I've looked at Ethelon's free system, but it's a tad outdated and I'd prefer to work with something I've made myself.

Unfortunately, I don't know enough about Lusternian combat to know what I should cure first and whatnot.

I have moderate programming skill so I'm not worried about that... it's just what I actually should be doing with the system...

Can I get tips from anyone whose worked on a system before?

For a start try looking at this topic

The topic linked here is a good one to read, but be sure you spar a lot. Some of his theories and "THIS IS WHAT WILL HAPPEN" will be outdated by now. But he has some great ways of coding waking up from sleeping and other random stuff I'm not going to list. Also, his systems are usually rather pretty.

Anyway, um, being a person who's building their own system as well, I'm buying from someone who does combat in Lusternia this day and age to tinker with it and see how they code it (since my coding sucks, to say the least), and I'm also going to be manual until I'm better at combat. Which means, lots of aliases, echoes, and frustration.

My advice is for you to do a lot of sparring and make sure you look at HELP CURELIST and talk to people about what certain stuff does. You won't get all that from some trigger lines and values and all. I'd even suggest doing a few manual spars and seeing how that goes.

There are so many tips one can give, but the most important, in my opinion, is to keep it as tight and efficient as possible. Don't loop more times than you have to. Use ^ and/or $ to anchor trigger messages. Only check curing queues that need to be checked, especially when certain key events occur, like curing anorexia/slickness/asthma or regaining a balance.

I always recommend regex patterns for triggers and data record variables for tracking defenses, afflictions, and what-not. If done well, they're both very powerful tools in building a combat system.

Avoid the temptation to make a system which is too stateless -- that is, each trigger causes it to do something instantly rather than remembering something about your current state. As much as is possible (at least until you have too many triggers and it slows you down), have your system be aware of as much as possible about your current state. Not just your afflictions, but everything else. What defenses you have up, what you're wielding, what kind of target you're fighting, etc. This may require extra triggers to capture that information as it changes, but it allows your system to be far, far smarter about deciding to do things when it's time for it to make decisions.

Well, I'm using Ethelon's triggers for mine, but the coding for my own system is mine.

If you've looked at Ethelon's, I'll assume you are using MUSH. If so, you don't really have to make it as efficient as possible. Especially if you're using Lua. The only reason I'm doing so is because my CPU is 450 megahertz, opposed to the 2gigs most computers nowadays have, so I kinda NEED it efficient.

Ethelon's free is a solid system, but there are a few bugs with it: The main thing I've noticed is that it'll clot as much as possible, rather than stop at a certain break point. That *always* kills me against warriors.

Anyways, I'm rather happy with my setup: Coming from Achaea/Aetolia, I've picked up a lot of tricks concerning beating illusions (which I'm not sure are used very often in Lusty, but better be safe than sorry).

I usually concentrate on curing hindering afflictions first, followed by death-dealing, then misc afflictions.