Just want to keep this as a brief FAQ for newbies...updating as I notice questions asked, so this will start super small :).

Location questions

Q: How do I find X area?
A: If using the batclient, enable 'show realm maps' option.
A: Everybody can 'help ferry' in-game for a list of the maps urls.
A: Ooga's maps site Jeskko's maps site Ggr's maps site

Q: How do I get to Arelium from Pleasantville?
A: Arelium is just outside pleasantville; once you get outside the pleasantville gates, type 'map' and you'll see a big city (indicated by C on the map). That's arelium.
A: There's a portal in pleasantville that will take you to the newbie warehouse (damogran's). Go 2 south, 1 east from the warehouse and you'll find yourself on the streets of arelium. When on the pleasantville streets, type 'village' for a map to find the portal.

Q: How do I get to my race shrine?
A: Use the race shrine portal in the Arelium adventurers guild. (help racial guilds)
A: There's a portal to your race shrine from pleasantville. When on the pleasantville streets, type 'village' for a map to find the portal.

Gameplay questions:

Q: How do I heal faster?
A: Check out the helpfile 'help healing'

Q: Where should I go to find good areas for getting started?
A: First things first: There are no 100% safe areas in batmud. That's part of the challenge. Anywhere you go, even if it's a newbie area, you need to stay on your toes. Use the 'consider' command often. Even better, use the 'consider' skill (and train it). Now that we have that out of the way, I'd recommend checking out the areas in the granite post. If you see a granite post around (there's one right outside pleasantville), try to 'touch post' and it'll give you a list of areas you can teleport to. Check those out!

Q: Help! I'm level 1, and even a pigeon or a fly is beating the $#*!% out of me!
A: Especially during the early levels, there are some alternatives to killing things for leveling up. I strongly recommend exploring areas for the first few levels. Check out 'help exploring' for some information about exploration. In short, the first time you enter most indoors rooms, you'll get a little bit of exp. It might seem like a small amount, but it can really add up as you explore full areas! It's entirely possible to get to level 20 or beyond without ever killing a single monster!

Q: Every pigeon I kill gives me enough experience to make a level, why is batmud so easy?!
A: The game is designed to let you through the first 20-30 levels quite quickly. Many people are new to the mudding format, and so it's worth those first 20+ levels simply to learn how to play the game and get around. After this inital easier period, you'll find that Bat is a truly challenging game which will keep you coming back for more!

EQ/Gear Questions:

Q: What gear should I use when getting started.
A: Don't buy equipment from the shops! This gear is overpriced and is rarely worth even a fraction of what it costs! If you're going to spend hard-earned gold on equipment, then buy it from a player via the 'sales' channel or 'broker' command.
A: There are many ways to get free gear. The best thing to do is check the newbie warehouse. There's a portal in pleasantville that will take you straight to the warehouse. Don't forget to be polite when you're there, though!

Q: I have two weapons/armours, how can I tell which one is better?
A: There's a nifty 'compare' command. Check out 'help compare' in-game for more details.
A: At low levels, you will not have very good weapon/armour skills, and therefore won't be able to take advantage of good gear. For armour, pick the lightest item that covers the most slots. For weapons, pick the one you're most skilled in (long blades, short blades, etc -- 'help weapon <type>' or 'help weapon list' for info on what skills are used), then pick the biggest one you can wield in one hand. Check 'help heft' to determine how wieldable a weapon is, and 'help weapon list' for a comparison of the relative weapon type sizes within a category.

Q: I 'quit' and came back and my items are gone...but it said I would save worn items.
A: Read 'help saving items'. Read it again.
A: A short answer: worn+wielded items save. Carried items do not. Coins (carried and in bank) always save. If you need to save more than you can wear+wield, then check into the alternative options in 'help saving items'. My favorite for people getting started out is inns -- they're cheap, and they let you save up to 50 items.
A: Certain items are not saveable. This includes most quest items and all keys. Additionally, items that store other items don't keep their contents. There are a few specific containers that keep a single type of item (purses, potion packs, pill packs, etc) that do save their contents, but you won't be running into those at early levels.

Q: How do I save my items?
A: To mention a few briefly: wear/wield items and use 'ld' to logout instead of 'quit', store items in the pleasantville basket (note, get the items before you become too highbie and are kicked out of pleasantville), and eventually you will want to rent/buy a castle room and buy some chests. For more details, see 'help saving items'.

Here are some thoughts on questions- I don't think I'm an experienced enough player to answer them, though. Since I'm a new player these might not be the smartest questions. At least some of these might be interesting.

Q: What kinds of things should I avoid doing as a new player?
A: Offensive language towards any player, loot stealing, making a lot of noise and Nazrix.

Q: What places should I avoid going as a new player?
A: Any place that'll most likely get you killed. But there's no way of knowing until you try.

Q: What places should I visit as a new player?
A: All areas that have no aggressive monsters or has only low expworth monsters. The bigger you are the bigger the monsters you can tackle without loosing your head. And the more areas you visit the bigger you get with the explore exp.

Q: What kind of equipment should I use?
A: Any suitable EQ to your class. And usually it's not worth wearing every single piece of crap someone left lying on the streets. There usually is a good reason for someone abnadoning 'em in the first place.

Q: How do I find/join <guild>?
A: Check the maps on http://www.bat.org/maps/ and player-generated maps also available on the Internet.

Q: Which races/backgrounds are easier for new players?
A: Any race with str/con combined with nomad background is an easy way to keep you alive. Some might say it's the boring way, but there really is no restrictions on what you can play. Some combos just aren't wise game-wise. Nomad background is just as good as anything else but the usual answer is 'ogre/cyclops/giant ranger'

Q: Which race/background/guild combinations are easier for new players?
A: See above.

EDIT: oh and also
Q: What does <strange short word> mean?
A: Point to a helpfile on nickname

More of Gameplay questions

Q: I'm poisoned how do I remove it?
A: Ask on wanted for summon and remove poison, go to a sauna (which are in player cities).

Q: I lost the map when moving how do I get it back?
A: help brief

Q: I can't use my skills/spells anymore and I know I am typing it right.
A: Uncommand use/cast (help command), unalias use/cast (help alias), make sure you have the right name for the target (these are probably 3 most common causes for skills/spells to not work right, but there are other causes)

I don't know how well this applies to BatMUD, but I know from playing other MUDs that when someone is having trouble getting a skill/spell to work, there's usually some kind of error message given (even if it's "You can't do that"). If you need to ask on channels or other players for help, it's much easier for them to help you if you give them the error message you're presented with. Usually that, at the very least, eliminates some possible causes.

A: #1 thing to avoid is breaking the hard set rules. No cheating (help robot, help multiple characters, help cheating) all of these things will most likely end up in your character being deleted and you starting over or not being allowed to play for a long time.
#2 thing is probably intentionally pissing off players. Asking questions shouldn't upset anyone but spamming on just about any channel with capslock will. Also if you do happen to get player killed ask the person why politely don't whine about it on channels (will just upset more people resulting in more deaths).

A: Don't avoid going anywhere...yes you will die exploring there is no way to avoid that, but it doesn't mean you shouldnt learn new stuff


A: Finding the shops in BC is good start and getting the general idea of where locations are based on "normal" markers sc, church, ocp etc

A: To start anything you can get altho most of your exp will come from exploring more than fighting. This is also very dependant on the background you took


A: Use the map http://www.zerobelow.net/maps/
As far as joining guilds help levels is a good place to start. Most guilds are a matter of having right background and just going to the guildmaster npc and typing join. Sometimes you may have to wait to join a guild though because the guildmasters tend to have nice equipment on them and get killed periodically.

A: Races are tricky. I personally suggest races that can see in the dark, but I have seen a lot of people suggest races with natural invis or other flavor. This is definitely more up to the player and depends a lot on how much help you are getting from friends/how new you are to muds.


A: Most players would suggest a tank race (something big) with ranger as guild, but again this is a suggestion. Lots of players do not start as the "norm" and make a pretty solid name for themselves for not doing so.

I'll only answer those questions that I think Kanis gave bit too vague answers.



A: All areas with newbie in their name and all areas accessible from newbie transport post and all places accesible with player city portals.



Basicly only newbie eq that has any real meaning is some armour with good prots like merchant made full-plates and o-yorois and 2x weapon. Spider sabres prolly have best price/damage ratio for newbie. Naturally if you want to be backrow member you should try to get +int/wis and +spr eq. For tank +dam +str/con/dex and other combat attributes. Also ring of infravision is very good if you don't have racial infra.



A: Ask on newbie channel.



A: Big because they have hit points so you dont die to ever hit. There is no battle mage in batmud because mages get like 300 hp, even a 1k monster can hit that much in one round.



Ranger is the offical newbie guild but other tank ones are also usable. That invis spell is no longer as useful as it used to be. So mage for explore does not work so well anymore. Monsters got random chance to get see invis so almost every area has some agros with see invis now.

Oh, silly me. I answered Nobu's questions with editing his post before reading the rest of the thread. Well, double info here and there but on a quick glance valid data anyway.

How do I go back and change my character?

I'm not sure what you mean by "change your character", but, here's a few suggestions...
* If you are unhappy with your name, then the only real option you have is to stop using the character, and start a new one. (well, you could make a LOT of exp, and do a rebirth in a year's time: 'help rebirth')
* If you're fine with the name, but want to pick a new background, guild, or fix some other mistake you've made when creating the character, then you can reincarnate. 'help reinc' 'help reincarnation' 'help reincarnation process'

Q: I can't find my way out of this place! (For example Ancient Catacombs)

A: If the exits are illogical, you are most likely in a maze. Take out a paper and pen, drop coins in each room to identify them and start mapping the maze. Eventually you will find an exit that leads out.

Um hi! Im a newbie just came in today and well needless to say im overwhelmed. Most ppl here have a clue on what to do because this might just be their thing but im am COMPLETELY new to this and have no clue. My husband kind of explained but im a total ditz and cant put a handle on what it is that im supposed to do. Is there like a batmud for dummies or something? :) Oh adn i want to be a vampire hence the name but what do i have to do to become one?

Heh, BatMUD is overwhelming. And damn hard to learn, but that is exactly what makes it special. The best way to get started is to read help files (namely 'help quickstart' and 'help getting started') and ask questions on the newbie channel. For vampires you need a lot of work, since they are a race only for the rebirthed ('help rebirth').

One last if everything else fails ask on newbie channel and try who helper unidle and then ask them in person with tells.

And if you are really desperate you can also try wanted or bat channel but the answers might be anything. Newbie channel has no lying policy other channels do not.

Q: How do I dig a grave for a corpse, and why should I?

A: Once you've killed something, it would be wise of you to bury it. Digging a grave for a corpse is as simple as using the command 'dig grave'. Though, you must have something in your inventory to bury the corpse with (i.e. a shovel). The reason you should bury your corpse' is because they will become mummies, zombies or anything undead and seek you out in revenge!

I found this in the Information category of the Books & Text section.

Actually you can bury corpses with bare hands it just takes few seconds and you can't use skills/spells while doing it.