Test area

A sealed area where a character with TEST in its name sets its own level, takes gear, skins and gems for free, and fights dummies, summoned monsters or other test characters. Nothing it does there reaches the rest of the server.

How you get in

• Put TEST in the character's name, in capital letters, anywhere in the name. The character becomes a test character when it logs in and is put in the test area.
• A test character starts at level 1 with 1 gold, and without the bedroll other new characters get. Ordinary characters start at level 3 - see Game client.
• The area is sealed both ways. A portal or door out of the area refuses a test character: "Test characters are NOT allowed to go anywhere outside of the TEST Area!". A test character that reaches the Gateway or the Fugue Plane is sent straight back.
• An ordinary character that ends up in the test area is sent to purgatory.
• Logging out puts a test character back at the test area's arrival point.
• Entering the area shows "You are now in TEST mode".

What is there

Trainers

Talk to a Trainer:

• Items opens six stores where everything costs 0 gold: legendary purple items, socketable items, Nordock craft items, GTS crafted items, brilliant items and standard +5 items.
• Level Adjustment sets your level to any value from 1 to 40. It does not work while polymorphed.
• Alignment Adjustment shifts your alignment 25 points at a time toward good, evil, lawful, chaotic, neutral, or a combination of two.

Skins

• The skin halls hold hundreds of appearances, grouped by signs (humanoids, undead, giants, outsiders, premium and donor skins, and more). A portal leads down to the lower hall.
• Talk to an appearance to take it. You pick its size category and scaling, and it costs 0 skin tokens.

Dummies

• A dummy does not move and does not fight back.
• Its name says what it is: its Armor Class (10, 60, 65 or 75), plus any of an alignment (Chaotic Evil or Lawful Good), Undead, Crit Immune, Boss Damage Reduction and DPS TEST.

Test grounds

• Four test grounds, behind the doors marked TO ARENA 1 to TO ARENA 4. A light outside each reads FREE or BUSY.
• A busy ground lets in only party members of someone already inside.
• Each ground has a Creature Summoner and an Area Cleaner lever. The lever kills every creature summoned on that ground. The ground is also cleared when the last player leaves it.

PvP arenas

• Three PvP arenas, marked PVP ARENA 1 to 3. The third has a red and a white side.
• Entering an arena makes you hostile to everyone already inside it: "You have entered a PVP arena! FIGHT!". Leaving it sets you back to neutral with them.
• Outside the arenas a test character cannot be set hostile to another player, and an ordinary character cannot be set hostile to a test character.

Traps and chests

• Five trigger traps: Easy, Average, Strong, Deadly and Epic.
• Five training chests (Low, Med, High, Epic and Boss) for Open Lock and Disable Trap.
• A test character that opens a chest gets the message "You -loot- the chest" and nothing else.
• Unlocking a chest or disarming a trap gives a test character no experience.

Other

• Trash receptacles.

What is different for a test character

Free

• Vengeance costs no Epic tokens and consumes no second copy of the item. This holds for the first vengeance, for every reroll and for going back a roll. The 100-roll limit of an item still applies.
• Sockets: you count as owning 99 of every gem. Gems you socket or remove are not taken from or added to your account's gem storage.
• Sockets: you can socket an item above your own level.
• Skins cost 0 skin tokens.
• Summon appearances: every summon appearance in the Player Menu is available, without unlocking it on the account.
• Brew Potion, Scribe Scroll and Craft Wand cost no gold and no experience.
• Mounts: the mount window lists a set of sample mounts, and a test character can summon them without owning them.
• Mounts: a test character can mount while wearing a custom appearance, without the mount appearance override.
• Pets: the pet window lists every pet.
• Premium races play without their race token. Without the token a character earns no experience, and the trainer sets your level directly.

Blocked

• The vault is switched off: "Vault system is disabled for test characters."
• Battlegrounds: "Test characters cannot take part in battlegrounds." The battleground window does not open.
• Forgetting a mount or a pet does nothing.
• The Rod of the Watcher does nothing: "You wouldn't benefit from it at this moment".
• Most chat commands do nothing for a test character: party and resurrection search, the party check, mass identify, -blink, -my_gems, -plm and the animations (/sit, /dance and the rest). -chars, -tut and the damage meter (-dps) work.
• Test gear stays in the test area. Everything from a test store is flagged plot and stolen, and cannot be sold to a store, put in the vault or listed on the trade post. Test gear found on any other character is destroyed when that character logs in.

Behaves differently

• The Player Menu opens the test menu. It holds fast cast setup, spell book and quickbar store and restore, summon appearances, the elemental choice for summon spells, removing your custom skin (you get it back as a skin item), vengeance, making a crafted item Masterful, player settings, restoring the default randomness, the time to the next reboot, and deleting the character.
• Levelling has no overflow limit: experience past the next level is kept.
• Dying: at 0 hit points or below you die at once. There is no bleeding.
• Death: no corpse and no Fugue Plane. Everyone in the area is told who killed whom, and you press Respawn.
• Respawning brings you back at the test area's respawn point, healed to full and cleared of negative effects.
• Wandering monsters never ambush a test character.
• Quest markers are not shown to a test character.
• Light sensitivity and dark sensitivity have no effect on a test character: no blindness and no attack or saving throw penalty.
• The appearance editor works anywhere. Other characters can use it only in no-PvP areas and faction cities.
• Deleting a test character works while it wears a custom skin. Any other character must remove the skin first.
• Other players: party and resurrection searches (-lfp, -lfr) and the Party Finder's broadcast neither list nor notify test characters. The players list has a Test filter that shows only test characters.

See also

• Builds
• General build advice
• Skins
• The server