Hi Wizards,

I\'m still a newbie to Batmud. I played about a year or so ago, and I quit
when
I hit the wall around lvl 40. I\'m at that point again, and apparently not
much
has changed. I\'m about to quit again, and I won\'t be coming back this time.

I don\'t know what to do to make experience so I can level up some and be
accepted/useful in a party that can make reasonable experience. I\'ve tried at

least 15 different \"lowbie\" areas as a ranger, and the best I can
do solo is
about 1K/minute. That\'s assuming I get lucky with not getting critted. Even
then I couldn\'t keep that pace for a long stretch.

I started out as a ranger, because everyone pretty much said that was the
best
newbie guild. As it turns out, I\'m starting to think that\'s the only newbie
guild.

I spent the mass majority of the first 10 days mudtime in the newbie mines
making cash, so when I decided to make the jump above level 30 I would have
some decent equipment. I bought a bunch of equipment I wouldn\'t be able to
make on my own, even with a big party of similar level. I also walked around
every area I could find that didn\'t have a bunch of aggro\'s and blockers
(using twomi\'s outworld maps).

Right now out of 120 unidle players, 18 are tarmalens (myself being an unidle

tarmalen) - about 15% of the unidle mud population. I asked for a party a bit

ago (a few times), and nobody needs a small tarma. I\'ve been online for 3
hours and 27 minutes, and I\'ve made 9000 experience from raising/ressing.
That\'s 42 experience points per minute. Though I have only been a tarma for a
few weeks, this has been about the norm, it\'s not uncommon. I\'ve been
checking unidle population vs unidle tarm population since I reinc\'ed, and it
seems to always be between 1/6th and 1/4th of the mud.

As a ranger with \"good\" purchased equipment I could solo between
700-1200
experience per minute, which is rather slow when it comes to gaining levels
and raising skills at lvl 40. Consider that\'s an inflated number, because it
doesn\'t take into account times spent getting to and from areas (walking to
fraggles/docks as a ranger giant took at least 10 minutes real time, even with

hiking at 90!). I say \"good\" equipment because quite a few people
complimented on the eq set I was using, so I\'m assuming most newbies have
more awful sets of equipment. I made most of my money (probably 2 million or
so total) running through the newbie mines and hoping for ea scrolls while
killing black puddings.

I\'ve tried barbarian before (from my year ago character), and it\'s very
difficult without reputation. Nobody would party with me, and I couldn\'t solo
because healing took forever.

I\'m tempted to reinc into merchant or alchemist to try them out, but all I
hear from people is \"Don\'t do it before you hit 20 million experience
or you\'ll be
useless beyond mining\", and I have to believe that because they\'ve been
pretty
dead on about other classes I\'ve asked about and tried. Mining sounds kinda
fun so I might try it anyways, but then again it\'ll probably get boring fast
as newbie mines cash runs did.

I have 8 1/2 million experience, and I couldn\'t even get myself a decent
equipment set without buying it. I used snickersnack axes as a ranger and they
seemed to work about the best of anything I\'ve tried, but even then I hit less
than 2/3 of the time and never very hard. A year ago I used merchant made axes
and they didn\'t work quite as well, but at least they didn\'t need repair
after a few days of use. I have tried brantis axes, and slicer axes. I\'ve
tried ranger swords and ivory sabres, and spider sabres. I still hit pretty
crappy, and most of those weapons get damaged rather quickly.

I couldn\'t get alot of those weapons by killing the mobs myself, even with a

party of people several levels higher than me. Last time I went into brantis
castle as a ranger something killed me in two rounds (that\'s one of the
cheaper axes I purchased). Even if I could, I wouldn\'t want to. It would take
alot
longer than running through the newbie mines and just buying them anyway.
People have told me to \"go exploring\" to get more experience, and
to a point
that seemed to work well. However, I\'m at 34% explore and I\'ve been nearly
everywhere on twomi\'s map I could find that hasn\'t got aggresive\'s or
blockers
I don\'t have a chance of beating. Someone told me to take a guild that has
invis, but even with invis on I\'ve died to mobs on explore, so I don\'t know.
I
think that route might seem logical to someone who knows the game well, but it
doesn\'t work when you don\'t know which places are safe to go.

I\'ve also tried the route of doing quests, but they don\'t seem to be good
for much of anything. When I played a year ago I did enough ranger quests to
get 10 gq points and get a boon. I tried fastcamp and the better fires, but
neither
seemed to do much considering all the time I spent getting those quests. Level
quests don\'t seem to do much of anything. I\'m told they decrease the cost of
leveling some, but I never noticed it. The older players tell me it only
really matters at higher levels, so I say why don\'t low level quests give a
bonus we can use, like a decent piece of equipment with my name. I was also
told gold is a reward for area quests, but the most I\'ve ever gotten was from
doing the zoy\'s inn quest, and even that was a laughable sum for the time I
spent working on it. The only one that ever seemed even slightly worth doing
was the newbie taskmaster. Very few people want to spend weeks or months of
volunteer work on something nobody will see/use, so why is it the things that
sound like the most fun are made unreachable for a newbie. Merchanting sounds
like alot of fun to me, as does alchemy.. but then I\'m told to get the
necessary skills to do it decently you need twice or three times the amount of
xp I have.

Alot of skills seem virtually useless for various reasons. Hunting, fishing (
takes forever to become hungry/thirsty), stargazing (never used it), locate
water (never used it), lesson poison (whats the point when remove poison is
there), soul hold (never found a use), guardian angel (lasts like 20 seconds
and costs a bundle), etc.

So I\'m here asking, what am I supposed to do? Do the veterans and oldbie
wizards really not want new blood in the higher levels that much? If so.. why?

Is the game supposed to be so difficult at level 40? Why can\'t I seem to get

over this hump and join the ranks that other players want to party with? At
what point am I big enough to start making equipment that\'s useful to me?

There was a tp rain apparently while I was eating dinner, first one I\'ve ever

seen in about 22 days of actual play time. I guess it\'s a new years
tradition.
Of course, I got back and found myself dead from clones - another part of the

tradition. What a \"fun\" new years tradition. Just makes me want to
logon and
play. 98 players are still dead and a magic eating cloud event has just been
thrown. 98 players who probably won\'t even be able to get a raise til the
thing\'s dead (I\'m lvl 40 and I don\'t have enough SP\'s at MAX to case raise

dead).. Awesome holiday, thanks. I can\'t even cast summon with full SP\'s ..

great.

Why are TP\'s so rarely made available for earning? I\'ve gotten 3 over my
entire
time playing (including the character I played a year ago). On average that\'s

one per 7 days (24 hour periods) of logged on play. Does that mean I have to
be on for 70 days before I can get a permanent tiny boon? It\'s almost as
though you wizards get punished for making events or bonuses achievable by
newbies.

The only events I\'ve ever had a chance at as a newbie were the rats and
snowball fight, both of which have nothing useful as reward - I think killing

50 or 100 rats gives like 2000 gold as a reward.. yay. I spent a TP on one of

the temporary boons once, I took the exp gain and it was hardly even
noticable, I think I gained about 10k/hour extra. That\'s pretty laughable,
even for a newbie like me.

This writing may seem to be getting more and more pessimistic, and there\'s
good reason. I started writing it two hours ago, and since that time I\'ve a)
died to clones (apparently thrown twice), b) missed the only tp rain I\'ve
ever seen
thrown, c) can\'t even raise a person because of a magic eater event, and d)
watched a wizard throw a TP event realistically doable only by merchants (40
minutes into the 1 hour window one person -a merchant- has completed it)
--> Fizzl awards Zock 3 points for completing \'Fizzl\'s spell components\'
task.

Happy New Years, huh?

Most times when I ask questions about where to explore, what\'s good for xp,
etc. on the newbie channel I get told openly or via private tell \"find
out for
yourself\" and sneered at as though I was a Puritan who had just
committed
adultery. A few times people have been nice and given me helpful answers (
mostly through private tells), and Cozmo even helped me with experience once
near Christmas (thanks, one of the few truly generous acts I\'ve seen from
highbies on the mud) but that\'s far from the norm. Why should unhelpful/
disrespectful players even be allowed to speak on a newbie channel? Isn\'t the
point of the channel for learning the ins and outs of the game, and asking the
\"dumb\" questions? There\'s an entire channel devoted solely to
BS.. channelban them to that single channel if they can\'t control their
impulses for insulting and discouraging newbies who ask questions.

Speaking of which, why are things like this even allowed in the game?

A firework explodes \"Lick A SACK\" in the sky.
A firework explodes \"SUCK A COCK MUTAH FUCKAH\" in the sky.
A firework explodes \"EAT A BIG FAT DICK U PUSSYS\" in the sky.

Childish doesn\'t even begin to justify that... I know 10 yr olds with more
maturity. Yet whomever did it probably doesn\'t even get a slap on the wrist.
I\'m at an impass... I like alot of the things in batmud. Guilds are distinct
enough to encourage and in some cases require partying, lots of races, guilds,
and alignments make for nearly endless replaying, and the outworld minimap
while walking is absolutely brilliant. I want to continue to play .. but at
the same time I\'m going to quit if it remains so hard to get past this stupid
hump I seem stuck on. So wizards, please let me know if there are other guilds
that are fun and very playable at lvl 40, or if you intend to make some other
guilds more playable for newbies. Otherwise just let me know, I\'ll bow out
and find a more realistically playable game. I hope things can be adjusted to
make my playing as a lvl 35-40 more enjoyable.

I hope this gets read by someone in a position to make the game more
interesting and accessible to us newbies,

Harley

Enjoy the celebrations tonight (or yesterday if you\'re living in
tomorrowland).

Sorry that posted so badly, paste definitely did not work as intended