Hey all,

I'm an old timer MUDder from way back, and have been thinking of coming back into MUDs after a long time being away. Since time is tigher now than back in the day I thoguht I'd hook up with some quality supported work to see how it goes (no knock to unfunded ones of course; MUME will always be close to my heart :)

Anyway, the website for the IRE MUDs never list useful costing information, so I'd like to know. IF this is covered somewhere due let me know :)

ie: They're free to play as I understand it, but since IRE have to make a living I'm assuming most people must buy some credits now and then.

So the questions become..

1) How many credits do most people buy and at what frequency? Do you need some right away to get useful skills or equipment? What rate of spending is usual? ie: Most pay-per-month games are say $10 (local currency be it CDN or USD or the like) or maybe a bit more these days. Given 40 credits is $19.99, does that mean they expect you to pop 40 credits every 4-6 weeks?

2) If some person dumps a pile of money into their credits, are they unbalancingly powerful?

3) What about those who don't spend any real world money at all? Do they have a chance? Are they frowned upon or is it super common with only a small percentage of paying players?

4) If you get PK'd, do you lose stuff you bought with credits? (ie: If you can buy EQ with credits, it'd seam sucky to then get trounced and loose it :)

5) What sorts of things can you buy with credits? skills? eq? spells? homes? stuff for your guilds?

Sorry if this is dim, but I'm totally dumfounded from checking the website :)

jeff

In IRE Games, you start with a base amount of lessons

Lessons are used to learn skills, and higher you go in skills, the more spells/abilities you gain

Each 'guild' in a standard IRE game is afford Three Guild Skills, and often you can find another Trade skill.

Each skill takes approximately 1800 lessons to Transcend, or gain all abilities in it.

A credit is worth 6 lessons. Credits are only used for lessons, or gambling, or maybe purchasing ingame items as an easier way than saving up gold.

It takes around 280 credits to transcend a guild skill.

There is an ingame Credit Market, which allows you to buy credits from other players for ingame gold. Most Guilds/Cities also offer credits for sale to their members at special rates, since every time a member of a guild or city purchases credits, a small percentage is gained by the Leader as a bonus.

You do not gain base Equipment such as armour, weapons, or anything of that sort, with credits

You can purchase artifacts with credits, but you cannot lose anything of that nature.

PK systems vary from each IRE game, you'd have to check relevant HELP PK in each of the four games for a more broad understanding.

Aside from the ability to purchase credits, the IRE games are all Free to Play, including the fact that you may gamble with lessons in an attempt to gain more for free, and there are also Neo Credits in a few of the IRE games which give you a free '100' credits for levelling up.

You can have quite the enjoyable experience without spending any real money, and often some people do so by bashing/hunting a lot ingame to save gold, to buy credits that way.

Enjoy!

I don't know statistics on how many most people buy or frequency, but I do know that there are many players who either can't or choose not to buy credits. They are not frowned upon, looked down upon, or given any different treatment. It is possible to rise to the top without credits, though many would agree it is harder in some areas (like PK). In other words, they don't EXPECT you in particular to buy anything...but they make a good product, and obviously enough people are impressed and happy enough to buy credits, because they keep opening more worlds and improving existing ones.

Depending on how many credits and what they spend them on, it can happen. But, you can also buy credits with gold in the game from other players, and from guilds and cities sometimes. So it isn't anything a non-buyer can't get, but it requires a lot of work to earn that kind of money in game.

They are in no way frowned upon. No other players will know if you have or haven't, except guessing by virtue of your skills and gear.

Depends on exactly what you mean. If you use credits to buy artifacts (which cost 50-2500 credits), you can never permanently lose them. You could loan them or maybe have them taken, but they will return to your inventory after a while. If you trade credits for herbs, elixers, armour, etc. from other players, or you sell them for gold, you could theoretically lose that. However, unlike some other MUDs, you don't drop everything when you die, or lose gold for dying. As long as you store things properly, the only things you will drop when dying are corpses and quest items.

You can use credits to buy artifacts, powerful items that will return to your possession even if dropped, loaned, or stolen.
You can convert credits to lessons, and learn skills.
You can trade credits to other players for many sorts of equipment, commodities, or gold.
IRE games have a home building system that is actually really neat, no subdivisions in Lusternia yet, but I assume there will be eventually. Also, at least in Achaea, with enough credits you can buy special features for rooms in your home, like regeneration and such, that will help you and your allies while they are in the room.

Any other questions?

Great guys, this is very helpfull stuff. (Hopefully they'll consider adding this sort of thing or a discussion to the help/FAQ on the website; I know I was turned away from the site several times over the years by not knowing..)

So you need 1800 lessons to 'fully' learn a skill (I'm assumign the skill has useful additions to your char as it increases from 0->1800).

I'm guess your skill goes up over time through usage (ie: Combat skills increase through attacking mobs or players), since buying 1800/6 (or 280) credits top get skills up would be very expensive (40c for $20 equals like $100 or whatever per skill trascendance). I'm assuming you can pick and choose some skills and it takers many months to build them up, like in normal MUDs (I'm mostly used to emlenmuds or diku or LPmud, etc)

So really, credits let you greatly accelerate your play; rather than play for a couple months powerlevelling to get anywhere, you buy some credits and get some lessons and boom, its like you've played a cople months so you can deal with larger mobs etc. Or buy some artefacts or the like.

Cool, sorted out I think.

I'll give it a shot

jeff

It should be mentioned that there is a fairly steep learning curve in Lusternia, so regardless of how many credits you may acquire, this will not substitute for the experience of actually knowing the system. (I'm sure others can point out examples.) It generally takes months or even years to become adept at combat (for example) before something "clicks" in your mind and you feel in control. In other words, don't expect credits to make you powerful or solve your problems (though granted it does help).

No, skills don't actually go up through usage. Every time you level up, you get a few lessons, and at landmark levels you get a whole bunch. The only way to improve your skills is by spending lessons on them, and the easiest way to get lessons is to buy credits. (Okay, so that's not entirely true about lessons being the only way to improve skills; you can temporily increase them with a teacher tarot or if you should happen to get a certain type of divine favour, but that's different.)

Anyway, the game tends to be really, really addictive... when I first started a different IRE game I thought it was ridiculous to spend that kind of money on a text game. I ended up buying some

No. Your skill doesn't go up by how much you use it. Theoretically, if you teach someone a skill, your skill will rise, but in practice that's so slow as to be non-existant. If you don't purchase/gain credits -in some manner-, you'll never transcend even one skill, even if you make it to level 100. However, from personal experience, it's possible to trans quite a few skills eventually without spending real money... it does take time, though.

How much did you spend?

For peopel reading this thread.. how much credits have you blown in your first week, first month, and over time? (I know this is a new game, but what about in the other IRE MUDs?)

(I know, no one wants to bring up how much they spent

jeff

Something I've noticed, actually, is that there doesn't seem to be a class that can just whore one attack without thought, like.. Magi in Achaea.

Good work, dev team!

I bought 100 on that original game (Aetolia) and so far 100 on Lusternia. I might have bought more on Lusternia already except that there was a bug in the opening that gave some lucky people, like me, a free 100 credits, and we were allowed to keep them. Also everyone who went through the open beta period got 75 free credits

Well, actually, I've never spent any real money in any IRE game. Just ridiculously insane amounts of time, and more time, and then some more time, and after that a little more time. Maybe 48 to 72 hours a week, for 8 months straight, when I was really hooked on Imperian. I ended up with lots of skills (but no artifacts, I don't think anyone has actually bought artifacts by in game credits).

In Achaea, I didnt buy a single credit, and managed to reach transcendent in 3 of my guild skills. The are many others who have done it as well, so it's definitely a possibility. I've heard that the price of credits in-game has soared considerably, so it may no longer be an option there.

Lusternia is still new, and the price of credits is still fairly acceptable. But I didn't want to go through the grind again, so I succumbed to the dark side...

All 200 credits of the dark side... :ph34r:

Oh, and just a weird statistic, the most I've ever heard of someone purchasing in one go was 15,000 credits... fortunately said person was a laughable fighter, so most of it was distributed to other people, to pay them to protect him....

I bought 300 credits not long after Lusternia opened, that's the only time I've ever bought credits.

someething people are not mentioning that might be worth knowing. A skillset has anywhere from 12 to 33 abilities in it. Your lessons spent on these abilities is logramithic. there are 12 skill ranks. Normally each rank has a skill at 0% and 50% sometimes there are added. Assuming 300 credits to trans. (you'll have credits left over when you do this) It takes 100 credits to get from rank 0 to rank 9 100 credits to get from rank 9 to 11 and 100 from 11 to 12.

Edit: This makes it someetimes benifical to get 3 skills to rank 9 before transing one of them, depending on what the last few skills are.

Generally the best way to make a powerfull (credit wise) charachter is to get 200 credits with your newbie bonus and trans a trade skill and a hunting skill. with these two skills you make more money and can often aquires credits by finding the rich (in credits) new player who doesn't have gold yet but needs good equipment.

I've done that for 2 charachters and have transed over 5 skillsets plus some minor artifacts like vials and packs with them.

I decided to buy 1000 credits immediately (a day and a half) after I started playing Lusternia. However I have been a longtime IRE customer and understand the intrinsic value of credits, and for a hobby, this is fairly inexpensive. I try to buy at least 1K credits during every sale.

Over all my time as a player I would say that I have spent significantly more money than I would have ever considered sane when I first started playing. Oddly enough, I didnt buy any credits whatsoever until almost a full year after I started playing IRE games.

I bought 2000cr, put half of those on me, half on my IG brother. He gave them back, and so I got, for $600, 2600cr, 2400l on both of us. I can tell you, it was well worth it. On Aetolia, I was never anyone important, and I never had any good skills. I have the best weapons, armour, have a clan, cartel, a pet in the future, "l337" skills... I can make Lots of things, and do lots of things.

One time large purchase, and perhaps sometime later, another. But right now, I'm rolling it in.

I spent umm $3 on aetolia over the years. Here I've bought 300 credits, and used well somewhere between 2.2k and 2.5k credits. But that's due to good timing and bussiness with trade skills. Before I bought any credits, I already had 5 trans skills, so yes it's very possible to trans things without spending any money at all.

I've never spent a penny on credits, and thus I don't yet have the skills to stand up to anyone in PK, but though regular leveling, purchasing credits with gold, ect. I am strong enough to bash, complete quests, and have a perfectly good time.

I buy 40 credits every few weeks. Which isn't bad, since I'd just spend that 20 bucks in a bar otherwise. I know, I should save that money up and buy bulk credits, but who has the patience for that