It would be pretty hilarious if one day the admin announce the end of the DoC/Summer Court/Glomdoring event with the epic destruction of the forest and it reverting back to a bashing ground.

Actually, wait, no. It wouldn't. Don't talk about it like an event.

Can we do the Lost Cities Event once this one is over?

Warning, wall of text to follow...

Hi all, relatively new player here, just out of novicehood.

I'm living in Celest, joined the Aquamancers, and thought I might be able to throw a few extra points into the discussion.

Firstly, on joining the game I found the intro useful, the collegium experience supportive, and the initial helpfiles useful (if a little long in some places). I have to admit, I was not greeted when I first arrived, in the college, guild or city, and I had to stumble over the HELP files through a mix of guess work and luck.

In the college, I did find the planar quest and the healing quests to be hard - I had to get help with the planar one after I was loitering outside the portal room in Celest thinking I somehow had to use this to travel onto different planes (I had no idea what a plane, bubble, or manse was at the time, and I had trouble figuring it out from the help files - maybe this is my own inadiquacy, and not the fault of anyone else - who knows). I asked a random person who popped out of the portal if they had time to help me after I recieved no response on the gnt and on the cgt and that person (lucky for me) was helpful, informative and passed me onto a guild mate for futher help (who promptly QQ'd after introducing me to the GHELP SELF TRAINING scroll). That first person I met, from another city and another guild, checked up on me the following day to make sure I was learning and happy, and I think I might hear from them again in the future. They are one of the reasons I bothered to come back and have kept coming back.

Since then, I have had a warmer reception from the guild, but I am finding some of the things which might still put me off are - I can no longer get to Newton, but I have died to rock eaters and on the tidal flats, so I am not confident enough to hunt there. This means ratting, supplicants and making necklaces for dolphins are my only source of gold. Could get dull fast.

I have been suggested to get a new client (the web one and zmud are my only method of playing at the moment, but apparently in order to heal well, I need to learn a new one) this puts me off a bit. Healing over all, with the sheer number of afflications, cures and possible attacks from players and npcs seems very very daunting. I wonder if I will ever get involved with combat - although I would like to at least get some basics.

Geography - the basin is huge, which is great, but how on earth do you find your way home, or to safety when you no long have portals and you have no idea where you are in relation to other places. I have used the maps on line and I still cant seem to grasp it - I know im young (well, my character is anyway), but thats something else which seems daunting. Other people seem to know the basin like its the back of their hand. I cant see me ever remembering places this way.

Lots of things are said on CT anf GT which actually make no sense to me - I am a little embarrassed to ask. As Lawliet said, she is sick of newbs, I dont want to be that annoying newbie who is asking innane questions all the time, so I am hoping I will pick it up if I just keep listening long enough. It really feels like you are pressing your nose up to a window, and everyone inside is having a great time, but you have to just watch.

I think I will probably stay, I think Lusternia is a beautiful place, and I have seen glimses of some really friendly people who are both helpful and interesting. I have yet to see any RP, but then I have yet to start any either. I will need some more help, and its going to be painful at times for someone who does decide to help me, because Im an honest to god true blue newbie, but I would like to think it will also be worth while helping me, because I want to engage with things and join in when I know how to.

We shall see, honours me in about a month, and if Im still there, great, if im not, see above for why not.

Lusternia does it fairly well by making the Basin a huge circle. That is, the highways can connect you to most Prime areas (that are important for your early experience), and if you follow them long enough, they eventually lead you home (well, through hostile cities, but hey). One thing that could worth considering is making Teleport the first ability in Planar.

This is unusual, but good. I've never seen so many new players just hop on the forums and chime in on something like this. It's hard data we need and can use.

This is an issue everywhere. The planar quest requires you to go to many planes you often don't have access to, or in fact are enemy territory. It's not easy to do, and has been brought up numerous times, with unfortunately no solution in sight .


I had the same problem too. Especially depending on race, what you can bash once out of Newton can vary. I see a few options-- 1) You can keep ratting, supplicantsing, and dolphinsing until you are a higher level, 2) You can ask around if people know of any places you could hunt or would be willing to hunt with you, or 3) Gather pilgrims, scholars and bards. They will net you fairly good XP and gold. Of course, 3) is also dependent on whether or not Krellan has raised the Tainted Broadcasat Centre, in which case you won't be able to do 3).


Combat has a ridiculous entry bar you must get over in Lusternia. It's basically understood that, aside from a few insanely coordinated people, you will need a curing system to survive PvP. As far as I know, no one has successfully built a distributable system for the Nexus (website) client. There used to be some for Zmud, but glancing over the Mechanic's Corner of the forums, they may not be updated anymore. Two systems that I know are updated very frequently are Ethelon's Avante Garde and Zarquan's Treant, both of which are for MUSHclient. Both have a credit cost (Treant can be downloaded and used free, but support costs credits), but both are reasonable and well worth the one time cost. Plus, MUSHclient itself is free. If you want to get started in combat, I'd suggest one of those.


That's something that will come in time .


If you don't know something, the only advice I can give is to ask.


Hope to see you around then!

First off, if Lawliet says she's "sick of newbs", then she needs to quit her position as Secretary. The people listed here are here to help, and if they don't give you the assistance you need then you need to approach someone higher in the guild and complain.

Like one of these people:




Never, EVER be ashamed of asking a question. Never be ashamed and afraid that someone will get angry that you don't know something and you'd like to change that. You are here to have fun, and if you aren't having said fun because people are too busy getting their groove on/chatting with friends then it's not your fault.

The aquas don't actually work on the basic guild structure.

Undersecs help newbs, Secretaries handle administration, Admin handles newbs AND administration.

That doesn't matter. Secretaries handle administration, which has mostly to do with.... newbies. And if Lawliet doesn't like newbies, she needs to go snuggle with someone random in her manse and leave it up to people who give a damn about something besides Lusternia just being an oversized chatroom

@ Rinthy
Talk to me or message me ig if you need help with things.

As Shaddus said never be ashamed or worried to ask a question. Chances are the person you ask has had that question at some point in time. Everyone was a newbie at some point in time.

One thing that has been bothering me lately is that though I often go out of my way to checkin with people who have COL, NOV, or 1 by their name, about 70% of the time they never respond to me, and of the 30% that do, often-times responses are so dreadfully slow (as in minutes range, so it's not because they're typing slow) that any kind of meaningful communication is impossible, but then these same people then later complain about not getting any help. I'm not saying that all novices/young'uns do it, just a little bit of frustration that needed airing.

Also, the planar quest is beans whacked. I wouldn't expect any genuine novice to be able to complete it alone.

She's the Secretary that handles guild events, not training newbies. It's not her job to handle newbies, it's a choice.

One point that gets overlooked a lot is that a newbie quest that requires them to ask for help is not a broken quest. Asking for help is a good thing. Some newbies prefer to do everything on their own, and that's okay, but in Lusternia you can't do everything on your own: the structure of Lusternia is that you will be part of something. So if one (optional) quest requires you to ask someone for help once, I don't consider that a problem, that's a feature. Learning to ask for help is a good lesson, and the process of asking can help people feel more connected. If it were up to me, I wouldn't change the Planes quest anyway. (Except for the bits encouraging people to go to enemy territory.)

I think part of the problem is that people don't view the collegium time as optional. They want their advancement, and they want their honours, and they want them NOW. Heck, people didn't even view the clearly-labelled optional novice advancements in the Paladins as optional.

This could be were I am going wrong. My first time through I didn't get a mentor, I wasn't even sure the best way to go about asking someone to be a mentor. Most of the people that seemed to play at around the same time I did, were Guild leaders and champions, and seemed to be too busy to have some new guy interrupting them with questions every 10 minutes. Maybe this was just my perception, and maybe it was wrong. My second go around, I started on a Saturday, meet a few people, had a very nice person offer to mentor me right away. They seemed really willing to help me get involved and answer all sorts of stupid questions. I haven't seem him since. I get the feeling that his playtimes may not actually have lined up very well with my playtimes. Something that I probably should have considered, but didn't.

I actually haven't had too much trouble with getting questions answered, I find any number of members are at least somewhat polite and willing to point me to the correct help file on a subject or even take the time to explain it to me over tells. The real problem is that afterwards I go back to killing finks and ants, trying to earn a bit of gold towards this huge list of items that I need, and they go back to doing whatever they are doing. Then some time passes, and I don't end up really feeling involved.

Go ahead and ask people to be your mentor. They get stuff out of it too and if they are too busy they can let you know. It doesn't hurt to ask.

It's true, there's a huge initial gold investment, but as you progress through the levels, gold becomes a LOT easier to come by. Also, once you hit a critical point (lv 50 or so, which seems high, but really isn't too terrible) you can start going on group hunts, following, and you're durable enough to withstand a decently varied range of places. If you're feeling down about the lack of involvement, try roleplaying a ritual, prayer, discussion, debate.... even a chess game can be a lot of fun! Find yourself a nemesis. Explore. Don't be afraid to die.

I've found that the Tahtetso's novice graduation bit is really good. Have to know a couple important places in the city, have to at least know how to do pilgrims/etc and supplicants, and seek a mentor.

Edit: Looking back, this post seems to be very...flame-ish. My apologies.

Basically what I wanted to say was: if you're not up to helping newbies, you don't need to have a leadership position in a guild.

QFMFT