Dark Legacy MUD Forum

Since we are actively correcting issues with the game at the moment, and are working towards new areas, new quests, and new content, i request some assistance in locating some issues with the lower level areas.

For (areas designed for) levels 1-30

1) Mobile Balance:

a) if you come across a mobile which instantly kills you, or does an obscene amount of damage, we need to correct it. (this is not true for potion attacks - those are just the luck of the draw)


2) Area Inadequacies

a) I am interested in creating a 'healing room' for either each area, or each group of areas which are close to each other. So if you die, you will be resurrected at this location after you depart.
(This may aid in the faster retrieval of corpses, and the ability to get back to levelling faster, rather than appearing back in Tarsonis)

b) Areas which are often used for levelling, and have players that charm all the mobiles, and place them together in one room, or find a way to make levelling impossible for other players in the area - needs to be corrected.

c) Finding it difficult, or near impossible to find a suitable area for your current level. This also needs to be corrected.
- For this, it is possible to either rearrange areas which are just placed too far out in the wilderness, closer to home, or, make use of neglected areas and change the levels and difficulty of the mobiles inside them to be suitable.

d) Finding it difficult, or near impossible to find armor and weapons suitable for your level. We would like to place more shops around cities which can aid the player at their various level ranges.

I also would like to place lower level areas closer to the big cities, for ease of travel.


Any other issues you have with mobiles and areas, please post here.

*Please note: If you are using newbie equipment from the academy, and are having issues with getting killed too quickly, let's correct the equipment problem first, and then you may consider posting about area inadequacies.*


thank you

Here is an invite to anyone wishing to revamp the current distribution of areas:

Take Alora's world-map, or even just a blank picture, and re-arrange the various areas around major cities.

Once finished, post here with a url, or send me the image, and i will place it online for others to comment on.


Current major cities:

Tarsonis - inland - current starter town - level 1+ (recommended) city
Midian - inland - level 10+ (recommended) city
Kendermore Village - inland - level 15?+ (recommended) town
Tyr - near mountains - level 20+ (recommended) city
Freeport - port city - near water - level 30+ (recommended) city
Highmoon - port city - near water

we will not yet count bangrath as a city or town, as it is designed solely for levelling atm.

- The arrangement should promote (some) worldmap adventuring, so i dont necessarily want all areas stacked together in a tiny group, the further you go away from the cities, the harder the areas should be.

Kendermore Village (near hochenya) now has a selection of level 16 gear which (should) be a far better alternative than the newbie equipment.

If any would like to try it out, and make any suggestions, feel free to do so.

Midian also has a new selection of level 11 gear

i've also disabled selling of armor and weapons at the two main weapon/armor shops in there, just to keep it pretty.

i'll find some alternative places for players to sell their wares however

Just a note, i had a chance to test out the level 16 gear in Hochenya today, and i think if you were having troubles before, these will help out satisfactorily.

The villagers were hitting me for 40-75 damage, and i was able to finish the fight with about 180 hp left, which should be reasonable i think.


Also - side note regarding the thing i mentioned about the worldmap - and area placements, if you feel more comfortable just writing stuff down in text, feel free to reply here with any concerns on areas which you feel would be better suited elsewhere, or areas you feel are just simply improperly placed.

About the equipment selling...arent you sort of shooting yourself in the foot really with regards to getting players to explore? It may not be listed here as a goal of exploring (getting better eq) but i think it def. should be. Across the range of areas ive found plenty of eq thats quite suitable for levelling...but theyre not always in the main areas of levelling (which im assuming you want to diversify) Id suggest promoting/supporting this instead of making it easy for newbies by allowing them to just buy their eq if they cant craft or are too lazy to explore Alora.

I think requiring newbies to explore all the various areas all over the place just to get the minimum required to level up and gain some levels is asking a bit much.

I disagree. You should be able to find suitable gear while you explore new areas. We don't need to dump full suits of new EQ into every level bracket.

Thats really an extreme. I don't think Isabelle mentioned full sets of eq at every level bracket, just 16. 16 is young enough so that exploring still kinda sucks anyway, your character is weak and low on movement points. Older vets take the shortcuts they already know for granted, whereas a newbie is wondering around on the worldmap getting swarmed by weenie mobs.

I did use a straw man argument but the real thing is there. The full sets of EQ you find from city guards ect. such should still suck. Better Eq should have a few pieces scattered over the level range for an entire areas.

Say in Dwarves you find sweet maces, and helms that are level 12 and then a sweet breastplate that is level 20.

This would give a couple options for both the high and low end of the level range for an area. Of course you'd also havce the full compliment of generally useless EQ.

It is alot to ask, being oldschool myself, and knowing where everything was, i still found it fairly difficult to find anything other than newbie equipment to use which didn't lower my stats, or otherwise negatively affect me. Some area mobiles were doing obscene amounts of damage to me (with regards to my then newbie eq - mixed with the eq that i knew how to get - arabellas bracelets, travelling cloaks, silver facewraps, etc.) If i was wearing these, someone new to the game must not be having an easy time with surviving. - that was my reasoning for the addition of equipment that is easily accessible.

The fact is, new players /do not/ explore, and find better equipment. This became painfully evident when i saw a level 49/49/49 player very upset that he was dieing in armageddon, when i looked at him, he was wearing a few of the items from the tarsonis guards, and the rest of the items were from the academy.

Exploration as many, if not all of you know, has always been a very big thing that i try to promote (and sometimes forcibly push). The way i want to handle exploration, will be via quests. The tools exist right now to create very detailed quests, which can promote both learning about any range of topics, and promote learning with regards to exploration.

Showing a player that there actually is more to the mud than just getting from level x to level x is very important to me. And at the same time, i want to help remove the image of Dark-Legacy as being for 'advanced mudders only'

We are going to be introducing new measures in the patches to come which will be geared towards reducing stress, and increasing the "fun" factor to the game.

I will point out, the items that are currently available - and that will be popping up, while it's true they are much more powerful than currently 'readily' available equipment, none of them will use things like resistances, or things which take away from the crafting process. At least, i will try for that. Usually, the items should focus more on health, mana, and hitroll / mobility. All of the items will have their proper material value set, which allows for damagereduction to function properly. Also, i will not be adding damage rolls to /any/ of these items, as i think thats crafters domain, and is also a source of imbalance in the game.

please, hit me with anything you'd like to see changed, or modified, or improved upon.

just also to mention, the gear will be indeed staggered, i won't add eq at every level range, you will see level 11, 16, maybe 25, possibly ending in 40 as a max.

also, the cost of the items will increase so that they won't just be cake to buy full sets, it will involve testing to see how much gold a new player may get levelling, if this means i need to adjust gold values on mobs, i will.

on most of my new chars (i make them alot) i get to lvl 10 with out 5k if i dont sell any stuff from chest, then i move to shatterd refuge and make a tad bit more from lvl 10 to about lvl 16 taking me to a total of about 12k once i get to 16 i head to HoW and kill off stuff there, depending on how i do it i make lots of money. but HoW isnt a normal levelling spot for newbies, so after about lvl 16 or 18 i cant really tell you how much money its normal to make for a newbie, but i hope the little bit of info helps. (p.s. newbies can make lots of money off of runes, i pop fecs about ever 7 out of 10 chests)

Whoa, non-crafted levelling gear that's not completely worthless. What's DL coming to?

Good job, whoever put this stuff in.

I would very much like to see mob gear getting boost and/or creation of new items on par with crafts.

Crafts are easy once a player actually "mines". I think it's too easy to master a craft and then you're set with particular type(s) of weapon/armory/jewelry for the rest of the game. Every level 1 character is capable of making top gear. Crafts may dispromote exploring for many players. Why explore when you can already make the best gear.

For newbies and/or low level characters, another factor that may hender exploring is lack healing/mana recovering methods. I can't think of a reliable way to heal other than with spells. Perhaps a potion shop that sells reliable(unlimited) healing and mana potions would help solve this problem. Random chest potion(s) are by far not "reliable" for developing characters.

Possibly regen being enchanted on items )))

the thing is thremp, were trying to get it so that we dont have to have enchanted armor to level a low player, also.. where would the fun in the game be if you could just enchant regen into a cuirass and everytime you got hit you would just regen it back? that would be the downfall of DL. puting regen into eq isnt a good idea, but if you must get regen in your eq to level i suggest looking at that runes do in weapons, i know its not much help but if you can find a weapon with 5 sockets and you use the correct runes you have 5 regen just for using that weapon, if you dualwield you can get 10 regen, and a 5 socket weapon isnt too hard to find, ive also heard that there are 6 socket weapons out there, if somehow you could get 2 of those thats 12 regen, i know it would be a waste to put regen in a good weapon, but that is the sacrifice of being able to heal without spells

The Fire Drake in the Warlock's Keep was pretty much guaranteed death last I checked, which was a while ago. Many low-level characters wandered into its room and died instantly.

Balam and Balac in armageddon seem to be extremely dangerous, though I haven't checked lately. Babylon would also instakill players with breath occasionally.

The barbarian smith and chief in Barbarian Village seem to have too much hp; perhaps lower their hp and raise something else about them.

Last I checked, the mage in Keep of Valor would sometimes cast distort, which was near-instant death for players of the appropriate level.

The zoo janitors seem too easy; low-level characters kill them pretty easily. They probably need more hp so it's harder to kill them from 150 feet with spells before they can close with you.

The elven chief in AC seems to score a lot of kills, but honestly I think that area is kind of overused and should have a lot of dangerous mobs.

ty, i will take care of those a.s.a.p.

also, i've been tweaking the 'summoning' spells, summon wolf, summon bear, etc

i just started, many of them had strange races set, and improper bodyparts, some were very weak, feel free to post here about any of the summoned creatures as well.

think i should let the summoned creatures be mountable?

i think only bear should be mountable. Rats, wolves, and faeries are too small unless your a pixie. Maybe the amount of fec runes could determine the size of the summon?

I tried to experiment with summons but i really couldnt do much to check their damage etc. because their AR was so incredibly low that they couldnt even hit the combat machine...and that was with a char with 83 summoning complexity.

*wolves and bears*

I've been saying for a while that summons, other than elementals, are useless.

As Silvanos says, they get jack for AR and can never hit anything. Also, they are all capped at ridiculously low levels; the faerie's cap of 50 is the highest among them. None of the summons, other than elementals, have high hp either; YOU have to tank for THEM, when it should be the other way around. Oh and, Summon Guardian is sad.

Rats, wolves, and bears are virtually useless; I've occasionally used bears while levelling but they're useless after triav and not very useful before that. Faeries can be useful while levelling, since their cone spell can't miss, but they have something like 15 hp, they have low complexity so they can't pierce MR very well, and they are capped at level 50. Also, the complexity for summon faerie is something like 35, which gives it to you pretty late. At the (late) point you get it, the level 10 faeries are worthless.

Summons became extra useless recently, with the "you don't gain xp for a kill if something 16 or more levels higher than you helped" code. Druids have to use elementals half the level they can summon, and normal summons become useless before you are high enough level to use them(a level 50 faerie isn't remotely comparable to a normal level 50 mob). Also, only level 60 elementals can be used epicing because of this, even though their damage is pathetic vs epic mobs(elementals have low damage, but compensate by ignoring every possible defense in the game, while epic mobs are pure hp; no sanc or resists), casters don't have many options other than elementals/charmies at high epic levels, and high-epic-level druids can summon elementals of hundreds of levels.

a prism containing Summon Vermin (5c, 20m, Summoning, 4.8 sec)
a prism containing Summon Wolf (12c, 150m, Summoning, 4.8 sec)
a prism containing Summon Familiar (15c, 200m, Summoning, 9.8 sec)
a prism containing Summon Bear (24c, 200m, Summoning, 4.8 sec)
a prism containing Summon Faerie (35c, 180m, Summoning, 4.8 sec)


outside of summong -->
a prism containing Conjure Elemental (30c, 300m, Nature, 4.8 sec)


i'll first try to balance them with a pixie player, and opponent of equal level - and see how it works out, next few days possibly.

i'll consider summon vermin and summon wolf as lowbie spells, designed for players who have lower complexities (and levels) and summon familiar as just a spell for those without pets.

Summon Bear will be the tank pet, (low ar, higher hitpoints/damreduction - maybe resistances)
Summon Faerie will be the damage pet. (low hitpoints, low damagereduction, high attackroll - or higher complexities)

sound fair so far?

yes, this will also help to balance out rangers a little more.

Ranger is already the best class at this point in the game.

Isabelle, what you suggested is fine, or you can do it like this:

Bear: High hp/damge, low AR/AC - a fat, hard hitting tank
Faerie: low ar, low damage, low hp, resistant to magic, higher complexity and more(not neccessarily better) spells than they have now
Uncap all summons' levels as well; I see no reason an e300 character should be stuck with crappy level 50 summons. Do you?

Right now, faeries are worthless in pvp; even if they get higher complexities to pierce MR more effectively, killing a 15(?) hp summon isn't hard at all. One casting of an arrow or sunbeam spell with xiix or tar runes can wipe out all of your expensive faeries at once. They're also useless in epicing; they can't pierce mob's MR or damage reduction and their damage is insignificant compared to epic mobs' hp. Uncapping their level might fix this.

Bears will continue to be useless in pvp if they're configured as a tank, as there's nothing forcing your opponent to attack them.

Edit: also, animate dead is useless now that animated corpses disappear if you lose control of them. It used to be useful for making astral targets for your alts, but now it is just another completely useless spell. You don't get the spell until late in levelling, it's pretty useless even once you get it, and it has no value at epic levels.