There have been several topics about which Muds are best for cooking, crafting, farming, and exploration. After playing a lot of Muds in search of the best one, I thought I would cull my knowledge and start this list, in hopes that I can save others a lot of time and searching. I hope everyone will add their advice, thoughts, and opinions to this thread, so that we can make a bigger list, but these Muds will get you started if you’re interested in any of the nonviolent facets of Mudding.
See Post 39 for additional information about some of the Muds.
See post 80 for information about Flexible Survival, an adult-themed mud with lots of crafting.
See post 84 for info on Accursed Lands, some of the best crafting I've discovered.
Accursed Lands
Build and furnish your homes, completely from crafting. Cook. Forge weapons. Weave and tailor clothing. But prepare to spend time developing the skills, and be aware that you may have to use several skills to craft an item. That's what makes this Mud so intriguing from a crafter's standpoint.
Cooking is also an interesting process, since you may need to hunt for meat, skin it, butcher it, and hhen cook. You may also need to buy items from shops in order to create other recipes.
Exploration is fantastic.
The only thing I didn't see in this one was farming.
Host: mud.accursed-lands.com
Port: 8000
Websites: Accursed Lands Wiki
Note that this Wiki is worded in the past tense, but the Mud is up and running smoothly.
Accursed Lands Topic by Annellin
Avalon
This Mud has everything – exquisitely written descriptions, friendly player base, navigation helps like zoom and find to make exploration easier, extensive crafting system, cooking, and farming. The only caution is that it takes a significant amount of RL time to raise your skills up enough to get into the crafting, and it can be costly resourcewise to get started in game. If you’re interested in farming, in the beginning, you probably won’t have enough gold to buy your own plough, so you’ll need to help out your city in farming their fields. This is fine, but it does mean you’ll have to be online at the time when the ploughing occurs. This mud is well worth the payoff if you’re patient, but this isn’t a Mud that you can start, and be making furniture two days later.
Host: Avalon-rpg.com
Port: 23
Website: Avalon
CoffeeMud
I’m surprised this Mud doesn’t have more people on it, because it has amazing crafting! If this is your main interest, the important thing here is to choose apprentice for your starting class, then choose artisan, and you’ll learn new crafting abilities as you level. If I had to guess, I would say this Mud offers the most crafting opportunities of any one out there – many levels of cooking, baking, embroidery, engraving, carpentry, ship building, jewelry making, tailoring, weaponsmithing, and amorsmithing, just to name a few. You can begin crafting early on this one too, you just have to know where to look to find the necessary resources for each of your projects. The only downside is that with so few players on at any time, and some of those idle, it can be hard to get newbie questions answered. But the players are friendly.
Host: coffeemud.net
Port: 23
Website: CoffeeMud
7th Plane
This Mud is set up a bit differently than the majority of RPG's. You don't go to mudschool, or train your skills. You learn by doing. This means that you start using your crafting skills, of which there are many, from the very beginning. Start by using "gather" and "chop" to gain resources, and work your way up from there. The first few times you use a skill, it will not work, but don't let that deter you. You don't choose a class until you want to, so you are free to spend time learning about the different ones and how they might affect your game.
These differences make for a refreshing experience as Muds go, and a fun game!
host: 7thplane.net
port: 8888
website: http://www.7thplane.net/
Lament: Age of Wind and Wolves
Lament offers - cooking, pottery, sewing, herbology, leatherworking, and many more.
The most unique feature of Lament is the job system. If you go to an inn or any of the buildings and type "Apply", you'll see that you can apply for certain jobs that fit your skills and level. These jobs will allow you to earn money, and possibly skill increases, when you are logged off of the game. This means you don't have to starve because you can't find quests for gold, the way you might in other Muds. I love this idea, and wish other developers would implement it in their Muds.
Another personal favorite feature that seems to be unique to Lament is one of the races. Menhits are half-otter half-hobbits. Considering the creativity that I've seen so far in only an hour of play, I imagine the crafting will be great in this one.
Host: lament.ghostglass.net
port: 8600
Frandum
contributed by Dark
Frandom has carpentry, weaving, knitting, skinning, tanning and leather working, smithing, forging, brewing, and their working on cooking, all of which you can start off right at the beginning, indeed in Frandom since you learn by doing (although teaching is available from some npcs), you can begin crafting whenever you want, and do whatever crafts you want at any time, though of course they'll get better with practice, (just as do all the skills in Frandom).
What is unique in Frandom however, is that rather than crafting involving gathering a pre existing set of resources to turn into crafted objects, you can literally pick up anything and try to make something of it.
For example, if you walk into an inn and find a bed with a colourful woolen blanket, you can get out your knitting needles and knit it into a colourful woolen scarf.
Can't think of anything to do with that old stick you just took off a goblin? Why not try sawing it into a drinking cup.
As well as getting some experience and earning you a quest whenever you try out a new craft, one major advantage to crafting in Frandum (aside from the direct benefits of say potions you brew or clothes and armor you make), is making cash.
The more you craft, the better items you create and the more you can sell them for, and since as I said Frandom is one game where you can't just slay your way to solvency, this is a major benefit. While it doesn't have a huge player base, people tend to be very friendly, including the staff, indeed one nice thing in Frandom is that the staff will help you enough to discover quests and new crafts and such, but not do them for you, since the game is all about exploring. Frandom is probably the only mud I know that does not directly award you for killing creatures in combat (all advancement is by quests, puzzles, examining things, trying things out , and exploring the world), exploratory crafting goes right along with this too, indeed while Frandom does have combat and weapons and such, it's probably the least combat heavy mud I've seen and absolutely perfect if your sick of constant kill and grind fests.
Host: frandom.fr
port 2001.
Website: www.Frandom.fr
Cosmic rage
The most impressive thing about this science-fiction-themed Mud is the colossal amount of customization you get from level 1! Rent a dwelling on any planet, and build rooms to your heart’s content. Describe the rooms, add more as your bank account grows. This is the only Mud I can think of, where you get so much creative space to build a house of your own.
There have been a lot of improvements in farming. Grow your own crops, raise livestock, send produce to the market, and keep track of it all from your farmland. You need to check the farm daily, to be sure your animals have enough feed, crops are watered, etc.
Cooking and sewing are great systems. Buy a sewing machine, and create exactly the clothing you want, if you can’t find it in the countless shops around the planets. Buy ingredients, and create your own recipes in the kitchen.
Make quilts, hunt, build homes from the ground up, perform concerts, make videos to contribute to the in-game television channels, create and sell paintings, write books, and make weapons and armor.
You can also create things for pets and babies. While the pets and babies are donator items, (meaning they cost money), they are a big draw to this game, because they are so fully customizable.
When you reach level 200, you can build your own factory. Open shops and cafes. Choose a theme for the factory and describe all of its rooms. Gather over 200 blueprints from space, to build furniture, appliances, and much more, that you can sell in your shops.
Another of my favorite features on Cosmic Rage, is that your suggestions are taken seriously, and implemented quickly if approved. Updates are made daily, and the game just keeps getting better.
Host: cosmicrage.earth
Port: 7777
3 Kingdoms/ 3 scapes
contributed by Dark
3k.org port 3000, 3scapes.org 3200.
I've only just started on this one so haven't looked things over as extensively as I might've done so far.
The games are pretty involved in a lot of areas and fairly obscure, from their guilds to their combat, however both involve a pretty extensive crafting system which includes cooking, farming, mining, chaos wrangling (aka making gems out of the energy of monsters), and of course smithing.
All of these sound like quite involved crafts, indeed farming is apparently quite a puzzler.
Empire Mud
This one is unique for your ability to build buildings fairly easily. Suggested by Firefly82.
host: empiremud.net
port: 4000
Website: EmpireMud
Iron Realms Muds
These Muds boast huge worlds, complex economy and political systems, tons of crafting etc. I didn't mention specific ones, because all seven or eight Muds are like this. The only downside is that they are roleplay intensive, so that if you say one thing out of character, people look at you like you're crazy. But they are immersive and wonderful worlds, so if you like roleplay, these are for you.
Website: Iron Realms Entertainment
4dimensions
4Dimensions.org port 6000.
Okay, this one I suspect Mirage knows about since she mentioned it earlier, but as I'm just trying it myself here is what I know.
While not quite as profoundly quest orientated as Frandom, 4dimensions is very heavy on doing quests, looking at objects, finding things. As such there are several professions and occupations you can try as a crafter.
These include various ways of acquiring resources such as fruit, wood, meat, skins, gems, etc and turning them into finished items. What is unique in 4dimensions as opposed to other games, is that the crafting actually rewards you with different things like trade points, indeed judging by several updates to the game it seems that this is an aspect of things the admins are trying to promote further, (textile working, which includes crafts as diverse as sale and rope making, tailoring and weaving has just been added).
Alteraeon
alteraeon.com port 310.
website here and audiogames.net db page here
But why alteraeon I here you all cry. We know alteraeon, it's all about the combat and the questing, where is there any crafting?
The answer is, well firstly what do you mean by crafting?
Lots of games have item enchanting it is true, but many of alteraeon's abilities are going way beyond your usual rpg style "just cast enchant armour to get a few extra armour class on an item" type of affairs that one would expect.
These include rune crafting, various protective spells, staff making, and my personal favorite the by now very extensive amount of brewable items, which range from the druids salves and protective tinctures, to the rather mad alchemist style mage potion brewing, and the dastardly world of poisons.
though these are combat abilities, they do involve a lot of gathering, and indeed knowing what to gather as well as recipes and carrying ingredients.
there are then a host of options for making your own weapons and armor, and while we don't have smithing yet, the ability to grab a branch and carve it into something good certainly is around for several classes.
More recently, some very basic, class free crafting options have been added. These include leather working, the chance to make armour through the skins of vanquished foes, stone tool knapping, and cooking is in the works.
yes, all of these abilities relate to combat, however when your spending as much of your time and attention making your staves or gathering herbs to put in potions, or poisoning your weaponry, I don't know what else to call it but! crafting.
As a final note, I did observe that star conquest has crafting, but I've not enough experience in that game to really say much about it.
Erion also has potion brewing, though in that case I don't know if the options to brew is extensive enough to count as actual crafting as opposed to just an interesting way to generate combat buffs.
Other Muds to Try
Procedural Realms (highly recommend)
Lensmoor
Wayfar 1444
CoreMud
Ancient Anguish
Flexible Survival - adult themed