I always thought Skarch and Balach... are those too difficult to bash for levels 20-30? What about cows and creatues you find on the mountains path? Pilgrim quest should help push you out of the lowbie levels. Also, Tosha quests might help a lot. Anyone else?

Now.. if only there was a hint that told me howto fix the springal so i can get that bucket of black jelly onto it

I didn't want hints that walked you through the entire honours quests!

You DID apparently want innocent newbies trying to walk into levers for days on end though.

The vast difference in bashing abilities between the archetypes and races really got to me. I was a dracnari mage, so I was fairly well off, and I have significant experience bashing so I didnt really have a problem. The thing that got to me were the level 30 or so moondancers going and soloing astral while I was stuck killing cobras for hours on end. As a dracnari knight, with flex, weathering, bear totem, and yellow activated, and regeneration on, at level 50 I was regularly getting trounced on astral, even while hit and running. Then a moondancer half my level walks by, and kills off everything without having to run once. It was just a bit...frustrating?

Altogether though, I found the newbie experience to be a good one, and most classes are just fine (excpting knight novices, who have it rough until they can specialize).

Psh. With my amazing -11- charisma I got level 30 in 3 days by influencing villages. 40 took me another 2 days, and 50 another 3. You can't complain, really

Back in the early early days when I was in those levels, I couldn't go to those places because you couldn't get the herbs needed for affliction cures, at all. People with the Healing skillset were hunting out Glomdoring while I was unable to get into Skarch and get back out. (Of course back then knight damage was nerfed too.)

I got through on weeviling, but even now, weeviling is the main thing I encourage people to do to get to level 30. Knights can't really do much more until they have better armor and weapons anyway, so the weeviling serves a double purpose. But boy, the boredom of it drives a lot of them nuts.

My only previous MUD experience was a short stint serveral months back on Achaea (never made it past novice).
So if you're looking for feedback, here's my impressions of starting out a new life on Lusternia...


About the Intro:

Game mechanics: I think the intro does a good job of stepping you through the basic game commands - for me this was a vital refresher.

Roleplay: The portal of fate / memory loss is a great idea. This makes things less intimidating for a new player - after all my character is not supposed to know anything, and should therefore be asking lots of silly questions . I realize Achaea is a more established realm - but there I got the distinct feeling one was supposed to arrived with fully formed history already decided.


Coming through the Portal of Fate:

First arrival is a bit overwhelming - there's a lot of information scrolling up the screen and it can be hard to know what to do. I didn't get a lot of help from my guild on arrival - just a quick message to read the standard help and nothing much more. Feeling somewhat lost, and picking up slience on gnt, I turned the wrong direction from the portal and ended up on Avechna's peak before I suddenly remembered the 'portals' command (oops). I'm not sure if it was mentioned anywhere in the intro - but if it was I missed it.

In fariness to the guild I should mention that on subsequent logins they were very helpful, explained the skills and gave equipment - I was just unlucky enough to arrive when there was hardly anyone on.


Life in Newton (as a Warrior archetype):

Once orientated I set out to Newton. Didn't have a huge problem working out what to do - the main issue I have with the quests is figuring out why they don't work.

i.e. Did I do the wrong thing, or did I miss some condition?

For example - Bring widgets to Cranky. OK. I do this - he wants another widget. So I do it again - same result. So I repeat this a few times - no change. Hmm, am I doing the right thing? Try collecting a bunch of widgets so I can give them to him at once - doesn't work - widgets reset before I can collect more than one (in fact they frequently reset before I can get them back to Cranky). Hmm - OK - go back to collecting widgets one at a time - repeat for an hour or so - no change. Getting frustrated by this stage - I'm guessing that its an "x number of widgets in y minutes" condition - but I'm a warrior class and having to sleep frequently to recover - so can't seem to get enough widgets fast enough.

The one time that I did get the gizmo working (only once with that character) - I went to the portal room and the portal is inactive (yes I missed the lever).

By that stage I was getting a bit annoyed that it seemed so hard to do the quests. As a (Lvl 9) elfen with 2 iron bound clubs it takes me twice as long to kill finks with weapons as it does punching them - which means I take 2x as much damage and can only kill half the number of finks (2) before needing to sleep. But even with punching I still can't seem to collect widgets fast enough. Maybe I'm just doing something wrong?


Life in Newton (as a Guardian archetype):

So, decided to try a new character class. Found that Newton was much easier, being able to collect items faster - it still took some doing (half an hour or so of collecting) but eventually managed to get the message that the portals were working - and I knew about the level / crank now - so went there and it didn't work. So I'm left trying to figure why it didn't work again...

On take 3 I got it! It would seem that theres a pretty narrow margin after Cranky/Finko gives the all clear in which you need to reach the portal room - I'd like to suggest this was lengthed to make it a little easier to reach the room, look around, read the descriptions then try the lever / crank.


Life in Lolliprin:

Well, I've only made it there once so far - but Lolliprin was a lot of fun, lots of things to investigate and good exp. So far I don't seem to have such a big problem with the quests here - figured some, got stuck on others but am still working on them.


About Guilds:

I can't really comment too much here because I have really on just started. However, the reason I lost interest in Achaea was due to issues with the guild system and game mechanics surrounding it. What I have seen so far of Guilds on Lusternia it would seem that many of the issues I had have been addressed.


Summary:

In short Lusternia is an intriguing and somewhat addictive game (if a little frustrating at times).

The intro is very good.

It might be nice if there was a better way to catch complete newbies as they fall out of the portal - maybe if there was some way to distinguish people that require additional assistance out of the portal? Just a thought.

And reinforcing what others have said - I think maybe access to Lolliprin needs to be a little easier. I'd like to see clearer feedback from the mobs - at least to do the portals.

I joined on the first day of open beta, so my experience may not be indicative of the current norm. The first thing I noticed was the name Lachesis "Haha, that's clever," I thought, but then I quickly became concerned that Lusternia would be a cut-and-paste of Achaea, like Imperian is. I might suggest changing the name Lachesis. Then came time to learn skills, I found the Serenwilde teacher to be impossible to locate compared to the other two as a newbie. This is probably changed now, as I'm sure there are people to lead a newbie to the Serenwilde tutor. But it might be nice if there was a portal to her like there is for the other tutors. I stayed out of Newton for my first few days because they were just too crowded. I doubt this is still an issue. Once I got into Newton I found them to be very enjoyable, I like those areas more than Minia/Lodi from Achaea, I think the quests and gerneral atmosphere are more interesting. I do think they are a bit difficult to find once one doesn't have portals anymore. I also found weeviling to be too easy, though I hear that they have been adjusted so that a level one faeling can't kill a hulking green weevil with one hit. Once out of newton, I found good bashing in weevils and in the deer/bucks in Serenwilde. I also did the pilgrim quest. I think the desert was too difficult for me until level 40 or so, but I'm a relatively low constitution race (merian) . At that point, the only decent expierence in the area was dracnari nomads and the mesa, which I cleared out regularly. I doubt I would've been able to do that if they had been like they are now, I think the rooms of 3 or 4 nomads are too much, as even at level 70 I need to run in, hit once, run out. I also did some bashing in Glomdoring, but I found it to be a tad sparse and the spiders were dangerous. After that, I began bashing the turtles in Balach swamp, for pretty decent XP. Around level 55 or so, I tried bashing starsuckers, which I think are a very nice source of xp and essence, and are properly scaled. I also influenced in Estelbar and the nomad/mesa area, until they enemied me . Around when the moose appeared I began hunting them and the rockeaters, and doing the accompanying village quest. Since level 67, I have been solely influecing in Tosha (which I think is a little too easy, and gives a little too much gold, but that's a separate issue). Overall, I think the current situation wish mobs has the biggest gap right out of newton, as it seems to require those players to sort of scavenge about the highways to find things to kill. I think a lowbie area or two, like the Great Rock and Actar in Achaea, would be helpful. Perhaps one for each city/commune even, to make them easy locatable by novices. I don't like starting new paragraphs, by the way.

Yeah, until you get TELEPORT NEXUS, Miakoda isn't at the portal exit like Meleris and Ardrak. I suggest changing the portal exit to come out at the Moonhart Mother rather than the Commune, myself. It'd help a lot.

The problem with that, Shiri, is that the Commune entrances are invisible. Infact, as a novice Merloch back then, it took me about a good week or two to finally figure out where the commune was. I kept coming -out- of it, but I could never find my way back -in-.

Lachesis is one of the Fates from Greek mythology, Faethan... I don't remember Achaea having them, but I could be wrong.

That's a good point, and I actually call that a design flaw in and of itself, but that's just me. Having the Nexus and Commune seperate really confuses the novices. It's about 10 rooms away, and it's not hard to get lost if you don't know where you're going to begin with, eh. I ALWAYS had to port into the commune though, I only recently figured where it was, so yeah.

Lachesis was the great spider from Azdun. I know she was in Aetolia, is a major character in fact, but I don't know that she is in Achaea.

Same thing in Achaea, but I wasn't aware of the Greek fates thing, so I withdraw my complaint about the name.

Newbie portal exit to Serenwilde has been changed to the Mother Tree.

Has anyone told you lately that you rock?

Something about Warrior hunting after newton: Cows and sheep and other animals that run away are beyond a pain for Warriors to fight. In Magnagora, I know some people go straight to glomdoring of Balach, while other charachters die there very easily.

I would suggest seeing if there is a similarity between classes, for people who die easily in these areas, and people who don't.

Myself? I spent my entire hunting experience on Sewer Eels and spectres, with the occasional gravedigger.

Oh wow, sweet. Thanks!

I must admit, I was getting all gooey inside at Lusternia being all original, after an Aetolia that actually asked people to avoid OOC while having areas named Mhojave and Dahkota (I guess many of those come from Achaea) and guides named Hansel and Gretel. And when I ran up against Clotho and Lachesis and Atropos, my heart sank. But I stuck with it.

If the worst thing I have to grit my teeth over is the Oneiroi and the Charites and such, I guess I can't complain. (Though I bet more people will recognize the OOCness of Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos than would recognize Alecto, Magaera, and Tisiphone, or for that matter, Achaea and Aetolia themselves. But that's still a fairly small slice of people either way.)

I kind of wince at Delport, too, though I can understand the reasons for doing it that way. I guess I'm a purist. Ignore me, I know hardly anyone else even notices, let alone cares.