LPMud-Revised: Quests, Creatures, Wizard Castles, Familiar Orb, and Graceful Shutdown

LPMud-Revised just got its biggest content drop yet. Two new quests, 17 new creatures, seamless wizard castles, a familiar orb for wizard scouting, graceful shutdown from the admin panel, and a round of bug fixes. Here's everything that's new.

Lost Miners

A rescue mission in the mine tunnels. Old miner Grimjaw in tunnel 2 tells you his crew is trapped deeper in the mines. Navigate branching tunnels, use a rope to free the trapped miner in tunnel 27, and return the mining token to complete the quest.

This is a mid-to-high level quest (levels 10-14) — expect dangerous encounters in tight spaces.

Rewards

• 2000 XP — the largest quest reward in the game
• Miner's Lamp — a unique quest reward item
• lost_miners quest flag — permanent completion record

The Wyrm's Spellbook

The toughest quest in the mudlib. On the Isle of the Magi, wizard Marvus at a crumbling monument asks you to retrieve his dead brother Aldric's spellbook — guarded by the Wyrm of Arcanarton. Players must be level 16 or higher to attempt it.

No fetch steps, no puzzles — you find the Wyrm, you fight the Wyrm, and if you survive, you claim the prize. The Wyrm is a level 17 boss, the strongest enemy in the game.

Rewards

• 1500 XP
• Arcane Bracer — AC 1 armor, among the best equipment available
• wyrm_spellbook quest flag — permanent completion record

17 New Creatures

The mid-game used to be a gap — early zones had plenty of enemies, and the endgame had boss-tier monsters, but levels 7-16 were sparse. That's fixed now.

Seventeen new creatures across five regions:

• Mines: giant rat, mine beetle, tunnel spider, rock worm, cave troll, mine foreman
• South Forest: wild boar, dark wolf, forest ogre, shadow stalker
• Crescent Lake Shore: marsh ghoul, shore troll, lake serpent
• Mountains: mountain lion, storm eagle
• Plains: plains bandit, ruin golem

Several drop unique treasure items.

Seamless Wizard Castles

Wizard castles now integrate as directional exits rather than awkward teleport commands. Each castle can be configured with a direction, short description, and open/closed status using defines in the castle file.

The map generator automatically discovers open castles and players/<name>/rooms/ directories, rendering each wizard area as a named region (e.g., "Peace's Castle") with a unique color tile on the world map.

Auto-workroom creation handles the home command, and player deletion now properly cleans up castle directories and init_file entries.

Familiar Orb

Wizards (level 20+) can now clone a familiar orb — a tool that conjures a remote NPC you control from anywhere. Send your familiar into a room with familiar move <direction>, see what's there with familiar look, speak through it with familiar say, or emote with familiar emote. All room messages relay back to you with a [Familiar] prefix.

The familiar flees when attacked — it's a scouting tool, not a combat pet. Dropping the orb destroys the familiar automatically. Commands are also available via the fm shorthand.

Graceful Shutdown

The admin panel now supports graceful server shutdown with a configurable countdown timer (1-15 minutes). When triggered, the server broadcasts in-game warnings to all connected players at regular intervals before stopping — no more pulling the plug without notice.

Wizard Quality-of-Life

The clone and goto commands now support pathfinding shortcuts. Instead of typing the full path like goto room/south/fairy_glade, you can just type goto fairy_glade — the system searches common directories (room/, room/south/, obj/) to find the match.

Inventory Gold Display

The inventory command now shows your carried gold coins alongside your items, so you always know how much gold you're carrying without a separate command.

Bug Fixes

• Wyrm gem drop — fixed an off-by-one bug in room/south/lair.c that prevented the sapphire from dropping
• NPC prompt fix — ambient chat and set_match responses from heartbeats now re-display the command prompt instead of leaving a blank line
• Runtime error logging — enhanced error reporting in obj/master.c
• Crash guard — query_ip_name/query_ip_number no longer crash on non-interactive objects in obj/simul_efun.c
• Wizard level check — relaxed overly strict level check in obj/leo.c

Quest Progression

With six quests now available, there's a clear progression path from new player to endgame:

1. Orc Fortress — introductory dungeon crawl (12 rooms)
2. Forest Remedy — multi-step fetch quest across the world (500 XP)
3. The Restless Dead — combat and puzzle hybrid (750 XP + enchanted ring)
4. The Fairy Plague — mid-level quest chain (1000 XP + fairy amulet)
5. Lost Miners — rescue mission in the mine tunnels (2000 XP + miner's lamp)
6. The Wyrm's Spellbook — high-level boss fight (1500 XP + arcane bracer)

Try It Out

Connect to the live instance:

telnet lpmud.ssetco.com 4000

Or run your own:

git clone https://github.com/midyear66/LPMud-Revised
cd LPMud-Revised
cp docker/.env.example docker/.env
docker compose -f docker/docker-compose.yml up -d

Check out the full LPMud-Revised project page for the complete feature list, or browse the source on GitHub.

The SSETCO Team