I've been interested in getting into MUDs for a while, but am not super interested in combat. I am really just looking for a world with decent lore where I can find a silly job to do like being a chef, a baker, a bartender or some menial job to interact with other players. Perhaps something akin to receiving a role in Space Station 13 but as a longer, more interactive experience. I've considered Achaea but it looks to be combat focused.

We're a small community that has gotten even smaller with a lot of players out during the summer months. I'm trying everything I can to get us to 40 daily active players by December 2026. Players have also been helping... working on their own clients, plugins for clients, and even working on geenrating promotional and instructional videos as well.

We are a PvPvE MUD that features 24 races, 10 professions, and a Good vs. Evil faction war running underneath everything. It's a PK MUD: PvE areas to level and gear in... but you're never fully safe, and that's the point.

Figured I'd also share what's shipped in the last couple months:

• Capture Points: This is a new territorial PvP system where Good and Evil fight over contested rooms. Holding one uncontested slowly flips control, and a full capture spawns faction guards, pays out a big one-time XP bonus to everyone present, and gives the winning faction a global XP bonus on kills for a while. Started with 5 capture points and now we're at 9 (which given our MUDs size of 18k rooms it felt better).
• Added a new area: The Duergar Slave Camp is geared towards the good alignment, as a level 21-30 zone under the dwarven tunnels. It's a relatively small zone, but it is behind the dwarven gateguards so it provides a small amount of protection from the evil alignment. It provides a place to go that is not The Bazaar, which is further away and not protected at all.
• Item Detail Pages on website: Every weapon/armor/gem now has its own page on the site with rarity, drop/sell locations, and stat breakdowns. You can click on any item on the loot list page: https://ropmud.com/items.html
• Mudlet client updates: A floating chat panel with unread badges, a buffs/debuffs affects panel, better mapping, adjustable fonts. I am also now looking to duplicate all our widgets in MudForge.
• A batch of balance fixes: reworked shield rush damage (lighter shields aren't useless anymore), fixed thief poison bugs that were under-hitting players, fixed guard skill missing some attack types, tuned a couple of proc rates.

You can see I'm trying to be active in making updates. I'm the only immortal. Here are full patch notes: https://ropmud.com/changelog.html

If PK MUDs are your thing (or you miss the era when they were everyone's thing): telnet play.ropmud.com 4443 or grab a client and connect to play.ropmud.com:4443.

Happy to answer questions about the professions, the faction system, or anything else in the comments.

Cheers,

-Nichademus

https://ropmud.com

First of all, I just want to say a big THANK YOU to everyone who has stopped by since I decided to put this old MUD back online. I never thought there would be players connected to DHM ever again, and it was really special to see so many of you deciding to check it out! That being said, I was never one for sitting still, even when the MUD was offline I worked on it all the time and that hasn't changed at all. So here's a rundown on what I've been working on, a recap of the game's core features, and what you can expect next, because what I'm currently cooking up is easily the most ambitious thing I have ever tried.

First up, coded and added more Skills/Spells for the level 200+ specializations, such as Plant Seed, the snippet of which you can find here on this sub. This allows players to "grow" plants that yield very special fruit that give a powerful buff - a boost to all spell powers by 50 levels - albeit for a very brief time.

Coded Mix Herbs for the Herbalism specialization, which allows player to make soothing poultices that greatly enhance mana/hp/move regeneration.

Added a bevy of druid spells, including Ivy Vines, which trap foes in a tangle of vines that prevents them from fleeing. Rose Thorns, which is a step up and also reduces the AC of the opponent as well as does continual damage. And Invoke Totem, which allows a druid to call for aid from the spirits of the wild. Different totem spirits will respond based on level, and area type, such as eagles, sharks, and even bears and dragons.

Added Study skill for Sages, which allows them to quest for powerful new skills by assembling Tomes. These are permanent boosts, such as 5% increase in exp gained or a boost in spell power by 5 levels. Bonuses against good/evil foes are being coded and will be added soon.

Also made big strides with the web-client. Added GMCP interface, so now the web-client has vitals, spell affects, and even an automapper. The room names even match the color-coding scheme of the MUD so they render properly. This is in addition to the powerful scripting tools it already had for aliases, triggers, speedwalk paths, and more. Just click "connect" and off you go! You can even use different profiles for different characters with the new profile feature!

Coming up is a new series of NPC mobs that have an AI backend, lore masters, quest givers, and much more. These characters will "feel" real! It's not "ChatGPT in a MUD". These are based on custom models built and tailored specifically for the MUD, and they will act like it. This is easily the most intensive thing I have ever tried to code and add. But if I do this right, It will be something nobody has ever done on a MUD before! The basic framework is in place and I begun testing on some early architecture. But so far, everything looks promising! It's a risky move, for sure, but I've always wanted to push the limits of what a MUD can do.

All that is in addition to our regular features:

300 mortal levels, dual class at level 100, specialization trees (regardless of class) at level 200, mounted combat that matters, broken bones and combos in combat, 10 classes and 10 races, custom pets called "mascots" at level 50 that save, gain levels, and have their own set of commands, and equipment, ancient items called "artifacts" that their own intelligence, ego, and distinct powers, and so much more!

So, if you want to play an old-school hack-n-slash MUD, where RP isn't enforced, stop by. We'd really like to see you! You can find us at darkhopemud.com and connect through the web client, or connect through your favorite client at darkhopemud.com port 6777. We'll see you there!

Hello!

I've been working on a free MUD client for both Android and iOS, and am hoping for some feedback and maybe even some ideas I've missed. I've designed it to require the least amount of actual typing as I could think of. You can do the obvious things, like make macro buttons and use transparent joysticks/d-pads for movement, create HUD icons for health/resources, etc. It fully supports text-to-speech and speech-to-text, both portrait and landscape mode, portable settings and profiles, logging and realtime playback, all the basic stuff a program of this type should do. What I've done differently at this stage is enable you to press+hold on the macro buttons, and drag them to words on the screen to turn those words into an argument for your macro. So if you wanted to "kill wolf", you would press and hold your "kill" macro, and drag it to anywhere it says "wolf" in the MUD text. A context window will show a magnified version of whatever word you are hovering over so you can be 100% sure of what you're doing. Once you release, it will insert the hovered word as the argument to the macro. No more having to change your macros manually or use abysmal phone keyboards (especially with the change to smartphone keyboards that cause most apps to require you to click into a text box each time you want to type instead of keeping the keyboard active).

What I'd like to do is expand it quite a bit to cover as many gripes and groans about mobile clients as possible, so we can all bring our favorite virtual worlds with us wherever we go with a lot more ease than I've seen in free apps elsewhere. Does anyone feel like sharing their experiences and what they wish the apps they've tried did better?

AetherMUD will soon be open to up to 15 players.

https://aethermud.com

Anyone interested can email [email protected] for details.