Reading Maps & Speedwalks

Above is a section of the Valkyre City (Newbatia) map.  Now, if you picked Valkyre as your home city - when you create a character, you will arrive at South Gate (the black dot on the bottom left part of the map).  If you want to go to the Bank, that would be a movement of north and then west.

Speedwalks are a feature of mud clients that allow you to input directions in a greatly summarized way that will let you remember and input directions much easier than you would be doing with raw telnet itself.  If you wanted to go to the Bank from South Gate, using telnet, you would have to input "n", hit return, and then "w" and hit return.

With a speedwalk, all you would have to do is input "nw" and hit return.

Now the fun part begins when you want to go somewhere a bit further than just 1 room in each direction.  Let's say you want to go to the Inn to rent, to save and quit out the game properly.  Find the Inn on the map - you'll see that it's near the Bank.  But the Inn isn't connected to the Bank (no line connecting the 2 rooms).  It would be two norths and then a west.

With a speedwalk, the run to the Inn from South Gate would be 2nw (whenever a number is entered in a speedwalk, the direction after the number is the direction that the number corresponds to).

From the South Gate, you could run to the Auction House by: 3n4e.  And to run back, it would be 4w3s.

Another feature of some maps are that special mobs that don't wander around but remain at the same spot are usually noted in that room, as are special rooms (like this town map).  A big oaf is always found at the South Gate and will always be there unless something happened (such as a player killing him).

Most directions are given from the recall spot of a specific continent - so to run to a specific area on Valkyre, the directions would be given from South Gate - as that is where everybody recalls to on Valkyre.  You can pull up a map from the website for another area on Valkyre but to get there, the directions are given from the recall point.

Here's a simple example.  To enter the Adventurer's School (MUD School) on Valkyre, the run would be as follows: u, en portal.

That means that to reach the area, from South Gate - all you have to do is go up and then enter the portal that's there.  Getting back from the area requires one of three things - a gate spell, a recall spell or scroll or stave or like item, or knowing how to walk back from the area.  Some areas are nogate, some are norecall, and some have no limitations.  An easy way to demonstrate this would be from the above example of the Adventurer's School.  Once you enter the portal to the School, you might decide that you want to return to town.  All you need to do is enter the portal again and then go down and you'll have walked back to South Gate.

[Written 06-Feb-2010]