New Player Notes

Hope everyone noticed that this isn't really a help page! Just my notes as to what it was like to be a newbie on MUD. When I started I felt so out of my depth. I was wandering around and not really reading much (it always pays to read the room descriptions). I would find a stick, I would light it and I would head to the swamp. And yes, many newbies figure out early on that methane & fire just don't mix. Not this newbie. I was still being whoosh'd at the swamp after playing for about a month. (gg - Sub-Ed).

I also didn't get a sense of direction for a while; I can still remember what I thought The Land was like. I found the 'Big Gate' by accident one day, and it took weeks to find it again. I could find the cottage eventually; the hut took a bit more figuring out. And I kept having people telling me to map areas, but I was so lost that I knew that a map wouldn't help me. What did help me was finding a graphical map on a web site. Seeing that, I copied it exactly to paper to give me a rough idea of where everything was. That elusive farmhouse, which I had seen once, was actually over a river.

Once I had a vague sense of direction, things began to pick up. But then, I'd been playing awhile and all those nice PK personas singled me out as the newbie without a clue. Armed with a stick I bravely died to dozens of PKs. Of course, I didn't know what a PK was, I just wondered if I had a 'Kill Me' sign attached to my back. I also didn't have a clue about stamina, and I wondered why sometimes I died when I whoosh'd at the swamp and sometimes I didn't. Then there was that door, now I'm not going to say which door, it's not a secret but it's not common knowledge, but it's the door that you can only enter if you are a certain thing. Now I didn't know that. It killed me more often than mobiles did. The message of 'door must be booby trapped' or similar only convinced me that maybe I'd removed the trap and could then pass safely, multiple trials of this proved me wrong.

Needless to say, I never learned quick. I did have help, and I would sometimes just agree to stop people having to explain something over ten times. When I started playing seriously, I killed everything that moved (with my stick) and fled from everything that moved but proved to be much tougher than I realised (that 'val mo' trick would really have been handy before I took out war on the Skeletons). I managed to get my first persona up to Hero, a level I never thought I would ever reach (oh, the days before the giant realm), only to wander near that mine place and into a little angry dwarf who was more powerful than he looked (plus it was before I figured out that stamina business as well) and I saw the lovely ... not updating persona.

I don't really want to give out help because I know how much fun it was to die all those times (really it was!!) and figuring things out yourself will help you become a better player, if you constantly have help and protection then the minute you are left on your own 'someone' attacks you with something that feels suspiciously like a longsword, and you wave your stick pitifully ... and you see that '... not updating persona' message again.