Caveat - this post may not be of much interest to CF vets. I do know that some of our playerbase, especially folks new to CF or MUDs in general, sometimes have trouble with mazes.

This post doesn't really contain supersecret l33tz0rr information. It is more along the lines of stuff I've picked up over the course of playing mortals for years and years and years.

So. Mazes.

In my mind, CF really has 3 types of mazes:

1. Not-really-a-maze-at-all Mazes
2. Easy-if-you-look Mazes
3. Pain-in-the-ass Mazes

For type 1, what I'm talking about are areas that seem like there is a maze, but really just have one general random element to them.

One example is the mountains near Udgaard. The mountains are not a maze. There is ONE room, at the top, that has three exits that randomly change each time the area resets. Navigating that area becomes quite a bit simpler once you realize that fact.

Another example is the Barren Wasteland on the way to the Tower of Trothon. The area LEADING TO the Barren Wasteland (Amongst Shifting Sand Dunes) is a true maze (albeit a relatively easy one), but the Barren Wasteland isn't. The only random factor for the Barren Wasteland is actually what room you BEGIN in. And that's a factor of which maze room in Amongst Shifting Sand Dunes you exited. Once you're in Barren Wasteland, nothing is really random. (Side note: While researching this post, I discovered that the greet_prog on skyflashes will fire even on someone who is wizinvis. Many skyflashes met a sad end this day.)


Type 2 is a broad category. The general gist is that these mazes have a "path" to them. Stepping off the path will get you into a Type 3 maze, but if you stick to the path (which is often randomized itself), you can get through via the LOOK command.

The example I'll use for this one is the Shadow Grove. Once you enter it (from the Feanwyn Weald), if you look in the four cardinal directions, you'll see the following descriptions, in different directions each time the area resets:
The dark forest continues in this direction. (You'll see this twice).
The shadows of the forest seem to deepen.
A small path leads back to the road.

If you are trying to move into the Shadow Grove, you'll want to follow the path that says the shadows seem to deepen. If you're trying to get out, you'll take the descriptions that say things like "back to the road" or "signs of life".

Interestingly, the Shadow Grove, once inside, is also not a true maze. The High Tower of Sorcery and other sub-areas that can be reached from it are always in the same place. It's getting into that non-maze area that can be tricky.

The thing to take away from this is that using "look all" will help you in this sort of maze.


Type 3 Mazes are ones that basically have no path. Truly wicked ones don't even have exit descriptions to show you how to get out at all, so you have to simply stumble your way out. You could be in the room that's right next to the exit, but you have no way of knowing if you should go north, east, south, or west (or in extreme cases, up and down).

There is, however, a method to defeating a maze like this. I've seen some folks use a method that involves putting one piece of copper in each room to signify that they've been in that room. I don't really get that method, so I'm not going to explain it.

My method (which I believe Daevryn showed me, many years ago), also involves coins (or some other form of marker). For the purposes of this post, we'll assume our maze only has exits in the four cardinal directions, no up or down.

The general gist of it is this. When you enter a room, if there are no markers in it, you will drop one marker, and you will go north (which direction you choose doesn't matter, so long as you always go the same direction for the number of markers in the room). If there is one marker in it, you drop another marker and go east. If there are two markers in it, you drop another marker and go south. If there are three markers in it, you drop another and go west.

If you enter a room and it has four markers in it, you know you've already exited that room every possible way, so it doesn't matter which direction you choose. Leave the markers alone, and move on to another room.

Using this method, you will eventually exit each room out of each exit, and therefore by brute force you will find everyplace that is reachable through the maze.

This won't always work. For one thing, some mazes are large enough that they'll reset before you can brute force your way through them. Once they reset, all of your markers are meaningless (except rooms with four markers, of course). Also, if someone has gone through the maze before you, and left markers, that makes for problems. Some mazes have exits that actually make you leave the maze and unable to return to it (one-way exit) - if that was the door you were looking for, that's fine, but if not, by the time you get back to the area, it will have reset and all of your markers will be useless.

Still, using this method is better than flailing around at random, in general.

One final note - some mazes (Sands of Sorrow for example) have completely non-descriptive exits at night, but if you are in them during the day, you can use the "exits" command to see the room names of adjoining rooms.


Come back tomorrow for another post! Have something you'd like to see me post about? Email me at twist@carrionfields.com.