The Wiki for Tale 4 is in read-only mode and is available for archival and reference purposes only. Please visit the current Tale 11 Wiki in the meantime.
If you have any issues with this Wiki, please post in #wiki-editing on Discord or contact Brad in-game.
Main Page
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Real time finder: http://wwp.greenwichmeantime.com/info/current-time.htm
Welcome to A Wiki in the Desert, a wiki for the Massively Multiplayer On-line Role-Playing Game A Tale in the Desert.
This wiki exists to document the game and to provide a community scratchpad for the players. You can find Guides on things such as growing Flax, an Atlas of interesting places, and various personal pages created by the Users and Guilds. If you're looking to buy and sell, try Trading. Visit the community portal for lots of info on current events, debates on the forums, or just random chatter.
Anyone with an ATITD game account can edit any page on this site, but you have to log in first. Please read the user's guide and information on formatting to see how to edit, and read our Policies before editing. Politics are not welcome (exception: Users pages, but no personal attacks please) and, if you want to discuss something such as laws, you'll find the forums more suitable. If you have any difficulties, please ask around in game or contact a wiki admin.
If you have a suggestion for how to improve the wiki software, please add it to the Suggestions page. If you have a suggestion for improving the content, please just go ahead and do it! If you want to contribute but don't know how, start creating missing pages listed here, or verify the information in pages containing unchecked content copied from the T3 wiki.
We also have a voice chat server setup for Mumble.
The end of Tale 4 is nigh, with the start of Tale 5 confirmed for August 7th 2010. The monuments are rising with the industrious work of Egyptians. Wahim and Sami continue to bicker but have left Egypt with a problem. Choose Wahim and we stay with the player base deciding the test to challenge the next generation. Choose Sami and the player base has the ability to choose and vote on seven technologies to be passed down as Research Directions
Current Stuff
Bastet
Bastet Main Page
Tale 5
Tale 5 is now open.
A Tale in the Desert V - Launches Saturday
Citizens of Egypt,
As I write this, we're days away from the release of A Tale in the Desert V. We'll go live:
Saturday, August 7, 2010 at 12:00 Noon EDT (GMT-0400)
Last Saturday, as ATITD IV concluded, we learned that Sami won the majority of citizens' votes, and ascended as Pharaoh. In electing Sami over Wahim, players voted to falsify the two monuments that were completed, and instead implore the scientists in Tale V to create seven new technologies. The following player-designed skills and technologies will be released during A Tale in the Desert V:
Foraging - The ability to memorize correct foraging techniques after 7 consecutive correct attempts Preservation - Allows one to wrap up a fresh cooked meal that can be eaten on the road Advanced Silkworm Farming - Allows changing silkworm diets by use of fresh leaves Aquaculture - Ability to grow papyrus in camp Herbology - Accurate prediction of aqueduct towers locations that will aid growth of herb seeds Fertilization - Production of a one-dose-needed, slow-acting fertilizer Molecular Balance - Comparison of the genetic weights of two plant genomes
I've made a bunch of other changes for Tale 5: I'm particularly proud of the mining system, which I've written about before, and which has undergone some evolution during our beta. I'll describe how mining iron works, though each kind of ore has somewhat different rules.
You'll be presented with a field of 7 different orestones. Some are red, some yellow, some green. (There is a colorblind-compatible mode available) Also, some of the orestones are covered by spikey crystals, some with cube-shaped, and some long and thin. The goal is to find three stones which:
All 3 are identically colored, or all 3 differently colored All have the same crystal shapes, or all differently shaped
It takes some concentration - it feels hard at first. But when you find a set of three - known as a workload - it's worth about 100 ore. Sometimes it will be worth much more than that - several hundred, or occasionally even a thousand. When you do find one of these huge workloads, you can call over friends who can also harvest the same workload for an equally large amount.
Furthermore, there are bonuses for finding multiple workloads in one field, and for finding rare 4 stone workloads, and all of these bonus amounts can be stacked. This description doesn't do it justice - it's taken an aspect of the game that has always been tedious, and made it into something entirely addictive.
The fishing system has also been totally replaced. It's irritated me for some time that ATITD, with perhaps the most complex tradeskill system of any online game had such a rudimentary fishing system. No more: there are now 49 species of fish. You'll notice that some fish have preferences for certain bait, or certain geographical habitats, seasons, times of day, and other peculiarities. In addition to the 49 kinds of meat, each from a different fish, fish may contain roe, or scales in many colors (there's an entire science to this), or other by-products that you may discover a use for.
In addition to fishing itself being a multi-level practice-based skill, there's a whole skill devoted to fly tying itself. Another new skill, Arthropodology, will help you discover the really rare insects on which your flies are based. And finally, you can learn the filleting skill - also multi-level - to increase usable meat when a kitchen isn't handy.
There's plenty more to discover, and I'm looking forward to the most fascinating Tale yet. See everyone Saturday!
Dawn on the Nile, Teppy
Last Newsletter
Citizens of Egypt,
As A Tale in the Desert IV opened, Pharaoh had died, and his two sons, Sami and Wahim, each addressed Egypt. Sami, the older son, wanted to share the bounty of his father's estate with the people, trying to win them over with gifts. Over the course of the Tale, Sami has sponsored contests and events, donating exotic goods to the champions, and to those that participated in the revelry.
Wahim had no material goods to give, nothing to make the people's life easier. In fact, as Sami lavished the people, Wahim intentionally stirred trouble, using them in his efforts to understand "the human condition" which he detailed in a series of essays known as Wahim's Manifesto. While Sami gave material goods, Wahim provided "Tests" - challenges to overcome, often with no concrete benefits.
As of this writing, several chapters of Wahim's Manifesto remain locked.
By tradition, for one son to ascend to Pharaoh, the other son must agree, and neither son was prepared to trust Egypt to the other. The impasse formed the backbone of A Tale in the Desert IV's story.
Finally, the brothers did agree on a way to resolve the impasse - a single vote to determine who would ascend as Pharaoh. Should Sami ascend, then he will implore the scientists of the next generation to research new skills and technologies invented by the citizens of Egypt, and voted on in a series of ongoing ballots. However, if Sami ascends, then all monuments completed will be considered false monuments, and their Tests not worthy of the next generation.
Should Wahim ascend, then the Monument Tests will become part of A Tale in the Desert V, but the technologies and skills created by the players will be forgotten.
The election ends, and the results will be revealed on:
Sunday, August 1, 2010 at 12:00 Noon, EDT (GMT-0400)
We'll also have our traditional end-of-tale party, known as "Amnesty", immediately following. At Amnesty, revealing any secret plot played out during the Tale is fair game! I'll tell all about my famous System Channel "who could win the lottery that would not seem like I hand-picked" message, behind-the-scenes happenings during Wahim's Microphone auction, and the results of the "Sway" social science experiment that ran during most of the Tale.
Finally, I'm looking forward to seeing everyone - old and new - for the launch of A Tale in the Desert V:
Saturday, August 7, 2010 at 12:00 Noon EDT (GMT-0400)
Dusk on the Nile, Teppy
Fishing changes for Tale 5
Teppy has announced changes to the fishing system in time for teh release of Tale 5.
From the press release: Fishing will now involve the catching of insects, done through a variety of everyday activities in the game. Some insects will be very rare and result in catching rare fish. In addition, fish will now have to be processed to produce meat and a variety of other resources, including colorful scales.
You'll get insects through a variety of normal every day activities you already participate in, like gathering water, planting crops, etc. There are six types of insects, and several individual insects within each type, some which will be more rare. There's also lure making, you take the insect and you make it into a lure - increasing your skill in luremaking will make lures that last longer.
- The first shard of the appropriate telling is the main shard of the wiki. All root pages should refer to the main shard.
- Any information which refers solely to any shard other than the main shard should be placed a sub-page named after the shard. E.g. the Bastet version of Foraging should be at Foraging/Bastet. This means any Bastet page should have the same path as the equivalent main shard page with "/Bastet" added at the end.
- If other shard versions of a page exist but the main shard version of a page does not exist, then please create a stub article for the main shard.
- All pages which have multiple shard versions should include links to all other versions at the top of the page. To facilitiate this, on the first line of the page, enter the following: {{ShardBox}}. This will automatically place a banner at the top-right of the page for every shard available.
- People will make mistakes implementing this policy. If anyone who has the ability to edit sees something which does not follow this policy it is both their responsibility and right to fix it.
Please read the Shard editing guide
New ATITD Server Shards
New ATITD Server Shards discussion page.
- If you are moving to Bastet Shard please add your name to the List of Bastet Players
- First T4 server shard "Shard Bastet" opens Feb 20, 2010 @ 9am EST (GMT-5) *per Teppy's mass email*
- Teppy has hinted on May 23rd that T4A will end and T5 will start in approximately 90 days (this puts it to the end of August 2010)
Current Events
A new Events page!
A New Events Page has been started to try and catalog events in a more orderly manner. Please follow the current method and add events to their own page and list them in order of occurrence on the Events page.
The old page still exists, at The Old Current Events Page.
The Last Tests Released 05/22/2010
Wahim released the Last 7 Tests on 05/22/2010 at 11:00 am EDT
Per Wahim in E!: In Tale 3, after the last tests were released there remained about 90 days until End of Tale. And that in past Tales, some "event" triggered the last 30 day count down.
- Test of Octec's Ghost
- Test of the Formal Garden
- Test of the Banquet
- Test of Chains
- Test of the Coalition
- Test of Leavened Bread
- Riddle of the Sphinx
A poem found at Meroe CS, which ends with this verse:
Seek out this treasure Search the coffers and lift the lid For if you find the very place A Pharaoh's treasure shall be unhid
The entire poem can be read here: Hagar's Poem
Funtasy has some events coming up for your delectation and delight. To keep track of these exciting opportunities to have FUN, please go to the FuntasyMic page.
How to Log In
If you have problems logging in, please contact FaceAnkh ingame (or just FaceAnkh by IRC, forum PM, etc).
Before you can log in you must set your webpass in game: Log into the game and type /webpass atitd.org password (meaning you replace password with your password).
Once you have created a web pass you log in here with "Login with OpenId" (top right).
Your open id is atitd.org/openid/YourName.
You should be sent to a page to then type in your account name and password you set in game with the webpass command. If you logged in to openid recently, it won't ask again.
If you forget your password, just re-set it in-game by using the webpass command again.
Other services
* Mumble Voice chat and who's online? * Forums * Community portal front page * Old (public) Tale 1-3 wikis: Tale1, Tale2, Tale3 ** note that copying pages directly from the old wiki may bring unwanted attention to your user or guild pages ... everyone has access to the special search pages, some of which highlight broken links - please fix up pages you bring over ** If you copy information directly from an old Tale, make sure you tag the page with the {{T3}} template so that it is clear that the information needs checking! * Web based IRC client (goes to #atitd on SorceryNet by default) * Game time logs * Server statistics
Firefox / IE Search Plugin
Firefox and IE (FF 2+ / IE 6+) users can install an OpenSearch search box to their browser. For details visit Browser Search Plugins
