>>Is it particularly bad to be targetted as a newbie? I think
>>it will be pretty hard to disguise.
>

Yeah, but it is easier to disguide and avoid as an assassin!

>Dunno how many people actually target newbies. As an assassin,
>you can hide from like 90% of people. People who can see you
>are: Assassins and thieves at all time, duergars when you're
>in civilized terrain, Tribunals when they're on duty and
>rangers when you're in wilderness.

Woohoo! All in my newbie guide draft!

> In addition, the Imperial
>Shadow lord and the Emperor have a power with which they can
>see you (though in this case the shadow lord doesn't matter as
>he's an assassin or thief and would see you anyway).
>
>>I think I have my boyfriend interested in trying to play,
>>though he is not sure he can handle fast scrolling text that
>>comes with combat.
>

Increase the number of lines of text on the screen, and the scrolling speed will have to be slower. Also, as an assassin, you can better pick one v one fights, which are less spammy. Even I struggle to follow what's going on in large group v group fights (anything more than 3 a side), so I tend to fight a lot less effectively.

>He should try it then. It's a tough game and no-one expects
>newbies to shine. So, you're completely allowed to suck and
>no-one will diss you for that. If you shine, it's only
>positive. I wasn't sure about being able to handle the fast
>scrolling text and not getting lost in a text-based world and
>I've managed well enough.
>

To give this some context, when I left cf for about 5 years (and everything changed) and came back, neutral assassin enabled me to get a 50% pk ratio. As in, I killed as many as I died to.

>>The dying too many times leading to perma death concerns me.
>I
>>am bound to die a lot early on, at the least, and I was
>pretty
>>reckless in the last mud I played. I enjoyed fighting a lot
>>more than running, regardless of the odds. How many times do
>>you have to die before you die permanently?
>
>You lose one point of constitution for every third death. When
>your constitution is lowered to zero, your character will die
>permanently.

I believe that actually you permanently die before this. At 3 con, perhaps?

> This would mean 39 deaths for a 16 con character
> elf or d-elf, they have the lowest constitution in the game)
>that doesn't practice constitution to compensate for the the
>ones lost in deaths. Generally, only people who con die are
>the ones who purposefully play recklessly or live a long
>life.
>

Don't worry about con death. If you con die, roll another, and you'll be a lot better because of what the character that con died learnt. Also, con affects hp regen, so you might get fed up with low con before you actually con die (although you can get skills that help with this).

>>It also sucks that 500 hours kills you permanently. That's a
>>lot of time to put in to a character to lose them. I clocked
>>way over that in my old mud, and I would have hated to start
>>all over again.
>

That's a matter of opinion. Sometimes the only thing that stops a mud being stagnant is new characters being born and old ones dying. Also, it stops any powerhouse from dominating cf for forever (possible except the current lich, since he doesn't seem inclined to delete from boredom and doesn't die any more either).

>Starting over isn't a huge deal in CF. The max level is capped
>to 51 and you can reach that in 30-100 hours if you powerrank.
>Also, game starts at level 1, not 51, and you should be able
>to have fun at any level range. Also, every class plays
>differently so the startover gives you a change to try
>something new.
>
>>How do you guys handle that, exactly?
>
>I'd like to point out that vast majority of characters die by
>deletion and not because the game forced them to die. People
>will simply reroll something else when they get bored of their
>previous character and want to try something new. 500 hours is
>plenty of time to get bored with your current character.
>Personally, I've age died one character (Fungor) and con-died
>two (Agantas, Endalion). Feel free to check their PBF's if you
>want to know how long they lasted. At that point, I was
>already ready to give up on those characters as their time had
>come. Of those characters, Agantas was my second character
> first that PKed, as my first character Fungor was about
>survival), a crazy balls to the walls character that fought to
>the point where he took completely unnecessary deaths. You can
>also play for about half an hour or hour after your character
>has died, as a ghost, to properly say goodbye to people who
>knew you in the game. Also, there will be a death thread for
>your character in the Battlefield forum where you can say your
>goodbyes and comments about the character. Also, you can talk
>about that character more freely at that point, as it is not
>customary to talk about your active character in the forums.
>
>>Also, I really wish the game would come back up, I could
>spend
>>all this time posting learning how to play hands on.
>
>Don't we all. This kind of longer downtime has happened only
>once as I recall it. At that time, there was a fireball in the
>host company's server room. This is not an issue like that,
>but they'll solve it eventually and it probably won't happen
>again and if it does, the Imms should be wiser at that time as
>they learn from this time's mistakes.