How Everything Works

In the absolute broadest sense, here is how the game generally works:

First, you create a character, with a Faction, some Merits, and maybe some Flaws.

Starting off as a regular hapless human (who may be oddly devoid of gender if you didn't pick one to start as with your initial merits), with some basic Equipment, you wander out into the streets of your home city (or fly over to the other one), and start picking fights with ferals. This rewards you with Freecreds, Experience, and usually some new Mutations, which come with new Powers. You spend the Freecreds and Experience on various things to improve yourself, allowing you to generally get more done.

How you play matters:

You can play the game either using the Web Interface (the webpage with all the tabs on the left side and big buttons to click) or through a Direct Connection (which is actually available through the Web Interface, or you can connect with a MUD client). Or both at once. With a direct connection, you actually walk around through a series of interconnected rooms, running into people, talking to them, and generally handling things in real time through text commands, while with the web interface you are in this nebulous non-space, picking locations from one tab and summoning random collections of ferals to fight from them in another. There are several things you can do through Direct Connection that you can't do with the Web Interface, so it will likely end up the primary way you play. Meanwhile, the only thing you can do through the Web Interface only is access Web Missions. However, Training is much easier to do through the Web Interface, given the nice dynamic interface and the fact that it does not require you to be in a specific training area.

How combat works:

You have a list of powers you can use (like "strike") under a list of enemies (like "1. skunk girl"). When it's your turn, you do something like "use strike at 1" to declare what power you want to use, and what you want to use it on. You can also just "target 1" to set a target, and proceed to just "use strike" without having to keep specifying it. With the Web Interface, you just click your target to select it, then click powers. Different powers have different effects, and take some time before they can be used again. Generally, you want at least 2 different ways to attack, and some way to heal yourself to begin with.

Important Commands

Type this: pub Hey everybody. And "Hey everybody." on the public channel. That's the general purpose out of character chat interface everyone can always see.

Type this: 'Hey there. And everyone standing in the room with you will see you say "Hey there." Interesting trick- If you put two commas in a row, you can stick the "you say" bit in the middle. So typing: "Like this,,see?" will result in something like: "Like this," you say, "see?"

Type this: :waves. And everyone in the room will see you wave. You can combine this with the pub command, like "pub :nods." which will let you pose yourself there.

The "spoof" command lets you display a message to the room without having to have it start with your name.

Learning more stuff about yourself can be done with these commands: score - Lots of info. mut - What kind of crazy mutations you currently have and the powers they grant. groin - Numerical info on your size and sexual characteristics.

About someone else in the room (let's say their name is Nuku for example... and note that they will see you checking): look nuku smell nuku

Or everyone in the room: glance - The short version of everyone's description. ws - Quick stats about everyone present. wi - Roleplaying preferences of everyone present. smell here- Smell everyone all at once.

If someone isn't in the room and you want to talk: page nuku=Hey there. Note: Don't go randomly paging Nuku. He's busy.

If you want to hang out with someone, maybe go fight things together, one of you has to carry the other, so you "carry nuku" and he will then be prompted to "hopon" you. Later, he can "hopoff" when you're done. You can also "msummon" someone to "meet" you, which can be handy, and if the two of you want to go somewhere nobody can bother you, you can "+room Someplace Nobody Knows About" to create your own personal private room called Someplace Nobody Knows About. This drains a little energy off your Battery, but don't worry, it recovers over time, and is only really used for weird little obscure abilities like this.

Stuff to collect and what it's good for.

Levels - They cost Experience and Freecreds to train. The higher your level, the more generally awesome you are (you take more damage, you have more energy, more slots to fill with all these other things, a higher cap before Experience starts getting converted to Freecreds, although the cost of all this stuff increases (so you want to fill all your slots, then level, generally). Anything else with a level to it generally won't work for you if it's too far away from your own level (using items, getting mutations, encountering wimpier ferals), but you never really have to worry about being too high a level. If you want to handicap yourself, type, for instance, "mentor 5" to lower your effective level (in this case, to 5).

Powers - Get a mutation, and it will frequently give you a new power. As you level, you gain more and more slots you can fill by mastering any power you currently have. This lets you keep it after you lose that mutation (you can drop it later if you really want to), and also allows you to Master it up to two times, improving some aspect of how it works of your choosing.

Badges- Various interesting accomplishments result in you receiving badges. Aside from bragging rights, the more badges you collect, the more Freecreds you get as a bonus for earning new ones. The most common sort of badges are total Mutation badges, earned by a feral attempting to mutate you further when you've already been fully mutated into what they are. Some dedications allow you to do things with the mutations you have total badges for. Most Web Missions and Quests also give badges for completing them, and most of the rest are in some way related to having sex, particularly if someone involved has the virgin perk.

Professions- Professions each give you 3 skills that do generally interesting things outside of combat. Your first two are free. You can benefit from getting the same skill up to 3 times. Without spending Mako or messing with perks, you can have 6 total, but can't drop them once chosen.

Roles- Roles are similar to professions, but give skills with combat benefits. Every 8 levels, you get a new role slot. Like professions, once you learn a role, you need to spend Mako to remove it, but you are allowed to learn twice as many roles as you can actually use at once, and swap your spares around.

Items- There are various places in the game where you can buy new items, using either Freecreds or Mako. Some of these can be equipped for various semi-permanent effects, others are consumables, which can be used for temporary or permanent effects. It's also possible to create new items from scratch with various properties and someone really needs to beef this up with all the details on exactly how this works with builder nanites and collectors and schematics and item experience and loadouts and upkeep because I don't have a clue.

Mako- Mako is a special form of currency, spent on various sorts of premium options. You can buy it outright with real world money, or earn it by adding new content to the game, having other people approve of what you've added (once a day you can type something like "commend festive reindeer" to show your approval of a given feral, and toss free Mako to its creator, and after a satisfying roleplaying session, it's customary to type something like "+vote nuku" to give them a bonus and a shot at a raffle prize), or you can get lucky with other sorts of giveaways.

Genitalia- Your penis, balls, vagina, breasts, and overall size fluctuate in size and number in a complex way as you are otherwise mutated. Any mutation you get will randomly change one of these aspects to be closer to what's normal for the mutation. This is a major point of interest for a surprisingly large portion of the playerbase, and there is a perk available for every possible personal preference you have on what they do. Whatever mutation you have for your groin also comes with a matching victory message that sometimes activates after defeating a feral. Many of these involve having sex with the defeated feral, which can lead to awkward situations. A quick primer on the gender related perks by the way: Male preferred- You will never change in any way that takes you away from fully, 100% male. At least 1 penis, no vagina, flat breasts. Always female- Like preferred, you'll never stop being female (at least some breast size, and a vagina), but may still end up sprouting a penis here and there. Never surrender a breast- All the perks worded like this are essentially the same thing as the Always set, but you also won't ever lose any spares you end up with beyond the standard count.

Fish- Get a fishing rod and some bait, find a fishing spot, play a minigame, and gain some fishing skill along with some fish which... do absolutely nothing so far.

Farming- Not in yet, but that's a whole other thing.