Shattered Kingdoms

Which would be great to have in game...

SK's in-game documentation is a bit.. sparse.

Now that I've played the game awhile, I've gotten used to some things, but I still think it's odd one is directed off the game and onto the forums, for example, for a lot of things that would be better served having documentation in game.

While I get that SK wants to encourage newbies to talk to players, I also feel a lot of my more stupid questions probably could have been answered in a help file.

Here are a few things I wish I knew that aren't in easily accessible help files:

* The names of the capitals of countries. Having 'help nerima' redirect to 'help zhenshi' for example would be great.

* The names of country portal stones, maybe appended to the 'help gate' file. The names aren't that important to know as a non-gater, but people reference them all the time ICly in a manner which seem to make them common knowledge. I didn't know what Arne was for like the first three weeks of playing. I thought it was a NPC.

* OOC mechanical information, like race/class stat caps. I understand the reasoning behind not including this in in-game help files, but I think it just pretty much just leads to ooc pestering or going off-site to find them out instead.

* General armor quality to status rank guidelines, for the same reasons as above. I also don't think there's a help thievery in game file, or if there is I couldn't find it after my first incident of 'thieves have stolen your crap!!!'

* A full area list help file (that displays all non-secret locations, if there even are secret areas??) that doesn't respect your level if you're too high or low for it. It doesn't need to include sextant coordinates or whether or not you've discovered them yet, it'd just be nice to reference.

Umm. I had a few more but I can't think of them right now.

The other thing that'd be really nice to have... is reviewing quests with the quest command, to actually get the full text of what was said or add in a keyword to get new mission directions.

I've basically got a bunch of quests from early on that I have no idea how to do anymore because I didn't log them. Some quests can be really time consuming to do if you have no idea what you were doing, either, and if you forget who or where the turn-in NPC is, you're basically being punished for not logging by not being able to get new directions.

Hi, welcome to SK or something!

I haven't played in a pretty long time and could be considered a newbie again..



I agree, and it can be even harder to ask questions while staying in character. It took me about 20 minutes to hunt down the outfit command and a bit of fiddling to remember the command to list available commands.



I think the reason you don't see these is because IC info isn't really intended to be available in help files. You also wont find a list of cabal abilities or anything like that. Those things are intended, for a lack of better terms, to be something you have to learn. I guess it adds a bit of mystery and intrigue and whatnot, but it can be frustrating.



Once upon a time, numbers were attached to dang near everything, over time, exact numbers turned into general words to describe stuff. Kind of annoying, but whatever.



I also think this is annoying, but I do enjoy now that when you buy an item in a shop it makes you confirm if you're too low level for it. As you spend more time playing though, you'll be able to determine what quality level is intended for what player levels.



There are secret areas, and I feel like you used to be able to list all areas - but can't remember for sure. Best to stick to the areas in your level range though, otherwise you could get prawned by NPCs in areas that are too high level to you. Once you're more experienced you'll be able to find those secret areas and whatnot, and then be free to take your newbie to them to get killed or whatever.



Yeah, I hate that you can't see the task of a quest with the quest command.

3_16 covered it, but I started typing before I got caught up with something in-game, so I'm going to post what I had intended to anyway:

Some of these probably will never be put into the game as helpfiles, but there are ways to work around them in an IC fashion. For instance, the information about portal stone names or armor qualities can be made public through notice boards or other publications. This has been done with adventuring guides through certain puzzle areas.



This is already being looked at, but it's kind of a sizable undertaking.



It's now placed on my to-do list. Sometime later in the week, it shall be done. Some of the kingdom helpfiles already feature the starting cities in the text, so I don't view this as an unreasonable stretch.

* The names of country portal stones, maybe appended to the 'help gate' file. The names aren't that important to know as a non-gater, but people reference them all the time ICly in a manner which seem to make them common knowledge. I didn't know what Arne was for like the first three weeks of playing. I thought it was a NPC.

Thinking these is common knowledge is one of my most hated things on returning to SK. There is one skill to work out what their names are in the game and it is a great interaction with the class that has it to go exploring with them and locating as many as you can find.

The race/class stat words rather than numbers was an active change made to try to take people out of the mind set of min maxing. The only reason the information is out there is because of some very clever memory and meta gaming work. Not that its that hard once you work it out to calculate it. It does give the old hands an edge on newbies but it really isnt that big a deal.

Armor lists are an interesting subject when I last looked in on it there was still much debate about how it all worked. So once you figure it out write it all down and take it to the printing press ICly.

A help file on ooc/ic thieves would be great, just a simple message letting people know its to balance high level gear vs low level chars but if you ask around you can pick this up quickly.

The area command gives you all the areas of your level range. The restriction is a lot more useful than you would think saving many a newbies life. Although it would be nice to list all areas just because it is quite an impressive number.

Back in my day we didnt even have a quest command you had to remember what quests you had done and not done. Those where the "golden days". Its better now but like you said it can be improved but its a lot of work it took 7 years for the bard class. Im sure its on the list of things to do.

As a side note everything in help files is accessible knowledge ICly. So if you see it in a help file you can use it Icly as knowledge which is why some things never show up in them. Sometimes self testing and research is part of the fun of knowing the answers to share with others.

Okay, so, update on the query of quests:

There's no way to set up the quest list to pertain specifically to the step of the quest you're currently on. It doesn't seem right to give every step of a complex quest as soon as you start the first piece, though. As I go through the list, I will check the scripts to make sure that you can use the original required keyword to get to the next task, regardless of your progress. In other words, this won't happen overnight.

I've found it useful to set an alias for quests that I'm performing which have several tasks to them, or which have keywords that aren't as obvious as the more common ones. You could use the in-game aliases, but there's a limit of twenty, I believe. You could also use your client's alias system, assuming it has one. Most do.

If you're using zmud, you could set an alias with the name tasks and, in the value, type something like this: #say "valley of ashes - kill 20 grim minotaurs, then report*"

You can easily add several to your list, and remove them as you complete them. It might be a helpful thing to do, at least until Meissa finishes that keyword project she's got on her list.

Also, I really love that idea for an "area all" command to see a list of all areas, regardless of status. Sometimes when I've finished my leveling and am helping others, I just space on which areas are best for what status ranges. It would make things so much easier to see a list like that, or one where you can specify the list based on a given status, like "area apprentice"

I would disagree that the advantage of knowing what you're doing with a build is not a big deal. In other parts of the forums, I see threads about people who have moved on from mains due to poor builds, and I presume a proper build makes a big difference in small group PK and in ability to be effective at end game hunting. The information isn't unknown, it's just not listed in the game, adding an extra layer of ooc digging in order to get it.

While I'm not saying emphasis should be placed on ooc game mechanics, at the same time, without mechanics, you don't have a game. It's beneficial to the game to have the information accessible to newbies who want to take advantage of it. It doesn't have to be numbers, either. Maybe have some guy in a training area say: "The greatest examples of your class spend a lot of time training up x stats. It should take you x training sessions to reach your maximum potential." 

As for the area list, I suggest it be available for precisely the reasons outlined by MsPooperTrooper. At end game when the difficulty of areas is no longer a concern. it's good to be able to reference the names of areas even when they're too low for you to hang out there, for the benefit of helping lower-leveled people.

Re: quest text, does that mean that the flags for progress can't be used to open up a new entry, for example? That said, my issue with quests isn't really in the quest entry, it's that directions are never repeated by the quest giver (depending on who wrote the quest, I believe), even if you say the keyword again. Even if you can get the next step of the quest with the same keyword, if you forget the directions, you're still SOL and will get some inane comment like, "Are you done with that job I gave you yet?" (Extremely frustrating when you don't remember what the job /is/....)

Re: aliases for remembering things -- I play from a lot of different places, one of those primarily being my phone. While it's a good suggestion I'll use when I'm playing from a computer, copy-pasting from the client I have installed on my phone is impossible, and making a bunch of aliases isn't that convenient, any more than saving notes to a separate note-taking app would be. It's a bandaid fix for something that should be taken care of serverside. That said, I'm glad to hear it's being looked at.

As stated previously, I will be updating the entries on the quest list to include the first keyword associated with the task and altering the scripts.If you have moved on to the second or third portion of a multi-task quest, the keyword in the quest log will repeat (or at least prompt you in logical sequence) the dialogue that pertains to your current assignment.

The only thing I feel is lacking from help files is how important art is for PvP for casters, the help file doesnt really give you a good indication and for a sorceror and their quite a large number of trains its hard to switch to dumping points into art at higher levels when you might get the understanding required from RP. Hard but not impossible. Also art with recite brandish and zap has no indication that it effects each one at a different level (assuming it still does).

The people who delete from wrong stat builds are normally so far off the path that having the information would not have helped them. I think the most recent effort was someone who had something like low str dex and con as a paladin. Thinking they where more a caster class than they are, ironically the RP that created was according to the afterlife threat quite engaging.

There are some things when it comes to maxing all stats that is counter intuitive. Im sure some much more skilled PKs can make their statements one or two stat trains in the wrong place wont effect PK that much. Ten stat trains going in the wrong direction will. A lot of people who have issues with PK will think the secret is in the build but its really in the prep/planning work.

It might be nice to see what race class combinations are good at vs weak at but then we would never get dwarf priests which I loved to play when I rocked one, getting interrupted by someone trying to tell you to hurry up as you are rezing them is priceless.

See:

Help Cities
Help Exile
Help Kol's (or Help Moot)
Help Menegroth
Help Nerina
Help Sith'a'Niel
Help Teron


Backwards compatibility to come soon!