Shattered Kingdoms

I am not sure if you have seen them yet but there are pretty nice maps of the main cities on the website. I leave the world map up at all times so I can get my bearings in the wilderness.

Dis right hurr~♫

Smoochy is keeping that in mind when outfitting newbies. But at the same time, you kinda always want to give a newbie something special. Something that will most certainty give them the most BANG for their buck! Step right up to the bar. We're talking godly or even outstanding quality here, folks! So do dem levels harder, darn you! Better! FASTER! STWUNGAR!

Gots some 'o dem smooches Smoochy wants tah gi'yah!~♫

Ok I apologize on advance for what I wrote below but I felt this feedback could be valuable to you and so out of a desire to be helpful I wrote it.

As a newbie I have to say, the identification or examination of items is clearly broken if you have to tell somebody to play a specific class so they can use the ONE SPELL that lets people see basic data about a given item that should already be available from the stock 'look' and 'examine' commands already, but isn't because nobody on the dev team seems to give a crap about something as basic as usability for new players.

Yes, that a cold thing to say but I'm sorry it has to be said, From my perspective as both a sk noobie and somebody with some basic experience working as a software developer for games myself, I cant help but feel sufficiently qualified to say that it needs said because I get the impression that nobody seem to care about the newbies when the only response we get back is "that's too bad, level up, veterans know, play the one class that can identify things, etc" even if by some miracle that isn't true. And lets face it not everybody is like me, not everybody will stick around to complain, not everybody would give you this amazing feedback you can use to make things better.

Newsflash: Without noobies the game is slowly dying. That is why you had to "consolidate" areas to make the world feel less empty with barely anybody playing it. The game is dying. I'm trying t help you save it, but your ignoring feedback that could do so. I log in do a 'who' and its never that many people.

I mean, if the mud was more visual you would be able to simply look at an item on the screen and get a feel for the quality of the item; But that's not what mud's do and I understand this, so we can can only consider an item by typing look or explain at it and yet using these 2 commands doesn't give you the data you need so I have to consider that to be a game breaking DEFECT. Its insane and RP breaking that basic data about an object I would know in real life just from glancing at an item is not available to a full EXAMINE of the item without first being a magic user who has a spell that my mage still cant reliably cast.

A lot of these changes are alienating newer players; I find myself less and less interested in playing due to stuff like this. And don't get me wrong; I love many of the things I have seen in SK.. but I don't want to play it and get sucked in if I cant trust the dev team cares about new players like I know we all cared for them in the games I have worked on either directly or indirectly myself.

And I can't. The one developer of the entire game sits in his iron tower and barely interacts with the player base from what little I have seen, but is great at dictating things.. Via email comments are short, succinct, cold, and honesty sort of anti-social even for a developer. I honestly worry and wish I could help in some way but every time I log in I either find nothing to do or a new bug that kills my joy and makes me log out.

And the maps? Not as good as you think. I'm thankful for them as they allow a basic idea but a map is a map and these are not maps. For example: Tell me where on the map the bank is in Telron? You can't, its not listed. Yet that and a basic newbie gear shop should be on the list wouldn't you say?

Duane, it's unfair of you to give out so much advice while also ignoring the majority of the advice that is given you.

I have consolidated all the information that any newbie needs to know here about item-level thieves. Almost all of it has already been mentioned in this thread, and most of it in multiple posts.

A) If you are buying an item from a shopkeeper, then you will be warned if it is above your level when you try to buy it. As such, the only items that you need to worry about being stolen are those given to you, or those you find lying around.
B) If an item is not steel, iron, leather, cloth or some other basic material, it is likely medium to high level and -can- be stolen from you unless you are at least veteran status. If a piece of equipment otherwise seems exotic or is a reaching weapon, it is also likely that it is not a low-level item that may be stolen from you until you hit veteran status. Don't rely on that piece of equipment not being stolen.
C) Taslamar and Nerina specifically provide shops that you can buy low-level armor/weapons from if you have trouble finding them. North of Taslamar's center fountain in the Academy (Near Iserken), and in the southwest corner of Nerina in the open market.
D) It's not a big deal to have items stolen from you when you're below veteran. You can completely outfit yourself in armor to get to veteran status as any class for practically nothing from either of these two areas. You can even place up to ten enchantments on an item before it starts affecting the item's level as it compares to thieves.
E) As you get higher in levels, you will likely make friends with people who can cast the identify spell if you cannot do so. If an item is described as having superior, outstanding, or near god-like quality, then you will want to be mentor/mastor/GM or thereabouts before you rely on that item not being stolen.


That is all the advice that you, or any newbie, needs to know as it relates to item level thieves. Yet, you haven't actually listened to any of it, and instead have only demanded that changes be made to the game to accommodate the way that you think it should be played. If you think about that, you're refusing to do the very thing (listen to advice) that you're demanding the admins of the game do, even though the advice given to you is very clear.

SK has a steep learning curve. As a new player to the game, you have more to learn about how the game is played than you have to contribute to the betterment of the game with regard to code changes. Everyone here wants to help you, and they want to hear your advice, but you're not going to get anywhere if you never listen.

Tagging on to Edoras' post there -

One of the best aspects of SK is the interaction with other players.
Most more experienced characters will do what we can to help less experienced ones in the game, if you ask:
-Ask for money to buy the armor.
-Ask for help finding the right shops.
-Ask for help enhancing armor.
-Explain what you are struggling with in combat, and chances are we'll find you the accessories to ease the burden.

It is nifty in SK that you CAN in fact wear items that are 'above your characters level.' Most games do the 'You can't wear that yet.'
When you buy something above your level, there's some relation between your level and the item's level that gets calculated in the chance the thieves will take it. It's not 100%.

This game takes a bit of pride in not being 'about the numbers,' and imposing a degree of exploration and interaction above mechanical transparency.
Makes for an interesting learning curve, but not that can't be overcome.

Does someone with a bit more experience than me know the full range of item descriptions that 'indicates' their general level range from poor to near god-like, and how that 'relatively' indicates level range? Seems like at least one mechanic this newbie is looking for we have... no extra magic/identification needed. Should this be help-filable?

As with the values for the individual attributes (which obscure specific levels and number values), the general range of item quality descriptors -is- listed in game...

Newsflash: SK has been slowly "dying" for years because it is a text-based game in 2015 that caters to a niche market (players that like both RP and PK) and competes with graphical games like World of Warcraft for players, not because your feedback has been ignored.



This might have been true ten years ago, but it is a liability now. SK forces interaction with other players for brewing, consecrating, enchanting, fletching, scribing, identify, and adventuring in most of the high level areas in the game. When the who list could support those activities, it was fun. It is no longer fun when the who list hovers around ten players and you can't even form groups to explore new areas added to the game. In that regard, I agree with Duane.

Help on 'hoarding thieves' is now available in game and linked via the help objects command. This file is long overdue and my apologies for continuously overlooking it.

Thanks. Though still nothing the non-caster is going to directly see without help. Mmm.
But enough info to brainstorm:

Consideration 1:
Ah! Maybe something can be added to the value command at the shops:
If a character who is apprentice or lower, and at a shop, using the value command, and the item is > their level:
In addition to being told how much the item may sell for, give an indicator that '<so and so> looks mighty valuable for a young adventurer such as yourself. Perhaps you want to sell it before the thieves get their hands on you.'
Essentially - Limited feature so one can't determine what levels items are, because that could become easy to do, but for newer characters to feel safer about their newbie gear.
Let's just say shopkeepers can pick out less experienced adventurer and try and 1) be a bit helpful, 2) encourage an exchange at his store, 3) leave it up to the character at that point to decide to take the risk and keep it overnight or sell it.

Benefit: helps newbies w/o benefiting others
doesn't take too much away from RP interaction with others
identification still useful.
don't need to rely solely on someone else as a low level character to know if something's not a risk
the mechanics of this change would blend into an NPC shop environment/interaction

Negative: it's a coding answer
doesn't require interaction with a PC to get an answer
it's possible to stick with the 'entry level zone' equipment and be safe without making any changes

Consideration 2:
When finishing the new newbie school -
Is there some means to point graduates to the locations of where they may find the newbie gear
Or, to at least one place more specifically in their own home kingdom.
This can be done by builders, not code, if it's not already in the works.
Easier to implement - same relative results.

Thanks for the update, Dulrik.

I going to suggest a solution that I'm sure has been suggested before.

Let people goto a shop to identify an item. This would cost money, and makes perfect sense.
Assuming we have sorcerer shop keepers, why wouldn't they sell their services to identify things for money? The idea that they wouldn't is very realistic for shopkeepers looking to make money.

To those that would argue this lowers the value of identify, I disagree. You would still have to bring those items to a shop keeper and pay them, while a friendly magic user could identify the item on the spot without having to go back to town or pay money.

This is also helpful for newbies who haven't identified every item in the game like the veterans have.