Daurwyn’s Guide for New Players’ Survival

Ok, so you are new, and have decided to try out Carrion Fields. So what can you expect?

First and foremost, you can expect a very steep learning curve. It is very rare for a new player to have much success at the player killing (pk) aspect of the mud, so you will probably spend a lot of time being killed and dusting yourself off (or if you are lucky, escaping so that you don’t get killed until a bit later). It won’t be made easier by the fact that you can’t find your way around very well either, and aren’t sure of what you should be wearing!

But don’t worry! It won’t last forever, and this guide has some advice that, if followed, should enable you to learn the ropes.


What is a good character for a new player?

Generally speaking, it’s not the extremely fragile, mistrusted, and hated drow necromancer. I highly recommend one of the following two CLASSES if you are new:

RANGER. ASSASSIN.

Why these two? Mainly because they can do the following:
a) Hide themselves from most enemies (which is useful both for killing, and for staying alive),
b) See most enemies.
c) Defend themselves well in most of the circumstances you are likely to be in
d) Explore relatively easily and self-sufficiently, so you can take it as slowly as you want
e) PK even if their gear isn’t great
f) Take blows from the monsters in the game, whilst gaining levels (making them attractive to other players as an ally, and those allies will in turn help you out in many ways, whether that be advice, or equipment, as backup in pk etc.)

Poor old drow necromancer on the other hand... can’t do any of the above without an experienced player at the helm. Other classes I don’t highly recommend (although being in mind that this is opinion, and people’s opinions differ), are:

Warrior: Fails (a), (b), and in most cases (e) above.
Thief: Can work, but you fail (d) in most cases, (e) in many, and (f) in most.
Paladin: Good class, but you need empowerment, so if you think your role-play is going to be good despite the fact you are in a hostile world you don’t know well, go for it. If not, don’t.
Shaman: As above. Quite a good class, but killing with it isn’t that easy.
Druid: As paladin, but you’re more fragile.
Healer: This could work, but you’ll probably be the guy that everyone aims at first when two large groups fight.
Anti-paladin: Fragile if you can’t find protective wands. Fire giant less so, but still vulnerable to plenty of people.
Transmuter: Not too bad for a new player, but you don’t get stealth until later in the game. Similarly, you won’t be great at exploring until later on.
Invoker: Far too much time will need to be spent practicing your spells. Then you’ll get killed anyway. So all that time spent could have been put to better use exploring the mud or something.
Necromancer: See drow necromancer comments.
Conjurer: This class could work for a new player, but the creatures you conjure can turn on you (and kill you if you panic. You are also not usually in great demand in groups, until you have advanced to a fairly high rank and can conjure archons. Evil conjurers who are new to the game don’t have to worry so much about being killed by other players. The creatures they conjure will normally turn on them and kill them first.
Shapeshifter: This could work for a new player. However, you may find yourself getting ambushed a lot whilst not in form (which usually spells death). Also, forms tend not to be all that powerful until the later levels. On the bright side, you shouldn’t find levelling a problem.
Bard: Potentially not too bad for a new player, but you’ll die a lot to stealthy characters at lower levels.


What RACE?
If you are a ranger, it really doesn’t matter too much. Just pick something that appeals.
If you are an assassin, I quite recommend human, or arial. The former has easier enemies to fight. The latter is better at defending themselves in melee, and flies all the time (meaning you don’t get tripped to death).


What ALIGNMENT?
I recommend you play either a neutral character (so you can travel with anyone, more or less), or a good aligned character (so you can request items from monsters – also known as MOBS – without having to kill them, and because good aligned characters tend to help each other out).


What CABAL?
You may not want to join a cabal.

Not joining has the advantage that you won’t be obliged to fight at severe disadvantage when cabals are raided.
Joining has the advantage of creating more allies (which generally makes things more fun from a role-play perspective).

I would recommend you do not join OUTLANDER unless you are a ranger, because feeding yourself will be an issue. Outlanders have a skill that helps with this, but it can also get you killed a lot.

I also recommend against joining SCION (who rarely admit players who don’t have extensive game knowledge), and EMPIRE (where mistakes tend to result in negative consequences, and being new, you’ll be making plenty).

You could join BATTLE, but as you will spend a lot of time fighting outside of the wilderness, it’s not well suited to rangers. An assassin in battle is a viable option to a new player. The drawback is that you can’t use magic, and that includes the potions that most characters rely on to escape bad situations.

NEXUS is probably not ideal for you, as your main enemy is BATTLE, who are hard for new players to stand against, and beyond that, you will often be having to fight against whoever is most powerful in order to restore balance to the world.

TRIBUNAL and FORTRESS are arguably the cabals best suited to new players.

There’s a fairly inconvenient punishment to attacking a tribunal who is on duty, which will cause many enemies to think twice about it. You have some nice powers, and whilst moving to the OUTLANDER enemy’s stronghold is very dangerous, you don’t lose your powers if they have your item, so you aren’t hugely exposed. You’ll be able to learn the cities well, and you should have plenty of chances to experience some nice armor (before someone kills you and takes it away again).

Fortress has some tough enemies (Empire, Scion, and Evil characters in general), but as a generalisation, Fortress members are more likely to support each other than other cabals are. There will normally be characters who can help keep you alive, and you’ll, again, get to see some nice armor as there’s a good chance that if you are badly armored, someone will take you out and help you get something better. Most people don’t consider Fortress powers to be all that good (I personally like them). The downside is that you will have to defend against some nasty odds.


So overall, I’d recommend.... (drum roll):
Human or arial neutral tribunal assassin. Even if you are awful at fighting other players, you can still contribute by catching criminals in the act (as many of them can’t see you when you are hiding).


I’ve taken your advice about the character I’ve created. What now?

To move around the mud, you use the letters N (for north) followed by the enter key, or S for south, E for east, W for west, D for down, U for up. You should be able to see if you type L (for LOOK) which directions you can walk in. It’s also possible to crawl to fit through small exits, and exits also exist that you can’t tell are exits (except, perhaps, by carefully looking at things in the room), but don’t worry about that for now.

Start with going through the academy (which lies to your north). If there’s a door in your way, you can open it with op n (for Open North), or something with something like op gate, or op door, depending on whether it is a gate or a door.

Read every sign, and everything else that it looks like you can read. Go into every room you can, as you’ll get an idea about what each cabal is about, as well as a little about your class, alignment, race etc. Also look at every MOB that’s there.

You’ll need to practice a few skills or spells (and you can do this when you reach your guildmaster as you pass through the Academy). Type PRAC (for practice). This shows all the skills you currently have, and your proficiency in them (100% is as good as it gets, 1% is as bad as it gets – on the rare occasions you find a skill drops to 0%, and you can’t use the skill at all). You can raise the number in a skill by practicing the skill with your guildmaster. How much the number goes up by will depend on your INTELLIGENCE. Type “help intelligence” for more detail. Also type SCORE to see what your stats currently are.

You can’t practice a skill beyond 75% at your guildmaster. Beyond this point, you normally need to be putting the skill to use.
If you are new, I recommend you practice everything when you can, but to start with, practice at least one weapon to 75%, and any of the defensive skills you have (of parry, dodge, shield block).

You can (if you want, improve your INT first by TRAINING at your guildmaster so that each practice raises your skills by more). Type just TRAIN on its own, to see what you can train. You can ask the guildmaster about each statistic to see more about what it does. Generally speaking, the stats you want to train first are:

WIS: to at least 18, which ensures you get 3 practices per level.
CON: to maximise your hp as you gain in levels
INT: to let you practice more efficiently (both with the guildmaster, and when generally applying your skills out in the wider world).

I should mention that further on in the academy is a lot of “fine leather” armor for different parts of your body. Some of these can improve the above stats (and STR or DEX), which will help you. For now, just practice WIS to at least 18, then practice INT as high as you can. Then practice the skills I recommended. This will be enough to enable you to explore the arena level of the academy, where most of this fine armor can be found.

Try putting it on (e.g. WEAR HAT), typing SCORE and seeing what it does to your stats. Take it off and type SCORE again. Notice anything that changes. Remember this, and with your future characters, you might decide you want to grab this stuff before you practice or train with the guildmaster.

Try to find some fine leather for every part of your body. Each bit of armor will require you to use a different command, or approach, to get it, so you should learn something from the process of finding each piece. When you’ve found enough, you’ll get a special message and given something you’ll find useful. I recommend you keep looking around the Academy level (and the level beneath it, which, be warned, can be more dangerous), until you’ve found everything.

You might also find someone who offers to teach you about FLAWS. I recommend you don’t take these. They will handicap you, and as a new player, you will suffer if you handicap yourself, no matter how cool and relevant it seems to your role.


So, I’ve got all the fine armor in the academy. What next?

You can either walk around the arena continuing to kill stuff (and gain ranks) up to level 5, leaving via the north of the arena to go back through the academy to your guildmaster for practicing new skills as you go (the SKILLS command will show you skills that become available to you at each level – SPELLS works in similar fashion to show the magic you know, SUPP for the supplications, or prayers, that you know, and REH for the songs you can rehearse at each level).

However, if you gathered all the fine leather armor, you should have noticed Simon the arena veteran asking you for a favour. You might want to help him out, because in return, he’ll help you learn a bit about the world.
Finally, whilst in
the academy, I would recommend that you consider buying the explorers notebook, and taking a look through it. It will help you when you graduate.


GRADUATION

Ok... I’ve left the academy and am out into the wide world, and I’ve done everything that Simon and his friends have asked me to... what now?

Well, there are a few skills that, when you can, you’ll want to master. These are CAMOUFLAGE if you are a ranger, and HIDE and SNEAK if you are an assassin. Until they are mastered, you can’t be certain if they worked. Which means you might be thinking you are nicely hidden, but someone walks up and kills you because you are not.

The easiest way to perfect these is a bit dull, so you might want to do it every so often but take a break from it now and then too. If you use a client, you can normally type something like...

#20 hide

...to attempt hiding 20 times without having to type it 20 times.

Doing this for a while will improve the skill rapidly. Although it will get slower as you get closer to 100%.

As a general rule, if you are a camouflaged ranger, only other rangers can see you (plus wood-elves if they get close enough, and assassins also have a skill that can help them see you). If you are an assassin and hiding in civilised terrain, only thieves, duergar, on duty tribunals, and other assassins can see you. If you hide in wilderness terrain, thieves and duergar can’t see you any more, but rangers can (I think).

Other than that, I suggest you just let your skills go up through use. Once a skill is perfected, it’s probably worth using other skills unless it’s essential to use the perfected one, so you can improve at the other skills. The exception to this is when fighting another player, in which case, use whatever seems most sensible. I’ll have some tips on fighting later.


So, you need to keep gaining levels. How? Your options are:

Ask another player

WHO GROUP will show you who you can potentially travel with, although you might find that some people on that list can’t travel with you because you are of opposite alignment. It’s also common that at lower levels, a lot of players prefer to travel alone. It’s at higher level that they tend to want your company. Let’s say you see a gnome warrior called Gumble, and want to see if he wants to travel.

Use TELL GUMBLE followed by whatever you want to say to him. It’s not considered good role-play to “TELL GUMBLE Want to get some levels?” but there are other phrases that are considered more acceptable. For example:
“Hello. I’m Drantis, and I’m looking for stalwart travelling companions. Are you interested?”
or the more ordinary...

“Care to gain some ranks?” (referring to gaining ranks within your guild).

With any luck, they are not new, so can show you to an area. However, I highly recommend that you use the maps you get when you type OUTFIT to get an idea of where each area they take you is. Then try to find your way back there (being prepared to get lost and potentially die), and look around there (bearing in mind that sometimes one part of an area is safe, and another isn’t). Getting to know areas will help you a lot when it comes to surviving, because you’ll be able to run and hide, or run and attack people before they know you are coming, etc.

If you are on your own, there is some helpful advice about where to go and what you might find there, in the helpfiles accessed by:

HELP NEWBIE
HELP NEWBIE2
HELP NEWBIE3

You might also find HELP AREAS useful (in conjunction with your maps).

You can find detailed maps for most places at the following link:
http://diku.qhcf.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl

STILL TO COME:
1) What to do when you are nearing the stage where you can be attacked by other players (and attack them). Because you’ll need some potions to help you escape, at a minimum, unless you are hoping to join BATTLE and have to avoid using magic.
2) PK advice (for assassins and rangers only)

but it is fine in MS Word.

I'll eventually supply it as a word document, if people think it will be useful.