This page was last updated 980414 and contains:
Basic concepts    General groupthingies    General triggers    Roomstuff     Priestpatterns     Immobilizingpatterns     Wellmobs    Special Wellmobs    What kills in the Well?

The well is the most challanging Burningmud has to offer, and this would be an even more sorry webpage if it had none of the wellthingies in it :)

The Well is as you prolly know if you read this a huge randomly generated zone wich has specialdriven mobs and specialdriven roomtypes. It's divided in 20 levels and each level is usually around 80 rooms at a guess. The goal with welling is to achive the essence to become K'ta'viir wich "means literally 'lords of essaence' in the Iruaic tongue." and to do that you need to find enough of the four types of essence, earth, water, air and fire. The essence is gathered in soul crystals wich can be found from level 10 downwards and wich you get merged into yourself with the help of Gond, the Wonderbringer, who in general resides on level 6. The actual gathering is done by butchering the corpses of dead wellresiders wich in practice is always done by the leader of a group, since the others will now and then get kicked out of group by roomspecials and mobspecials.

This page currently focuses on helping the ppl who already know most of what the well is and just want help with patterns etc, but a "newbieguide" will hopefully be coming too soonish.

Basic concepts of the Well

Soul crystals are the containers for the essence needed to become Ktv (K'ta'viir). To be able to use one you need to find one (they pop on random mobs from level 10 onwards) and then give it to Gond the wonderbringer (who in general resides on level 6). Then it will fuse with your body and make your number of essences appear in score.

Butcher is the way to get the essence from a corpse of a Wellbeeing (heh?). The syntax is simply "butcher corpse" and with autosplit toggled it will split the fragment among your followers. The number of drops of essence as well as the type of it depends on the level of Well you are at. Level 1-5 gives earth only, 6-10 gives earth and water, 11-15 gives earth, water and air and level 16+ gives all four types. The harder mobs also give a slight bonus to the drops.

Magical flasks are a water container that pops on all levels of the Well. They can be filled with Wellwater wich can be found in springs randomly dispersed in the well. The springs can be drunk from like a normal fountain, but only Magical flasks will keep the wellwater for later uses. The wellwater gives random spells, both good and bad, and is pretty much only useful for getting barkskin and blur, even tho the occational mountain heart or haste might be fun for kicks. Two of the spells are teleport and word of recall, so dont mess with them springs if in a group, they will waste pr mana.

Compasses also pop at every level of the Well and their use is to give hints on the direction of the wellentrance from any spot of the world. The tracking down of the well is a rather hard task often involvning knowledge of many areas but the compasses have made it a possible feat usually. The way they work is that on "exam compass" they give a message like:
"The needle is pointing on a bearing of 351 degrees."
The stuff seems to be depending on how many norths/souths/wests/easts there is in the direct path to the well entrace from your current location. Occationally you get straight 90 readings no matter if ya move or not, and that means U need a boat or fly to get to the spot (this can also be used to guess where it is).

General grouppolicys for welling

Leader always butchers corpses.

Never use areaspells unless told it is ok (they kill groups often, but dont help damlogs that much).

It is your responsibility to keep in group, leader cant keep track of all groupmembers.

Use "tell <cleric> summon", not "gt summon me" :)

Dont tell leader unimportant stuff, since he'll be tellspammed by autopeeks.

General triggers

The first thing that tends to strike ppl in the well is the wind:

#action {You feel a slight movement in the air, and you can hear a storm brewing afar.} {rest} well

#action {A raging tempest races through the room, leaving devastation in its wake.} {stand} well

The second is prolly them stalagmites, and this is where many ppl take the easy way out wich in general kills them every 10-30 hours of mudding, depending on luck. The messages are somewhat mucked up since when U get ungrouped U get the leaderwalk message after the stalagmitetrigger, wich often causes ppl to walk the second to last dir instead of the last. A working way of getting around this is to delay the actual walk to the first clear line, instead of walking at the stalagmite message:

#action {@leader's group leaves (%w).} {#var WalkDir %1} Well

#action {A stalactite dislodges from the ceiling and plummets to the ground, narrowly} {stand;#wait 300;#t+ WalkWell} Well

#action {$} {#t- WalkWell;@walkdir;group} WalkWell

#action {But you are not the member of a group!} {fol @leader} Well

The wait there is pretty much obsolete but i made it that way originally and it works. You'll also notice i dont autorefollow, but instead use group command to check if i was ungrouped, and if so refollow to reduce spam for group.

Roomstuffs

The different types of rooms have different specials attatched to them and we all pretty much know what they do, but for the newbie here is a short runthrough:

Magical Waterfall and Essence flow are wild magic wich randomize spell durations.
Small passage and that cavern are earth rooms with trapdoors and stalagmites.
Glittering Passage and Shimmering Room seem to do nothing special.
Hot Lava Flow and Fiery Lavafall are fire rooms with continous damage.
Deep Eddy, Wide Pool and Narrow Underground Stream are water rooms with drowning on resting/sleeping giving the pattern: "You unthinkingly immerse yourself in the water, and start to drown."
Icy Passage and Frozen pool are ice rooms from wich U can slide out of while fighting or walking.
Quicksand are special rooms that randomly drops ppl standing in them to the next level.

Some useful patterns for priests

Ice room sliding:
(%w) slips on the icy floor and slides off to the (%w) on %w butt.

Trapdooring:
(%w) is too slow to react, and falls through it.

Tentamort injections:
lashes out with a tentacle and injects something ominous into (%w).

Water wierds who wants to get a remove poison spell :)
The water wierd is here, fighting @Leader.

Some immobilizing patterns

grapples onto @Buffer and starts squeezing.

makes the foolish mistake of looking into The basilisk's eyes, and turns to stone.

is turned to stone by The thessaltrice's glare - that'll teach him to stare!.

The wellmobs

I might expand this page some day when i'm boored xping to give info on every mob there is down there in textformat, but i dont quite feel up to it today. I will however give ya the chance to download my wellmobDB wich contains all mobs but Gond i belive and has some info on specials, agressivness, item, hidden and sentinel. DB should need version 5.48 or later, and the guy who compiled most of this information is of course Xerxes/Albion.

Hold down shift and click here to get the zipped DBfile and DBDfile (990414).

Special Wellmobs

Gond the Wonderbringer, allows you to fuse with your soul crystal. Also allows Ktv:s to buy stuff.

Morgoth the Valor God, the biggie who is currently the only non-killed PGmob on the mud. He resides on level 20 and have specials including force-group-flee (as opposed to force-person-flee of 2 other wellmobs).

Most usual killers

In general ppl die when they get separated from group or if group runs into a myst at the wrong level. The mysts are basically something that happens occationally and the important thing is to make sure group is not afk and will withdraw in the direction specified by leader when leader says so. The main responsibility for avoiding mysts lies on leader, but since they are sneaking, nonsentinel and peeks takes some time they cannot be totally avoided. Cop is of course the most important wellspell, and i tend to have one person on cop on entry duty, and one who i can ask cop for wild magic and nonaggr fighting (to spread regen a bit).

The way ppl get separated from group is from either room specs or from mobspecs. The rooms that separate ppl from group is earthtype and icetype. The earth ones use stalagmites and trapdoors to drop groupmembers, but those two are in general rather harmless and are usually well countered with refollow and summon triggers. The ice type is much more dangerous since U can slide into rooms with aggro mobs, and thats why i tend to avoid ice rooms if possible. If U lead a 20 ppl group across ice chances are at least 1 and on the average about 2 will slide, and the direction is quite random.