I recently found (and love) the new additions to the cavern, and have remembered something else i meant to post a long time ago.
I have found that many players roleplay as little as possible, and their only goal is to beat up the monsters and players of the world. In fact, some characters(or players for that matter) tend to bring up real world issues on CF, and when you mention it to them they're all "Huh?"
They say things like "third?" and a good roleplayer like myself things hmmm... thats not exactly a realmly thing to say, or a otherealmly either. I find that people try and say and emote as little as possible to avoid being labeled a non-roleplayer, which of course is bad. So here's my thought.
Why not make learning to emote be a required "course" in the academy? School the folk on roleplaying. Solve the problem early, with newbies. That way when all the no RP-ers leave, we have an(almost) pure roleplaying society. For example, have someone have to emote "licks the floor." or something like that. Maybe you 'folk' at CF can find a more appropriate phrase and situation.

I suppose this is irrelevent, but when i wrote the post meantioning the new rooms, i hadn't explored but one. Now that i've explored them all(i think) i am pleased to give complete approval of them(not that its up to me) and back them(the changes) completely. IIf there were a higher rating than 10 on the 1-10 scale you folks would get it. If there was anything higher than an A+ you'd get it. Hate to be a brown-nosing suck-up here but your additions were absolutely top-hole(wotwot!).

I agree the changes are excellent. I always thought there should be ways to get XP without killing right from the start. A newbie can now do quite well just by exploring and doing quests based out of the academy. Keep up the good work!

Regarding questyness:

Several months before the Academy stuff went in, I ranked a character (with 0 xp penalty, alas) from 1 to 11 (halfway to 12) without ever stopping to intentionally kill mobiles, outside of the requirements of one of the quests, and some minimal self-defense. It took a little longer (*) than sitting around common ranking areas and killing mobs, but was a lot more fun for me, and I was glad to see that the viable alternative pathway works for that much. This is easier for certain alignment/class combinations than others.

I'll readily admit this is impossible (at least for me... quests are numbered, and I know the number I used for the Academy stuff was a very big number, meaning there's a lot more quests than I thought out there) later on, though there's a lot more questy XP out there than most people take advantage of. Also, I didn't get much in the way of exploration XP, though if I had explored a lot, I probably could have gotten to level 12 or so.

The future of CF holds a lot more of this kind of work. As we add more areas, the number of potential XP tricks in your bag grows as well. Keep an eye for new treats in old areas as well.

- Valguarnera

I can't believe you put a lever in there, Valg. Please say it doesn't do what I think it does.