Orc Scouts

Continent: Laenor

Description:

• A good newbie (as in players lower than level 20) area
• The area quest rewards a decent amount of money (around 15k gold) which can be repeated once a day.
• The red rockets dropped here are a popular way to shout messages to the rest of the mud
• Note: Many of the bullies don't leave corpses which makes it less interesting for guilds that need corpses.

Quests:

• Area Quest: Scouts
• Note: This quest is not listed on the bat.org website

Equipment:

• Orc scout field guide
• Sells for around 3.5k gold so it is worth picking up even if you can't use it.
• Reward for finding the orc scout treasure
• Supposedly if you wield this then it will grant you a bonus to your consider skill
• I suspect there is a level limit to this item as it did not do anything for my Level 27 character
• Red Rockets
• These allow you to send a message to the entire MUD
• Only the first 31 characters will be displayed
• Use "message %" to set the message the rocket should say
• Next drop rocket (so it doesn't blow up in your hand)
• Then use "light rocket" to launch it
• Comic Books and Baseball Cards
• These are lightweight and sell for around 1k each at the shopkeeper
• Good source of starting money for newbies

Open Questions:

• What's up with the cup in the leaves of the tree?
• What player level does the orc scout field guide stop working?

Map:

Notes:

Entrance (Clearing and First Level of Tree):

• You start out by encountering the orc cub scout leader
• If you ask them about "help" they say that bullies took over their treehouse and tied up their friends.
• If you ask them about "bullies" they say that the bullies even figured out their password
• If you ask them about "password" they remain suspiciously silent...
• Once you free enough scouts (five scouts is enough), the leader will tell you the password.
• The password is randomly chosen each boot. For example "pfj0w39yg"
• Time to free some orc scouts!
• Use the command "climb tree" to get to the first level of the tree
• Throughout the tree you will encounter tied up orc scouts
• Defeat the bullies guarding them and then free them using the command "untie orc"
• On the first level you can "jump down" from most of the rooms to go down a level
• If you jump down from one of the rooms though, you will end up in a room with a swing, (more on that later).
• I think this room changes per boot
• If you "ask orc scout leader about swing" they will tell you what branch the swing is on
• This is measured counterclockwise from when you climb the tree, with the first branch/room you enter counting as 1. So if the swing is on the fifth branch, go four rooms counterclockwise (aka starting east)
• When you kill a bully, a truancy officer arrives to take them away, so there are no corpses to bury.
• Sometimes the bully drops a red rocket which is a good way to let the rest of the MUD know what you are thinking :)

Second, Third, and Fourth Levels of the Tree:

• From these levels you can also "jump down" to quickly get to the previous level.
• Sometimes you might jump multiple levels which will cause some damage to you unless your character can fly (aka a duck)
• On the fourth level, in the entrance to inside the tree, you can "search leaves"
• This will result in a message saying you found a cup but decided to leave it there for the newbies.
• Not sure if I was lower level if I would be able to keep it or not
• The fight against the bully leader Nelson is tougher than the rest of the area
• All of the other bullies will turn aggressive when you attack Nelson
• On the flip side, Nelson will ignore you as you kill the bullies/punks
• Also some of the bullies will block you from leaving once the fight starts
• Long story short, I'd recommend killing the large bullies first so you can leave if you need to
• This is very hard to notice but in the clubhouse if you "push knothole" you will open a door to a secret room in the clubhouse
• If you "look at walls" it mentions how high quality the wood is.
• If you "search wood" it will mention the knothole
• In the secret room there is a lever you can pull to open/close the exit
• There is also an orc guard in the secret room you can tell the password to if you want to pass
• (Evil/Quick Route): You can kill the guard and "pull string" to open the trapdoor. This saves you from having to go back to the orc scout leader to learn the password
• This leads you to a treasure room
• Random Trivia: The orc guard's name is Bobby. They were the ones who lost the treasure ring.
• In the treasure room will be a comic book and some food
• Take the comic book as you can sell it for some good money
• Also type "search" to find a treasure map!!!

Swing and Brambles:

• Ask the orc scout leader where to find the swing, and then "jump down" to end up in the swing room
• More information about this is above in the first section of this guide
• Sit on swing, then swing.
• When the swing momentarily hangs in the air, "jump"
• If you do this right, you will end up in the brambles
• This will do a small amount of damage as well so make sure you aren't close to dying before doing this.
• "search brambles" to find the decoder ring!!!

Finding the Treasure:

• Wear the decoder ring
• read the map
• The map will display a bunch of gibberish. For each chunk of text type "decode X" where X is the text. This will give you a direction to follow
• I've always been tempted to script up a quick program to automate this task. What I've done instead though is copy the text into a notepad, add a ', ' to the front of the text, and then find/replace ', ' with a ';decode '. Note the spaces in there. I can then paste the resulting text back into my mud client to decode the entire map at once.
• Follow all of the directions starting from the orc scout leader and then "dig"
• You "should" find a treasure chest if everything worked
• Spoiler: Sometimes decoding one or two of the values on the map will fail. This usually happens for one letter encrypted messages. What you need to do is follow the rest of the directions, drop a coin so you can find the starting point, and then search in a circle around that point by using the command "dig". Eventually you will brute-force that missing value.
• Warning/Note: The quest will eventually timeout/reset in which case your map will blow away.
• At this point you need to find the new map and try again if you haven't succeeded yet
• When you dig up the treasure, make sure to pick up the flag as that's what you need to return to the orc scout leader. 
• The playing cards, magazines, and piggy bank are worth a decent amount of money to sell
• You will also often find other valuable things like wands.
• Finally, there will also be an orc scout guide. This provides the consider skill to true newbies (players under level 20)
• Return to the orc scout leader and give them the flag to compete the area quest.
• Congratulations! You have just completed Scouts!
• You receive 1058 gold as a reward for completing the quest.
• You have brought joy back to the Orc Scouts and have completed the quest!

Kill Tracker:

• A small {{ bully }}
• 150 exp
• Drops a red rocket
• A large {{ bully }}
• 300 exp
• A HUGE {{ bully }}
• 400 exp
• Nelson the bully leader
• 3800 exp
• Orc Scout Guard
• 4700 exp