The "mission ruler" tool, available to those who can spawn it in Wurm using the "Ebony Wand," can generate simple missions or quests based on triggers and effects. The system is not at all intuitive and can be frustratingly finicky. This guide will get you started with making simple missions with the mission ruler, and will provide tips to help reduce the headaches associated with this tool.

This is my first guide, and thought it needed to be made due to the lack of information out there on the mission ruler. Please let me know if you have comments or need clarifying information

Firstly, you need game management powers high enough to spawn the mission ruler (i.e., Arch Angel or higher - level 4 or 5 powers - this will allow you to use the Ebony Wand to create items). Once you have your Ebony Wand:

• Activate the Ebony Wand
  
• Right-click on any item or tile
  
• Go to Specials > Create
  
• Find "mission ruler -birchwood" and press "Send" (QL, etc, doesn't matter)

After following the above, you should see a mission ruler in your inventory.


To bring up the mission ruler interface, right click any item or tile and click "Manage Missions." You'll see several options pop up. Every mission is made up two main parts: triggers and trigger effects. In a very basic mission, the player would perform one action (trigger), and some thing (effect) would result. In more complex missions, triggers may only be active when the mission has progressed a certain amount, and multiple trigger effects may occur from a single trigger.

Mission created with the mission ruler do NOT behave like the "Epic" missions in Wurm. Each player tracks progress individually, and you cannot make 'group' missions that allow multiple players to contribute to mission progress.

Let's begin by doing a very simple mission, and explain what different options mean along the way.

The best way to start off with the ruler is to make a simple mission to start to see how it works. In this mission, the player will examine an item, and will be rewarded with another item. We'll also go over what each item in each dialog means.

To start, activate your mission ruler, right click on an item or tile, then select "Manage Missions." You should see the "Manage missions" screen popup. Select "Create Mission" and hit "Send." You should see the "New mission" dialog popup as shown below.

Next you'll need to fill in basic details of the mission. Below is what each is an explanation of each field:

• Name (required): A name for your mission. This is what will show up in the player's mission log after the mission is started and through completion.
  
• Inactive checkbox: If ticked, then progression of this mission is halted and triggers and effects in the mission will not occur. If the mission is not started by the player, then it cannot be started while inactive. If a player is in the middle of the mission and it then becomes inactive, the player's progress will "freeze," as triggers and effects are disabled.
  
• Introduction: This is the mission text that will pop up on the player's screen when the trigger that starts the mission occurs. Note, if a mission has a single trigger and effect (e.g., the mission starts from 0% and goes to 100% in one step), then this popup does not occur.
  
• Fail on death checkbox: If ticked, the mission will fail (e.g., progress lost) if the player dies while the mission is in progress.
  
• Mission time limit: You can set a limited time for the mission if desired. This is optional, but it is usually a good idea to set some time limit.
  
• New chance if fail checkbox: If ticked, this will allow the player to restart the mission from the beginning trigger if they fail. (time up, death, etc)
  
• May restart when finished checkbox: If ticked, then the player can do the mission again and again after it is completed.
  
• Delete checkbox: If ticked, the mission will be deleted after the "Send" button is pressed. WARNING: if you have a mission in progress that you delete, it may forever show up in your mission log as an incomplete mission (not a fatal error, but a nuisance).

Let's fill in some info for our basic mission. Let's call it "FirstMission" and allow the player to do it over and over. There's a time limit in there just in case things go wrong (as is liable to occur with the mission ruler). The items circled are changed from the default:

Then hit "Send." You should see "You create the mission FirstMission" in your Event log.

Now, we need to decide what the player has to do to run the mission. Since we're just going to give the player an item for examining something, we need to start by creating or selecting the item for examination. For this tutorial, we'll create a "Libila puppet" as our trigger target. Create one using the Ebony Wand.

Once you've created the puppet, it's time to go back to the mission ruler. Activate the ruler, right-click on any item or tile, and hit "Manage missions." This time, we're going to go to select the "List missions" action and hit "Send." You'll see an "Active missions" list like the one below (except with only one mission).

Select the "Edit" radio button and hit "Send." The next dialog you see will be very similar to "Create mission," but with two new sections: "Mission triggers" and "Trigger effects."

Since we want to create a trigger, select the "Create new" radio button under "Mission triggers" then hit "Send." You'll see the "New mission trigger" dialog pop up.

• Name (required): Simple and unique name for your trigger. Ensure it is descriptive enough that you don't get it mixed up with other triggers (very important for more complex missions).
  
• Inactive checkbox: If ticked, simply disables the trigger.
  
• Description: Description for your trigger. Optional field - only someone with the mission ruler will be able to see it.

Then comes the "Triggers" section:

• On item used: if the player needs to have a certain item activated to complete a task, this is where you'd select that activated item. For instance, if you wanted a trigger to occur when the player lit a forge, then the "On item used" box should be "steel and flint" (not "forge"). Unfortunately, this box is not alphabetically organized and cannot have filters applied, so it can be frustrating to find a specific item. A lot of the time, this box will remain "None."
  
• On Action performed: This is an important trigger item, as this is the action the player must perform to activate the trigger. This can be anything from stepping on a certain tile to chopping down a tree to examining an item. For instance, if you wanted the player to examine an item to trigger something, then you'd select "Examine" in this box. Note that not all perform-able actions are in this box, so that limits some trigger possibilities (such as "Use").
  
• Action performed on target: This is the tile or item on which the above action is performed. The Use current checkbox will make whatever item you used the mission ruler on to open the mission ruler interface to be the target of the above action. Alternatively, you can put in the WurmId of the item in the Use id box to designate the target. NOTE: if the "Use current" box is ticked, then anything inside the "Use id" field is ignored!
  
• Target is a Spawn Point checkbox: Unknown
  
• Seconds to trigger: If desired, you can insert a delay between the trigger action being performed and the trigger effect(s) taking place. Leaving this blank makes the effect(s) happen instantly.
  
• Mission affected: This determines which mission the trigger is used for. It is important that this field is properly selected, as having the wrong item in here could cause the incorrect mission to trigger!
  
• On which state of the mission should this trigger execute?: This a key element to mission progression. For a trigger designed to start a mission, this should be set to 0. For multi-stage missions, this should be set to the exact value for mission progress for which you want the trigger to be active. Note that the trigger that starts the mission automatically sets mission progress to 1%. So, if you have an effect that increases mission progress by 50%, then you should make the next trigger active at 51% (e.g., 0% -> start mission -> 1% -> continue mission -> +50% = 51%).

With the above knowledge, let's setup the trigger for our starter mission. We'll name the trigger "ExaminePuppet". The On Action performed will be "Examine", and our Action performed on target will be the Libila puppet we spawned earlier. As stated above, there are two ways to do this. Since you likely didn't right click the puppet to start the mission ruler interface (and thus can't use the "Use current" tickbox), we need to get the puppet's WurmId. The easiest way to do this is to activate the Ebony Wand, right click the puppet, then select "Item" > "Get info." You should see the item info (along with the WurmId) show up in your event window:

The "WurmId" for your puppet will go into the "Use id" box in the mission trigger dialog. We'll leave Seconds to trigger blank (instant effect), set the Mission affected to "FirstMission", and leave On which state of the mission should this trigger execute at 0.

Now that all the info is filled in, we'll want to go ahead and make a new trigger effect. Select the "Create new" radio button and hit "Send."

Now comes the fun part: what happens when the player initiates a trigger? There are a lot of options, including giving a reward, changing a tile, spawning a creature, or teleporting the player. Let's see what each item in the trigger effect window means.

• Name: a name for your effect. Like trigger names, make sure it is unique and descriptive enough to not get lost in a long list of trigger effects.
  
• Description: Like the trigger description, this is just something to help you remember what the effect does. The only people that can see it are those with mission ruler capabilities.
  
• Inactive checkbox: If ticked, disables the effect.
  
• Trigger: Important! This is the name of the trigger that causes the current effect.
  
• Resumes/stops skill gain: As it reads. If one of these boxes is ticked, it will stop or resume ALL skill gain.
  
• Destroys all (!) carried items: As it reads - removes ALL items from a player's inventory when the effect is activated. Don't use it. It's silly.
  
• New item Reward: Spawns the selected item inside the player's inventory upon the effect being activated. You can also set the Material to something other than standard if desired. For example, you could spawn an adamantine axe if you selected "axe" as the item reward and "adamantine" as material. More testing required for unusual combinations (e.g., cotton axe)
  
• This is a tutorial/newbie item: Unknown. Suspect is creates a non-improvable item, but further testing is required.
  
• Qualitylevel: Sets the QL of the spawned item (1-99).
  
• Numbers: Sets the number of reward items to spawn.
  
• Byte value: Unknown
  
• Existing item reward id: WurmId of an item already inside the game world to use as a reward.
  
• Existing container id to insert into: WurmId of a container (chest, barrel, etc) to put the above reward item into (if left blank, it goes into the player inventory).
  
• Modify Tile X/Y: X/Y coordinate of a tile to modify. You can get the X/Y of a tile by Examining a tile with the Ebony Wand activated (tilex and tiley in the Event Window are your coordinates).
  
• Tile Type: Type of tile that the above selected tile will change into upon effect activation.
  
• Tile Data: Unknown
  
• Spawn Tile X/Y: X/Y coordinate of a tile on which to spawn a creature (defined below).
  
• Creature Age: Age of spawned creature. Not fully understood. Theoretically, should be a value between ~1 and ~8, but testing revealed variable ages even when defined.
  
• Creature spawned: Type of creature spawned at the X/Y coordinate defined above.
  
• Teleport/Special effect Tile X/Y: Player teleport target tile OR special effect target tile. If a special effect is selected, the player will not be teleported.
  
• Surfaced: Determines whether or not the tile X/Y (for the above tile coordinates) is on the surface or not. This should almost always be "true." The main exception is when the target tile is inside a cave.
  
• New skill Reward: Skill to increase as part of the effect increased by Skill Reward value
  
• Special effect: perform a "Special effect" from the drop down on the Teleport/special effect tile defined above. If an X/Y coordinate is defined and no special effect is selected, the player will be teleported to the target tile when the trigger effect is activated.
  
• Available achievements: If you have custom achievements and want to grant the player one during this trigger effect, you can select it here.
  
• Mission affected: Important! This must be selected to ensure the desired mission progresses correctly! Very strange things can happen if this isn't properly set.
  
• Mission state change: Important! Adds this % value to mission completion. If this value causes to mission to go to or above 100%, then the mission will be considered complete.
  
• Sound mapping: not tested. Theoretically plays a given sound on trigger effect.
  
• Top text displayed/Text displayed: Displays text you place in the fields in a popup box. The "Top text" is bolded at the top of the popup box, and the "Text" is below the "Top text." I found that using only "Top text" for the popup box is better, as the formatting for what is in the "Text" field isn't quite right (output is too narrow).
  
• Verify the popup?: Not tested
  
• Window size X/Y: Supposedly sets the window size for the popup, but doesn't seem to work.
  
• Mission to activate/deactivate: Very powerful options! This will make active or inactive any missions that you select in the drop down boxes (same as ticking or unticking the "inactive" box in the "edit" or "create" mission interfaces). I found this method to be much more reliable in making a mission 'non-repeatable' than selecting the "may restart when finished" checkbox in the create/edit mission interface. These options can also be used to open up successive 'branches' in a quest line without having them all tied under a single mission.
  
• Destroy target: Unknown. Doesn't seem to do what I expected (e.g., destroy item which was trigger target). Seemed to have no effect. Use at your own risk.
  
• Delete this effect?: If ticked, deletes the effect after you hit "Send."

For our mission, we just want the player to receive something - a blueberry - every time they examine the puppet. So we'll call the trigger effect "GetBlueberry", we'll make sure to select the Trigger "ExaminePuppet", we'll make the New item Reward "blueberry", set the QL and number of items to 1, set the Mission affected to "FirstMission", and finally set the Mission state change to "100".

Now that all the info is in, we can hit "Send."

You've made your first mission! If you followed all the instructions correctly, you should be rewarded with a QL 1 blueberry every time you examine the Libila puppet.

Editing missions is pretty straightforward, and will likely be done often as you make more complex missions and learn the quirks of the mission ruler. We'll use the basic mission we made as an example.

Let's say, in this instance, we want to change the player action from "Examining" the puppet, to "Drop"ing it on the ground.

First, activate the mission ruler. For missions that involve a target item, such as the puppet, you can actually right-click on the target item, select manage missions, select the "Edit target missions" radio button and hit "Send." If the target item is associated with multiple missions, they will be shown. If it is associated with a single mission (as in this case), then a dialog box will pop up for you to edit that mission.

You should notice under "Mission Triggers" and "Trigger effects," that the previously made trigger and effect are listed. Select the trigger or effect you want to edit by clicking the associated radio button. In this case, we want to edit the trigger "ExaminePuppet," so we select the "Edit" button and hit "Send."

In the "Mission trigger" window, we can change any of the triggers to give the desired effect. You can even change the Trigger name, and it will automatically update the associated mission and effect to use the renamed trigger. Let's change the name of the trigger to "DropPuppet" and change the action performed to "Drop". We don't need to do anything else, so just select "Send".

Now, when you "Drop" the Libila puppet, you should be rewarded with a blueberry!

Now that we have the basics, let's move on to a slightly more complex mission involving multiple parts. In this mission:

• The player will examine a gravestone and will be given a barley.
  
• When the player plants a barley (at any time), they will be teleported back to the where the gravestone lies

First, we need to create the setup for the mission. This involves creating the gravestone and make it so it can't be picked up or moved.

1. Create a gravestone using the Ebony Wand
   
2. Drop the gravestone on the ground near where you want the player to teleport
   
3. Edit the "Item Restrictions" on the gravestone so that it can't be taken, moved, destroyed, and has no decay
   
4. If desired, choose a location to teleport the player to, then record the coordinates of that location (Examine a tile with the Ebony Wand).

Now, it's time to get started on the mission. Activate the mission ruler.

1. Right-click on the gravestone and select "Manage missions"
   
2. Select "Create new mission" and hit "Send"
   
3. Name the mission (e.g., "Return to grave")
   
4. Set a description (e.g., "Plant the barley to return to the gravestone")
   
5. Set max time to a reasonable value (e.g., 1 hour)
   
6. Tick the boxes for New chance if fail and May restart when finished.
   
7. Hit "Send"

Let's create the first trigger.

1. Right-click the gravestone and select "Manage missions"
   
2. Select "List missions" and hit "Send"
   
3. Select "Edit" next to your new mission ("Return to grave") and hit "Send"
   
4. Select "Create new" under Mission Triggers and hit "Send"
   
5. Name the trigger (e.g., "Get_barley")
   
6. Set On Action performed to "Examine"
   
7. Tick the Use current box or insert the WurmId of the gravestone.
   
8. Set the correct Mission affected
   
9. Select "Create new" under trigger effects and hit "Send"

This is where we want to give the player the barley.

1. Name the trigger effect (e.g., "Get_barleyE")
   
2. Select the appropriate trigger ("Get_barley")
   
3. Set the New item Reward to "barley" and the Numbers to 1.
   
4. Set the Mission affected to the appropriate item (e.g., "Return to grave")
   
5. Set the mission state change to a desired value (e.g., "49")
   
6. Hit "Send"

TEST your first mission trigger. When you examine the gravestone, you should see a popup that says the mission description and you should be rewarded with an barley. Additionally, your mission progress bar should show 1+[mission state change value] (in this case, "50%"). If you try to examine the gravestone again, you'll notice nothing happens, since the barley is only given at mission start (0% mission progress).

Now that you're a little more familiar with the ruler, let's make the second part. (I'm making this part more streamlined, let me know in comments if it's not detailed enough)

1. Create a new trigger for your mission called "teleport_Grave"
   
2. Set the trigger to be item used "barley" and action performed "Sow"
   
3. Select the correct mission and set the mission trigger state to 50%.
   
4. Create a new trigger effect called "teleport_GraveE" and make sure the Trigger is correct.
   
5. Set the coordinates in the Teleport/Special effect Tile X/Y. Make sure Surfaced is true.
   
6. Set the appropriate Mission affected and make the Mission state change 100.

TEST the second part of your mission! Find a place and sow your barley. As soon as the sow action is complete, you should teleport right back to the gravestone. Success! You can repeat this over and over. Alternatively, you can edit the "teleport_GraveE" effect to deactivate the "Return to grave" mission so that it can only be performed once by one player.

Below are a handful of tips to help you on your mission making... missions.

This is simple enough when making a one-step mission like we did above, but when making complex missions, it's a good idea to make your mission one trigger at a time (i.e., make a trigger and effect(s), test them, then move on to the next). The big reason for this is that as you make triggers that only activate during mission progress, it can be a pain to figure out you messed up an intermediate step, then have to change that an all subsequent steps. Going through the mission step-by-step allows you to find and fix problems much more easily.

If you're in the middle of a mission in-progress, and for some reason decide you want to delete it, DON'T. Either wait for the mission to fail or create a 'quick finish' trigger (see below), so you don't end up with an incomplete phantom mission in your "Mission progress" window.

This is a great tool! Creating a "quick finish" trigger will allow you to complete a mission in progress no matter what it's state. This can be useful for restarting a mission for testing purposes, or to complete a mission that you want to delete. It can be accomplished in any number of ways, but this is my preferred method:

• Create a dummy item to be the trigger target (e.g., a puppet)
  
• Create a new trigger for you mission with that item as the target and set the On which state of the mission should this trigger execute to the current mission progress percentage.
  
• Create a new effect based on that trigger that does nothing else except set the Mission state change to 100.
  
• Don't forget to properly set the important values such as Trigger and Mission affected, or else your quick finish won't work!

Once you've done the above once, you can change the point at which your "quick finish" trigger works by just editing the trigger and changing the value in On which state should this trigger execute to the current mission progress value.

The way missions work with the mission ruler in Wurm is not like the epic missions - each player tracks missions with the mission ruler individually (e.g., "solo"). However, there may be times when you only want one player to be able to be active in a given mission, and without a special setup, many players can activate the same mission and make things very confusing.

A way to make a mission 'pure' solo is to create an 'opening mission.' For example, you have a mission that spawns goblins for a player to kill when they enter a cave, but you don't want those goblins to spawn multiple times as more players enter. A simple way around this is that, instead of making triggers occur at certain mission % values, you can make a 'quest line,' where each part of the quest is an entirely new mission (e.g., "Kill Goblins Part 1", "Kill Goblins Part 2", etc). This way, as soon as a player finishes "Kill Goblins Part 1", then part 1 deactivates and part 2 activates, preventing new players from starting the quest line. For example:

• The in the "first" mission, the player examines a village board and is rewarded with a piece of scrap metal. The trigger effect also deactivates the "first" mission and activates the "second"
  
• The second mission starts when the player sacrifices he scrap metal at an altar. Another player can't do this, since they don't have scrap metal, and another player can't get the scrap metal since the "first" mission is deactivated.
  
• Multi-part mission continues, etc.

Run back through your Trigger and Trigger effect line-by-line. Keep a close eye on important fields like Mission affected. The game will not give you any sort of debug or error messages, so attention to detail is your only way of making sure things work right. Actually, during the course of writing the basic mission guide, I forgot to put in a Number for the reward item, and a quick review of the Trigger effects revealed the error.

I'll expand this section of the guide as I come up with more items, please leave a comment if you have something to add