 - 80%: Good 81 - 92%: Very good 93 -100%: Excellent 101%+: Superb
Typing practice outside of a guild looks like this:
You have 5 practice sessions left. Skill Knowledge Difficulty Class ------------------------------------------------ Bandage Bad Easy None Wilderness Bad Normal None Dodge Bad Hard Thief Search Bad Normal Thief Parry Poor Normal Warrior Slashing weapons Average Normal Warrior
If you are in a guild and type practice, you will see all the skills or spells it offers, that you have access to at your level. You'll also see your progress on learning any of those skills. The guild master will also give some practice advice, like if you are well suited to learn more, or know more about the skill then they can offer you. Here is an example from the warrior guild:
You have five practice sessions left. A retired warrior can teach you the skills below. Skill Sessions Knowl. Diffic. Advice ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Bash 0/15 0% Hard I can't teach you enough Cleaving weapons 0/12 0% Normal You could learn easily Concussion weapons 0/12 0% Normal You could learn easily Endurance 0/10 0% Very hard I can't teach you enough Parry 2/10 38% Normal Easy to improve Rescue 0/ 5 0% Easy You could learn easily Slashing weapons 4/12 54% Normal You reached your current limit Stabbing weapons 0/12 0% Normal You could learn easily
Guilds
Guilds are where you practice skills or spells in the game. There will be a guild master that does the instructing. If you type practice at a guild, you will see a list of all the skills or spells you can currently attempt to practice. As you level up, you might see more added to your list, now that you can get access to them.
Then to advance or increase a skill or spell type prac <skill or spell>. For every one time you prac a skill, you use up one available practice. You cannot practice if you have 0 or less pracs. You can get negative pracs by losing a level.
prac dodge, prac slash, prac cure light, prac ride
Types of Guilds
There are 5 main types of guilds for the Free Peoples of the West. And a very few 'speciality' guilds here and there. There are also guilds that are more for lower level, mid level, and higher level characters.
- Low Level Guild: Some guilds you will find in the game over all have lower caps you can
- practice skills or spells up to. These guilds tend to focus on levels 1-5. You will
- find yourself quickly out leveling alot of what they offer.
- Mid Level Guild: A few guilds you might find are more 'mid level' or a mix of low level and
- mid level, or maybe even mid level, and high level. They tend to help more with levels
- 5-15 or so.
- High Level Guild: Last are guilds that are at the top of the game. These higher level guilds
- often let you max practice quite a number of skills. They tend to be the focus of lvl 15-26,
- and beyond.
- Ranger Guild: The ranger guild has a wide variety of skills. Many of them deal with exploring
- and getting around, trying to make traveling easier. It is called the Ranger guild but many
- different classes use skills from this guild often.
- Warrior Guild: This guild teaches most of the combat skills in the game. It focuses on weapon
- skills and other moves and tricks you can do in combat.
- Thief/Scout Guild: This guild teaches a few combat skills in the game. But mostly it focuses
- on skills that make you sneaky and stealthy.
- Mage Guild: This guild teaches mage spells. Over all mage spells tend to focus on defense,
- damage, teleporting, and trying to find out information.
- Cleric Guild: The cleric guild teaches cleric spells. Cleric spells focus on healing,
- recovery, removing negative conditions, and bolstering fellowship members.
- Specialty Guild: These rare guilds only teach one skill, or very few skills. Some notable
- examples are:
- riding guild (ranger) in a small village north of Ingrove
- archery guild (thief) W of Lorien
- poison guild (thief) NE of Rivendell
- riding guild (ranger) in a small village north of Ingrove
Difficulty of Increasing Skills and Spells
When you are in or out of a guild, you will see how difficult a specific skill or spell is to practice. This roughly means how much % you get with each prac. Harder skills use up more pracs then easy skills. So you might do very well with a few pracs into a very easy skill or easy skill, but you'll get MUCH less % gains in harder skills.
very easy easy normal hard very hard
Also related to this, is how practiced you are at the skill. At low % it is much easier to increase a skill by practicing. But as you get closer to 100% it gets MUCH harder. Early on you might have gained like 14% with one prac! But later on you go from 88% to 90% with one practice. Getting skills high gets much more prac expensive!
You will also notice a few skills in the game limit how much of it you can practice at a time. It will give you a message like "you need to be more experienced to practice further." That means you need to gain a level to spend any more practices at that skill.
Skills in Guilds
Every skill in the game has a help file that describes how it is used. Please check them out if you are thinking of getting a skill. It will also tell you what commands are used with the skill. Here is a quick description of what each skill can do for you.
help dodge, help ride, help create light, help bash
Ranger Skills
- Awareness: helps you to see hidden and sneaking mobs or players, if very high might help see in fog or darkness
- Bandage: bandage up bleeding wounds, clean wounds, help dying characters
- Climb: climb up and down, even maybe east or west exits
- Command: order around pets or charmies to follow commands
- Leadership: lead a group with less noise and movement lag or delay
- Ride: ride a mount without falling off
- Swim: swim on surface water, and if praced high, swim underwater
- Track: follow a targets tracks, look for tracks in a room
- Wilderness: build campfires faster, go longer between eating and drinking, helps movement in natural settings
- Dark Oath: BN only Ranger skill to drain some life force from targets when you kill them
Warrior Skills
- Bash: knock down targets in a fight, knock them out of a fight, bash down some doors
- Charge: broken skill, do not practice
- Cleaving Weapons: wielding axes
- Concussion Weapons: wielding clubs, hammers, maces, morningstars
- Endurance: can give bonus to hits and moves, and hit and move regen
- Kick: a small to medium damage extra attack
- Parry: block attacks with your weapons and shields, helps PB
- Rescue: pull someone out of combat or protect them and jump in if they are attacked
- Slashing Weapons: one handed swords, whips
- Stabbing Weapons: spears, polearms
- Two Handed Weapons: any weapons wielded with 2 hands, even if they cleave, slash, stab, or concuss
- Unarmed Combat: troll only skill for them to fight with their claws
Thief Skills
- Attack: attempt flees faster and attack faster with all piercing weapons
- Backstab: surprise attacks from sneaking/hidden that do bonus damage and leave wounds, only with piercing weapons
- Dodge: dodging attacks with quick movements, helps DB
- Envenom: poisoning your weapons, why trying to not poison yourself
- Escape: remove your self from combat, avoid -panic flag, pick direction to leave a fight, easier to be rescued, recover from rescue faster
- Hide: hard to find in a room, avoiding a mob seeing you, hiding in a room
- Missile: ranged weapons, slings and stones, crossbows and bolts, bows and arrows, raises your M_OB
- Pick: picking open locks of chests and doors, or picking them locked again
- Piercing Weapons: daggers, knives, dirks, small swords, fangs, thorns
- Search: search for hidden objects and exits and secret door names
- Sneak: move from room to room unseen, avoiding a mob seeing you
- Steal: steal coins and maybe small objects from mobs (not players)
For Mage and Cleric Spells please check out:
help spell list
Combat Skill Ratio
These are the easiest skills to understand in all of MUME, in how they affect your character. All combat skills operate on the same ratio. 5% = 1%
- 5% parry skill = 1 % PB
- 5% dodge skill = 1% DB
- 5% all melee weapon skills = 1% OB when wielding that weapon type
- 5% in missile = 1% M_OB when wielding missile weapons
So if you prac 25% dodge you get +5% DB, or 100% parry you get 20% PB.
Guild Issues You Could Encounter
A few guilds in the game are closed during certain hours. They will tell you what their hours are so you know when to come back and practice at them.
A few guild masters in the game wander and walk around. They do not stay in the same room all the time. Most annoyingly, are the guild masters that sneak while they move. Some even go home for the night, and return to the guild the next day.
Some guild masters are racist, and will only let characters of certain races practice at them. You could find hobbit only or dwarf only guilds, for example.
Some guilds are very secretive and hidden, making them hard to find. You may need to search to find them or ask someone else to show you how to enter.
A few guilds are greedy, and charge for their services. You need to pay somehow in order to enter them.
Guilds that offer higher level or higher % can often be in areas of the game more risky to visit.
Abilities For Each Skill
Each skill and spell in the game has 2 or 3 abilities tied to it. The higher your ability scores are, the higher of a % you get when practicing the skill. If your abilities are lower, you'll get less % when you practice the skill.
They are listed in order of importance. The first ability affects the skill the most, with the second a lesser effect, and the third (if the skill has one) even a lesser extent.
If you ask a guild master about a skill or spell, they will give you some information about the skill or spell and what abilities affect it. You can also find this information in some of the help files about the skills or spells.
ask thief help dodge
ask ranger help bandage
ask mage help create light
ask cleric help bless
ask warrior help parry
ask hunter help dodge You ask an accomplished hunter 'help dodge' An accomplished hunter thinks till it hurts. An accomplished hunter tells you 'Dodging is crucial for survival in these hard' An accomplished hunter tells you 'times. If you practice long and hard enough,' An accomplished hunter tells you 'you will be able to dodge even the largest' An accomplished hunter tells you 'trolls or the greatest beasts. A dodged hit' An accomplished hunter tells you 'means a longer life.' An accomplished hunter tells you 'To master this skill, great agility and good' An accomplished hunter tells you 'eyesight are required.'
help dodge DODGE (Thief Skill) Similar to parry, this skill will increase your basic dodging bonus. This is heavily affected by dexterity and the amount you are carrying. The number of foes doesn't affect your dodging bonus (DB) Dodging is crucial for survival in these hard times. If you practice long and hard enough, you will be able to dodge even the largest trolls or the greatest beasts. A dodged hit means a longer life. To master this skill, great agility and good eyesight are required.
Guilds and Guild Masters
Here is a link to a pretty good list of guilds and guild masters in MUME. Also, if you are using mmapper to play, you will sometimes see a G on your map in a room. That is a room with a guild master.
https://mume.org/wiki/index.php?title=Category:Guildmasters
Abilities in MUME
If the guild master gives you some tips about a skill or spell, here is a list that might help you understand which ability score they are talking about.
Muscle = Strength
Agility = Dexterity
Iron nerves = Will power
Health = Constitution
Eyesight = Perception
Brilliant mind = Intelligence
Deep insight = Wisdom
Here's some brief descriptions about how each ability is used in the game. You can type help <ability> to find out more. Like help Perception, or help Wisdom.
Strength: Important for picking up and wearing heavy stuff, wielding weapons, climbing, swimming.
Constitution: Important for determining your hit points and regen, and exhausting skills.
Dexterity: Important for move points, dodging, and hitting a target. Also being stealthy.
Perception: Important for spotting sneaking/hidden people, and precision attacks such as missile
weapons or some spells.
Will Power: Important for the spells that are a force of wills, like most mental spells.
Intelligence: Important for offensive spells and skills involving knowing details.
Wisdom: Important for healing/defensive spells and mixing herblores.
Subraces and Skills
Several of the various subraces in the game also can affect your skills percentages. Or give you a bonus to a skill.
- Dwarf Broadbeam: much better at using Bash on doors, Parry a little bit better as they get hurt
- Dwarf Firebeard: they gain a 10% bonus to Bash, and somewhat better at using Bash on doors
- Elf Noldor: free permanent detect magic spell (no need to practice)
- Elf Silvan: they gain a 10% bonus to Missile and Wilderness, and Track faster in a forest
- Elf Sindar: they gain a 10% bonus to Leadership
- Hobbit Harfoot: they are faster and better at using the Escape skill
- Hobbit Stoor: they gain a 10% bonus to Endurance and 25% bonus to Swim
- Men Beorning: they gain a 25% bonus to Wilderness
- Men Eriadorians: gain 5 bonus pracs to spend on any skill at level 1
- Men Dunedain: they gain a 25% bonus to Leadership, and get some % toward Track by practicing any skills at the Ranger guild
- Men Dunedain: free permanent detect evil spell (no need to practice)
- Men Rohirrim: they gain a 25% bonus to Ride
For more information about races and subraces please check out:
https://mume.org/wiki/index.php?title=Guide_Race_and_Subraces
Teaching and Learning
You can actually learn skills in the game from other players instead of visiting a guild. To do so, you need to use the "teach" and "learn" commands. It has some limitations of who can teach who and how high of a % you can get the skill. But if you need some pracs in a skill far from a guild, this is the only way to do it.
help teach, help learn, teach, learn
Pure Class vs Combo Class
MUME's class system is one of the most interesting features in the game. It is very dynamic and allows you to customize your own class very well. Generally characters fall into two categories: pure class or combo class.
I recommend if you are new to the game and just starting out, try making a pure class first. You will be effective and learn alot while you are doing it. I would strongly recommmed some type of warrior or maybe a scout/thief for a first character. Casters can eventually be powerful, but are more difficult to level up. Game knowledge will help with that.
Pure Class
Pure class characters do not have 100% of their skills only in one class. But
- they very much do tend to focus on one class. Like almost all warrior skills or almost
- all thief skills. This does not mean that warrior cannot practice outside of the warrior class
- however. It is VERY COMMON for a 'pure warrior' to have a few pracs in pick (a thief skill) or
- maybe a few pracs in cure light (a cleric spell).
Combo Class
These characters practice in more then one guild by design. Some common combos
- people try to make are: Ranger type, defense warrior, battle clerics, warrior/scout, thief-mages, warmage, etc...
- Combo classes can often do some more variety of feats and tasks then a pure class, but very
- often does not do them quite as well. So you might tend to fail at a skill more often then
- a pure class would. But you usually gain some more flexibility.
Practicing Cross Class
When you start to practice alot of skills out of your main class, you will begin to notice a cross class penalty. It can be confusing, so here are some basics.
First none of the skills in the ranger guild affect ANY of the other classes skills. Ranger skills can be practiced without penalty by any classes in the game.
Next, some classes tend to hurt when practicing cross class MORE then others do. Warrior vs scout pracs and mage vs cleric pracs do penalize you, but not as much. Warrior vs mage and thief vs cleric tend to penalize you just a bit more. This is in the game to try and reduce the number of sleeping backstabbers or bashing fireballers, sort of.
So for example if you are a warrior with high parry, a weapon skill, and bash, and then decide to start practicing the spell fireball, you will notice that your warrior skill % start to drop some. Maybe it used to be at 90% and now it is down to more like 81%. It will drop more and more as you practice the mage spell higher and higher. Notice you can still use the skills, you will just have less success.
If you keep your practices cross class lower %, they do not penalize you as much. So having a skill at 20%-25% maybe 30% you will not notice very many issues with cross class practicing. It might not even lower your main class pracs much at all. But if you start practicing those skills higher you will notice that your max % you can get may no longer be up around 100%.
So, you will see many warriors with 1-2 pracs in pick. They can still open alot of doors, and it does not hurt their main warrior class pracs doing it. Another example is a mage that has 35% in create food. They get the benefit of the skill, backfire rarely, and it does not hurt their mage %.
Benefits of Maxing... or Not
If you improve a skill, you generally get better at it. But that does not mean you need to max that skill. Many skills in the game are 'useable' without being at 100%. You might not be able to be successful in EVERY circumstance, but you will likely get by just fine.
One major benefit of NOT maxing a skill or pumping it up to 100% is that it gives you more practices to spend elsewhere. This can mean a wider variety of skills or spells you can afford by not trying to get every skill as high as possible. However, if it is a skill you really depend on in combat, you'll probably want it 85%-105%.
Out of combat spells are a good example of this. You might be just fine having it at 50%. Sure you might backfire 3% of the time, but since it's not in combat, it's not really a big deal. Another example is 50% bandage is very useable, even if it is not the 'best'. Many non-thieves have 1-2 pracs in pick.
Decay Skills or Spells
There is 1 way your skills or spells can decay. As skills decay, they turn back in to practices you can spend again. Decay often takes a long time, even longer if you have the skill practiced up very high. One benefit of this is that you can get rid of a skill you don't like, don't use, or no longer need. And can try out something new.
train slash, train cure light, train climb, train call familiar, train all
Practice Reset
You can also change ALL of your pracs with a prac reset. This does not allow you to pick and choose which skills you want to change, it's all or nothing. If you want to remake your character this could be an option to change all of your skills. You'll be reset back to no skills and alot of practices to spend.
To get a prac reset, you need to rent retire for one real life month. After the month is up, when you type info in the account menu for that character, it will let you know if you are eligible for a practice reset. Just log into your retired character and type pracreset.
Help prac reset and help retirement for more information.
Character Class
You can change the class of your character at any time. As you level up and practice, your character's class choices may change. Use the change class command to see what classes are available for you to choose from. The classes are heavily based off of what skills or combination of skills you have practiced.
chan class You can choose between Adventurer, Apprentice, Pilferer, Recruit and Scout. chan class scout
So go out and see what classes you can become while you level up and practice with your character!
Link back to the wiki guides:
