Now that things have settled a bit with the Newbie Experience, check out the roster of fun end of year holidays the Starmourn sector is known for!
October
Rapadruk Season is the Starmourn analog to Halloween, and the Sector decks itself out with ENTHUSIASM for all the spooky theming and parties similar to the Earthen holiday.
Join us for the reopening of Raparak Mansion, trick-or-treating across the Sector, and of course our annual tradition: Scare the Storytellers! Check out previous entries here.
We might also have a few treats up our sleeves… You’ll have to log in to see!
November
The Floating Market is ON! Running for only a week in November, the Floating Market serves as an opportunity to get unique, one-of-a-kind and limited run wares from NPC shopkeeps, plus serves as a place for players to host their own shops and make incredible marks sales. There are also wedding and concert venues, so be sure to check it out while you can. More details to come!
We’ve outfitted a variety of new vendors and improved on the offerings of some returning classics so new and veteran spacers alike have the opportunity to grab something hot ‘n fresh from the limited time market offerings. Learn more about the Floating Market here.
December
Closing the year, we celebrate our annual holiday of Winterflame, when Ironbeard raises his ship and flies across the Sector to drop presents and glee to all!
A Tukkav holiday at its core, Winterflame is the celebration where spacers of every race and creed set aside their differences to come together in warmth and friendship, to exchange gifts, and to build a chosen family that is as important as blood. Learn more about Winterflame here.
Every year the Admin team works to bring about a unique event or game system for players to enjoy as our gift to you, and we end the year with Player Nominations – A chance for y’all to give kudos to each other for all you’ve accomplished over the course of the year.
Other Fun Things & Dev Updates
The Admin team regrouped last week to discuss dev plans and ideas, as well as to create a roadmap of our releases for the next few months. We’re hard at work building new areas, planning a Xenohunt weekend, and otherwise developing fun content for y’all to enjoy, so stay tuned and keep an eye to the blog!
Reminder about the REQUEST system, whereby any player can build out their RP journey and get admin assistance for new experience, events, areas, and more! If you’ve got an idea you’ve been wanting to explore, send Argus a message in game or consider submitting an RP REQUEST today.
With much love and excitement,
Your Starmourn Admin Team
First of all, a huge shout out to ALL the new players who have joined the Starmourn Sector since the New Tutorial released just one week ago! We are beyond thrilled to see so many new faces joining the game and really taking to it.
Celebrating the New Tutorial
We announced on release day that ALL spacers would get a FREE rainbow tesseract upon logging in AND would get to take advantage of DOUBLE XP for the rest of the month.
Then on Monday this week, we announced in game that ALL players are eligible to receive up to 8 additional rainbow tesseracts just for playing! Every 10 hours spent in game until the end of the promo period = 1 more tesseract to share with friends.
Players have gone wild, teaming up on hunting expeditions, taking to the skies in pursuit of fortune and fame in the stars, and celebrating in style by organizing parties to maximize the rewards of this period.
We are so grateful to all of our veteran players for welcome new folks with open arms, branch-ends, wings, tendrils, and such. Y‘all are truly the heart of this game, and you make the Sector a wonderful place to play.
New Archaeology Digsite: ISHBI
We are deeply delighted to dish some dirt on a dazzling new digsite that Archeology aficionados have been waiting ever so patiently for;
Scatterhome’s Ishbi asteroid, a dry rock full of dusty saloons, tarak beetle ranches, and a wilderness of strip-mined canyons has recently unearthed some items that may be of academic and historical interest.
Photo by arash payam on Unsplash
Six new fossils and three new antiquities are waiting for the collective You to dig them up, dust them off, and dash them to pieces on the research table.
As a reminder (or an FYI to our new friends), Archaeology is a system of roleplay collaboration, allowing groups of people to get together to uncover some in-world lore and gleanings of history from the fossils and antiquities of the past. We encourage all of you to seek out your Faction’s Curators to learn more!
QOL Update: WELCOMEBACK
Implemented today, players will now be offered a WELCOMEBACK package if returning to Starmourn after 60+ IRL days on the ice.
This command will give you any armor you’re missing and a full set of class appropriate weaponry based on your MIL, as well as some marks and clothing to help you get where you need to be.
Pat-patting your frost-laden cryo chambers,
Your Starmourn Admin Team
To those who’ve been thinking about taking their first steps in the Starmourn Sector or considering a return from an extended cryo nap- It’s time!
As of Sync on Friday (0:00 GMT), the revamped Starmourn Tutorial and newbie experience will be officially live and available to the public.
I could never give enough kudos, but shout out to our incredible volunteer team and the player BETA testers who completed over 20 test-throughs throughout 4 rounds of testing to help ensure the new system is fun, informative, and… hopefully unbreakable. You are all truly incredible, and we are so grateful to have such an amazing community.
In the new tutorial, you can:
- Meet many new NPCs and explore Starmourn’s lore
- Trial run every class and practice your skills
- Get an intro to KEY systems and QOL configs
- Complete additional quests with the NPCs of the asteroid city
- Earn and discover takeaways from the tutorial that you can keep and use in the main game
- Meet with Cassandra Min and optionally jump right into the Main Quest when you finish the tutorial
- Plus everything we discussed in our last post here
What’s that? You think we can sweeten the experience even more?
Well, you’re absolutely right! For the next two weeks:
- Firstly, everyone who logs in to Starmourn will get a FREE rainbow tesseract to open for artifacts, credit prizes, and more! Open in a room with friends and EVERYONE present will also get a gift!
- Second, we’ll be offering DOUBLE EXPERIENCE for everyone to help supercharge your run to MIL 75. Find some friends and start hunting to make the most of this boost!
And who knows? We’re so giddy with excitement, we may choose to sweeten things even more.
As a reminder, Starmourn is now entirely FREE to play.
There’s a wealth of activities to participate in including space exploration via starship, PvE combat that uses a variety of class skills, nuanced PvP combat opportunities, archaeology and freeform RP museum research, loads of design tradeskills, and more! Add in player and admin led events and the potential is practically limitless! Check out a more complete list on the Things To Do page on our website.
You can also get ahead by checking out our Official Discord Server (the hot place to be, RIP Forums) and discussing this further on our most recent Reddit post!
Don’t miss out – Dive in to the interstellar world of Starmourn today!
Small yet mighty, the new Starmourn Tutorial zone packs a punch in a compact space with the goal of onboarding new and veteran MUD players alike into IRE’s unique sci-fi title – And it’s completely free-to-play!
Round two of BETA testing for the new tutorial has officially kicked off today, which means we’re another step closer to releasing the revamped Newbie experience for everyone to try!
For those who missed the last update
Here’s what you can expect to be able to accomplish in the new tutorial:
- Learn how to engage with and navigate the world
- Actively develop a roleplay-based backstory
- Learn about key systems including wetwiring curing, HETE cloning, modding, and tradeskills
- Learn about Faction history and racial lore
- Try some local fare at the Bodegani cantina
- Experience a holo-performance from a celebrity band
- Learn and practice the basic attack and healing abilities of up to all five classes
- Learn how to use armor and slot mods to improve your stats
- Befriend a slew of unique new allies on the most remote rock in the Sector
- Pet a goredog puppy
- Kick some butts and thwart some evil schemes
Our goal with this new tutorial is to ensure new players get the lessons they need for a sturdy landing at Omni Station as they start their Starmourn adventure.
Players will have the option of skimming through for just what they need, or really immersing themselves to learn LOADS about the Starmourn sector before diving in with other players. Either way, thanks to round tables and many discussions with veteran and new players alike, this new tutorial has been designed for YOU!
Oh yeah. You wanna pet that dog don’t ya.
Ready to join us?
If you’re thinking about playing Starmourn, but want to wait for the new Tutorial’s final release before making a character, check out our Things To Do page for an overview of all the new things to do in game! You can also click around to learn about our game systems, classes and skills, player races, FAQ, and more all in one handy spot.
For all you lore junkies looking for more- The Starmourn Wiki serves as a rich library information for you to scour as you prepare to join the Sector.
And lastly, get in touch with the Starmourn community in our official Discord server. We’d love to meet you!
Sincerely,
The Starmourn Admin Team
For Starmourn and beyond! A small update on what’s going on behind the curtain –
New Tutorial Status
Work is progressing nicely with #NewTutorial, and I really look forward to unveiling it to you all sometime this month!
Prep work on the new tutorial began quite a while ago over lengthy discussions with current players and recent newbies to better understand what new players truly needed to know before taking their first steps on Omni Station.
The goal of the new tutorial is to cover many lessons in a brief span, hopefully taking a new player an average of 10 minutes to complete.
In completing the tutorial, new players will:
- Learn how to engage with the world
- Be prompted with the chance to develop a roleplay-based backstory
- Gain an understanding of unique functional systems including wetwiring, cloning, marks and purchasing, etc.
- Have the opportunity to learn about history, racial lore, tradeskills, and more
- Learn and practice the basic attack and healing abilities of up to all five classes
- Equip/Wear their first pieces of armor and weaponry (plus a mod if they explore a bit)
- Get the chance to preview larger systems such as performance and modding
- Pet a gorepup!
The new tutorial also includes a robust NPC generator including NPCs of all races operating with unique interactions based on a variety of personalities, descriptions, and dialog cues. Through this, each player experience within the tutorial city will be unique, though of course it’ll follow the same general course.
Those of you who participated in the Round Table talk a few months ago may recall me mentioning a future installation: The Academy. This will be an NPC-run continuation of the new player experience, serving as a location for returning players to pick up gear and get re-oriented, as well as serving as a place for players to learn advanced skills such as hacking, space flight/combat/mining, additional combat kill paths, etc.
The Academy is going to be a long-term project and will not be released at the same time as the Tutorial – I’ll be taking some time to do some worldbuilding in between and monitor how the new tutorial land is being received before building this out.
The Main Quest with Cassandra will be temporarily put on hold once the New Tutorial comes out, pending a decision about where to plug it back in. It will be back, though! We love Cass and co too much to ever let them go.
Photo by Nguyễn Trường
Website Updates
Class Skills Page
Thank you Garryn for creating a live-updating class skills page!! Players can use this to learn about class skills outside of the game, including actual skill information and lesson costs.
Check it out: https:www.starmourn.com/game/skills
Archaeology Records
Coming soon! I’d like to start building out an Archaeology Database of RP records since y’all have been so powerful about exploring those wildernesses with your teams to recover ancient specimens and artifacts. If you have a research session you’d like registered on the website, please send me a Pastebin file or log of the research on Discord or as an in-game message.
Make sure everyone involved in the research is on board with it being shared!
Photo by Felix Mittermeier
Events & Worldbuilding
Secret Event & Zone
Marra is hard at work planning an absolutely STELLAR event for y’all in game, including an expansive new hunting zone full of unique quests and intrigue. I really can’t give any more information and risk spoiling it, but you should all be VERY excited.
Hyndoh Prison
Serpentine lower body undulating, a Rags-affiliated Selassian prisoner moves west.
A place of treachery and scandal, the prison warden is working on making its halls accessible to the Sector’s bravest spacers. Stay tuned for more details after the New Tutorial’s release.
Newbie Questing
Based on some additional feedback from new players, we’re looking to expand on low-level area quest opportunities. We’re most interested in quests that build out game lore, including food quests to learn about cultural meals, unique hunting quests, infiltrating organizations, etc.
We’ve got a few spoons in the pot on this development, but we welcome all players to come up with ideas as well! If you’ve got a thought about building out a newbie area, feel free to shoot me a message on Discord or in game.
We’ve been hard at work behind the scenes and look forward to sharing more content with you in the days, months, and years to come here in the Starmourn Sector. <3
Starry-eyed and thriving,
Your Starmourn Admin Team
A big thank-you to Picram and Shunvaz for inspiring our recommended playtime event, and to everyone who participated in this lore exploration!
Recap: After conducting a very newbie-friendly overview of Starmourn’s modern history, Picram and guests were given an open invitation to meet with a Lha Ti named Ambassador Mhoyul to learn about the mysterious Ibyssian Brotherhood straight from the space-whale-diplomat’s mouth. This was a rare opportunity to engage directly with one of the most ancient living races in the Starmourn Sector, and we on the Admin team had a lot of fun letting some old secrets slip.
As a result of this player-driven event, we’ve released a new zone – on the oceanic homeworld of the mysterious Lha Ti no less. If you’d like to check it out the new areas of Ghenla, you can access them via Rensu Station. Just be aware of the dangers! Remember, the Ibyssian Brotherhood is seldom appreciative of outsiders, so I hope everyone is on their best behavior!
Players seeking new alien hunting grounds might consider the Amber Ridgeline above the Panzan Marshes suitable for MIL50+ characters.
While Ambassador Mhoyul has returned to the deeps, future visitors can speak with one of her peers – Ambassador Ylexei – for a little more info about each of the races that make up the exotic and isolated Ibyssian Brotherhood.
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