Shattered Kingdoms

I think the Newbie Academy was done very well. It creates a balanced start no matter which region was chosen and the speed of leveling was good. I have two suggestions based on my recent experience of leveling a sorcerer.

I noticed that while I was leveling at a decent speed, I was spending most of my time sleeping. I decided to time it which ended up being for every 1 to 2 minutes of combat I would sleep to regain mana for 4 to 5 minutes depending on getting energized. Would putting the rest bonus from the inn cause more trouble than it’s worth? The XP would likely have to be tweaked so that it is not to fast but I think it would allow for more action and less down time.

The second would be to alter the “you don’t belong here” teleport to be friendlier to true newbies. I often found it to be a bit unnerving especially when I forgot about it. What about turning that into a caravan ride where the driver can give you some history of your chosen city and some general locations of interest around it? (Optional of course)

Perhaps even drop them off in the next leveling zone with some location specific armor and weapon vendors, in addition to trainers that teach Novice abilities added to them. This may also be more trouble than it’s worth I am not sure, I just felt it might help extend a newbies progression on their own while they have more time to develop connections in game.

I posted about the "you don't belong here" message and it was supposedly a bug. You're not supposed to be able to train to Novice while still in the Academy. Guess it hasn't been fixed.

In the newbie school, the "outfit" command provides mage classes a magic missile wand, so they don't have to spend so much time resting. There just needs to be a hint to use the command.

I definitely need to change the 'You don't belong here'. I also might as well just give you either more wands or a wand with even more charges to start.

Skirmish + Ranged Spells
(lightning bolt/call lightning/cone of cold/magic missile/flamestrike)
Not full on AoEs.

No need ... you just use "outfit" when the wand blows up and you'll get another one.

Or make some really inexpensive ones available for purchase or available as part of a quest reward where you can ask for a handful more if you need them once the quest is completed.
And put a check in that script so after level 5 it simply doesn't work.

The problem is learning about the outfit command. I know I didnt learn about it until my second or third caster. It does seem like something a scripted quest NPC who checks if you have a wand then offers you a new one if you dont seems like an "easy" solution. Either at a dirt cheep price or for free.

Agreed, the problem is knowing about the outfit command, and it's also inconvenient to deal with all the other junk it gives you.

How about expanding the outfit command to:

Outfit <type>

types are: Armor, Weapons, Backpack (maybe a couple more broad categories but this seems to do most)