>Deathtraps seem to be geared towards killing the curious explorers.

If you have any caution (which I typically don't), but sufficient curiosity to look at everything, the death traps won't kill you. Apparently you need either more caution or more curiosity.

By the way, I've died far more often to aggresive mobs than to actual deathtraps.

>In the end, is the benefit worth the cost? I explore to find preps.

I've only explored for one prep source in years, and I eventually found it, the detect invis prep so many people love. I asked IC for hints, and tracked it down in person.

No, people don't tell me where they are, typically I don't give a #### about preps. They're not part of how I like to play. I explore for the same reason I once wandered around a water purifying plant after closing: I like to see things most people never/rarely do.

>What does the first guy to find the prep get? Squat? Conloss?

If they keep it a secret, they get a prep. Big whoop. If they tell others, they could make deals to exchange information, or make friends, or all sorts of things interesting to play out.

If (like the IRC OOC squads) they keep the information to their little circle so tons of people know but nobody outside their group knows: That's what I think annoys the IMMs. It's like what happened to me my first time playing Warcraft 2 against someone else. He knew the cheat codes, I didn't. So I lost. The preps aren't as unbalancing as that Warcraft example, but there's a similarity there.


>I think we should stop tricking ourselves into thinking that prep
>locations are sacred, and that the only way to compete with the
>dissemination of knowledge is to hide preps better, add more DT's
>and make area's more dangerous.

Quit thinking preps are sacred. They're not. Preps are just stuff. There's plenty of stuff going around. Also I know of NO cases where deathtraps were added to make it harder to acquire the 'sacred preps'.

>This practice only hurts one kind of person.. the kind of person who
>we should be supporting for their patience and curiousity.

Why should patience and curiosity be supported? If those traits are used properly, they are their own reward.

>The general consensus is that exploring is deadly pre-30 or
>hero. That sounds like a bad thing.

Not true. My best exploring days were back when you could get into huge xp holes through mob deaths. I was in the mid twenties, getting bored because I'd piled up too many mob deaths at one level, so I went around exploring alone. I did pretty well actually, but many areas I'd checked out have changed since then, so I should get more exploring done again.