Ok so I'm new to mudding in general so I might be overlooking something. But I've grouped with a few people of low-level like me (i.e. under 10) and their navigation skills are just amazing. The screen scrolls so fast I can't even figure out where they're going. So my question is how in the heck do they know that? The world maps are outdated and that dikuclanset of maps is KIA. I am, however, using zMUD which has an automapper....but I'm not convinced it's very good (it is extremely convoluted, user-friendly wasn't in the plan), or at least it seems a confused mess to me. Help a brother out?
Cheers.

"Life is a big wild crazy tossed salad, but you don't eat it, no sir! You live it!" --The Tick

Instead of brief, and I would use the shape of the paragraph to navigate by rather than th words within.

Now I count in my head.

I am not sure if you are aware of the command called, "brief." If it is a problem of to much text scrolling by while you walk around this will cut down on enormous amounts of text. What it does is it removes the room descriptions from walking. This allows you to see better where you are going with just the roomname and the exits. Also if you log your groupmates taking you to new areas, you can go back and review it with only looking at the roomname and exits.

Caveat: This is not good to have on while exploring or looking for those branches/trapdoor... and stuff to open to get into another part of the same area.

Now that you mention it, I remember seeing that command buried somewhere. Totally forgot until now. I do log most of my sessions and am getting the feel of a few places. I can get to several of the low-level spots pretty easy now. Had a doozey of a time last night, still haven't gone through it though. I'm gettin it though. Thanks everyone.

Cheers

"Life is a big wild crazy tossed salad, but you don't eat it, no sir! You live it!" --The Tick

Hmm. Tried it but it says I'm not experienced enough to turn off descriptions. *shrug* Oh well.

"Life is a big wild crazy tossed salad, but you don't eat it, no sir! You live it!" --The Tick

You said yes, you were new to carrionfields and muds in general while generating a character didn't you? When you do that you are restricted from entering brief. Sorry.

Aaaah yes that makes sense. I must have done that then. No biggie. I'll just be sure to pick No for my next character.

"Life is a big wild crazy tossed salad, but you don't eat it, no sir! You live it!" --The Tick

There's alot of places where if you don't know where to go, regardless of whether or not you need to open a **** or a #### that isn't obvious and doesn't respond to "open d" or "open n" etc. then you want to have on room descriptions. The most simple example would be the North Road. Unless you want to "l n;l e;l s;l w" every step, you might as well just leave brief off. This will save you life, time, and effort in many scenarios.

Oh and, if you should ever walk into one of Nepenthe's areas, I hear he gets really frustrated when people go in with brief on. And he's a deadly dragon now...ZAP.

Soon your eyes will be able to pick out the important info during battle, ranking. Give yourself 3 months and soon you'll be able to walk just like them to the frequent places.

Exploration is a different thing altogether.

What it probably amounts to is that they're low level characters but not first time CF players. Unlike some games where you pretty much have one character for your entire time playing the game, CF for various reasons tends to see veteran players making new characters all the time.

I haven't tried to use one but I gather that automappers will break down on CF in a few cases, notably maze-like areas or places with exits that aren't coherent in the normal sense.

I figured they'd be veterans with a new character, but still they're moving around caves and forests with such accuracy it's just uncanny.

Heh, the mapper with zMUD has rooms literally with three stacked in some places, essentially useless. But like I said, that program is inherently user-UNfriendly (adjusting settings brings on migranes). *shrug* I'm getting to know Galadon fairly well, so I guess it's possible to memorize most places. Though a world map with the right names would be nice. *wink* I do have to say most people seem more helpful than you'd think....though I'm only level 6 and have nothing worth PKing over yet.

Thanks.

"Life is a big wild crazy tossed salad, but you don't eat it, no sir! You live it!" --The Tick

Not to discourage you, but a lot of vets have put so many hours into the game, that they know many of the areas blindfolded. This makes for quick and efficient travel as well as a useful tool when someone blinds you with a spell or dirt kick or something.

It just takes practice. You will eventually get the hang of it, trust me. Your best bet is to hang out alone for a bit while you are pre-11.

Get to know Galadon and the kobolds. Get to know your way to Balator and back and the layout of Eastern road. Get to know Tabershaw's.

When you are up for a bit more of a challenge, make your way to the Forest of NoWhere in the Past. I remember when I first did that alone, I was pretty proud of myself. Of course, the directions were much simpler five years ago.

Good luck!

It's not discouraging, just means the learning curve is a bit sharper. I don't mind figuring things out, it does make it more interesting than simply knowing it all up front as it seems that the imms try to keep the nuts and bolts pretty obscured, at least for newer folk.

"Life is a big wild crazy tossed salad, but you don't eat it, no sir! You live it!" --The Tick

Nivek is right. Go figure... but I'd recommend seriously levelling to 11 by yourself. It's not the hardest feat (depending on what class you picked) but the way that I did things, was rank to 11-20 about five times. You can do this in a week or two. Rank up a character with little or no role, delete, rinse and repeat. Do this until you have the low level areas down. Then make a serious character once you can reliably get into the teens and know all of the areas while you do it. Then later you may also be leading the groups while you do it, and you can have someone else in the group take the lead and show you around to more advanced areas when yours expire. After your party disbands, try to walk home alone. I'd carry a few potions in case you get stuck, but this is a good way to learn to navigate. Someone else gets you there, you get yourself back, and then you know the way. While the scrolling text is hard to follow, keep an eye out for the room names as they fly by. If you see "North Road" - "Rolling Foothills" - "Mountains" then it's a pretty sure thing that you're going north to the vale. Head back south to get home and look for those similar areas or rooms on your way.

Anyhow if you stick with it, you'll be running blindfolded and dazzling the newer newbies. Eventually, you 'll just about be doing mazes that way. And truth be told, you may start running through five areas literally blinded to get to a healer that'll cure your blindness so that you don't lose a PK. I've done it enough, and there are people alot more experienced than me who've run from an area past Arkham all the way to the Eternal Star, which is near what is on the old map on this page as Tar Valon, the Ruined City, or what-have-you.

Sidenote: The in-game maps got tweaked not too long ago, and should be incredibly useful if you'll just pay attention to them.

Don't think you have to rank up a ton of characters to 20 and delete them. You can learn plenty as long as your having fun with your characters RP. If your not having fun, play something else. Don't make CF work!

No worries on that. If it wasn't fun, well I wouldn't be here. I tend to not play games that I don't enjoy. Go figure.

"Life is a big wild crazy tossed salad, but you don't eat it, no sir! You live it!" --The Tick

You know, I started to enjoy it more after I knew my basics around. If you're 23 and can't get to Aldevari, it tends to be a drag. I'm not saying not to roleplay. What I'm saying is, don't spend three hours writing a role for a character that you probably won't play for more than 15 hours. Keep it simple, and the simplest of roles don't always need to be written. Chances are, learning your way through Aldevari, the east road, maybe even down to Seantryn Modan...this will not get you enough attention to merit a big-timer role. When you start "playing for real" after a week or two of learning the basics, it's a good time to put in a role, explain who and why you are, who and why you'd kill, and what you want to do in life. But if you're playing a character to explore low level and not kill, you don't need to say who or why you'd kill. If you're not planning on playing it for long, you may not need to explain who and why you are.
Role + "I want to learn the basics of this game. I'll try to kill anyone that attacks me, or maybe I'll run in the directions that I don't know."
Could suffice.

Can you enjoy a character through RP when you absolutely know nothing otherwise about CF? Sure. But I'd like to see more people know what they're doing while they RP rather than more people RPing and asking me at 49 if I want to rank in the Ashes of Nowhere. Each person can find their own balance between RP and the rest of the game, but I don't think that anyone would call a week or two of newbie learning a "work task" in the grand scheme of how long most players get sucked into this game. You may be here for life, whether it's your own or CF's.

So, some comments. Newbies tend to learn where to rank from groupmates that take them ranking in group. By level 49, people surely have learned that they cannot rank in one place forever. This started to become evident to me pre level 10, when I was solo-ranking with trogdolytes as my first character and noticed that I was getting less and less experience from killing them.

My advice to newbs is: Play one character to Hero and you have learned quite a bit about the game in the process.