Alignment

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Revision as of 07:51, 10 January 2022 by Ilde (Talk | contribs) (Alignments for different deities: align ranges of four gods changed)

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Alignment is the measure of how good or evil you are. This is of vital importance to priests (and of some importance to followers), since being too far out of alignment makes it impossible to perform rituals or even enter the advancement room.

Newbies still in Pumpkin Town can change their alignment by rescuing or drowning beetles in the priests' guild area. This is a good idea if you're planning to join the priests' guild, and you can almost get to ideal Pishite or Sekkite alignment this way.

Alignments for different deities

Each deity has a different range of alignments they would like their priests and followers to stay inside. You can check your alignment at any time with "score align" or "score alignment" ("score" by itself also contains this information)--this gives you a general indication of how good or evil you are, and tells you how happy (or not) your deity is with you. If you are in alignment, they will be "very happy" or "pleased" with you. If you're so far out of alignment as to not be able to perform rituals, they'll be "quite annoyed", or worse, "very angry" with you. If you're on the edge, they'll be "a little concerned" about you, and rituals may be more difficult.

Alignment is visible to players on a scale that goes from 50 good to 50 evil using the Detect Alignment ritual, or in a number of steps using the "score align" command.

The mud tracks alignment on a scale with a large number of steps, examination of the mudlib (/include/tune.h) suggests that this may be from -10000 (good) to 10000 (evil).

#define MAX_AL 10000

The mapping in the mudlib (/std/living/living.c) of score align to absolute alignment values in the mud is as follows:

string align_string() {
   switch ( alignment ) {
      case -MAX_AL .. -5001 : return "extremely good"; break;
      case -5000 .. -2501 : return "very good"; break;
      case -2500 .. -1251 : return "quite good"; break;
      case -1250 .. -601 : return "good"; break;
      case -600 .. -301 : return "barely good"; break;
      case -300 .. 300 : return "neutral"; break;
      case 301 .. 600 : return "barely evil"; break;
      case 601 .. 1250 : return "evil"; break;
      case 1251 .. 2500 : return "quite evil"; break;
      case 2501 .. 5000 : return "very evil"; break;
      default : return "extremely evil"; break;
   }
} /* align_string() */

Thus, if we divided those mudlib values by -200 (so evil is negative), then we get:

Min Max Align
25.005 50 extremely good
12.505 25 very good
6.255 12.5 quite good
3.005 6.25 good
1.505 3 barely good
-1.5 1.5 neutral
-3 -1.505 barely evil
-6.25 -3.005 evil
-12.5 -6.255 quite evil
-25 -12.505 very evil
-50 -25.005 extremely evil

This maps pretty well with reports from the Detect Alignment ritual.

Changing alignment

The most common way to change your alignment, either intentionally or unintentionally, is by killing things. In general, killing evil things makes you more good, killing good things makes you more evil, and killing neutral things moves you towards neutrality. Killing things with more extreme alignments moves you towards more extreme alignments, and works more quickly. See list of NPC Alignments for a handy list of common NPC alignments.

There are, however, a few other ways:

  • Ritually burying corpses: Priests can use their ritual bury command to move their alignment more towards their ideal. This depends on faith.rituals.special.
  • Praying: Praying moves priests and followers towards ideal alignment. Prayer is more effective when further away from the ideal, and is also more effective with more faith.rituals.special.
  • Shattering holy relics: If you're more evil than your deity's ideal, then you can shatter a relic of a deity more evil than yours to become more good. Likewise, if you're more good than your deity's ideal, you can shatter a relic of a deity more good than yours to become more evil. So, for example, a Pishite may shatter any non-Pishe relics to become more good (until going past ideal alignment) and a Sekkite may shatter any non-Sek relics to become more evil. A Gufnorkian would shatter Pishe relics to become less good, and relics of any other non-Gufnork deity to become more good.

Determining alignment

For yourself, you can get a fuzzy indicator of your alignment with your score. To see others' alignments, there are a variety of methods available.

Detect Alignment

Granted by Pishe, Sek, and Sandelfon, as well as to Sandelfon's followers, this ritual gives you a numeric indication of the target's alignment and is the most precise method. With lower skills, your result may be less accurate, but even then it seems to give you a result in the general area of the target's actual alignment.

See Alignment

Granted by Pishe and Sek, this ritual changes your vision so that when you see someone, their fuzzy alignment (the same as is shown in "score align") and their deity, if applicable, is shown after their name.

Light

Performing Light on a target will cause them to glow in a colour that gives a general indication of their alignment. Green is neutral, or nearly so. The more towards the red end of the spectrum they glow (with crimson being the highest), the eviller they are, and the more towards the violet end of the spectrum they glow (with violet being the highest), the more good they are.

This ritual is pk-checked, as it can interfere with covert actions.

Red-hilted dagger

Hitting someone with a red-hilted dagger will cause the dagger to spout flames--black flames for evil creatures, white flames for good, and nothing for neutral or nearly neutral creatures. You can get, a "flicker", a "gout", or a "jet", with a flicker meaning 2 - 4 degrees, a gout meaning 5 - 15 degrees, and a jet meaning anything over 15.

Titles

There are two titles, Lord/Lady/Creature of Light/Darkness, given to the most "good" or most "evil" player online.

External links