The FK Nooby Experience So Far

[Nedylene]

I just noticed now Pyranis that you deleted your previous posts. I wish you hadn't as they had alot of merit to them and a thoroughly honest review of the "first 10".

[Nysan]

No need to delete your posts, unless you are tossing swear words every other sentence or something. No harm in having an opinion some folks disagree with. That type of thing has cause quite a few positive changes around here over the years.

I support coding all practice dummies to incap characters rather than kill them, not just in the newbie temples either. School of Wonders' dummies and other designated training areas should not have a fatality rate like they have these days. Training dummies shouldn't be feared.

I also support the change in meditate. Either lower it to lvl 5, or make it a starter ability for wizards and priests. Thats alot of downtime in those first 9 levels (can train skills 5 levels below their set level remember).

Sort of off-topic, but newbie related... A newbie wizard suggestion: Allow new wizards (possibly in a custom build option) to pick the spell they start with. Let them choose between: chill touch, shocking grasp, burning hands, or magic missile (the no component attack spells). This idea has been kicking around my head ever since I revived Siros and he was default with burning hands as a starter spell, a spell he could not use due to his RP situation.

[Nedylene]

If you customize your wizard it does let you choose between burning hand, shocking grasp and chill touch. As well as lets you choose either concentration of spellcraft as a starter skill.

[Lathlain]

The help file suggests that you either aren't able to use abilities you train before you're right level, or at least that you shouldn't. That's by the by though!

[Nysan]

If you customize your wizard it does let you choose between burning hand, shocking grasp and chill touch. As well as lets you choose either concentration of spellcraft as a starter skill.

Did not know that, then again Siros has been around a bit. Curse my outdated information...

[Nysan]

The help file suggests that you either aren't able to use abilities you train before you're right level, or at least that you shouldn't. That's by the by though!

Every single spell caster character I have trained meditate at level 9 (well, the ones that are not ancient), course it cost a HUGE amount of exp at the time, but its true.

[Lathlain]

Just adding the helpfile quote for clarity's sake. It might be that this info is outdated.

For instance, if you type skills and see that you can learn second attack
at level 20, the earliest you can start training this skill is at level 15,
but you won't be able to actually *use* it until you reach level 20.

Anyhoo - I don't want to derail the topic any further. I completely support the other proposals here.

[Nysan]

Yes, did not mean to derail the thread. Sorry.

Final thought then back to new player topic, character I made last month trained meditate at lvl 9, and was getting skill-ups in the skills by lvl 10 though... Either helpfile is outdated, or meditate just likes me. *shrug*

[Elenthis]

I tend to agree that there should be a portion of the "newbie training area" that talks about the various weapons, armors, armor locations, and so on to give people starting out a better sense of why they would do well to cover every 'wear location' as early as possible, as well as sort of a 'how-to' on choosing what's best for you.
An example might be 'if one item is rusty...and the other item is shiney...and the 'compare' command suggests the rusty one is worse...you might do well to switch to the shiney one'.

Or how a double-edged blade is good for to-hit and damage, a two-hander is better for damage, but takes the shield-slot ect ect ect.

If I knew the code-basics myself, I would offer to write it, and even though I dont, I wouldnt mind writing it based on what I've learned, but I really think this would slow down the mortality rate in the temples and sewers.
~Elenthis.

[Dalvyn]

I, for one, was also interested in reading your first (and now deleted) posts.

[Elenthis]

Hey again, folks.

Today, I had, what I believe, may have been THE most annoying "newbie" expirience ever, and I'm loath to think that other 'real' newbies may have expirienced it as well. My story...

Today, my level 5 character, who's name shall remain ungiven, was in the sewers killing rats and whatnot. (waterdeep sewers). At one point, I was out of Mv. So I went to rest, but just as I rested, a mob aggro'd me. No biggie, I had nearly full health. Except that he aced my leg on the first attack. (This is not my concern, since It happens a lot to low-level characters.) Seeing that I had lost a limb, I quickly dispatched the beast (rat) and rested. Here comes the maddening moment. I didnt get any movement back. Each tick, the "bleeding" cost me more mv. then I gained. Now...as a reminder, movement is required for the following:
Recalling
Walking
Sending tells
So...in short. I had to sit there for about 10 minutes while my life drained away with no ability to stop this from happening except to "yell" which got me...not much. As I was under lvl 10, the actuall loss was only expirience, but weather my stats are astronomically low, or its just the rogue class, expirience comes VERY slowly. I estimate a good half hour of grinding was lost in this incident. But there again...the worst part of this experience was WATCHING that expirience drain away with my blood, and therefore movement, which, again, represents nearly every possible escape from such a situation. I STRONGLY hope that a medium or solution in this sort of potential situation could be met. The 'grind' is bad enough without each death feeling like you just spent 10 hours at work so you could fill your tank to get to work to fill your tank to get to work to fill your tank to get to work.
~Elenthis.

[Selveem]

So, Elenthis, what would you think would be a good solution for this?

Reading your post, I'd think maybe making the actual 'recall' command usable without movement requirement and during combat might help, but even then that only works if it takes you straight to a Cleric. More possible aid might come from bandages actually stopping only the 'bleeding' affect much like AID does. They can, in turn, be given to newbies at creation.

Just popping off some ideas. I would really like to hear your suggestions, though.

[Selveem]

Also, I would like to add that the helpfile IS outdated or it can be trained via a bug.

In the past, there was no _true_ level restrictions on skills. If you saved up enough experience, you can train the skill. I know this because my lowbie Thief had a number of skills normally not available to Thieves.

[Nysan]

Hmm, would anyone be against making 'aid' a default ability? I do not see any balance conflicts and it would make life easier for young folks in this new limb-severing-happy damage system. Cannot remember off the top of my head, does 'aid' drain MV points?

[Timaeus]

Aid itself is trainable pretty much as soon as you get to the particular starting zone with your city selection. It is in every starting zone for a cost of 1 gold. If the experience to train it is lacking 1-2 kills of the starting zone mobs grants more than enough to train it once. A new player should have done the training portion of creation and certainly have the gold available. The fact that you, as a player thats been around longer than I have, neglected to train aid is just poor judgement on your part. And for Aid using moves I have not seen it use any during any of the limb severing episodes I have had recently.

That said, starting everyone with one rank of aid would really not be detrimental to the game at all. Though the loss of limbs is currently so prolific for under 10 characters that it might be better to look at solutions to lowering the times low levels lose limbs. With my recently created characters limb loss has been along the lines of 1-3 losses of limb per level once I leave the starting zone for alternate in level range areas. Limb replacement is comparatively extremely expensive for low level characters from NPC priests (most commonly used means to replace limbs) compared to the available income they can generate. Which is more discouraging and amplified with a new player just starting to play FK.

[Nysan]

Quite the opposite, every one of my characters has aid trained to some degree and most of my new characters have used it regularly, first skill most of them learned actually (which is why it bugs me to no end that I cannot remember if it takes MV). Making it a default skill was the first thing to come to mind after reading the last few posts. *shrug*

I would be happy to support any other idea to help deal with the limb loss problem that seems to be plaguing the lower levels. I was only thinking out-loud.

[Oghma]

A good solution would be to equate the blood loss problem to the recently fixed beheading problem. Instead of major blood loss killing a pc, why not make them experience horrid effects associated with movement, mental and physical responses? A little less realistic, true but it would keep premature deaths down. Though training aid is still an easier method.

[Elenthis]

While I should, indeed, have trained aid, this seems sort of a lot like someone saying "you should have worn that helmet" when a steel beam falls out of the rafters...sure...I should have worn the helmet, but the roof shouldnt be falling apart either. Also, I dont know weather aid uses Mv. But I can tell you that I went and it took me almost 10 minutes worth of killing dummies before I could train aid. on a lvl 5 character. Nothing major, but my point remains, I hope. None the less, I tend to think the losing of limbs every 20 or so combats is the root of the issue, and I like oghma's idea of changing blood-loss. RP-wise, how does one cope with life after watching his arm severed for the 37'th time? lol.

*trains aid*

[Liandria]

Another option might be to remove the piercing/slashing damage from the mobs in the areas designed for level 1-15. I've noticed on my PC's that when using a weapon that deals blunt damage (mace or warhammer) I NEVER sever any limbs, though I may mangle them badly. It may not be 100% accurate for a rat, dummy, or beetle to deal blunt damage, but it would reduce limb loss on new characters, and still allow the limb loss system to operate for higher levels.

Removing the slash/piercing damage on bandits might reduce sudden deaths there for the newbie crowd also.

[Pyranis]

While I should, indeed, have trained aid, this seems sort of a lot like someone saying "you should have worn that helmet" when a steel beam falls out of the rafters...sure...I should have worn the helmet, but the roof shouldnt be falling apart either. Also, I dont know weather aid uses Mv. But I can tell you that I went and it took me almost 10 minutes worth of killing dummies before I could train aid. on a lvl 5 character. Nothing major, but my point remains, I hope. None the less, I tend to think the losing of limbs every 20 or so combats is the root of the issue, and I like oghma's idea of changing blood-loss. RP-wise, how does one cope with life after watching his arm severed for the 37'th time? lol.

*trains aid*

Funny you should mention that last bit, I was thinking the same thing. This mud seems to take death very seriously, or at least tries to, but how can you? I've died like 8 times in the temple alone. How can you RP something so traumatizing if it happens every fifteen minutes? Limbs for that matter too.