Help File Improvement

Eoghan

This thread was created at player request to have a unified place to make suggestions for help file improvements. This includes fixing/updating/expanding existing files, as well as making new ones.

Everything posted here is subject to review by the administration before being added, etc etc.

Linslet

From HELP MISC ARTIFACTS

Caravan Crop: 75 credits
  - Moves your caravan 25% faster.

It would be nice if HELP HUNTING GROUNDS would mention the AREAS command existing as a means to find suitable bashing areas for a person of one's level so I don't have to look dumb next time I forget about it.

Eoghan

Should also note that minor help file corrections (for example, artifacts that haven't been updated) can be submitted as a TYPO.

Linslet said:

From HELP MISC ARTIFACTS

Caravan Crop: 75 credits
  - Moves your caravan 25% faster.

It would be nice if HELP HUNTING GROUNDS would mention the AREAS command existing as a means to find suitable bashing areas for a person of one's level so I don't have to look dumb next time I forget about it.

Both of these done.

Iniar

@Eoghan, I don't mean to sound rude (but probably will) but the main website needs much more work than your HELP files. CSS5 and much more accurate descriptors - a lot of information needs tweaking.. priorities

Eoghan

Iniar said:

@Eoghan, I don't mean to sound rude (but probably will) but the main website needs much more work than your HELP files. CSS5 and much more accurate descriptors - I mean the website still claims you can ascend to godhood. priorities

Different people, different pools of time, and even the need to work on something different from what you've been working on means that one thing needing work doesn't detract from something else needing and getting work.

Many people are able to modify help files (not just coders). I can't personally make modifications to the website content, either! Thanks for bringing it back to our attention, though.

Iniar

Fair enough, ok, in keeping with the spirit of the thread, HELP 16.10, 5.3, 5.4, 5.10. Also, can HELP BLOODLINES give indications for fairly common questions - I.e. When a child is adopted, they can pick one surname, how being divorced drops you out of the family channel etc unless the information is somewhere else and I don't know where to look.

Jules

Now I'm curious.  Are the website help files not mirrors of the in-game help files somehow (ouch if so) or are the inaccuracies in advertising blurbs/FAQ/things like that?  I do see a mention of "interacting with Gods" in FAQ for example.  

Ultrix

Can we please add a cross-reference to HELP GUILDHALL in HELP ORGREQUESTS? 

Eoghan

Jules said:

Now I'm curious.  Are the website help files not mirrors of the in-game help files somehow (ouch if so) or are the inaccuracies in advertising blurbs/FAQ/things like that?  I do see a mention of "interacting with Gods" in FAQ for example.  

The latter. All help files on the website pull from the same help files used in game.

Juran

Wait, I can't ascend to godhood? All this time wasted!

Eoghan

Iniar said:

Fair enough, ok, in keeping with the spirit of the thread, HELP 16.10, 5.3, 5.4, 5.10. Also, can HELP BLOODLINES give indications for fairly common questions - I.e. When a child is adopted, they can pick one surname, how being divorced drops you out of the family channel etc unless the information is somewhere else and I don't know where to look.

5.3 and 5.4 were deleted along with endurance and willpower, and haven't been reused yet. We don't want to reorder the other help files in section 5, because many people still reference them by number. We may reuse those numbers in the future - I've removed them from the section 5 listing for now.

5.10 (Scholasticism) is in place to ease the transition from other IRE games. It is mostly meaningless to people completely new to IRE, but it's worth keeping around.

The bloodline help is already pretty cluttered. I'm open to the idea of creating sub-helps (5.17.1, etc), if they're put together to include the relevant information.

Shou

8.5 and 14.4.1-14.4.7 are files that haven't been relevant/updated for some time already.

Iniar

13.15 Honourable Combat

HELP HCOMBAT

Honourable Combat takes place on the Fields of Honour between two or more organisations. Once started, any with appropriate experience will be able to join the competition, and thus claim a gauntlet that will stay with them for the duration of the game. Once a gauntlet is claimed and worn, a challenger may challenge any other wearer, if they are ten circles of experience or less lower, or up to thirty levels of experience higher than the person they challenge. You will then be taken to the Fields of Honour to battle each other in single combat!

Each victory will give a person a point, as well as their organisation, and the loser will be slain and travel to Dis in the normal fashion, save for the fact that they will only lose 25% of the usual experience they would lose due to death. Once you reach the Fields, you have ten minutes for one or other to be victorious, or both will die and their organisations will lose a point. Once in battle, you will not be able to challenge anyone else for fifteen minutes, or the same person for one hour, and removal of the gauntlet will forfeit all your gained points. You also may not challenge another member of your city, council, order or guild. 

The Fields of Honour look harshly upon those who attempt to cheat, for example, logging out during combat, deliberately running constantly, attempting to force a player to remove their gauntlet, or deliberately standing and allowing someone to kill them solely for points. 

Syntax:

JOIN HONOUR/HONOURABLE COMBAT - Gives you a gauntlet that must be worn. Once worn, removal will forfeit your points.

HCOMBAT SCORE - Shows the score of your organisation.

HCOMBAT RANKINGS - Shows your personal ranking.

HCOMBAT WHO - Shows a list of combatants currently online.

HCOMBAT CHALLENGE <player> - Challenges said person.

Jeremy Saunders

Iniar said:

@Eoghan, I don't mean to sound rude (but probably will) but the main website needs much more work than your HELP files. CSS5 and much more accurate descriptors - a lot of information needs tweaking.. priorities

Yeah, this is mainly a priority thing. We get very few views on the pages outside of the main page and the client page. Our time is better spent working on the game itself.

Iniar

Jeremy said:

Iniar said:

@Eoghan, I don't mean to sound rude (but probably will) but the main website needs much more work than your HELP files. CSS5 and much more accurate descriptors - a lot of information needs tweaking.. priorities

Yeah, this is mainly a priority thing. We get very few views on the pages outside of the main page and the client page. Our time is better spent working on the game itself.

Out of curiousity, what is your new-player retention rate? (i.e. converts to subscription)

Shou

Iniar said:

13.15 Honourable Combat

HELP HCOMBAT

Honourable Combat takes place on the Fields of Honour between two or more organisations. Once started, any with appropriate experience will be able to join the competition, and thus claim a gauntlet that will stay with them for the duration of the game. Once a gauntlet is claimed and worn, a challenger may challenge any other wearer, if they are ten circles of experience or less lower, or up to thirty levels of experience higher than the person they challenge. You will then be taken to the Fields of Honour to battle each other in single combat!

DAMN IT.

Dicene

Feel like this is on topic. Could smudge commands find their way to HELP RUNELORE and maybe have a syntax help thing show up on just SMUDGE? I've found the actual syntax once, but I can't find it anywhere now that I actually want to use it. =/

Edit: Ah, found syntax in AB RUNELORE TOTEMS. Question though, is there some way to pull up a syntax list, cause I could have sworn I've pulled up one at some point through some misuse of the SMUDGE command.

Lalitana

Could the shopkeeper/humgii information please be added to HELP 6.11 (or a sub-category I guess)?

I do see that the shopkeeper command has been added to the list of commands when SHOP is typed, but since there is a fee involved and shopkeepers can be customized with credits or a token it would be great to see that information in 6.11 or a sub-category. Similarly there was a note about being able to script them, so listing how that is done - if currently available - would be helpful. The humgii information is also not there, and how to purchase said humgii/gremlin/whatever does not appear when SHOP is typed.

Jules

14.4.1 CHARON, FERRYMAN OF THE UNDERWORLD

Trapped in the underrealm for eternity, Charon will return souls to the land of

the living for a mere 2 golden tokens. He is kind enough to allow newbies to

travel for only one token. Of course obtaining the tokens is the hard part. For

more information on how to obtain token, try the following help files.

  HELP DICE

  HELP MIRROR

  HELP REVENGE

  HELP POMEGRANATE

Once you have obtained the tokens you can find Charon beneath the Temple of

Thanatos. Use FERRY DEPARTURES to discover where he will bring you.

Actually... don't change a thing.  I only vaguely remember your old Underworld, with an odd fondness, because I was still fairly new in Achaea, and thought I'd try Imperian on.  It was always so quiet, and then I died and got stuck in your Underworld and slept for a few hundred years :P  

(besides, HELP DEATH covers things, so maybe you left this intentionally anyway)

Eoghan

Those help files still exist (and can be found by number, until we reuse those numbers, as well as by name), but they won't be referenced in HELP 14 anymore.

Shou said:

8.5 and 14.4.1-14.4.7 are files that haven't been relevant/updated for some time already.

Removed references to those help files from their respective indices.

Dicene said:

Feel like this is on topic. Could smudge commands find their way to HELP RUNELORE and maybe have a syntax help thing show up on just SMUDGE? I've found the actual syntax once, but I can't find it anywhere now that I actually want to use it. =/

Edit: Ah, found syntax in AB RUNELORE TOTEMS. Question though, is there some way to pull up a syntax list, cause I could have sworn I've pulled up one at some point through some misuse of the SMUDGE command.

Information added to HELP RUNELORE. The only way to get that syntax to pop up is a really weird edge case. I'll consider making that clearer when I'm back to my office.

Jules

I entertained myself way too long trying to figure out how to make date work from Imperian to real world time.  You have to use 1 letum 678, plus the current amount of years in our age, plus one day, to convert an Imperian date to real world, and that probably needs to be in HELP DATE.

Eoghan

A better solution is to fix the DATE command, but that's pretty low on my list of fixes at the moment.

Svorai

Jules said:

14.4.1 CHARON, FERRYMAN OF THE UNDERWORLD

Trapped in the underrealm for eternity, Charon will return souls to the land of

the living for a mere 2 golden tokens. He is kind enough to allow newbies to

travel for only one token. Of course obtaining the tokens is the hard part. For

more information on how to obtain token, try the following help files.

  HELP DICE

  HELP MIRROR

  HELP REVENGE

  HELP POMEGRANATE

Once you have obtained the tokens you can find Charon beneath the Temple of

Thanatos. Use FERRY DEPARTURES to discover where he will bring you.

Actually... don't change a thing.  I only vaguely remember your old Underworld, with an odd fondness, because I was still fairly new in Achaea, and thought I'd try Imperian on.  It was always so quiet, and then I died and got stuck in your Underworld and slept for a few hundred years :P  

(besides, HELP DEATH covers things, so maybe you left this intentionally anyway)

Updated

Svorai

Jules said:

14.4.1 CHARON, FERRYMAN OF THE UNDERWORLD

Trapped in the underrealm for eternity, Charon will return souls to the land of

the living for a mere 2 golden tokens. He is kind enough to allow newbies to

travel for only one token. Of course obtaining the tokens is the hard part. For

more information on how to obtain token, try the following help files.

  HELP DICE

  HELP MIRROR

  HELP REVENGE

  HELP POMEGRANATE

Once you have obtained the tokens you can find Charon beneath the Temple of

Thanatos. Use FERRY DEPARTURES to discover where he will bring you.

Actually... don't change a thing.  I only vaguely remember your old Underworld, with an odd fondness, because I was still fairly new in Achaea, and thought I'd try Imperian on.  It was always so quiet, and then I died and got stuck in your Underworld and slept for a few hundred years :P  

(besides, HELP DEATH covers things, so maybe you left this intentionally anyway)

Updated

Lalitana said:

Could the shopkeeper/humgii information please be added to HELP 6.11 (or a sub-category I guess)?

I do see that the shopkeeper command has been added to the list of commands when SHOP is typed, but since there is a fee involved and shopkeepers can be customized with credits or a token it would be great to see that information in 6.11 or a sub-category. Similarly there was a note about being able to script them, so listing how that is done - if currently available - would be helpful. The humgii information is also not there, and how to purchase said humgii/gremlin/whatever does not appear when SHOP is typed.

Let me see what all I can dig up. I will try to add this stuff in tonight or tomorrow.

Elokia

Greetings!

I am in need of assistance if you're able. I would like to see HELP RUNEGUARD, HELP TEMPLAR, and HELP DEATHKNIGHT spruced up with the knight changes. Also, I hear that HELP MAGES needs a bit of love as well.

Also, the following classes, they have a "main stat" but not a "suggested statpack" and I want to know what you guys would suggest with the following classes for statpacks.

- Assassin

- Bard

- Deathknight

- Druid

- Hunter

- Mage

- Predator

- Priest

- Renegade

- Summoner

- Templar

- Wytch

I can toss you some credits for your help. Either e-mail it to me or post it here. Thanks a bunch!

Iniar

- Assassin  Fast, Athletic

- Bard Intelligent, Wise

- Deathknight  Athletic

- Druid  Athletic, Fast

- Hunter  Fast, Athletic

- Mage  Intelligent, Clever

- Predator  Fast, Athletic

- Priest  Anything, really. It won't die. Athletic

- Renegade  Fast

- Summoner  Intelligent

- Templar  Athletic, Fast

- Wytch  Clever, Fast

Iniar

HELP RUNEGUARD

How:

Arm yourself with the biggest battleaxe you can find, type in AB REAVE. Profit.

See Also: HELP DEATHKNIGHT, HELP TEMPLAR

Elokia

Hi guys! Looking to update HELP TEMPLAR and HELP MAGES (the combat portions really) Please let me know what you guys think will fit best here.

Thanks!

Jules

HELP VANITY PETS:

You may find yourself with a cute new pet! The next question you will ask is, what can I do with it?

Your "Vanity pets" will respond to most, if not all, of the following:

- Dropped

- Picked up

- Pet

- Poke

- Giggle

- Eye

- Frown

- Boo!

- Smile

- Laugh

- Prod

- Turned

- Pushed

Some of the pets will have some fun things they do periodically while on the ground, so look out to see what your pet enjoys!

Other Syntaxes:

VANITYPET LIST

- see a list of your owned vanity pets.

You can also interact with your vanity pets using the PROMOTIONS system. This includes the ability to sell and trade away your vanity pets, if you so wish. You can read more specifics (including the commands to use) in HELP PROMOTIONS and HELP PROMOTIONS MARKET.  You can remind yourself of the available syntaxes by typing "PROMO".

  - Each vanity pet can only ever be traded one time. Once the vanity pet

    has been traded to a new owner, it will forever be bound to that new

    owner. This includes sales on the promotions market.

The following is a list of pets available:

- an ant farm

- a hamster in a glass sphere

- a mesh butterfly pavilion

- a gangly golden cria

- a tiny crocodile

- a fluffy white bunny

- a fuzzy penguin fledgling

- an inquisitive little joey

- a madcap gator hatchling

- a skeletal humgii

- a golden tiger cub

- a baby phoenix

- a miniature alabaster pegasus

- a fluffy cream coloured corgi pup

- a snow white ermine

- a shiny green scarab beetle

- a miniature black mouse

- a tiny red bat

- a pretty pink piglet

- a goldfish in a glass bowl

- a jar of maggots

- an animated pumpkin

- a young turkey with bronze and black feathers

- a tiny reindeer festooned with bells

- a miniature snowman in a striped scarf

- a small baby bat

AB TRAILBLAZING:

Crimsonflames

Syntax: SPRINKLE RED INK; requires an encampment

Not used currently.  

Ceruleansparks

Syntax: SPRINKLE BLUE INK; requires an encampment

Not used currently. 

Amberglow

Syntax: SPRINKLE YELLOW INK; requires an encampment

Not used currently. 

Emeraldblaze

Syntax: SPRINKLE GREEN INK; requires an encampment

Sprinkling green ink on your encampment fire will temporarily pacify the doppleganger demons (AB ENSLAVERY PIRIDON) used by Summoners, preventing the dopplegangers from attacking until the effect wears off.  Works on all dopplegangers in the room.

Jules

On these, I actually need some help making them as accurate and complete as possible.

Rampage - Backflip

Syntax: BACKFLIP <direction>

This ability allows you to leap over walls and bypasses all professions' versions of the "block" ability (need to compile complete list of any additional things it can bypass if there are more).  You can't backflip out of a water or flooded room, nor can you backflip from a dry room into a water or flooded room.  Backflip does not bypass gravehands, piety, engage, (possibly both versions of intercept, and maybe other things I need to compile) - in all of those situations, it is technically possible for you to backflip out in the same way that it is possible for you to simply walk out.  As with attempting to walk out, however, these abilities' probability based hindering effects (such as a short balance loss or broken limbs) may "hit" you when you attempt to backflip, in addition to preventing you from leaving the room on that attempt.  

Rampage - Frontflip

Syntax: FRONTFLIP <direction>

This ability allows you to move out of your location, bypassing many hindering effects that would thwart movement attempts, and can even be performed while bound. It is important to note that some types of entanglements do block this ability (need to figure out all of the ones that do, as well as all of those that do not).  You can't frontflip over walls and all professions' versions of the "block" ability prevent frontflip as well.  You can frontflip into and out of watery rooms.

Jules

Something like this:  

Affliction:    masochism

Cure message:  You no longer enjoy pain.

Diagnose:      masochistic.

Cure:          orphine

Physical:      No

Mental:        Yes

Can be purged: No

 

Delivers periodic damage.

should always reflect hugely important changes like this (from announce 2766, 23 July 2014):

[108] Masochism ticks now strip shield, rebounding, and prismatic barriers

[108] Masochism ticks can now occur while off balance or equilibrium, and the damage per hit has been lowered

"Delivers periodic damage" is an almost useless description, giving no indication as to the real power of this affliction.  The only reason I even found out what it can actually do in the first place, was because Risca was using it in a very particular way, and I started digging.  I always have to dig it back up when I forget about it too, which is pretty irritating.  But with classleads coming up, I am begging that we incorporate hugely important information into the files where players will actually be looking first, which is also where they should generally actually FIND the relevant, useful information.  Please.  

EDIT:  should also include all things that can cure it... at the very least Tree, but I would love a complete list of what Rites are supposed to cure, for example.  I recently found out (by bugging) that rites are intended to cure stun, for example.  Even the senior guys in our ring thought that was very likely a bug (and why wouldn't they).

EDIT2:  I will even volunteer to write like... at least 10 such files myself, and will try to go back to say, at least the beginning of 2013 to try to capture anything important (which is a bit tricky, because the archive system is fairly clunky)... since it really is just compiling information and doesn't require deep insight into anything.  All I would want is a warm fuzzy that there isn't something magical about scattering information and that those files would actually be put in.  But going forward, I would love to see more changes to relevant files as classleads get implemented.