Newbie Areas

[baerden]

First off, thank you GM's for creating a beginner area for players wishing to play a stealth/archery user. I'm not sure how IC it would be to call it out by name, if its ok, then I will, but otherwise i'll leave this clue: Ribbit.

As for why I think it should recieve appreciation is that there are only a few areas a brand new player can learn stealth with a bow effectively. I would like any input as my knowledge is not complete, and I think this post might be a good reference to point new players to or possibly used to update the new player wiki entry. I am however interested in your input in the fact if we should share this knowledge in an OOC manner, one one hand, I think it would greatly help new players, and on the other hand, it seems like IC knowledge that should be discovered on their own.. I would appreciate any input along these lines as well.

Current newbie areas and their disadvantages or advantages to learning stealth / archery and possible suggestions to make them better.
* The Abandoned Caravans do have creatures that skilled for a newbie to learn, however the area is open plains thus making it a challenging and at times frustrating place to learn.
Ideas for improvement: Change a few rooms in the area to a more forested type, a small grove of trees here and there.
* The Kildr Dale, while the perfect area (forested, easier to hide in) will get cold and thus despawn any infested creatures making this area less than ideal for training.
Ideas for improvement: Introduce a few hostile non-infested creatures to contend with in this area, such as venomous snakes, sickly or undesireable creatures that need culling to help the herd, or any other destructive / hostile creatures
that would be acceptable for a druid to cull or eliminate.
* Dusklamp ruins - Outside, is another good area for newbies, though I think its not terribly good for archers again due to terrain.
Ideas for improvement: Like the caravan, change a few rooms in the area to something thats easier to hide in, perhaps add in non-infested creatures to couter-act the cold-despawn issue.
* Coastal cliffs, another great area for newbies though I'm not sure how easy it is to hide in the environment. I will need input from new players about the feasibility of training stealth or archery here.
* Unnamed area referenced in the begginning of this post, great area for hiding due to trees, mild, and full of easy creatures for the new player to hone archery and stealth on. It makes sense because when I was a boy, frog gigging did
indeed teach stealth in real life.
Ideas for improvement: I'm not sure if this is a bug, but the frogs there cannot be skinned or butchered. It would be a great and easy place to start to learn skinning, though i'm unsure what frog skins could really be useful for. As far
as eating, frog legs are delish and would make hunting them seem less barbaric since we could use their meat. The only glaring issue with this area that I see is that there is no risk since the frogs arent capable of attacking. I think
introducing some more hostile creatures to this area would 'balance it out'. Something like snakes, or any other made up or naturally occuring fauna. Would be great to hear some ideas concerning this since I'm sort of blanking on it.

[jilliana]

I am particularly interested in this since I am working on a couple of characters that are stealthy, and one of them is having a hard time training up.

[Lysse]

The Coastal Cliffs shouldn't provide any penalties to stealth, from what I could tell in my time there. The crabs there are also pretty darn easy to skin. The worst part is just how remote it is, but other than that it should be a viable stealth training area for low skilled PCs.

[Selene]

That area isn't intended to be a newbie training area. It's simply a flavor area.

That said, the frog legs are now skinnable and cookable, much as crab legs are.

[baerden]

Ah, well its a neat little area and would be great for new players to practice stealth/archery.

Thanks for adding the frog legs mmmm.