Shattered Kingdoms

Have you been playing the same games I have? Games these days are way more of a time sink than the games I grew up on.

Promoting time sinks isnt quite the same thing as promoting patience. And newer games, particularly social games, will let you skip past most anything that requires patience, as long as you cough up enough money.

Speaking of time, how long does it typically take for a character to reach "Grandmaster" status?

depends on you and how nice people want to be to you

This is a lesson they learned well from the Koreans. Kekeke.

Totally solo, it takes 15-50 hours of dedicated time spent xping, depending on your expertise. For a new player, 50 solo sounds about right. However, you don't typically get xp just sitting around, so even if you make it a goal, you might hit 100-125 hours before reaching GM your first time if you do your xp alone.

If you make a few friends, you might find you get pumped up in levels super fast. Despite this being a heavy RP mud just make your desires known IC and people will tend to help you on your way - if that includes prioritizing getting to GM, you'll find that a bunch of us who like having GMs around to help with adventuring are willing to take the time to group with you and otherwise help you speed things up.

Cheesekk, as a fellow CF alumn (albeit not for the last 18 years), I would like to welcome you to SK. There are bound to be a few things that will feel familiar, at least at first. CF certainly had an influence on SK's early development. But one thing to keep in mind is that the influence has gone both ways. There some imms and coders for CF that got their start on SK as well.

I hope you enjoy your time here!

I've decided to give the game a go, after spending much time to try to understand the logistics of it through reading help files and forum posts. Is there a good way in-character to go about finding a trainer? I spent over an hour looking in my starting city without much luck. Maybe I should stand in the streets and yell?

cheesekk, it is unrealistic to expect to be GM in 15hrs, have heard 50hrs. To do it in 15 would require some sort of xp twinking, which is probably a bug. The 100-125 is about right for a starting player.

Take Galactus' "advice" with a grain of salt. He's an old timer who isn't very good at making or keeping friends in game. It all comes down to your priorities, and if leveling up is one of them, you'll go on the low end of the range I threw out there.

As to trainers, yeah, standing in a street and yelling isn't a bad way, that'll get attention from any PCs in the city. There are low lvl trainers in all the starting areas, so if you follow the hints you'll find those. For more advanced training, try the "Mentor" command in game. It will alert higher level characters that you're looking for someone to help with training, though buyer beware, there is no guarantee that there will be experienced players behind these characters - just work with what you get.

Glad we could get you set up. You and any other new faces reading this are welcome to keep posting or PMing logistics questions about your first chars... see you in game.