I'd love to have newbies start in different areas depending on what their city or commune is, like WoW does.

I just wish they had something more than newton caverns. I know when I make alts here, I hate the caverns. I love having a choice of 7 different novice areas that some of the other IRE games have. Pushing people into one bashing area with three levels to it, makes it monotonous and overcrowded, especially in the mother mucka level, since none of the portals lead to the second or 3rd level of newton area.

I dont mean org specific, just something different. And an option so people don't get crowded into one place. When you have 3 areas that you have to go through area A to get to area B, etc. It makes things a pain when you die, and want to get back to where you were.

I do not have an idea for a newbie area (YET), but I have an opinion on how its general feel should be.

First off, what turned me off from Newton each time I started a new character was that finks, gnomes and almost everything else just die in one attack, which makes fighting them boring. Yes, BORING. Only exception: warrior newbies. For them, it can even get too tough if they don't get two clubs/shortswords, but it's their guild's fault for not supplying, not the areas.
Solution: harder mobs. Maybe put somewhere racks with clubs/instruments for warrior/bard newbies to use (they'd decay quickly like quest items or disappear when you leave the newbie area).

Moreover: in Newton Caverns, you get THREE types of bashable finks, and FOUR types of gnomes. Boring. Compare that to Minia in Achaea, for example. In Newton, killing the same creatures over and over only added to the repetiveness of the task, but it maybe just me. Anyway, this is more minor than other points.
Solution: put many mob types in the area.

The quest in Newton Caverns is, as mentioned many times before, impossible to complete without extensive outside help (read: non-newbies giving you advice).
Solution: When putting such quests in the area, make them more obvious or give more hints via the newbie hints system.

Non-combat options. Newbs in Achaea can capture butterflies, deliver textbooks to the pixie teacher and lots of other stuff. Lusternia? Influence, only that. Sure, they get XP, but what about money? Dough is VERY important for novices. I'm not saying here to put a lot of things to do for total hippy pacifists, just to have newbies do something else than bashing in the place. Lolliprin is actually a good example, with crystals from rock hogs, frogs, and whatever. But we need such activities available from the start, too many novices get bored in Newton proper without discovering Lolliprin.

I think this is an absolutely excellent suggestion.

Puzzle Pirates (On servers that use a credit-like business model, like Lusternia) has four "main" puzzles which are essential to cruising - Bilge pumping, carpentry, sailing and swordfighting. They're all different and immediately available to everyone instantly as they join the game. There are a lot more puzzles, virtually all of which are available to all players; you need to pay to be able to play them whenever you want to, but they're available for free on particular weekdays. A complete newbie to the game has between five and seven different things he can try. I use that as an extreme to compare to the very low amount of things Lusternia newbies can try out; nearly every feature of Lusternia has an extremely high barrier of entry.

Though perhaps go with a 2h wooden sword or something. I've found it's easier for novices to get used to attacking with a 2hed weapon than two 1-handed weapons (every once in a while, when we used two single weapons, I'd find a novice complaining about killing really slow and found they were doing one jab per balance).

I think there's plenty of time once they're more used to what's going on to deal with multiple attacks-- give 'em a 2h weapon to start, let them get used to playing, and then decide where to go from there. (We put a lot of money into 2h weapons for novices, too)

Oh, and I think there are things newbies aren't made aware of but should be. I think it would improve newbie retention if they knew about trade skills, aetherships, and so on. Make introductory, newbie scrolls about those subjects and add little blurbs about them to the newbie tour, or maybe toss them into the newbie channel at times:



Particularly, newbies don't know about influencing (And some guilds try to keep newbies from learning anything outside the approved programme) or about village honours quests (Which are easier than newton's, and easier to do if you have Grace of Innocence).

The problem with this is information overload. Some novices would like those little blurbs-- some wouldn't. I also know I hate repeated "hints" or "OOC comments" or whatever that are broadcast on an aether at regular intervals. Though... it would be possible for these to be added to the Guides repertoire, and be passed as more of a helpful hint from a person who's there to actively answer any questions raised by the hint, instead of a bodiless tip.

I don't believe in information overload. I think it's silly to believe newbies will quit because they see too much of the game in a very short time, or because they get too much information. But I'm no fan of random hint systems either; handing this information during the newbie tour or asking guides to distribute them would be better.

Information overload does exist, but beyond that I think you have a great idea. It just needs to be presented so that the player doesn't feel obligated to read another big helpfile on yet another topic.

Verithrax (and anyone else who agrees/has an oppinion), what options do you think should be available at the start of the game? Beyond the choices of bashing and straight up RP, and not including fighting (because I doubt it could work, honestly)...

I know this makes me out to be a sadist, but I always thought of making Hallifax, Gaudiguch, and Ackleberry Newbie areas. Especially the cities. You could even explain it, saying that novices under Circle 21 aren't as grounded into Lusternia, so they can pass through the barriers of time surrounding them.

Don't hate me, it's cruel.

Honours quests, figurines, chess... Not enough, really. Newbies need more stuff to do, maybe even more than they need to be made aware of the stuff they can try out early on already.

That's true, and it's a shame (kind of). I think we have so many interesting things that newbies never find out about before they quit mid-newton and leave. I'm going to see if I can get a new tip added for the guides, one that talks about the badass stuff in Lusternia, like ships, houses, cartels for custom designs, village influencing, etc. The stuff we love; maybe discussing that will retain some more people.

I may have misphrased my question, because there are honors quests in Newton and anyone can play chess (i'm not sure about costs of figurines). However, what *isn't* available to novices that you think should be? If we could get a tangable list of activies, its a lot easy to think of how to integrate them into the novice area/novice intro/training than just talking about all the things they should have acess to.
Sorry if it sounds like I'm asking a stupid question.

Regarding thigns that have been said, I don't think housing can be brought to novices that easily... but ships definitely can. If they so much as select aethercraft as a skill, can't they be locked into a ships crew? So they could go out and be in aetherspace on a city/commune ship, if their org made the option available.
For village influence, its tough. I don't have any good ideas (maybe a constant influencable area in newton, somewhere?). Cartels can be joined without skill in the tradeskill, so novices can be introduced to this without any investment. I guess this assumes the org wants to give novices the choice...

Newton's honours quest is really hard, however. They should know about the village ones which are vastly easier and more variate. I think making it possible for them to get a little taste of aetherspace too would be great. Otherwise... it's not so much making the big expensive features of Lusternia open to newbies, but more of making new features which aren't quite as big and expensive.

Talking about it and not getting to do it is frustrating for me. Not everyone is gonna have credits for skills and still more left over for ships and houses straightaway, so why tell them about things they won't have right away?

Village influence is different, they could make a novice influence contest in Newton that's like villages but simpler and with no PK. Like, get the shroomies to support the finks or the gnomes.

I can make a newbie character and learn elementalism up to Blast, but that doesn't mean I can pass the barrier of entry into PvP. You need a lot more than the basic skills to be accepted as a member of an aethercrew that wants to do some serious aetherbashing, say.

Thats not what I was trying to say. What I meant was they can join a ship, and see if its something they wanted to invest in. With Aethercraft up to master, from my understanding, (and possibly less than master) you can make a perfectly acceptable gunner. I guess its not right off the bat, but its quickly available, I think? It wouldn't be a *serious* aethercrew - but it could be enough to show new players some of whats available. If I'm completely wrong then sorry.

I coulda sworn I said that there was obviously no way to show novices pvp right at the start, but apparently I didn't. Anyway, I agree about that.

Ideas for an org-specific newbie area.

Magnagora Zoo
-The zookeeper in Magnagora is forever being overwhelmed by the fantastical and gruesome creatures that inhabit his domain. Though he will not accept help from citizens with better things to do, novice Magnagorans can fight back inflated populations, help him breed new species, and .

This is a good idea. It's terrible when you're wandering around looking for widgets/chains/black stones/ant eggs/whatever for HOURS. And increase decay on certain items... it's awful trying to zip back and forth in time.

: )