Shattered Kingdoms

That REASON is why they're more expensive.

I'm pretty sure that it's in the Bible somewhere in Leviticus where SK characters cannot live on weapons alone.

That's stupid, though. The newb-school weapons should be priced like the newb-school skills. They should be accessible. A wooden weapon is completely impractical for any length of time. You -have- to buy a weapon.

Just because it makes sense in the real world theory of 'supply and demand' doesn't mean it's newbie friendly. It's very disheartening to start out in a newbie school with one gold and not be able to buy any equipment (especially for those fighter classes that would do best with a weapon other than a dagger).

There's a lot of ways to fix this: make newbie school NPCs drop equipment, make the starting weapon something better than wood, up the amount of coin received upon creation, subsidize newbie eq shops, make newbie quests to reward equipment, ect.

It's not going to imbalance the game at all to make the character creation process a little less frustrating.

I don't know what the fuss is about.

I spammed the "outfit" command at level one and had a pile of wooden weapons that lasted just fine through level, like, ten.

I use the dagger. It seems to work fine. I get to journeyman in under ten hours on average. I've not done it with all classes, but I can say that it wasn't very difficult. I'm fine with making newbie areas more friendly, but Taslamar is pretty much the shizzle, thanks to the former incarnation of Algorab. It might be a good idea to add a few more resets for gear on NPCs that could be picked up and sold off. I'm not against that, but there are five other KD's in charge of the other five newbie zones. I can't speak for them.

How about adding in horseshoes in the countries that provide armor to their newbies? I created an alt just to get some frustration out the other day, and none of the newbie zones have horseshoes, or cheap enough ones for newbies to buy.

But I've had no problem either with the wood weapons either, or purchasing a slightly more sturdy weapon for less than a few gold (which only took me a handful of kills to get). What I would like to see brought back is the "unique" starting weapons for each class, we had this once and was never sure why it changed. It was nice to see a priest starting with a mace, a paladin started with a sword, a rogue with a dagger, etc. Now, the only people that get "unique" starting kits are scouts (bows and quivers) and mages (wands) to my knowledge.

It was changed because the IMMs wanted newbs to start off with some proficiency with a weapon when they started, so you didn't have to spend 1/4 of your starting money and all of your experience just to be able to gain experience. And, to do this, they decided that everyone should start off with the same proficiency in the basic weapon class(daggers).

While I do miss having a wooden sword as a starter weapon, I'm alright with this change.

On an unrelated note, Archernar, while Taslamar is definitely my favorite starting area, you guys really should scale the training cost to match with the other kingdoms. 1.5 silver was great when we didn't have the trust fund, but now it takes all your starting coin just to train one skill.

How difficult would it be to go in and tweak the costs of things in Exile? It seems that could solve some of the issues.

Personally, I think every newbie school should be the same, as far as what it offers in training costs and eq. So why do some schools give newbies eq and others you have to buy it? I can understand areas like the North and the Empire being harder on people, but who in their right mind would choose to start in an area where they have to buy their gear versus one where they can just ask for it (besides the restrictions on certain races not being able to start in these cities). In my opinion, this just encourages people to not play these choices because they can not get free "goodies". Either give away a kit in all schools or take it away from those that have it. My personal choice would be to give it to all, make it cheap and not really on the sturdy side if you have to, but give the newbies equal footing.

Who bases their starting location on what free goodies they get there? Newbies don't know any better, and experienced players will probably make the rounds from newbie area to newbie area, doing quests and training skills at Kytar, if they really care.