Just been pondering a lot of the things being said on the forums and working it through in my head exactly where CF goes from fun to fubar for me. I think the transition comes when I run into a class for which I have no idea of what spells/skills/supps are going to be thrown at me combined with that player having significant level advantage over my character as well. Gettings smeared repeatedly in such a situation is aggrivating.

Help files. Well help files do not give you enough "HELP" to truly have a decent chance of surviving PK attempts on CF as a newbie. You can not access enough information on other classes skill/spell/supp sets to plan something so it is just hit and miss. I do not think it would be such a bad idea for the "info class" command to be available so you could formulate what the heck to do against said baddy.

Lower PB. This is causing a lot of angst at this time because your character can easily become the choice victim of player X. This is not because player X is a rabid wombat with no personality but because player X is playing a role that demands him/her to smack your particular character class/race/cabal upside the head. Now with only you and maybe one/two more people on for player X to hunt, like he/she should be, being the less knowledgable means you are the often dead. Then add to this the fact that the lack of group availability makes leveling a chore beyond words.

Gear, economy, and stuff. Well this is nuts. I got ahead of the curve a couple times only because I lucked into things and had enough ready cash to get higher levels to buy me things. I have NO idea where to get the special little trinkets that help in PK such much. And in all honesty the merchant level restrictions hinder my interest in the game when it comes to mercantile ventures. Bartering actually makes the life of a newbie harder because all those semi decent items now can be used for healing, buy food, trading for potions etc. Sadly this hurts because I need something else for my character to focus on to get over the down-in-the-dumps feeling I get because I suck at PK.

Crafting, house building, or the like would be nice. The ability to submit a single room house plan, ie room desc, for a character would give a player something else to focus on for a long term goal. Crafting already takes place to a certain extent via smithing some characters can do but the game needs more options for such. In game quests to find a specific trainer to teach a craft would be a boon for those of us less PK inclined and more ... crafty?

Movement. Ugg. Movement is just nasty on CF. Hard starting out having to sleep to explore anywhere outside your starting hometown. Nothing is more frustrating as a new player than the first time you die due to movement loss. Bad enough you do not really know where you are fleeing to but suddenly your are standing stone cold and waiting that final whack. Add being blinded, poisoned, and otherwise maledicted into that for wonderful earth worm shake.

I know the game revolves around RP driving PK and PK driving RP but it is the little extra stuff that seperates one mud from another. I guess I have no real idea what solutions would work within the code and architecture of the game.

This game is not easy to master. That is why I've been playing it for so long. Because by no means have I learned everything Im going to learn, or found every secret Im going to find. The way that areas are being built and revamped nowadays makes it so even a player like me who's been around since '96 can still find something in a relatively old area, and pick it up and be completely surprised by what it is and does.

The fact of the matter is, it may take you 20 characters to figure out how to successfully avoid a PK altogether. What it takes is learning from each and every character and not setting your sights on each character you make being THE one that brings you fame and glory in the CF world. When I first started playing. I rarely made it past level 15..and this was back when you could easily get into a 30 or 40k exp hole before you were level 15. I would rank up an AP to teleport, and teleport all over the world until he was con dead just to see what was out there. Thats no way to make a name for yourself as a character, but the point I'm trying to make is that you can make an unlimited number of characters one after another, so when you've run one into the ground, pick up...roll another and keep on trucking.

The more you play, the more you will learn. Ask like minded people in character the questions you want answered. Join the Empire...all it takes normally is asking for the oath, and whatever you learn from that experience take with you to the next character, and the next, and the next. Then one day, you'll run into a class that you feel comfortable with, and you'll find some gear that suits your class best, and you'll be able to run from Ysigrath to Galadon healer blind and have enough cash to heal yourself. And then, you will sit back and chuckle to yourself thinking of the days when you couldn't make it past level 15 because you had no idea where anything was.

I hope this helps. I really want people who are in this situation to be able to make it past it. Actually trudging through this stage and learning things with your own brain and ingenuity over the long run is Sooooo much more rewarding than being led through it by the hand. I think of it like a video game that I can't quite get past this one part. What do I do. I play up to that point over and over and over again until I finally beat it. You know what the difference is though, once you've beaten it..its over. This game never ends. And thats what keeps people coming back. Its never the same, and it never can be beaten.

I hope you come back 100 times and learn one thing each time.

Desmonn

Please take this post as helpful advice instead of as some sort of self-aggrandizing rebuttal.

>Help files. Well help files do not give you enough "HELP" to
>truly have a decent chance of surviving PK attempts on CF as a
>newbie.

The help files are aren't horrible. Have you read them all? They're all available online from this site. They don't give you all the info you need to know, but they should get you 90% of the way there.

>Gear, economy, and stuff. Well this is nuts. I got ahead of
>the curve a couple times only because I lucked into things and
>had enough ready cash to get higher levels to buy me things.
>I have NO idea where to get the special little trinkets that
>help in PK such much.

I see two issues here. One, you don't know where to find gear. Two, you don't have enough money to buy things like return potions, etc. Make it your goal to find a decent cash source. You could attempt to do this by exploring, but imho a better way is to just ask other people in game. Or check what merchants are selling. If someone sells something to a merchant, that merchant will then have the item for sale. So, by checking what merchants have for sale you can figure out what people are selling to them. Cash is a big deal. It lets you buy teleports, it lets you buy returns, it lets you win pks by out-healing your opponent, and it lets you use "heal refresh" to drastically lessen the inconvenience of movement regen.

Gear: whenever you group with someone or see someone in the guild and that person is wearing something you don't recognize, ask them where it comes from. If they're willing, ask if they'll let you identify or lore it. If your class has locate object, see if you can figure out what mob it's from. There are also item lists available on third-party sites, but much of what they contain is inaccurate and they're generally frowned upon by the staff. Still, you might find them useful. Just don't take treat their info as the gospel truth.

>Movement. Ugg. Movement is just nasty on CF. Hard starting out
>having to sleep to explore anywhere outside your starting
>hometown. Nothing is more frustrating as a new player than the
>first time you die due to movement loss.

This is where money comes into play. Run out of movement? Quaff away. Ideally, though, if you have cash on hand to heal refresh at a healer, you're that much less likely to run out of move. Some classes have pathfinding too, which drastically reduces movement cost. Other classes have the refresh commune, which refreshes movement at the cost of mana.

Heck yeah!
This is much better than hearing "play a conjurer or a healer" both of which are on the CF warning list for new players. Seriously I know I would be bait with either one and I find both a tad interesting. The last mages I enjoyed playing thoroughly were the ones on RS. Great Elementalist type mages which could be additional mage type here on CF.

Gear is frustrating and painfully slow to get a handle on where is what. I think it comes from me playing games where movement was not so hindered. No other game I have encountered is as nasty as CF for movement penalties and movement killing abilities. Reduced fleeing chance is cool but killing actual movement is ugly. On all the other games I have played it was 100X easier to get into know for gear securing and prep finding.

Also the killer classes tend to be the restricted ones which means as a new player you are bait. Having one of the unknown classes come after you being run by a skilled players is mind numbing and disheartening. From my experience I seriously think the two best newbie race/class combos would be:

Duergar anti-paladin. You get to see anything coming and you are fairly buff.

Arial assassin. You get to see anything coming and you are fairly invulnerable to being forced into PK. Add no trip to make it even happier.

Sadly I find both of the above absolutely uninteresting.

As an aside I have noticed additional Mud sources linked for players to vote on. Are they all listed as once every twelve hours as well?

"Also the killer classes tend to be the restricted ones which means as a new player you are bait. "

I think CF is balanced enough that it can't be said that there is a "killer" class. I'm assuming by killer you mean that there are classes that are just generally better killers than others. If I'm wrong, then disregard this. I don't have a ton of CF experience yet myself, but with decent area/gear knowledge I've managed to hold my own with several different race/class combinations.

"Having one of the unknown classes come after you being run by a skilled players is mind numbing and disheartening."

Potions really are a good solution to this. Money can be a little difficult, but I don't have the hang of bartering and selling yet myself. Money -> teleport/return potions -> improved survivability.

"From my experience I seriously think the two best newbie race/class combos would be:

Duergar anti-paladin. You get to see anything coming and you are fairly buff."

The amount of people that would rather see any AP, much less a duergar AP, con dead before they can get that beefy unholy weapon far outstrips any survivability this race/class combo might have had for newbies. Prepare to be ganged/multi-killed.

"Arial assassin. You get to see anything coming and you are fairly invulnerable to being forced into PK. Add no trip to make it even happier."

A better choice. In fact, this was the first combo I played when I started CF. On top of the perks you mentioned, add to that that you 1) don't have an alignment discernible by who or where, and 2) have pretty good combat capability, and you have a solid newbie combo.

"Sadly I find both of the above absolutely uninteresting."

Well some other possible things...

Svirf thief. Can see anything coming, fairly hard to force in to fights because of hide, inherent stoneskin. Play a thug and you might have decent combat ability. I'm not sure, I haven't played a thief yet. They're readily discernible as neutral, which may or may not help you with some folks. Don't know what gear does? You've got 100% lore. Don't know where gear comes from? Steal it.

If you're comfortable with a couple of detect invis preps, any other kind of thief meets these criteria too except for the lore thing.

Likewise, if you don't mind occasionally being bothered by hiders, a svirf-anything will let you see lots of people coming. Again, 100% lore. Watch out for your blunt vuln as it can suck horribly.

Bards. Everyone I've ever met likes to have a bard with them, provided you can keep from doing something really dumb (don't sing whatever passes for we come we come these days near big mobs, personal experience here). Bards can tank decently well in my experience too and can hand out decent damage without being overly worried about gear. As a bonus, you've got 100% lore. Hate movement? You've got the travel tune (or whatever it is these days). This is also as close as you get to practicing being a mage without battle ragers jumping all over you. Just watch out for the XP penalty.

If there are any other questions I can answer, feel free to ask... I'm no expert though.

--Nightshade

>This is much better than hearing "play a conjurer or a healer"
>both of which are on the CF warning list for new players.
>Seriously I know I would be bait with either one and I find
>both a tad interesting.

Imho healer is appropriate class.

>Also the killer classes tend to be the restricted ones which
>means as a new player you are bait. Having one of the unknown
>classes come after you being run by a skilled players is mind
>numbing and disheartening.

There are no restricted classes on Carrion Fields, so you won't have that problem. Even paladin virtues have helpfiles. About the only thing that's likely to be a complete surprise are mummies, liches, and cabal powers. And you should be able to figure out cabal powers in-game.

>Duergar anti-paladin. You get to see anything coming and you
>are fairly buff.

I advise against this.

>Arial assassin. You get to see anything coming and you are
>fairly invulnerable to being forced into PK. Add no trip to
>make it even happier.

This is a fairly good suggestion, except that you're semi-gear dependent.

I believe all three of the new vote buttons request once per day voting instead of every 12 hours. They have more restrictions on voting, and some even have confirmation codes to make sure you aren't some program trying to vote for us. Please try them out and vote often! TMS is not one of the top results if you search for "MUD" on google, nor is it mentioned in the Wikipedia entry for MUDs. So being highly ranked on the other sites may be even better for our playerbase than being ranked highly on TMS.

Yanoreth

But really, for a newbie, they are not.

Newbies' problems tend to stem from not typing where enough or not being able to escape an enemy they can see.

Duergar aps are powerful in experienced hands, but really frail in the hands of a newbie before level 34 (when they get bloodlust).

APs are one of the easiest classes to kill, and being a duergar just gives you a nasty vuln.

Duergar have good dex, but aps can't dodge, so that's a problem.

Generally, I would not recommend aps to newbies. They are a feast or famine class. Offensively, they have the potential to steamroll enemies. Defensively, they can be extremely frail.