What has changed in Blackfire, newest first: new features, changes to the rules and the bugs we've fixed. In the game, changes and mudstats link here.

Coming in the next update

These are on the test server now (blackfire.online port 8000, where characters may be reset) and come to the game with its next update.

Quests and achievements

• Quests. They start on their own once you qualify, or when you talk to the right person, and ask you to kill, find or deliver things, visit places, use commands or reach a level. Rewards include crowns, experience, practice sessions and items. journal (or quests) shows your quests, what to do next and what you'll get.
• A tutorial for new characters, covering score, your inventory, the bank and post office, finding your guildmaster, practising a skill as far as they can teach it, your first class ability, resting and the healer. Eight quests follow for levels 2 to 25, in the streets of Talorien, the Lair of the Spider Clan, the sewers, the cathedral, Haaldsten Manor, the Burying Ground and the Forest of Shadows.
• Achievements for sightseeing, killing 100 to 100,000 creatures, bosses, reading help, reaching levels 10 to 120 (counting every class), entering chaotic lands, donating 1 to 1,000 items and finishing the tutorial. Each is worth achievement points: 1 if easy, 5 if moderate and 10 if hard. achievements shows your latest five and the five you're closest to, with your points; achievements earned, achievements unearned and achievements <words> list and search them.
• Your prompt shows [Q] while you're on a quest, and custom prompts can place it with @Q.
• The Shield of Tansaare is now a quest in your journal, and your soul marks carried over. The trials mark only players on that quest who are wearing the shield, so a mark is no longer wasted. If you weren't wearing it, you can do the trial again.
• The web client's side panel shows your quests and achievements, with a message for each one you complete.

New commands and helpers

• guide <place> gives directions to the nearest bank, guild hall, locker room, post office, temple or donation room in your area. guide guild leads you to a guildmaster who teaches your class.
• Anyone with a blade can now skin a corpse; there's no skill to learn.
• Up to level 15, only your natural constitution and wisdom count when you level, so newcomers need no levelling equipment. After that, equipment that raises them gives you more hit points and practices as you level.
• New characters start with a quieter login: no colour test or long introduction, and you confirm your name before choosing a password.

Leaderboards

• The leaderboards rank chaotic kills, other player kills, experience gained, quests and achievement points, for today, this week, this month and all time. They are made again every hour.

MUD clients and accessibility

• Screen readers. Clients that report a screen reader get a plain greeting, and toggle screenreader sends plain text, with no colour codes and no map above rooms (look around and map still show maps). New characters made with a screen reader start with it on.
• Encrypted connections. Port 4000 also takes TLS: tick Secure in Mudlet. See Connecting.
• Less data. Clients that support MCCP compression, such as Mudlet, MUSHclient and TinTin++, are sent about a third as much.
• Pages fit your window. The game reads your client's window size, so long pages fill the screen and long lines wrap at its width.
• Mudlet: the inventory and room panels work, your quests and achievements are sent for scripts, and Discord can show that you're playing Blackfire with your level and class, naming your area only in lawful lands. The GMCP page has the details for script writers.
• The web client takes several commands on one line, separated by semicolons, such as flee;north. Lines you write in the editor, such as notes and descriptions, and alias lines are kept whole.
• Prompts end with a marker that clients use to find them, so triggers work without changing settings.
• Spell timers in clients count down as they should, and reconnecting sends your room and vitals straight away.

Combat and magic

• Creatures now attack as often as they are meant to. Every creature swung once too few, so those with one attack never hit back at all. Expect harder fights.
• cast understands three-word spell names, such as cast hammer of faith orc.
• The weather changes again. Every area had been stuck under a storm since mid-2025. Each now has weather for its season, so lightning bolt, call lightning and fireball depend on the rain where you cast them again.
• Teleport no longer throws you to the far side of the map, and farsight follows the exits it takes and leaves no rooms lit behind it.

Your character and belongings

• Crowns and items can no longer be duplicated or lost if the game stops at the wrong moment during a deposit, gift, split, theft, sale, locker or cabal account.
• Cabal privileges, promotions and ennoblements given to members who are online are no longer lost when they are saved.

Getting about

• Riding a mount into a death trap kills you once, not once for each mount and rider.
• search opens the hidden door it found, landing always ends a flight, and the stable's sign names the pegasus and the hippogriff the right way round.

Areas and quests

• The Celestial Fortress puzzles work again: the prism, the blade, the statues around the dais and the throne, the hidden walls and the doors. The cloud giant's helm protects you from Obiath's gaze.
• Frostholt's trials are fixed: invocations are heard however you type them, bribes take what you offer, shields lessen the nimbus, chaos no longer heals, and the portcullis and levers behave.
• In Castle Azeloth, the white spellbook, the grappling rope and the laboratory's niche work. In the Elemental Vortex, the salamander fetches the elixir again, so the sorcerer's robe can be forged.
• Fixes in the abandoned manor, Tiril Legorion's tomb, Murkwater, Hyburiis, the Last Haven, the dragon lairs, Ily'kras, Northern Village and Talorien.
• Old item exchanges, such as Thorgrim's forge and the craftsmen, no longer take your crowns or ingredients when they can't make the item.

Shops and commands

• Shops understand buy sword, buy #3, buy 2 blade, sell sword and describe sword again, and buy everything they trade in.
• Adolphus, the cleric for hire in Talorien, also casts quickness, for 30 crowns: heal quickness.
• help finds topics with spaces in their names, such as help armor class.
• ^old^new runs the corrected command again.
• Changing an alias to something the game refuses keeps the alias you had.
• Answering the shout and development channel questions in toggle set does what you answered.
• Bug, typo and idea reports reach the developers again.
• mudstats counts correctly, where <name> shows the first match, and time says the real time is UTC.
• Custom and class prompts show a missing spell as a dim letter instead of a row of numbers.
• rouse works only when the leader can wake, and a charmed creature can no longer be made to split crowns it doesn't have.
• The text editor no longer keeps /s in your text or runs words together when it formats.
• The in-game change list has moved here; changes links to this page.

Web client and website

These are live now.

• The web client has been rebuilt to be faster and smaller. Its output is ordinary page text, so the browser's own selection, find and screen reader work on it, and reconnecting is more reliable, including after sleep or a change of network.
• The web client no longer stores passwords, and deletes any it saved before.
• Keyboard and screen reader fixes in the web client: Page Up and Page Down work after a disconnect, Space presses buttons, the reconnect countdown isn't read out every second, and closing a tab in the game asks first.
• Each web client tab shows its own character's affects, the map draws its borders and floor, and accented letters display properly.
• A new guide to component equipment shows which items crafting recipes use and where to find them.

June 2026

• Guild tutors train weapon skills to 25%, and fighting raises them further. Rogues start at 15% in swords and daggers.
• An emerald ring loads on the Gwellan nobles again.
• help index works, and its help explains it.
• You can loot crowns from corpses when your inventory is full.
• fly with a destination takes off and heads there in one command, flying mounts can fly to the Ruins of the Lorekeeper by name, and flying by area name takes better abbreviations.
• farsight shows room names and contents only, with a blank line between rooms.
• Fixed a crash when reciting a scroll of identify on an item.
• freport shows $ for a member who isn't sneaking and ? for one who's away.
• autosac sacrifices empty corpses after kills, and is on by default.
• upkeep lists horn and figurine timers when you're away from shops.
• Auto-loot works with charmed creatures, and crowns are always split.
• Reform by position: formation leaders can move members with reform using the slot they're in, such as reform fl br to move whoever is front left to back right. reform <name> <slot> still works. See help reform.

May 2026

• compare with one item checks it against what you wear.
• The Crown of Fire works by direction again in Frostholt.
• Standing idle in lawful or neutral lands no longer sends you to the void.

2020

• First level: the experience needed for the first level was raised, so the kills needed to level match the levels up to 12.
• The in-zone map is back. In lawful lands it shows other players as a cyan asterisk. Hidden and illusory exits aren't shown, and it's hidden for farsight and looking around the wilderness.
• Deaths are gentler. You wait less as undead before you can pray: 1 tick in lawful lands, 2 in neutral, 5 in chaotic lands and chaos gates. You're told when you can pray.
• Newbies: players stay in the newbie cabal from level 1 to 30, need an approved name by level 15, and gain the most hit points and mana they can as they level.