Introduction:

Intended Audience:

The goal of this guide is to help new players get started in BatMud.
This guide is roughly divided into advice for newbies (levels 1-15) and lowbies (levels 16-30)
I'm going to assume that people reading this have some familiarity with other text based MUDs (Multi User Dungeons). I wish there was a good "true new player guide for MUDs" that I could link to here, but I don't know of one. So I feel bad about this assumption, but if I dive down into that level in this guide then I'll never get around to publishing anything.
This guide does not take the place of Batmud's official tutorial. I strongly recommend taking the time to run through it when you create a new character.

What to Expect and How to Use this Guide:

I'm going to make this guide largely spoiler free so if people want to explore and learn on their own they can.
That being said, there are many spoiler filled area-guides in this blog! I will link to some of these area-guides in this document, and you can read the other entries on your own if you wish. Be aware there are spoilers there, so read them or avoid them as you will. I trust you to play the game the way you want to play it.
This guide is focused on giving an overview of what Batmud is, as well as providing tips and strategies for making your first 30 levels as easy as possible. Please keep in mind this is simply advice. The wonder of this MUD is you can play it however you want!
In general I'm going to focus on the following topics:

Overview of Batmud, and what to expect when playing it
Character creation advice
Strategies to gain experience and money
Quality of life tips and tricks

Recovering from death
Interacting with the environment and solving quests
Healing for poison
What to do with items monsters drop (e.g. chests)
How to get invisibility for exploring
Quick way to save equipment sets
What to do if you get turned into a frog
Traveling to other continents via ferries
How to raise your charisma after dying

About Me + Feedback Options:

I started playing Batmud around 1996. It was the second MUD I ever played
That being said, I was pretty young then. I didn't really know what I was doing and never advanced much past level 30.
I stopped playing around 1997, started playing again a couple of years later, and then stopped once the playing area was split into multiple continents. Over the last couple of months I've picked Batmud up again out of nostalgia and really enjoyed digging into the game, discovering its secrets, and writing this bog.
This is all to say, I really don't know anything about playing a higher level character. In fact, I'm not even a good low level player!
I am trying to learn though! I hope this guide is helpful. If you have suggestions, corrections, or questions please don't hesitate to reach out to me. The two ways you can do that:

Contact me in game. My character's name is Laki. A link to my character on the bat.org website is here.
You can also leave comments to this blog entry below

Batmud Overview:

Official Batmud Resources:

The official website at www.bat.org

You can manage your character's profile, read forum posts, and get information on how to connect to the game here
There are also listing about the various "public" guilds as well as races and quests in the game info section.

Useful helpfiles (available on bat.org)

Getting Started: The official Batmud getting started guide! I highly recommend reading this first.
Quickstart Guide: Contains some additional information and tips about getting started
Newbie Helpters: How to find in-game helpers!!!
Newbie Crystal: A very helpful piece of equipment that you will have until your character spends one million experience.
Movement: Describes basic movement. The big takeaways are that if you use capitalized letters in the outerworld (such as "S") you will move in that direction until the terrain changes. If you are on a road, you can use the "travel" command to move along that road. So for example "travel w" to travel west on the road. These are huge quality of life improvements which is why I wanted to highlight them here.
Levels: Describes the leveling process. More info is available in this guide as it gets a bit confusing.

New player Tutorial:

Batmud provides an excellent in-game tutorial that covers all of the major commands and how to play the game. I highly recommend taking the time to go through it and read the various help tutorial entries. When you first start out after creating a new character you'll find yourself in part 1 of the tutorial.
If you need help with the tutorial, here are some (spoiler filled) guides to the tutorial

(Spoilers) Guide to Part 1 of Batmud's Tutorial
(Spoilers) Guide to Parts 2-6 of Batmud's Tutorial
(Spoilers) Guide to Batmud Stories

Unofficial Batmud Resources (aka player guides and website):

Batwiki:
Link: https://taikajuoma.ovh/wiki/Main_Page
Description: The most up-to-date information about equipment and monsters. Tons of information here
The BatMUD Information Shoppe
Link: https://batshoppe.dy.fi/eqinfo2.php
Description: Searchable database of all the equipment and weapons you can find in Batmud. Also has weapon compare lists which give you an idea of how much damage weapons do.
Dryad's Batmud Web Site
Link: https://dryad.batmudder.com/
Description: One of the original massive area guides for Batmud. Still the best source of information about mid level and high level areas. Hasn't been updated since 2014(ish) though.
Nepos's guide to BatMUD guilds
Link: https://nepos.batmudder.com/guilds/
Description: One of the best overviews of all the guilds in Batmud. Highly recommend visiting this site.
Ralmaz's RIP Action Calculator
Link: https://rip-action.ralmaz.pro/
Description: Super helpful site that generates the Batmud command that will let you specify the action your character takes when you kill a monster. This is a huge quality of life improvement that I recommend you check out.
BatMUD Information Shoppe Reincarnation Sim
Link: https://batshoppe.dy.fi/reincsim2/statsim.php
Description: This is probably for more advanced players, but it is a good place to game out if you have enough experience to make a certain build work. Also it has a good explanation and simulator for boons and banes which is super nice.
Nepos Batmud Guide
Link: https://nepos.batmudder.com/
Description: A good overview of all the different guilds in Batmud along with a list of areas for Newbies to explore.
Pupunen's Batmud Maps
Link: https://tnsp.org/maps/
Description: If you don't have the BatClient and are playing this game using Telnet, the maps here are invaluable to finding different areas in Batmud.
Hair's Batmud Guide
Link: http://flaprider.dyndns.org/~hair/batmud/
Description: Lots of good random information can be found here such as detailed testing of backpack material and information about various guilds.

What to Expect Playing Batmud:

Batmud is one of the oldest text based MUDs that still has an active player base
I routinely see 100+ players online
People are still actively questing and participating in the MUDs economy
While the MUDs primary language is English, many of the players are Finnish
It helps to have google translate up in a tab when playing to decode chat messages.
This aspect makes the MUD more interesting to me as an American.
The typical playstyle is "Player vs. Environment" (PvE), but "Player vs. Player" (PvP) is allowed
That being said, PvP is discouraged in a lot of different ways. You don't really need to be worried about other players killing you outside rare events like "Blood baths"
If as a newbie you really want to kill a high level player, there is a league of as assassins you can pay to put out a hit on them.
Character death only resets progress, and can happen quite often
When your character dies, you'll lose some of the EXP you haven't spent yet, your character will get older, and you'll obtain scars which lower your character's charisma.
EXP can be earned again (and previously spent EXP is not lost)
Scars can be removed by a merchant or healer. The merchant can also perform additional "plastic surgery" to further restore your charisma.
If your character gets too old, you can simply reincarnate them which gives you additional options to try a different race and/or background.
This is good, because your character will die a lot. This MUD can be pretty unforgiving in its difficulty level. There are many situations and learning opportunities that will lead to instant-death.

Character Creation Advice:

Do not worry! None of your choices are permanent:

As long as your character is under level 40 and less than 10 days old (as in 10 days of playtime) you can use the "recreate" option to choose a different background and race. This will not directly cost you any money or experience so it is "mostly" free.

Money spent on guild levels will be lost though. But early on this isn't much and doesn't apply if you are under level 15
Also, if you leveled up any skills through use vs. spending XP, then you lose that as well. But as a newbie that shouldn't be a big deal

After you age out of the recreate option, you can still "reincarnate". This is a bit more involved and costs some XP. But still it's pretty flexible and gives you options to try different builds.
The takeaway here is feel free to be very aggressive to take advantage of the "recreate" option to try different combinations.

For example, you can pick a Giant Nomad for you first 10-15 levels to quickly move through them by killing creatures, and then swap to a Brownie Good Religious character to gain invisibility and explore new areas, and then swap to a Duck Mage for more long term play. Or try your hand at one of the more difficult races like a troll to see if you can work around their downsides
Basically, have fun and don't stress. If something isn't working for your playstyle go ahead and switch things up using "recreate".

Character Creation Process:

Step 1: Pick a name

This is the most important part of the whole process. A wizard can change your name later but that can get complicated. I'll admit I'm not playing the first Batmud character I created since I no longer like its name.

Step 2: Pick a Background

This determines what guilds you can join and what your gameplay experience will be like
There is some advice later on in this guide about background/guild combinations that are newbie friendly. Some backgrounds like Civilized are really geared towards higher level players to reincarnate into.

My take on the backgrounds:

Nomad: The frontline tanks of Batmud

They have the most hit-points and they hit the hardest with their weapons.
Other hybrid backgrounds can fill the tank roll, but Nomads tend to be the best.
With one guild exception (Archers) Nomads are exclusively a frontline member of the party. Even Archers tend to be placed in the front of a party.
Very, very, limited spell selection. Almost any spell you might have will be gained from your racial guild and not a Nomad guild.
Very limited self healing options.
You will die a lot as a Nomad.
Provide a good pick for newbies for levels 1-30, but become difficult to play for levels 30-50(ish).

Magical: The ranged damage dealers (mages) of Batmud

Lots of spells (both offensive and defensive)
The lowest hitpoints of all the backgrounds. Tend to be squishy on their own. But they can mitigate this by summoning elementals to protect themselves by joining the Riftwalkers guild
Some limited self healing options
Provides solid options for newbies, midbies, and highbies. But they can be a bit tricky to play.

Civilized: Jack of all trades. Also options to participate in Batmud's economy

Civilized guilds can do it all. They can heal/buff party members, they can cast damage spells, the can tank, and they have money making guilds.
The problem is that Civilized guilds are significantly weaker than guilds in backgrounds that specialized in things.
As a newbie, you'll really want to focus on one guild starting out. Therefore you won't be able to take advantage of the Civilized background's flexibility. You'll just be a weaker version of what you could have been if you picked a different background
Therefore, I'd highly caution new players from picking the Civilized background

Good Religious: Healers and hybrid tanks

This background provides the best healing, which is very important to parties
There are also hybrid tank options to improve your survivability and allow you to do damage
I'd caution starting out with a hybrid-tank guild though and instead focus on healing. If you want to focus on damage dealing while still having the ability to heal, check out the Evil Religious background instead.
Once you advance a bit in a healing guild, you can then look into the various damage dealing options.

Evil Religious: Can heal, but the focus is on damage

The Evil Religious background is mostly composed of "hybrid" guilds. They all are weird and have a unique flavor and playstyle.
Evil Religious guilds can damage, sneak, poison, tank, and heal.
Almost all of the guilds have specialty quests and blockers that you need to overcome to advance in them. This may be sacrificing equipment, feeding your mount lots of corpses, assembling weapons and collecting artifacts, or figuring out new poisons.
There are also a number of "secret" Evil Religious guilds that are not advertised in the official Batmud documentation.
Because of this uniqueness, they tend to have a steep learning curve. They can be tons of fun, but they might be better for your second rebirth/reincarnation after you've started to get a feel for the game.

Step 3: Pick a Race

When you are just starting out, you will not be able to pick a race that is considered not suitable to your background. When you recreate or reincarnate your character you will have more options. This is to stop you from picking a duck nomad tank and then wondering why you can't kill anything
Your race is important, but not that important. Especially when you are starting out. Don't worry too much about what race you pick. Have fun!
That being said, I would strongly caution you from picking a race that is allergic to water. There is a lot of water in Batmud and that allergy is going to really limit where you explore, how you interact in parties, and will kill you multiple times.
Also you may want to avoid creatures that need to be in the light or dark to regenerate or have stat penalties if they are not in their desired environment. That can cause problems with parties and really slow things down.
Note: Some of the races will have you make additional selections, (such as if you want to be an Earth Giant or a Fire Giant). Unfortunately the impact of these selections isn't documented. For example I've been told Fire giants are resistant to fire and get a HUGE bonus to damage, but they take more damage from cold. Earth giants get natural 20% physical resistance, but they take (+20% ?) more damage from all spell types. Basically follow your gut when making these choices and pick something that seems cool to you vs. worrying about min/maxing.
Thanks Requiem for providing this info!

Step 4: Pick Alignment

I'll admit I totally forgot this was an option until I created a new character writing this guide. It doesn't matter much unless you are in a religious guild, and there are a few areas where your alignment can have a small impact.
General selection process:

If you selected the Good Religious background, pick Good.
If you selected the Evil Religious background, pick Evil.
If your race has penalties for a particular alignment pick the appropriate one.
Everyone else should pick Neutral.

Good Starter Race/Background/Guild Combos:

Note: This are just recommendations to make the game easier. You can totally play other combinations and have a great time doing it. For example, I'm a Wolfman Civilized Shadow Saber. I really enjoy the guild and was happy I picked that combo. That being said, it's a lot harder path than some of the options below. Think of it as selecting the difficulty level of the game. The options below are for people picking "easy mode", or at least "easier mode" ;p

Option 1: Hack and Slash

Background: Nomad

Guild: Rangers

Recommended Races: [Giant, Cyclops, Minotaur, Wolfman]

Description:

This is the "standard" combination people recommend for newbies. Nomad background is basically the "tanks" of Batmud, with lots of constitution, and they can do steady damage with their normal attack. This lets you solo monsters at a low level.
If you want to complete level quests and earn your XP killing monsters, this is a good combo to start with. It provides the most typical "MUD" experience.
The Rangers Guild (which you can join starting at level 16) provides a good mix of offensive skills and has the best regen/recovery of all the nomad guilds with camping and fire building. Therefore, it is the recommended guild for newbies. Later on you can join more dedicated defensive or offensive guilds depending on your play style.

Pros:

You have the most constitution (hitpoints)
You can do enough damage to kill monsters on your own
Has some basic regen/recovery options.
This is the easiest and safest combination to complete the initial tutorials.

Cons:

The gameplay can get a little boring. You don't have as many "neat" skills/spells available to you.
You really can't contribute much to a party (unless all the party members are newbies). A newbie tank on the front-line usually results in a lot of death, and you don't have any back row skills/spells available to you.
There will be a lot of downtime as you slowly rest/recover from damage when killing monsters. For the first 30 levels, you can advance much faster by exploring areas and partying vs. trying to solo monsters yourself.
This race/combo has a tendency to "hit a wall" around level 30. You can't contribute much to most higher level parties. The explore experience slows down as you revisit the same areas. Finally, you will spend a lot of time regenerating between killing monsters.

Notes/Tips:

Bigger races tend to have more hitpoints and strength. This makes them good tanks.

Bigger races also get hit more when in parties, which can be both a blessing or a curse depending on if you are trying to protect others.

The giants and cyclopes can wield two-handed weapons in one hand, which make them hit a lot harder.

Giants also get "giant step" which lets you travel very quickly around the world at the expense of losing hit-points. It's a nice quality of life skill.

Minotaurs have clairvoyance which is a huge help with exploring.
Wolfmen have the ability to avoid death occasionally, which is also nice.
Since you are just starting out, the downsides of bigger races (such a low skill maxes), don't really impact you as much. Things like a low skill max can hurt you as you get to level 30+ so you may want to think about recreating out of this after that, but for a newbie they are great!
Once you hit level 30, I would highly recommend considering to reincarnate to something else. For example, going with an Evil Religious background and joining the Tzarakk guild can provide a lot of the same tanking gameplay, but also gives you a mount to ride and some self healing options. Tzarakk doesn't really get good until level 27-30(ish) though which is why it can be easier to start with a Nomad background.

Option 2: Party and Explore

Background: Good Religious

Guild: Tarmalen

Recommended Races: [Brownie]

Other Healer Races: [Elf, Merfolk, Sprite, Human, Centaur, Duck, Gnome, Drow, Hobbit]

Description:

This is the exact opposite gameplay of Option #1 Hack and Slash. This combo is all about earning your EXP via. partying and exploring.
This will likely also be the fastest way to level up quickly. There is less downtime, and if you can get on the right party you can get huge boosts to your EXP in a short period of time.
From a partying perspective, people always need healers and even a newbie healer can start contributing immediately. Most EXP parties will be more than happy to let you tag along.
From an exploring perspective, Brownies are one of the few races that can learn the spell "Invisibility" from their racial guild. This will allow you to explore areas that usually would be too dangerous to wander around in without it. EXP earned while exploring is very impactful at a low level so you can level up quicker than if you were simply killing monsters in areas you've already visited.

Pros:

Quick leveling
Forces you to be social and get to know people! Batmud is all about the players, so making these connections early can really make the game more fun.
Useful in parties
Strong ability to explore new areas

Cons:

Very little ability to kill monsters without help. You simply won't have the attack skills to do do damage, and you don't have the hit-points and defensive skills to take damage.
For the first 15 levels you really will need to focus on exploring, and completing the tutorials. It may be easier to start out using a different combo and then use the recrate option to pick this combo around level 16(ish). That being said, the tutorial and those first 15 levels fly past really quickly so don't worry about that too much.

Notes/Tips:

You don't have to be a Brownie. A lot of the other races actually make better healers. They just don't have the invisibility spell.
There are many guilds for the Good Religious background that provide healing. Tarmalen is simply the best "pure healers". Going with that guild first will help you find, and contribute to, parties at a low level.

Option 3: Tank and Blast

Background: Magical

Guild: Riftwalker with a couple of levels in Mage

Recommended Races: [Duck]

Other Healer Races: [Elf, Brownie, Merfolk, Sprite, Human, Centaur]

2nd Recrate Races (Harder): [Thrikhren, Drow]

Description:

Of the three recommended combos, this is the most powerful and well balanced one for newbies, but also the most complicated to pull off due to its unique mechanics. If you can get past the learning curve for this guild though, you can solo monsters and complete a lot of the starting level quests on your own. Their biggest gap is that your ability to contribute meaningful to parties will be limited.
The Riftwalker guild focuses on summoning and controlling elementals (called rift entities) that will tank damage and attack monsters for you. While it does provide two damage spells, you'll quickly find your entity is doing most of the damage.
What this means is you are really a one-person party all on your own. Your Rift Entity is your tank. You can then blast enemies from behind your entity while also healing it.
The challenge is in contributing to parties. At these lower levels, your entity will only be active when you are in the front row. This is a problem since your entity is not a true tank and can actually slow the party down as it gets targeted and killed by higher level monsters.
I'm currently writing a guide for Riftwalkers, but I'll be up-front that I'm still learning the guild myself. Their ability to regenerate quickly and get back in a fight is amazing, and the rift entity handles early low level monsters with ease. But I really don't know how they scale.

Pros:

You can solo and be useful in a party. This gives you a ton of flexibility. It will take a few levels in the Mage guild to start to contribute in any sense to parties though.
The Riftwalker guild only has 15 levels so if you don't dual-class you'll max it out by level 30.

Cons:

The Riftwalker guild can take a while to figure out.
The guild itself is hard to get to. It's on a different continent, and surrounded by murderous vampire bats that will destroy you when you are full of unspent EXP, causing you to lose a lot of it.
Also, the early levels (1-17) will likely be tough as you won't have many hit points, your damage spells are unreliable, and you won't have your rift entity yet.
This guild can struggle to contribute to parties without having extra levels in the Mage guild.

Notes/Tips:

Here is my longer Riftwalker Guide.
You can't actually summon a rift entity until your third level in the guild. So things will be a bit awkward for you until level 18.
This may sound weird, but the Duck race is a bit overpowered when it comes to quality of life abilities.

They have lots of Intellect (INT) for casting spells
They can fly/swim so they don't have to worry about drowning (or lava)
They have clairvoyance which significantly helps with exploring
They have a fast heart rate which means they regenerate hit-points and spell-points quickly
They learn "Alertness" in their racial guild which makes them less prone to being ambushed. When you are ambushed you can not run away which tends to lead to dying.

The Thrikhren and Drow races are also very powerful for mages, but they have some significant limitations that can get you killed if you are not careful. These limitations can be mitigated though as they get higher level though, which is why I'd STRONGLY recommend that you don't start as them. If they sound interesting, instead Recreate into them after you have a few levels.
Thrikhrens have the best INT of all of the races. They also learn a basic offensive spell and Invisibility from their racial guild. But they are allergic to water which means they will take significant damage if they ever get wet. There is a LOT of water in Batmud!

In the Riftwalker guild you learn the spell float, which will let you float above water. Therefore Thrikhrens become more safe after level 16 as long as you remember to keep casting that on yourself

Drows also have some nice INT stats and also learn (and innately have) some offensive spells. This means you will have some better spells to cast from the backrow of a party as you are leveling up. They loose half of their STR, CON, and DEX in the light though. This can cause you to drop things, and your hitpoints will be super low, which tends to lead to equipment loss and death.

Starting at level 11 Drows begin to learn how to cast darkness which can mitigate their racial weakness.

Option 4: Ride and Murder

Background: Evil Religious

Guild: Disciples of Chaos followed by Tzarakk

Recommended Races: [Orc]

Other Races: [Wolfman, Minotaur, Catfolk]

Description:

Tzarakk is often recommended for people levels 30 - 60 as they have the ability to summon a mount that can attack and do damage.
It's a bit like being a Riftwalker but you are a beefy tank as well which means you're less likely to get one-shotted by a spell.
Unlike Nomad tanks, you also have limited healing thanks to your Evil Religious background which really helps.
The problem, is you need to spend 10 levels in Disciples of Chaos as a prerequisite before you can join Tzarakk and get your mount. Disciples of Chaos isn't a bad guild, and it focuses around letting players turn into a chaos spawn to do extra damage. But it can be hard guild to level in.
Therefore, rather than staring with this combo, I'd highly recommend taking advantage of the free recreate option, start as an easier guild, and then recreate into this background/guild.
Right now I'd say my level 28 Riftwalker and my Level 40 Tzarakk are about equivalent in power for killing monsters. But my Tzarakk has a lot of quality of life features like quick overland travel, and they die a lot less due to all their hitpoints.

Pros:

Mounts are awesome!

Your mount will tank damage for you
Your mount will let you travel across the outerworld easily, and you can get saddlebags to carry all of your loot.

You have access to cure light wounds to heal. If you dual class into Triads, you can also learn cure serious wounds.
This is a great background that will take you all the way to being a highbie

Cons:

It's going to be a rough journey to get to level 30.
When transformed into a Chaos Spawn (which is your main state when leveling up in Disciples of Chaos, so levels 15 - 25), you earn 25% less EXP.

This is a huge penalty. It will take you significantly longer to level up than with other backgrounds, (even Riftwalker which has its own EXP penalty)

Disciples of Chaos are also very Endurance Point (EP) constrained. They are constantly running out of EPs which slows them down as they need to rest.
Don't get me wrong, Disciples of Chaos can wreck monsters. They can be very strong. It's just they will really slow down your leveling up as a Newbie.
Tzarakk's ability to do damage is less than many other guilds. You can take a lot of hits which is good since you won't be able to end fights quickly.

Notes/Tips:

Here is my longer Disciples of Chaos guide.
Here is a guide for Tzarakk which is one of the more popular evil religious guilds: Tzarakk Guide
Here is a guide for Triad of Darkness, which is a good secondary guild to get healing spells: Triad of Darkness Guide
You won't be able to join Tzarakk until level 25.
Orcs are great for Tzarakk

Their racial penalty of less stats in light isn't that bad, as Chaos Spawns can only heal in the dark, so you'll want to keep things dark regardless.
Despite what their profile says, their racial special of Frenzy will occur regardless of if you are in a party or not. This skill speeds up your skills which is VERY powerful
They have a good EXP modifier which means you'll advance faster than some more powerful races like Minotaurs

It helps to have some spell points, so I'd recommend avoiding races like Giants and Cyclops.
As you get more levels, I'd recommend taking a few levels in Triad to get better healing spells
If you want to cast attack spells vs. relying on Chaos Spawn, make sure your off-hand is free so you can cast "cause serious harm" which requires touching your target.

Later on as you put levels into the Triad guild you'll get a spell that lets you channel harm spells through your weapon. But it won't be available to you when you start.

Strategies for the First 30 Levels:

General Approach:

Equipment Tips:

Save up your money for the following items and buy them as soon as possible

A lightweight frame/backpack/rig from a player merchant cart.

This will likely cost around 5k -10k gold
Ideally made out of silk, leather, or fire.
You can put items in your backpack and they will weigh less, meaning you can carry more stuff.

A coin purse

Costs around 5k gold.
You can buy these from a player city's furniture store. These are different from the occasional purse you find after killing a monster. The ones dropped by monsters will not work across reboots which is annoying, so you want the player city furniture store ones.
You can put coins in here and they will weigh less. This is important since coins weigh a lot!
Also, it'll keep you from accidently spending your money on different room effects. For example some monsters will convert your money to EXP.

A ring of infravision (only if your character can not see in the dark)

You can buy this from the Arelium ring shop for 700 gold
Yes, other options include making torches or casting light, but they get annoying real quick. If you get this ring you can see in the dark all the time.
This will likely cost around 5k gold

A ring of lead

You can buy this from the Arelium ring shop. It will cost you 13k gold though, so you can hold off a bit before you buy this.
Some monsters will banish you. This will stop that from happening.
Note: This will also keep you from being able to teleport, such as using the Navigator Trees. So it's a handy item to keep in your backpack, but you probably don't want to wear it all the time

A shovel (even if your race can eat corpses)

There are many places you can get a shovel, from the free shovel dispenser in Newbie Mountains, to the groundskeeper in the Arelium Church of All Gods graveyard.
In fact, you will start out with a shovel, so as long as you don't get rid of it, this step is already taken care of.
You need to take care of your corpses or they can sometimes be raised as undead and attack you again. This can ruin your day.
To use the shovel "bury corpse"
This is helpful even if you can eat corpses because sometimes they are too heavy to pick up (and eat).
Also, shovels can be used to "force boxes" to open them. This is dangerous and not recommended as the boxes can explode, but I'm always curious what is in them.

Build out the rest of your equipment from donations to Saint Damogran.

His room is 1 east and 2 north from the church of all gods starting location.
When you first see him, type "Bow Damogran". If you don't, he will kick you out of his room
He offers a variety of Newbie related services but the biggest is equipment donations. Higher level players can donate equipment and you can grab a few items every day.
This equipment is bound to you. You can't sell it, and others can't use it. But it is free!

Here is a good list of relative weapon tier levels.
Here is some stats for various pieces of worn equipment.

When to Level Up and When to Wait:

For Levels 1-11: Don't even think about it. Just level up whenever you can. There is no downside to advancing quickly.
For levels 11-15: you will also be advancing in your racial guild that has skills and spells to train.

Some skills/spells will be useful. Some will just be "fun/flavor" and won't impact your game that much. Take the time to identify which is which.
Training skills/spells usually costs much more experience than advancing levels. My recommendation is to take the time to train skills/spells that you find useful before leveling up, but to skip all the "flavor" skills/spells and only put EXP into them once you are past level 30 and have the EXP to burn.

For example, don't worry about training skills like "Hunting" or spells like "Call Pigeon"

Up to level 15, there is no downside to advancing your level. So for these first few levels, if you have any doubt: Advance your level vs. spending your EXP on skills/spells.
When creating a new character to write this guide, I earned level 15 after completing part 2 of the tutorial. I never trained any skills, and have no regrets. It only takes around 12k of experience to advance all of your levels.
If you do want to train skills/spells for your racial guild, there is a portal in the adventurer's guild in Dortlewall to take you to you race's shrine.

Once you hit level 16: You can no longer take the portal to your Racial Shrine and you may want to start thinking about completing Level Quests.

Level 16 is the first milestone where you may want to hold off on advancing your level and focus on training skills and spells from your racial guild.

Losing access to a quick teleport to your racial guild is quite a hit. Many of the racial guilds can be hard to get to on foot.

There are also two level quests for level 16 that you might want to complete first (for bragging rights). Both of them are also fairly easy to complete on your own.

LQ16: Black Butterfly (Newbie Mines)

(Spoiler): Here is a guide for completing that quest

LQ16: Statue (Ochimos)

(Spoiler): Here is a guide for completing that quest

That being said, don't hold on to too much experience before spending it. If you die (and you will die a lot), you will lose a big chunk of it.

Levels 16-29:

Level 29 is the second milestone you will hit that you may want to pause leveling up. After you hit level 30 you no longer can receive free donated equipment from Saint Damogram (see Church of the All Gods).
Also some areas have level caps at level 30, so players at a higher level than that can no longer access them. Here is a list of level capped areas.
The focus of these levels is that you will be advancing in your chosen guild.
While you will be earning more statistics (e.g. INT, CON, STR, WIS, DEX) and gaining SIZE with each level until level 30, for the most part gaining levels by itself doesn't make you more powerful. It is the skills/spells you can train in your guild that will really determine what you can do.
In your guild, it is important to categorize each skill/spell you can train into one of the following three categories:

Skills/Spells that you will use regardless of what level you are at in the guild. These can include core foundational skills/spells like "Attack", "Quick Chant", and "Invisibility".
Skills/Spells that are good for your current level, but will be superseded by future more advanced options. For example "Magic missile" is a good starting spell, but you'll quickly find yourself replacing it with "Summon lesser spores" when you can train that offensive spell instead.
Skills/Spells that are very situational for their use, and might not be that applicable for your playstyle. For example, you'll likely not use skills such as hunting and sewing all that much. There are variations of this category. The spell "identify" is very useful, but you'll probably only use it once or twice a week as you get new equipment.

In general, you should train skills/spells in the first category when you can, up to your racial skill/spell max. After that it gets very expensive to train them so you might want to hold off on that.
For the second category, you should train them if they are a prerequisite for a more advanced skill/spell, but otherwise you need to balance if you should spend EXP training them now, or focus on quickly advancing your level to get the better skills/spells instead.
For the third category, it doesn't hurt to throw some EXP into training them if you have that EXP free, but otherwise you should focus on spending that EXP to advance your level.
Once you hit level 29, you can then go back and focus on filling in missing gaps in your skills/spells before advancing to level 30.
Don't stress too much about this though! If you spend EXP on something you realize was a mistake you can always recreate your character to get that EXP back (or simply earn more EXP). This advice is mostly focused on getting you to level 30 as quickly as possible.

Strategies to Gain EXP:
Kill Monsters
If you've played other MMRPGs or MUDs, this is typically the way you grind out levels and experience
This is totally a valid approach to getting EXP in Batmud as well.
One thing to keep in mind though that Batmud implements an EXP tuning algorithm that modifies the EXP you earn based on how many times a monster has been killed by all the players, and how many times you've personally killed a monster.
Also, if you kill the same monster repeatedly, it will eventually spawn a "Turbo Monster" that looks exactly the same but has greatly increased stats. If a little butterfly is suddenly kicking your butt, this is likely what happened.
Therefore, it really helps to have several (3-5) areas you can cycle through in your monster killing sessions to maximize your EXP gain.
Explore
You earn experience for exploring new rooms. This is a significant source of experience for Newbies and Lowbies.
The experience per room you explore increases with the more rooms you've explored. So the more you explore, the more EXP you'll make per new room you find.
You can also complete the Level Quest 22: Explore 10%, by exploring new areas
Up until you hit around 20% explore percentage, you usually can earn experience faster by exploring than by killing things.
If you explore 2k rooms you will have earned 1 million experience.
Currently you need to visit 1.8k rooms to complete LQ 22: Explore 10%
If you explore 4k rooms you will have earned 4 million experience.
The full table for how much EXP you can earn by exploring can be found in the official Batmud help file. Here is a link.
There are area guides in this blog that you can follow to explore areas and avoid trouble.
Note: These guides have lots of spoilers, so if you want to explore on your own I highly recommend that as it's quite fun not knowing what you'll run into.
When reading the guides, monsters whose names are in RED are aggressive and will attack you. Monsters with names in PURPLE will block you from passing until you kill them or complete a task. Monsters with names in GREEN will wander around the map.
Keeping track of your exploration:
If you use the command "show summary" it will tell you how many new rooms you have explored this session.
If you use the command "score" it will show you how many rooms you have explored in total.
The list of rooms you have explored survives character recreation and reincarnation. So you can't gain explore experience twice.
There are a number of "special explore rooms" that give you even more experience than normal as they tend to be hard to find. They will also show up in your score and are another bragging metric.
Party
When trying to decide if you should earn your experience by killing monsters or exploring, the best answer is "why not both"!
If you join a party, you can kill monsters much quicker, heal/regen faster with less downtime, and explore areas that you wouldn't be able to wander around on your own.
You also get to meet new people, and have a more social experience. Other players are a big reason to play a MUD vs. a stand-alone game.
The main downside is that it can be hard to understand what is going on when you are in a party. Things happen fast, and parties usually don't linger around letting you read room descriptions and solving puzzles on your own. So the solo experience can be rewarding as well.
In general, if you need to earn experience, the fastest way to do that is to join a party.
Solve Level and Area Quests
In most cases you can grind experience (either via killing or exploring) faster than by completing quests. The real reason to do quests is because they are fun. Also other people can see the quests you've completed so they are good for bragging.
Area quests as the name implies are a quest for a particular area and they can provide some nice equipment or money rewards
Level quests (LQs) are quests that have a level restriction, but will provide a discount on advancing to that level in addition to any other rewards they offer.
The level quests are also a good source of !!fun!! You can complete them up to the level they are set at, but you will only get the EXP level discount if you complete it before that level.
For example if you complete LQ16 when you are level 15, it will give you a discount to advance to level 16.
If you complete LQ16 when you are level 16, you can complete the quest but you won't get a discount until the next time you reincarnate your character.
You will not get credit for completing LQ16 if you undertake it at levels 17+. You will have to wait until you recreate/reincarnate your character and are level 16 or less again to complete the quest.
To figure out what Level Quests are available, you can go to the quest room one south of where you advance your character's level. A list of all the level quests are there and it's worth checking before you advance.
Simply going to the quest room will let you earn the Area Quest: Quest Room!
For the first 30 levels there are some area quests that yield several pieces of good newbie equipment and you will also get training points that will allow you to gain extra stats once you make it to level 31+.
Most level quests before level 25 are doable by yourself, though that can be dependent on your race/guild combination.
Healers are going to have a harder time soloing quests. Sorry, there has to be a trade-off for being insanely popular in parties ;p
Starting around LQ25, you'll need help to complete most (but not all) of the level quests. I still recommend doing the initial exploration yourself to try and understand the area and the quest before you call in help. But at some point you'll likely hit some boss or blocking monster that is too tough to kill on your own.
Guides to some of the quests are available in this blog, but I would strongly recommend you first try to complete them on your own. A lot of the fun is solving the mysteries and trying to puzzle out what to do.
Long story short, there's a lot of quests to do and mysteries to explore. While they don't really fit into a speed-run mentality I've really enjoyed not advancing in level until I've completed all the associated level quests.

Strategies to Gain Money:

A more detailed guide can be found here: Batmud Guide to Earning Gold

Tips and Tricks and Suggested Areas for Each Newbie/Lowbie Stage:

True Newbie (Levels 1-15)

Comments:

It will take around 12k experience to advance all of your levels from 1 to 15. This really isn't a lot. With the experience bonus you get, you can do this by killing abound 24 monsters in the tutorial.. These levels will fly by.
The real experience sink is training skills and spells at your racial guild. You probably will have earned around 100k EXP by the time you advance to level 16.
Basically, do the tutorials in Dortlewall and you are pretty much ready to advance to being a Lowbie.
If you want more experience for training, I'd recommend investigating the Newbie Mines for LQ16: Black Butterfly, and Ochimos for LQ16: Statue. You can earn enough experience there killing monsters and exploring to make a good dent in training skills/spells from your racial guild.
You can see how much experience you've spent and on what by using the "show experience" command.

Suggested Areas to Explore and Quest:

Dortlewall

Reason: Tutorial and newbie quests are available here
(Spolier): Dortlewall Guide

Ochimos

Reason: There is a Level Quest for level 16 here.
Difficulty: Very, very easy. No aggressive monsters and the few you need to kill are weak.
Experience Gain: I earned around 17k EXP from exploring and killing only the creatures required for the LQ.
(Spoiler): Ochimos Guide

Newbie Mines

Reason: There is a Level Quest for level 16 and level 17 here. LQ17 can be tricky, so you may need help from other players depending on your race/background/guild combo.
(Spoiler): Newbie Mines Guide

Newbie Mountain

Reason: There is tons of rooms to explore which means tons of free experience here. By that I mean you will likely earn 200k to 300k EXP exploring this area!
(Spoiler): Newbie Mountain Guide

Arelium Clock Tower

Reason: This was one of the original new player areas. It's not big but it is fairly safe, many monsters drop equipment you can sell, and the creatures are easy to solo.
(Spoiler): Arelium Clock Tower Guide

Pleasantville

Reason: This used to be the old Batmud newbie starting location. There's some options to kill easy creatures and earn money turning in rat corpses. In all honesty, this area probably should be deferred to later when you are tougher since the caverns beneath it are very interesting but probably too difficult for payers under level 20. The only reason I have it here is mostly due to historical reasons due to its status as the previous newbie training area.
Warning: There are some super dangerous areas if you start really exploring Pleasantville. Think death traps and 20k massive monsters waiting for newbies to stumble into their lairs. But if you stick to the surface you should be ok.
(Spoiler): Pleasantville Guide

There's a lot of other places to explore that have monsters in the 100-500 EXP range, but you'll probably be advanced past level 15 by the time you get to them. When writing this guide my Nomad Giant was level 15 with all the core skills from my race guild trained after completing the tutorial and doing LQ16 in the Newbie Mines. These levels really fly by quickly.

Lowbie (Levels 15-30)

Comments:

For these levels, you are only a semi-newbie. Some things start getting harder, but you also finally get to pick and join the guilds of your choice so your character and gameplay become a whole lot more interesting!

This is where you'll need to actually focus on trying to earning EXP vs. just completing quick quests.
Long story short, this is a great introduction to what the rest of your journey to level 100 will look like :)

You'll likely need around 5 million to 20 million EXP before you graduate Lowbie status and make it to Level 31.

Like before, the EXP to advance your levels will only be a small part of this. If you wanted to, you could power-level to Level 31 with 160k EXP if you only spent it on levels.
Your skills/spells are what determine your character's ability to fight, heal, and buff. While you get some stats for advancing your level, the real reason you advance your level is to train more of your skills/spells. Hence the goal of 5 to 20 million EXP.

This will also likely be the point in the game where you start to be acquainted with character death.

Exploring is dangerous; You'll be trying to kill tougher monsters to earn EXP quicker; Some of the quests are hard; Your party might forget they have a Lowbie on board and you get an acid arrow to the face.
Try to avoid having too much unspent EXP on your character to make these deaths less impactful. If you have 50k-200k unspent on your character you probably should prioritize getting to your guild to spend it on skills/spells.

Skills/Spells will get more expensive the higher % you train them.

The cost to train a skill/spell depends on your race (some races require more experience to train), your race's skill/spell max (training a skill/spell above its max is dramatically more expensive), and your current % in the skills/spell (each additional % trained increases the cost to train)
Also some skills/spells are simply more expensive to train than others. For example the skill Parry is significantly more expensive to train than Consider.

What this means is that there are some skills/spells that are not worth training up beyond a certain percentage at this stage in your character's progression.

In general, you might not want to train skills/spells above your racial training max. The cost is generally way too high vs. the benefit you get from it.
Likewise, if a skill/spell costs more than 100k per % to advance, you might want to put off training that for now.
Personally, I don't always follow that advice since like completing the level quests. So sometimes I run out of places to "store/spend" EXP with the exception of 100k+ per % skills/spells. So I'll dump my EXP into those until I complete the LQ and advance.

Make sure you pick up a pair of ruby slippers from the Wibble Village ASAP

Starting at level 16 you will no longer be able to use your Newbie Crystal's "recall" functionality. The ruby slippers from this Wizard of Oz themed area provide the same functionality and last until you are level 30.

Suggested Areas to Explore and Quest:

The following list is organized roughly in order of when it makes sense to explore as you advance in levels. This is just a suggestion though, so feel free to spend time in areas which are fun for your gameplay. Also, feel free to explore the areas listed earlier for levels 1-15 if you haven't had a chance to visit them yet!

DortleWall (Batmud Stories)

Reason: You won't get much experience, money, or equipment. But the "stories" questlines in DortleWall provides a wider introduction to different gameplay features. Also there are frequent enforced breaks in the stories that last a day or two. So it's something to do in bits and pieces as you level up vs. something to grind out all at once.
Difficulty: Super easy. It really just takes time and remembering to check to see if you can advance to the next stage of the story or not. That being said, once you hit Chapter 7 of the story there, it will get *very expensive* from a gold perspective to continue.
(Spoiler): Batmud Stories Guide

Newbie Petting Zoo

Reason: Very easy to get to (there is a newbie-post), no aggressive monsters, and you can make a quick circuit around it killing and/or petting animals as you see fit. It's worth visiting at least once.
Difficulty: Very easy with the exception of the archwizards.
(Spoiler): Newbie Petting Zoo Guide

Newbie Forest

Reason: As the name implies, this is a forest for newbies. I'd recommend exploring it at least once for the explore EXP. The monsters are also easy to kill but it is off the beaten path enough that you likely not going to be spending much time here.
Difficulty: Very easy. You can start making runs through this area around levels 15+
(Spoiler): Newbie Forest Guide

Wibble Village

Reason: Wizard of Oz themed area. Easy monsters, good explore experience, and the ruby slippers you get there can save you a lot of time to get back to your starting location after you "age out" of being able to use your newbie crystal recall.
Difficulty: Very easy
(Spoiler): Wibble Village Guide

Public Garden:

Reason: Safe area to explore with easy monsters to kill. If you are leveling up a Civilized Folklorist, this area is pretty much required to harvest herbs at.
Difficulty: Super easy
(Spoiler): Public Garden Guide

Apple Orchard

Reason: Easy monsters and a big square grid to earn explore experience on. Also the creatures drop money and equipment that you can sell.
Difficulty: Very easy (with the exception of a couple aggressive pigs)
(Spoiler): Apple Orchard Guide

Digga's

Reason: Home of LQ17. Lots of critters to kill in the newbie park area
Difficulty: Moderate. There are some very high level player areas in Digga's so make sure you stick to the newbie park area of it or you will die. Also be careful since some of the critters in the park may cause you problems.
(Spoiler): Digga's Guide

Newberry Park

Reason: Lots of little critters to kill, and around 45(ish) rooms to explore.
Difficulty: Very easy in the park. The goblin caverns beneath it might get a bit tricky for low level players.
(Spoiler): Newberry Park Guide

Hairkko Forest

Reason: Easy area to explore and get some decent EXP killing monsters if you find yourself in Desolathya. It's fairly boring though. I view it as someplace to visit once but you likely won't be spending a lot of time grinding EXP here.
Difficulty: Very easy, and there are no aggressive monsters.
(Spoiler): Hairkko Forest Guide

Arelium Church of All Gods

Reason: Decent explore experience and monsters to kill. Most of the monsters are either good or evil so you can kill them to change your character's alignment. Also there is a newbie ring you can earn here.
Difficulty: Easy until you start getting into the dungeons. Once you get to the altar in the dungeons it can get very hard (player level 30+ appropriate)
(Spoiler): Church of All Gods Guide

D'hregal Mines

Reason: Home of LQ18. Super small area that you will probably only spend 10 minutes in completing the LQ and never come back to again. It's one of the easiest LQs though so I'd recommend doing it.
Difficulty: Super easy
(Spoiler): D'hregal Mines Guide

Hugoville

Reason: Home of the second level quest for level 18. There's creatures to kill and you can make some easy money selling looted equipment.
Difficulty: Moderate difficulty, with the boss of the LQ being very difficult to solo. There is a highbie portion to this area so avoid the Hugo estate/mansion and stick to the town.
(Spoiler): Hugoville Guide

Marble Sanded Beach

Reason: Small area that is accessible via the Newbie Posts. It's worth running around real quick to get the explore EXP. There is also a quest here to get an axe for melee focused characters, but I haven't solved it yet.
Difficulty: Easy except for the aggressive skeleton in the caves and as long as you don't attack the townfolk.
(Spoiler): Marble Sanded Beach Guide

Conifer Forest

Reason: Home of LQ19. It's a small area so once you do the LQ you probably won't ever come back here.
Difficulty: Very easy
(Spoiler): Conifer Forest Guide

Arelium Sewers

Reason: Home of the second LQ19. The LQ rewards a niece piece of equipment. The real reason is the bragging rights though since this is one of the more complicated mazes in Batmud
Difficulty: The monsters are easy. Getting out of this area is crazy hard. It is a huge randomly generated 4d dungeon, and you can't leave until you complete it (or Batmud reboots). Make sure you have several hours free before you start your exploration of these sewers.
(Spoiler): Arelium Sewers Guide

Saint Patric's Abbey

Reason: Home of LQ20. Lots of easy NPCs to kill. Also make sure you visit it while you can still use the newbie post travel system. It's in the middle of nowhere so getting to it later to explore it will be very difficult and time consuming.
Difficulty: Very easy as long as you don't invoke any mystical phrases you find written on the walls.
(Spoiler): Saint Patric's Abby Guide

Old Oak Forest:

Reason: Home of LQ21. Lots of easy critters to kill, and the LQ rewards a nice piece of equipment.
Difficulty: Very easy. Only one aggressive monster.
(Spoiler): Old Oak Forest Guide

Beastlands

Reason: Home of LQ23. There is also an incredible amount of creatures roaming around this area to kill.
Difficulty: There are a few tough creatures here but you likely won't run into them unless you are working on the level quest. There are a lot of aggressive leeches but they are more an annoyance vs. a threat. The biggest risk is other players as sometimes players will turn on "attack everything" skills/spells and run through here killing everything.
(Spoiler): Beastlands Guide

Newbie Playground

Reason: Home of the second level quest for LQ23. You can also get some decent newbie melee character equipment for completing the LQ.
Difficulty: Easy, though the final boss may give you some problems. No aggressive monsters.
(Spoiler): Newbie Playground Guide

Chessboard

Reason: You can earn a lot of experience exploring this area as there are a lot of rooms. Also there is a large number of "easier" monsters to kill, and the chess pieces drop equipment you can sell
Difficulty: The bats/spiders/pawns can all be soloed by characters who are in the 20-30 level range. Leave the higher value chess pieces alone until you have many more levels under your belt.
Warning: The Chessboard can be dangerous to characters who do not currently have neutral alignment.
(Spoiler): Chessboard Guide

Circus

Reason: There are a lot of creatures you can kill here by yourself. Most of them drop money which also helps. Finally, there are no aggressive creatures (unless you search for them) so it is a relatively safe place to get explore experience.
Difficulty: If you want to complete the area quest here you will need some help as the lion is very difficult. Otherwise you can solo most creatures here once you start to get to level 20+. Be careful though as there are a few exceptions so make sure to use the skill consider.
(Spoiler): Circus Guide

Goblin Farm

Reason: No aggressive monsters and it is modestly interesting area to explore. Basically if you find yourself in Desolathya, it is somewhere to run through real quick to earn some EXP.
Difficulty: There are some moderately tough to kill monsters (10k EXP) but nothing aggressive and most of the creatures are fairly easy.
(Spoiler): Goblin Farm Guide

Zoy's Inn

Reason: Home of LQ24. The creatures here give good EXP when you kill them, but they may be a bit difficult for your level.
Difficulty: I would not advise going here before level 23. It can be a challenging area, but very few people run this area so it can be worthwhile to revisit after you complete the LQ. Beware of the wendigos, and don't go picking fights with the Snakemen as they are for higher level players to kill.
(Spoiler): Zoy's Inn Guide

Secladin

Reason: Home of LQ25. One of my favorite areas. Lots of rooms to explore, the monsters give good experience, and you can sell gear for a ton of money. Also the level design is fun and well thought out. I highly recommend making this a frequent place to grind EXP until you hit level 30. Note: These is a level limit of 30 so higher level players can't (easily) visit this area.
Difficulty: Very Hard. This is a high risk/reward area. There are a lot of wandering aggressive monsters. You have to be very careful about keeping your hit points up and not wimpying into a random room. Also, plan on needing help to complete the LQ. I was able to solo the LQ as a riftwalker, but it was a close call.
(Spoiler): Secladin Guide

Newbie Taskmaster

Reason: Home of LQ26. This is the only reason to go to this area, and you probably won't ever go back to it. You can actually complete the LQ much earlier if you want since the fights are trivial.
Difficulty: Super Easy. It just takes time to complete. The creatures you need to kill could probably be soloed by a level 15 good-religious brownie.
(Spoiler): Newbie Taskmaster Guide

Rainbow Cloak

Reason: You can complete LQ27 here. Otherwise you probably won't ever go here.
Difficulty: Very hard. You will almost certainly need a party to complete the LQ. Make sure one of the party members has +50 strength.
(Spoiler): Rainbow Cloak Guide

Mythical Valley

Reason: You can complete LQ29 here. Also you can make some decent money selling equipment that you pick up.
Difficulty: If you are completing the LQ, you will likely need some help. But there are a number of monsters you can kill here on your own. I suspect this will be one of the last places you quest in before advancing out of Lowbie status and graduating to a Midbie
(Spoiler): Mythical Valley Guide

Dunamor

Reason: You can complete LQ30 here. Also there are lots of monsters that you can solo, and many of them drop equipment you can sell.
Difficulty: If you are completing the LQ, you will likely need some help to get past one of the monsters. But you should be able to solo most everything here.
(Spoiler): Dunamor Guide

The Village of Stouby

Reason: Home of LQ32, but you can solo and complete it at a much lower level as the quest largely doesn't require much fighting. Also this is one of my favorite level designs for this area. There's tons of secrets to find and multiple ways to solve most challenges.
Difficulty: If you try to kills things it can be very hard. But from a questing perspective, you can do this at a low level.
(Spoiler): Village of Stouby Guide

Cornfields

Reason: Lots of creatures to kill and areas to explore. Aimed towards players levels 20+.
Difficulty: Challenging. There are a ton of aggressive monsters here. If you take it slow you should be ok. But if you rush things or need to wimpy in a random direction things can get real interesting (and deadly) real quick.
(Spoiler): Cornfields Guide

Quality of Life Tips and Tricks:

Recovering from Death:

You are going to die a lot. Don't worry about it. There are a couple of options available to you
Every time you die, you will get a scar that lowers your charisma by -1, and your character will get older.
Different players can remove scars (merchants, and good religious backgrounds). You'll get a portion of you charisma back, but not all of it.
Also, if you visit the NPC priestess in Desolathya Harbor, she will heal your scars for free.
To get your charisma back to 100%, you will need the services of a player merchant who can use "plastic surgery on you"
The reason why charisma is important is that the lower your charisma, the higher chance something bad will happen to you when you come back from the dead.
If your resurrection is "fumbled" bad things happen to both you and the player casting the spell.
When you get brought back from the dead, you will end up next to the caster who brought you back if you are both on the same continent. Otherwise you will be brought back in one of the major cities on the continent you died on.
Default resurrection option: "Accept ress from Theresa"
Theresa is a NPC healer to compensate for the lack of healers playing/idling. She will raise you but it will cost 65% of your unspent EXP
This means if you have 100k unspent EXP, after she resurrects you, you will now have 45k
The lower level you are, the faster she will resurrect you. Normally this process takes a few minutes.
This is the safest option because as far as I'm aware Theresa does not fumble her spells.
You can also ask on the ghost channel for help.
"ghost I tried to be a hero and died. Can someone ress me?"
You are helping players out if they bring you back because they get a portion of your lost EXP.
Players can cast three spells on you to bring you back. "Raise Dead", "Resurrect", and "New Body"
As a newbie, ignore "Raise Dead". You will lose 75% of your exp. It's better to go with being ress'd by Theresa.
Raise Dead is targeted towards higher level players. Theresa takes longer to resurrect you the more levels you have and Raise Dead is a much safer spell for player characters to cast than Resurrect.
"Resurrect" is the standard option to ask for. You will lose only 50% of your EXP.
"New Body" is the most advanced/complicated option. You will only lose 25% of your EXP, but your stats will be drastically reduced for the next 6 hours.
Also, if the caster fumbles the New Body spell, you get a forced "reincarnaction" where you may lose 40% of your TOTAL Exp. That's bad news bears.
If a player fumbles Resurrect, the following can happen. Note: I've never had any of these happen to me. Keep your Charisma stat up above 50 and hopefully these will never happen to you either.
You lose a level.
You feel mentally weaker.
You feel a lot older.
You feel mentally weaker.

How to Raise your Charisma after Dying:

Every time your character dies they will pick up a new scar. Some monsters also cast "make scar" which is annoying. Scars lower your Charisma. Having a low Charisma impacts certain skills but more importantly makes it riskier to be resurrected after dying. So this turns into a vicious cycle where dying a lot makes it riskier and more costly to die in the future. Ideally you should always keep your Charisma above 50.

So what's the downside to having a low Charisma? Why is dying with it risky? The short answer is real bad things can happen to both you and the person resurrecting you after a death if you have a low Charisma. For example, one common side effect is that either you are the healer resurrecting you could permanently lose statistics until your next full reincarnation (character recreation). A less common side effect is you could find yourself having a critical fumble and going through a forced reincarnation with a massive loss to your saved EXP. Basically, you are going to die a lot, so make sure you keep your Charisma above 50!

The solution to having a low Charisma attribute is two-fold.
Have someone cast remove scar: You can ask for merchants or healers to cast this spell. Or if you are anti-social, travel to the Desolathya ferry location [Guide Here] and idle in the room with the mermaid priest NPC. They will occasionally cast remove scar on you.
Ask on the wanted channel for plastic surgery: Getting a scar removed gives you back "most" of your lost Charisma, but not all of it. For that you'll need a player merchant to use plastic surgery on you. It can be a pain to find someone to do this, so I'd only recommend taking this route when your Charisma gets around 50.
Bonus Option: Some fancy clothing gives a bonus to Charisma. If you find some after killing a monster try it on and then check your stats to see if it helps.

Interacting with your Environment and Completing quests:

When trying to solve a quest, "search" and "look" at everything in a room description.

Other common options are "move", and "open". So for example "move painting", or "open box".

While there are many exceptions, you can often identify if a non-player character (NPC) can be interacted with by asking them a question. For example "ask monster about quest".

If the response to a question is "NPC ignores you", then that *typically* means they can not be interacted with and will not respond to any questions.
If they have any other type of response (or even no response at all), then that often means they can be interacted with.

NPCs will only respond to specific keywords when asking them questions.

"ask NPC about quest", and "ask NPC about help" are two common ones to use
After that you'll need to pick out what words they may be responsive about. For example "ask NPC about vampires" if there are vampire related shenanigans going on.

Healing from Poison:

Unlike a lot of other MUDs, poison in Batmud, if left untreated, can last a long time before you get it out of your system.
If you start getting "you shiver from poison", you really need to get it healed as it will likely kill you if ignored.
As a Newbie, you likely will not have access to a "cure poison" spell or cure. Therefore, the best way to cure poison is to sweat it out in a sauna.
One free sauna you can get to on all the continents of Badmud is in Esirus.

Take the portal to Esirus. One is available at the default starting location in the Church of All Gods in Arelium. In that room, simply type "transport esirus" to go there.
In Esirus, type "map" to find the sauna. It is to the southwest of where you portal in if you are coming from Arelium

In the sauna you can adjust the temperature and "toss water" to create steam.

The higher the temperature, the quicker you will sweat the poison out.
If the temperature gets too high, you will take a lot of damage though.
The max temperature you can stand is based on a number of statistics of your character. As a wolfman my max temperature is 110 degrees.
I would strongly advise figuring out what your ideal temperature is, as well as how to find and use the sauna, before you need it. Trying to figure this stuff out in a panic is no fun.

Sauna commands:

heat up: Increase the temperature
cool down: Decrees the temperature
toss water: Creates steam. You need to periodically do this or the sauna won't help you.

Once you are cured of the poison you'll get a message saying that you sweated it all out.

A Monster Dropped <item>. Now What?:

Occasionally you'll run into something weird. It could be laying on the ground because another player left it, or you could find it in a monster corpse. Here's some items you should keep an eye out for and what you can do with them.
Essence of <Random Type>
What you should do with it: Sell it to other players on the #Sales channel
How much is it worth: Generally sold for 2k gold each
Notes: Alchemists need this to brew flasks. They are usually in high demand, and by finding/selling them you are really helping other players out. Those players in turn will make more potions which helps you out. Essences are also lightweight so there is no real reason to leave them behind. I usually sell them in stacks of 10-20 or so to minimize the time spent spamming the #Sales channel.
A Locked Chest or Container
What you should do with it: Leave it be and let some other player deal with this cursed object.
How much is it worth: A locked container usually is filled with low value coins worth around 10 gold. But it can very, very, very, occasionally have items such as youth scrolls which can sell for 400k+ gold.
Why you should leave it be:
Chests are often trapped and the traps are very powerful. They will explode, or poison you.
I should keep notes, but my gut feeling is 1 out of every 5 chests will have a trap go off. Of those I probably die 20% of the time. So you are looking at a 4-5% chance of dying when you try to open a chest that likely has 10 gold worth of coins in it.
Do you open chests?: Absolutely! I can't stand not knowing what's in them. But don't be like me.
How to open locked containers:
If you can, take the chest to the area outside a sauna. That way if you get poisoned you can heal yourself very quickly.
If you are a melee character, "wield shovel" (you have a shovel right!?), and then "force chest".
"force chest" initiates a strength check to see if you can bust the lock. Each strength check also has a chance of triggering a trap in the chest. The stronger you are, the better chance you have of forcing open the chest.
Shovels are the 2nd best item to force a chest with. If you have a crowbar, that is the best item. Using a shovel will increase your chances of opening the chest vs. if you use your weapon.
Also, forcing the chest has a chance of damaging your weapon. I'd rather you damage your shovel vs. you primary weapon.
If you are a spellcaster, you can cast offensive spells at the locked container to open it.
This has a chance of destroying the chest completely or damaging the items inside it.
Still, if you don't have the strength to force a chest, this is probably your best option.
(Secret Hidden Option): If you are a member of the Tiger guild, or know somebody who is, then they can pick the lock.Tigers are a "hidden" evil religious guild focusing on player killing, so finding someone who is a member of it may be challenging.

Invisibility for the Rest of Us:

A vast majority of the guilds and races do not have access to the Invisibility spell. This is really annoying since when you are doing quests and/or exploring there often will be blocking monsters you can not get past.
The good news is you can buy a flask of invisibility from an alchemist that will let you turn invisible.

Beyond asking to buy a flask on the "Wanted" public channel, you can also see flasks that alchemists have for sale in the city of Arelium potion shop. There almost always are flasks of invisibility for sale there.

Typically they cost around 5k-10k gold and contain two charges.
They also wear off faster than the spell invisibility.
Still, they get the job done!
To use a flask, just drink it. Be mindful there is a delay, so don't move or do any skills or spells until it takes effect
- You will get messages like "your hands itch" or "your nose twitches" for a few seconds before the flask kicks in'
Also keep in mind that any skill or spell use will break invisibility
There are rings that grant invisibility, but they normally cost around 300k gold, so may not fit within your price range.

Saving Equipment sets:

Equipment carried by your character will by default be saved over reboots. The exception to this are quest specific items like keys. This is great, but if you are rebirthing/reincarnating into different guilds you may need to switch between different types of equipment. A Duck Riftwalker will be geared differently than a Cyclops Ranger. The best long-term solution for this is to ask on the Wanted channel if any player rooms are available to rent in player cities. The problem is this costs money, and the player city might not be conveniently located. A cheaper short term option is simply to buy a chest, put your equipment into it, and bury it.

Renting a Room for 3000 gold a Day:

In Arelium (the main Batmud city) you can rent a room to store 10 items for 3000 gold a day from Lacramobo's room.
Some people like this. I'm more a fan of burying checks. Renting feels like I'm throwing money away, where buying chests is an investment.

(IMPORTANT DISCLAIMERS):

If you bury a chest, any player can dig it up and take your equipment.

The outerworld is big, and most players aren't hunting for buried chests, so you should be ok, but keep this in mind.

If you leave your chest unattended for a year, it will disintegrate

This shouldn't impact most players, but this is not a long term solution for saving equipment.

If you forget where you buried your chest, it's gone. There is no way to get it back.

Obtaining a Chest:

You are first going to need to get an equipment chest to save your equipment. You'll need this regardless if you are storing this chest in a room in a player city or burring it.
(IMPORTANT): These chests are different than the chests you find and break open when killing monsters. Do not attempt to use monster dropped chests to store your gear.
You buy these chests from player merchants (or players reselling their old chests). You can ask on the Wanted channel if people have chests for sale, you can use the "broker" command to find merchants selling chests, or you can go to the various merchant carts in Arelium and Esiris to find chests for sale there.
For your initial chests, don't worry too much about material or locks. They eventually are nice quality of life options (such as having a transparent chest), but that can also increase the price of a chest significantly. The important thing to look for is the number of slots in the chest. The most slots, the more you can store.

Pick a Spot to Bury/Store your Chest:

Once you have a chest, the next thing to do is figure out where you want to bury it.
The spot needs to be in the outerworld and not have any special landmarks on it.
Also pick a spot where a merchant in unlikely to dig a mineshaft. So I would strongly caution around burying your item around Arelium city.
(IMPORTANT): Also pick a spot where you can find the exact location again. When you bury your chest, it won't be marked on your map. So if you forget where you buried it, that chest is lost.

Storing your Items in a Chest:

First put your chest on the ground
Next, open your chest.
Put your items in the chest
(IMPORTANT): Close your chest

You can not bury an open chest.
Also if you are in a player city room, items in an open chest will not be saved across reboots
You will get a warning that "This is a no-save room, items will not be saved over reboot" if you are burying your chest. This is ok. It just means if you don't bury the chest the items won't be saved.

Burying a Chest:

Wield a shovel in your hand

It doesn't matter what hand you choose, but you must have a shovel and you must wield it.

Use the command "bury chest"
Burying the chest requires around 50-100 EPs and will take roughly 20 seconds to do

Digging up a Chest:

Go to where you buried your chest and wield a shovel in your hand.
Use the command "dig ground"
The digging will take roughly 20 seconds after which your chest will be on the ground if you correctly remembered where to dig.

I'm a Frog, Now What?:

Some monsters and certain environmental items will polymorph you into a frog/toad. These are especially prevalent in Newbie areas. Yes, this is mean and totally unfair to people who are learning and exploring. So what is a frog to do?

(Important): First of all, DO NOT DROP ANYTHING WHILE POLYMORPHED

As a frog, your strength will be almost non-existent. Once you drop something you probably won't be able to pick it up again.

Impact: What is the downside to being a frog?

Your stats are almost non-existent.
You can't use skills or cast spells.
Your charisma will be super low, so if you die you are likely to suffer extremely adverse effects when you get raised. Try not to die while polymorphed.

Solutions:

Healers can restore you to your original form. The easiest option is to travel to Esiris, stand at Vlad, and ask on the Newbie or Wanted channel for help. Most of the time there will be a helpful player who will do this for free.
Another option is to buy a restore flask from the Alchemist potion shop in Arelium. Just like with buying invisability flasks, this will let you sip the flask and restore yourself.

These flasks normally sell for around 5k gold each

A third option is to use your Crystite currency from the Dortlewall crystite mine to buy a "restore orb". This will give you a single restore spell/charge to transform you back to your normal self. You probably want to save up your Crystite for other rewards though, so I'd recommend one of the first two options instead.

Traveling to Different Continents:

At one time, all of Batmud resided on one giant continent. While this was simple, it caused problems as traveling between areas took a long time. This went double if your character didn't have the hiking skill and a small number of hit-points (cough, mages, cough). To simplify things, the Badmud wizards caused a giant cataclysm that broke Batmud up into five different continents.

Laenor: The starting continent for new players. Most (but not all) low level areas are here, and the outerworld monsters tend to be a bit tamer.
Desolathya: This will likely be your next most traveled continent as you level up. Truth be told, this continent has a bit of an identity crisis as there are some very early (as in less than player level 20) newbie areas as well as tougher areas.
Lucentium: Lots of good areas as your character get closer to player level 40. Be warned, this is one of the wilder continents with lots of different creatures wandering around the outerworld.
Rothikgen: Midbie focused continent. If you are a civilized background player you'll likely find yourself visiting the main city of Shadowkeep quite often.
Furnachia: The most unfriendly of the continents filled with lava and wastelands. Bring extra water as your character will quickly become dehydrated if you venture off the main roads. Home to joining most evil religious guilds and a few tough early level quests. Most areas are geared towards end game content.

While there are many different ways to travel between continents, the most reliable way is the Batmud Ferry system.

Go to the ferry port on your current continent, and select "travel <continent>" with the name of the convenient you want to go to.

For more information on how to use the ferry system and where to find them, please view the Ferry Guide available HERE.

Comments

Luke RobinsonNovember 7, 2024 at 9:41 AM
Just started playing MUD’s for the first time in my life beyond cursory attempts over the past year or two. Your guide and posts have been invaluable! I recently hit 31 as RW/Mage and in my attempts to go back and get RW up to snuff your guides have been a critical resource

New Player Guide

Introduction:

Intended Audience:

What to Expect and How to Use this Guide:

Batmud Overview:

Official Batmud Resources:

Unofficial Batmud Resources (aka player guides and website):

What to Expect Playing Batmud:

Character Creation Advice:

Character Creation Process:

Step 3: Pick a Race

Step 4: Pick Alignment

Good Starter Race/Background/Guild Combos:

Option 1: Hack and Slash

Option 2: Party and Explore

Option 3: Tank and Blast

Option 4: Ride and Murder

Strategies for the First 30 Levels:

General Approach:

Equipment Tips:

When to Level Up and When to Wait:

Strategies to Gain Money:

A more detailed guide can be found here: Batmud Guide to Earning Gold

Tips and Tricks and Suggested Areas for Each Newbie/Lowbie Stage:

True Newbie (Levels 1-15)

Lowbie (Levels 15-30)

Quality of Life Tips and Tricks:

Recovering from Death:

How to Raise your Charisma after Dying:

Interacting with your Environment and Completing quests:

Healing from Poison:

A Monster Dropped <item>. Now What?:

Invisibility for the Rest of Us:

Saving Equipment sets:

I'm a Frog, Now What?:

Traveling to Different Continents:

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