Movement

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(From the TFC for Newbies website by Nyx)

The world of TFC consists of thousands of rooms in over 150 areas that form three large continents, a massive sea, and several islands. Getting from one point to another can seem a bit daunting at first, but the basics are pretty straight forward.

Traveling from room to room uses up movement points. You can find out how many you have available by looking at your prompt. Different kinds of terrain will use up different amounts of movement. For example, moving around in a city might only take 2 moves for each room traveled, but in the mountains it may take 10 moves. Like your hit points and mana, however, your movement points will regenerate over time.

Each room can have up to six exits: north, east, south, west, up, and down. Few rooms have this many, but it is a possibility. If you have the autoexit configuration on you will see the obvious exits from a room when you walk into it, like so:

Guild Hall
[Exits: north east south west]
You will have to look around to spot any hidden exits. Though these exits are referred to as “hidden,” you don’t need a spell to see them or anything. Some of them will actually be mentioned in the room’s description; some will not. One easy way to find them is to try to go in directions that don’t appear to have exits; some people refer to this as the “bump” technique. If there is an exit there you will see that it exists but is closed. In order to use these exits you will need to open them first. Using OPEN will work, as will opening the specific name of the door of the exit.

If the door is locked you’ll have to either unlock it with the right key or get around it. The locks on some doors can be picked, and if the lock can be picked then you also have the option of using the passdoor spell to float through the door.

If you see an obvious exit in parentheses, like this:

On a Path Near the River
[Exits: (west) south]

then you are prevented from going that direction for some reasons. Possible reasons include:

  • You need to be flying and you aren’t.
  • You can’t fly there and you are.
  • It is a private room that already has people in it.
  • You need a boat and you don’t have one.

And Speaking of Flying and Boats...

These are easy additions to traveling. To fly you will either need to be an aarakocran or have the fly spell on you. Then you just type FLY to fly and LAND to land. Flying is handy on numerous occasions, be it to go through rooms in the air, to cross water without having to deal with currents, or to just avoid leaving tracks as you go overland.

You will be able to swim in some waters, but others will require a boat. To use a boat you just have to have it in your inventory, though you can’t have it in a container in your inventory. It is possible to have your boat wrecked by rapids but there aren’t too many places where that can happen.

Traveling on a Grander Scale

Walking from room to room will serve you well under most circumstances, but the time will come when you want to travel longer distances... to the other continent, say. You will have three options for that. The first option is to walk. Given how dangerous the monsters of the sea can be, that’s not a real good idea. Even really big characters can get into trouble there.

The second option is to take the sailing ship that travels from the docks at the south end of the Great Western Road on the northern continent (“NC”) to the half-elven hometown of Safehaven on the southern continent (“SC”), stopping briefly at the giant hometown of the Isle on the way. (Note: Young non-giants shouldn’t wander around on the Isle. The guards there are bigger than most city guards and are generally armed. They will attack you on sight.) If you are going to take the sailing ship you’ll want to buy a ticket first. They can be purchased from shopkeepers near the docks where the ship arrives. Once you board the ship, make sure you are actually holding your ticket. While the ship is at dock this won’t matter much, but once the ship begins to move then Fitzwalter starts looking for tickets. If you aren’t holding a ticket you will be thrown off the ship. All in all, if you have a ticket the ship is a nice way to travel across the sea without having to worry about any seacreatures attacking you. The drawback is that it isn’t a particularly fast ship, so you can end up spending a lot of time waiting for it to show up, then a lot more waiting for it to reach your destination.

The third option is only available to you once you reach level 11: the vortex. There are vortex entrances at several point across the realm. Every hometown has one, for example, or at least has one near it. These are seen as swirling grey exits, and are usually up exits. The only one that is different is the one in Safehaven, which is a down exit. They are easy to spot if you read the room descriptions. You can exit the vortex at several locations as well. Since the path you need to take from entering the vortex to exiting it for each possible exit is always the same, this makes it a useful way to very quickly get from one place to another. There are four big drawbacks to using the vortex, however. First, there is a current in the vortex that drags you around. This can easily get you disoriented. That is a bad thing because some of the exits from the vortex are into really nasty places. Second, there are some nightmares that make the vortex their home, and they will attack anyone they see in it. If you have to use the vortex while you are still small, get a high level invisibility spell first. A level 23 regular invis will generally get you past the nightmares. Third, you can get blinded, cursed, and deafened in the vortex, making things all the rougher. Fourth, you can’t recall out of the vortex. The moral of the story is this: if you are going to use the vortex while you are still young, reduce the risk of something nasty happening by taking the quickest routes possible. A list of all the vortex paths is available below. The two that will probably be of most use to you are the ones to Hovelton, which is on the northern continent, and Nydia, which is on the southern continent. One last piece of advice: if you get lost or blinded in the vortex, never take a north exit. The only really bad exits are both to the north.

Vortex Paths:

  • Ancient Cobblestone Road: Enter, 2e
  • Aran (SC): Enter, d, e, 2n
  • Cillidellia (SC): Enter, 3d, 2e
  • Demon Realm (NC): Enter, 2u, e, 2n (BAD EXIT!)
  • Dwarvenhold (NC): Enter, 4u, 2e
  • EmDeeVille (SC): Enter, 2d, n, w
  • Gla-Shorn (SC): Enter, d, n, w
  • Half-Elf Camp (NC): Enter, 3u, s
  • Hovelton (NC): Enter, s
  • Isle (at sea): Enter, 3d, s
  • Kuroth (SC): Enter, 2d, 2e
  • Lineaoth Valley (SC): Enter, 2d, s
  • Malenest (NC): Enter, 4d, n, w
  • Mithas (NC): Enter, 4u, e, 2n
  • Nydia (SC): Enter, d, s
  • River of Despair (SC): Enter, 3d, e, 2n (BAD EXIT!)
  • Skull Top (SC): Enter, 2d, e, 2n (Note: you must be flying to use this exit)
  • Thistlerock (NC): Enter, 2u, 2e

Magical Transportation

And finally there is traveling by spells. There are five spells that can be used to get you from one place to another: recall, teleport, necroport, portal, and summon.

Recall is by far the most common of the five. Pills or potions of recall are available in every hometown; They are most often called “a clear red potion.” The spell involved is a cleric spell, word of recall. When it works correctly, recall takes you from wherever you are and puts you in the Recall Room in the Adventurer's Guild. When it works incorrectly, recall takes you from wherever you are and drops you somewhere else. That somewhere else can be bad places sometimes. This is referred to as a “bad recall” and costs you hit points and movement. It also leaves you sitting, so you’ll need to stand up to flee if that is necessary. When you are young will rarely, if ever, get a bad recall. The chance of having one increases as you get bigger, though. Recall will also simply fail on occasion, leaving you right where you are. It is more likely to fail in this manner if attempted while you are in combat. It is better to flee first, then recall. Also, there are times when you can’t use recall. Specifically, you cannot recall if you have been cursed and there are some places that cannot be recalled from. These are referred to as being “no-recall.” If you try to recall and you see that Maurice snickers and blocks your transport, one of these two conditions exists.

Teleport is a mage spell that teleports you to someplace random. Chances are it won’t be anywhere nasty, but sometimes it will be. The major reason people use teleport is that it works even if you are cursed, so it is a good way to get away from a PKer (or a mob) if they’ve cursed you. Like recall, however, there are also a few places where teleports just don’t work.

Necroport is a shaman spell that teleports the shaman to a mob’s corpse. Using this spell not only costs mana, but some hit points and movement as well. It also has the catch that the shaman doesn’t know where the corpse is before they necroport.

Portal is a very useful mage spell. A mage can use it to transport themselves and their group to anywhere they’ve left a wizard mark. Sometimes the portals fail, sending the mage and any group members to various places as if they had been teleported, but the better the mage is at portal the less likely this is to happen.

Summon is a cleric spell that can be used to transport someone in the same area as the cleric to the room the cleric is in. It’s handy for getting people out of no-exit rooms and the like, but is used most often to bring PK targets into a room so the cleric and his friends can attack them.