Written Realms Winter Newsletter

Adventurers of Written Realms,

It's been a busy winter season. We've added a whole new playable class, a UI sidebar, new features, more content, and a brand-new documentation site! Read on for more details.

New Playable Class: Assassins

Masters of stealth and ambushes, Assassins are powerful damage dealers skilled at survival and crowd control. Unlike the other classes which are designed around a stable set of core skills, the assassin's core skills change depending on which stance they are in. The starting stance is Breeze, and then based on which initial ability you used, three distinct tracks of core skills become available to you. Other abilities bring you back down to Breeze, creating intricate 'opener' vs 'closer' move dynamics.

Assassins thus spend much of their time dancing from stance to stance, finessing their way through the challenges that meet them. Their primary stat is dexterity, and they are the only class that is able to dual wield weapons.

Desktop Sidebar

Written Realms was designed from the ground up to be responsive, and we have spent a lot of time making sure it plays well at narrow widths. But this time around we focused on larger viewports, and have implemented a side panel if your window is wider than 1000 pixels.

This sidebar includes shortcuts to quest log & communications log, an online player list, as well as tools to help you manage your character's combat specializations.

New Features

Written Realms is an eternal work in progress. Some of what we've added this winter:

• Faction Ranks - Building upon last fall's custom factions work, you can now define named ranks within a faction, along with the required standing threshold for each.
• Mob Ordering - Any mob that follows you will respond to the 'order' command, and execute the rest of the arguments as a command of their own. Combined with reactions and quest completion commands, this means that mercenaries can now be implemented.
• Consumables - A new 'food' item template type is available, which can be configured to restore health, mana or stamina.
• Peace Rooms - Combat could already be disabled as a world configuration option, now this can be toggled room by room.
• Random Item Naming - The algorithm to name randomly generated items has been reworked, yielding a much greater variety of names.

Documentation Site

Our National MUD Building Month event last Fall highlighted a need for better documentation, and we have since been developing a docs site at https://docs.writtenrealms.com. Though we initially spent more time on the Building section, the Playing section is now getting filled out as well.

New Content

Skaldsblood

• New playable zones The Iron-Wood, The Serpent-Wood and The Gallows-Wood.
• At the top of the Serpent-Wood, a new boss encounter awaits those who have no time to waste.
• New day and night system, with a boss in The Heart of the Wood that opens its doors at twilight.
• New crafting system, available when sufficient standing has been obtained with your starting faction.

The Unbroken World

• The halls of the Crown Makers Guild are now open to members of the Renisian Army, west of the market in Renise. Provided with the required materials, the master crafters will produce armor of the desired slot.
• A band of mercenaries from the frozen lands of Brekeren to the north have relocated to the warmer climates of Saphrin. They've settled just north of Alendel, and for a few hundred gold will assist you with just about anything.

Contact Links

If you have questions or feedback, the best way to reach us is via our Discord server. We are also @written_realms on Twitter if you'd like more frequent updates.

Thanks for reading! Look to hear from us again in the Summer.

-- Thibaud & Pat