I would just like to say that the Shadow Envoy clan was a brilliant idea by Shayle or whoever thought it up. It really helped when there were no Ebonguard around and one of their novices needed some help in learning the skills and how they work and weapons, etc. It all the orgs had something like that, I think it would go a long way toward solving the problem of not having active guild members around, or guilds not understanding other guilds stuff.

And yes, I know not everyone is an Ambassador aide. Please don't spaz out on me about it.

I'd say, for newbie starting packs:

For warriors: One (Or two - Do newbies dual-wield?) shortsword or club, customised by the guild; trousers, a shirt, and a tabard, customised by the guild. Quick decay health vial.

For mages, guardians, druids and wiccans: Mana vial, trousers and tunic, customised by the guild.

For bards: Instrument customised by the guild; trousers and tunic; quick decay mana and bromides.

Yes, newbies dual wield. No, it's not a good idea for a newbie to dual wield, imo.

We try to give them 2h weapons. Gives them one less thing to deal with (armbalance) while they're dealing with the rest of the game.

Totally just met that guy. Good idea.

I think this is actually an excellent idea, if it was possible.


If things were left for an Adventurer's guild and still had to rely on people, what's to say that someone who randomly picks Glom for the first time on joining in a time period where noone is about won't still happen? After all when I first came here, the only reason I picked moondancers was because the name sounded cool, not for any knowledge of what the moondancers could do or even stood for much less the political implications that went along with it, such as at the time, they were friendly-ish towards Celest and Mag/Glom were to be avoided.

I don't like the Adventurer's Guild idea. It sounds very generic and wouldn't have appealed to me as much as joining a guild directly. Going through two consecutive novicehoods would be discouraging. It should certainly not be mandatory (making alts would be awfully painful).

It also doesn't address the problem, which isn't simply that people aren't being welcomed and helped out during novicehood: it's more that, even if they don't fall through the cracks, they're unaware of what there is to do in the game. At least novicehood is a highly structured time when you have clear goals to work towards and clear things you can do in your own defined areas; I'd bet we lose even more people in GR1, when they've been loosed upon the world with no direction. (Most guilds' post-novicehood programs are less than stellar and constantly being altered, and new players have trouble 'making their own fun' and coming up with stuff to do because they're unaware of the options.)

Automated intros regarding these features that you can take at leisure would be a tremendous help, and I'm glad to hear there is one for influencing now! Maybe some quests in Newton could reward newbies with bits of useful, if temporary, equipment. Nation-specific areas/quests and guild-specific skill training (with a little flavour thrown in) would also be awesome. Seriously, I could write the script for a guild-specific training session in one hour, because... that's essentially what I do every time I train a new novice, and I've sure rehearsed it enough times by now.

Planar emphasis should be reflected in newbie areas and the intro quest. As in 78 people in your plane != 78 people in the game, and there are always more people than you think there are, and communication issues. And Adventurer's Guild -

This is all based on MY experience with Lusternia:

One thing that I didn't like about Lusternia was that you never got a straight-up history lesson. Nothing is more embarrasing as a newbie than to be asked a question about the city's/commune's policies or history and know absolutely nothing, only to be scolded for not reading the scrolls the instant you got into the realms. I'd really, really like some sort of history teachers for the guild halls that you could ask questions and be given short lectures on the history of your nation or whatnot. This way, I feel as though I'm interacting (and learning how to ask questions to NPCs) with someone and learning.

This leads me to my next problem: No one shows you how to interact with NPCs. If you've never played a MUD before, you only know that you can click on an NPC and initiate chat, read what he wants and be on your way. In Lusternia, there's a whole deal of what you can do to coax an answer out of an NPC, but no one really shows you how, nor how you can interact with the environment. It's not intuitive at all for a newbie, and it makes honors quests all the more difficult than usual.

I also abhor the amount of time it takes for you to enter "for-real" combat with your city/commune. Basically hearing my leaders scream "Get up to Astral NOW!" and then sit there and be slaughtered was NOT fun. There's no raiding opportunities for lowbies. Maybe a segment of each commune/city could have a lower area that was designed for weaker characters to combat, so that they to could participate with their nation with people their level and skill. I wanted to participate with everyone else, but never got to put in enough time to be strong enough to help.

My favorite moment in Lusternia was when I actually had to RP and PvP in defense of another character. Some Mag attacked a newbie, so I chased him down and made him pay. We both died (I killed him first), but I got to threaten him that if he ever touched another newbie I'd cut him to ribbons. That was the most fun I EVER had in a game, and I wished I had more opportunities to make enemies and fight actual players instead of just random mobiles for hours on end.

The fact is Lusternia is really top-heavy. You spend hours upon hours making gold/leveling up so you can start raiding so that your RP actually matters. There's nothing for newbies to do other than exp. until they can start PvPing. There should be more opportunities for lower and middle strength characters to but heads againts other lower and middle strength characters.

In the other IRE games, I believe Arena combats are encouraged and valued.

Maybe there can be a way for combatant novices to work together. Perhaps allowing novices to have duels or wargames in the world arena for prestige. Perhaps we can add a culture value to official combat tournament. Members of the villages watch the battles and the winner org get a bonus to their overall culture score based on prowess. Or Maybe Communites "bet" power or commodities or even a village.

This encourages competition without being turned into a grief-fest. It's also a good way to have lowbie battles matter without the normal chaos of defending a plane. It also encourages friendly or "honourable" competition, which I think can help ease the pain of conflict getting too out of hand.

I really like that idea, especially because it gives newbies a small sense of importance ("Hey, I'm participating by helping us take villages!"), as well Guild leaders incentive to train their newbies more ("Oh snap, these guys need to learn NOW so we can get them ready for the next tourney").

I would be particularly wary of attaching any actual worldwide importance to events that only newbies can participate in, if only for the simple fact that this will automatically cause many people to suddenly log into their pimped out newbie alt just to participate, thereby ruining the experience for most of the real newbies.

There are a few problems with this.

1) What do you define as a novice? People who have yet to graduate from their novicehood for the first time? People who falls within a certain % of might? People who are below a specified level?

2) How would you handle artifacts, specifically damage increasing ones that can skew the tide of combat?

3) Numbers, in a "fair" novice combat, its all about who has more novices to pound the other group into mush. Its not like high level combat where a smaller group can take out a larger group with either overpoweredness or pure tactics. Guilds like Harbingers are going to suffer even more.

4) Peer pressure, this eventually will make ATTENDING SUCH ARENA EVENTS compulsary.

It's not a Lusternia thing, it's an IRE thing. One person with high skills, a system and experience can mow down masses of newbies / midbies unless those smaller characters know exactly what they're doing and know how to work together.

Which, as you said, basically shuts the door on any kind of rewarding PvP for those lowbies / midbies.

On the other hand, that's the incentive IRE gives us to spend our $$$ to get past that bump in the road. Spend and you can join the PvP country club.

I have an idea: why not have a checklist of things for a newbie to do, or a tutorial checklist?

This could be anything from just a paper list given to them in the intro, to a command that lets them see it and actually puts some kind of a mark next to it when they're done, or even a talking little gnome device.

Imagine, you're a complete newbie, and you've just gone through the basic newbie intro. You exit the portal, and have your checklist of things to do. You ask your gnome magic contraption about things to do, and you get a list sent to you in a tell (gah, imagine the spam, all the time, if it wasn't a tell). Once you do one of those things, do the quests it asks you, answers the questions it asks you, or read the files it tells you to, they get checked off. Once you've completed it, it poofs, and you get a special newbie present, like an extra pack with some vials in it, or something.

This allows people to see what all there is in lusternia (sure, you'd have the complex says and emotes tutorial, but what about an aetherspace tutorial? a crafting tutorial?), and they have an incentive to complete all the tasks, thereby exposing them to most of the elements of the game.

** SUMMARY at end, because I tend to be needlessly long winded.**

Let me start off by saying, I'm not an IRE newbie, nor a Lusternia newbie, though I've never done much here.

I love some of the features this mud offers (Most noteably the illusions skillset. I play muds to roleplay, I play WoW when I want to mindlessly kill things. Illusions offers me a very powerful roleplay tool without forcing me into a certian class (eg, achaean's who want to illusion must be mages, sylvans or have an artie, not counting various illusion skills that are a pain to use such as the creator tarot, which imo is pointless, you need to be in the room beside the target! or hocuspocus, which gives away the fact that it's an illusion anyway.)) so, I find myself (even though I play achaea for my friends, it's my first ire mud, so I'm attached, and I play imperian because, in my opinion, it has the best mechanics. I feel you can control so much there.) coming back reapeatedly, though many characters (including the one this forum account is named after) have been created, and either erased or suicided because I find my time has been cut once again (damn you, real life!) to nil.

I love lusternia, and I keep finding reasons to come back. I admit, the low playerbase gets to me at times, but generally, I'm a soloist, I don't work well with people, so it's just as well, I suppose. At least I'm not floundering, like I did on Aetolia, when there was like, two people in my guild, and -no one- knew -anything- about the guild, except that it was 'broken'. I wish I had acess to credits on a more wide spread basis, just so I could play with the roleplay ideas the skillsets here present (illusions and influence being my two favorite) but I don't, and neither do a -lot- of newbies.

Achaea is the easiest ire mud for true mud newbies to play, if only because of the huge playerbase and the annoying lack of real rules anymore (I hate houses. Hate.) so if you want to roleplay an evil knight benedict arnold, you could probably do it, if you're a good enough liar, and don't get caught doing particularily stupid things, like... killing a housemate for attacking a paladin. There are help files for -everything- and nearly 10 or more teachers at any given time, both housed and not, plus many denizen teachers. It's easy enough to get into achaea.

Aetolia, last I played, was the most annoying. There's not even close to enough people around, especially in the less popular guilds, so getting help, even as a not so new newbie, was very hard.

Imperian is great, and oodles of fun. I find it has a decent enough playerbase, and well maintained help files. I had little trouble getting into things.

Lusternia (see, I didn't forget my point!) is the most complicated of all. It's got so many special features and they're all sort of thrown at you. I picked up on it quickly, partly because I knew what I was doing, and partly because I knew where to look for the rest of it. But, reading the website, all my brother (not a mudder. even close.) was interested in was having his own ship. I guess my problem is, if you know before hand that there are some limitations on abilities (eg, what you can afford to buy credits for, icly or oocly, and what you can't) you'll be ok. If, however, you don't, and you're one of those people that assumes that because it's free to play, it gives you all you'll ever need, you'll probably end up putting so many lessons into something neat sounding early on, that you're screwed.

**SUMMARY**

Lusty, while great, and feature rich, which, is why I play, even sparatically, is not for newbies. In my opinion, save for Aetolia (which, is only top of the list for the complications surrounding a small playerbase, so it may be moved, should I ever go back to Aetolia and find that there is no longer a teeny playerbase) is -not for new players-. It's got -too- much for a real newbie to get their head around without proper guidance, and as many before me have said, proper guidance for newbies is not always available.

I don't know if the instrument would work. I had a bard alt and the cheapest I could get an instrument was 10000 gold. It takes nearly 100 wood to make those things, if I recall correctly.

You can get the cheap lute from Bob for what... 400 gold? It works pretty well for newbies.

Yes, but he was saying an instrument customized by the guild. Not likely for every Bard newbie...

I assumed he meant a cheap lute like Bob's, but customised as per guild in the same way that novice titles are customised for each guild.

One other idea: Guides in Imperian check in on all newbies periodically, which I don't think our Guides do. You get a tell, usually every time a new Guide comes on shift, asking you if everything's all right, if you have any questions, or if you've gotten help and advice from your guild. It's a small thing, but it gives newbies an opportunity to think about what they need and speak up, when most of them will not contact a Guide of their own initiative.