Thanks to Thor streaming the game a bit, I’ve recently gotten into HackMUD. It’s a pretty cool game where you need to solve puzzles to collect resources, and can use JavaScript to help do it for you. There are a bunch of different kinds of puzzles, but one of the main ones you’ll encounter happens when you go after NPCs or other players to try and take their stuff, called locks. These are where the scripting really shines, because you have a limited time to solve them and they are often extremely repetitive (for example, “find the code word, then find the proper pass digit from 0 to 9”). In addition, the solutions to these locks will eventually change, called a “rotation.” I’ve seen 15 and 30 minutes thrown around, best to err on the side of caution and assume the shorter time.

One of the more confusing ones out there is a tier 2 lock, called acct_nt. This lock generates it’s solution based on *your* transactions. Part of why it’s confusing is that there is a lot of information out there that is either correct but awkwardly explained, or partially correct, and some that’s outdated or just plain wrong. However, we can glean some useful information on how to consistently solve the lock based on a combination of in game and out of game information.