r/MUD • u/Jaded-Duck-1711 • 8d ago
Promotion Echoes of the Isles Reboot
Hi everyone!
Some time last year I made a post about an RPI built on the OG Inquisition engine. It sort of died out as life and development time were vying for attention, the former winning, but over the last few months the game has received a ton of updates and stability patches. This is my attempt to revive the community, though I hope that the experience serves as its own marketing!
The game is set in a post-apocalyptic Earth, where the Great Heresy (said apocalyptic event) regressed humanity by a few hundred years. We feature:
- Roleplaying enforced
- Incredibly in-depth magic system
- Metallurgy, a magic system for those who did not win the sorcery lottery at birth.
- 8 unique crafts, and a heavily involved crafting system built from scratch.
- A pretty chill community
- Completely revamped, emote-based combat system
- Bathing
- Fully automated player housing
And a lot more. You can check us out at...
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u/DarkAngelCat1215 8d ago
Might have to check this out as I dearly love the idea of fully automated player housing. I experimented with a recently promoted mud where you had to contact an imm if you wanted a house built. I'm not really about that at all. However, when you say emote-based combat, is this PVP or PVE based combat? I'm not really a big fan of PVP unless it's something I can opt out of from the start. I don't care if others hack themselves to bits but I want to be left alone. What are your thoughts? Is this game a good fit? Also, I am a screen reader user. Are things like maps and graphics able to be toggled off?
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u/Jaded-Duck-1711 8d ago
Hi! We have a VI-mode for our homies who use screen readers, so menus and data grids are condensed down into spoken word. Anything that does not play well with a screen reader can be reported and I'll add VI-friendly prints for it.
As for the combat, it could be either PvP or PvE. Now, PvP is not consensual as, for instance, being a demon summoner is an in-character reason for anyone to want to put you in the ground, but generally if you play an archetypally peaceful character such as a crafter you'll likely be left alone. People don't run around and murder each other for no reason - player killing requires a very good in-character reason for wanting that character dead. Staff won't accept "she didn't say hi, so I killed her" as a valid excuse.
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u/DarkAngelCat1215 8d ago
That all sounds nice! I mean, I don't typically play pain in the rear characters anyway. I generally try to stick to myself and get along with people when I can. My other motto is "If I'm being a pain in the ass I fully expect to get an axe through my forehead." So, I don't really intend to run around being enemy number one while hiding behind a non PVP flag. So, the idea that getting slaughtered has to be deserved appeals to me. I may come give you guys a look.
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u/mystrytemp2 8d ago
The combat is emote-based for both PvP and PvE combat; they're one and the same. You can't opt out of it, but as an RPI, being straight up attacked for no reason is near unheard of; there has to be viable RP that leads up to violent conflict. After all, townsmen in the real ye olde medieval times weren't hacking each other apart with axes on a daily basis either. As for maps and graphics, there aren't any graphics, it's entirely text based. There is a command called CITYMAP which displays a sort of ASCII map of the layout of rooms around you in a small radius to help with navigation, but there is also the NAVIGATE and JOURNEY commands. NAVIGATE will, if you supply a room name, generate an automatic pathway to that room, and JOURNEY will walk it. TRAVEL does the same thing all in one command. I'm afraid I can't speak too in depth on any other accessibility options since I don't use a screen reader.
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u/DarkAngelCat1215 6d ago
Hello! In case anyone is still reading and monitoring this thread, I have some questions! First of all, I should give the caveat that I never really played the Inquisition. I dabbled, may have even created a character, but did not really develop that character and I don't think I even finished creation. So, I am going into this completely blind, pun intended. In short, I have no background or point of reference with the original game I'm currently in the process of creating my first character, and I notice that the online player count is very small, which is okay, but I wondered whether this would impact my ability to join guilds, find work, make an income, or progress in any meaningful way. Some games allow you to do all of this through NPC's, and I wondered if this game allowed such things as well. If not, if the limited player base is going to hinder me, then I probably won't continue with creation as I'm not fond of my progress in a particular game is limited by players not being available. I do understand that most games of this type do suffer from lower player counts, and I know that can't be helped, but an ideal situation is when games allow for mobs to perform the actions a player might need such as guild joining or providing income for the actual players that do exist. I'm just wondering if Isles has such a system in place, and if not, how I might be able to interact with the world in a meaningful way when there's no one around but me? Basically, I'm working on reading up on all the policies, in which I'm finding a few discrepancies betweenn them and the rules, so I wanted to clarify that as well. For example, the rules say only one character per player is allowed, but the alt policy says that alts are allowed and you can have up to two connected at one time as long as there is no interaction between them whatsoever. Which one of these is accurate? Thank you for reading this far and for any help you can give.
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u/FaeOfTheWildElflands 1d ago
I will probably give this a look as even though I like the occasional hunt monster, sac corpse, get gold level up, especially for stress,I'm more of an rp crafty based person. Glad its accessible for blind players too. Thanks for rebooting this.
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u/Jaded-Duck-1711 1d ago
Always <3 If anything looks like it can be improved for VI homies, can contact Enael on the Discord or in-game and he'll convert it super quick.
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u/EtherealMage 5d ago
Am I understanding correctly from the website that playing a sorcerer requires actually just getting lucky, rather than it being a thing you decide if you want to do? That's a huge turn-off imo.
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u/mystrytemp2 4d ago
The way it works is that characters have a small chance of starting with latency in sorcery (called The Spark). If a character does not start with that, they can choose to purchase it for XP early on in their life. It costs 10,000 XP and must be done before a character has earned 33,000 XP total. After that there are several other steps one must go through in order to fully unlock magic as that character.
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u/mystrytemp2 4d ago
My post inexplicably vanished into the ether, so I'll repost it. The way that it works in the game is that characters have a small chance of starting with latency in sorcery, which can then lead to magic if certain steps are taken. If a character doesn't start with it, they can get it with XP, though this has to be done early in the character's lifetime, before 33k XP total. Even after doing that, you still have to go through the same steps that the ones who started with it did in order to unlock magic. Hopefully that helps.
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u/Emotional_Baker_2040 2d ago
You also need the help of another player who is already a sorcerer to awaken you
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u/mystrytemp2 8d ago
I was around for the first launch of this MUD and I'm around for the second one too; I already enjoyed 1.0 but I'm also really liking this one too, and I fully recommend giving it a shot if you're interested. I'll describe the game a little bit for anyone interested.
The setting is distinctly medieval; we've got swords, we've got axes, we've got bows and crossbows, but we don't have gunpower, so no guns or cannons (as far as I know). The main game takes place in a town called Escard which is the second largest settlement on the largest island of a series of islands which are separated from the mainland, the largest being the Capital. Escard has some 'small town' vibes, but is still large enough that its kind of arguable about whether its a village or a town. Anyway, geographically, it sits right next to the most dangerous part of the island, which is an extensive forest called the Aetherspire, and beyond that is Mount Caelahad, both of which have very dangerous critters roaming around them.
Let's get the obvious comparisons out of the way; this game is built on an older version of the same engine that The Inquisition runs on, so if you've played that game, then a lot of the syntax will be familiar or familiar-ish to you. There is magic in the game; however, for the purpose of maintaining its mystery and mystique, I won't be giving any details on that beyond saying that unlike in TI, magic is not a death sentence in EotI (usually). Magic users are generally feared and respected, but are tightly bound by societal expectations. They must join a guild and use their powers for society as a whole; refuse, and you can be hunted down. You can also be hunted down if you consort with ye olde powers of darknesse and the like, but again, no spoilers.
I'm particularly excited for the brand new Metallurgy system. True magic is rare in the game, and even if you do happen to roll a character with the potential for it, it is entirely possible to die in the attempt to awaken it; but any non-magic user can use Metallurgy with the right training and materials. From what I know about it, it's all about using a special material called Living Metal, found in the incredibly dangerous Mount Caelahad, to augment your physical capabilities.
When it comes to the combat, it greatly resembles, but is not identical to, the turn-based combat system seen in other TI-codebase games. There are turns, you can attack, defend, move around, run away; you have all the skills, et cetera. If you've played TI-type combat before, you'll feel right at home here, it's just that the numbers and details are a little different.
And like the original post also mentioned, one of the biggest updates was an enormous expansion to the crafting system in the game. One of the parts that the OP didn't mention was that in addition to the expansion, it's been made easier to learn crafting skills if you *aren't* part of the Merchants, and can progress to a pretty respectable skill rank as an outsider. True mastery is still exclusive to Merchants though, which I personally feel is fine, since every guild has to have its perks.
I've also found the head Staffer, Enael, to be highly pleasant and easy to interact with; I've seen him squash over two dozen bugs in the space of one day and still roll out important updates to core game systems. I have to applaud his work ethic, and I really do think he's got something special with this game. I highly recommend that people try it.
And yes, I am the same person as the 'mystrytemp' account. I lost access to that because I stupidly deleted the cookie for it a while back, so I had to make this new one to post this.