So you've mastered directions and portals and how to purchase items, but you've walked into a local tavern to grab a beer and run across an Non-Player Character (NPC) king down on his luck. It seems that Hera has overrun his property with wild boars and he's offering a ripe reward to the person who helps him drive them out. You're just that person! But how do you offer your help and accept his quest? He's just an NPC after all. Just saying "I'll do it!" isn't going to cut it. Now we're going to show you how so you can rid his kingdom of the vile beasts and reap the reward.

Non-player Characters (NPCs)
You will see many of these around in your travels around our little world, and since these characters are run by the game system 99% of the time you need to know the proper ways to interact with them. Some things are easy and common sense. If you see a cat or a dog and PET DOG, you'll pet the dog. That part is easy. But if you see our bereft king up there begging for help, how are you going to handle that? A nice pat on the head?

Tip! Type SET MONSTERBOLD immediately upon entering the lands for the first time. This will highlight NPCs on eScape and the Wizard.

Speaking to NPCs is easy, but figuring out what to say can be hard. Some will have nothing to say at all, others might just offer a bit of delightful banter before turning back to whatever they were doing... others may offer you hints to hidden treasures or passwords to gain access to previously inaccessible locations, so it's good to know the basics of communicating with them.

To speak with an NPC you ASK <npc> ABOUT/FOR <subject>. If we wanted to talk to our king up there about his problem we might type ASK KING ABOUT BOAR and he just might respond, "I'm cursed with pigs. Wild boars with huge tusks and sows with teeth like knives! I can't hire anyone to work my fields anymore." That might prompt you to ASK KING ABOUT CURSE and he might respond, "I angered Hera, but I don't want to get into it." See how we got the boar question from his initial query and then got the curse question from the answer to that? Most NPCs will hint toward what you should ask them when answering other questions.

Now, we seem to have hit a dead end with asking him about the curse, because asking about Hera got no response. So maybe we should look at his initial answer and ASK KING ABOUT HIRE and he may respond, "Well now, if you're serious about wanting work, I'll pay a bounty price for a bundle of sow ears or boar tusks."

One thing you can ask just about any NPC is ABOUT GOSSIP. Most everyone loves to gossip, and they just might tell you some interesting things that are going on or might be going on in the future.

So you ran off and collected a good amount of boar tusks and want to go receive your bounty. What you'd want to do is just like with another player GIVE TUSKS TO KING. If the king had been asking for money then, just like with another player, you'd type GIVE KING <amount>. The king was so overjoyed that you rid his lands of so many boars that he gave you a special scepter that he says does wondrous things.

But how does it work?

Special Items
Sometimes you will run across items with special properties as you adventure through our world, items that will do special things with the right command. Our scepter up there is a good example. If you wave a normal item around, it'll do just that, wave around. But you stumbled across waving your scepter and it made a glass of wine appear out of thin air! This scepter has special exceptions to the normal verb rules, when an item is like this they are generally known as scripted items.

Tip! Always be sure to LOOK at things mentioned in the room text. It might not be anything special, but it could just hint toward something in the room that isn't readily apparent. Looking at a wall might reveal a crack, then looking at the crack reveals a nest, then looking at the nest reveals a giant ruby that is yours for the taking. Don't miss out by not paying attention to you environment!

Most scripted items will have a USAGE, typing USAGE SCEPTRE might say something like, "Try the following verbs with your scepter: WAVE, RUB, TAP, and TOSS." That'll tell you all the special verbs that the scepter will react to and you simply just need to wave, rub, tap and toss it to figure it out. But sometimes you'll be told you need to figure it out for yourself, that's when you go on a verb hunt. Just try anything and everything you can think to make your scepter do something, but try and do it somewhere quiet so people don't think you're having grand delusions of being a mad king when they see you fiddling with it for hours on end.

You'll find some items in rooms will react like this too. There might be a rope swing that you need to JUMP SWING to jump toward and swing on, there might be a hammock that you can PUSH to cause to swing to and fro, or a wall sconce you TURN to open up a secret room. If something looks suspiciously like it should do something, then try to make it do something... the worst that can happen is it won't work, unless of course you think that statue of Discord might need a swift KICK and you get turned into a pile of ash for you troubles. But those are the risks you take in a world of petty gods and cruel kings.

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