This area tour was run by Dentin. A rough, edited transcript of the text, with notes and
additions, is provided below.
The Fire World of Khinzhai was built bye the god Dentin in the 1996-1997 time
frame, and was originally known as the Ethereal Plane of Fire. It was in a lot of ways
a technology demo, and the interactive mobs and special procedures for the area provided
the foundation for modern dprocs and iacts, both of which are largely unchanged from the
original designs.
This tour began in Redferne's palace. Redferne is an old fire giant who builds, repairs,
and collects portals and magical gates. He has acquired several unique ones over the
centuries, and the portal to the fire world is one of the gates in his collection.
Dentin: back in the olden days, we used portals to add lots of areas, because the game was too small
Note - the meaning behind this is 'too small for everything that was built to have a reasonable
connect point'. The game world was in fact fairly large, but not enough to accomodate lava fields and frozen
wastelands on the same continent. Portals provided a cheap workaround.
Dentin: these posts here, which lead to the marine biolab zone, were based on the
movie 'phantasm'. They used to be anchored in the dark forest east of ralnoth
Dentin: so the first real area that actually had creatures in it, and actually had
objects in it, was the imp and gnome mines which I built. Later on, I built the ice plane, and after that this place, the fire world,
though it used to be called the fire plane and the world didn't have a name
Dentin: originally, the ice plane was connected to imps because we didn't have anywhere
else to put it, then the fire plane was connected below it, because hey, why not? The game was really, really small back then
Dentin: unfortunately, that setup caused a lot of deaths, because newbies would go to the level 5
imps and accidentally fall through the gate and die
The group then entered the portal to the fire world:
Dentin: a lot of the mobs in this area are ethereal, and cannot be hit by normal weapons
Dentin: do not use fire and avoid lightning if possible
Dentin: when I started on the ice plane, it was a testing ground for a lot of
special code and special features. We added a lot of specps and so forth for it
Dentin: the fire plane was that on steroids
Dentin: I ended up adding the initial code for iacts and dprocs here, which was a complete mess
Dentin: and most of the mobs in the area, at least this top part, were designed to be pretty
Note - in a lot of ways, the fire world started out as a technology demo.
Dentin: if you ever get the chance, wander around in here and look at the
creatures and objects. there's some really good stuff in here
Dentin: we're about to go into one of the more special rooms on the game
Dentin: we're only going to spend a few seconds in there, so pay attention
Dentin: there's a black pool here on the ground
Dentin: the pool was one of the first really special things. It's a piece of custom
code that provided the initial concept behind nearly all of todays interactive creatures. The pool is based on
the black tarpit thing in star trek the next generation that killed tasha yar
Dentin: if you stay there, it will kill you, the same as it did her
Note - this room is still special. There are only four uses of this code on the entire
server, and two of them are in on the first world.
Dentin: ok, so I gotta say this
Dentin: these blue dart mobs, yes, they're actually college humor, as is the spell
Dentin: my roommate at the time, who used to play the character 'buffboy', insisted that I add it
Dentin: that ring elemental, if you ever manage to look at it, is roughly what I
imagined the inside of a tokamak nuclear fusion reactor to look like
Dentin: so hellhounds are another piece of weirdness
Dentin: the first mud I played, hidden worlds, had hellhounds on the lowest level
of hell. They were described fiery and probably fire resistant on that game
Dentin: when I got halfway through building this, I was running pretty short on mob ideas
Dentin: so I built some hellhounds. I figured why not, they're fiery, right?
Dentin: turns out that wasn't a great idea
Dentin: the hellhounds are physical creatures that do physical damage, and it
makes a lot of the traditional fire defenses useless
Dentin: it forces people to split defense in dumb ways
Note - this was the first major, defining feature that made the fire plane diverge from its
intended place as a mirror to the ice plane. The ice plane had very few physical damage creatures, and the
few that did exist either were in out of the way locations, or had magical weaknesses. This allowed casters
with fire spells to perform very well on the ice plane, but on the fire plane there were too many physical
damage creatures for that to be an effective strategy.
Dentin: these fireworms are super cute
Dentin: there'a a lot of decoration in here that has no purpose other than to be pretty
Dentin: we're about to enter another very strange, very special room
Dentin: watch
Almaric: the tongue
Dentin: it's taking its time, heh
Dentin: well anyway, this room has another specp on it
Laniloa: help!
Dentin: wow that sucks
Rhorae: and herein lies dentin's secret plan to get rid of all our spammy minions
Dentin: ok, we're temporarily safe here
Dentin: did anyone die?
Lilianne: not me
Smith: i was area healing
Camlorn: I did not see anyone die.
Dentin: ok, so word to the wise, stay out of the star wars room
Dentin: I built that room when I was thinking about star wars, the movie where they
fly the millenium falcon out of the mouth of the giant space worm
Dentin: I wasn't expecting it to actually eat us
Note - the giant worm thing did eat the entire group, and Dentin had to use building
commands to allow everyone to escape.
Dentin: ok, so these rock spheres
Dentin: these are the silicon nodules from the old star trek episode with the horta
Dentin: speaking of which, lets go see her. Dont attack the horta, it's a kind and gentle creature
Dentin: this is the horta
Dentin: it eats rock, and those nodules are its eggs. Watch the episode at some point for more details
Dentin: one other piece of trivia about this area
Dentin: originally, the mobs were designed to be level aggro
Dentin: the idea was that it would remain equally difficult at all levels,
where as you gained levels more stuff would become aggeressive to you
Dentin: there were two problems with that - most mobs didn't make sense to be level
aggressive, and people tend to just attack everything they see anyway
Dentin: eventually I abandoned that plan and started just putting level restrictions on things. That worked way better
Note - one of the entrances to the lower levels is guarded by an ethereal wall of fire. That
wall of fire is the mob described below.
Dentin: this mob is super special
Dentin: it was the first creature with a dproc on it
Dentin: basically when you hit that mob with a physical attack, it burns you
Dentin: you can go into nomelee mode and crater it without taking a single point of damage
Dentin: I was taking a class in compilers and parsers at the
time, I think. It was my first attempt at building a language parser
Dentin: so the icy paladin was one of my roommates ideas
Dentin: I never did understand exactly why they wanted to build him. They were
bigger d&d heads than I was, and I think they liked the idea of a mob adventurer wandering around down here killing stuff
Neenah: I always wondered about that one
Dentin: yeah, I never was convinced there was a good reason for him to be here
Zenith: i always assumed it was something like that
Guillermo: yeah, I had to laugh seeing an icy mob down here
Note - there was also another creature, Red Dog, which I believe was named after
a popular beer at the time. It was wearing an oak rescue barrel around its neck.
Note - one of the exits down to the second level is guarded by a salamander nest.
Dentin: ok, aggro room ahead, get ready for carnage
Dentin: the salamanders were guards to the exit down. They're not particularly important
Dentin: down to the next level!
Dentin: as I mentioned before, the fire plane was supposed to be the sister plane
to the ice plane, but because there were so many real, physical mobs instead of elementals, it just didn't work
out very well as an area idea
Dentin: now that we've leveled it up and just decided to make it level 25, I think it works a lot better
Wuver: Just wondering, you mentioned making it level 25, does that mean all the mobs are approximately the same level now?
Sandman: for this level yes wuver, but [the level goes up as you go down to lower levels]
Dentin: wuver: we moved it to redfernes portals recently, and the levels have
been improved, but aren't completely sane. There's still a huge amount of decoration here, but the levels are much better than they used to be
Wuver: I see. that's one thing I noticed with ice plane, a lot of mobs were wimps and some of them were very strong.
Sandman: ice plane [is] on the list to be updated at some point.
Dentin: I remember making this bench and this little part of the world as a safe zone, a hangout place
Dentin: I'm a deadbeat though, so I never did anything else with it
Dentin: if you look at the runes here, you'll see reference to kenai
Dentin: there's references to kenai all over the place. Kenai built a LOT of stuff
in the early days, and the reason I keep bringing him up for god events is partially to make sure people remember him
Gunsmoke: I will always remember Kenai :D
Dentin: kenai makes a great villian, but never forget that he's only a great villain because he did a lot of great things :)
Dentin: this cavern has no purpose other than to rest and hang out. The balls of
light are cute, i like them, but they have no point other than to be cute
Dentin: so this part of the cave system is a confusing maze, with the bonus
of a mob named confusion in the middle of it that mass confuses anything which enters the room
Dentin: in fact, this whole section is really irritating. It loops back on itself.
It used to be a lot worse, as the mobs in here used to be completely lethal
Dentin: we're not going to bother exploring the maze
Dentin: if you look south, you'll see a crack in the wall
Dentin: anyway, as a noob, I used to hide in that crack all the time
Dentin: my characters were never strong enough to actually take on the dangerous stuff down here
Dentin: those of you with dclient maps will have noticed that we appear to be back where we started
Dentin: this was also one of the first areas that truly loops left to right
Dentin: I got the idea from playing the video game gauntlet
Dentin: ok, down to the lower level
Dentin: this room is amusing, but is purely decorative
Dentin: there's four pillars holding the place up, and a giant chain link which does a good job of looking ominous
Dentin: this level was originally just a small part of the fire plane, a couple sets of rooms
Dentin: a lot of this stuff is new and doesn't have history yet
Dentin: this chamber however, I'm sure a lot of people know
Dentin: this is where the spellbooks, elementals, and fire giant leader reside
Dentin: in the olden days, you actually had to get cone of cold and the upper level
spells by getting these spellbooks. They were the only ones on the game for it
Dentin: I remember boning up on saves and coming down here to
kill these things, which was ridiculous for my level 28 character
Wuver: I remember that. Those tomes actually used to go for quite a lot of gold
Dentin: anyway I used to come down here and kill the elementals with harm, because
it was the only real way I could do damage to them through the saves
Dentin: I would get in the appropriate saves, then get into a regen contest with
each elemental and pray i didn't get imprisoned
Dentin: cone is now taught by normal trainers, which makes these spellbooks more
of a historical item than something useful
Neenah: so did you run here solo all the time Dentin?
Dentin: I was down here solo all the time with my mortals, but I can't really say
I ran the area. There were very few things I could kill reliably
Dentin: this is the second spellbook, once gain guarded
Laeg: um dentin dunno if you know but these books teach ice imp and chain?
Dentin: we probably updated the books so they made more sense
Dentin: in the olden days it was cone and something else
Note - actually no, I have no real idea what the books currently teach. They've changed
several times over the years, and I haven't had cause to run them in quite some time.
Note - referring to the column of fire at the north end of the fire giant leader's chamber:
Dentin: this is more decoration
Dentin: I really was going for beauty down here. The area was secondary to it being a creative outlet
Dentin: unfortunately that doesn't always work out, but I still remember this place fondly
Note - entering the chambers of the fire giant leader:
Dentin: dont attack these guys
Dentin: the giant leader here has one of the first ever iacts on the game
Dentin: he answers probably a half dozen questions, you just have to figure out the keywords
Dentin: when you get bored, you should come down here and talk to them for a bit
Dentin: lets go see the chimera
Dentin: so some history on the chimera
Dentin: back in the olden days, there was a god named dowart
Dentin: dowart built some stuff
Dentin: a lot of what he built turned out to be a bad idea
Dentin: I ended up adding one of his mobs, this chimera, to the fire plane
Dentin: it was a bad idea, in that I never really felt like it fit here, but I never really had a better place to move it
Dentin: we finally got him in a sane prison with the latest update to this place
Dentin: SHIELDS UP EVERYONE - CHIMERA IS AGGRO AND VERY, VERY DANGEROUS. PROBABLE DEATH.
Note - massive battle with the chimera happened at this point.
Ladislaus: it would've been nice to know what it did beforehand
Dentin: I didn't know. It's been updated
Sandman: trust me, it was a lot worse than what it is now. It got severely dented
Note - there's an actual hellhound kennel on this floor.
Sandman: the kennel
Dentin: these hellhounds were again based on the hellhounds from hidden worlds
Dentin: ok, we're basically going to go on a mob killing spree for the lower layers
Dentin: less tour mode, more killing
Dentin: enter chasm
Dentin: this is the latest extention to the fire plane
Guillermo: what was the inspiration for this portion of the plane?
Dentin: when we reworked the layer above with the fire giants, morpheus and I
decided that we needed to make the threat to them more credible
Dentin: so we put dangerous shit below the fire giants to give the giants something to fight
Note - the tour ends here, as the group became an ordinary death march after this point.
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