14.3 Rats and Ratting

(See also HELP NEWBIE QUESTS)

Ratting is the activity of hunting and slaying the rats that infest the major
urban cities and sewer systems of Achaea. In every one of these cities (all
city-states listed in HELP CITIES but Eleusis), there exists a denizen who
has been commissioned by the city to pay those who help rid the city of its
vermin. Simply slay the rats you find, then SELL their corpses to this rat
buyer.

Rat buyers
----------
Ashtan     Ratman     Northwest part of the city, near the docks.
Hashan     Liirup     In Hashan's Old Quarter.
Cyrene     Jorj       Near the entrance to Cyrene's courthouse.
Mhaldor    Maric      Pestilent Way, in the north of the city.
Targossas  Hakhim     In an office at Mistfall Square, on Duskmere Isle.

You can reach nearly all of these directly via an exit from the portals, if you
are a newbie and can use the portals.

These denizens can also be reached by using the landmark system (see HELP
LANDMARKS).


Syntax
------
RATS                   Enter this command to see rats. Enter again to
                       stop seeing them.

SELL RATS TO <name>    Sells all your rats to the rat person in order
                       to get your reward. You must be in the same room
                       as the rat person.

Because there are so many rats wandering about the cities and because seeing
them enter and exit can become annoying, the command RATS will toggle on and
off your ability to notice rats. Generally, you will want to turn this off
while you are not out ratting.

When you see a rat dart out of its hiding spot, by all means, slay it before it
can run away. Once a certain number of rats have been slain in a location, no
more rats will appear there until a new Achaean day. Generally, you'll find
that a sewer location contains more rats than a normal city street.


I Can't Find Any Rats
---------------------
As noted above, rats only appear in cities and sewers. Beyond that, only a few
rats may be killed in any particular place before they get wise and won't
return until the next Achaean day. The sewers are more populous, but also much
more dangerous, and most of our younger players will not have the specialised
skill required to enter them in any event (see HELP SEWERS).


Rat Stats
---------
There are five types of city rats. Ranging from most common to least
common (which also corresponds to least valuable to most valuable, as
well as weakest to strongest), they are:


Rat Type      What The Rat Buyer Will Pay
---------     ---------------------------
baby rat          7 gold sovereigns
young rat        14 gold sovereigns
rat              21 gold sovereigns
old rat          28 gold sovereigns
black rat        35 gold sovereigns


A Word of Warning
-----------------

Be careful! When you are of a very low level, it is recommended that you
stick to baby rat and young rats. Bigger rats have the potential to do
lethal damage to you. Remember, when you are in a room with multiple rats,
you can type INFO HERE (or simply IH) to see the specific #s of the rats in
the room and target the specific rat you want for attack.

For example, you might see:
rat70550            a black rat
rat148947           a baby rat

In this case, you would want to be sure to attack rat148947. If you simply
type KICK RAT, you would attack the first rat in the list, the black rat.


Rat Exceptions
--------------
Rat pets are not affected by the above, though you are free to try 
killing them anyhow.


(See also HELP NEWBIE QUESTS)