Hi! I'm new to CF but not new to MUDs. I have some easy questions.

<ol>
<li>I use MUDlet. Should I add any special scripts? Does CF have special output I should take advantage of?
<li>What's a good starting class? I'm leaning towards assassin or ranger. Looks like religious characters are complicated. Thieves and mages tend to be too squishy. I find warriors boring. And bards have a bit of a learning curve. Is that a fair assessment?
<li>What are the guidelines for descriptions? I read help description & extra. There aren't any length guidelines.
<li>Why does it say "HTML use enabled" but not process my list?
</ol>

Thanks for the help!

Rangers are a very strong and very easy class to learn the game with. They have a built in heal with herbs and a very nice hide skill with camo. You need to spend time in the wilderness so this won't be a great class for spending much time in civilized, but there is a TON of stuff outside of towns and the like to see.

If you haven't yet, look at the WIKI on the unofficial site. It is chocked full of info that helps. Also the discord is a great place to get help. But honestly the best way to do it, is play a character, roleplay and learn that way.

A good aligned ranger would be great. Or an assassin.

Druids aren't that complicated honestly. Just a bit more involved with keeping track of moon cycles and how they relate to the herbs you have. Druids kick ass. Play what you want and have a blast.

Welcome to the best MUD ever.

First, if you're using Mudlet, hopefully you're using the built-in CF skin (if you have the current version of Mudlet, you'll see Carrion Fields as one of the default options). One of our Imms built that skin and it makes life far easier.

As far as good starting classes, assassins are by far the most commonly recommended option. They have a wide-ranging skillset and no glaring weaknesses, so they'll help you learn the game. You won't regret going that route at all for a first character.

I wouldn't write-off warriors so quickly though. I've played other MUDs, and CF warriors are something else entirely. There's a huge amount of customization to warriors, with two specializations (at lvl 20 and 40), legacies (lvl 44 and 48) and edges. Basically, no two warriors are ever going to be exactly alike.. you can really make what you like. And there are a lot of very strong options. It really is worth your time just looking at some of the different options there.

I wouldn't write off empowerment classes either. I'd steer clear of Druids, since they're very complicated. Healers are fairly one-dimensional. Paladins (my favorite class, by far) and shamans are both very strong though. The entire empowerment process is not as complicated as you may think. It basically amounts to writing a role and praying to a god. Even before you meet your god and get "empowered", you'll still have a very competitive skillset.

For descriptions, there are no hard rules beyond what you probably already know. It should be what someone sees when they look at you..no actions or interaction should happen there. You can look at the Premium Battlefield for some examples of descriptions, but most of them are just one paragraph. Maybe 5-ish sentences. More or less won't make anyone mad though. I've seen 3/4-paragraph descs, and I've seen 3-sentence descs, and as long as they give you a sense of what you're looking at, they're fine.

As far as the forum stuff- I dunno. The forum software is old and weird. Check out the Discord page (link on the main homepage) for the more modern way of interacting and asking questions. It's pretty active and you can get more real-time answers than you'll get on the forums.

Thanks for the info.

I found the skin. That looks pretty awesome.

Druids are complicated? They almost made my list. They look like they have high survivability and they have identification.

It says that any race can be a warrior. How is the combat system set up here? Can high dex races survive as warriors? I'm used to seeing melee being mostly about strength.

Druids are very complicated because you have many factors you have to keep track of at all times. Dex warriors are very very strong in CF because of a few skills (Help Evade) and legacies (Help legacies, help striking the shadow's footfall). Both strength and dex warriors can build really strong builds. But like was said above, highly recommend assassin. The ability to hide and see hidden foes is very very paramount to surviving while you learn the areas. Couple that with strong defenses for surviving ranking and abilities to get you out of danger (See help bindwounds and help vanish), and they are just an all around great class for new players. Also I recommend joining our discord if you haven't already because you'll find quicker answers in the newbie channel there than you probably will on the forums. Welcome to the fields and I hope you have fun!