Changelog & Updates

Hello!

I've registered a new domain for the MUD. Connect to the MUD using the following:

• Host: acropolismud.com
• Port: 5500

Likewise, the website is now located at:

https://www.acropolismud.com

Some of our tools have custom URLs now, as well.

• Events Calendar: https://events.acropolismud.com
• Aetherial Items Compendium: https://aether.acropolismud.com
• Item Power Calculator: https://calculator.acropolismud.com

This small patch has a reworking of some basic melee-oriented skills.

Added

• toxicology skill for assassins
• Passive chance to increase damage by 20% when using weapons with poison

Changed

• kamikaze is now a combat affect
• Resource cost:
  • 150 mana
  • 1/2 move
• When used:
  • Heals 10% of the user's hp
  • Adds a combat affect for 8 turns with a counter of 4
  • Next 4 melee hits draw from user's hp to add a damage modifier
  • Hp cost is 10% current hp
  • Modifier is 2x hp deduction
• assassinate is now a passive affect
• Chance to trigger on circle or backstab
• Multiplies damage by 1.5% (common outcome)
• Has a chance to instakill target (rare outcome)
• dirt kick improved
• Removed level diff check
  • Should be much more effective when used against high level mobs
• Increased duration by 1 tick
• Changed negative hitroll modifier
  • Now based on level
• kick improved
• Now factors damroll, strength and dexterity
• Added a check for the kung fu skill which greatly improves damage on proc
• trip improved
• Now factors damroll into damage
• Has a 50% chance to apply a slow affect when the trip lands
• Added a check for kung fu skill which improves damage and guarantees slow on proc
• berserk and frenzy affects are no longer coupled to each other
• They can now stack
• The berserk affect has a small chance to cause spell casts to fail

The following help files have also been added/updated:

HELP ASSASSINATE HELP KAMIKAZE HELP TRIP HELP KICK HELP BERSERK HELP FRENZY HELP TOXICOLOGY

Enjoy!

Quick quality of life release focused on identifying items and shop browsing.

What’s new

• Shop item info You can peek at details before buying. Syntax: list <item> info Works in special shops too, including quest and aether shops.
• stat shows mob drops Immortal-only command

Improvements

• identify now includes:

• Wear flags

• Extra descriptions

Behavior change

• Item drops are placed in the mob’s corpse instead of the ground.

Fixes

• Missing line breaks after spell casts in lore.

Feedback welcome. If anything feels clunky, I’ll tighten it up.

EDIT: Forgot to mention - there's a new item for sale at the Aether shop!

This release is about making loot drops cleaner, more flexible, and easier to expand on. Up until now, loot was mostly handled through clunky mobprogs—now it’s fully codified into mob data. That means:

• Hardcoded drops (items, XP/QP tokens, aether shards) with precise percentage ranges down to 0.001%.
• OLC tools (adddrop, listdrops, deldrop, cleardrops) so builders can manage loot without hacky workarounds.
• New “bounty” metastat — increases your loot drop chance (with diminishing returns at very high values).
• Drop-related events like DOUBLE/TRIPLE/QUADRUPLE drop chance that directly boost bounty.

Also in this update:

• Imbue/imprint stat balance reworked, with utility metastats now in the mix.
• In-game events now push announcements to the #ingame-events Discord channel.

A double drop event is running right now and will end Fri Aug 15 03:16:58 2025 (UTC), so now's a good time to hunt for items!

This update is a large one, with two major features: Tier 3 paragon skills (even if no one's remotely close to unlocking them yet), and a new event system for bonus XP and more.

Tier 3 Paragon Skills

Tier 3 skills are now fully implemented. While these won’t be accessible until mid-tier paragon levels, the groundwork is complete and the skills are ready for the day someone reaches them:

• Mighty Swing – A single, devastating physical attack. If it lands, the target becomes disoriented for 4 combat turns, preventing dodge, parry, block, blink, and counter.
• Iron Will – Passive. Increases base max HP by 1% per skill point.
• Singularity – An AoE spell dealing negative damage with a chance to apply temporal anomaly, affect locking the victim out of autoattacks and commands for 3 combat rounds.
• Mystic Ward – Passive. Reduces incoming spell damage by 2% per skill point.
• Bio – Single-target poison spell that applies weaken, poison, and plague, with a 50% chance to inflict virus (combat affect draining 8% HP, mana, and movement each round).
• Smoke Bomb – Immediately ends combat and flees, either in a random direction or one you specify.

All Tier 3 actives have a base cooldown of 5 minutes (10 minutes for Smoke Bomb) with cooldowns reduced per skill point invested.

New Event System

Special bonus events are now live, rotating daily, weekly, or monthly. Event types include:

• Double, Triple, or Quadruple XP
• Double Random Encounters
• Double Aether Shards
• Double Quest Points

Use the events command in-game to see what’s active and what’s coming up. You’ll also see the current schedule auto-displayed after the bulletin boards at login. Admins can manage events via the cevent command.

You can also check the event calendar online: https://sbarbett.github.io/acro-events/

Repository: https://github.com/sbarbett/acro-events

Kickoff Events: To kickoff the event system, Triple XP and Double Random Encounters are active for the next ~48 hours.

Other Changes

• Combat affect descriptions now display in affects.
• Cooldown and DT checks for paragon spells are now modular.
• Added updated messages for plague, weaken, and poison.
• The currently selected bulletin board is now shown in red when using the board command.
• Removed the Discord link from the board display.

Fixes

• Fixed duplicate APPLY_* constant assignment.
• Corrected messaging for some combat affects.
• Bleeds can no longer be dodged, parried, blocked, or blinked.
• Removed unnecessary line breaks from time command output.

Removed

• The old smoke command (formerly a joke function, reclaimed to be used for smoke bomb).

I threw together a simple browser app that shows off all the endgame "Aetherial" (legendary) items you can get from boss kills.

• Live site: https://sbarbett.github.io/aetherial-items/
• GitHub repo: https://github.com/sbarbett/aetherial-items

The goal is to give players an easy way to browse the loot in-game without needing to manually search or ask around. It’s searchable, works on mobile, and updates automatically from a simple JSON data file. Pretty barebones, but it gets the job done.

Let me know what you think. Happy to take feedback or feature suggestions!

Hey everyone! Today I'm rolling out Imprint, a new affix system that runs alongside, and is similar to, the existing Imbue mechanics, but:

> Imprints are spawn‑only, permanent bonuses that an item is generated with. You can’t add them later, and you can’t reroll them.

Features

• Exact same formulas as Imbue Reuses all stat‑types, range tables, and roll functions from the Imbue system.

• Spawn‑only, permanent Imprints roll only when an item is generated.

• 1–3 Imprints per item

• 1 imprint: \~10% chance

• 2 imprints: \~2% chance

• 3 imprints: \~0.4% chance

• Separate from Imbues You can still apply Imbues to Imprinted items.

• Visual flair Imprints show up before your usual flags as [*], [**], or [***] (number of asterisks = number of Imprints).

What’s Next?

• I’ll be adding a system in the future to let you reroll an item to attempt to get imprints, but this will entail completing destroying and getting a fresh copy of the item (existing imbues, quest flags, enchants, etc. will be lost).

Additional Changes

• Paragon level players can now increase their base stats up to 100 through equipment (returns are highly diminishing past 60).

Let me know what you think—feedback, bug reports, etc. (per usual)

Hey everyone, I have some updates to share: an extension of Starovia, minigames, bosses, new aetherial loot, a redesigned website, and more. More below.

Patch Notes

Added

• Roulette minigame - Check Greate Guy's Casino
• Slots minigame - Also in the casino

• Ravi’s Spellbook (grimoire)

• 50% chance to triple the damage of life/mana drain spells

Changed

• Brief pulse of lag now occurs after playing a blackjack hand

• You can now junk sticky and cursed items

• (Claimed items cannot be junked until you unclaim them)

Fixed

• Blackjack split bug when you had a blackjack
• Improved messaging for multiplayer blackjack
• affects now correctly displays second‐bit vectors (e.g., life stealer)
• Bit collision that spawned undead mobs as ghosts
• Cheat‑detection log spam
• Claimed/sticky items no longer storeable in lockers

Removed

• Random mob loot generation (it was cluttering inventories with junk)

• Will revisit procedural loot once we’ve settled on a better approach

Starovia Update

Roughly 25 years ago I stumbled across a Magic the Gathering MUD that had an “Ihsan, the Betrayer” mob, based off the “Ihsan’s Shade” MTG card. I was very into MTG at the time and remember my parents buying me a whole bunch of Homelands booster packs because they were cheaper than the other MTG booster packs. In retrospect, I understand why they were cheap now, but at the time I did not care and was just happy to open packs of cards and look at the artwork. And Ihsan’s Shade was at the top of the list of “cool Magic card artwork that 13‑year‑old‑me thought was great and edgy.” When I became a builder on Acropolis around this time, I “borrowed” the idea from the defunct MTG MUD and made my own version of the Ihsan‑themed area. Access to MTG lore was not as readily available or robust in those days, so a fair bit of the content was totally off‑the‑cuff.

Fast forward to 2025—MTG lore is now Marvel‑Multiverse‑levels of complex, and we know a bit more about the tragedy of Ihsan’s life, his relationship with Baron Sengir, etc. If you truly want to know more, go check out the MTG wiki.

So I decided to take this and run with it. Now, when Ihsan is slain in his lair, there will be a 20% chance of spawning a temporal rift which will return you back in time to witness the events leading up to Ihsan’s “betrayal.” This event introduces three new high‑difficulty bosses:

• Ihsan’s Shade
• Grandmother Sengir
• Baron Sengir

Each of these bosses also has a small chance of dropping brand‑new aetherial items, and Baron Sengir may even drop a mote which begins a soon‑to‑be‑implemented epic quest chain to unlock a powerful weapon… stay tuned!

New Aetherial Items

Ravi’s Spellbook

Object 'ravis spellbook' is type treasure, extra flags evil magic burnproof no_restring. Weight 0.3, value 800, level 126. Affects concentration +400, celerity +300, saves –10, wisdom +4, intelligence +4, potency +1500, damage roll +35, hit roll +35. Adds spellcast: life drain, magic drain.

The Sanguine Quill

Object 'sanguine quill' is type weapon (dagger), extra flags glow evil burnproof no_restring. Weight 0.3, value 800, level 126. Damage 15d22 (avg 172), vampiric & shocking. Affects recuperation +650, crit damage +400, crit chance +100, hp +300, constitution +5, damage roll +25, hit roll +25. Adds spellcast: energy siphon.

Obsidian Gauntlets

Object 'obsidian gauntlets' is type armor, extra flags dark evil burnproof no_restring. Weight 0.5, value 700, level 126. AC: pierce 30, bash 28, slash 30, magic 27. Affects damage roll +26, hit roll +27, strength +4, constitution +4, hp +200, alacrity +300, penetration +600.

Eyes of the Betrayer (face)

Object 'eyes betrayer' is type armor, extra flags glow evil burnproof no_restring. Weight 0.4, value 700, level 126. AC: pierce 28, bash 30, slash 27, magic 30. Adds infrared vision. Affects penetration +500, crit chance +300, hp +200, saves –15, constitution +4, dexterity +4, damage roll +32, hit roll +31.

Sengir’s Orb

Object 'sengirs orb' is type materia, extra flags glow evil burnproof no_restring. Weight 0.4, value 800, level 126. Affects concentration +200, celerity +250, potency +1000, mana +200, hp +300, wisdom +4, intelligence +4, saves –14, damage roll +26, hit roll +27. Adds spell: Ice Shield; teaches energy drain.

New Website

Big thanks to Sinon—our new site is live at https://acropolis.techforward.it (Some sections are still WIP, but it’s ready for you to poke around.)

Item Powerlevel Calculator

I’ve also updated the Power Score calculator:

1. Added all the new meta‑stats
2. JSON import/export now supported

Try it out on GitHub Pages: https://sbarbett.github.io/item-power-calculator/

As always—feedback, bug reports, or just your thoughts are welcome here, Discord or in‑game. See ya!

I'm excited to deploy v2.5.0, containing an initial release of the casino area, introducing minigames, a reward‑points economy, and a new end game boss encounter. Here’s what’s new:

Added

• Minigame object types

• Four v‑values: game type (v0), currency (v1), min bet (v2), max bet (v3), max players (v4)

• Behave like furniture—sit to play

• Blackjack minigame

• Full 21 logic: hit, stand, split, double

• Multiplayer tables

• Grate Guys reward points

• Randomly awarded by casino attendants during any game

• Grate Guys Rewards Shop

• 20 Practice Sessions – 80 pts

• Senzu Bean – 100 pts
• Potion of Insight – 175 pts
• VIP Membership Card – 225 pts
• Novelty Jester’s Cap – 550 pts (50% insight, 50% prosperity)
• Grate Guy’s Deck of Cards – 750 pts (75% insight, 75% prosperity; +faerie fire downside)
• Scroll of Malloc’s Empower – 1200 pts (powerful item‑enchant spell)
• ggradd admin command to grant reward points
• [Mythic] item flag for loot

Changed

• Item flags shortened for brevity:

• [Glinting] (was Vorpal), [Sanguine] (Vampiric), [Acidic] (Acid), [Icy] (Frost),

• [Flaming], [Corrupt] (Evil), [Holy] (Bless), [Pure] (Purify)
• Added levels to the gain list command for QoL

Removed

• Legacy slot‑machine code (in prep for new slot implementation)
• Unstable web‑server components from legacy codebase

New Casino Area

• Now live for exploration—sit and play at the blackjack tables!
• Coming soon: Slots, Roulette, Poker
• VIP area: Defeat Grate Guy, an endgame, paragon-tier boss, for a chance at some Aetherial drops

New Aetherial Gear

• Grate Guy’s Motley (body armor)

• AC 28/26/27/30, +3 Int, +3 Wis, +1000 Potency, +400 Celerity, –5 Saves, +22 Hit, +18 Damage, +1000 Prosperity

• Flags: magic, burnproof

• Flower Ring (jewelry)

• +25 Hit, +26 Damage, +3 Dex, +3 Wis, +1000 Mana, +300 Crit Chance, +300 Celerity, +1000 Crit Damage, +300 Concentration

• Flags: glow, burnproof

This is a small batch of improvements and fixes. Highlights include support for dual-spell wands/staffs, smarter recharging mechanics, and a handful of bug fixes.

Added

• Dual-spell Wands & Staffs

• Now can hold two spells instead of one

• Casting triggers both spells simultaneously

Changed

• Imbuement

• Wands and staffs are no longer imbue-able (they’re destroyed when spent, sp this would be unwise)

• Recharge Spell

• You must now be holding the wand or staff to recharge it (auto-targets your WEAR_HOLD slot)

• You cannot recharge items that are already at full charge

• Runed Materium Rod

• Converted from a wand to a staff with 4 charges of insightfulness and Dinchaks Power

• As a staff, it now affects all players in the room
• XP bonus affect makes it more powerful, so charges have been reduced accordingly

• Insight Adjustments

• insightfulness bonus increased to 150%

• Maximum insight raised to 800%

Fixed

• Recharge Spell

• Corrected rechargability check to use spell level instead of skill number

• Quest Items

• Fixed prices in the D column of quest items

• Combat Affects

• Now removed silently on death

• Prevented multiple instances of acid-damage effects stacking

• Imbue Messaging

• Resolved an output bug in imbue feedback