Mudders Unite

ASCII gif of intro's you're greeted with upon login to the Three Kingdoms MUD WMT is a player created site dedicated to providing information for the MUD - Three Kingdoms. This site provides step by step directions on how to navigate the areas as well as complete many tasks within the game to help you along your journey to being awesome. At this time, armour and weapons lists have not been created, however this is on the 'to-do' list.

This site is a work in progress and is by no means error-free, comprehensive, or completed. If you have information to contribute, contact us (link in the menu).

MUD HELP

If you have no idea what a MUD is - read 3K's Newbie help page - or - click the image below to learn more about MUDs in general.

Clipped image of the external website explaining what MUDs are and how to play them.

3K is a MUD that does not enforce roleplaying.

Recent Updates

23 September 2022: Areas:
Ashridge Acres map updated, thanks to Shenanigans.; Dungeons:
Chess, scaler 95, info added.
Death Taco, scaler 80, info added.; Guilds:
Brief description added regarding penalties (or lack thereof) when leaving your guild, thanks to Kirin's guidance on the newbie chatline.; Milestones:
NEW page created! Visit https://wemudtogether.com/milestones (this link has also been added to the main menu under Character Development).; Dungeons:
Scaler 15 info added for all dungeons except Carnegie Hall and Kayos Wars.; Guilds:
New form added to Changelings guild (North American Termite).; Quests:
Hidden Treasure - Directions to a clue corrected.; Rod of Lordly Might:
Orrery rune updated with description and how many charges it uses.; Areas:
Map of Queen of Hearts' Garden added to Chaos.
Map of Queen of Hearts' Garden 2.0 added to Chaos.; Dungeons:
Chess updated with scaler 115 max class size thanks to Mugen.
Kayos Wars updated with scaler 145 reputation and stat points thanks to Skykleaver.
Terra's Terrific Treehouse scaler 90 - new high class added by Wiener.; Quests:
Hidden Treasure updated with new clue thanks to Stargerbil.
Newbie quests, Mack and Resource Crisis, updated with new locations thanks to Mugen.; Changelog:
'ibrief' now has an 'all on' or 'all off' argument to toggle your entire inventory.; Discord:
Shiny new 3K Bot added to WMT's discord server. Many thanks to Adalius for making it!; Dungeons:
Aegis reputation data added. (Info from Cable); Player Map:
If you missed it, there's a player map showing where some mudders are in the world. Feel free to add yourself by filling out the form.; Professions:
More info added to Golem Masters - how many daggers a specific size can hold as well as how much they sell for vs the player. (Info from Byron); Areas:
Map of Myth Area (Land of Myths and Fables) added to Chaos.
Map of Norgrith Manor added to Fantasy (many thanks to Shenanigans).; Dungeons:
Aegis scaler 7 corrected by Byron.
Kayos Wars scaler 105 and 115 updated by Papitas.; Skills:
Directions to advanced bow trainer added.; Areas:
Map of Longshadow Camp and Longshadow Battleground added. Click here for entry on Fantasy page.
Map of Paris: Eiffel Tower and Paris: Theatre des Vampires added to Chaos page. Click here for entry on Chaos page.
Map of Theatre of Souls added to Fantasy page. Click here for entry on Fantasy page.; Dungeons:
Aegis scaler 7 info added by Byron.
Chess scaler 55 confirmed by Momentary.
Section Z scaler 130 gear benefits added by Vat.; Library:
Entry for a journal from the Theatre of Souls area added.; Quests:
Pyrope marble directions added.; Areas:
Map added for Innerspace in Chaos.; Artifacts and World Drops:
The Breastplate of Timescape (Knight artifact) added thanks to Agni.; Dungeons:
Chess scaler 54 confirmed by Momentary.; Rod of Lordly Might:
More information on the Dove rune provided thanks to Kirwan.; Areas:
Map added for Enchanted Jungle, Fidohell, Fraggle Rock, Funky Bathroom, Funkytown, Gamer's House, and Winnie the Pooh in Chaos.
Map and area information added for Larem Cemetery in Fantasy.; Dungeons:
Chess, scaler 100, added thanks to Gaidin.
Section Z, scaler 99, added thanks to Stasis.; OTHER:
Re-direct link to Rod of Lordly might page created (which means you can simply type wemudtogether.com/rolm and it will take you to where you need to go.; Player Map:
More player(s) added to the map!; Quests:
Frozen Dude updated.
Potato marble instructions added.; Guilds:
Changeling guild information added.; Player Map!:
More players added to the map!; Areas:
Maps added in Chaos for Crydee, Dayln's Mind, Dragonlance Solace, Erratio Forest, and Tabard Inn.
Map added in Fantasy for Rampage/Snake Pit.
Fun map of the Section Z arcade game added.
Another location to find an axe added to Terra's Terrific Treehouse.; Changelog:
New changelog made - Combat: Description: ClanWorld deaths no longer cause you to drop your stuff.(crecover first); Dungeons:
Zelligar - scaler 78 information added.; Navigation:
Primary Character and page Resources pages created to give an overall description of the what's listed within the Character Development and Resources navigation dropdowns.; Player Map!:
More players added to the map!; Quests:
The Project updated to account for new information provided.
Typo marble directions added.; Areas:
Map uploaded for Clan world.
Map and area information for Cloud City added to Chaos.
Map uploaded for Jag's Bar.
Note added to Shansabyk's Castle and Dragon Shell quest per Raest's findings: preliminary testing has shown that Grathmoore will make a DragonShell with more than 10 scales. Without testing, there's no evidence that you can use lesser scales to max out AC in a slot but is indicative that this is the case.; Missions & Stat Boosts
Cloud City stat boost item directions added.
Fixed all stat boost instructions which were bringing in default directions/area information from another area.; Player Map!:
More players added to the map!; Quests:
Dragon Egg instructions added.; Areas:
Map and area information added for Fuzzy Aliens of Mars.
Maps added in Science for Crashed Plane, Gas Station, Last Chance Truck Stop, Subway Sandwich Shop, and Water Tower.
Map also added for Wax Museum, however, help is requested to figure out the area more.
Maps added in Chaos for ROTC, and Used Car Lot.; Bags:
A Mechanic's Toolbox added from Gas Station in Science. (Holds 20 daggers); Player Map!:
More players added to the map!; Quests:
Kill Bahamut instructions added (note: this is a once per boot quest).; Aread:
990, 991, 992, and 993 added.; Areas:
Map added for Jack's House in Chaos.
Maps added in Science for Military Camp, NASTAR, Nomad Camp, and Toy Store.
Brand new area, Witch's Hat, added to Chaos.; Chatlines:
Political chatline info added.; Guilds:
Bards Guild - Being drunk is less painful. Who ever knew a sober Bard?; Missions:
Pittsburgh Cleanup instructions added.; Player Map!:
More players added to the map!; Puppies:
Puppies page reformatted to also include the Pinnacle Pound Shop as well as the medals and vafs that are associated with puppies (though still slowly bringing back info and pictures for some puppies).; Quests:
Graphite marble directions added.
Ultraviolet marble directions added.; SOULS:
<sudo> soul added to the mud.; Aread:
Congrats to Turnhold and Frank.; Bags:
A lunch box from Abandoned Building added.; Changelog:
See below.; Chatlines:
Say, Spouse, and Tell chatlines added.; Maps:
Abandoned Building added to Science.
Antimammonist Vault added to Science.
Atlanta remade which now includes Kord Mutual parking garage, to Science.
Bandit Camp added to Science.
Cybers Insurance added to Science.
Lost City added to Science.
Murdock Chicken Plant added to Science.
Ryogi Pei Docks added to Fantasy.; Player Map:
New mudders added to the player map!!!; Missions/Stat Boosts:
Arcanarton stat boost directions added.
Murdock Chicken Plant stat boost directions added.; Quests:
Butterscotch marble directions added.; Aread:
#989 added.; Areas:
MK ][ Machine information tweaked a bit on Science page.
Rocky Hill map and a bit of area information added to Fantasy.
Tower of Vindaes map and a bit of area information added to Fantasy.; Guilds:
Fountain, inside Order of the Lost Knights area in Fantasy, added to Bards guild page as a water source.; Maps:
Ladder map added to Chaos.
More players added to the player map.
Stormrock Castle map added to Fantasy.; Missions:
A Knight's Ale mission added.
Knight Tournaments (1-6) missions added.
Roses are Red mission added.
See the Town mission added.
The missions page will now include stat boosting 'tasks'/items. The following have been added so far:
Amulet of Concupiscence, Drink from Pool 9, Einstein's Brain, Inside a shack on the ice, In the Pantry, Penguin Zone, and Tree of Life area; Skillquests:
Note added to the Good and Evil skillquest regarding custom alignment.; Fun New Page!
Player locations page created.; Aread:
Aread 988! Welcome, Canislupus.; Areas:
Fantasy, Tower of Pak-Tor map added.; Bags:
Guild bags added.; Dungeons:
Banshee's Lair, scaler 130, defeated by Whoknows.; Missions:
Free Hamstel! added.; Newbie:
Added 'help milestones'.; Quests:
Fire marble directions added.
Indigo marble directions added.
Vole the Hateful instructions added.; Extras:
Thanks to Esper's cattle prod, <help death> and Newbie Academy quest have been updated by Kikipopo (though the quest is not updated on this site yet).
Kikipopo has also updated the <wimpy> command to indicate what your wimpy is currently set at (this does not apply to Necromancers and anyone else who has/had custom wimpy syntax built into their guild object).; Areas:
Chaos, Sweetboots' House map added.
Fantasy, Bandit Hut map updated.
Fantasy, Clear Falls Valley map added.
Fantasy, Desert Palace map updated.
Fantasy, Snake Pit area added.
Fantasy, Winter Wonderland map added. (Only 12 of 13 rooms located.)
Fantasy, Woodsman's Hut map added. (Only 11 of 12 rooms located.)
Science, Florida Sinkhole map added.; Artifacts and World Drops:
Ring of Kaotic Forces, a legendary item, added to Artifacts and World Drops.; Dungeons:
Alphabet and Death Taco scalers 25 added.; Guilds:
Ascended guild page added.; Library:
A journal from the Woodsman's Hut added.; Quests:
Directions added to Pub Crawl for Crown's Pub, Elven Pub, and The Lazarian Tavern.
Shale marble added.; Areas:
Science, Jeremy's Swamp map added.
Science, Lost Submarine map added.
Science, Swamp Lake map added.
Science, X1S17 Stealth Tank map added.; Guilds:
Psicorps guild Tours, post glvl 100, added.; Missions:
Weaken the Guard instructions added.; Navigation:
Direct link to 'Temper a Weapon' made under the Items dropdown (which is the area link for Grand Hall of Rohm Giddor in Fantasy).; Quests:
Epic directions added.
Trinitrotoluene marble directions added.; Areas:
Chaos, Ice Fishing map added (found 9 of 10 rooms, please help with the last).
Chaos, Kandy Mountain map and area information added.
Science, Starcraft:Broodwar daily area changes added to Science page. (Or go to direct Starcraft page here.); Chatlines:
Cult Game added.; Dungeons:
Section Z scaler 110 gear bonus added.
Section Z scaler 120 Brain adjusted and gear bonus added.
Terra's Terrific Treehouse scaler 60 added.; Equipment:
Isleth the Widowmaker updated.
Runesword page created.; Guilds:
Bards guild page created.
Elementals help file updated to reflect adjustments made on the mud.
Eternals training room added for the (refresh item power.
Psicorps guild levels updated with post glvl 100 information, as well as Tier 1 and Tier 5 additions of body adjustment power.; Areas:
Ant Hole - Map of Levels 1 - 5 added (it's a massive file and will be cut down in size later this week).; Artifacts and World Drops:
Gentech's Genomic DNA Crystal's description added.; Dungeons:
Many thanks to Elminster, Esper, and Kirin for helping with dungeons.
Banshee's Lair, scalers 125 and 140.
Halo, scaler 100.
Kayos Wars, scaler 150 verified.
Section Z, scaler 100.; Pinnacle Morgue:
Page added to explain coffins and corpses.; Areas:
Vago's Stronghold - steps on how to obtain the weapon added.; Dungeons:
Many thanks to Wiener, Marlon, Stasis, Elminster, Ephemeral, Echoloc, and Whoknows for defeating the following dungeons to add more entries to the Graph.
Aegis scalers 55, 135
Alphabet scalers 60, 120, 125, 135, 145
Android scalers 60, 95, 100, 120, 145, 150
Banshee's Lair scaler 100
Carnegie scalers 140, 145, 150
Chess scalers 130, 135, 145, 150
Death Taco scalers 70, 85, 140, 145, 150
Halo scalers 45, 65, 75, 110, 125, 130, 145, 150
Hotel Transylvania scalers 65, 70, 80, 120, 130, 140, 145, 150
Kayos Wars scaler 85, 150
Mahjongg scalers 30, 50, 55, 145, 147, 148
Puppy Mill scalers 75, 80, 140, 145
Section Z scalers 35, 100, 125, 145, 148
Smurfs scalers 105, 135, 140, 145
Terra's scalers 90, 150
Zelligars scalers 105, 110, 120, 135, 150; Aread:
Aread 987; Areas:
Incinerator and Military Bunker maps added to Science.
Momentory Keep map added to Fantasy.; Lights:
A Glowing Orb, from Newbieland, added.; Marbles:
Just a reminder that more marbles will be added each week. Still have +/- 100 marbles to re-add to catch back up to WMTv1.0 marbles list.; Uptime Countdown:
Updated countdown timer (above) to hopefully be accurate for all time zones. Harass Elminster/Knull if it's not right for you.; Areas:
CowVille and it's areas of Northern CowVille and CowVille Moofia have been added to the Chaos page.; Dungeons:
Banshee's Lair scaler 55 defeated by Wiener.
Visit the Dungeon Graph to see what's missing. Feel free to help fill it in!; Library:
Com-Moo-nism for Dummies, from CowVille, added to the library page.; Lights:
A Torch, from CowVille, added to the lights page.; Aread:
Aread 986; Areas:
Tempering instructions re-added. Either search for temper on the fantasy page or visit wemudtogether.com/temper and it will redirect you to the correct area (which is the Grand Hall of Rohm Giddor)
Necromancer's Lair map and area information added to Fantasy page.
PG's map and area information added to Chaos page.
Tomb of Rutha-Al map and area information added to Fantasy page.; Dungeons:
Android dungeon scalers 40 and 85 defeated by Wiener and Locrian.
Chess dungeon scaler 110 defeated by Hideo.
Hotel Transylvania dungeon scaler (zombies) 30 and 35 defeated, and (vampires) 30, 45, 60, 75 defeated all by Wiener, Locrian, and Knull.
Mahjongg dungeon scaler 26 defeated by Wiener.
Section Z dungeon scaler 40 defeated by Wiener.
Zelligar's dungeon scaler 35 defeated by Wiener.; Quests:
Quests page now has 'A Moment of Nostalgia', which lists how many quest points USED to be required to advance your level.
Rutha-Al qinfo added. (Though it has some last step nuances where the enemy simply may not appear.); WMT now displays a countdown until 3K's reboot, on the main page.; Areas:
Camazots map and information added to Science page.
Chaotic Forest partically mapped (need help).
Happy Ed's Chinchilla Farm map updated.
Orc Village map and area information added to Fantasy page.
Section Z capsule and mob information re-added/updated.
Smurfs, scaler 146, defeated.
Terra's Terrific Treehouse, scaler 55, defeated.
Zelligar's sectioned out between golems and Zelligar on the overview graph.; Chatlines:
UNO added.
Lottery updated.; Linked Items:
Rod of Lordly Might hint added for Frost rune, details added for Raven rune, note on (refresh item added.; Missions:
Kayos Chinchilla Furs updated.; Quests:
Pub Crawl quest updated with directions to Camazots Distillery, Rosewood Pub, and The Silvermane.
Waldo quest updated.; New page layouts!; Site should be completely screen-reader and mobile friendly (hopefully).; Chaos, Fantasy, Science, and Newbieland pages now indicate an explorers column, showing a room count (if currently known) as well as a quick link to the map with an icon. Area dropdowns are available for only those with more information listed. Areas will have extra details to look at as time goes on and this will continue to be a work in progress. Additionally, an Areas page has been added which is an overview of all area names (except Pinnacle for now).; Bags:
Jedi Backpack added.
Necromancer's secret chest updated.; Chatlines page added.; Dungeons page now showcases a scaler overview chart.; Guilds:
Adventurer guild information now available.
Breed guild information now available.
Elementals guild information pages now available.
Psicorps guild information pages now available.; Missions:
Investigate the Disturbance added.
Disarm! added.
Poisoned Apples added.
Save Humpty Dumpty added.; Marble: Eggshell added (though about 95% of all other marbles have not yet been re-added).; Newbie welcome/help page redesigned (which now includes Adventurer Guild information).; Pinnacle area page and Fun and Games pages have been temporarily disabled until redesign is complete.; Profession:
Golem Master page added.
Transmuter page added.
Veterinarian added to Puppies page (though the list of puppies is currently under construction).; Slime page added.; Useful Sites page added which contains links to all 3K sites, Inix's Github, and various sources of information.

Many thanks to everyone that has contributed information!

3K Community Events


                    <aread>

Note 993 titled 'Canislupus (Someone, Fri Jul 01 10:07:26 2022):

Please congratulate Canislupus on his recent promotion for his (fairly big) Witch's Hat area and doing some file cleanup behind the scenes. Huzzah!

Note 992 titled 'Information RE: XP Changes & More (Adalius, Thu Jun 30 00:18:21 2022):

As promised, information regarding the XP changes post testing boot are provided. In addition, I decided to discuss some of the problems that we're facing as a wizard community that require some of the changes being made, and lightly touched on some of the things being discussed (emphasis on discussed) at this point.

See more:
https://forums.3k.org/index.php?topic=1822.msg16921

For anyone that does not have a forum account, you can read the initial post

Information Regarding The State Of The Mud & The Recent XP Changes
« on: Today at 12:15:50 am »
As many of you are aware, last boot (#1944) we began testing a system that would gradually reduce experience awarded for killing the same mob multiple times. I was clear that I would post information after we concluded the test boot and had data so we could try to dial the system in. So, here is a tremendous amount of information and data that I hope will satiate everyone's need for information.

First and foremost, I have turned off the XP reduction temporarily until we can finish the changes we need to make before reimplementing it. We are working on the dialing in now but it is going to require us to implement some additional code on an area-by-area basis (specifically allowing the coder/maintainer to tweak how fast XP is reduced on a per-mob basis). What this directly means is if an area has a ton of a single mob and a handful of other mobs, the coder can, at their discretion, require more of the populous mobs to be killed per 1% reduction in XP than the other less-populous mobs, to try and balance the rate that the XP decays. The goal would ideally be to have a certain XP reduction every time the area is cleared, roughly. This also means if you personally feel an area is reducing XP at an unbalanced rate, you can simply use the 'idea' command to suggest that it be changed. On the flip side, if a coder feels their area is being over-visited/abused/etc, they can just as easily increase the decay rate beyond the default values.

We do not have a date that we expect these changes to once again go live, but there will be another announcement post beforehand.

Before I get into actual data from the testing to share with you all, I'd like to take a minute to explain some of the myriad of issues we're facing (and have been for quite some time) in very shallow detail, as well as how this change directly ties to the problems at hand.

To begin with, we are trying to tackle a large number of problems, mostly dealing with inflation (money, XP, advancement rate, +stats, +regen, WC, AC, etc) and power creep that has occurred after almost 30 years of the mud being around. As an example, as I write this, 24 of 62 online players are wielding weapons with maximum WC. 2 players have near immunity in AC. 4 players, under 5 hours into boot, have between +300% and +500% to their HP. It's hard to envision any room to 'grow' when everyone is able to log in and almost instantaneously be at the top of the spectrum in multiple categories; and if there's few if any challenges left to conquer, what is the game really at that point?

The last time any serious attempt was made to 'reign-in' what was occurring were the 5150 changes that occurred roughly two decades ago. They were effective for the most part, and I'd say I think they worked quite well for about 10 years or so. We'd like to see similar success in our current and future planning as the things have gotten drastically out of proportion to a level that I don't think people realize (partially because they've been playing along as it happened so it felt like natural progression even though it was, for a game lasting decades, beyond natural). The wizard staff in general takes the blame for a lot of the current situation, even if many of us weren't here or active when it happened. Had we made lots of small adjustments years ago, maybe we could have avoided the current situation without having to do anything as drastic now (a thousand small cuts versus several big ones), but here we are, and things need to be done in some shape or form.

We also know many are eager to offer suggestions, but its important to note that we're looking at the problems as whole, including problems we can't discuss with the playerbase as they're open to abuse until we solve them, and often times the suggestions we receive appear to be perfectly sound, but once put in context with the other problems, have clear flaws or limitations that prevent them from being utilized.

We are currently discussing multiple plans to tackle some of these issues but the first prong we are utilizing is this XP reduction. It is designed to address a few different things, but one of the larger problems it is addressing is that players are essentially congregating in a single area for the vast majority of a reboot. We were routinely seeing 70-90% of all online characters in a single area from a few days into boot right up until the end of boot.

Why is this a problem? Because it effectively is functionally the same as putting every player in a room with a button that pops a single identical mob out for them to kill over and over and over without any variation. "So what?! If that's how we want to play, let us!" I hear some of the crowd yell. Sure, but understand if that's how people are going to play, there's little to no incentive for any wizards to make anything. If we aren't going to make something with the single minded goal of being better XP than that room, or providing insane equipment that makes that room more productive, it is not going to get visited after the first month. Thus, forcing players to have to rotate areas and utilize more places is in the interest of the long term sustainability of the game, because if we (the wizards) lack creative incentive, we're not going to do much of anything; believe it or not most of us like the creation not just the maintenance of the game. This change, from a thematic position, also makes sense that killing the same thing over and over ad nauseum is eventually going to teach you less (hence you gain less experience from it).

I know many players have thrown around responses to this situation with ideas like "give bonus XP for killing elsewhere" or "code more 2.0 content to spread it out", as well as a handful of other less-oft-repeated ideas. While I certainly appreciate your enthusiasm for offering solutions, I assure you most, if not all of these ideas (and more) have been brought up in our lengthy discussions. We quite literally have been discussing the handful of problems for over 2 years on and off, and as discussed above, we weigh them against the collective problems, including ones the playerbase simply cannot be informed of. The conversation has repeatedly and roundly come to the conclusion that these two above options and others are not going to solve our problems in any long-term meaningful manner. For one reason, due to the inflation, the XP being given out is already a problem (which this change also addresses a bit). We're approaching a (quite literal) wall in terms of numbers, so anything that results in a bonus or more XP being given out, is not going to help the situation. Additionally, unless the bonus is large enough to be more than the existing XP in the 'best' areas, people will still continue to go there instead of getting bonus XP, or they'll just resume going there once they've used up the bonus XP in a new area. In any event they end up with a net increase which is in direct opposition to what we need done. I'd love to give carrots instead of sticks, but we're well past that turning point. My hope is if we can get things reigned in enough that eventually at some point we can utilize positive reinforcement again, but we're a ways away from that.

As a small example of what I mean by literal wall, some of you are already familiar with things like Elemental pstats breaking due to how large the numbers get by the end of a week long boot, let alone a 14+ day boot. We also have similar issues with monsters. As players gain XP at an ever increasing pace, the monsters in new areas are getting bigger and bigger to try and maintain a challenge, and as such, we are close to reaching internal caps (for instance, this is why you see some mobs cap at 2B class). The system I wrote and have talked about publicly before (ipairs) that allows us handle numbers larger than 32b limits for lots of 'collected' values (gxp, pstats, etc) is not a solution for this because a lot of the formulas baked into monsters use certain types of math that are not available when we store the values in an array, and converting them out of an array back to an integer just reintroduces the bounds limits we used arrays to avoid in the first place. Similarly using floats means we lose precision when doing calculations, making them ineffective.

These formulas are everywhere inside the monster code (and to some degree in the player code as they share a base), and trying to change the combat code (and the million other places these values are used) to be operable with ipair math would come close to as much labor as it would be to simply rewrite the core mud systems from scratch or do the entire 64b driver rollover (see also: tremendous). In which case, we've just doubled our workload since we'd have to do that *and* still carry on with the 64b driver at some point. For that reason, anything that results in *more* XP being given out is simply not a valid solution as that only speeds up our rate of travel towards crashing into these walls.

This is also a problem because at some point, we're not going to be able to make mobs any tougher with more reward. We could, in theory, make them tougher, but the most XP they can give out is going to be limited, and who is going to fight a more difficult mob for max XP if there's already other mobs at max XP that are easier/faster to kill. The only incentive you'd have to do that is better equipment or some other sort of positive perks (stats, regen, SMD, etc), all of which helps you kill faster meaning more XP meaning once again increasing that rate of change. Its a no-win scenario.

When it comes to additional 2.0 content or more 'big' content, in addition from that being more work than more people I think really understand (yes, even 2.0'ing an area, its faster but still a lot of work) we've done that, and every time we've done that, it didn't reduce the clustering, it simply moved it from the last 'best' area to the new one. A big driver of this is everyone wants dungeonized content, which is then reset-able on an almost continuous basis by rolling cooldowns with other players. This is part of why we're looking at some other things related to dungeons, specifically (reset dungeon, which I touch on below in a blurb about Eternals.

It's important to understand as well that part of these problems are just inherent in the underlying systems. Popular demand was a massive reduction on death costs, but in doing so, there is little to no negatives to offset the positive XP gains, meaning what used to be a minor net positive is now a tremendous net positive and the rate of change is growing exponentially without anything to keep it in control. We suffer the same issues with the gold economy. We have tremendous gold generated every reboot, and comparatively few expenditures, which is part of why things like Ogotaz were put into place, to convert extremely large sums of gold into tangible useful things. At some point we had a policy on stat boosts being limited in size which was removed causing tremendous stat gains. Right now, 5 hours into boot, we have people with +125 - +200 to a *single* stat. It becomes very difficult to balance when a stat can naturally go from 1-275 and 5 hours into a boot people already have +200 on top of that, almost doubling the base value.

We understand these changes aren't going to be fair across the board, specifically with the XP reduction they do punish people who kill quickly more than those who tank, they do affect those who play 16 hours a day more than those who play 2 hours a day, but we have to balance the consequences of the changes we make with the labor required to make them, and the resources required to run them. Put simply for an example, the code that gets run on a monster death already is close to running out of available time to run which is part of why we had to limit '(fry' on how many mobs it can target, because it was running it past the limit and breaking. So the code used to calculate the XP reduction, which is a core bit of the death code, cannot be so grandiose that it requires significant runtime, it has to be simple and quick, which this solution is. If we add more layers to it to try and balance it with timers or damage counters, or all sorts of other things that have been talked about, it simply will not finish running fast enough and errors will start popping everywhere.

Just so there are no claims of surprise in the future, I want to be very clear, we are very limited on options that will work to combat the problems we're facing other than some nerfs, ranging in severity, across the board. As I stated in the lengthy back and forth on the forum post, we do not enjoy this. We do not relish in it, we take no joy in it. Even getting people to talk about it has been a chore because nobody wants to be the one who has to do the dirty work of scaling things down. Nothing we can do, other than amazingly drastic measures we are frankly trying to avoid, is going to cure the 'disease', so all we can try to do is limit the symptoms. We're hopeful we can slow the symptoms enough that maybe we'll have enough time to get to 64 bit before everything starts breaking which will then move the 'wall' I discussed above much, much further away. As such, you can expect that there will be discussions about Eternals coming up in the next weeks/months in regards to their powers, the costs, their cooldowns, and how to adjust them to help the problems at hand as they are in many respects integral to some of the larger problems. You can also expect there will be discussion on a fair number of other topics we have on the burners.

To that end, we are also in talks about redesigning a way to bring players into these discussions without the extreme emotional outbursts that have become routine every time something is changed (even when information is given in advance and en masse). The Players Council was a grand idea that failed, but we believe we can, with proper planning, find a similar means to have conversations with a small group of players providing feedback before, during, and after changes occur so that player interaction is involved, and to hopefully provide a group of players who can explain to the rest of the playerbase why the changes we're talking about need to be made with some semblance of understanding of the problems being faced, not just from the play-side but also the code-side of the issue (within reason of what we can disclose or choose to disclose). While Turnhold is still working out a proposal for this, I imagine it will operate something similar to the Player Review Board where players can volunteer for the position and the wizards will accept those volunteers who meet a given set of standards. Again, that is still at the proposal drafting stage and thus I have little details to offer.

So, to conclude all the above, I'd like to share with you some of the data from our testing, obviously obfuscated to remove data directly tied to individual players or any "behind-the-scenes" things like filenames and such.

In terms of numbers, our data showed a fairly reasonable reduction in congregation after the instituting of the change which we view as a positive success, however, the problem is still *very* visible, and very present (which is part of why we have other changes that are either in discussion or planning stages).

Over the first 7 days of the last boot, a total of 252 individual characters (which includes alts) recorded 265,295 total kills.

Of those kills, the top 5 unique monsters killed, representing only *3* areas, were killed at the following rate:
#1 - 22,611 Kills
#2 - 6,730 Kills
#3 - 6,484 Kills
#4 - 6,081 Kills
#5 - 4,613 Kills

As you can see, the most killed monster was killed just slightly fewer times as the next 4 monsters killed combined. This is also during XP reduction after people had identified the system in place and tried to work around it. So you can easily imagine how much worse things were/are without it.

We also tracked for each player which monsters had which percentage reductions and then summaried them. There were 5,470 unique player/monster kill combinations and their XP reduction breakdown was:
42 @ 50% reduction.
19 @ 40-49% reduction.
48 @ 30-39% reduction.
74 @ 20-29% reduction.
335 @ 10-19% reduction.
3905 @ 1-9% reduction.
1047 @ 0% reduction.

This tells us that for everyone who said their XP is down 40-50%, that they were almost certainly focusing exclusively on a very small number of monsters to make up the entirety of their experience gained.

Out of the 42 player/monsters combinations at 50% reduction, one single player had 8 monsters at 50% reduction, 2 players had 3 monsters, 3 players had 2 monsters, and 22 players had 1 monster. Meaning the vast majority of those with *any* 50% reduction only had one single monster out of everything they killed that was getting a 50% reduction. This also means there were 224 characters who never reached the 50% reduction cap on even a single monster.

Of those who had one single 50% reduction, the overwhelming majority had a second highest reduction of less than 20%. Of those who had more than one 50% reduction, their next highest non-50% was split between being less than 35% or less than 15%. Additionally, of all the monsters killed on a per player basis, almost every single player had half or more of their monsters at less than 10% reduction.

Also for note, those who did not have the #1 killed monster as (one of) their 50% reduction(s), which unsurprisingly was the most common 50% reduction, often did not have *any* reduction exceeding 25%.

The average maximum reduction across all players was only 13%. This was calculated by taking the single highest reduction each player had, and averaging those values across all 252 characters.

So, given everything put forth, what's next? As mentioned, we will be instituting this reduction long term but with some provisions to allow us to better balance it, especially in areas that have tremendously offset ratios between various mob spawns within them. We will be doing long-term minor adjustments as needed once we feel we have it dialed in. We will be providing more information when we have any about a potential Players Council v2.0 (or whatever Turnhold deems to call it). We will provide more information about other potential future changes as we get further along in their planning, we're still in discussion on many and not even to the 'lets implement this for testing' stage on any.

We appreciate your patience in this matter. It's not an easy thing to fix, it's not something fast to fix, it's something we want to continue to spend time working on to do right. We haven't spent years discussing things before implementation for no reason, and it can be very discouraging to hear people say how bad an idea it is within hours of learning of it without having put the same tremendous amount of thought and debate into it that the wizarding community has. So I ask that if you absolutely must have your opinions heard on the matter, then remember these are people, volunteers at that, spending tremendous amounts of their time doing nothing but talking on how to properly implement changes to make something you enjoy better, for you. Temper your emotions, be kind, be thoughtful, have a solid rational and reasoned position to present, and be open to the fact that if we listen, that does not mean we will agree. If you can't manage that, then leave it to the future Players Council 2.0 to have those conversations and run your thoughts through them to bring to us once it is established.
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3K Changelog

Important


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Auction House

During the year of 2021 - You may have noticed some really impressive items up for a very good price in the auction house. This is a new approach to making rare items more accessible to those that would like to use the eternal power (duplicate item. These items can be spotted by listings specifically set at a bid of 10 and buyout of 11 coins. They are meant to be purchased, duplicated and then the original item relisted for the same 10/11 price for the next person. So far this has made life easier for those sharing and duplicating, so if you happen to see these listings, please only purchase them if you intend to duplicate and relist!

Side Note: Nobody is perfect, and the system will reflect that. If one of these auctions appears erroneous, help get things back on track. If you see an item traditionally reserved for sharing but with a slightly skewed price, it's better to assume it is not something selling for a too good to be true price. The more people we have respecting and helping this process, the better it will be for all.