Gaining eXperience Points (XP)

In order to learn anything, you need to gain experience. Within the Discworld MUD, this means gaining experience points (XP) which you can then spend on advancing the six skill sets (or trees): Craft, Covert, Faith, Fighting, Magic and Other. (More on the Skill Trees later).

You earn XP for every second you spend logged in - this is known as heartbeat XP. But the two main sources of XP are Quests and Combat.

Quests and Quest XP

The Quests are mini-puzzles in the game, and if you solve them, you earn a nice little stack of XP. They're graded in difficulty levels, with 1 being the easiest, and some of them are good fun. As previously noted, two of them confer the Emote and Remote commands - but the rest are just for fun.

The first one you'll ever do is in the Newbie Area; technically you can't leave until you've done it. But actually, the game will expel you from the safety of the Newbie Area if you haven't left by your third or fourth login, so if you don't manage to get it, don't worry. But give it a go, because it does give you a nice handy starter stack of XP.

The Discworld Admin have some very strict rules regarding the giving away of Quest solutions, as you'll have already noted from the list of rules when you started your character... so sadly I can't go into too much detail.

However, all Quest solutions are available on the Discworld page itself. To read them,

• Go to http://discworld.atuin.net/lpc/.
• Click the Login for more options.
• Enter your character name and password. Note the tick box option to Remember password - it might be worth selecting this.
• Logging in successfully will see the Login for more options turn into Welcome [your character] with the option to Switch user underneath.
  • If you're unsuccessful, you'll get a page telling you so. But fear not! Just click the Login for more options link again and the Discworld will generously let you have another go.
• Hover your mouse over the Playing menu item, and you may notice that the Playing menu now contains considerably more items than it did before. Third from the bottom is the Quests page.

The Discworld MUD Quests page purports to give you all the solutions, with the option to only see various hints rather than the entire thing, for those who like a challenge.

However, the solutions themselves are, in most cases, merely generous hints. Some are only available to certain Guilds, several require high levels of particular skills, and some are just weird¹! So don't imagine you're being dim if you can't work it out, even from the "solution" - just think of the ones you don't get as something to aim for as you progress your character.

Combat

As previously mentioned, the most successful way of gaining XP is by fighting and killing NPCs - and even if you don’t fancy a life of fighting, being able to defend yourself against brigands and Shady Characters will mean you’ll get to live longer. And that would be nice.

So, the Newbie Area of the Disc handily provides you with a safe environment in which to practise your moves, gain some XP, and learn about the fighting process itself. You’ll find it behind the door marked Combat.

While you can earn a bunch of XP in one go for winning Quests, combat confers it in small increments during the fight; if you win, you get an extra stack, the size of which depending on how powerful your opponent was.

In the Combat room, you'll be practising on a dummy, so you'll only see small increments - but the longer you practise, the more you get.

Well go on then, brave Adventurer! Click on Combat and no diddle-daddling!

1. And some are tediously boring.