Customizing Items
This guide discusses how to customize clothes and other items. This includes how to personalize your starting gear and new gear in game.
But I don’t want to worry about items. Do I have to?
You don’t! You start with a perfectly acceptable set of items for almost any character in Lithmore. If you don’t want to worry about it, you can just start playing with the default items.
How do I personalize my starting gear?
In the starting zone, you can use the restring command to change what your items look like. First, check out the equipment and inventory commands to see what all you have. Equipment is the items you are wearing, while inventory you are just carrying with you.
To restring an item, you will need it to be in your inventory. If you are wearing it, remove it to put in your inventory.
Now, each item has several different fields you may want to change. Let’s use a hat as an example.
The first field is the short description. This is what you see describing the item in your inventory or equipment. It is just a short phrase which says what the item is. For example, a short description of a hat might be: a blue muffin hat. To change the short description, use restring <item keyword> <new short>. For our muffin hat, this would be:
restring hat short a blue muffin hat
Short descriptions are limited to be 59 characters including spaces.
The next field is the keyword. This is the field that determines what words you can use to manipulate the item. If you want to be able to type ‘wear hat’, then ‘hat’ has to be a keyword. You can set as many keywords on your item as you want, but try to include all of the nouns in the short as keywords. To set keywords, use restring <item keyword> <item keywords>. For our muffin hat, this might be:
restring hat keyword hat blue muffin
Next is the long description. This is a full sentence that shows up when you see the item in the room. It doesn’t have to describe the item in any more detail – it is just a full sentence. Our hat’s long description might be ‘A blue muffin hat is here.’ or ‘A muffin hat sits upon the ground.’. To set the long description, use restring <item keyword> <long desc>. So our muffin hat might use:
restring hat log A blue muffin hat is here.
If you want to add more detail to your items, you should use an extended description, also known as an ed. An ed is a description which is attached to specific keywords on the item that you will see when you use look with that keyword. They can be the same or different from the item’s keywords. First you use restring <item keyword> ed add <keyword for extra desc>, and this puts you into an editor where you can type the description in, just like your own description. Then just use @x when you are done to save and exit the editor. For example, we might create an ed to describe our hat:
restring hat ed add muffin hat
This muffin hat has a snug band and is poofy up top.
@x
And even though we have added an ed for the keywords muffin and hat, we could still add another to describe a plume, even though this isn’t a keyword on the item:
restring hat ed add plume
The muffin hat sports a fluffy plume, pinned on with a bronze rose.
@x
Now you can look hat to see the first description or look plume to see the second one. You can also change an ed you already wrote by using restring ed edit , or you can remove an ed with restring ed delete.
How do I add color to my items?
You can color your items by adding color codes to the strings. A color code is a { followed by a letter to indicate the color. The color code itself won’t show up in the string, but all of the letters after it will appear in that color until another color code is used.
For example, {B is the color code for blue, and white, the default text color, is {w. If we want to make just the word blue in our hat, we would change the way we use restring to put a {B before the word blue, and {w after, to return to white:
restring hat short a {Bblue{w muffin hat
and get:
a blue muffin hat
You can also change color codes within a word to create colored effects of alternated hues. So for a more interesting blue:
restring hat short a {bb{Bl{cu{be{w muffin hat
would end up as:
All of the different color codes are available listed in help color.
http://polyducks.co.uk/hosting/inquisition-tool/ is a resource to help you in coloring.
Can I get personalized items once I’m in the game too?
Restring doesn’t work anymore once you’re outside of the starting zone, but there are options available for personalization still. Most commonly, people can commission custom items from merchants, who can craft items and make things to their specifications. They can use the tool command to string items that have just been made. Tool works just like restring in syntax.
However, if you have an item which you have bought and would like to personalize it yourself, you can use the retool command. This costs the purchase price over again, but then you can use the tool command to customize it as if it had just been made. Then when you’re done, finalize the item to make it usable again. This is usually a much more expensive option than commissions from the merchants, but it works when you don’t want to use a merchant for some reason.
If you want to craft your own items, you can do that as well, but that is beyond the scope of this guide.
What should I make my items look like?
Generally, you can make your items look however you want. The Inquisition takes place in a medieval theme, but generally clothes that are suited anywhere from the dark ages to the baroque will fit in.
When you restring items, you can change what they are, but you should keep to items with the same general properties. For example, a bodice could be a tunic or a shirt, but shouldn’t be changed to a hat. If you restring a dagger, it could be a knife, but an axe is a different type of weapon, so you shouldn’t string it as that.
In the starting zone, it’s usually alright to change what material an item is made out of, so that you can start with something that suits your character, but once in play, you shouldn’t change an item’s base material. So a linen shirt will always be made of linen, even if you don’t draw attention to that in the string.
You should also be mindful of sumptuary. This is legal limitations on who can wear what, as a benefit of their station. You can read all the details in help sumptuary. The most important things are that only nobles and gentry can wear silk and velvets and silver jewelry and only nobles can wear gold jewelry. There is also a shade of purple called Tubori purple which is limited to the nobility, and a shade of red called Cardinal red which is limited to Inquisitors and Royalty. You can wear other shades of purple and red, but if you want to be very careful about it, you can avoid them altogether.
Also keep in mind that Lithmore is both very cold and very modest. You will usually want items which will work in that scene. Don’t make anything that shows a lot of skin without being aware of what you are in for. Check help lithmorran fashion for more details on how the typical Lithmorran dresses.