Blastmud's sharing system is a two-player collaborative experience based on the premise that if two players share local knowledge, they will (at least while the local knowledge is fresh) be stronger for it. As such, for 10 minutes after sharing, it will boost stats - in the best case, 2 points of boost for every single stat. As such, to be good at Blastmud, you should get good at sharing.
You start sharing with a player by typing `share knowledge with <player>` while you are in the same place (as long as they have consented with `allow share from <player>` first). Sharing will start immediately and automatically, but if you just leave it to run with no intervention, you'll get a very bad score (but don't worry, you can always start sharing again for another try). To get a better score, you need to understand how sharing works and plan your strategy, so read on!
When sharing in Blastmud, there are 7 interest types:
The effectiveness of a sharing session is measured by the highest sum of all the interest type levels reached during the session at any one point in time. On the other hand, if your conversation goes too deep into one interest type and overruns the maximum, then the conversation gets overwhelming and ends. So a good conversation will balance all of the 7 interest types and get them simultaneously to be just below the maximum; this is harder said than done without letting one go over before others are near the top. Try `share status` while in conversation to see your current interest levels.
In order to steer which interest type levels are increasing, and which are decreasing slowly, you can change the topic of conversation, by entering the name of the new topic. However, changing the topic might not always go over smoothly - depending on your `share` skill level, and the time since the last change, the topic change might fail (and if it goes really wrong, might even reset the timer until you can try again). The more skilled you are, the more quickly you can make subsequent changes. When you have a good chance of making a change, the game will inform you with a message, including the possible options you can type.
However, you cannot freely talk about a topic if the current style of conversation isn't suited to it. There are three conversational styles:
* Joking
* Serious
* Amicable
You can switch conversational styles (but it counts as a change, just like changing topics, and might fail). Each of the three conversational styles has three topics you can talk about in that style - making a total of nine topics. When you first switch styles, you'll land in the default topic for the style - and you'll have to wait to switch topics.
Two things make it easier: firstly, if you have high Share skill, you can change topics more quickly. Secondly, just because you've changed topics recently and it would be awkward for you to change again quickly doesn't mean the same applies to your partner; their timer is independent to yours. If you can coordinate with your conversational partner, you get more switches between you than if one partner does all the switching, and can more effectively optimise your score.
Finally, if you find the conversation too fast or too slow, you can also change the pace with `share slowly`, `share normally` or `share quickly`. Keep in mind changing the pace counts as a change, like changing topics - but once you have set the pace, it scales how fast conversational interest levels grow.
Use the following table to help work out what topics to choose:
Style|Topic|Interest Impacts
-|-|-
amicable|fishing spots|weather+++, local geography++, frivolity++, threats-, tactics-, politics-
amicable|thoughts on sun tzu|tactics++++, politics+++, philosophy++, local geography-, threats-, weather-
If you don't like the stats you picked, you can pick again with the *delete stats* command. It
will prompt you to enter a code to confirm.
Note if you do this:
* Your character dies instantly.
* You lose all your XP, except XP obtained through completing journals.
You don't lose your credits, nor do you lose any apartments you are renting (or corps you belong
to), and you come back with the same username. You can change your starting stats and your sex.
### Destroying your character entirely
If you want to give up on a character entirely, you can [log in to the game](https://www.blastmud.org/game.html) with your username and password, and enter the command *delete character forever*. It will prompt you to enter a code to confirm.
Note if you do this:
* You get disconnected from the game immediately.
* A one week countdown period starts.
* If you log in again as that user within the week, the deletion is cancelled.
* If you don't log in for a week, the deletion process is started.
* Your user (including our records of your email and so on) are deleted from the database. We keep backups going back about 9 days, but we only use backups to roll back in the event of a major problem affecting multiple users - so as far as your character is concerned, it is gone and never coming back after the week.
* Your character and anything in its possession is completely deleted.
* Any apartments the character is renting are evicted - sending any other players there on to the street, and destroying any possessions left there.
* All XP, credits, journals and so on are lost forever.
* Another user can register as the same username if they want to.
* After the user is deleted, it doesn't count towards your limit of 5 characters (but note: it does count during the one week wait period).
