Malix's Unofficial 8bit Survival Guide

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OK, this document is targetted mainly towards newbies, but it might be useful to others. I recommend you read the whole thing before you get started.

DON'T MESS WITH LUIGI, he is the head wizard, and the King of 8bit. Do NOT disobey him, or you'll be in deep trouble. Several players have had to learn that the hard way, he probably won't @sitelock you unless you are actually trying to get that to happen, but he has many punishments available.
There are several warnings in this doc, I don't want you to get the impression that all this stuff happens constantly, it doesn't, but it does happen every once in a while.
OK, if you don't like 8bit and aren't gonna come back, contact Luigi and tell him that, otherwise he might never @nuke your character and that's just a waste of space.
8bit has a very extensive help system, many newbies often ask questions that could be answered easily if they just read the help files, but I guess sometimes people don't want to take the time to read em.
First thing you should do if you haven't done so yet, follow the instructions to setup your client to view FANSI and get yourself a lot, this'll also get you a mailbox and your newbie paycheck which is 50 coins, (note: you don't get this much every day, see help paycheck in game for an explanation of the formula for how much you get.)

I'd recommend trying to stay connected for at least 5 hours a day every day for the first month to max out your paycheck, because after you lose the 3 coin bonus for being under a month old, it's a /long/ time before your paycheck gets that high again. I notice several people make that mistake myself included, and they end up passing up a lot of coins that they might need later.
OK, a bunch of newbies seem to have trouble getting their paycheck out of their mailbox, you either get mail's pay or if you have trouble with that, just enter mailbox then get pay(Note:If you have more than one paycheck, either use the full name, or the date, something unique in the name.
If you have a question you want a straight answer to, use the <newbie> channel, or if it's a coding question use the <crazy computer speak> channel(use @chan/on crazy then +cr Message), frankly if you ask on <Public> you don't always get a straight or truthful answer, sometimes they like to trick newbies.

Update: As of the last update of this doc, The newbie channel no longer exists.
OK, before you go running all over the grid, you'll need to be wearing something otherwise you might get arrested for public nudity(This has happened to a /lot/ of people, myself included.), you can either go to one of the stores in the clothing district to get premade nice looking clothing, or you can just make your own. I'd tell you exactly how to make clothing, but I'd like to encourage capitalism, because lately only newbies seem to spend any coins buying products like clothing and I'd rather not mess with that.
ALWAYS @lock your objects when you @create them, otherwise they could be stolen(Your stuff is not safe just because it's in your inventory) another lesson I learned the hard way. I myself made a client alias to send @create whatever and @lock whatever whenever I type @create whatever
I HIGHLY Recommend the Tutorial O'Doom which can be reached with @tel #500 It has pretty much almost everything you need to know, the first part explains how to move around the game and talk and build, and the rest explains about MUSHcode, it covers just about everything you need to know, at least to get you started.
If you don't like your name, you can just easily change it with @name me=NewName Password(This is for players only, you shouldn't specify your password when renaming things, rooms, or exits.
PLEASE don't just create another character just to change names, because the database is rarely purged of old characters. If you want an alt you are allowed to have one(even more than one), you can even have more than one on at the same time. However your main paycheck(Not all the paychecks) is split between the ones you have connected in the same day(Only if they own property and thus a mailbox. If they don't have any property(Usually this kind of alt is used for testing code) then the paycheck can't be split, because they don't get paychecks.).

You may /NOT/ give coins to an alt, there is a channel solely to detect this. Now if you have code to test you might get away with giving a few coins to a testing alt(One without property and doesn't get a paycheck, thus it is generally accepted that it is ok to give them coins, since they can't get them otherwise other than finding them on the grid or completing puzzles.), but don't even try to give large amounts of coins or you will get your *** handed to you. 8bit is very relaxed, and has very few rules, I don't say this lightly when I say if you can't follow the few rules it has then frankly get the **** off and never come back.

PLEASE don't give your alts property unless you plan on building on it, it's a waste of space on the grid otherwise. It's really annoying to walk around the grid and walk into lots that are months old and have nothing done to them.

I haven't confirmed this, but there might be a limit to how many alts you can create, this is to prevent people from creating hundreds of alts to avoid punishments or to annoy everybody. I know at least that I suggested it several months ago, and I thought I heard something about it being implemented.
Most channels on 8bit are patrolled by the POT9k(Punish O'Tron 9000), every time you swear you are punished, the punishment worsens the more times you swear. Every day you connect your record goes down one, and if you have a clean record you get a small bonus to your paycheck.

Note: There are a few non-swear words that also trigger a punishment, these are obscure so I doubt you'll run into them in general conversation, unless somebody tricks you into saying them. I won't list them here, since I don't really remember all of them.
Sometimes on 8bit it seems like no matter what you do, somebody is gonna hate you, there are a few exceptions, but for the most part newbies are treated very harshly. Don't start thinking they are singling you out, they do it to like every newbie, if they don't /then/ they're singling you out. It's like a test of character, either you have the stuff to stick it out, or you don't. It's been compared to a hazing ritual to get into a fraternity.
DON'T lose your temper, you'll just end up saying something stupid and being taunted about it for the rest of your life on 8bit. Believe me I know. Feel free to insult back if you must, just keep a calm head and don't resort to swearing every other word or spamming public or some other such nonsense, that just makes you look like an a**, and will /NEVER/ result in you winning an argument, even if they think you're right they'll probably keep arguing to get you to to keep swearing and making a fool of yourself.
8bit has a food system, it affects the BATTLE system I think, but more commonly if your stomach ever gets empty all the names on <Public> and in pages turns to names of food, so you don't know who's talking. You won't run into this for like the first two weeks or so, but if you start seeing food talking to you, it means you should get some food. You lose about 1 food item per day(If you are Fit, it seems the more fat you are the more food you burn through). Type score to see how much food, drink, and bladder you have left.

There's also a drink and bathroom system, but there are free facilities and a drinking fountain, and as far as I know they only effect the BATTLE system.

Luigi recently added a Build system(Fat or Fit), although it still isn't completely clear how it works, it most likely has to do with the ingredients of the food you eat, and/or how active you are.
You should be very careful when @chowning other people's objects, and even more so when they tell you to @set them TRUST. Also, I highly recommend never @setting your player TRUST, because that's like setting everything you own TRUST.

You see TRUST objects have control over your player, so in the wrong hands they can @force you to do stuff against your will, like giving somebody all your coins for example, or making you say something. Not all TRUST objects are scams, some stuff requires it in order to @teleport you, or to locate things from your perspective, etc. Objects sold by vendors are generally safe. Just be careful.
8bit has weapons called darts, they knock you unconscious for 15 minutes per dart. Making you unable to do anything for 15 minutes. They are relatively expensive, especially satellite darts, which can dart you from anywhere, not just from the same room like normal darts. During your first 30 days you should have newbie protection, unless you make a conscious effort to tick people off, in which case you may be turned into a pin-cushion anyway. Note: This is not a coded protection, just a general guideline, but if people break it without good reason, they are almost always punished.

Do /NOT/ create alts or connect from the website chatroom if you are darted because this is against the rules, it isn't written down on the game, but it is. It makes sense really, because who would dish out all that money to buy darts to dart you if you could resume talking or whatever just by connecting to a different character. Unless you really get on somebody's nerve or they're really pissed off, chances are you'll only get 1 dart, which gives you 15 minutes to cool off or do something else.

Update: OK, it seems that regular(same room) darts are no longer sold, only satellite darts, however there seem to be varying durations, regular darts are still 15 minutes, royal darts are something like 4 hours, tiny darts(not sure if they're still sold) are like 2-3 minutes, and if you are unlucky enough to get hit by a HOLY dart that's like a month(but since Luigi is the only one who has them, you'd really need to piss him off to get hit with one.)
You should generally make yourself a safe room, and @link yourself to it. A safe room will protect you from most forms of attack. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that just about the only thing you can do while darted is go home. The easiest and most common way to make a safe room is to @dig a FLOATING room.(A room that isn't connected to the main grid, and has the FLOATING flag. Note: The Floating flag is actually optional, it just suppresses a warning message.)
Spam is where somebody sends you like a couple thousand lines in order to either annoy you, to lag your client, or just to shut you up. I haven't seen it used much since the creation of darts. The most common way to send it is to @pemit it, which can be blocked easily with either @lock/page or HAVEN. There are also two devices on the market that block it for you, they are the PageBlock and the PageFilter, the PageBlock is cheaper, and is good for your basic spam blocking needs, the PageFilter has lots of more advanced options.

The rules considering the spamming of newbies are much the same as for darts, if they do it without darn good reason they're severly punished. The last person who did it was perma-darted for like 2 weeks.

Related to @pemit and spamming is the <Vigilante> and <Vigilante2> channels, they monitor @pemits, the former displays every @pemit as it happens and thus can spam you if somebody is being spammed that way, the later(created by me) summarizes the output of the former and displays it on a minute by minute basis.

Update: As of the last update of this doc, remote @pemitting has been disabled, so it only works in the same room, or if they control the room you're in.

Update: Ok, remote pemitting is re-enabled but a switch must be specified.
If you don't connect for a long time, there's a chance your character will be taxed a few coins. ~~Now this takes a couple weeks/months, it doesn't happen if you leave for a couple days. Just so you know.~~ Correction, I recently found out it /can/ happen after just a few days absense, although I think it depends on how much money you have, both for how much and how often you are taxed.
If you are planning on doing a lot of exploring there are several products to help you out. There's several teleportation managers that let you use aliases to @teleport to places, there's a feature comparison here(Many people buy both the Telematic and TimeWarp, so they can have the best of both.) There's also the Mapping Droids, which follows you around, tells you when you find a new room, lets you compare your progress against other people with droids, shows you if the current room has any +views, and can tell you how many rooms away a specified room is. The Explorer Assistant which records where you go, and makes a color coded exit list to show you where you have and haven't explored, and there's the Staff of Many Places which takes you to a random JUMP_OK room in the game. You /DON'T NEED/ these devices to explore, but they can help if you don't have a really good memory(Like me admittedly, which is why I created the Explorer Assistant in the first place).

Luigi in his all mighty awesomeness recently added a new global function called shortestpath(), which searches for the shortest path between points A and B, and returns the dbrefs of the exits to get there, although it does cost 1 coin per use, because it's computationally expensive.(Update: Luigi in yet another showing of his awesomeness recently changed it, and several other commands/functions that charge you like @search and @find, to a 1 in 1000 chance of being charged, so they're practically free).

If you are just planning to sit around and chat then those products won't really do much good. You might consider one of the Channel Filter devices, but you don't really need it, and it might cost you some coins to queue cost, and you might not be able to listen to the filtered channels while you are darted.
8bit has all sorts of things to entertain you, there's a <Trivia> channel, MUSHopoly, a couple different arcades, a Bowling Alley, a MUSH Nintendo, A MUD/RPG-ish game area called Oceana, and more.
Some miscellaneous devices you might find useful are the Object-O-Matic, which lets you store dbrefs of your stuff with aliases~~, and the OmniEye, which lets you see other people's inventories.~~

You also might check out my MUSHcode Tips, Tricks and FAQs page, and my Lot Rating Guidelines.