As the topic subject says, I've been on the Lost souls mud for a good while. And I know there was a topic a while back about this, but I rather not summon up old topics. So time for impressions.
Lost Souls is a mud where you can truly customize a character for your own. Pick your race, pick your colors, pick your starting stats, modify your skills for a bit, your homeland, your ethics and alignment, your dominant hand (unless ambidexterous) and name and gender. however, this is where the point most other muds would tell you pick a class and then tell you to continue. And then your character would be set for the rest of the game most likely. here however, your customization does not end. In all honesty, your customization can continue for your character's existence outside of just your stats.
You do not start in a special class you pick, you end up at the adventurer's guild. With random starting equipment and a pet, you wander off wondering what to do. directionless and confused, you have now entered a mud that would simulate an actual fantasy world, no hand holding in place...well then there's the ooc channel. Normally players are helpful enough to give directions ranging from xp or gold running to how to make your character. And the wiki helps with knowing what you need, and where the guild is. You do what you must and then decide to do some weapon training with one of the main weapons a guild you want to join probably uses. You are most likely in losthaven, getting your sword, dagger, spear, hammer, shield, axe, or whatever weapon you want to use, walk up to a normal rat under the town...and proceed to spend 2 minutes trying to hit it. And considering how hard rats are to hit in real life as they tend to chase after you, you get a feel on how this mud is going to turn out. You eventually get good enough to consistently hit an extremely dodgy enemy as your skills improve....which leads to another function:
Skills are another customizable part of your character. At first you are not able to get your skills up more as it works on a specialty access system. you use spec points to raise the upper cap of a skill for you to train to, and your spec points are only limited by your stat points. every 10 points equal one spec point for that stat. So 180 str would lead to 18 str points to use to increase access in any str skills. (though I think there might be a change that allows you to use spare spec points form other stats to let you increase one, but probably t a higher cost like 2 points of str for an int spec point). So your characters skills are dpendent on your stats for more then just how wel your stat modifies that skills function, it allows that skill to go up higher.
combat is a much more complicated affair then your normal everyone gets a round of combat and maybe the second/third/fourth attack kicks in. you have a speed stat that acts as an activity point meter. Every action, ranging from a hit from your weapon, to a parry and dodge, to activate certain powers uses up activity points. So then you may end up with a situation where for some reason your only doing one attack when your opponent does 4 that hit, and realize it does not hurt much. but if this continues, you'll die before th emob does. combat modes are then used to judge what you do in combat, being defensive to offensive, to going completely berserk, to putting yourself in a mode to wait for the best hits possible. This judging what you do more of, attacking or blocking/dodging. As well as the ability to aim at certain body parts There's actualy many things that can cause combat to be different depending on guild and associations.
And going off body parts, the hp of your char is separated into your limbs and head. Your hands, arms, legs, feet, body, head, tenticals, bodymass, your other head, your tail, that third head you somehow have, your random appendage on your body, and so on, with probably plans to extend this to stuff down to fingers, ears and possibly vital organs. When a body part hits 0, it's disabled (your head leading to instant death). If your chest hits below 0, you start bleeding out, eventually leading to death, but letting you try to flee and heal up before that occurs. If a limb hits to the inverse of its max (100 hp arm going down to -100), depending on method of damage, it can be sliced, smashed, or stabbed of and can be sown back on by vivsectors, to being obliterated from existence in various and sometimes brutal ways. (decayd away by entropy, burnt to ashes, somehow turned into air, dissolved by acid and various other acidic materials, eaten by ooze, rotted by disease, and for one comedic time when using a certain enchanted arrow, causing it to vanish from existence do to it being so worthless to exist). So you can try going for the head for quick kills, but if the mob is too dodgy for that, and the body seems like a lot, you can try disabling the legs to reduce dodging, maybe cut off an arm to prevent parries, and then go for the head on a crippled mob. And mobs can do the same back, don't worry 
there's probably a lot more to go over, but this post is getting long. One thing I want to mention are guilds and associations. Guilds are far from your standard fighter, mage, thief cleric affairs. You can range to being a follower of true order, using his god's might to create armor and weapons, and summon down the power of order, unholy followers looking for the death of life of the goo dand ordered (reapers, though they are getting a rewrite to turn into genocidal battle necromancers using necromancy in offensive ways and physical combat, wiping out all uncivilized life on the lands), a few guilds that allows bonding to an animal familiar, where each different animal provides different specialty access and skills and spells to use, mages of fire and its components, along with mages of the weather and chaos, drunken bar fighters that enjoy rending foes limb from limb, quite literally, and many, many others. As well, associations that provide other benefits to go with your guild, from masters of various languages, a garbage cleanup service with benefits, followers of some religions, and many others. What guilds and associations provide, beside skills and spells, are specialty access to skills and bonuses. Acess is essentially how far someone can take the skills before they reach a limit. This is outside of spec points as that decides the number of points to allocate, access provides the main limit. Spec bonus places spec points automatically, without using up a spec point, letting you free up spec points, or taking it higher.
these are just the basics. And barely scratching the surface of what there is to experience. However, the mian complaint I see from the previous thread was there was no direction/newbie school. This usually caused people to not have any idea how to begin. This info provided was to give you points of interest to search in the help files for much more indepth info. The mud is hard yes. I had trouble at the beginning and left the mud for a bit after a spectacular fail. but you have to come to this mud with the realization that you are no different from a mob. What you can do, there's a mob that can also do it, and most likely be better at it. And then there are those who can do stuff, that you can never hope to dream to do, but fall under limits where you can dodge, block, prevent, or backfire upon a mob s mob special attacks fall under a certain stat and skill formula most likely (unlike othe rmuds like altar where a spec is usually an unblockable instant affair). Knowing this, your mission is to be the best mob, err invidiual you can be amongst orcs, humans, dragons, animated constructs, and even the gods themselves (though gods don't die, they just lose their physical form for a while before returning back to normal. Though this does screw over e.l.f invocations as they rely on a live god to provide benefits. From character creation, to your time at lv 50, to lv 100, to...idling as one of the players who managed to get themselves past lv 400, you can always customize you rcharacter in one way or another, always improving through your own ability and not just through equipment. hell, theres players who find fighting naked with their bare fists...or claws, as a viable way to run through an area.
This mud is far different from the many stock muds out there. It tries to be unique in various ways, and manages it, from your character design, to how you approach the world You can be the smartest person in the world, but if your character is not smart enough or well versed in what a language, a material, or what a living being is, it reflects it. And once you get through the difficult sections of the mud, reach to the point where you walked up to something like Azozoth or abhoth, and took them down, you have done something few players have ever managed to do. The takedown of a brutally hard mob feels like an accomplishment, especially when you have situations where multiple people have trie and failed when new content is put on-line. It' is hard, but the satisfaction if accomplished is great.
And because this is a long post, connection info on the next post.
