Settings and options - player guide

The settings screen is on the F8 key, and it is also in the game's main menu. Everything you change there is saved and is still set the next time you start the game.

Music box volume

Music boxes can be loud when you are standing next to one. The settings screen has a music box volume, from full down to very quiet. Pick a level, save, and every music box you can hear plays at that level from then on, including after you restart the game. It only quietens music boxes; the rest of the game is untouched. Turning it all the way down never silences a box completely.

Keep my messages when I close the game

With this on, everything in your message buffers is still there the next time you start the game, even after a full restart of the game. Your history is written to your own computer, not to the server, and the last two hundred and fifty messages of each buffer are kept. Turn the option off and the saved history is deleted straight away and does not come back.

Voice chat

Voice chat can be switched off entirely in the settings, and there is a bit rate setting if your connection is slow: a lower bit rate uses less data and a higher one sounds better. There is also an option to hear your own voice while you are talking. If you switch voice chat off, the server stops sending you other people's voice at all, which saves data.

Other things worth knowing

The settings screen also holds your notification choices (online and offline messages, auctions, arenas, the number game), reading options such as speech interrupt and position information in menus, buffer beeps and timestamps, and mouse turning. If something is speaking when you would rather it did not, the setting for it is almost certainly here.

Looking around: the groups

The tracking key opens groups now, not one long list. The groups are Things lying on the ground, Fire trees and growing things, Homes, Shops machines and doors, Vehicles, The people of the village, Animals of your own, Work which means crops ore traps and rubbish, and Around the town for boards, the traffic light and the toilets. Each group says how many things are in it, and the group with the nearest thing comes first.

Pick a group and you hear only what is in it, nearest first. Pick a thing and tracking behaves exactly as it always did. If you preferred the old single list it is still there, at the bottom, called Everything nearest first.

Out of character message sounds

You choose the sound that plays for out of character messages yourself. Open the game menu, choose Privacy options, then Out of character message sounds. There are two settings: the sound for the messages you receive and the sound for the messages you send. Each opens a list with the server default, chat3, opened, received, dado3 and no sound. Picking a sound plays it straight away and you stay in the list, so you can listen to the next one; Back takes you out of the list. The sound for your own messages follows the one for received messages until you pick it separately. Your choice is kept on the server with your character, so it is still set after you restart the game and on any device you play from. An older version of the game keeps playing the received sound until you update it, and if you have muted out of character messages they stay silent.