All about Mobiles

Mobiles. mob for short; the old MUD word for anything that lives and moves, are the world's creatures and characters: a shopkeeper, a town crier, a goblin, a mouse, a shambling zombie. Friendly or fierce, they are all mobiles. They are not items: they stand in rooms, you can look at them, and (soon) they will move about, talk, and fight. Builders make and shape them; the commands mirror items but use mob.

Seeing them. When you look, any mobiles in the room are named after the items:

Town Square
Welcome to the town square. There is a fountain here and some benches to rest on.
Exits: north
You see a coin.
A town crier is here.
A goblin is here.

• examine name (or ex mobile) to read its description
• look name does the same

As with items, you can refer to a mobile by any word of its name or its keywords, and adjectives disambiguate; look grizzled or look grizzled zombie picks the grizzled one out of a crowd of zombies.

Looking at a mobile also shows whatever it has equipped — the weapon it wields, the armour it wears — the same way eq lists your own gear, so you can size up what a creature is carrying before a fight.

Making and shaping mobiles needs the worldbuilder, implementor, or admin role. The command is mob (mon and monster are aliases).

A mobile is born in the room you're standing in.

  mob create goblin

ref below is the mobile's keyword or its number (id); you edit mobiles in the room with you.

• mob ref name new name — rename it
• mob ref desc text — set the examine text players read
• mob ref displayname text – the name players see in the room and in combat, shown in place of the raw name (The Spider Queen for a mob named Spider Queen). Targeting still uses the real name and keywords. (disp is an alias.)
• mob ref lookslike text – a whole custom presence line for the room, used instead of the default “Name is here.” (A pair of red eyes gleams in the dark.) (looks is an alias.)

Data fields. A mobile's stats, flags, and behaviour live in its data, with the same typed values and editor as items:

• mob ref data field value — set a field (true/false → flag, numbers → numbers, else text; empty or false clears it)
• mob ref data — list the mobile's data fields

Useful fields:

• data keywords word word… — extra words to refer to it (e.g. data keywords grizzled thistle, so two zombies can be told apart)
  • Combat & experience. Mobiles fight with the d200 to-hit system; set these to make one tougher or more rewarding (all default sensibly — a bare mob create is already a weak level-1 creature):

• data maxhp n — its hit points (default 10) — how long it lasts in a fight
• data level n — its level (default 1); each level of gap between attacker and defender is worth an effective +1 hitroll, so a higher-level foe is harder to hit and hits harder
• data elevel n — effective level for the consider command only: what the mobile reads as when a player sizes it up, without touching its real combat level. Use it when a creature is tougher or weaker than its level looks (a level-3 brute that fights like a level 10 → data elevel 10). Unset, consider falls back to its real level.
• data damage dice — attack damage as a dice expression (e.g. 1d3, 2d6+1), default 1. A wielded weapon overrides this with its own damage.
• data ar n – an armour modifier (default 0, zero-based, matching item AR and the modern armour display): + is better armoured (harder to hit), - is worse (easier). Each point is about 0.5%, so data ar 10 is ~5% harder to hit and data ar -20 ~10% easier. Worn armour (onwear-ar) stacks on top.
• data hitroll n — a flat bonus to its attack rolls (default 0; each point ≈ +2.5% to hit)
• data damroll n — a flat bonus added to its damage on every hit that lands (default 0). Stacks on top of its dice (or its wielded weapon) and any onwear-damroll from gear it wears — a boss with data damroll 1 hits for +1 over its dice.
• data xpvalue n — experience a player gains for slaying it (default 0). Mobiles never gain experience — only players do. (expvalue is accepted as a synonym.)
• data dodge pct — a chance (in percent) to sidestep an incoming blow, the same skill players train. data dodge 1 is a 1% chance to make an attacker miss.
• data warcry phrase — a line the mobile shouts the instant a fight begins (“For the horde!”). Flavour; leave it unset for a silent creature.

Wandering. By default a mobile stands where it spawned. Flag it with data wander true and it will amble on its own — roughly every minute it may step through an open exit into an adjacent room, and players in both rooms see it leave and arrive. A wanderer never leaves its home zone (it only takes exits that stay in the same zone), never walks into a closed/under-construction room, and holds still while it's in a fight. Its position is remembered only while the world is running — a daemon restart sends every mobile back to its spawn room. Leave the flag off (or data wander false) for a stationary shopkeeper, guard, or trainer.

Mobiles that fight as a pack. Two fields let creatures come to each other's defence, so attacking one goblin brings the whole warren down on you:

• data party tag tag… — the pack(s) this mobile belongs to (free-form words, e.g. data party rats or data party goblins raiders).
• data assist tag tag… — the pack(s) this mobile will defend. When any mobile in its room whose party matches is attacked, this one leaps in against the attacker.

So a den of rats that all defend one another:

mob create rat
mob rat data party rats
mob rat data assist rats

Strike one rat and every other rat in the room joins the fight against you. (Peaceful npc mobiles never assist.)

Hostile on sight (aggro). A mobile is peaceful until struck by default. Flag it data aggro always and it opens the fight itself the instant a player steps into its room (a warren of them will swarm). data aggro dark makes it hostile only when the room is unlit – a lurker that leaves you be by torchlight but strikes in the black. Clear it with data aggro false. (Peaceful npc mobiles never turn aggressive.)

Reactions. A mobile can react to what happens around it. The first reaction is overheard speech:

• data react_say phrase — what it says when someone speaks nearby
• data react_say_chance pct — the chance, in percent (default 100)

The classic example is a zombie that mutters for brains one time in ten:

mob create zombie
mob zombie desc A shambling corpse, jaw slack, eyes empty.
mob zombie data react_say brains
mob zombie data react_say_chance 10

Now, whenever anyone speaks in that room, there's a 10% chance:

Cindy says: anyone here?
The zombie says: brains

A friendly mobile works the same way — a town crier who calls out when folk gather and chatter. (More reactions — greeting arrivals, responding to attacks — will follow.)

Remove a mobile. mob destroy ref — takes it out of the world.

A mobile can carry and use gear just like a player. This is a builder tool — worldbuilders, implementors and admins anywhere; zonebuilders inside zones they own.

Load its inventory two ways: hand over something you're holding with give item mob, or use the as command to move an item from your inventory (or the floor) straight into the mobile:

• as mob get item — put an item into the mobile's inventory
• as mob drop item — take one back out onto the floor

Then dress it from what it carries:

• as mob wear item — wear a piece of armour or clothing
• as mob wield item — wield a weapon (which becomes its damage)
• as mob hold item — hold something in the off-hand
• as mob remove item — take an item back off

See what a mobile is carrying with mob mob inv (equipped items are flagged). Its gear is part of it: capture the dressed mobile with setspawn and every spawned copy comes dressed and armed the same way — and the gear drops as loot when it dies.

Rare drops. By default everything a mobile carries spills into its corpse. Put data droprate pct on an item (either droprate 10 or droprate 10%) and it reaches the corpse only that share of the time — a boss's signature weapon at droprate 10 lands on about one kill in ten, which is what makes it worth farming. On a no-drop roll that copy is destroyed, but the mobile respawns wearing a fresh one, so registered loot is never lost. (A slain shopkeeper still loses ~half its stock in the scuffle, before droprate is even rolled.)

Coin drops. A mobile's own coins always spill into its corpse; on top of that you can give it a gamble drop, rolled fresh on every kill, with data coindrop type min-max chance%. e.g. data coindrop copper 10-40 50% – on half of all kills, 10 to 40 copper appear in the corpse; the other half, nothing. The type is a currency (copper, silver, or gold); the amount is a range (10-40) or a single number (silver 1 for exactly one silver); the chance is a percent. It stacks on top of any fixed coins the mobile carries, and a missed roll simply drops nothing – so a filler mob need not be worth a guaranteed purse. A shambling zombie with data coindrop copper 1-5 50% pays out only now and then. Join several specs with ; for a mixed drop – data coindrop silver 1-2 25%; copper 5-20 100% – each rolled on its own.

Editing a mobile's items. The plain item command only reaches your own inventory and the floor, so to edit something a mobile is holding, use mobitem — it works just like item, but over the inventories of mobiles in the room:

• mobitem item — show that item's data
• mobitem item name new name or mobitem item desc text
• mobitem item data field value

If more than one mobile here carries a match, mobitem lists them numbered (1.dagger - a rusty dagger (carried by a goblin)); pick one with mobitem 2.dagger data …. (You can also edit any item by its number with plain item # …, wherever in the world it is.)

If a mobile carries a stackable item – one with a data stack key (see All about Items) – you can have each kill drop a random count of it with data dropq min-max set on that item. e.g. a sheep carrying wool: mobitem wool data dropq 1-3 drops 1 to 3 wool per kill, rolled fresh each time (a plain data dropq 3 drops exactly three). Whatever the roll, it lands as a single merged stack in the corpse, ready to loot.

A trainer is a mobile that teaches profession skills. Flag it with data trainer true, and set the profession it teaches with data profession class — Fighter, Wizard, Woodsman, or Adventurer (warrior, rogue and mage are accepted too). A player standing with the trainer types train to see what's on offer, and train skill to learn one for skill points. You may write data class instead of data profession – they are the same field. (Woodsman is one class wearing three faces by alignment: ranger, woodsman, rogue. A Woodsman's first skill is identify, as a Fighter's is hit.)

A trainer usually keeps shop in a safe room — a no-combat sanctuary you flag with the room command room data safe true — so the guild hall stays peaceful (anyone who tries to fight there is told “No violence is permitted here!”).

A complete Fighter's guild:

room data safe true                  (make this room a no-combat sanctuary)
mob create Silas Mossthorn           (creates a mob named Silas)
mob silas data trainer true          (...makes him a guildmaster/trainer)
mob silas data profession Fighter    (...and able to train Warriors)

Now a Fighter who types train here is offered the hit skill, and train hit teaches it for one skill point. See Training and skills in How to Play.

Some mobiles shouldn't be fought — trainers, shopkeepers, quest-givers. Mark any of them with mob mob data npc true and players can't attack it (kill, hit and attack all bounce). Clear it again with mob mob data npc false.

A mobile you create is a single, one-off creature; slay it and it is gone. To make it repopulate, register it as a zone spawn. Zones reset about once an hour, and each reset re-creates any registered mobile whose live copy is missing.

• zone setspawn mob [room#] — register the mobile (here, or by id) to respawn; the room defaults to where you stand
• zone setspawn mob spawn# — replace that spawn: give an existing spawn number instead of a room, and the old mobile (with its gear) is swapped for the one here
• zone spawn — list this zone's mobile spawns (each shows a #)
• zone spawn # — spawn a copy of that one right now
• zone remspawn # — stop it from spawning

mob create goblin
mob goblin desc A small, mean-looking goblin.
zone setspawn goblin
zone spawn            (lists it, e.g. "#3  goblin  (room #42)")

The goblin you registered stays as the first live copy; once slain, the next reset brings a fresh one back. Its corpse still counts as “out there”, so a spawn never double-stacks while an instance remains.

• Mobiles are a separate kind of thing: item commands never touch a mobile, and mob commands never touch an item. (To edit a mouse that's a mobile, use mob mouse …, not item mouse ….)
• Mobiles live in rooms; they aren't picked up or carried.
• They share the look and keyword systems with items, so describing and naming them feels the same.

See also: All about Items, How to Play, How to Build.