The last guard, bloodstains on his torn armour, dropped a bar of strange
material on Secretary Fingledrell's desk.

Turning it over and studying it curiously, she asked "It looks like iron...but
there's something off about it."

"It's _primordial_ iron, the foreman said before the troll caught up with us
and ripped his arms off," the guard replied. "The tunnels go so deep and so
far, we're finding the purest forms of metals and gems. Something elemental,
something pure, apparently."

"This...is important stuff," the Secretary mused. "Get a replacement team of
reserve guards and workers and get back down there."

"Um...we _were_ the reserve guards."

"Oh, well, some of the locals, then," she said without looking up. "I'm sure
we have some petty cash we can pay those idiots with."

FOOL'S GOLD 2023

For the next two weeks, head into the tunnels deep in the bedrock of
Desolathya and help the Feldspar collect "primordial" materials for this
April's event. The event is broken up into two parts.

EVENT AREAS

The tunnels join up with three special sub-areas, each of which are instanced.
A party leader may create a dungeon for themselves and their party members,
locking them collectively into the same collective area for the rest of that
day's boot. Once you're locked to one leader's sub-area, you can't enter the
same sub-area with another member, so you get one of each per day. You can
enter different sub-areas with different leaders.

These areas are packed with monsters scaled to the level of the party --
newbie, midbie, highbie or UHB -- based on the strongest member of the party.
So, a midbie and a highbie will get a highbie area. The exception is any
newbie helper counts as one "tier" lower when they are in a party with a
newbie, so, a highbie helper and a newbie will get a midbie area. Each area
will have a non-respawning boss which is tuned with the intention that it
cannot be soloed, but you shouldn't need a nine-man either.

Killing the boss of the sub-area will award each party member, that made a
meaningful contribution to the fight, with one piece of primordial material.
These can be given to Sec. Fingledrell for one event point for yourself, and
one event point for BatMUD. So, if you are part of a 3-man and you all turn
yours in, each member gets +1 event point and BatMUD collectively gets +3.
Anything else you find in there is yours do to whatever you want. There is no
benefit for soloing a boss, other than bragging rights -- every player who
helped gets one bar, be it one player, three, or nine.

Since you are locked to only one leader's sub-area per reboot, that's 3 event
points you can get, per day, from those.

PRIMORDIAL LODES

At random points during the day, a primordial lode of material will spawn in
one of the tunnels. Players should get there and start mining the material. As
this happens, monsters will show up to claim the lode for themselves, so
merchants should bring guards to keep the monsters off their backs.

Mining a primordial lode down to nearly nothing will spawn a larger boss,
whose death will reward players with one primordial bar (as above). In this
context, "meaningful contribution" includes killing off the smaller monsters,
and also the miners who were digging the ore out. Lower-level players should
probably help pick off the smaller monsters so the boss doesn't just one-shot
them.

EVENT REWARDS

There are three types of event rewards.

First, there are primordial armour and weapons. These are like most of my
other event eq -- greatly/greatly stats, indestructible, named, one-year
lifespan. The item's stats are based on the item's component materials. As
such, special test prizes are available to experiment with this weekend. Each
reboot, you can make two no-save items, to see how the prizes work. Since it's
impossible for one player to test every single possible material, I suggest
you coordinate research efforts.

When the event is over, you can make real prizes. The first one will cost you
5 points, then 10, then 15, etc. If you engage in even a single sub-area per
weekend for both weekends, and help defend one primordial lode, that's enough
to get one prize. If you get every possible bar every possible day for two
full weeks, you'll have enough points for five prizes, but you'll also go for
two full weeks without sleep, so maybe don't do that.

Second, there will be point dump items like consumables added at the end as
well.

Third, if BatMUD overall gets enough points collectively, an extra and
_permanent_ upgrade will be added to the game. No spoilers (if you don't get
enough points, I can reuse the idea in a later event) but it will be an
upgrade basically everyone should benefit from.

I'll be babysitting this event heavily this weekend for bugs and other issues.
Hopefully things go well and it can run smoothly for the two weeks that
follow.

Shinarae "pyrite maniac" Lluminus