Clan Lord Fount of Abundant Questions

There are almost always a bunch of people standing around the center of town, too, and if you're hurt you can usually find a healer there. If you're polite (see 2.12), chances are someone there will help answer your questions. But remember, part of the fun of Clan Lord is figuring out things for yourself. If someone gives you a hint instead of a straightforward answer to an in-game question, they're not being rude, they're just trying not to spoil things. Have patience and enjoy your own explorations, and chances are you'll figure out whatever it is you wanted to know.

(2.5) What are karma, sharing, and balance?

(2.6) What happens when my character dies?

If nobody finds you soon, try "share toggling." Pick someone from the Players list who might be willing to help you. The best choices are people with blue stones next to their names (healers, because they can heal you) or people with white or yellow stones next to their names (Journeymen or Mystics, who can usually find you and direct a healer to you), but really most people will help if they can. Then type "/share <person's name>", wait a couple of seconds, "/unshare <person's name>", wait, and "/share <person's name>" again. This will signal to them that you are in trouble. If they aren't busy, this will usually get them looking for you right away. Sometimes folks are busy, so you may have to toggle more than one person. Be patient, and don't disconnect or go to sleep right away. It can take a healer several minutes to find you, and another few minutes to take care of any dangerous beasts or fetch more help if necessary.

If you give up on being rescued, maybe because you're off somewhere really remote or dangerous, you can also /depart. Departing carries a small experience penalty, so it takes a bit longer to reach your next training improvement afterward, but that's all. It doesn't remove any training you already have. When you /depart, your body is healed a little and you're sent to Purgatory, a vast, featureless plane outside the normal realm of existence. Start walking in any direction, and within a couple of minutes you should pop back to the central temple, or whichever altar you last touched.

(2.7) Where can I disconnect safely?

There are library-like areas for each of the professions in the training halls: a barracks for fighters, and so on. They work just like the regular one, and can help role-playing. There are also advanced libraries where you can pay a few coins a day and get additional experience, and a copper mine where you can earn money but get less experience.

If you disconnect anywhere else, your body will stick around "asleep" for about ten minutes before disappearing. If something attacks you in that ten-minute period, you'll be injured or fallen when you reconnect. You reconnect near where you disconnected, though sometimes you might be a short distance away on the same screen.

(2.8) How do I gain experience? How should I train? What level am I?

Which places are safe for you to hunt as a newcomer to town depends on your race, but a safe place to start for any race is the "rat towers," towers near the gates that are infested with rats and other small rodents. If you can gather three or four new exiles, you can also head into the first sections of the myrm hive. In general, anywhere outside the town and farms is much more dangerous.

There are various opinions about exactly how it's best to train, but in truth the answer depends a lot on your own personal playing style. Go out in the world, adventure, take note of your limitations, and train to eliminate them some. If you have questions about specific trainers, try asking an experienced exile in your profession.

Clan Lord doesn't emphasize levels or titles, since your abilities depend not only on how much experience you've earned, but also on how you trained and on your own playing (fighting, healing, etc.) strategies.

There's no way to tell how much total experience you've gained, or exactly how much you've trained with one of the trainers, except by keeping track yourself (or using a log-parsing program such as Scribia [see 1.9]). However, the trainers say different things to you depending on how good you are at what they teach. The town employees will also start calling you Master or Mistress when you're advanced enough, and then Lord or Lady.

(2.9) How do I earn money?

A bad way to get money is by begging. Someone who stands around town pestering everyone for money will not be appreciated.

(2.10) How can I buy something from someone else?

If someone can't /sell you something, you can't pick it up if they /drop it either. Don't be fooled by someone trying to scam you.

(2.11) How can I get something written in my /info?

(2.12) What kinds of things are considered rude?

• Things you do that will get Delta Tao mad at you

  If you, as a player or a character, do something that Delta Tao objects to, they can impose various sorts of punishments. These might include locking your character in jail for a day or two or banning your serial number from of the game completely, with no refund.

  Examples of such behavior: Harassment of other players. Explicit or predatory sexual behavior, or anything nonconsensual. Offensive activities or comments directed at the person playing the game. Yelling obscenities in town, especially obscene insults, or sunstoning them. Trying to break into or otherwise damage the game's server or data.

  Joe (see 4.8) has also said that "if a character gets an unfair advantage because of a bug, we will decrease their level to compensate for any exploitation of bugs. Of course, there will be rewards for those who help us track down bugs."

• Things you do that will get other players mad at you

  Bad karma is an obvious consequence of upsetting other players. Since most things that bother players also bother their characters, other consequences might include people refusing to hunt with you or sell you things. For more serious charges, your character might be subject to other consequences imposed by the (character-run) court system.

  Examples of improper rudeness: Yelling the same thing over and over. Begging for coins or karma. Talking about OOC things around people who want to stay IC. Demanding that a healer heal you, or a fighter share with you, or a mystic... mystic you. :-) (Asking once nicely is fine, but being abrupt or insistent is rude.) Karma bombing. Hitting a beast that someone else is successfully fighting, without asking first. Hitting someone else's kudzu plants. Deliberately leading monsters into people or interfering with organized hunts (but see below).

• Things your character does that will get other characters mad at you

  There's a fine distinction here. Sometimes your character does something that someone else's role-played character doesn't like, even though the person playing that character thinks it's just fine, even amusing. This kind of impolite behavior actually belongs in the game. Since it's more IC, its consequences are too. If you decide to role-play a jerk, you will get bad karma, since that's the IC way of telling someone he's being rude. Expect to get into IC arguments, and don't let them degenerate into OOC fights. And again, your character might be subject to other consequences determined by the court system.

  Refusing to answer a question, insulting someone's clothes, talking about how all the new exiles are a bunch of weaklings or how all the older exiles are a bunch of stuffed shirts -- those are all valid role-playing attitudes. Even leading monsters into people can be valid, for a character with an evil side (see 2.13). Just be careful to keep your own rude behavior IC. There's a big difference between saying that dwarves are stupid and should stay in their mines and saying that women are stupid and should stay away from computer games. If you're planning a "rude" IC scene, it may be a good idea to discuss it OOC with your intended victim before you get too far in, to make sure that you're not upsetting the player as well as the character.

In general, people are pretty polite in Clan Lord. There's a lot of "Thank you" and "You're welcome," because teamwork is so important. Before you assume someone is being deliberately rude, give him the benefit of the doubt. It's possible that he's curt because he's not a native English speaker and doesn't know the language well enough to use the fancy, polite words -- or he might be role-playing somebody who doesn't speak the common tongue well. He might have run into your kudzu farm by accident, or interrupted your hunt because he was lagging and had no control over his actions. Try not to overreact to minor transgressions.

(2.13) Are there "evil" people in Clan Lord?

Just remember that being creatively evil is not the same as being a pain in the neck. Yelling something over and over in the middle of town might be justified, if you can legitimately claim that your character has some strange disease that makes him do that, but most of the time it's just disruptive.

3. *** Using the client application ***

(3.1) Why are some names on colored backgrounds, or in boldface?

• White, green, yellow, or red background: healthy, wounded, seriously wounded, nearly fallen. Beasts use the same color code in their health tags.
• Black background: fallen (see 2.6)
• Brown background: asleep (an IC way of indicating that you're not paying attention to the game at the moment)
• Light blue background: an NPC (non-player character)
• Boldface text: sharing with you (see 2.5)
• Underlined text: someone you're sharing with
• Italic text: a member of your clan
• Red text: has a lot of bad karma, and more bad karma than good (see 2.5)

(3.2) How do I use a command on a person?

Commands like "\share" and "\thank" take the name of the person you want to use them on. Leave out any spaces and punctuation marks: to share with Example d'Exile, type "\share exampledexile". You can also use just the first few letters of the name, also without spaces or punctuation, as long as it's enough to distinguish the person you mean from anybody else shown on the player list. Or you can type the command portion, then option-click on the person's icon to insert their name. Finally, you can command-click on someone (or click on their name in your Players window) to select them, then choose the command you want from the menu. Be careful to remember whom you've selected, though, especially if you use the standard macros (see 3.7).

(3.3) How can I select or ignore someone, or mark them as a friend?

• Command-click (/select): selects the person (blue and yellow oval under his icon) for use in a command
• Option-click: copies the name of the person, without punctuation or spaces, into the text entry area
• Control-click (/label): adds one of several colored labels to the person, cycling through the color choices. Their name will have that color box around it in the game window, and be listed in that color in the Players window. (See 3.4.) "/forget <name>" or "/label <name> none" removes a label.
• Control-shift-click (/ignore, /block, /forget): once, "ignores" the person (yellow box around his name), so you don't hear anything he says. Twice, "blocks" him, turning him into a black outline. Undo this by clicking on the person's name in your Players window.

(3.4) How can I keep track of my friends?

Each of your characters has a separate list of labelled people, stored in a text file in the Friends folder. The file's name is the same as your character's name in the Character Manager. Each file contains one line per labelled person, with their full name, a tab, and the label color name. The words "blocked" or "ignored" can be used in place of a label name, in which case that person will be blocked or ignored (see 3.3). You can also have a global list of labelled people, used for all your characters; its filename is "*global*".

The label lists are read in once, when you connect, and written out when you disconnect. If you change someone's label status while playing, it won't be saved until you disconnect. Likewise, if you edit the text file by hand while playing, those changes will be overwritten by the client when you disconnect.

(3.5) How can I repeat something I typed before?

(3.6) How do I assign command keys to my inventory items?

(3.7) How do I make a macro? Any suggestions?

In addition to the official macro instructions, also see Nohn's macro links, Nohn's macro langauge reference, and the extensive, though unofficial, Clan Lord macro archive.

You can edit your macro files in any text editor. If the CL client application is running, choose Reload Macros from the Options menu to apply your changes.

Here are a few custom macros I've found handy:

f12	"/yell Help please!\r"

"thx"	"Thank you!\r"
"yw"	"You're welcome.\r"
"np"	"No problem.\r"
"rc"	"/action pauses to recover her spirit strength.\r"
":-)"	"/action smiles.\r"

Skirwan writes (and I agree):

There's a major difference between macroing and scripting. Macroing is a Good Thing -- it saves typing, and lets people participate in the world at a more reasonable speed than if they had to type out "/action waves." every time.

Scripting is a Bad Thing -- it separates the player from the character and the game, and almost invariably hurts the game environment in the process. People say again and again that social interaction is the heart and soul of CL's success -- and scripting totally disrupts this social interaction. I for one prefer real people to Turing tests. (Well, I guess it depends on the people...)

Algernon is a cute idea. Insultus is a funny gag, at least for the first minute or so. But when every character in the game smiles when you /share, dances when you /thank, frowns when you /curse, etc, etc, etc, what's the point of playing a game with other humans? At that point the game isn't CL anymore, it's somewhere between Diablo without the items and a programming contest.

4. *** Other frequently asked questions ***

(4.1) How do I get ___-colored clothing?

Be aware, though, that some clothes are special. Light denim blue was given to those who participated in the Ripture War that marked the end of the testing period. White and turquoise shirts and pants, and the colors they become when dyed, can only be worn by qualified healers, with a few rare exceptions for items dyed before the current clothing system came around. Yellow belts are only given to bards, and advanced fighters also have special-colored belts. Other special accessories can't be bought anywhere, but must be bestowed, perhaps as a reward for some service to the community or upon the completion of a special quest.

(4.2) Where are all the secret places?

Anything that has to be discovered is in some sense a secret. Of course, some things are harder to discover than others, and "more secret." Where to buy tan clothing is a pretty easy secret, and a lot of people will gladly take a new exile there. Grey clothing is a lot harder to find and harder to reach, and a bigger secret. It would be poor form to ask someone to take you there until you've been around a while.

If someone asks you about something secret, try to give a hint without giving away too much. For instance, you might tell someone who wants to become a healer that all the objects he needs can be found within the Puddleby town walls. That reduces his search considerably, without telling him any exact locations or spoiling the challenge for him.

Definitely don't broadcast any secret information to people who might not want to hear it. Before you give away a secret, make sure the person you're telling really wants to know it, and that nobody else will accidentally hear you. Private rooms are good places to talk about secrets. Don't do it in town square, over the sunstones, or on Hotline or Usenet.

(4.3) How do I become a mystic?

Being a mystic requires scholarship, self-control, dedication, and lots of patience. Mystics are intended to be much less common than other professions. The process of becoming one is not easy or straightforward, and as a mystic you may feel underappreciated and have difficulty earning experience. However, for those with the right personality for the job, it can be very rewarding and can offer the chance to contribute significantly to the community.

Mystics are required to be very secretive about their profession. Nobody will tell you exactly how to become one -- or at least, they shouldn't. In fact, some mystics consider discussing their profession at all cause for giving bad karma (see 2.5). Wander, gain experience, learn the world, and most likely you'll figure it out. Listening closely to the peasants in town might be especially helpful.

(4.4) Is training ever harmful?

Similarly, the more spirit you have, the longer it will take to recover it all. Training to improve your spirit strength doesn't make your spirit recovery slower, on a points-per-second scale, but it does mean it'll take longer for you to go from empty to full.

Clan Lord is always changing. Sometimes those changes affect what your training does, usually when there was a bug the game designers had to fix. If something seems too good to be true, don't get too attached to it.

An "untrainer" does exist, to let you convert trained experience back into experience that you can reapply to whatever other skills you want. It takes away from all your current skills equally. The conversion isn't perfect, though: you don't get back all the experience you untrain. Most people think the untrainer is a terrible deal, and would never use it.

(4.5) Do beasts in the circle tests vary?

(4.6) What is Puddleby time and how is it related to real time?

The days of the week in the Clan Lord world are Soldi, Lundi, Gradi, Terrdi, Merdi, Fordi, and Sombdi. The year begins on the 1st day of Winter and has four seasons, each with 90 days.

You can estimate the time by looking at your shadow or using the /sky command. Crius, the town crier, yells the time each hour in town center, and an announcement is made to everyone in the lands at midnight, sunrise, and sunset. A pair of NPCs in the fairgrounds help with conversions between real time and Puddleby time, or you can run Puddlewatch (see 1.8).

(4.7) Is the coliseum open?

(4.8) Who is Joe? Who are the Ancients? What is a GM?

Joe

In the game, Joe's public character is a halfling healer with pink hair. Visit him in jail; he gets lonely.

The Ancients

Much of the confusion about what an Ancient is stems from the fact that there was once a clan called "The Ancients" (note the upper-case "T"). Members of this clan weren't themselves Ancients, but rather sought to regain the knowledge and power lost after their disappearance. Membership in The Ancients was more or less limited to the characters of GMs.

GMs

Note that although Ancient is an IC concept, GM isn't. Characters run by GMs are not GMs, they're just Thooms or unicorns or glowing bits of ether or whatever, and as a character in the game you should interact with them accordingly. When GMs wish their characters to be recognized as somebody special, they will often wear special-colored clothing (see 4.1). But even then, the character isn't a GM, because IC there are no GMs!

The only GM-run characters who will handle OOC problems are explicitly OOC and usually have "GM" in their names. Otherwise, when you're interacting with a character you think is played by a GM, don't use that as an excuse to go OOC. The whole point to the GM being there is to role-play and perhaps advance a plot, and having people make OOC comments or ask for OOC favors ruins that for everyone. Besides, it won't work.

Delta Tao has said several times that their goal is to make the game run itself with as little GM intervention as possible. Nevertheless, rightly or not (usually not), GMs are often the ones blamed when something weird happens, or when twenty mean beasts suddenly appear and everyone dies. Remember, though, that GM is not an IC idea. If you need to blame someone, pick something IC: the gods, or Fate, or Emperor Mobius's evil Mystics, for example.

Sometimes people try to impersonate GMs. If you're not sure about someone in the game who's claiming to be a GM, ask them to prove it by sparkling or becoming an NPC. It's harder to know for sure on a web bulletin board or newsgroup, so be careful about believing what you read. No GM, or anyone at Delta Tao, will ever ask you for your password.

The public GMs include
Ann GM
ClientGM
Eldon GM
Helpful GM
Helpful Human
Jafo GM
Joe GM
KGM
Michel GM
Pengy
Tinker GM
Vizia
Watson GM
ZoGM

Joe and the GMs also have other, anonymous characters in addition to their public personae.

(4.9) What is vanquishing? What is dispatching? What is slaughtering?

(4.10) Why did I just gain experience? What are spirit pulses?

Spirit pulses also mean you have been rewarded with experience, usually for good role-playing. Generally one person gets a spirit pulse from an undisclosed source, and automatically sends it along to each person they're sharing with.

(4.11) Why do I "sense little mental connection" to someone?

(4.12) How can I become a Bard?

(4.13) What is Dun'ilsar?

5. *** Glossary ***

afk - away from the keyboard. It's nicer to express this IC ("meditating," for instance).
AM - Apprentice Mystic
bad weather - lag (slow or choppy network or server response)
backpack - to heal someone while they're actively fighting, or the healer doing so
bb - bloodblade
bbl - be back later
BK - bad karma (see also GK)
brb - be right back
brick - to "hold" a beast that is unable to hit you, allowing others to kill it; or to trap a beast behind a fallen body
bro - "big red orga" (Orga Fury, Frenzy, Wrath, or Hatred)
BW - Black Widow
C&S; - the glacier (formerly called "a cold and snowy place")
cad - caduceus, a tool used to heal someone from a distance
chaos storm - server update/reset, usually resulting in changes to the world
CL - Clan Lord
CW - Coin Whore, someone hunting to earn coins quickly, usually in an area below their level (see also RW)
cya - see ya' (see you later)
DC - Dark Chamber, Deadly Crawler
DI - Devil's Island
DN - Dal'Noth
DP - Dread Passage
DS - Detached Spirit
DT - Dark Temple; in an OOC context, Delta Tao Software
DV - Death Vermine
fog - lag (slow or choppy network or server response)
FG - Frost Giant
FI - Fire Island, another name for Devil's Island
FMOCR - Full Moon Orga Camp Raid, a quest open every IC full moon
GCP - Giant Carnivorous Plankton
GD - Greater Death
GI - Gungla Island
GK - good karma (see also BK)
GM - Game Master (see 4.8), or the character Gold Moon
GMV - Greymyr Village
goss - gossamer
GS - great sword
GV - Giant Vermine
GW - Greater Wraith
HC - Hooded Corpse
HGM - Helpful GM
HH - Hatred('s) Hollow
HWC - he-who-clicks (refers to a character's player) (see also PWC, SWC)
IC - in-character (see also OOC)
IP - Island Panther
J'man, Jman - Journeyman Mystic
JM - Journeyman Mystic
KI - Kizmia's Island
LDV - Large Death Vermine
'lock - Orga Warlock (or Hemlock, Dreadlock, etc.)
LSW - Large Sand Wurm
LV - Large Vermine
MI - Melabrion's Island
mp - my pleasure
NBC - New bear caves
'noid - Arachnoid
np - no problem
NPC - non-player character, like the "robots" who greet you when you first arrive. NPCs have light blue behind their names. Some people call GM-run characters NPCs too.
NWF - Northwest Forest
OC - Orga Camp
OE - Orga Eye
OG - Oak Giant
omw - on my way
OOB - Orga Outback
OOC - out-of-character (see also IC)
OV - Orga Village
pf - Pathfinder, pathfinding
PMF - Pogue Mahone (a clan) and Friends
PWC - person-who-clicks (refers to a character's player) (see also HWC, SWC)
QC - Queen's Chamber, in the myrm hive
QR - Queen Room (Queen's Chamber), in the myrm hive
rank - one unit of training
rc - recharge (when a healer or mystic pauses to recover spirit). Many people use an \action instead, to make this seem more natural.
RC - Rocky Cavern
rod - to occupy a beast that can hit you by healing or being healed faster than it can do damage to you; or, a group of healers healing each other to accomplish that
RP - role-playing
RW - Rank Whore, a usually derogatory term for someone who plays to get the most ranks possible, the fastest possible; as a verb, hunting to maximize experience gained in a given time (see also CW)
SACWAG - "Start a company, write a game." This is Helpful GM's occasional response to suggestions he doesn't think fit well into Clan Lord, whether they're good by themselves or not. The rest of it goes, "If it's as good as Clan Lord, I'll buy a copy. Maybe two."
share toggle - to /unshare and /share with someone to send them an implicit message (usually, "I've fallen, please try to find and rescue me")
SF - South Forest
sn'ell - a unit of distance corresponding to however far you can go without having to cross a "screen" boundary, or a unit of area referring to one screen. Not all sn'ells are the same size.
snert - originally "snot-nosed, eros-ridden teenager," now more generally someone of any age who delights in being immature and causing disruption solo - to kill a beast by oneself and gain all the experience
"soon" - Helpful GM's way of saying that something's being worked on and will be done eventually. Probably.
ss - sunstone (a magical item that allows communication over long distances), or short sword
SWC - she-who-clicks (refers to a character's player) (see also HWC, PWC)
tag - to get a single, minor hit on a beast and thus gain some of the experience
TG - Tree Giant
TGBG - tree giant breeding grounds
thx - Thank you
TI - Tenebrion's Island
TK - Tenebrion's Keep
toggle - see "share toggle"
TW - tanglewood
tx - Thank you
UI - Umbrion's Island, another name for Kizmia's Island
wendy - Wendecka
WG - Willow Giant, Wisher's Gate
whiff - to swing at something and miss
wiff - see "whiff"
yw - You're welcome
'zerk - Orga Berserk

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