Asheron's Call General questions taken from the AC FAQ v1.9 What's a mule? Mules are characters you create to do something that your main character doesn't want to do, e.g. hold extra items, fletch, or identify items. They have physical statistics and skills designed only for what they do which usually makes them pretty bad at adventuring. Most have high strength to carry extra items, and some have appraisal skills or alchemy and fletching specialized. Transferring items from main character to mule can be risky alone, as it requires you have both characters in one spot, drop the item, then log in with the other character to pick it up. There is a period of about 30 seconds that anyone can walk by and grab whatever you dropped; and don't forget: POSSESSION IS THE LAW (unless you're both PK). Handing the item to a trusted friend to hand to your mule is much safer. Is there a way to do secure trading? Yes! The September 2000 patch added a trading panel next to the allegiance/fellowship windows. Get out of war mode, select your trading partner, and click the button to initiate a trade. Then drag items to the trade window. As soon as both parties agree to the trade, the items are exchanged. Secure trading does not fix all scams. Two things to do to prevent losses: always verify all items in the trade window before accepting the trade, and keep the text window "large". The reason to keep your window large is because if you're dragging an item to the trade window and the window gets closed, suddenly you're placing the item on the ground instead of the trade window. How can someone steal from you? There really is no such concept of thievery in Dereth, as it requires (in)action of the victim to lose an item. Although most people are quite honest in Dereth, some spend their time trying to trick people into losing items or giving them away. The common ways people lose items due to others are: 1) a trade where one party doesn't follow through with the agreed-upon trade. Use the secure trade panel to prevent this, and always make sure you ID the items offered before clicking "Trade." 2) while "muling" (i.e.: dropping items on the ground, then logging in with a mule to collect those items) there is a bit of time where the items you drop are open for anyone to take. 3) while recovering items from a corpse, if the owner closes the corpse (or runs away), anyone can subsequently open it and remove any remaining items. 4) handing items to a tradesman to fashion for you (e.g. motes to make an ingot), where the "tradesman" is a fraud. Try to get a good recommendation, and always ID a tradesman to verify high coordination and focus... if they won't let you ID them, don't hire them! 5) someone closing a trade window the moment you drag an item to it, causing you to drop your item on the ground. If you have your chat window expanded, this won't affect you. Be wary when showing an item to a stranger, and use the large chat window. 6) Certain items look the same in a trade window. A white robe and a black robe look exactly the same! To avoid the old "bait and switch" when trading for a black robe, you can get the person to WEAR the object (so that you can see it's a black robe he's wearing) and place it in the trade window. When you examine the object, it should say some like "Use this item to REMOVE it". If it says "Use this item to wear it" then it's not being worn! Some people will claim that taking objects that fall off a decomposed corpse is stealing, too. Although that is debatable, always remember the first line: "There is no such thing as thievery in Dereth" but whether you call it stealing or not, all those actions are ANTI-SOCIAL in a social environment, and it really does ruin other players' enjoyment of the game. The Code of Conduct does not prohibit grief players, and the game mechanics do not provide a way for getting the lost items back; but you CAN inscribe items which may help recovery, especially if they fell off a lost corpse. When you see someone being a grief-player, simple do a /squelch -account evilplayername, and be done with them. Is there housing? Housing was introduced in the Dark Majesty expansion in October, 2001. All require specific items (usu. monster parts) and cash. There are three types: cottages (cost 1 part + 300,000 pyreals), Villas (cost 1 part + 3,000,000p), and Mansions (cost an ungodly amount of parts and an ungodly amount of pyreals). How does the allegiance system work? Characters can swear allegiance to another character (of equal or higher level), becoming a vassal. Vassals will generate free experience points (XP) for the patron and his patron, all the way up the tree to the monarch. This XP is not taken from the vassal's normal XP, but generated for free. The amount of XP generated depends on the vassal's loyalty rating, the patron's leadership rating, the number of vassals the patron has, and the amount of time the vassal has been sworn to the patron. The xp generated is typically 10-20% of the xp earned, and the next rank up the tree gets about half of that passed up. It is in the best interests of the patron to retain his vassals, so a good patron will usually provide not only incentive to swear allegiance, but provide help for his vassals in some form as they advance. Breaking allegiance will cost the vassal XP to swear to a new patron, unless the patron dissolves the allegiance. Once you're level 30 or 40, for 100,000 xp (a relatively small amount) you can vastly increase the xp your patron gets by raising loyalty. When do I get new skill points? As you advance in level, you gain additional skillpoints to learn new skills. You will obtain one point every level up to 10, then every even level to 20, then every third at 23, 26, 29, 32, then every fifth at 35. It looks like: 2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,12,14,16,18,20,23,26,29,32,35,40,45,... Learning any untrained or unusable skill will make it trained. You cannot specialize a skill after character creation. Skill points are rare, spend them wisely. The skill point at 32 was added on the September 2000 prop, and was retroactive. There is also a skill point quest on ML, for those that purchased AC:DM, which can be done once per character. What is a "death item?" When you die, you will leave one or more items on your corpse. You can regain the items you lost by getting back to your own corpse and "looting" it -- no one else can loot in the meantime (unless you are a PK and were killed by another PK). If you don't get back before your corpse decomposes, it drops all the items on the ground for anyone to take. You tend to lose your most expensive items, so many players stock up with "death items" -- useless, lightweight, and expensive items -- which will drop first if they should die (greater manastones come to mind). How long does my corpse last after I die? Approximately 5 minutes per level, with a minimum of one hour. If no one is around to keep the landblock active, it can last weeks. How do Arcane Lore, Difficulty, and Spellcraft interact? Your arcane lore skill allows you to activate the magic in magical items, and helps you learn spells from scrolls. You can still wield a magic weapon that you can't activate, but it will function as a non-magical weapon. The "difficulty" of an item is the arcane lore required to activate it. The "spellcraft" of an item is the skill at which the magic is cast. Spellcraft is really only significant with respect to offensive spells, and directly affects whether the spell can overcome the magic defense of the target. How do mana stones work? Mana stones and mana charges are used to charge up magical items. A mana CHARGE will impart all of its mana into an item and be destroyed after use. Purchase these from a mage shop. An EMPTY mana STONE can be used to drain the existing mana from a magic item (destroying the item) and later impart that mana into another magic item. The chance of a stone being destroyed after charging an item is 10% (after the Oct-2001 prop). What good are specialized skills? The current calculations show that specializing a skill will only give you a 12 point bonus at the lower levels, for the same amount of experience spent on the skill. However, at the very high levels, this amount is larger, perhaps 30 points. Although 12 points at the lower levels may not be worth the investment, 25 points at a high level is MANY millions of XP, and those 25 points can be quite significant in the effect they provide, too. However, skillpoints must not be squandered, so this decision is an important one. Consider the importance of the skill, the bonus received at the level you expect to reach, the cost to specialize it, and the effect the additional points will have. It's rarely worth specializing run skill, because a run of 330 isn't much faster than a run of 300. But a magic skill of 330 is noticably better than a skill of 300. Can two people play on the same account? When you login, all other active logins will be closed. There is a workaround to allow sharing of one account on different worlds (by closing zonefriends after bringing up the "Play" window), but this MIGHT be against the license agreement. You can, however, install AC on multiple computers and play on any ONE of them using your zone ID. Your characters are linked to this ID, and not the computer where you play (except for keymaps). Where do I find special arrowheads? All non-starter towns now carry special arrowheads (may- 2001) and "wrapped" heads, which allows the fletcher to create 250 at a time. How do I report a bug or complain? In-game: use the "urgent assistance" button (hit escape a couple times to bring it up). Web: bugs.zone.com. For zone problems, zmaster@microsoft.com. You probably will not get a response. Worse yet, if you have problems with the zone, you usually must get help using a zone chat, which won't work depending what problems you're having. What newsgroups are available? alt.games.asherons-call is available on Usenet. You can also try the group microsoft.public.games.zone.asherons_call, but you may need to connect to the microsoft server at msnews.microsoft.com. How do I run two clients on one machine? You can get instructions at http://todd.acdev.org What is Decal/Sixth-Sense? People have been writing 3rd party software for AC for some time now, such as pathing algorithms, taper predictors, etc. Decal is the next step, which allows the AC network protocol to be analyzed, so that 3rd party software can INTERACT with AC. Sixth-sense is one such program that uses Decal. Information can be obtained from www.ac.webefx.com and www.acdev.org. What is Gear? Gear is a speed hack, which tries to make your character run faster. I've heard different reports on its effectiveness, but it's considered a cheat in PK and there are many reports of it lagging nearby players. It's also considered an attack on the game servers, which violates the CoC, and Turbine is banning people that use protocol-altering programs. What is "God Mode"? "God Mode" and "Runcasting" are the same, which is where you can cast spells or heal or eat while running. It requires precise timing and repeated jumps, so Turbine added a jump timer to make it more difficult. However, they put it on the CLIENT side, which is a kludge at best, because there are programs that can disable their patch, allowing you to runcast again. Should we start a class-action lawsuit for downtime? No. Even suggesting that will cause you grief. If you're frustrated, return your game or stop playing, or ask for help fixing it. Should I sign a petition? Petitions have very, very little effect on policy decisions. - o -