Your persona can be killed in a number of ways in MUD, but fighting is almost unique in that if you die in combat then your persona is obliterated. Whether you started the fight or not is completely irrelevant. With other forms of death, you can normally come back immediately (albeit with fewer points than you had before!).

When a fight starts in MUD, it continues until either party is dead, or has fled. Every few seconds, an exchange of blows takes place. The higher your dexterity, the greater your chance of hitting your opponent. The higher your strength, the more damage you will do when you hit. The higher your stamina, the more damage you can take. When your stamina drops to 0 or less, you die. If you flee from a fight you will lose points, but obviously not as many as if you had died! More points are gained for killing an opponent than for having one flee from you, too. In both cases, however, everything they were carrying will be left behind on the ground.

A weapon increases the damage you deliver, but some weapons require that you have a certain strength before you can wield them. Useful weapons include:

• lit sticks
• daggers
• the staff
• axes
• picks
• swords

Your strength and dexterity are modified depending on how many objects you are carrying, how much they weigh, whether you can see your opponent or not, and how injured you are. Thus, if someone attacks you, the first thing to do is to USE a weapon, but almost as important is to drop anything big and heavy that you don't need for the fight!

command

example

what the example does

Kill <creature>

k banshee

Initiate a fight with the banshee.

USE <weapon>

use staff

Use the staff as a weapon in this fight.

Kill <creature> WIth <weapon>

k banshee wi staff

Previous two combined.

Flee

f

Leave the fight and move in a random direction.

Flee <direction>

f o

Leave the fight and move in the out direction.

SuperFlee

SF

Leave the fight and quit immediately.

HIT <creature>

hit rat

Hurt the rat without starting a fight.

HIT <creature> WIth <weapon>

hit rat wi stick

As above, use the stick.

WithDraw

WD

Accept/offer a mutual withdrawal, with no resulting points loss if your opponent also withdraws.