How does an assassin's stalk work? Does the assassin have to be in the same MUD room to be getting the benefit for assassinate or martial trance, or just on the rack? Also, can assassin follow someone around if stalking if the nofol toggle is on? And if so, does an assassin 'lose' the stalk if the victim does something like run over an ocean, and if not what determines when the benefit is given up?

This is a high level ability that I can't ask about on newbie channel but that suddenly become relevant

Assassins can stalk someone in the same area so long as they are hidden from them. They don't need to be in the same room to stalk.

Nofollow works just like you'd expect - the assassin will need to manually follow them to any different area they'd enter.

Not sure what you mean by "on the rack".

If the victim runs over an ocean, the assassin would be visible if they followed, so they would be likely to lose some stalking time, yes. However, someone could run across the ocean (say, from Arkham to Hamsah docks) and the assassin could wait and run across later (or use magical means to get to Hamsah) and continue stalking.

This is generalized info, there are definitely more specifics but those go into strategy that you can find out by trial and error.

Thank you, general vague was all I was looking for. I thought the assassin had to be in the room, not just in the same area, and there was both some confusion for me tactically while alone and also when my character was talking to others.

One further question:
When do characters like an assassin or warriors with the observation legacy lose the benefit of observation? Is there some sort of timer on that? Even a vague answer will suffice, because I don't have any idea.

rack: refers to a standard allocation in the MUD database. E.g., 'where' usually checks the players whose location is on the rack. It's sometimes used instead of 'area' because very large areas in MUDS can compose several 'racks'. In a different MUD, people might say Stone's Embrace and Akan are the same area, but different racks. This term has no relevance for Carrion Field forums discussion, I just made a mistake by using it by believing the term was more general than it is.