Are there any *comprehensive* newbie's guides?
Posted: 20 May 2016 08:23
So OK -- I'm new here, and I've been playing text-based games (principally Gemstone, Dragon's Gate and Fed II) for 25 years now.
So far, people have been helpful; no one can say otherwise. I recognize that folks don't want to hand out a heap of quest spoilers, and that's good, but there's a lot that a newcomer could use that'd both help with newbie retention and keeping the message traffic on the ntell line down:
* The way inventory is handled in this game is pretty atypical. Newbies really ought to know (if, as I gather, it's true) that most items don't survive a logout, and that a newbie is shooting himself in the foot by spending precious gold on most of the things in most of the shops, if indeed those too will vanish in a couple hours tops.
* Newbies ought to have a ballpark notion how training in particular skills will work over the short term and the long term. So far, I've invested a lot of hours and gold in working up various magical skills, without much handle on how long it's going to take to get so much as a single spell that can be used in combat. Ten more hours of foraging and skinning? Twenty? More? Should newbies not bother with magic skills right off? Is there anywhere I can find out the benefits of training "Enchantment" vs "Abjuration" vs "Transmutation?"
* A bunch of smaller tips would be useful, too. I spent 2 1/2 hours foraging grey bark for an Academy quest earlier, handed the stuff to the herbalist as I got it, was halfway done, had to log out, and had no idea that logging out on an uncompleted task voided the task. I would've appreciated knowing that beforehand. (Come to that, at an average of one bark an hour, obviously I'm not a good enough forager to come up with FIVE. Where ought my skills to be? Two more trainings? Five? Ten?)
* Could common nomenclature and the "magic map" be harmonized? I spent about 45 minutes searching for an "Orc Temple" that seems, in fact, to be what the map calls the "Orc Fortress." Are they in fact one and the same?
The tutorial was very good and very well organized, but the frustration level is rising here.
So far, people have been helpful; no one can say otherwise. I recognize that folks don't want to hand out a heap of quest spoilers, and that's good, but there's a lot that a newcomer could use that'd both help with newbie retention and keeping the message traffic on the ntell line down:
* The way inventory is handled in this game is pretty atypical. Newbies really ought to know (if, as I gather, it's true) that most items don't survive a logout, and that a newbie is shooting himself in the foot by spending precious gold on most of the things in most of the shops, if indeed those too will vanish in a couple hours tops.
* Newbies ought to have a ballpark notion how training in particular skills will work over the short term and the long term. So far, I've invested a lot of hours and gold in working up various magical skills, without much handle on how long it's going to take to get so much as a single spell that can be used in combat. Ten more hours of foraging and skinning? Twenty? More? Should newbies not bother with magic skills right off? Is there anywhere I can find out the benefits of training "Enchantment" vs "Abjuration" vs "Transmutation?"
* A bunch of smaller tips would be useful, too. I spent 2 1/2 hours foraging grey bark for an Academy quest earlier, handed the stuff to the herbalist as I got it, was halfway done, had to log out, and had no idea that logging out on an uncompleted task voided the task. I would've appreciated knowing that beforehand. (Come to that, at an average of one bark an hour, obviously I'm not a good enough forager to come up with FIVE. Where ought my skills to be? Two more trainings? Five? Ten?)
* Could common nomenclature and the "magic map" be harmonized? I spent about 45 minutes searching for an "Orc Temple" that seems, in fact, to be what the map calls the "Orc Fortress." Are they in fact one and the same?
The tutorial was very good and very well organized, but the frustration level is rising here.