Buying Things

Discworld MUD contains thousands of objects to buy, including clothes, armour, weapons, books and jewellery, and three types of shop in which to buy them. Your first experience of a Discworld shop lies behind the Commerce door, complete with a handy quick reference on how to use any shop¹.

The Commerce room is a General Shop. You can buy items from it, or sell it items of your own. The standard method of acquiring money for any player is to sell things - as you’ve already noticed, although the game gave you some money to start with, it’s not a great deal².

You can check how much money you’ve got by typing money, e.g.

money
Your purse contains 8 Pumpkin dollars and 100 Pumpkin pence.

If you want it shown as one short total, type money brief:

money brief
Your purse contains 9 Pumpkin dollars.

Enough to buy some equipment, but more is always good. To see if any of your items is worth anything, try the value command on each of them.

value sash
A colourful sash is not worth enough to be sold here.
> 
value booklet
An information booklet is valued at 10 Pumpkin pence.
> 
value voucher
A voucher is valued at 6 Pumpkin pence.
> 
value torch
A lightable torch is valued at 11 Pumpkin pence.
> 
value bucket
A small bucket is valued at 21 Pumpkin pence.

You can value them all in one go - and get a nice total value at the end - by typing value all:

value all
A voucher is valued at 6 Pumpkin pence.
A lightable torch is valued at 11 Pumpkin pence.
An information booklet is valued at 10 Pumpkin pence.
A colourful sash is not worth enough to be sold here.
8 Pumpkin dollars and some Pumpkin pence is not worth enough to be sold here.
A small bucket is valued at 21 Pumpkin pence.
This gives you a total value of 48 Pumpkin pence.

Before gleefully selling the lot, however, you might like to look at the bucket.

look bucket
This metal bucket was designed for a purpose, and looks like it would fit a champagne bottle perfectly.
It appears to have something written on it.
It is in excellent condition.
The small bucket is about one-quarter full with a champagne bottle.
It is about one-quarter full.

Eeeeeeee, it contains champagne! (And the bucket has your name written on it.) Note that the shop didn’t give you a value for the contents of the bucket. Does this mean the bottle of champagne is worthless?

look bottle
Cannot find “bottle”, no match.

You can't look at the bottle because it's inside the bucket. Or can you? Maybe if you were a bit more specific about where the bottle is when you're trying to look...?

look at bottle in bucket
An expensive-looking bottle of champagne, just right to celebrate being on Discworld.
It has a small label stuck on it.
It is in excellent condition.
The small champagne bottle is completely full with six ounces of fine champagne.
It is completely full.
It is open.
>
read bottle in bucket
> 
You read the small champagne bottle:
On the small label is written:
Written in cursive lettering on the bottle's label:

    _________________  
   |                 | 
   |                 | 
   | Vintage Century | 
   |      of the     | 
   |    Fruit Bat,   | 
   |   Year of the   | 
   |  Midnight Frog  | 
   |                 | 
   |_________________| 

Mmm, looks good! Must be worth something though..?

value bottle in bucket
A small champagne bottle is not worth enough to be sold here.

Surely the shopkeeper can't be serious! This delicious bottle of champagne must be worth something? What about if we took a closer look?

get bottle from bucket
You get a champagne bottle from the small bucket.
>
value bottle
A champagne bottle is valued at 87 Pumpkin pence.

Ah, that's more like it. Although... champagne is terribly scrumptious, and 87 Pumpkin pence isn't a lot of money...

Wonder how much just the emty bottle is worth?

drink bottle
You drink a few ounces of fine champagne from the champagne bottle.
> 
drink bottle
The champagne bottle is bone dry!
> 
value bottle
A champagne bottle is valued at 87 Pumpkin pence.

Yum! And it's still worth 87 Pumpkin pence! Fantastic.

And the moral is...

Remember to look carefully at container items before getting rid of them, in case they contain something valuable. Sadly, the best things in Disc life are expensive, and getting rich is actually quite difficult, so never pass up the chance to acquire a few extra pennies.

> You trip over and fall on your face.

Whoops! You drunkard, you.

You hiccup.
You hiccup.
You trip up.
You stagger around.
As the features of the world become painfully clear, you realize you are once again sober.

Ah well. At least there’s no such thing as a hangover on the Disc.

What to keep, what to sell

Of the collection of oddments bestowed upon you by the game when you enter it, the things you really need to hang on to are the torch (wandering around in the dark is the fastest way to get killed) and the voucher - you need to exchange that for a talker so you can communicate with everyone else. And if this is the first time you’ve visited Discworld, I strongly suggest you keep the Information Booklet too, at least until you’ve read it. Type help read and syntax read to find out how to read multipage items.

Everything else you need can be bought in Commerce. So, sell the things you don’t need, then type in list to see what goodies are available.

Try not to buy too much stuff - being skint isn’t much more fun on the Disc than it is on Roundworld (but at least you don’t need to eat or sleep!) - you need something to wear and at least one weapon.

Do browse carefully anything that takes your fancy before you buy it, and if in doubt, ask on the newbie_channel.

1. The other two are dedicated shops (not sure what they're actually called in the game; feel free to let me know), which sell without buying, and Player shops, which are run by other players. They all work in much the same way.
2. Pumpkin money is what you have in the Newbie area, but once you leave, whatever pumpkin cash you've got left is automatically exchanged for the local currency.