Hm..might be a bit of a stretch but maybe a short blurb about how each city/commune acts and views the Basin? Like Celest being very anti-taint, Glomdoring being isolationists for the most part, etc.?

First of all, make it brief. You want to pack a lot of information into a small space, because as a newbie you don't want to have to slog through pages of information, you want to jump into the action.

Put a lot of emphasis on the guild, explaining that they are there to help: mentoring, receiving your instruction from a guild member, using GNT to ask questions ect. Essentially, give them the tools they need to learn moreso than having everything they need to know dropped on them at once. We already have loads of wonderful undersecs (and if you don't, rant to your guild admin about it, please), help files, and forum topics available to newbies, after all. Could just make the guide a sort of easy-to-navigate nexus from which a newbie can locate and access existing information.

To get the ball rolling again, what are the top 10 questions/issues that newbies ask and/or need to know?

Where am I?
How do I get to my city/commune?
How do I choose my skills?
How many lessons can I learn at a time?
How do I talk to my guild?
How long is a Lusternian day?
Do I have to play for my time to go down? (novicehood related)
How do I join a guild? (for those who forgo selecting during the novicehood, and want to join one)

These are just a few Ive heard asked, the last one I mentioned is really rare though.

1) How do I level?
2) How do I pick my skills?
3) Where can I get weapons/armor?
4) How can I get to xyz?
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Personally I think the skillchoice could be better explained and the required skills to be automatically chosen. For example, if you're joining a Warrior guild, make Knighthood and Athletics automatically chosen, for a Mage, Illusions and Elementalism.

Secondly, we should institute landmarks like they have in Achaea and Imperian so that novices don't have to rely solely Portals to get around but those instead.

How does skillchoice work
What's a good thing to hunt at cirlce (whatever)
Where did my corpses go
How do I make gold
What can I do if I'm bored with Newtons

are some I've heard a lot

Something that I wish was done when I started - preset GNT and CT colours, so they A: notice the GNT stuff, B: know it's different then CT. I never notice grey text. It all blends :S

Maybe some hints would be nice at first. If they're learning 1 lesson at a time, maybe a reminder that they can learn 15 at a time. Or if they're using kick/punch while they have a guildskill that's better. One thing that really annoys me are the gravediggers. I died at least once a day to them when I started, and I still die if someone doesn't come rescue me quickly. It can add a nice life and death feel to the game, but it is easy to forget which area you are in and not glance ahead before you walk in, they're also in an area that I walk through all the time. Cool at first, but very frustrating when you keep running into them.

After being secretary for quite a while, the top ten questions I usually hear are

1) What do I do now?
2) How can I level up?
3) How do I earn money?
4) How do I get to ?
5) Are there healing and mana potions?
6) If so, where do I get them?
7) Besides Newton, is there any other place I can hunt?
8) What should I learn after learning the skills stated in the scroll?
9) Are gnomes/finks good/evil?
10) What should I do? I got kicked out of Newton.

Hmm. This seems like a really nice idea.

Just thought of something: There should be an OOC-IC dictionary, giving them IC terms for game mechanics things. For example:

Channel : Aether
Log out : Leave the realms
Respawn : Be rewoven

...

I can't actually think of any more...

Top 10 only? Bah, this is going to be hard to choose from...

-How many skills can I choose/what skills should I choose?
-Is there another way to get more lessons besides gaining levels?
-What exactly are credits?
-Is it all right to kill Finks/Gnomes? Won't that get me enemied somewhere?
-How can I make my novicehood time go faster?
-Why am I not allowed to go to certain places (cities/communes/villages)?
-How do I heal?
-I died. Now what happens? Is it permanent?
-Is there some other way to make gold?
-How do I save/quit the game?

To add on....

Level: Circle
Anything OOC: Your soul

Also, perhaps explain the difference (briefly of course) between cities and communes. Some novices just can't understand that.

Let's see, introduce influencing and begging/debating. I didn't know any of that for a while after I graduated. Ah, and maybe introduce them to manses/Aetherplex travel, since it is an entirely seperate dimension to the game.

Maybe just a list of commands that'll be necessary, and then telling them to do HELP and having a detailed file on each would be most efficient. Then the detailed thing isn't a big, long file to slog through, and newbies can skip through the commands they don't need or already understand and move on to learn others. Any way to go back and easily reread a particular command or topic is good too, as opposed to putting numerous things in one file, since nobody who's actually new is going to remember a bunch of things. This way, you could keep all these topics as their own seperate entities where they are in the help system already, but make it so that newbies have a nice list of topics that will be immediately relevant.

I'd also recommend something to help point newbies towards making basic aliases and stuff. I've known a lot in Achaea at least that have gotten all the way through Minia without making any reflexes at all, which amazes me, but more to the point, is infeasable when they have to start sipping and stuff to stay alive.


Pardon if any of these topics have been covered already. *smooch*

That'd be a good idea - I've gone in and out of lusternia several times, but always get frustrated when i'm utterly obliterated shortly after newbiedom because of lack of reflexes, with raids n things only making it worse - another moderate problem is after newbiedom you're... dumped.. out on the world, and it's just as disorienting , if not more, than just joining for the first time - you don't know what to do except for grind the same rats/dogs/grubs/rockeaters/whatever for hours on end - some tips on that would be nice.

~ I will gladly help you but in a slightly different way. I'm just starting to play Lusternia and started a blog about it (check out my hompage). I will write my game experiences there as a Lusternia newbie (but not a MUD newbie!) and I hope it will help you to recognize what needs more explanation for new players.

What we should do, and would have saved me alot of pain, emotional trouble, heart breaking, suicidal tendencies, and whatnot when I began Lusternia, is actually implement guides with real world things. For instance, a novice may not know what is respect, what is disrespect, when he/she is being disrespected or respected. I know I heard Xavius say in game that it should be learned in the real world but some people are very poorly educated.

Maybe if there was a guide for offtopic things like what constitutes respect, what is proper ettiquette. we get 14 year olds, and I know we have some young but high players in Lusternia, but the others well, they know little. I know I'm still having problems.

Guilds and communes tend to be selfish and only make help scrolls dealing with things like defending, demesnes, enemying, and so on but nothing to actuall educate the novice socially.

If this was done, alot less novices would be killed and bullied. Probably. Because I know the Magnagorans are quite 'trigger-happy' with killing each other, as is the Glomdoring Think about the social parts of young players and Lusternia will explode into popularity. Also, less emotional trauma

This is all from personal experience btw.

As someone who has been in Achaea for two years, and -just- started Lusty, things I have been wondering are:

Relationships between Guild / Cities:
Which city should I avoid? Which guild members are the "natural" opposite of mine in terms of RP.
Names of Divine closely associated with my City / Guild.

Talking across planes is something you can't do in Achaea, so that confused me.

Skill choices, you mean I get a choice?

Influencing ?


For the true IRE mud newbie, teaching about aliases etc are a given

A guide of things you could do after you get through the initial stages of finding out how the game works would be nice. After leaving Newton you're kinda dropped into the world and urged to find you own way, and everyone will tell you something different to do. I also find information lacking on how to join an order and what you can do for your city (aside gathering power). A guild seems to have several stages of tests you run through which earn you ranks, perhaps city favours would be easier to get and a lot more people would help out if they actually had a clue what they can do aside waiting till a certain minister spot opens. On the topic of orders, I understand novices shouldn't join one right away, and that they want to be kept a bit "secret" maybe, but a little clarification would be nice.

And yes, a clearer guide on influencing would be nice as well, all I found out so far is that begging isn't enough to have a skill in the later levels but what I should learn then would be nice to know. Perhaps in general guilds should write an alternative guide for those who want to level by influencing instead of bashing. Perhaps lower the requirements of guild skills a bit and set other requirements? Give them a special role in the guild?

Something I found lacking in the newbie tutorial is for example a room of which you need to read the description and handle an object that is only found in there and not seen with IH.