Illarion.org

I say ex-newbie, because i have equipment and armour, and a trade now, and I'm beginning to know what I'm doing.....still much to learn though..

at the risk of annoying anyone, I thought I'd post just a couple of observations about getting started in the game, in no particular order, and some good and some bad.

Hammers and shovels - the breakability of these is extraordinary. If unlucky, the first outing in Illarion will result in broken equipment, and a growing sense of frustration and bafflement. May I suggest these be slightly less breakable? Once broken, a player is utterly dependant upon other players to help them out. Wheich leads to my second point :

Dependancy and other players - I got lucky, in that I found a couple of players who were willing to help me out, and get me a sword, and a bit of cash. Otherwise, I would have been stuck (Thanks guys - you know who you are.) THis dependancy stems fro mthe fact that although I knew how to mine, and wanted to mine, once my tools were broken I simply had nothing - no money - no tools - no idea of what else to do apart from rely on another player.

Killing things - It's got to be said, by FAR AND AWAY the easiest way of making a bit of cash, gaining some experience, and a few skills is killing a load of the you know what's in the you know where. This detracts slightly for me from the game. It encourages a newbie in a certain direction - almost pushes them there in fact. I only got my stuff by doing this - the frustration of breaking hammers and shovels has put me off mining for life I fear.

Anyway, these thoughts on paper, I would like to end on a positive note, and say that the game in general is fantastic, a great achievement for the guys who've put it together, and I am (now) thoroughly enjoying myself.
Thanks guys.

Well, the sense of braking things is indeed to support player interaction and trade. This way, a "newbie" will do something else than running around and doing everything on his own, powergaming until his skills are maximised, and then starts to attack people out of boredom (we had a lot of such cases, all of those got banned of course).

and i think most of the players are very kind and help people out. You just have to speak with them friendly and most will help you.

Regarding to the breaking things. I know it's to add realism and encourage player interaction, like you said Damien, but it gets to a certain point that the constant breaking begins to take away from the gameplay rather then add to it just out of sheer annoyance. I would also agree that it would be nice to see it lowered a little. I mean the first few times having your shovel break on you is kind of neat but i mean, in real life if you're digging through dirt your shovel doesn't break every five or ten minutes...

AHEM, he is not digging through dirt, high iron rocks are very tough and heavy, and if you shove your shovel into them for a while it is very likely with medival quality to break.

I hardly ever break any tools, sometimes its two in a row but tools are extremely cheap in Illarion anyway. Maybe a sort of quality system is already in place, they just don't want you to know about it.

Although some people have helped me out (you know who you are!,) there are ways to go from rags to riches without help. Consider this hypothetical:

A new player enters town. He goes over to the pigs and slaughters them 20 times over. He cooks the meat, sells it all to Eliza for 40 gold, and puts the leather away in his depot.

He repeats above process two or three times, and he now has the coin to purchase the tools for almost any profession he might be interested.

Then he takes those tools he purchased and gets some raw goods (lumber or iron ore is definately top choice) and sells them to a master carpenter or smith.

At this point, he should be pretty well set. He can buy tools, learn a trade, buy weapons and armor to become a warrior, or, if he repeats the process enough times, he can get a trainer in magic and buy magic books.

In the latter case, it may sound unfair, because mages should be devoted to magic over work, but it would be thought that, in most cases, only the sons and daughters of the rich could be properly trained in magic. Otherwise, you'd need to work hard and get rich to do so.