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Quests and adventures are the main focus of Sryth, and therefore good, standard, documentation of this information is important for the wiki. And with the huge number of different items in the game, with many items vital to quests and other items necessary for a strong character, proper item data also needs to be organized and accessible to wiki users.

To that end, there are two namespaces set up for these categories: "Item" and "Quest". Any item or quest articles should be in their respective namespaces as a way to organize the content on the wiki. These pages should also be set up in a consistent format that allows users an efficient method to obtain their desired information, while promoting easy editing and maintenance. Namespaces allow for separate searching, separate Recent Changes and page lists, and other useful and advanced features.

If you need help or advices about editing, please refer to Sryth Wiki Editors Guide

The steps to creating standard item and quest pages are detailed below.

First steps[]

Know your editor[]

The default editor for new wiki users (that is, if you have never edited) is the Visual Editor. The other one, used by more advanced wiki editors, is the Source editor. You can change them at will in your Preferences, on the "Editing" tab. The Source editor is much more powerful (though a bit tricky at first). You can use any of the two, but take care to select the appropriate box for it. If you have no clue what all of this means, just go ahead and edit, no worries, you won't break anything. The wiki magic will fix the problems later.

Instructions for admins and power users to correct this

The Visual Editor messes with the complicated syntax of the preloading templates, needing a source cleanup later (more technically, the Source editor performs a transclusion of the preload, while the Visual Editor makes a copy of it, very similar but not exactly the same as substitution ({{subst:}}). The effect is that Item/Quest pages created through Visual Editor have

  1. Broken <onlyinclude></onlyinclude> tags
  2. Are incorrectly placed in Auxiliary templates

To correct these problems, go to Auxiliary templates and edit any "Quest:" or "Item:" page that has landed there.

The contrary case (a page created using the Source Editor through the box for Visual Editor) is harder to automatically catch. It will completely lack the <onlyinclude></onlyinclude> tags, and will also lack the rest of the sections. Let's just hope the Source Editors won't make this particular mistake.


Create the page[]

On the main wiki page, on the right-hand side, there are boxes specifically for creating item and quest pages. Enter the appropriate information in the appropriate box, making sure to include the "Item:" or "Quest:" prefix (this is the aforementioned namespace prefix), and click the "Create" button.

Note: for items, be sure to read the section about item naming conventions below.

Edit the content[]

Now, you should be looking at helpful guidelines for organizing the article information (pulled from Template:ItemPreload and Template:QuestPreload). While those details won't be repeated here, a general description of how the pages are used will be given.

The top of an item or quest article will contain a template (Template:Itembox or Template:Questbox) that provides a summarized version of the overall, important (but non-spoiler) information. This box will show up on any other pages that transclude the item or quest page (e.g. Quest List), which allows for easy referencing and maintenance. You may remove the <!-- comment tags --> from the page after filling in the information, but do not remove the <onlyinclude></onlyinclude> tags, as they are needed for the transclusion. The rest of the article will go into more in-depth details.

Save the page[]

When you have completed your edits, you can enter an optional edit summary. It is recommended to preview the page and check that the format displays as expected. Make this as many times as needed until you're sure you've done it right. Then, finally save the page. The itembox and questbox templates will also automatically categorize the individual item and quest articles into related categories, which generates useful categories that users can browse without any maintenance.

If the page was a new quest, make sure the quest is properly linked (or transcluded) from the Quest List and any appropriate location articles. This can be done by adding the following to where you would like the questbox to show up: {{Quest:<Questname>}}. A big part of Quest List no longer transcludes individual quests, but rather entire locations. In that case, add the Quest link to the appropriate location and it will automatically appear on Quest List.

If the page was a new Item, make sure that the page has been automatically added to the correct categories (specially Category:Items by ID). If this doesn't happen, make sure the "name" parameter of the Itembox matches the page's name.

To make a link to a Quest page, if you don't want the "Quest" prefix to show up, you can use {{Quest|<Questname>}} or [[Quest:<Questname>|]]. For Items, you can use {{Item|<Item Page Name (ID + name)>}} or alternatively {{subst:ItemID|<Item ID>}} if you only wish to specify the Item's ID, and {{subst:ItemName|<Item Name>}} if you wish to specify on the item's name.

Quests[]

The heart and soul of the wiki is the Quest List page. It has gone through a lot of transformations (and it will still endure many more). This page basically collects, by way of transcluding, each and every quest in Category:All Quests, showing only the Questbox for each one, and grouping them by location.

Maps[]

You may find the Maps spreadsheet useful

Combats[]

When you document a confrontation with one or more enemies (See Combat for tips on how to do the following).

  • Try to note down as many of the following points as possible, but if you can't test something, don't worry. They're listed in decreasing order of importance
  • Note down the to-hit value (at least at two different MR values, to test for scaled fights). Try to establish the 9+ value, if possible. If not, present as many values as possible.
  • Note down the SP, either counting your damage or estimating from the percentages. If you do the latter, please indicate that it's an estimate.
  • Note down any special attacks, both the damage range and the approximate frequency
  • Note down if you can rest/heal between battles, if there are more than one.
  • Check if the enemy requires magical weapons to be hit (see YWIIATE)
  • Note any magical resistances you note (use Destruction or any other resistible power to check)
  • If possible, use {{Foe}} to document all of the above, so as to present it in a standard fashion.


Items[]

If the quest has several unique and noteworthy items that can be obtained, these items should be listed as itemboxes and the quest page should be added to Category:Items so that users can quickly see which quests provides interesting items. Adding the category can be done by clicking the "Add category" button at the bottom of the editing window. For an example, see Quest:A Haunting in Durnsig.


Shortcuts in branched decision trees[]

When documenting an adventure, if you can choose several ways to complete it, sometimes you can cut the time spent re-playing it by looking at the links.

Each link for an option (or the classical "Please continue" links) have the following form: "http://www.sryth.com/game/ci.php?f_c=set_pc_location2.inc&f_zoneid=4&f_sectionid=11473&f_previouszoneid=4&f_previoussectionid=11472".

The text in bold is the next section, and the italics is the current section. If two links point to the same section, they converge, so if you find an structure like this one:

  • Section 10000
    • Section 10005
      • Section 10007
    • Section 10006
      • Section 10007
    • Section 10001
      • Section 10005
        • Section 10007
      • Section 10006
        • Section 10007
    • Section 10002
      • Section 10005
        • Section 10007
      • Section 10006
        • Section 10007
    • Section 10003
      • Section 10005
        • Section 10007
      • Section 10006
        • Section 10007

Then you can start playing, check where do the sections 10005 and 10006 lead, and then you only have to explore sections 10001, 10002, 10003, and sections 10005 and 10006 just once. You will find decision trees like this one many times when you can choose several ways to deal with a problem, and after the problem is solved, the story unifies to continue (section 10007, in this example).


<To complete>

Items[]

The most important pages relating to Items are the two main categories, Category:Items by ID and Category:Items by name. Also important are the Category:Items tree, and the Item Selling Guide.


Item page name conventions[]

There are several important conventions to Item page names:

  • All Of The Words Capitalized: there are several items that show different capitalizations in-game depending if they are in pre-view, in your inventory, or in storage. On this wiki each Item is placed in a page with its name, and each of the words of the name must be capitalized.
  • "#" characters left out: As "#" is the HTML character for an anchor, the wiki parser will not recognize "Item:1106 Tablet Fragment #1" as we humans read it, but will convert it to "Item:1106 Tablet Fragment", and then search for an anchor named "1" on that page. There is no known way to bypass this, so by convention, each time an item has a "#" on its name, the character must be removed but all the rest kept. That way, the correct page name becomes Item:1106 Tablet Fragment 1

Spoilers on descriptions[]

Some items have descriptions which clearly state the result of a quest, or otherwise give "too much" information. As said in Sryth Wiki spoilers policy#Spoilertags, those descriptions can be spoilertagged to keep the "public" part of the page spoiler-free. This is the only case an Itembox should use Spoilertags, all other potentially spoilerish information should instead go into the Item page.


Variable Items[]

Several item pages (like Tzal-Toalth and Glittering Ice Shield) share some features of the templates, i.e. they are variable pages that can be used to show several forms (or levels) of the item. Those special Item pages should self-document, to keep all data together.

No matter how do choose you create a variable Item page, you must ensure that if transcluded like a regular page (with {{Tzal-Toalth}}, for example) it must show a correctly rendered, meaningful, readable Itembox.


<To complete>

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