One of the main reasons for playing in a MUD is to gain levels through gaining experience. Experience is gained mainly by killing things and to a very small degree when you master skills and spells. Gaining levels is important because it makes your character tougher, more powerful and gives your character access to new skills and spells. There are up to 100 mortal player levels and each level brings about its own rewards. However, as your character increases in level, the amount of experience points needed to get to the next level increases too. To see how many experience points your character currently needs to get to achieve the next level, just type the command 'level'. Generally the bigger and more powerful the creature you kill, the more the experience points it's worth.
When you go hunting for creatures, always be careful. Make sure you are going to an area that is suitable for your character's current level. If you go into an area that is too difficult, you will easily be defeated in combat. Just type 'areas' to find out about the safer places where your character should go adventuring. When you see a creature for the first time, its a good idea to type 'consider creaturename'. This tells you the creature's experience relative to yours and how hard it would be to kill. Some creatures are docile, meaning that they wont attack you when you come near them. The more dangerous ones are the aggressive ones which will attack you on sight. To initiate combat with a creature, type 'kill creaturename'. Killing creatures can be very rewarding. They give your character's experience points, money and even new equipment to use. Note that your last fifty kills are recorded and every time you kill a creature that was one of the fifty, you will get less and less experience for it. Over time, creatures with a high intelligence will also learn from fighting your character, thus becoming harder to defeat.
As your character gains in level, you will find that new and different fighting styles will become available. These fighting styles include evasive, standard, defensive, berserk and aggressive. Using an appropriate fighting style against a particular opponent who is vulnerable to it will give your character a huge advantage in combat. To set your fighting style, just type 'style stylename' where stylename is one of the aforementioned fighting stances. You can find out more about the different fighting styles by entering 'help style'.
If your character is able to, you may also use missile-type weapons such as bows and crossbows to damage creatures in adjacent rooms. To do this, you must have a missile weapon wielded and the correct type of ammunition for the weapon in your inventory together with a reasonable proficiency in the missile weapons skill. The command to fire arrows is 'fire direction target' where direction is either north, south, east, west, up or down and target is the name of the creature you want to shoot at.
To do well and survive in fights, always keep an eye on your hit point levels. If it goes too low and you start to bleed, then type 'flee'. Even though you may lose a bit of experience points when you flee from combat, it is far better than dying. Also, you character should wield a good weapon and wear good armor. After all, the monsters are not stupid. They will sometimes chase after you when you flee or use nasty spells on you. Of course, using spells and skills such as bash on the monsters is recommended as it helps you defeat them faster. It's also better to travel in groups with friendly adventurers as you can defeat more creatures together than alone. Try looking for adventurers who are near your level so that there are no incompatibilities when grouping. Always remember to bring along healing potions and recall potions which take you back to a safe city. You should also try to map out new areas which you are exploring so that you don't get lost. Mapping makes corpse retrieving easier too. A simple piece of blank or grid paper and a pencil are all you need. And finally, when you are in trouble and need help, don't hesitate to chat for some. Ask nicely and help is sure to come from your fellow adventurers.