Applying health to head also cures deafness and blindness (only if you've no wounds, I think). nice if you don't want to chew up your herbs.

That's the problem, it does cure them, AND wounds I think. I am not sure about that, though, I only know I have problems keeping up sixthsense against warriors that attack my head.

Yeah, if you have both blindness and wounds, it will cure the wounds first, then you gotta apply again until your head is healed for it to cure blindness/deafness.

Oh yeah. Just noticed a little failure in my headcuring. It indeed does cure wounds first.

I had stuff to do, but I felt like procrastinating. This was during a bunch of raids, so I also took that into consideration, although a real novice might not which may discourage them from playing again (first impressions). I played them much like the first character I had, not trying to be stupid, but I was extremely confused and curious about the workings of a mud.

(Also to note, that you can type OUT to get out is confusing, as you're asked to wait, then you're told again to do it, then you have to wait cause more information is scrolling up. Also, novice helpers, some people are very shy and will not ask for help, so it is good to ask how they are doing, whether or not you're sure they have been greeted, either via tell or GNT.)

If you would like your name mentioned, I will fill in the BLANKs, if I can remember.

And sorry if I took up your time novice helpers, I wanted to see how we've improved over the short period of a week or so. BIG BIG improvements were made.

SERENWILDE

+++Serenguard: B-
Character Forgot Name Male
-Got a hi
-Was told I could speak on GNT some time later, but no reference to scrolls
-Was not asked to use PORTALS to get to the tree to learn stuff
-One undersec around, was the only person on prime, I think
Quit this character soon and quickly.

+++Hartstone: A
Character Mochia Female
-Was greeted
-No reference to scrolls, but was asked to come to Serenwidle via PORTALS
-Two undersecs around
To see if they anyone would play around, I asked why I had to use PORTALS. Maybe it came off as snotty, but I was trying to make Mochia look more confused than anything. Got no reply right away, but there was talk of Narsrim on CT. BLANK offered to teach me my lessons in person when I asked what I was supposed to do, and others answered as well. Good work! I would have liked if I was told why I needed to come to the Tree instead of just being ordered and ignored until I asked again. Friendly atmostphere, and I hope you don't mind me mentioning Dia, but I thought you were very nice!

+++Moondancers: A-
Character Wacoue Male
-Was Greeted
-Was referenced to scrolls and that I could ask questions on GNT
-Was told, as per the scroll and guild mate, that I had to get to the tower first before I could learn my lessons
-No undersecs
Novices are expected to find the tower through very thoughtful and creative but not so direct directions. This would have killled me, since I was lost on Avechna for a hours on my first character. I think it's best to make sure they have their lessons, then let them take initiative to explore. I never found the tower or bothered with trying to test this guild out further, but after like doing 5 characters I may have grown weary. Was irritated people focused more on abusing gambling sprites or something on CT rather than getting a response for something that seemed simple to answer.


MAGNAGORA

+++Geomancers: B
Character Baerenil Male
-Was greeted
-Was not told I could speak on GNT or referenced to scrolls
-No undersecs
-When I asked what I needed to do, another guild member offered to take me hunting in the caverns
-Was not offered to learn my lessons first
BLANK who helped my character has always been helpful from what I noticed, but with my other novices in the past, I had trouble getting help sometimes even with an undersec around. He was fairly friendly, spoke OOCly a bit, but it might have been comforting for somone for is new to muds. I will try to work on this guild myself as well since I'm an undersec.

+++Ur'guard A+
Character Iuron Female
-Was greeted
-Was referenced to scrolls
-Was told to use PORTALS to start my training
-One-twos undersec around from what I could see
-When I asked again what I should do, I was told to read the scrolls. Satisfactory response, albeit short.
BLANK immediately told me on GNT which scrolls to read and to use PORTALS. Asked who I could learn my lessons from, got a response from another undersec and a high ranking person, who offered to briefly teach me. The other undersec took me to the guild trainer to begin the lessons. Nice work, Ur'guard.

+++Nihilists A+
Character Female Erinae (nekkid elfen if I might add)
-Was greeted
-Was referenced to scrolls and told I could speak on GNT if I had questions
-First guild where I bothered reading the scroll - and goddamit, that's really long. Good for immersive roleplay and it was very informative, but a bit intimidating!
-Was offered to be taught in person
-One undersec, one sec - was greeted by security
Greeted, referenced, offered to be taught. I was told to change my race by BLANK who was teaching me, via RP! Good work. Dvyrus I give you an F for peering at my nude elfen form, you perv.


CELEST

+++Aquamancers C-
Character Oaisyr Male
-Was greeted
-I saw seven people, nobody bothered to reference me to a scroll
-Was not told I could speak on GNT to ask questions
-Was not offered to be taught
-One undersec, one sec
Someone suddenly said "PORTALS, S, SE to be at the Pool of Stars" on GNT without bothering to mention what that meant until I asked . And then only was I referenced to the scroll!! I remember when Reiha first joined, the reception was much better, but this is only one instance and people could have been busy. Good and to the point scroll, though.

+++Paladins A
Character Reliciea Female (Viscanti)
-Was greeted
-No refences to asking questions on GNT
-Was offered to be trained when I asked what I was supposed to do, and then was referenced to scrolls
-One undersec around, I think
Was helped by BLANK, nice rp, good work! Seemed a bit quiet in the guild, but nuthin' wrong with that. Race was not brought up until I mentioned it. Excellent scrolls and format. I really enjoyed this guild.

+++Celestines A+
Character Junapar Female
-Was greeted
-Was referenced to the scrolls
-No undersecs or secs
Celestines did excellent: greeted, referenced, offered to help training when I asked. I cut my testing short here, my eyes were sore and I needed to eat. Good job.


GLOMDORING
*cough* You have too few people, and I didn't feeling like testing anymore, but my previous experiences with Glom have been good, except for the Shadow Dancers once when an undersec ignored me. Shayle is always amusing and her RP very encouraging.

Edit: sorry for the horrible grammar and mispellings, but my mind is fried

You were Mochia? Im so sorry about that, I never even heard the question of why you had to use Portals.

I hope it was because there was a raid and they were busy defending.

But if Serenguard came downhill like that, all I can say is:

The Serenguard novice training program has gone really downhill after all the former undersecs were promoted to secretaries... in fact, the secretaries still do a bit of teaching, more so than the undersecs! Rastor, and maybe Dinoniel and Kittari, though I haven't seen her around in quite a while, is the only old-school undersecretary left. There's a severe shortage of undersecs and even when there's a lot on, many don't do anything at all. Reiha's experience is typical. Unless there's a really energetic undersecretary on, it's up to the secretaries and security members to train novices.

But the entire guild has been getting a long and extensive makeover, with many help files getting changed because of the new history and all the changes that's been occuring - the guild's almost done with that, and I'm pretty sure things will look up for the novice program soon.

The initial information sounds pretty much like what we've always done. You said later that the Nihilists scroll was the first one you bothered reading. The Moondancer scroll has directions to the tower that yes, aren't a simple "N, NW, 2NE, etc" ... they do have directions and reference the surroundings, though. Only a very small percentage of novices have trouble with the directions, and only a very small percentage of those still have trouble after we help them. Benefit of having a novice title as a prefix, you can set a trigger to color the line, then check WHO with thirdeye up to judge general progress of the newbies. If nothing else is going on, I generally check first around 5 minutes, and if they haven't moved I'll talk to them a bit more. If they haven't found the tower in 10-15 minutes (or if I notice them wandering around elsewhere in the world or Serenwilde but not on the path before then), I'll offer to help them by following them and letting them know if they go off the path. Coincidentally, when they take the time to actually read what the directions say and walk slowly to pay attention to the surroundings, only a very few (who give the impression that they're new to MUDs in general) still have trouble.

If you had gotten to the tower and done as the scroll said at that point by announcing yourself, you'd have been congratulated for your accomplishment and someone would've come to train you in person. Of course, the latter part barring any dire need for people elsewhere. Even during raids and revolts we do tend to give as much guidance as possible, though. If someone's not able to come for whatever reason, they should tell you to look at the ghelp selfteaching scroll ... or further down in the initial scroll (ghelp seekers) it'll point you towards that. (And ghelp seekers should still be referenced at the end of help guildnovices moondancers.)

The order shown on the list wasn't the order I necessary did the alt testing, it was fine, but for people like me who aren't good with directions, it was troublesome finding the tower. Especially when I asked for a little assistance in finding it.

I suppose with what you mentioned though, the Moondancers really do deserve an A to A+ since I didn't spend more than 3 mins looking for it, and was feeling rather impatient about getting to my lessons. Also, since people are busy and have things to attend to, I just felt the attitude though a bit cold there still and it felt as though I was being pushed off and away - so that also influenced my decision in giving it an minus.

The peering was because she was elfen, not the naked part! Was about to tell her about reincarnating, but she suicied first.

And yes, our intro novice file is a beast. Too long, really.

Yay for double posts.

I just noticed you said I was nice Reiha. Ill try and keep it up. Not lose it like I did with Dia, I have reached my personal goal so I have a bit more time to give to the guild if it doesnt interfere with school.

I'm not sure that one run really does it justice, yeah.

Very true, though I was suprised how much helpful people seemed this time around, both times seemed like there were raids / counter raids being planned. Ack, now that I'm thinking about it, I remember the Moondancers did exceptionally well that first round a week or so ago...and the Geomancers could use some work in some areas, when no undersecs or secs are around.

I have no idea what this quiz thing is...

But I've been welcomed very well into the Moondancers guild, though I don't know the situation in other guilds. I'm definately planning to stay.

Might it be worth asking a new player if they're "just looking," and waht they want from the game before you start teaching them? Then you could kind of tailor the intro a bit to them. Obviously there's the basics you HAVE to do, but you can present it in a way that will enable them to do what they're looking for. If what they want is completely wrong for your guild, maybe suggesting that they read the info on the website, and choose again? Suggest one to them? It might not help YOUR guild, but it will help Lusternia as a whole, as they're less likely to leave in a guild that's best suited.

I think it depends a lot on your personality what game is right for you... Lusternia seems very intuitive, complicated, and there's lots of reading and learning to do at the beginning. If you don't enjoy that, I can see why people don't stay. That's not anyone's fault but the game programmers though.

EDIT: Oh, and there was/are a lot of raids and desecration going on too, so extra brownie points for being welcoming the the moondancers.

And hey, if you actually read the scroll, you would have realized that it contains everything you needed to know!

All I can say is I hope you suicided these when you were done, so you didn't waste those couple kilobytes of server space.

Glad you're enjoying it, and welcome to the forums as well!

Honestly, most of the time, unless a person makes it ABSOLUTELY clear that they already know these things, I just do it anyways. I consider it more OOC to not teach a person who is a novice, hence why I hardly ever ask.

The one time I did do that, there was a person who was going really fast, and then they made it clear via tells that they just wanted to learn things and get going. I was too tired from raids to really be upset or sad about it, especially because it gave my fingers a rest. My poor ickle fingers.

If someone, whether a Lusternian alt or from another IRE game, just wants to learn what they need to and be done as quickly as possible, it's usually fairly obvious in training them, and you just make sure they're given direction of all of what you want them to know, rather than just what they know they need to know (for example, point them to where the rules/expectations are rather than just what lessons to learn and where to hunt). If such an alt is willing to take the time for a bit more interaction and immersion, taking the same time and methods as you would for someone who's not an alt but picks up things easily is fine.

You musta hit the Aquamancers at a bad time. When I came on, people were quite helpful. We're pretty good with novices, our only real drawback is we're easily distracted and kinda one-tasked. You said that you did this during some heavy raiding times. A lot of the Aquamancers who have a job (Undersec, sec, etc.), are usually into the fighting, and when raiding, things fly by real fast. I'd recomend giving the Aquamancers another shot when things aren't so heavy in the raiding. (Also, with the way Celest is, when things are raiding, chances are Celest is involved. Either defense or offense).

As for the Gloms, I heard rumors that it was the Gloms that percipitated that one announcement post about novices.