I abhor observation experience, but going through the game more slowly lately in the low levels has trained me what to look for and how to pace myself based on how many edges I need by different points in my character's life and how much CON/exp holes I'll sacrifice to get a look at more dangerous things.

Doing the stupid song and dance for a handful of mages hasn't trained me to find aura and shield rods any better but I am aware of a few limited sources for them that no one uses, including alignment/ethos/class specific wands that can be used freely to substitute for a sleek and are easier/quicker to farm. In many cases if the Immortals have rewarded a character enough, and they have sat on enough gear for a long enough time period it doesn't actually matter, but it does allow me to experiment and get a feel much longer for how they actually think. I have also become vaguely aware that there can't be much more than a dozen sleek barrier locations in the entire MUD period. If your character can avoid mob aggro (and most victims going to those sleek locations can't, even and especially with a group), barrier actually becomes a huge PK magnet.

Different characters can cover different amounts of ground for tracking. The best tracker for PK's actually isn't an air shifter or a ranger, nor an assassin, nor a thief with City Ties, it's a conjurer with Master of Planar Rifts. When you don't have to worry about cursed rooms no one will actually be in anyway and no dragon's lairs and no more noexit rooms, it becomes much more reasonable to spam teleport around a continent, spot someone in the same area, explore it a bit, find out why they are there, and note something to tesseract to or walk in later. You also become immune to air shifters who are typically swooping down on you prepped with a/b/s anyway, if you don't land dispel in the first cast or two. You are also immune to people waiting at your recall. Second best for this is an invoker simply because in many cases they don't actually care what they teleport into.

As you get better at THAT over time, you track better on other characters without relying on luck of the draw as much, otherwise as a newer player you're stuck checking the same dozen areas for your PK range and ignoring the other explore areas you could be checking along the way using junk to refresh with at a healer, though the MUD is still too damn large and needs more gear destruction/looting penalties for 'going off the beaten path to solo rank' as Sevriis describes it. Exploring is all fine and dandy to figure out how to solo level unusual combos off of specific mobs but it needs to stop being a method of effectively removing yourself from PK range for a six hour login. Only logging in at 3 AM should do that.

If you are not focusing on improving these aspects specifically over the course of various characters to a certain extent, it all tends to fall apart and you stay 'new'. I am finding even as I get better at these aspects, I'm so soured on how much time the entire MUD takes just to rush to the point you feel 'productive' at X level, that the things I learn often become moot outside of passing it along to the next poor bastard who is standing around getting full sacced by Outtie gangs in the 30's or something.

TL;DR Being a newbie isn't about the amount of time you've spent playing, it's how wisely you've used it, asking the right questions to learn the right skills, and a big healthy does of luck not to get steamrolled by a Villager, a Scion, or a paladin wielding Defiance, prayer beads, and a helm of brilliance.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 09/08/2013 03:48PM by Scrimbul.