Start (Player Guides)

Hello and welcome to The Two Towers, adventurer! This short guide will briefly introduce you to the game and hopefully will help you get started playing the MUD "for real".

To start, this guide is targeted at players who have already completed our introductory tutorial. If you are still in midst of it (or worse yet, did not even choose your race!), stop reading this now and follow the onscreen instructions on what to do in the tutorial.

After the tutorial is finished, you are dumped somewhat unceremonially into the middle of a town. This, adventurer, is your home town. Home towns are chosen based on your race: if you are a dwarf, you will end up in Belegost; if you are a hobbit, you will appear in Bywater, and so on. The first thing you should do once you arrive in the town is to familiarize yourself with it. Move around a bit (use the standard directional commands like "n", "s", "ne", etc.), explore. To help you with this, in each starting town there is a sign with the map of the town drawn on it. Just "l map" when you come near one. If by chance you exit the town into the wilderness, see "help lost" for a guide on how to get back.

Once you are familiar with the general layout and moving around, you should think about choosing a profession. When you start the game, you begin as a Civilian. Civilians do not have any special abilities and thus are the weakest profession. Unless you are an experienced player seeking challenge, staying a civilian may not be a good idea. There are 7 other professions available to you; check "help professions" to see the quick summary of all of them, and "help <profession name>" to see the details of a particular one. You may also view "help abilities" to see what each profession can do. Don't worry about picking the right profession for yourself; when you are still low level, you will be free to change your profession as often as you wish and explore what suits you best.

To become a member of a profession, you will need to seek a trainer of that profession. There is a chance there will be one in your town, although it doesn't have to be the case. Sometimes you will have to travel to another town. To do so, walk to the town gates, where a signpost is located. From there, you can "travelto" to neighbouring towns. See "help travelto" for details. If you do not know where the trainer you seek is located, ask the newbiehelpers on the newbiecomm, by typing a question such as:

] Hello.  Where can I find a warrior trainer?

When you finally reach the profession trainer, simply type "study" to join the profession.

At this point, you are ready to explore Arda, and can choose multiple paths. If what interests you is gathering money, see "help golding". If you want to quickly advance your character, see "help levelling". Finally, if you would rather explore this huge world slow-paced, see "help questing".