Basic Knowledge

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This topic covers the most basic things you, a new player in Wurm Online, should know about.

What is Wurm Online?

Notch (Founder): "...Wurm is not an MMORPG... ;)"

It's Massively Multiplayer Online Fantasy Simulator (MMOFS)

Or you could call it a Life Emulator...

A massive world you can create and shape around you.

Introduction/Starter Tips

After starting Wurm you see the Login Screen, where one can enter his/her Username and Password. Below it is a checkbox, labeled "Play as Guest" which is enabled by default. You should uncheck it and enter a password to create a new "real" Account, because Guest Accounts are not stored after you logoff.

Upon logging in, your avatar will spawn (see Spawning) in a village called Newtown (NT), you spawn here the first time you play, and also when you die (there are some exceptions). Do not steal in and around NT. The guards will quickly make swiss cheese of your body.

If you get stuck in a large pit or cave and definitely cannot get out or if you find a bug/glitch Etc, type '/dev' to contact any of the GM's/Devs if they are online.
(See Helpful People). Please use this feature sparingly.

Movement

To move in the world of Wurm, simply use the W A S D keys, or the arrow keys, on your keyboard.

To look around, left-click and hold in the 3D-view, and move your mouse. Alternatively you can press the right or left arrow keys.

To center the view, press C on your keyboard.

To Autorun press the X key, or the Page up key.

Steep slopes require you to climb. To climb a surface, click on the Climb button in your Event window. If you carry a lot of items, your stamina will drop like a stone while climbing, and fairly fast while walking. And you can not climb trees, sorry.

Note that when your green stamina bar goes down to nothing, your speed while walking will slow dramatically, and that if you are climbing and it drops to less than about half way, you may stop climbing and fall.

A compass is one of the most important tools for getting around Wurm. To use a compass, make sure it is in your inventory then place it wherever you like in your HUD. Secondly, you can look at the top of a settlement token in any village or homestead to see a compass rose.

Important Hotkeys

The F-keys on your keyboard hold important access to things in Wurm.

F1 : Brings up the console, for debugging and generic information.

F2 : Skills. In this dialog you keep track of your body, religion, and skills. New skills are added as you learn and improve on them (i.e: Hot Cooking).

.........Incrementing of skills in this game takes time.

F3 : Probably the most important hotkey in the game. This brings up the Inventory, where you keep all your items and can equip them to various parts of your body.

F10 : Hides the HUD from display so you can take clean screenshots of any view.

F11 : Take a screenshot. It is saved in your wurm directory/screenshots as a png file.

F12 : Quit the game. You are presented to a Yes/No-dialog before you can quit the game.

Activating Items

To activate an item to use (you can only activate one at a time), simply double-click an item in the inventory. A message will now appear at the bottom of your Inventory saying "Active: (Item)" depending on what item you chose. You can work with items within the inventory, there is no need to drop them on the ground. As an example, you activate the carving knife, and right-click on a log in your inventory, to create new items with it. Note: If you carry too much, speed at which you walk is reduced. You can also become encumbered, and walk extremely slowly, by carrying very heavy items such as felled trees. Improve your strength skill to carry more. Remember you can also use your bodyparts for certain things, like molding clay, by activating one of your hands by expanding the Body-category and double-click a hand, and then right-clicking the clay in your inventory, to work with it.

Interaction

Right-click on objects, tiles, people, anything, to interact with it. A pop-up menu appears saying "Requesting..." which means the game is fetching data from the server about the specific object you are trying to interact with. When it's done (which is fairly quickly), you are given several options in the menu of what to do with the object. There are different options for different objects. You get more options depending on what item you have active. For example, you are presented with another option called "Cut down" if you have the Small Axe active and right-click a tree.
(Cutting down trees does not work with herrings!).

Note that a menu that appears in dark grey is cached. Not all options may work. It will be automatically replaced with the real menu when the data from the server is received.

The Bars

Tip: Hover your mouse cursor over any of the bars to show stats.

• Green : Stamina/Energy
  
• Red : Injuries
  
• Blue : Thirst
  
• Orange : Hunger
  
  

Refilling the bars

Stamina : Stop all activity, including working with items, walking or climbing. The less thirst and hunger you have, the faster it regenerates. If you are low on stamina, you can not walk as fast as normal, and not climb very far.
Injuries : Wait for them to heal on their own. Be warned that if you are badly hurt, your injuries will get worse, not better. Cast healing spells (see Religion), apply some healing salves to it or bandage them with cotton rags (see First Aid). Your actual injuries are shown in your Inventory in the body category.
Thirst : Right-click Water and select Taste to see if it's alright. If it is, right-click the water again and select Drink.
Hunger : Forage for food by right-clicking on grass and select Nature > Forage. This type of food can only be eaten when your character is starving. You are going to need to cook the food in order to eat it when you are hungry. This will be explained later.

Chat

In the lower left corner (by default), you have the chat-dialog. This is were you talk in Local, Kingdom, Village (when you become a citizen on a deed), and private messages.

The people shown in your local chat are the players within about 1 kilometer radius from your position.

To talk in kingdom when the window isn't open, use the /shout -command, like so /shout Look out for the truck! Only people of the same kingdom as you can read this chat.

To talk with only one player, use the /tell-command (or /t), like this for example: /tell Zyndrome Hello, you may already be an instant winner!

To close a private conversation or kingdom-chat, click the small X in the upper right corner of the dialog. Local chat can not be closed.

You may ignore somebody with the command /ignore, followed by their username. Unignoring is accomplished the same way. Ignoring a GM or a dev is a bannable offense.

To use special characters in any of the chat dialogs refer to this chart.

Players may also use the in-game IRC chat by setting up IRC in the client to speak with other players in-game and out.

Event window

Event

This text box shows your actions, & their results. It also gives other information like actions performed by people near you, and important (mostly not important) messages from the GMs.

Buttons

These can be found under the event window text box.

'Climbing'

This is a button that you press when you want to climb. See climbing for more detail.

'Faithful'

Use this button to change between faithful/unfaithful. See faithful for more detail.

'Lawful'

Use this button to change between lawful/unlawful. See Lawful for more detail.

Current status

These are listed next to the buttons on the event window.

Full, hungry, starving, famished:

These are states relating to your orange Hunger bar.

Thirsty, Dehydrated, Parched :

These are related to your blue Thirst bar.

Hurting:

This shows up or a while after you get hurt and is related to your red Injuries bar. While this status is here, you will walk slower.

Climbing: This shows up when you press the climb button. See climbing for more detail.

Fighting:

This shows up when you are in combat. See fighting for more detail.

Defensive, Aggressive:

This shows up when you select one of these modes on the 'right click menu'. See fighting for more detail.

Tired, Exhausted:

These are states relating to your green Stamina bar. When you are Exhausted, you will walk slower. You will also be far more vulnerable to attacks.

Death and dying

When you die you will loose 0.25 points from each skill, and 0.1 body strength. Note that the body strength currently only updates every 2nd death or with a client restart. With the exception of the newbie items you get when you first start, your items will be on your corpse. You'll need to find it to get them back. If the corpse has decayed, the items that were on it will be a pile of items on the ground.

Also, you will be on a red and black screen with a little box in the middle, you will have to choose where you want to respawn. If you are dead and you cannot see the little box, type /respawn in your chat window.

While you have no deed, you will only be able to spawn at Newtown or Start (Start is also Newtown when you are on the homeserver). When you are the owner or citizen of a settlement, you will be able to spawn on that settlement. If that settlement has any allies you will be able to spawn there also if you die within 50 tiles of their center.

Only for basic accounts

After your strength level has decreased by 0.06 from your max strength ie:

20.00 to 19.94

19.50 to 19.44

(Approximately 6-7 deaths), You will be "Perma-Dead", meaning you will be un-able to play as that character any more. This applies to both the home server and the wild server. You can re-gain your strength by doing tasks such as Mining, Digging, or Woodcutting.