SidneySmith does Ankh-Morpork or My travels in discworldMUD!

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So after this thread here got me reminiscing about my time as a Priest of Gufnork in discworldMUD many, many moons ago, I decided it'd be a great idea if I documented my travels in that most worthy of worlds this time around, and in particular that greatest of cities, Ankh-Morpork.

It's probably not the fantastic idea it at first seems, but I've had 3 beers and so it's happpening anyway.

I find myself dropping from the sky and landing in a pile of pumpkins in a little town called Pumpkin Town. This is the newbie area of discworldMUD, a kind of getting to know you area as well as a place of training and information. The first time I found myself here all those years ago I already knew I wanted to be a Priest of some kind, and so it was just a matter of heading to the Guilds area of town and wandering into the Priests Guild. I remember having to either save or drown some little beetles that were paddling about in a bowl of water. This would decide my alignment and therefore limit my choice of God or Goddess. I remember liking the idea of being evil at the time but simply couldn't bring myself to drown the poor little beetles and so ended up saving as many as I could and, well that's how I ended up being a Priest of the God of fluff. Not a bad thing as it turned out. I liked being able to summon little balls of fluff. I even had some other player come up to me and ask me make some for them. I think they had healing properties or something. I forget now.

Anyway, I digress. This is what I got up to this time round:-

• Entered Pumpkin Town by falling from the sky.
• Proceeded to wander around randomly to get my bearings and see if I remembered anything from last time.
• Visited the Shop first and equipped myself with a lovely brown skirt, an iron mace, a wide brimmed floppy hat, a medium sized satchel and later when I returned, a dagger.
• Made the aquaintaince of many very pleasant, very helpful people such as Johnny be-bop, the nurse who healed me several times after I practised my fighting skills against a pumpkin hanging from the ceiling of a hut at the Warriors Guild and whose name I'm ashamed to say escapes me.
• Met a Womble and went on a little quest to find him a gooseberry, which he was very pleased with.
• Met more people, your one at the Assasin's Guild and the Wizard who sent me on another quest to find his lost paper which had a spell or something on it. I gave up on that one since I knew I didn't really want to be a Wizard.
• Shoplifted a plain white bra at the Shop for your man at the Thieves Guild. He seemed pleased with it.

All in all I've enjoyed my time in Pumpkin Town this time around, although I think that has a lot to do with the fact that I don't have any preconceived ideas about what I want to be or what Guild I want to join. I'm not even sure I want to join a Guild this time, at least not at first anyway. I think it may be more enjoyable simply wandering around, getting drunk at the drum on weekends and generally annoying the locals.

Ended this session with a trip to the Travel Agents to the west of Pumpkin Town. Here I was given a voucher for a 'Talker' which gives me access to 'channels' which are like chatrooms I suppose. There seem to be lots of them, some everyone has access to for a limited time like the newbie channel, which you only have access to for 15 hours I think it is. Then there's general channels everyone can access, and Guild channels that only members of particular Guilds can access and apparently there's also the possibility of access to a private channel. While I was in Pumpkin Town, someone called 'THEGODWIZARD' decided he was going to troll the newbie channel with inanities, which was annoying especially since someone then said we don't officially exist in Pumpkin Town so it's impossible to put him on ignore. Oh well.

Anyway, I've now walked through the door in the Travel Agents and have appeared in the bar in 'The Mended Drum'. Woo-hoo...!

Next time: I plan on getting drunk in the drum, and maybe trying out some of those cool 'soul commands' johnny be-bop told me about.

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Just as a little addendum to my previous post I thought I'd record SidneySmith's current status.

First off, this is where he is at the moment:-

+ +
$-@
\|
$
+

Thats a little map, and I'm actually inside the Mended Drum pub at the moment. The little '' symbol is me. It's actually coloured yellow in the actual map.

Next to the map is the text description of where I am:-

This is the main bar of Ankh-Morpork's most infamous pub, the Mended Drum. The bar itself runs along the northeast of the room, east of which lie tier after tier of shelves, all full of exotic, possibly toxic drinks. Pools of unpleasant liquid cover quite a large part of the floor here, along with a scattering of unpleasant rubbish. Dotted around this area are several grubby tables and chairs, while a rather tattered menu hangs above the bar.
The atmosphere in the bar is loud with talk and thick with heavy coils of smoke.
There are three obvious exits: north, south and west.
Hibiscus Dunelm is standing at the bar and a helpful street urchin is standing here.
A peanut tray full of brochures is on the bar, a dart board is mounted on a wall, The Green Slab box and an AM Daily box are beside the bar and a fruitbat flavoured badge is on the floor.

Here's my 'score' which contains info about my various stats.

score
You have 500 (500) hit points, 50 (50) guild points, 0 (731) quest points, 1 (1342) achievement point and 50 (50) social points.
Your current experience is 33122 and you are level 1 in the Adventurers' Guild; your overall rating is 512.
You have died 0 times and can die 7 times before you are completely dead.
Your wimpy is set to 20%.
You are unburdened (18%) and quite comfortable.
You are neutral, worshipping no god.
You are 4 hours, 10 minutes and 43 seconds old and have logged in 12 times.

And finally, my inventory. As you can see, SidneySmith seems to enjoy wearing women's clothes at the moment(and no, I've no idea why. It just sort of happened).

i
You are unburdened (18%) by:
Holding : a dagger (left hand) and an iron mace (right hand).
Wearing : a fluffy pink towel, a wide brimmed hat, a medium satchel and a colourful sash.
(under) : a brown wool skirt and a set of fluffy earmuffs.
Carrying: a spiked club.
Your purse contains 4 Ankh-Morpork dollars, one Ankh-Morpork half-dollar, 2 Ankh-Morpork ten-pence and 5 Ankh-Morpork pence.

I was looking at the menu in the Mended Drum yesterday and I noticed you can buy a drink for 10p, although since 'Ankh Water' is listed as costing 50p I'm not sure how long I'd survive trying to get drunk on that 10p drink(I've forgotten what it's called and can't be bothered to log back in to check now). There are plenty of choices of alcohol, the most expensive seems to be $30. And once again, I can't remember what drink it was. I'll put up the list when SidneySmith decides to get bladdered, which he's planning to do sometime after Thursday since he's pretty sure he'll have the time to devote to such an august undertaking then.

Oh. I just remembered. I also met DEATH in Pumpkin Town too. Just saying!

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heh, heh! just logged in via the app on my phone to play about with the various settings to find that Sidney now has a pink bow tied in his hair. I know I didn't put it there. Could this be one of the creators having a little fun I wonder? What makes me wonder more than anything is the fact that Sidney is wearing or is wrapped in a pink fluffy towel which I 'did' buy.

It also says I look very cute. So that's nice anyway.

Daith

Really tempted to make a new player now. My main was a priest of Pishe and I just remember the slow slow progression to be able to fight people to get XP. Probably has changed now.

Maybe a fighter or thief this time.

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I remember getting resurrected many times by priests of Pishe. As a priest of gufnork I would have been able to resurrect people if I had become very powerful, but I'd have had to have been playing for years before I got to that stage I think. weren't priests of Pishe the ones where you get to resurrect people as soon as you become a priest? Think that's them.

I used to die soo often, and I wasn't even a playerkiller. The final straw with my gufnork character was when I put in a lot of time and effort to gain the ability to kill zombies with magic only to be killed by the first zombie I attacked. That was when I gave up on it and never went back.

Daith

I think a few priests could raise the dead but only priests of Pishe could resurrect (which meant the player got back his stats and some xp).

I used to just idle at the mended drum and ghosts would pop along and ask. I remember a thief who was killed who I resurrected and he gave me some ring that was worth alot.

I think as the Disc grew bigger it meant people were more spread out and the Drum was never the center of the MUD the way it used to be.

There was a quest in Nowhere that had you return a ring to a ghost. I remember trying to use Turn Undead on the ghost was told I couldn't. I filed a bug report and they changed it

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Had intended to get hammered at the Drum this weekend but realised pretty swiftish that $4 and some odd change wasn't going to get me very far, so armed with the optimism of a complete idiot and absolutely no clue as to where I was going I headed out into the city streets to seek my fortune, or at least some sense of purpose. So, here's how SidneySmith spent his week so far,

• Visited the Royal Art Museum which proved to be less fascinating than I'd imagined. Lots of paintings. Don't know what I expected really.
• Killed a Cockroach. Then for some inexplicable reason decided to eat it's corpse. This proved to be a mistake when I immediately began to beat the cr@p out of myself for no good reason. I lost several hundred HP(hit points) before I finally relented. Weird.
• Decided shortly after that I was ready for bigger prey, and attacked and killed a rat. Didn't eat it's corpse either so I definitely learnt something that day.
• Got a bit cocky at this stage and started eyeing up a small street child. There's a command anyone can use which is consider, so consider street child will give you an indication if you're stronger or weaker than them. It's kind of like sizing someone up to see if you're likely to get your backside wooped or not. Anyway, it said the child was weaker than me and I have to say it took all my effort not to smear it across the pavement, but his little face got the better of me and I gave him a Hug instead. This was another mistake as it turns out, because the little b'stard started shouting at the top of his voice that SidneySmith was trying to molest him. I hot-footed it out of there pretty sharpish.
• Went North at this point past the Opera House and through the Isle of Gods across the river and ended up pretty well lost. Luckily I remembered a site that had a searchable map of Ankh-Morpork which was when I realised I'd traveled as far North as I could and was on what is effectively a pedestrians version of the M25. It's a street called Endless Street and it circles the whole of Ankh-Morpork. You could be walking that street forever if you're not careful. I decided to head back South and find a shop.
• At this point I should say that as I'm wandering around I'm constantly searching. This quite often turns up things you can sell or even the odd bit of money. I ended up with so much stuff to sell that I started dropping bits here and there due to being overburdened. So I stopped searching and headed south back towards the Drum. If you go East of the Drum there's a little shop which buys and sells lots of different things and is a good way of getting shot of all the junk you've picked up on your travels.
• Now here's an interesting thing. While at the shop another Player Character comes in and sees me putting away a torch I was using to light my way around some of the shadier parts of the city. He then hands me a Turtle Necklace and tells me it'll give off light and so I won't need torches anymore. Thought that was really nice of him. It works too. I'm now bathed in a warm chocolate glow whenever the light levels are a bit low. It's quite cool really.
• From here I decided to visit the Street of Small Gods. Now this has a special place in my heart due to it being where my priest of gufnork used to visit his Temple all those years ago, and I used to spend a lot of time heading back and forth to and from this street.
• Arrived at the Street of Small Gods and wandered into a few Temples. Couldn't bring myself to visit gufnork's Temple though so headed to the Temple of Small Gods itself, which is quite impressive, but my favourite was Blind IO's Temple. There are disembodied eyeballs floating around in mid air. It's quite large and imposing too. Very impressive. I haven't been tempted by the Priesthood again yet, but I do like the Gods and Temples of discworld. It was while I was in one of these Temples that I noticed the chocolaty glow was lighting up the walls as I passed. Nice little touch that I thought.

So as you can see, SidneySmith has had quite an interesting little tour of only a very small part of Ankh-Morpork, and hasn't even touched upon some of the other cities on the disc. This world really is HUGE at this stage.

I almost forgot to mention the various fights I witnessed too. Mostly outside the Drum as I was coming and going or passing by, but they can be very interesting to watch what with various bits of magic going off and what have you. Also saw someone magic up a portal in mid air in the middle of the street. It was made of solid oak and in the shape of a door, and remained open after the Player Character had stepped through. I didn't feel brave enough to attempt to step through myself but I think I remember people using these to travel vast distances to other cities and continents and so on, so I probably made the right choice there. Still, was another very cool thing I happened upon.

I should also mention that I only managed to increase my fortunes by the princely sum of approximately $6 or so. I now have about $13 to my name.

I love my chocolate coloured glow more than anything though...

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SidneySmith has decided he's done enough wandering aimlessly around Ankh-Morpork and has been inquiring about/investigating the various Guilds. He quite liked the idea of joining the Fools Guild for a while, but was then informed by one of the creators on the Talker channels that the Fools Guild hasn't been implemented which annoyed him more than it should have. As a consequence Sidney has made a mental note to buy himself a clown suit at the earliest possible opportunity and wear it as a form of protest. He then went to visit the Fools Guild and had a custard pie thrown at him as he looked longingly across at it's black, dreary facade, which cheered him up a little anyway.

Other Guilds that Sydney has considered are The Warriors Guild and The Priests Guild. He pretty quickly rejected the Warriors feeling more of an affinity with the less violent Guilds. Of course Sydney being Sydney decided he might like to become a Priest of IO(the one with the floating eyeballs and impressive looking Temple) only to discover that they weren't accepting new Priests at the moment. He seems to have a knack of setting his heart on things he just can't have. Typical.

On another note, Sydney had to call upon the services of his Fairy Godmother when he accidently took a wrong turn and fell down a hole which seemed to have no way out. She kindly re-arranged the world for him and made him appear back at the Drum, which is nice. He also found a spliff on the ground as he wandered around and got nicely toasted for a while. That spliff seemed to last forever too. Although he did then get the munchies and kept craving jam doughnuts.

Whatever he decides upon now, he's determined he's going to be doing it in a clown suit though. That'll learn 'em...



UPDATE: Sydney has now procured his beloved clown costume from a little shop on the western edge of the city on endless street. It cost him the princely sum of 32p and is described as being an 'incredibly stupid looking clown costume' which pleases him immensely. He's currently quite chuffed with himself, although he remains Guildless for the timebeing.

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So after being disappointed by the lack of a Fools Guild, Sidney was at a bit of a loss. By this time he'd really set his heart on a big red nose and a satchel full of custard pies just ripe for the throwing, not to mention the joy of reciting officially sanctioned jokes in the Drum. Oh well. It was not to be. So Sidney did what all right-minded people do in these circumstances... and headed for the pub.

Arriving through the doors of that greatest of establishments he decided to ease the boredom by, amongst other things, fingering a few of the locals. Now this isn't actually the disgusting act it may at first appear. In fact, when Sidney fingers a likely looking chap in the main bar it simply tells him a little bit about the person, such as any personal descriptions they've added to the information you'd get if you look at someone or examine them etc...

Having fingered an Adventurer called 'Lav' he was greeted by a plan this particular Player Character had devised for his character and his adventures on discworld. The Plan was this,

Do not numberchase, enjoy every day upon the disc to its fullest

Actually that was only a relatively small part of his plan, but it was the part that appealed to Sidney at this time.

You see, 'Lav' it turns out is a man after Sidney's own heart. Sidney didn't realise what he really wanted from life on the disc(at least for the timebeing) was to simply kick back, relax, and not to have to worry about advancing this stat or joining this Guild or chasing this skill. Now this isn't to say that Sidney won't be advancing skills or checking his stats every now and then, but he's not prepared to go back to that numberchasing mindset that his forebear(the Priest of Gufnork) succumbed to. No. Sidney has found his peace in life. And it came to him not in a sudden flash of divine intervention, or in a sombre vision, but by getting drunk in the Drum and fingering the locals.


Please note: This is likely to be so much guff-in-the-wind if the creators see fit to implement the Fools Guild anytime soon

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SidneySmith has been quite active over the past few days. He's had his ups and downs to be certain but has managed to stay alive the whole time, which is something to be celebrated he feels. Here's his current status,

score
You have 1250 (1250) hit points, 81 (81) guild points, 0 (731) quest points, 6 (1342) achievement points and 96 (96) social points.
Your current experience is 2290 and you are level 7 in the Adventurers' Guild; your overall rating is 3072.
You have died 0 times and can die 7 times before you are completely dead.
Your wimpy is set to 30%.
You are unburdened (41%) and quite comfortable.
You are neutral, worshipping no god.
You are 1 day, 14 hours, 53 minutes and 5 seconds old and have logged in 70 times.

...and his current inventory,

i
You are unburdened (41%) by:
Holding : an old staff (left hand and right hand).
Wearing : a pair of metal clad boots, a hardened leather breastplate, a medium satchel, a turtle necklace, a winged helm, a mail skirt, a pair of mail mittens and a silver medallion.
(under) : a wooden bracelet and a pair of white stockings and suspenders.
Your purse contains 2 Ankh-Morpork ten-dollars, 21 Ankh-Morpork dollars, 8 Ankh-Morpork half-dollars, 39 Ankh-Morpork ten-pence, 1825 Ankh-Morpork pence,

Since we last met Sidney, he's lost his nice new, and much beloved clown suit when he decided to try out his fighting skills on a few(actually more than a few) NPCs. Halfway through one of his fights he was greeted with this message,

You swing at the graceful crow with your morning star but, although unable to defend, it somehow avoids the attack.
The incredibly stupid-looking clown costume breaks!
The graceful crow snicks your chest with its claws but your skin absorbs some of the blow.

...and yes, a graceful crow was the heinous beast that destroyed Sidney's beloved clown costume.

This was a momentous moment for Sidney and caused him to pause and consider his future, and not less his choice of attire. The clown costume he went to some lengths to aquire turned out not to be so good in the thick of battle, and simply fell apart at the first sign of a graceful crow. So, he made the difficult and hurtful decision to dispense with the idea of a personal protest at the non-implementation of a Fools Guild and get himself equipped with some clothing designed with a more practical bent. If he ever gets the opportunity to join the Fools Guild then of course things will turn on a sixpence once more. But for the moment Sidney has decided to do himself a favour and embrace his, shall we say, less Foolish side.

So what else has Sidney been getting up to in this greatest of cities. Well, he,

• met Angua on one of his wanderings and gave her a kiss, which was rewarded a minute or two later with the arrival of several watchman accosting him for molesting a member of the watch. They then beat him up a little before whisking him off to the watch house, where he was thrown in a cell and had to serve a good couple of minutes of jail time.
• also met sergeant colon and Nobby Nobbs on Endless street(the one that circles ankh-morpork). Nobby Nobbs proceeded to sing an absolutely hilarious song which I would kill, absolutely kill, to repeat here, but unfortunately I was on my phone at the time and hadn't thought to save a log file(which I always do on my laptops). I'm determined to find them again just so I can hear the song once more and jot it down here for posterity.
• met a friend of Lav's(the guy Sidney fingered in the drum in the last post) who noticed that Sidney had not joined a Guild yet and asked whether he was planning to join one or remain an adventurer. Sidney, upon explaining that he was going to remain an adventurer until the Fools Guild was available(sometime never probably) was then invited to join a select group of like minded people who also were refusing to join a Guild. Sidney was quite chuffed at this offer, but nevertheless was still having too much fun being a free spirit and wandering aimlessly around stumbling into trouble, and so has for the time-being declined the offer. Sidney does have contact details though, should he ever decide to join them.
• has had no less than 5 weapons nicked from him by the self same member of the Thieves Guild(a NPC). This really P!ssed him off since he spent a good deal of money on a couple of those weapons, two of which he'd literally just walked out of the shop with. And I mean literally... He's since decided to equip himself with cheap but effective weapons from now on, at least until he's skilled enough to avoid being the victim of the little BRAT from the Thieves Guild. He now uses a Hefty Wooden Old Staff, and it quite pleases him.
• has also been acquiring Skills. This entails him teaching himself in exchange for XP(experience points) he gets for killing NPCs and also as it turns out, simply for being active in the game, even if he's only sitting at the bar in the drum. Among other things, he's taught himself some swimming skills, climbing skills(where he fell off the wall into the river ankh. Luckily it had a hard crust on it at the time so he couldn't have drowned even if he'd tried), and quite a lot of fighting skills. He intends at some point in the near future to teach himself some Languages in case he feels like venturing through one of the doors the Wizards and/or Priests occasionally open to other continents.

There are many other things that Sidney has been getting up to while wandering the great city, but the one thing that has remained constant(apart from his love and desire for the Fools Guild, of course) is his strange and unusual propensity to dress in women's clothing. His only defense in this matter is to say that he really, really likes Angua and is modelling himself upon her. *ahem*

...or maybe he's just a little bit out there!

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It's been a couple of weeks at this point since SidneySmith has been seen around discworld, mainly due to me succeeding in keeping my discworld sh!t under some sort of control, hooray!!

When Sidney has been active, he's been mainly going around kissing watchman. The reason for this is because I noticed in the extensive list of potential achievements that characters like Sidney can persue is one where he attempts to kiss at least 10 watchmen. This sounds easy but it turns out that watchmen, even those of the female variety(which Sidney tries to stick to) are strangely averse to being kissed by complete and utter strangers. Who knew...?

Anyway, as a result, Sidney has been arrested several times at this point and is becoming quite a regular at the Dolly Sisters branch of the Ankh-Morpork Watch House. More of this in a while, but first,

...the Drum has a Christmas Tree,



...and it looks like this,



...pretty, pretty!

They do this every year, which is nice. Something else I've noticed a lot in this MUD is it's remarkable attention to detail. At halloween Pumpkins appear all over the place, but then gradually rot over time. They don't simply disappear one arbitrary day. Now of course the christmas tree appears in the Drum, but also, little sprigs of holly have been hung on the lampposts all over the city. It's one of the things that makes the place feel alive and evolving all the time rather than just a static entity. This can also be seen on a normal day to day basis with the various characters from the books wandering around and singing songs(Nobby, Colon, I'm looking at you...) or CMOT-dibbler trying to sell you his sausages or pies, or the beggars(milleniumhandandshrimp...) following you incessantly until you either wait them out or give them some money. It all makes the place really come alive.

So, back to Sidney's escapades then. Here he is being confronted by a member of the watch for molesting two watchmen,



The interesting thing here is that the two instances of kissing of watchmen that led to his arrest here happened a couple/few weeks ago at this point, but the game has remembered him doing it and has nabbed him for it now. I think this is wonderful, and one of the reasons I keep returning. As I stated above, it really makes the whole thing seem like it's alive and constantly changing, even when I'm not logged in for a while.

Now Sidney is resisting arrest and is severally beaten for it,



Turns out from what we see of the fight here that the watchman in question is a lady. I do think though that there should be an initial option to come quietly. What actually happens is that the watchmen spot you, tell you you're wanted for, whatever it is, and immediately set upon you. There's no opportunity to simply hold your hands up and go with them. So you're fighting whether you want to or not. The good thing is you can set something in the combat options settings called wimpy which makes you automatically run away when your hp(hit points) go below a certain level(30% in Sidney's case). You also have the option to type stop which should make you stop fighting(but usually the opponent has to do the same so I don't actually know if it'd work with NPCs).

Anyway, here's a shot of my hp getting depleted by the fighting,



They've turned yellow to indicate that I'm hurt. If they'd turned red I'd be in serious trouble and need to either run away or stop fighting, or probably die.

Here I am being sentenced to 4 minutes of minimum security arrest for(supposedly) resisting arrest, and two counts of molesting a watchman(guilty!).



...and here I'm being thrown into a cell,



They do give your possessions back once you've done your time though so that's something you don't have to worry about. In fact it occurs to me that being arrested in Ankh-Morpork isn't as bad as it could be. I usually just go make myself a nice strong coffee or grab another beer while pondering my next piece of utter stupidity.

Anyway, Sidney was released after his 4 minute sentence and went on his way. I'm pretty sure he must be quite close to his 10 watchmen at this point so I'll expect to see an achievement message pop up soon. He could then go for his kiss 20 watchmen achievement I think, so he'll certainly think about that. I think if he does decide to do that he may just set himself a little personal challenge and attempt to kiss Angua herself 20 times, since he has a soft spot for her. It only seems right really.

'til next time...



Note: oh, just for completeness sake; these screenshots were taken on my Android phone(moto g). The app I use to play discworldMUD is called BlowTorch MUD Client(play store link)

Star Lord

I'm not too fond of the mobile clients, just feels a little clunky for it. I'm using MUSHclient on the computer for this.
You really need to get those GP up somehow SidneySmith! :eek:

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Star Lord wrote: »

I'm not too fond of the mobile clients, just feels a little clunky for it. I'm using MUSHclient on the computer for this.
You really need to get those GP up somehow SidneySmith! :eek:

Yeah I use MUSHclient myself when I'm on my laptop. It's very good. I only really use the phone if I'm just checking in or not doing anything too intense. The gp are slow to rise mainly because I'm not a member of any of the guilds I think, just the default Adventurer, which I kinda like for the timebeing. If I remember correctly from my Priesthood days, they practically shot up without me having to try too hard. One of the benefits of joining a guild I suppose.

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Well Sidney died a death a lot quicker than I expected this time around, and not because he died in-game but rather because I just stopped playing. I knew it would happen after a while but the speed at which it did surprised me as much as anyone.

Anyway, I'm going to log in as a guest at some point soon, mainly to see how they dealt with the great man's death. I've not felt that sad about anything in a long time.

RIP Pterry.

Orim

He had a good run. RIP