In the German MMORPG Tibia (PC), some users discovered a bug that allowed them to return to the starting area along with their equipment and cause a lot of trouble there. We at MeinMMO summarize.
What kind of bug is this? A game error in Tibia allowed users to return to the starting area Dawnport along with their equipment. This bug was fixed by the developers in a hotfix, as it could have massive implications for new fans of the MMORPG.
Actually, you start the game in the city of Dawnport and the subsequent island of Rookgaard. You stay there until level 8, talk to an NPC to choose your class, and then proceed to the main continent of the MMORPG. After Dawnport, you never return. Theoretically, at least.
Because when you die in Tibia, you lose experience points and can even “down-level,” meaning you can actually drop back in level. If you die often enough to be between level 5 and 6, you will actually respawn in Dawnport after your death, completely naked and without your equipment.
This last part is especially important, as otherwise, you would disrupt the entire dynamic of the starting island. You could easily defeat all enemies, monsters, and NPCs in one blow and even attack and kill players who have already reached level 8 but are still in Dawnport.
But the curious bug made this possible. You could return to Dawnport with all your equipment and really shake things up there.
Tibia has been online since 1997 and is still being played. You can see four other titles in the video:
Huge effort just to bring back items
Who found the error? The user DarkGladir shared the bug on August 10 on reddit to gain the attention of the developers. The post was quickly deleted to prevent the bug from being exploited further.
The bug has since been fixed and the instructions can be found again on reddit. And they couldn’t be more complicated. Even though the island of Dawnport has been in the game for several years, the bug was only noticed now.
How did the bug work? Although the bug no longer works, we want to share how curious the effort was to exploit it. The following steps had to be taken in this order:
- Attack any other player to get rid of the Blessing buff
- Die enough times to reach level 6, specifically you had to have between 1500 and 1518 experience points
- Purchase the Blessings Phoenix-Charm, Solitude-Charm, Spiritual-Charm, Twin Sun-Charm, Unity-Charm, and Twist of Fate
- Lower your character to one life point and log out in a corner with a maximum of one square meter of space
- Another player then had to activate PvP and throw two fields of fire on the square meter you logged out on. Also, another field of fire on an adjacent square meter
- After that, the level 6 player had to log back in with 1 HP, at which point he would immediately die from the fire. Your character would then respawn in Dawnport with all your stuff and could even access the further beginner area, Rookgaard, through an NPC
“This is insane, how does one discover something like this?”
How does the community react? They are thrilled that such a bug can even be found. There is especially a lot of recognition for the players who discovered the bug and reported it to the developers. Others, however, complain about why it was still possible to cheat items into Dawnport after such a long time (via reddit).
Some fans are also worried about how many items have already been smuggled to the beginner islands through this bug and whether they could be pulled back out of circulation. A few people even attack the finder of the bug, Gladir, and claim that he exploited the bug before reporting it.
He only writes that he reported the bug on the first day he found it. However, he continued to experiment to find out exactly how to reproduce the error. Once he knew that, he reported it to the developers as well. But we can’t say who is right in the end.
What do you think about the whole situation? Are you also amazed at how such a bug can be found? Or rather angry that the bug is still in the game? Feel free to let us know in the comments here on MeinMMO.
