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=Well of Souls=

Well of Souls is one of several games currently on www.synthetic-reality.com. It is an RPG game with an ever expanding number of features and the ability for players to add to the game each time they play it (more on this below). The game is absolutely FREE to download and play, but there are several advantages to donating $25 in exchange for the perks of a Golden Soul.

Game play overall is only restricted to the imagination of the developer, whose world you play. The default world Evergreen is where exciting things happen, such as Player vs. Player or PK fights. A PK Fight is where 2 Players use their characters to fight each other using weapons, attack spells, as well as disease and ability altering spells. The best thing about PvP action in Well of Souls is that you don't have to go into any special startup screen or go to a battle desk and register to enter a fight. Simply find a foe and attack away, but remember it is nice to ask first if you don't want to be attacked right back. If you never want to be attacked, then you can also make a non-pk character.

WoS has an inbuilt RP (Role-Play) dice function that is and has been used by gamers to conduct live server RP play, as well as simple things such as deciding who gets to attack first in a PvP duel.

Leveling in Evergreen isn't very difficult. Your first time advancing a character to Level 100 shouldn't take more than 25 hours. Once you get good at leveling though, it can be done in 6-7 hours. It doesn't mean your character will be very powerful, though. It takes a lot of work to get a good character in most worlds.

As with many other RPG based communities WoS has a Guild system, which are also known as clans on most MORPG/MMORPG games. Guilds can be joined by anyone who meets some simple requirements although being accepted is of course up to the Guild Leader. The main requirement to join Guilds is 20 hours on the character; however this requirement is waived if you are a Golden Soul.

Once you are accepted, you can wear the Guild Uniform and fight in Wars against other guilds as well as represent your guild in tournaments and the game in general. Guild Wars can be formal via the recently implemented Guild Wars system or simply as a slugfest between 2 rival guilds until only 1 is left standing.

After you have played the game a while (100 Hours) on a single character you can even make your own guild. Choose to make allies & enemies, fight wars and design an eye-catching guild page. People with Golden Souls can make guilds at any time though, so long as the character making the guild is Level 60, but the player with a Golden Soul must have 100 total hours.

Storylines differ vastly between worlds. The default world Evergreen has a simple story, but the world as a whole remains incomplete due to increasing functions being added. The worlds RoT (Revolution of Terror) and Athelias have cool story lines and are but 2 of the many popular user-created worlds available to download and play for free. Going into detail about the storylines might only ruin the fun you will have playing these worlds, but every world is unique and has something you won’t find in other worlds. I am beta testing some new worlds right now which are like a completely new game run through Well of Souls. Their size and depth will leave you breathless when they are released.

The Graphics and sound are admittedly what is keeping this game from being truly perfect. The graphics are 2D and not much to them. Some world developers are skilled enough to create masterpieces despite engine restrictions. The sound, aside from providing lag, is cut up at times and often slow to load. The plus side here is the ability to make your own skins. You decide EXACTLY what your character looks like on the map, in scenes, while attacking and getting hit. You can make it so only you can see your skin or share it with your friends and other gamers, if you want. Skinning is the process of making skins. It is fun, relatively easy, and rewarding. Leveling to 100 on your shiny new sword-user is even better when you do it on a skin you, yourself, made. New skins will automatically be downloaded through a server, and people can download your skins if you want them to.

There is a never ending potential of things you are able to do with WoS. If you get bored with a world, there are always dozens more to try, with a community of world developers constantly working on new & different world projects. A world developer is someone who develops a world (DUH). Making a world is a long process, but in the end is very rewarding when you see people enjoying the world. Making a world won't make you any money, but is something else you can do with your creative talents & spare time. WoS Quest Language is used to create worlds, and resembles a very simplified version of C++ in some ways. It is custom to WoS and gives you quite a bit of freedom while scripting. There are Worlds based on anything from PS2/gamecube/ect, to TV shows, and the best come right from the developer's own imagination. World Developers are only limited to their own imagination and a few arbitrary programming limitations of course.

Online play is possible 24/7 thanks to the MIX Server System that is used in the game. MIX Servers are servers run off the person's computer. You don't have to connect to this monster server list with 1000 people on each server (in fact, Well of Souls servers almost never get bigger than 50 people). You set your own rules, decide who stays and who gets kicked out of your server because you don't like them. Your server can be set to play any world at all, so if there are not a lot of say gargoyles players on, then you can make your own server to play the world and with some luck more people will come play it with you. Of course, with any game, occasionally servers go down. Samsyn, the creator of the game, was smart enough to include other ways of connecting to server if the master server crashes for some reason. Abilities such as Telnet let you connect directly to the server whether or not the master server is working.

The online playing community is relatively small compared to some games. Numbers of online players at any specific time of day range from 150-500 players. The Synthetic-Reality Forums for the game are loaded with new posts daily so keeping up with current events with guilds, worlds and other WoS related happenings is easy.

I have only really touched on the surface of Well of Souls. There is a LOT more to it than I am telling you and hey, since its completely free and your not doing much right now aside from reading game reviews, it is definitely a game worth trying.

~Hesacon [ editted by Minkor ]

How To Play
 making a character making a character is simple. click one of the two buttons that say New. a window will pop up, asking for a name, gender, class, and weither you want to be a "PKer" Pker stands for Player Killer. saying you want ot be a PKer will allow other Pkers to attack you, you to attack them, and for your pets to auto attack them. For the name, just put whatever you want your character to be known as. for Gender, pick whatever you want. on the class list, you may notice something like this by the class name: (90% magic, 10% hand) this shows your magic/normal attack ratio. the higher the percentage, the stronger the attacks of that class will be. in the above example, that class will have stronger spels than normal attacks. After selecting your desired class name gender and weither you want to be a PKer, click OK. a message pops up asking if you are sure. if you are not, click no. if you are, click yes. A new window pops up, showing some attributes. They are as follows and do as follows:

Strength---Makes normal attacks hit harder

Wisdom-Makes spells hit harder

StaminaMakes you take less damage

Agility-Makes you get hit less often

Dexterity---Makes you hit more often

So, for a spell caster class, you probly are going to get more wisdom than strength. you get 20 points at the start to put into these attributes. (to put a point into it, click it once.) every time you level up, that window pops up again and you get 10 more points. After that is done, and you click ok, you get to pick your "skin". your skin is what you look like in the game. Well of souls comes with some at the start, but there are others online and yuo can even make your own. select what you would like to look like. congratulations! you now have a player! select him and click "Incarnate"

The map Gameplay is simple, as it only uses the mouse. When you are on the map, left click to move around. loot at the bottom left of the screen. the various buttons there all do different things, but i will just cover their basics. the hunt button shows you were enemies are (at first it wont, but the more you hunt, more enemies will show up.) The Equipment button lets you view your equipment, and allows you to equip new weapons/armor/shields ect. ect. the Spell button lets you view what spells you have, learn new spells, and train your elements. higher elements are needed for better spells. the item button lets you view all the items you have on your character. there is no limit to the number of Different items you can have, but you cant have more than you character level + 1 of a single item. the camp button takes you into a scene without enemy monsters that other players can enter. this is good for trading items with other players. the stat button shows the stats of all nearby players (their level, class, strength, wisdom, ect. ect.) and the Well button takes you back to the "well", allowing you to make a new character or change to a different one.

Combat During combat, you use the right mouse button to move around the scene, although this really does nothing. When fighting enemies, there are three ways you can attack. you can do a normal attack, cast a spell, or throw an item. To do a normal attack, click the button on the button called "Equipment". your mouse should turn into a sword. when the sword has yellow stars falling off it, left click your opponent to attack! (if there are multiple enemies, it may take a few seconds to get your attack in, as Well of Souls tries to make attacks turn based) to cast a spell, it is similar. click the icon on the button named "Spells" and click the spell you want to cast. your icon will turn into a wand, and, when a spell is selected, the spell will come off the tip of the wand. left click your enemy to cast the spell. Spells range from dealing damage to a single enemy, stunning an enemy, poisoning an enemy, healing an ally, damaging ALL enemies, temporary stat boosts, and even charming and taming an enemy monster, making him your loyal pet/slave/cyborg! (the name for pets are as different as the worlds are) To throw an item, click the button marked Items. Some items can damage the enemy if thrown on them. Be careful what items you throw though, as most can heal. Checking the upper left corner of the item screen shows what the item will do and required level to use it. To throw an item, click the item you wish to throw and left click the enemy. Your mouse will turn into a potion, and when you can throw an item, there will be bubbles coming out the top. you can also give items to other players by doing this. If you think you can not win the fight, or don't have time for a fight, click the "flee" button. sometimes this button does not work, but most of the time it does. this button takes you out of combat and back to the map (If there are no enemies, the "flee" button changes to the "exit" button)

Chatting with other players If you've noticed the window at the bottom, you can use that to talk to other players. just click in the bar below it, type your message, and hit enter. all other players will see this unless they have turned off eavesdrop. there are other commands you can do, they are as follows: CAUTION: LONG LIST!!

/funpak This opens a floating window which logs various internal game activities. It is mostly of interest to world designers as it shows error messages generated when a world is loaded. /tune  This command sets your current 'gossip' channel number. If you don't enter a channel number, it just tells you what your current channel is. Channel numbers are between 0 and um.. I forget. /bubbles Some people don't like my wonderful "chat bubbles" (seen in scenes only). This command lets you toggle them on and off. /fps This toggles the FRAMES PER SECOND meter on and off (it appears in the upper right corner of the map or scene window). I'm not sure if this works in release builds or not. /afk This command turns on your AFK (Away From Keyboard) status so people understand why you are not responding to them. A special graphic appears next to your name on the MAP list. If you provide an optional message, it will be automatically typed as a reply to any sentence which begins with your character's name. (Any subsequent chat typing on your part will turn off your AFK status automatically.) /shout Well, sorry for all the non-cheats! This is how you make sure your message is heard by everyone in the world (unless they have Muted All Shouting). You can also do this by starting your sentence with an exclamation mark (!). /w This sends your message only to the current 'whisper target.' The target is set by right-clicking on a name in the MAP list and selecting the whisper command. Thereafter a pair of lips will appear on the MAP list next to your current whisper target. (You can only have one whisper target at a time). You can also send a whisper by starting your sentence with a semicolon

/fx  If you are in a scene, this command turns on one of the special effects (like the water ripple effect). A value of 0 turns the effect off. Only you see this.

/weather  If you are in a scene, this changes the weather to the number you specify. A value of 0 turns the weather off. My favorite is "/weather 9" which is heavy snow. Look how the snow sticks! /bkgnd If you are in a scene, this changes the background jpeg to the one you specify. The file has to exist in either the world or the wos "scenes" folder. I don't think you need to add the ".jpg" suffix, but I forget. This is mainly of use to world designers who are trying to get the best look for a scene.

/theme  This selects a new 'sound theme' (those background environmentals like lakeside, heavy rain, etc.) I'm always looking for new theme possibilities, so feel free to send me (free) wave files. Setting it to zero turns it off.

/midi This starts a new MIDI music file playing. The file you name must be in the world's or Wos "MIDI" folder. Again, I don't think you add the ".mid" suffix, but I can't recall for sure. To stop the music, type "/midi " (don't forget the space.)

/sayings This is the same as selecting "Book Of Sayings" from the BOOKS menu. It starts up a copy of notepad to let you manually edit your current aliases.

/diary This is the same as selecting "Personal Diary" from the BOOKS menu. It starts a copy of WordPad and lets you edit your diary document.

/colors This is the same as selecting "Book of Colors" from the BOOKS menu. The Book of Colors lets you choose colors for various flavors of incoming chat text.

/skin This is the same as selecting "Book of Skins" from the BOOKS menu. This book lets you review skin files you have collected, and to switch your current character's skin (solo game only).

/pi This opens the "Let's Find Pi" mini-game. It's thrilling.

/wav This plays the specified .WAV file (which must be present in the world's or wos SFX folder)

/pokedex This is the same as selecting "Pokedex" from the BOOKs menu. This opens a list of all the monsters defined in the world, along with their stats.

/pet This is the same as pushing the TRAIN PET button on the EQUIP screen. It opens your Pokegatchi Training Pen. It might be a bad idea to do this when you are not incarnated, so perhaps this command is a bit dangerous (crash? corrupt character?)

/asteroid This opens the Big Ol' Space Rocks mini-game without having to walk to Stonetree (or in worlds which haven't added an arcade link). Again, if high scores are ever recorded it might be dangerous to do this when not incarnated.

/villagers This opens a special viewer which lets you browse all the filmstrips in your world's MONSTERS folder. This is very useful for a scene designer who needs to know the file name and image number for a particular ACTOR in a scene.

/q This opens the specialized 'Quest Editor' to rummage through the world's "quest.txt" file. Although this LOOKs like a real editor, be sure to save your work frequently. What makes it specialized are some search tricks and the fact that it handles TABs the same way as visual C++ (meaning your columns might line up). This is definitely for world designers. Do NOT modify the quest.txt file which ships with WoS or subsequent patches WILL FAIL. Make a copy first and do your experimenting in your own world ("Clone of Evergreen").

/q  Modern quest.txt files use a lot of "#include" directives to embed other files within them (this allows moving a large table, like SPELLS into a separate file, like SPELLS.TXT). To edit such a file with the specialized quest editor, type "/q spells.txt"

Note, only one file can be open at a time in the quest editor, so save your work before opening a new file. You can use any text editor you like, of course, for your world files. Beware of having the same file open in two editors.

/eavesdrop This toggles your eavesdrop status on and off (the same as if you used the right-click popup menu in the chat window). While eavesdropping you hear pretty much everything said in the world (except whispering and gossipping). With eavesdropping off, you only hear people who are 'nearby' (on the map, in your scene, a member of your party). Please note: Your privacy IS NOT GUARANTEED anywhere in WoS. Always assume your mom is listening. /homework Occasionally I am asked to help with homework and a computer solution shouts out to be made. Since I am usually editing WoS anyway, I just cram it in there. As of this writing the problem had to do with 'how many locker doors would still be open' and the results were kinda cool (ended up being a prime number generator).

/seance This toggles the SEANCE setting, the same as using the right-click popup menu in the chat window. While a SEANCE is active, you can see and hear ghosts (who are otherwise invisible). Ghosts are people who are passively watching the game (spectators). They pick one player to 'haunt' and then become an invisible member of that player's party. They can BLESS or CURSE that player (and thereby make a trivial change to the random part of the outcome of attacks)

/bleep This adds a word to your personal bleeper list. Anytime someone types this word (while you have your bleeper on) it will be replaced by the word "bleep". For example "/bleep butt" would then cause all future occurences of "butt" to appear as "bleep" instead. Which means "butter" would turn into "bleeper" :-) It's a MIRACLE!

/unbleep I don't give you an actual 'bleeper editor' since that would expose your gentle eyes to a concentrated list of foulness. Instead, I give you the Unbleep command which lets you remove a word, if you can spell it. However, I don't let you remove the stock bleeper list (it's pretty short, mainly the F word). To return to the stock list, use the command "/unbleep ALL"

/mic On occasion I use WoS to further my plans for world domination, which include some signal processing issues (I want to be able to talk to my pets). This command turns on the microphone sampling code. (It probably conflicts with other programs, the embedded speech feature, etc.) It doesn't even work with some sound cards.

/nomic This makes a half-hearted attempt to turn off the microphone sampling code, but it probably doesn't work very well and you'll need to shut WoS down completely to really stop it.

/speech This opens a screen which looks a bit like an oscilloscope and (if you have already given the /mic command) might bounce around in time to your voice.

/terrain This command toggles the terrain map overlay. While officially this should probably be a cheat, it is easy to get snagged on some otherwise invisible terrain and this might be your only way to escape.

/help I was a little proud of this one, as it was so economical. Type "/help magic" and it opens the Help File to the topics list with a scan for the keyword 'magic.'

/element This the same as pushing the TRAINING button on the SPELLs list. It opens the element traiing screen (where you can spend PP to boost power in specific elements). Again, this might be dangerous to use when not incarnated.

/phist Short for "Packet History" this command prints a little report in the chat window summarizing the total number of each kind of packet you have received, plus the effective bandwidth consumption of each packet type. I use this to optimize the game for low bandwidth (biggest bandwidth headache today is all that quick-clicking in a small area to stimulate a monster fight. I have a plan for that.. stay tuned)

/preset Short for "Packet Reset" this just zeroes out the counters used by the "/phist" command so you can start aggregating new bandwidth numbers from RIGHT NOW only.

/a Known as the ACTION command, this just removes the colon after your name when your message is seen by others. So, instead of "Samsyn: " they see "Samsyn " This lets you do things like "/a likes you" and have it seen as "Samsyn likes you" (he does!)

/easter Computes and displays the date of easter for the given year. Hey, why not? You know you wanted this!

/www... precede a URL with a slash (starting with http: or www.) and it will open that page

/pal N where N is 0-255 lets you try out a color table without restarting WoS or reloading the world. All new monsters and actors which enter the scene will be translated by the specified color. table 0 "/pal 0" returns you to the normal colors. Note this overrides any colorTable settings you have in your world and ALL actors/monsters will get this manually applied color table.

/dist N intended to help world developers plan their monster placements. (though players could use it to check the hunting-areas of various monsters, I 'spose... I'd still like to have a nice GS feature on that subject someday...) Anyway, N is a map number (0- whatever), or -1 for all maps (be prepared to scroll). It just shows monster distribution by level and by element. It doesn't give you any position information (the monster placement editor already does that for World Developers). This command only works for 'placed' monsters, not monster groups or monsters in scenes. I have a teensy plan for a new feature which I can't predict whether Josh will love or hate... Probably the latter... ok... it's palette-shifting for monster skins. The idea being to algorithmically (yuck!) swap red and green, for example. I dunno... it might work OK.... Anyway, the goal is an economical way to extend monster skin count without a lot of extra download. The goal-goal being to have more monsters to fight at each level.

/mags This calls the "magnificent attack" routine one MILLION times and then tells you how many mag hits you got. You should see about one in 50

/pwd This tells you your 'current working diectory' and is intended to be used by people with disappearing buttons. It should show the path to your WoS folder and my theory is that when your buttons disappear it will instead show the path to somewhere else, and you'll recognize that path and tell me and then we'll know what is changing the path. But since this version also no longer depends on that path (for the most part), you may never see your buttons disappear again, so this command might not be useful. Well, it will still be good to know, so after your buttons WOULD have disappeared, see if the path has changed anyway :-)

/password *As of A56, you can optionally password protect your heroes.* Now, of course, they are still saved in files which your little brother or sister could delete, but other than that you will need the password to use or purge them (via the in-game purge button).

And if you FORGET your password, don't come begging to me, coz I will have no idea.

HOW TO SET/CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD:

After incarnating, type /password to set a new password. (you'll have to know the old one if there already is one set).

You will have to enter the new password twice (two edit boxes) and spell it the same way each time.

CASE IS IMPORTANT. So you idiots who like to "tYpE IN CrAzy TaLK" are doomed to forget your passwords! Did I say 'idiots'? I'm sorry. A slip of the tongue. Pay attention to your caps lock key when entering passwords...there's no 'upper case asterisk' to remind you :-)

Thereafter, you will be prompted for that password each time you attempt to incarnate as that character. Or if you use the 'purge' button on that character.

HOW DO I REMOVE A PASSWORD?

Use /password again, enter the current password when prompted, then leave the two new password boxes empty. setting your password to a blank password removes your existing password. Make sense?

WHAT IF I FORGET MY PASSWORD?

You're screwed!

So.. wouldn't it be HILARIOUS if your little brother or sister SET YOUR PASSWORD TO SOMETHING YOU DIDN'T KNOW?

Face it, there is nothing WoS can do to protect you from a renegade brother, sister, or friend. You'd best seek other solutions to that problem :-) Otherwise, they're bound to figure out how to reformat your hard drive eventually.

Don't run out and password protect your favorite characters as soon as you get A56. Give the password feature a good tryout on a character you don't need first. or make backups. or something. /version This command lets you, the world developer, set an official version number for your world in development. If you officially version your world, then players will not get marked as modders when they play it. If you then make changes to your world and publish it without setting the version again, then ALL players will be marked as modders!

/coverage This command prepares a report of which items and spells are using which magic and attack path images. If you don't know what that means, then you don't need to use this command. But it helps you make sure you aren't over-using the same bit of art excessively, and that you haven't left any out either.

/fail This command casts the currently selected spell several thousand times (in its head) and then reports how many times the cast 'failed.' This is for people who don't trust the math which determines (via level and wisdom) how often spells "fail"

/coord This command toggles an on-screen coordinate display. So when you point the mouse inside the main scene window, you see the (x,y) coordinates of where you are pointing. These are the proper coordinates to use in the scripted ACTOR commands.

Whew! all done!

CHEATING come on, you KNOW you want this!

to quote synthetic-reality.com: "Hence I decided early on in WoS to establish a two-track system, where cheating is officially allowed (though not necessarily encouraged), but your character is then marked as a cheat character. Once marked, your character is limited in certain ways when interacting with pure characters (for example, you can't give them money or items, nor can you hit them - unless they hit you first). Each player can see the cheat status of every other player via a column on the MAP screen." the cheats are as follows. USE AT OWN RISK!!!

/inn This recharges your character's HP and MP to their current maximum values. Originally I was going to have Inns in the game for you to recharge at (like every other RPG on the planet), but then I opted for the Soul Brother religious technique. /scene  This causes you to immediately drop into the scene specified. You pretty much need this if you are a world designer, as it is the easiest way to test your individual scene scripts.

/gimme A perennial favorite. This gives your character one of every item, every spell, every piece of equipment, etc. Now try to get rid of them!

/give A more focused form of "/gimme" this gives your character exactly one thing. The thing is specified by a letter followed by a number. This is intended for world designers to be able to easily prepare a character for a scene which looks at tokens. Some example 'things' are: T22 (token 22), I15 (item 15), S43 (spell 43), G200 (200 GP), and maybe some others.

/take Same as "/give" only this REMOVES one of the specified things from your character. Say you are developing a scene which is based on tokens (and which gives you a token). This lets you remove that token manually so as to re-experience the scene over and over until you get the scripting right.

/fight  If you are the host of a scene (say you just pressed your CAMP button), then you can use this command to bring individual monsters into your scene. (you can give the command several times, but will probably crash if you do it too much). Monster ID numbers can be found in the pokedex. This is intended to allow world designers to play-test monsters easily. You do NOT earn GP or XP from these monsters. Solo Mode Only

/fight L23 Same as 'fight' but brings in a monster of the specified LEVEL (first one it finds in the monster table) instead of by specific monster ID. The example here is level 23. This is of most use to me when trying to balance the damage mathematics between various classes and elements.

/reload Say you're editing your world's quest file(s) and you want to see if your changes are working. Well, they won't until you RELOAD them. (this basically compiles your quest files into the in-memory tables used by the game). So, after changing a quest file: 1) SAVE YOUR CHANGES, 2) RELOAD. Re-entering a world from the world menu automatically reloads, of course, from the current quest file set.

/monster This command toggles an overlay which shows where monsters are placed on the map and their 'range' If you are inside of a range circle, then you have a chance of meeting that monster. The closer to the center of the circle, the more of them you might meet at once. If you are inside two overlapping circles, you might meet either or both, etc. THIS IS NOW A CHEAT CODE UNLESS YOU HAVE A GOLDEN SOUL.

And that, my good friends, is the end.

Command and cheat list from www.synthetic-reality.com/wosCheats.html

all other text and info provided by Dark Dizzy

Edit: Fixed the grammar errors I found. If you find any more, please fix! Dark Dizzy

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~Hesacon

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