I hope it isn't, but I've met a couple of newbies who basically told me: "I'm sick of getting killed for nothing all the time. I'm done"

I know, CF just isn't for everyone, especially since there is a whole lot of things to learn* (I don't consider me a newbie but still I think I know only about 1/3 of the game**) and if you're getting killed all the time, you are so occupied with regearing you can't learn a lot. (besides how to regear than )

* Which is part of the challenge for me
** or less, for all I know

The first thing that I notice about newbies most of the time is they pick a race and class in their mind because it sounds cool. For example drow necromancer. Then when half the mud comes at them in the low ranks swinging mithril they get mad and quit. There have been many newbie help topics made, but there are some bare essentials many people miss.

When you are new to a mud and learning, be able to escape/hide from your enemies. Hide, camo, invis, and teleport are the most useful for this since you don't get word til the later ranks, and the potions are expensive.

(i.e. don't pick mage for your first class, your better able to learn with a melee class most times.

Make friends, or alliances with people of similar interests early on. Learn from them, glean from them, watch what they do and store it away for later.

Don't sit at market square yelling "DOES ANYBODY WANT TO GROUP?!!!!?" because if you do, you just painted a big newbie target on your ass.

Don't be predictable.

There are many many more of these, this is just the tip of the iceberg. Basically don't expect to get spoonfed on here, because it's carrionfields, not happy fun land.

feel free to search on here, or if you have specific questions we'll address them as they come. ( I think the best one for this is "getting my ass kicked" on the new player q&a.)

I died alot when I first started playing. This continued for a good long while. Things I did wrong (imho):

1. Used telnet. No "quaff return" alias. If I even had a return on me at the time. Forget about teleports.

2. Didn't keep detect invis up all the time.

3. Didn't spam where often enough.

4. Didn't immediately go into "run like hell" mode when I got attacked by someone I wasn't expecting (which was all the time).

5. "Escaping" usually consisted of spamming "flee" about 10 times.

Was I intimidated at first, heck yeah! I still am, but the fun more than makes up for it.

One of the things I had to get used to was dieing.
At the other MUD I came from it took literally months, I mean like 6 months to rank my first character up. And dieing was always painful (loss of HP and Con) so it was something you avoided at all costs.

CF is very different. Even if your character con dies, you can make a new one and rank right back up there pretty quickly.

I think the HARDEST thing was learning the lands enough to be able to run away far enough to be fairly safe. You put a newbie in a fight with someone who knows the lands and all the hiding spots and that newbie has almost nill chance of getting far enough away if the experienced player decides to give chase.

Full looting is another hard thing to deal with as a newbie. It takes a lot of learning to know what gear to wear, where to get it, if you even CAN get it at your rank. People give you stuff, but you have no clue wear to find that piece again if you die and lose it. That is still hard for me and something I find very intimidating.

What got me to stay and play, you ask? The players who are helpful, and the RP. Those two things are what make CF really enjoyable for a new person I think. I don't think any newbie is going to be very successful at PK with their first couple of characters, if they are my hat goes off to them and they better stick around because it only gets better.