Hey Dark,
I've been playing Aardwolf for years now. But I'm sort of streaky with it. Meaning, I'll go through phases where I'm on Aard for a few hours a day, which, is as much as I get to play games anywhere.
But at this point I'm rather taken up with leveling private shooter on swamp for now.

To be clear, when you say auto-quests, are you referring to the area goals? Or the quests that questor hands out every 30 minutes.
The goals and or area quests can be daunting as you progress, but sometimes just re-reading the task over again can help.
Typing "task here" when you're in the area your goal is in you'll sometimes get a hint you might not first be given when the task is assigned.

As you mentioned, the wiki is very helpful, and there are maps for the quote, VI. Which is short for visually impaired.'
The aardwolf community generally know when you say I'm VI on the question/answer channel that this means you're blind. As just saying I'm blind on the channel will get other players sending you cure blindness potions. lol

Getting back to the accessible maps, here's the URL for this super helpful site.
http://maps.gaardian.com/vi-index.php

My main char on Aarrdwolf is named Delq, so send me a tell if I'm online and you need to chat or have an issue you might wanna compare notes on.
Or, post a note to me once you're in the personal board and I'll get back to you.
that goes for anyone who might need help from the Audiogames community.

Best of luck, and I hope you stick around.

@Mikefont, when I said "autoquests" I mean the ones the quest master gives out every 30 minutes. as I said I find those fun but not as much fun as the goals which I've had a go at, and particularly because in the campaign I'm doing while some mobs I foun just by exploring others seem to be in locked areas, indeed I got some help from one other player to solve my issue in the giant's pet store because you couldn't get into parts of that place without already completing the goal which was crazy.

I am having a similar issue now with the graveyard trying to find a zombie (yep, thought that would be an easy one), but have just decided to have a go at the goal anyway, particularly sinse I ran into the grave digger who gives it out right at the start of the area, though as it's now nearly one in the morning I'll have to continue tomorrow .

I'll also need to go and upgrade equipment I suppose, though that is never something I enjoy doing sinse I always prefer the exploring to the sitting aroun and minimaxing numbers, but obviously the stuff I have from random quests and the new player academy won't keep me safe perminantly.

Still, I'm quite surprised how engaging I'm finding the game to say it's a kill fest. 

Btw, people are okay about the Vi thing, however I do wish people wouldn't propose maps as a solution when I'm actually needing to know where to find a key, that was the issue I had in the giant's pet store before someone helped me out, everyone just said "look at the map" thinking I was lost when effectively I was just locked out.

Actually the areas haven't been too bad to navigate thanks to the good descriptions and the fact that most rooms have distinctive names. The only thing is I do find the speedwalks something of a double edged sword especially when I'm just running into an area to kill a mob sinse it seems suddenly ping! I'm on the other side of the world which is a bit confusing an also messes with my sense of epic exploring, indeed I might just do a conventional walk out of the city of ailer when I'm done with this campaign and with the academy just to see where things are.

One thing I really! like about the game is that though you do circuits of the different classes, there are clearly more than enough goals to keep you well and truly busy, on your way around, indeed even if goals can only be done once for each character and don't reset when you remort that still leaves a hell of a lot to do.

@Ironcross, well if your not looking for fantasy games Aardwolf won't be what your looking for.

Flux world is definitely worth a look as it's a really unique setting, although a little hard to get into, so I'd recommend keep checking back sinse I don't think new player registration will be restricted for long, just connect and see how you go. Two muds I've heard good things about which are neither fantasy nor the star conquest style scifi, that you might have a go at are epitaff online the zombie survival mud, and cyber assault, a post appocalyptic game with cyborgs etc. There is also wayfar1444, a game I've tried myself, which is space colonization with you building a colony on an alien planet, harvesting resources and building many devices and vehicles while fighting off alien monsters.

I would also suggest you give clok a look, sinse though it is a fantasy setting, the fantasy elements are very very very! minimal. no dragons everywhere, vampires or spirits, indeed most of the enemies are wildlife and bandits and much of what you do in the game is more like survival in a wilderness/wild west setting with making arrows, hunting for food, working in the mines, crafting items etc rather than going around like a ten tonne tank conan the barbarian slaughtering your way through hoards of the generic orcs and zombies. Indeed I don't plan to give up on Clok, I just like aardwolf as a contrast and as something new to try, indeed as I said I'm quite surprised how engaging I find a streight up fantasy kill fest like this sinse I would've assumed it would become dull fairly quickly.

There's also a soundpack for it. I can't remember where the link is, but google helps for sure.  This mud is well established, but I don't really the way quests and goals go. Well, that's just me.

Beware, the soundpack is hard to install and you might screw your mush if you don't do it the proper way.

I've played Aardwolf a few times (and a bit of late, actually), and here are the things I've learned about it.

1. If you want cohesive worlds, this isn't for you. There are space-themed areas, silly areas like a modern carnival, and constant references to RL things like plastic and football and whatnot, all alongside your fantasy fare. Each area is pretty well-themed, but the mud as a whole is not. Not at all.
2. All the classes seem pretty balanced, with none being utterly bad or utterly good.
3. The races they recommend when you start up your character are not always best. They suggest giant for thief (among others, of course), and fail to suggest vampire for paladin even though vampires statistically make excellent paladins.
4. Some of the goals are pretty easy and straightforward. Some of them are infuriating in this regard. There's an area called Solan which has a goal marked "medium"; at one point, you have to find some guy's missing box, and the only hint in your list is "dig through the rubble". Well, there's only one room with rubble in it, and multiple different tries at syntax including the words "dig" and "rubble" did absolutely nothing. Worse, when you ask about guess-the-syntax puzzles, you're told that "goals aren't for everyone" instead of hearing the admission that in some cases, difficulty has been misrepresented. I'm sorry, but when you have to rely on weird words just to make something difficult, that's not...really...difficult. It's frustrating. This is just one example; I can think of several more. Point is this: some goals really are pretty straightforward, but some are just awful.
5. When someone becomes a superhero (gets to level 201), they can go "loud", which is to say the whole mud knows about it. If they do this, the whole mud gets double experience for ten minutes. There's also a daily-blessing system which does things like, among others, giving you double quest points for your next few quests, or doubling the experience for a whole pile of mobs once activated. If you're careful and a bit lucky this way, you can easily get to level 30 in an hour or two, and since most goals and other things don't lock you out even at high levels - as always, there are exceptions to this - it's a great way to jump past the really easy part of the game so you're less squishy.
6. Gear is not the be-all end-all everyone makes out in other muds. Personally I haven't really bothered equipping my highest-level character with much, and he's still able to wreck things pretty hard. Maybe I'd wreck them harder if I had the best gear. That brings me to another thing; I feel like this game has too many areas and too many bits of gear. There's gear all over the place, but most of it isn't the sort of thing you'd want to wear.

If all those things don't completely turn you off, then give Aardwolf a try. It's very well-populated, if nothing else, and people are generally friendly.

Oh, and if there's anyone who's played the game more long-term and wants to discuss goals, I'm all ears. I've been thinking of putting together a sort of master walkthrough of the goals (not necessarily step by step, but intuitive enough to walk a player through them if they want).

I played Aardwolf a little bit, and I really liked the room descriptions.  Even some of the mobs you had to kill were pretty funny.  I can't remember the specifics, but there was one farm or something, where the food was after you!  I may have to give this one another try.

Well the believer path wasn't actually too bad, just that "expose the distortion" thing which I obviously overthought.

Other goals I'll have to judge when I get to them, but I have liked some of the places in the game, fatnasy fields was fun, beating up bursts of anger or "you feel down"  sort of reminded me of some of the crazier eamon games.

I couldn't find anything about this mccp thing in vipmud either, but I wouldn't say your being penalized, just missing out on extra quests and really there are enough to do anyway.

wow, I'm glad I tried out Clok, it's amazing. I'm failing epically, but I'm trying to create a survivalist char. Bad things keep on happening to him though, no one wanted to buy branches off him first of all, then someone did, then he got killed in a mine, then he nearly got killed in another mining cave in, then he nearly got trampled by a bison, (I have not found a command to appraise or consider the strength of an opponent versus me), and it just keeps going. But I'm still having fun at it.

@Ironcross, glad you like clok. No there is no consider command, but really you shouldn't be trying to kill everything sinse it's not that sort of game, or at least not unless you specifically train hard at it, indeed the fact that killing a bison is just as hard as it would be in real life is rather nice, but if you want to discuss clok maybe move to the Clok topic.

I don't know about clans, it's not really something I've looked into in Aardwolf,but unlike in other games accept for the newbie bootcamp clan  most clans need you to be pretty high level anyway.

If I remember correctly, certain things, like the bag will scale with your level, or have static stats no matter what. the bag and aura come to mind, which is why you buy them at level one. You probably won't get them on your first runthrough of the levels, but save up and get them again once you remort. then you're supposed to have something like a new weapon every twenty levels or so, but I never got that far, I think I had one every fifty levels. the point is because they get more powerful as you level, but they won't scale with you so you can't use it at level one.

Hi mirage,
As far as I know there isn't an Aardwolf soundpack for vipmud, or any other mud client. You'd pretty much have to make your own, as I'm doing. Its a semi pain staking afair, as you create it trigger line by trigger line.
If you need sounds you can download them from the following site.
http://www.soundjay.com/index.html

To learn how to create triggers, aliases, and hot keys, check out the vipmud help system by pressing F1.
When you have questions, as I'm sure you will, I'd advise you to subscribe to the vipmud email list. There's some very knowledgeable folks there who can give examples and explain things more in detail then this forum thread could.

To subscribe to any of the GMA Games lists use this simple form they've set up.
Ask for the subscription address so you can become apart of the vipmud list.
Here's the link to the form:
http://www.gmagames.com/gmamailer.php

Best of luck with Aardwolf, and your vipmud experience.
HTH

No problem, glad I can help. Btw, what's your char's name on Aard?
If you wanna look me up or post a note to the personal board with a question, my char name is Delq.