Batmud Extended Help
BatMUD's help system is fairly robust for a Mud, however the quality, pertinence, and presence of the help files varies, and many commands are not documented to my satisfaction. These files are an attempt to supplement the BatMUD help system. As with all my resources, I warn that my advice may be out of date or incorrect to begin with.
Command: force Argument: Normally: 'box', 'chest', or 'safe' Ghost of Presence (ghost): Chest: 2. Me: 0.
Attempt to use brute force to break open a locked container on the ground. Each attempt uses twenty or so endurance points on average. If there is no container present, this will produce a typo message. This seems to be a strength based check, modified by anything wielded in hand 1, or hand 2 if hand 1 should be empty. Very strong characters can force with bare hands, weaker characters need a weapon of some kind to have any chance. Forcing with a shovel used to give a huge bonus in the force attempt, this may no longer apply. Forcing can have several results:
You damage the lock on the chest. The chest will no longer be pickable with the pick locks skill.
A trap might be set off and the chest remains closed. Near as I can tell, a trap never gets used up from failed force attempts. Chest traps are often stupidly overpowerful. Forcing is a bad idea if you and everyone around you can't suck down about 900 or more hitpoints of damage.
You succeffully force open the chest. This usually sets off any traps as well.
Related: monster chests, merchant chests
Monster chests.
Monsters can carry a variety of locked containers, most of which aren't worth the effort of spitting on. Some of these include:
moneyboxes: Toll collecting monsters normally carry boxes which contain all the gold the monster has collected. Probably the most commonly seen example of this is those carried by bridge trolls. Killing the trolls for their tolls is a lousy way to make money however: They are too powerful for their worth, and usually have less than 500 in gold, as most players are saavy enough to avoid them.
Boxes, Chests, Safes.
These are chests which usually contain a random and small amount of money, though they will sometimes have a respectable sum. These containers are legendary for their high risk and low reward. An almost universal experience for new players is to die opening a chest that contains a few zinc coins. Uncommonly these boxes will contain skillbooks, which used to be worth something until they were tuned to work only for the maker.