Shattered Kingdoms

And actually, PE really isn't as much of a problem at higher levels. I suspect in part that's because of constitution. You might try training that attribute, or getting gear that improves your constitution. (A low dexterity can also hurt your PE, but I don't think dexterity is connected to regeneration.)

I do suspect there's some legitimate concern. I'm not sure base PE got updated when so many skills started draining PE. Nonetheless, you can adapt. If it were impossible to level, we'd surely have noticed over the past year.

But if you REALLY want the PE problem to go away, you can always start a new character. Some races don't have this problem: Centaurs have natural endurance. Sprites have natural flight. Griffons have both, and don't need armor or weapons at low level either.

Maybe add something to the value command that indicates its quality.

Maybe add something to armor2 (or something else new) that gives some indication to how level names relate to armor quality names.

This seems less heavy handed.

I like Gremlin's approach to a fix, but a warning about login thieves in the newbie areas would be almost as good, and far easier to create.

No you don't.

Don't forget that if something is only a couple levels higher than you, there's a much smaller chance for it to get stolen than if it was Grandmaster quality. I've kept items before on characters of mine that were Grandmaster quality when I was a low level master.

And what class are you playing? As a giant, I would guess a fighting class, in which case you should learn endurance as soon as possible. If you can't find a trainer, just ask people in character until someone tells you, or just look around the major cities. Regen really does improve with level(Because of skills such as endurance, fast healing, meditation) and I've never seen a grandmaster take more than 12 ticks to fully regen while sleeping, usually it's around 8 at most.

The bottom line is, if there are skills that you could have learned but haven't (IE: Endurance, second or third attack, combat skills), then learn them as soon as possible, either by asking for a mentor or asking someone where they might find a trainer. Also, if you're having trouble with logout thieves, relogging 200 times over is the absolute-worst thing to do. As a giant, you should be able to kill a few NPCs within a decent amount of time and get some experience to make up for levels between you and the equipment you find.
Oh, and one more thing. Don't bash all the time, unless you need to(IE: You're fighting a caster class). I'm not sure if you are, but that's a huge PE drain as well.

You do get a reward. You get to use the item for a time. Other muds would deny you the ability to use said item. So rather than logging in and out why not use the item.
For PE, you dont need to spam bash, learn to bash when you need too. Use reaching weapons and a pet to not even need to bash at all. Dex has to do with PE recovery so if you havent got a reasonable dex it will slow you down. Also you do not recover PE in combat. So rest in stretches to recover your PE while training.

Maybe we should be able to see the quality of something by looking at it? Seems logical and like an easy solution.

QFT (Quoted For Truth)

If you find something good on your travels, get as much benefit as you can from it, but don't plan on holding on to it. You'd be better off travelling back to town before logout and trying to sell any items you aren't sure about. And at low levels, you increase in level fast enough that if you'd only re-logged 3x instead of 200x, you probably would have passed the cut-off point for the thieves for that item anyway.

I don't know how hard it would be to code but on the part of the item that is listed that shows its quality would then show a three color code system.

If it is green: A silver longsword (Brand New) then it is of your level or lower.

If it is yellow: A tanso longsword (Brand New) then it is within 5lvls of your char. It is a lower chance of the piece of eq being stolen but there still is a chance nonetheless.

If it is red: An adamantite longsword (Brand New) then it is over 5lvls of your char and is the most likely it will be taken by thieves.

Of course, only Big D knows the percentages but this seems to be a decent approximation.

The problem is, that kind of change would only be understood by a someone who already knows what's going on. True newbies won't be familiar with the situation and would ignore it. I still tend to think that just removing the option to buy the items would be best for newbies.

Well, a true newbie wouldn't know that if you walk around outside Teron, you might get killed by spiders. I think that this would be a good change, IF you put it in the tutorial-thingy.