The Return

Early August 2026

I know it has been a while. I wrote a whole letter to the community last year and forgot to press send. The short version: I was overwhelmed and really down on my luck at the time, but never forgot about the game. Over the last few months I've slowly been working my way through what were otherwise insurmountable issues, and wanted to share what I've been working on. The server is back up, and you can log in and play, but largely my efforts will be invested in stabilizing and adding features as opposed to promoting the game on Reddit, for instance.

The changes below are difficult for only one person to extensively test and verify. I appreciate any and all reports as I work through them. All bugs fixed and identified from player reports have been closed and awarded QP.

Bug Fixes

Fixed (hopefully) issues with timed events, such as movement and crafting, causing characters to stall. Passed 120 timer rolls in meditate without a stall. This might expose new bugs in certain crafts, please report them and be patient with me.
Fixed (hopefully) in-game time jumping forward by a few years each time the game crashes.
Fixed broken columns for evoke list.
Fixed an issue where jobs sometimes would not provide their weekly payout.
Fixed a bug with teaching and listening inducing a stuck state for pools.
Fixed sheathed weapons having the wrong short descriptions.
Fixed sheathed weapons having a trailing space.
Fixed scan missing a space between a player's description and their direction.
Fixed awaken crashing the game.
Fixed an issue where long cooking recipe keywords or short descriptions of produced dishes would break columns.
Fixed an issue with the inkless void helpfile being inaccessible.
Fixed a cascading memory issue in the backend with keywords being loaded for mobs when it hits the tenth block.
Should have fixed Moonflower's affect reporting as invalid.
A lack of spacing was hardcoded into being able to see light in a direction. Fixed.
Fixed look/open/unlock <direction> losing to an inventory keyword match.
Fixed dominate giving no success or failure message.
Fixed sing songs not listing what's on cooldown.
Fixed a purchase cost formula mismatch for height.
Fixed an issue where herbs would not fit in rucksacks or chests.
Fixed an issue where some crops would yield the wrong produce.
Fixed an issue with ledgers and notes not being editable by their own authors.

Admin Fixes

Added an imp command to stress-test timers.
Immortal commands are now broken up into level headers.
One additional keyword added for all randomized fields.
Bashed out over 200 compiler warnings.
Fixed an issue where objects would not populate in the room editor's return function.
Added a crash command to simulate game crashes.
Added a loadhelps command to load helps from file on the server in case offline edits are made.

Feature Updates

Lots and lots of economy stabilization. Some players' silver earned has been trimmed, RP-to-silver ratios adjusted, over 200 shop item prices adjusted, and value added to over 70 items. This was necessary so we can stick to our commitment of never doing a pwipe, so some of you may see your wealth cut significantly.
33 new crops added to the game in preparation for the cooking prototype.
Fixed an issue where xterm colors (RGB was safe) would not print to some telnet clients (MudForge & MobaXterm tested).
Added 16-color functionality. The color 16/ansi command has the MUD print to you in only the original 16 colors, in case your client can't handle extended 256-color codes.
Fishing overhauled to load unique species at different tiers.
Skinning and butchering overhauled to produce unique items for different animals.
Cooking trade ability added as a prototype for the new crafting system, with 70 ranks worth of recipes.
Job payout window widened, just in case the server isn't online during a payout period.
Backgrounds have been reworked. They no longer act as prerequisites for certain abilities, but instead offer faster progression for the abilities listed in that background's checks.
Children and adolescent backgrounds removed, characters can't be younger than 18 on creation. Any character who logs in with either of these backgrounds, or younger than the threshold, will be normalized on login.
Crafting is no longer locked to being a merchant. It's instead capped at 36 for non-merchants, but can be increased by being taught up to 60. Advancing beyond 60 requires being a merchant, regardless of whether you've been taught or not.
Harvesting's intelligence requirement brought down from 70 to 60, to be in line with plant and tend.