Elysium is a living world, where, set against a background of medieval fantasy, you can fulfil your every dream, becoming a mighty hero, a wise sage, or a wealthy noble, or any other of countless roles.

It is the aim of Elysium to provide a realistic and enjoyable simulation of this world, an environment where your only restriction is your skill and wits. When you enter Elysium, you become one with this world, free to guide its path as fate guides you. In this way, Elysium will grow and develop as you do, constantly changing and providing new challenges and aims.

The world of Elysium is a complex one, and your presence can easily sway its path. As such, each person who enters Elysium has the opportunity to change it in some way, be it by rising to power in the cities, becoming a feared and reviled warlord, protecting the weak and young, or simply healing friends or offering advice to their fellows. When you begin your life in Elysium, you will be a common citizen in one of the cities of the land, from which seed you can grow to great power, working your way up the pile of guildmasters, ministers, emperors, priests and gods, all with their own aims and powers. Perhaps you will be the one to rise above all others, and take your position in legend and lore.

There are nine cities in the lands of Elysium, spread out across three continents. Each of these cities was built by one of the nine major sentient races of Elysium, although many now choose to forsake the homelands of their ancestors and seek a new life in one of the other cities. These bastions of civilization are led by the emperors, men and women of supreme power who proved their worthiness and took control of an empire. Under the emperors toil the ministers, appointed by the emperor to serve their citizens. But the emperors do not control everything; Within and around the cities, guilds teach their lore and skills to willing initiates, led by their guildmasters, who, when leading a particularly large and important guild, can be more powerful than the emperors. The religious orders of the world are also beyond the powers of the emperors, the gods ruling over their loyal followers through their priests.

When you first log on, you'll be in an introduction area which teaches you the basic commands you'll need to live and thrive in the world of Elysium. While in this introduction, you are able to regenerate your random description, or delete your character and pick a different race, though once you leave it your race and description will be fixed.

If you don't need this basic introduction, or after you have completed it, you'll want to call for a guide by typing 'guide'. This guide will give you some more information about the world, focussing on the race you selected, then will take you to the academy in the city of your people.

Although it is optional, completing the tasks given to you at the academy will give you a good grounding in the world of Elysium, revealing further systems and gameplay mechanics, and giving you a taste of the world's themes. You can also earn some basic rewards that will make your first few days easier, and some lessons to unlock your first skills.

To communicate with people within Elysium, type 'tell ' and they will receive a private message from you, or you could 'shout ' and everyone within Elysium would hear your message.

To show emotion, you can type commands such as

smile, grin, frown, sigh, sniff, nod and shake

These will display appropriate messages to all those in your location, to convey your feelings. If you wish to target your emotions at any particular individual, you can add a player's name to the end of the emotion, such as 'smile Oudreas'.

You will start your adventues in Elysium in the home city of your race. To see who else belongs to this city and is currently online, type 'cwho' (short for citizen who). They should be the first people you should go to if you need assistance.

If you wish to see your current condition, type 'status'. This will list your health, mana, city, order, guild and many more things...

You can list your inventory by typing 'inv', 'inven' or 'inventory'. At first you won't have many items, just some starter equipment given to everyone, though completing the academy will earn you more items, and other equipment can be earned or bought once you start venturing out further in the world. Finding shops that are selling food, drinks, light sources and clothing is an important early objective; You will also find market stalls where you can eat and drink.

Fortunately, each city has seen to it so that the first 10 meals and drinks that a newcomer needs are given to them for free, but only if you are on the streets of your own city when you become so hungry or thirsty that you would start to take damage.

To see a map of your city, type 'help map' i.e. 'help tylorusmap' if you like in Tylorus. This will show you the basic layout of the city.

The shops are likely to be on a road which suggests trade of some kind. You can recognize a shop when you enter the same location as one by seeing;

a fat merchant eyes you up and down

Type 'goods' and you will get a list of the items that the shop sells. If a particular item takes you fancy, such as a barrel of water, then type 'goods barrel' to see how many the shop has in stock, and the price for the barrel.

When you have some money, you can type 'buy ' or 'buy ' if you want to be specific.

Let's find some money now. Upon your continent there are quests which give you money as a reward. The best way to get gold as a newbie is to find the tinker which resides within each city. This is a good time to introduce the 'directions' command, which can tell you where to go to reach certain waypoints, including the local tinker. You can also use this to find routes between cities, or back to your home city if you get lost outside the gates.

Once you have found him, type 'greet tinker' and he will ask you to retrieve three items for him. Each time you bring him one of those items he will give you some gold. Many non-player characters (NPCs) within Elysium, such as the tinker, respond to the 'greet ' command. Upon greeting them, you will be informed whether there is anything you can do for them.

All of the items can be easily found either within the city's academy (which you will have been in if you followed the newbie guide (type 'guide' to summon a new one if you wish)) or just outside the city gates.

If you are asked to retrieve a pine cone, or a cherry seed or something similar, then you will want to search out a tree which grows these items. Once the appropriate grove of trees has been found (i.e. you'd find pine cones in a pine grove) then you should type 'pick seed'.

Once you have the item that the tinker asked you to get for him, then return to the tinker and type 'give to tinker' to receive your reward.

Another way is to kill creatures outside the city gates, and carve their corpses into carcasses which can be sold to a city to feed their populace. To attack a creature, type 'hit ' as many times as is required to kill it.

Combat in Elysium works on a balance system - You can't just type 'kill ' and wait for it to die, each time you want to hit your opponent you need to send the command again. You'll get a message when your balance recovers, which means you're ready to use another combat or skill command like hit.

Hitting is a weak attack, and so you should only attempt to kill creatures which look quite small and harmless i.e. do not attempt to kill a small wyvern, for the odds of you winning such a fight would be very small indeed. You will learn more potent attacks once you join a guild.

Once the creature is dead, type 'carve' to carve the creature's corpse into carcasses, and take the carcasses. With the carcass slung over your shoulder, you should try to find the tradesman in any city (preferably your own city). The tradesman is an NPC who purchases commodities, such as carcasses, from you if the city who owns him is willing to buy them. You should be able to use the 'directions' command to find the local tradesman if you're struggling.

Once you have found him, you may type 'goods' to list what he is buying and selling, and for what price.

If he is not purchasing carcasses then type 'shout Who wishes to purchase carcasses from me?'. You are likely to get a response from someone high up in one of the cities.

If you're selling through a player, rather than the NPC, make sure you have quite a few carcasses (at least 10), otherwise it would not be worth their time purchasing such a small amount from you, if they have to travel far to reach you.

Other people you meet may be able to tell you of more ways to make money. There are various quests which are more difficult, yet give you larger amounts of money in return.

To eat any food you have purchased, say a steak, then you simply type 'eat steak' and to drink from a barrel full of water type 'drink from barrel'.

Once you have a source of income, you will want to join a guild. It is within a guild that you learn a profession. Type 'help guilds' and 'guildlist' to find out more about how guilds work, and for a list of the guilds available respectively. Typing 'help guildlist' will give you a list of guilds which have further information available about them.

You should approach the guildmaster of the guild you are interested in, and ask him some questions about it. The guild you chose is not permanent, yet will influence the way you act and do things in the future... it is not a decision to be made up on the spot. If the guildmaster is not online (type 'who' to see who is online) then you might wish to either wait for them, or mail them by typing 'mail '. Mailing costs 10 gold pieces, and the instructions on how to use it are explained once you type the command.

Elysium is a roleplaying game, and as such you will be required to roleplay your character. That means no shouts about what is on TV and no shouts containing the lyrics to your favorite song. You should read the help file for your particular race and decide what you would like to accomplish in Elysium and then roleplay towards that goal. Act like your race. If you are a goblin, be cunning. If you are an Orc, be aggressive. When you join a guild, and possibly a religious order, your roleplaying fun will increase. Do not take things personally here - roleplay and you will enjoy your time a lot more. If you do want to talk to people about out of character things, you can use the handy 'ooc' command to chat with the other players.

Click here for a full list of commands