When you join the tribe, you should explore the area a little, and decide what kind of home you want, and where. When you've done this, let Kaer and Rahna know, and they will dig you a room with the Builder. The room will be a very basic affair, with the bare necessities set on it. You will need to do a number of things before the den is a proper living space for you.

Building

The VERY FIRST thing you must do is type @chown change owner your den and both the exits leading in and out. You can do this by entering the den and typing @chown here=me and @chown out=me. Then type o to leave and type @chown exit=me, replacing exit with the alias to enter.

You will want to remove the HALTED flag from your room, and link yourself to it as well. From inside your den, type @set here=!halt, @set here=commands and @link me=here. Now you own your den and both your exits, your den is able to perform MUSH actions/listen/be triggered, and it is the room you will return to when you type home.

Your den will have a basic, preliminary @desc set on it. You will want to redesc it to personalize it to your own tastes. Describe your room by typing @desc here=%t description. The %t before the description will indent the desc with a tab. No space is needed between the %t and the first letter of the desc. You can be as simple or fancy as you want in your description. If your room's desc is getting too long, consider setting +views (+help view online for more info) to describe the details of things or points of particular interest.

The exits in and out of your den have been set with the most basic of messages. All exits on the game are required to have certain messages set: an @desc, @succ, @osucc, and @odrop. You are welcomed and encouraged to get more creative in redescing and altering the messages that we have set. Please see news exits online for information. You can examine your own exits, to see what we have set on them to start you off with, by typing ex exit.
The exit leading into your private room may have been set DARK. If we have set your den with a DARK entrance, please leave it that way. MUSH building guidelines dictate our handling private exits this way.

Parent Room

All public rooms are parented to the Cat Elf Parent Room (#5581). The parent room provides the code to support +lhelp, seasonal, and time-of-day commands, among other things. You can set your own private room to access these features by typing, from your room:

Make sure your room is set commands (@set here=commands) and is not HALTED (@set here=!halt). Once you have set the parent for your room, you will have access to +lhelp, and you will notice that a paragraph has been added to your room's description, detailing the season and time of day. Being that your private room is likely not an outdoor location, you might not want it to say it is raining inside your den or niche. The nice thing about these messages is that they are entirely customizable—it is easy to alter them to whatever you want or make them go away entirely!

The season and time related messages that the Parent Room sets on its 'child' rooms are totally customizable... here's how! If you want to prevent any messages at all from being shown, type @succ here=%b The commands to set personalized messages are as follows:

Setting your own messages, using those commands and replacing the text with an appropriate message of your choice, gives you the option of still being informed of the season and time but in a way that seems most appropriate and useful to you. If you have any questions or need any help with setting, removing, or customizing your messages, please feel free to ask the chief's Second.
NOTE: You do not HAVE to @parent your room to the Cat Elf Parent Room! It is purely a convenience for you if you want season and time messages, and the use of +lhelp and commands unique to the Jungle from your private room. You are welcomed but by no means required to use the Parent for private rooms.

If it is an object such as a tent, and not an actual room that you would like to set, there is a tiny piece of additional code that you will need to set on it to protect yourself and others from double spam. You can set these commands as shown below on your tent or other object, and it will keep them from having commands triggered from the outside (the reason for the double spam). The commands are:

This creates an attribute that checks the location of someone triggering a command. If the person triggering the command is not inside of the object, they will not be allowed to trigger the command through the object. The uselock restricts use to those passing the check.

Conclusion

Be sure to go over all of the general MUSH building guidelines at news building as well... there are a lot of helpful tips in there. Building can be quite fun and challenging as you seek to create your own personal room, a grove in which to hang out and RP, even an area in which to hold a full TP. Just remember to let your creative juices flow and when in doubt, ask a staffer or chief.

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