Elysium is an excellent mud. I urge any new players reading this to disregard all previous reviews, as a great deal has changed and the most recent posts are either downright incorrect, written by players that have not played seriously in quite some time, or that just have no idea what they are talking about.

---Starting Out--- Elysium is 100% custom and is 100% free (you may pay to study offline, which will allow you to gain some lessons while not connected [see skills for a lesson explanation] but with a penalty). The 9 cities are completely player run (outside of some very minor Imm influence in the form of patroning), with one emperor and 8 positions (5 ministries and 3 helpers) for players.

The 15 guilds are completely player run. A large majority of them are auto-inguilding and most newbies will be able to join the guild of their choice right out of the gate. If a newbie knows their place, they will be helped openly when they ask questions. If they demand that people cart them around, or act improperly (like using IC globals for OOC chatting) they will irritate many of the veterans and probably not receive a whole lot of help. The main reason for this is not because we don’t want new players, but that there is a huge problem with alts and it seems that almost every newbie is just someone else’s alt.

---Skills--- There are numerous skills in the game (roughly 30, give or take a few) which you can mix and match as you wish. Many RP’ers will look down on folk that learn skills just because they are powerful or pick skills that have nothing to do with each other (for example, a thief-mage-warrior-bard-crafter) there are no restrictions on your set of 6 skills that you can learn. Each guild has 3 skills. You do not lose skills when you leave a guild (unless you purposely forget them). You can also learn skills out of guild (at +50% the lesson cost). Lessons are how you learn skills. You receive one lesson every 2.5 hours you are connected to the game. If you choose to study offline, you get one lesson every 6.66 hours while you are not connected. This may seem like a long time between lessons at first, but believe me—they come a lot faster than they seem, unless you are waiting for that last lesson to learn a skill—then it takes ages!

---The World--- The world is divided into 3 large continents housing the 9 cities. Occid, the northwestern continent, is home to the dwarves, goblins, and orcs. Orien, the northeastern continent, is home to the specter and the Cyclops. Polaris, the southern continent (and the largest) is home to humans, elves, hamakei, and spawn. Skilled mages can teleport between continents using magical artifacts, but most people will simply choose to sail, using a variety of ships. Sprinkled throughout the large ocean are several islands, some of which hold powerful items that will give you assistance, such as a necklace that gives you more hitpoints or a ring that will let you locate people or objects. You might choose to be a fisherman and make your money by sailing your trawler over the ocean and selling your catch to the city of your choice, but beware… as you travel the sea, you may encounter great sea serpents that are fiercely territorial, and will likely not appreciate your presence in their areas!

---Sins of the Past--- I’d like to point out that the administration has tightened the screws on the two huge complaints in the prior reviews: Aurora[good] and Silathis[evil]. This pair, a bit overzealous in the past, have been reigned in and very rarely act out, and even rarer is it that they are visible. Alaric[good] has seemingly disappeared, though his order is far from dead. The new law around the mud is Velarq[neutral], who isn’t really new but people are quickly learning that they need to follow rules. Many will call what she does harassment; but let me ask you this: If you broke a rule and got killed for it, and you broke the rule again, and got killed for it again, and you kept breaking rules and kept dying, would you consider this harassment? I wouldn’t—I would consider it stupidity on the rule-breaker’s part. She’s more lenient than I would be, were I an imm.

This review is already long enough, but has barely even scratched the surface of what Elysium is all about. The features are far too numerous to list here, but connect and give it a try, and you’ll find yourself quickly learning the ropes and all that this mud has to offer. It'll be worth your time.