chapter 4 "Gaining Experience"

    Now you must prepare for the
technical demands of your creators.

    Your creators will expect you to have 
answers to their questions. For the most part,
they'll find these answers in the Creator's FAQ,
at http://dead-souls.net/ds-creator-faq.html .

    But you're going to get questions not on
that FAQ. You'll get stuff like:

* How many quest points should the Issa Quest award?

* What's the maximum player level on this mud?

* Can I make a player class called "Swiper"? 

* What's a good weapon type for The Bouncy Ball?

    These are questions that depend strictly on you
and what your vision for the mud is. Dead Souls is
a starting point. The classes, levels, systems,
*everything*, is open to modification. 
    
    It is normal and natural not to have all of
these answers at first. I suggest you concentrate on
making an "area", perhaps a quest, consisting of
perhaps 15 to 20 rooms  and a few npc's, weapons,
pieces of armor and general items.

    Test your weapons and armor in the arena. To
get to the arena, first go to the Creators' Hall
by typing: wiz

    Then go east, then north.

    You can have the dummy wear armor like this:

give mithril shirt to dummy
force dummy to wear shirt

    And you can test your weapons by beating on the
dummy:

force fighter to drop sword
clone hammer
give hammer to fighter
force fighter to wield hammer
force fighter to kill dummy

    The dummy will very helpfully blurt out the amount
and type of damage it receives.

    You can get ideas for your npc's by visiting the
 menagerie. It is east and south of the Creators' Hall.

    By creating your first quest, and putting test
characters through it, you will gain the experience
you need to be able to tell your players things like:

"The Issa Quest is supposed to be easy, so make it 2qp."

"Level 50 explorers are way too strong. I'm capping
player advancement at level 40."

"No, there is already a thief class."

"Make it a projectile weapon."
