New Players

[alasteir]

The Devil Angel is still in the rift area.

[Bargeld]

what happened to the devil angel in the start area?

He bungled everyone's account by adding evil dopplegangers to the toon list.

[Tsavong]

Ice Flats... ...I haven't found where the other end of that portal is.

See my last post its in an abandoned house in Garagoth

[DM Ireheart]

what happened to the devil angel in the start area?

Nevermind, I always forget about the devil angel being there, and here I was thinking I had come up with an awesome original idea..............

[Dazrield]

It would be nice if spoilers were allowed to be posted at this stage.. I've been muddling around in HoK for hours over the past couple of days w/o any luck getting through this awful maze. Tried getting a party to go with, no one wanted to.. offered bribes for a guide, one kind player did tell me that I have to step on a certain tile to unlock the next section.. but that lag was probably causing it not to register when I did.

Edit: Finally made it through the maze! Stumbled into a minotaur lair completely unbuffed.. wasn't pretty. Rather anticlimatic fighting for all of 30 seconds after spending about 5 hours on that maze not fighting anything.

[DeputyDog]

Ahh yes there is a Devil/Angel.
Maybe we need to edit that sign to say how and where to use him.

Tried the portal to ice flats. Thats pretty nice, if only a new player expores the house...
Capturing mephits sucks lol.


Tried an SL Bard. Good first quest. Even gave xp. 2nd part is kill Tulgik, but doesnt say what a Tulgik is lol. The trek there goes through some orcs but makes for a nice alternative area from the underdark stuff for SL. Was able to solo him at lvl 3 as a drow (go darkness)

---

So my impressions after taking a character from level 1 - 5ish in each faction are that it is doable but difficult and a little frustrating at times. Im going to push for more signs explaining things in each starting area, xp for jobs, more starting gear/money and more xp for low lvl critters to make these levels less of a pain.

I dont think any of the starting areas need to be reworked, but I think the level 5-10 stuff may need to be looked at next - Im trying to get some dev stuff setup can I can at least tweak mobs, but we'll see.

[Lokey]

Omigod, DD playing something other than straight pali. Times have changed

Last low level sweep I did was for stupid easy things (oh god those undead minos near NC were auto-level forever). I tweaked gnolls and mezzos up a bit in difficulty and cr to fill a cr range that was lacking on that side of the continent...messed with FD too.

I hate hate hate leveling melee, and leave that to chase. Any caster in any faction is no problem as far as I can see--include ranger and pali I guess, I did level those up but not in all allowed factions. If you can use spells, you can level end of story.

[Ajantis.]

To be fair, the list of things to do, fill volumes of books... you are a dev, are you not... one with ultimate power? Who's permission do you need? I could be wrong, but I assumed the slow progression of certain game developments haven't been from a lack of good ideas or consensus, but rather insufficient staff personnel and time to implement it.

[Elagneros]

There is a lot of info that you need to know to make a class/race selection. Maybe we need to put a big sign saying goto the wiki as part of the intro lol.

I say it's one of the unintended consequences of pulling out LA. There are some combinations that just have no place to go on the server, like non dorf/gnome good-aligned wizards or some cleric setups. For us experienced players, it's less of a big deal because we know how to tweak race/class/alignment but a prospective new player who can't play a toon he want might just get annoyed and not come back.

[Lokey]

You hang on irc Ajantis, you know the primary dev problem: getting in exploit free stuff that's fun and complements stuff on the server well. The amount of stuff that didn't get past testing is...well, pretty depressing (I really wanted to do more, better and combined meta-magics for example). Testing is always the biggest hurdle, and we still find bugs that have been in for years--Linux found a doozy a few weeks back.

BUT ideas are always welcome. Sometimes the more impractical the better

[Bargeld]

In the end, the best outcome is that you have salvaged a couple of new players' first and second toons. Like anything else, getting to know these things is just something you gain from in-game experience. Talk with people, explore on your own & in groups, READ what NPCs say

If a player is going to stay, it's not because there was a sign to read that explained everything. Your DM in a PnP campaign tries their hardest to pull the rug out from under you; it's the players' jobs to play smart. The same applies here. If you can't figure out how to complete faction jobs, how on earth are you going to figure out how to build a good PvP toon. Cuz that should be the end result here. The rest of us want more contenders on the field.

I'm all up for development, and I speak my peace about changes and suggestions, but like it has been mentioned... there's already a backlog of 'dev stuff' to do. Nerf Imp stunning fist to +1 instead of +2, 1st and foremost

BTW DD, you don't know me (yet), but welcome back. And thanks for starting this whole thing up.

[DeputyDog]

There has always been a backlog. Doesnt mean that stuff cant go in front. Especially when I see population low. The secret to our longevity has always been our accessibility and community. Now more then ever, we need people to stick around.

I was a dev. Havnt done it in so long that I am as green as any other potential dev. My only advantage is I know how to test and how the foundation and skeleton of this place work. Im going to try to get up to where I can make small changes, but who knows how long that will take.

For now I will barf out ideas and hope some of them stick and get put in.
And yea melee sucks with out a party, but it is D&D and not really meant for pure solo.

Have to do something with ns city. mobs too hard for the low cr. Either make em easier or raise the reward/gear drops.

[Lokey]

We toyed with messing with ns city a bit and decided against it because it's cr 18-20 not in FD that people can do without some random higher level player showing up and pasting you for messing with his city's guards. Think I leveled a straight pali there at 15ish (div shield) and waltzed through with my cleric (but cleric still stomps anywhere he feels like).

I agree to some extent with Bargeld. Ok more than some. Take ns3 with the huge welcome conversation and all the signs few read... Would be useful to get some more info into the faction journals, where's that dead post where I suggested that? (Note journals have a limit of ~3200 characters, the main one is pretty close to that.)

[mining]

It would be nice if spoilers were allowed to be posted at this stage.. I've been muddling around in HoK for hours over the past couple of days w/o any luck getting through this awful maze. Tried getting a party to go with, no one wanted to.. offered bribes for a guide, one kind player did tell me that I have to step on a certain tile to unlock the next section.. but that lag was probably causing it not to register when I did.

Edit: Finally made it through the maze! Stumbled into a minotaur lair completely unbuffed.. wasn't pretty. Rather anticlimatic fighting for all of 30 seconds after spending about 5 hours on that maze not fighting anything.

No HoK Spoilers!

[Dazrield]

No HoK Spoilers!

Which made perfect sense when the server was more active and there were always people around that knew stuff or could help.. or there were parties always interested in exploring areas like that. However.. most players I talk to these days consider HoK a pain and have no desire to go. Which means since I really want to see it.. I spend hours and hours of running, running, running.. Pretty sure the riddles are meant to challenge the mind, not to add more monotonous running.

I still don't even know how to do the riddles.. like.. do I answer at the statue doing the riddling? Or the next statue down the hall that doesn't say anything? Let alone get the right answer.. even if I do have the right answer I really don't know if it's right cuz I might've messed up where to say it. And do I need to do that in talk mode? Or will talking to anyone in party/shout/pm wreck it?