New newbie experience.

So yeh made new char and went to try out new newbie stuffs. I went trough new cave, and ran around Hills a bit.

So far it loks good, few observatiosn from me:

- teleportation still feels like more intuitive way to go off inland. Maybe add mention about this alternative route to this old elf dialoge.
- Vines in spider cave are really hard - maybe tone them down a little.
- Spider eggs drop rates feel a bit too low

So yeh this is it for now. I will continue to play my new char for few more days (to around lv 20, i think or untill i explore all of Hills),adn give feedback here.

Good evening,

I will submit my feedback on the new player experience here as well.

I first did several rounds on the island to get some quests done (I wanted psych) and to interact with the NPC's.
When my Sword and Unarmed were level 8 and 9 (and psych at 3) I entered the cave-system. I had no trouble going through it (I have yet to die for the first time). (Note I did not do Gajus himself)
Currently I have explored most of the cave system that is shown on the map. I have reached the (first ? blue crystals) tunnel leading out of the cave.
Combat skills are now level 9 Sword and 10 Unarmed.
I have logged out for now to submit some feedback.

Things I noticed :
- the NPC's on the island currently give no hint through text that there may be another way out. I don't expect that of the Lighthouse-guy (who's focused on Teleportation) nor of Riger. But maybe Lawara could give a hint to seek out the mini dungeon.
- In the dungeon again no feedback is given that there may be way off the island. (When you approach Gajus, a text popup is given to give some insight about the danger of bosses; I could imagine that a similar popup might come up when decending the second spiral stairs;)

- I have found two apples on the island (one on the island, the other in the cave); When eating the apple, the foodbuff from either the Lawara's porridge or the foodbuff from the Hardtack food are overwritten; that is a little weird; the apple give a lesser / worse buff than the porridge or bread

- I think I noticed in the cave system, that the 'select next non-combatant' key does not select Cheesewheel or Hardroll (bread)

- on the first level of the cave system (directly after passing the 'how many godlings' force field) a good number of notes and some recipes are found;
It felt a bit weird that although there were a great many bookcases and books on the second level of the cave system, I could find no interactible items (pages or books)

I will log back in now; and continue down the new tunnel.

Kind regards Jack

My continuation...

I continued through the tunnel and I came to the second cave-map-area.
My thoughts on the 2nd (spider) cave system:
- again thanks for providing the map :-)
- the passages can be a bit tight; normally no problem, but after killing a couple of spiders, the spider corpses become blocking obstacles. This may be a learning experience; but when encountering a stack of corpses that someone else has killed, it may be confusing to a new player ?
- no problem that the MegaSpider is such a heavy hitter (for a new char); I died :-)
- after quickly stepping out of the cave system (I wanted to know where the white light would take me) and then re-entering the cave I found it unexpected that the lever-controlled rock wall had again lowered; and on this side of the wall there was no lever to be found; The player is given no warning that going through the lever-controlled wall is a one-way trip. This may be confusing


And my thoughts / observations on a short trip through Serbule Hills
- I had the bad luck that I entered Serbule Hills at 7 PM area-time; So it had just gotten dark; After playing for about half an hour it was 1 AM; I noticed at the time that I found the area a little 'glum'. Not really inviting or attractive; I think that may have been mainly due to me playing on a laptop with the graphics set very low; And it being night;
- After leaving the cave and entering Serbule Hills in the north, I headed for the nearest dark patch to where I was; I came to the house that had 3 heavy hitting spiders in it; I had hoped to find a vendor or NPC; that felt weird; (after going so long without seeing a NPC, somehow I had expected to see an NPC there;
- the first NPC I encountered was the Baroness; Hearing her speak of 'her people' I had expected to get some guidance as to where and who those people were. (Similar to the Animal Town mayor).
- the second NPC I found was Brianna miller - She just wanted me to leave;

- BUG ? during my trip I killed a Ranalon Gardener with a 'kill quest crown'; after killing him I got a quest to kill 6 Wild CHickens
- BUG ? I had some conversation with Julius Patton - Through the conversation I got the impression that he would teach me Gardening; but after the convo I had no Gardening skill and I could not repeat the convo with him; nor could I learn Gardening through his Training options.
- BUG ? on the outside of the Baroness building, there was a temple like structure that was a little higher than the grass; On some parts of that structure the grass did not have the same level of the structure; The structure seemed to float there.

(please note that me being on a guest account I cannot make bug reports inside the game)

I may have had bad luck, in the order in which I encountered the NPC's - but I found the 'normal' Serbule route easier; I had to follow the road to the large castle I could see from far away.

Also please note that I do not mean to imply that the cave system or Serbule Hills are bad; After playing for a year and a half I may not notice the 'goods' things as much (since I see those as normal); the outliers are more noticeable to me; Please continue the good work

I am off for now; I hope to continue tomorrow

Kind regards Jack

I'll shut up soon - But after doing the write up above; I just came back to the game

now 8 AM server-time - The sun has come up - I see a much more attractive colour of the grass - a windmill in the distance
darn this is pretty now :-)

sweet dreams now

I think I'm going to sound like I'm shredding the new zone, so my apologies in advance. I do think the zone is very pretty; I enjoy the overall atmosphere and like the new NPCs that I've encountered so far. It tends to be easier to focus on flaws but that doesn't mean I hate the zone.

Also, the below contains serious spoilers for anyone who hasn't been in the zone yet.

So, with those warnings:

Quote:

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Originally Posted by jackybah

- the NPC's on the island currently give no hint through text that there may be another way out. I don't expect that of the Lighthouse-guy (who's focused on Teleportation) nor of Riger. But maybe Lawara could give a hint to seek out the mini dungeon.
- In the dungeon again no feedback is given that there may be way off the island. (When you approach Gajus, a text popup is given to give some insight about the danger of bosses; I could imagine that a similar popup might come up when decending the second spiral stairs;)

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Yes, that's the first thing I thought, too. I know the blue tunnel (very pretty mushrooms!) is the way out because I've been keeping up with the patch notes. If I was a newbie, I would assume the new tunnel is part of the tutorial cave system and the exit comes out somewhere on the island, and then go crazy trying to figure where on Anagoge the Serbule Hills are located and trying to finish everything in Serbule Hills before teleporting off Anagoge because all previous MMOs have taught me that I must finish everything in one zone before moving on to the next.

I'd have some hint about a tunnel off the island on one of the island NPCs. I actually would pick Elmetaph for that - he could comment that if the player can't figure out teleportation, they might want to try the Anagoge Records Facility even though it is a dangerous place. Elmetaph makes a bit more sense to me too since he's the only person voluntarily on the island and the only who still has his memories. Anyway, it doesn't really matter, just some hint somewhere would be good.

I'd also have a popup message in the blue tunnel - something cheesy along the lines of "You hear the sounds of the sea overhead. This tunnel appears to head away from the island underneath the sea. Are you sure you are ready to leave? The mainland could be a dangerous place." - just something that will make it really clear to players they are exiting the tutorial.

The tunnel also seems to be a bit short to me for what is supposed to be a swim of several miles. Maybe some portal might be better to make it clear the player is traveling a serious distance from the island?

Ok, that's probably more than enough about the tunnel. Once I pulled the lever, I was wavering between exploring the cave a bit more and leaving, and decided on leaving based on my overflowing inventory. I came out in sunlight at the top of a hill, looking down at a friendly farm below me. Awesome! Much better than Serbule already, where I'd managed to get lost on the way to town after teleporting. Then of course I got to the farm, and found it infested by spiders. I kind of like this as an introduction - it lets me know this is a wild and dangerous place that many people have abandoned. On the other hand, it also left me feeling rather confused about where I was supposed to go then. I checked my overhead map and didn't see any map spots nearby that looked promising, so I decided to head towards another building that I could see from the farm. To my non-newbie non-surprise, this building appeared to be populated by hostile ranalon, one of whom ambushed and killed me while I was busy with a nifty manta-looking mob, causing my first death on this character. Oh well, everyone has to die sometime.

Respawning put me back at the spider cave entrance which I found a bit disappointing since I still didn't know where to go and I really wanted to clear out my inventory before exploring too much. I decided to head into the opposite direction from the farm this time and that's when I noticed the signpost pointing towards the Tapestry Inn. Well, oops. With the sign's help, I found the Tapestry Inn without problems, although I was a bit surprised that it didn't seem to have any kind of structure marker on the overhead map. Oh well, that's why we got map pins.

I was attacked by a rat and a hostile sheep on my way to the inn, making it a more dangerous place than Serbule already. Interestingly different. My first friendly face was Bertha the cow whom I was delighted to meet. I then went into what appeared to be an empty storage shed, and a bit later finally found my first person to talk to in Paul Vaughan. Our conversation went roughly like this:
Me: "Hi! I don't quite remember my name, and I woke up on this island, and I lost all my memories, and then I went through this tunnel, and there seem to be people trapped in the spider cave, and where am I anyway?"
Paul: "Hi! I'm Paul and I'd rather be a fighter than a lumberjack."
Me: "Um... Ok... Well, I never thought about the issue much, or at least not that I remember, but if you want to change careers, that's fine with me I guess. Um. Could you maybe point me to a place where I can sell all this stuff that I'm carrying around?"
Paul: "Hey, would you like me to show you some fancy woodworking tricks?"
Me: "Uh, no, that's ok. Maybe later... Oh, yeah, later... See you later! Nice meeting you."

Once I made my way into the inn proper, things seemed a bit better. I really appreciated Durstin's chat option about gear, although I was disappointed that with a whole inn full of people, I still couldn't sell much of anything and didn't have any storage options. I would also have liked a bit more obvious chat about what this zone was about anyway. I think Nelson Ballard does a fine job of introducing Serbule, for example, and I would have liked a similar introduction to the Serbule Hills. Judging by the path Jack took through the zone, the inn may not necessarily be a good spot to put it though. I'd put an intro NPC in an obvious spot near the cave exit (might be too much handholding, I know), or move the signpost for the inn, so that people cannot miss it when they exit the cave. Or maybe just paint the sign neon yellow or something like that?

I decided to log out out at the inn. Coming back, I had completed a hangout with Durstin that gave me a level 15 recipe for scrambled eggs which was less than exciting to a newbie who had never cooked or encountered a peppercorn or egg before. (Come to think of - I didn't see any chickens at all when I was exploring the Hills?)

I then followed the road north to Serbule, pleased by how obvious the road was and that the zone to Serbule worked. That established, I turned back around to the Hills and walked past the inn to look for that mysterious baroness Durstin told me about since I still needed to clean out my inventory. The first house I came to featured Gertie the cow walking around on the front porch and nearly stepping on the human behind her. Julius was a very friendly fellow to talk to and I appreciated him selling me a saw and giving me an onion growing quest which seemed like a nice way to build up gardening when I was ready.

For now though, I moved on to the next building I saw. Brianna was rude and refused to talk to me, but I couldn't really blame her. If my ripe and flammable corn fields were full of burning sheep, I'd probably be upset too.

On to the next building! The baroness at last. On the walk over to her, I had been reflecting how I rather liked the more spread out NPCs, even though that meant risking attacks by pathing spiders. When I first got to Serbule, I had gotten really confused by the town layout and ended up drawing a nasty hand-made map to try to keep track of buildings and NPCs. With the more spreadout NPCs in South Serbule, just marking them with pins on my map was much easier. On that satisfied thought, I pulled up my map to jab down a map pin for the baroness and ... "You have already used the maximum allowed pins per map." Well, crap. I know I already said this a year ago, but I really really think there should be more map pins, especially for new players and lower level zones. I like exploring and marking things but if I run out after putting down a handful of pins, I'm right back at needing to hand-draw a map or just using the Wiki and other people's efforts. My map for South Serbule currently shows the Spider Cave, the abandoned farm, the Tapestry Inn, Julius and Brianna. I feel all of these are good and useful markers - why should I need to hand-draw a crummy out-of-scale map to keep track of which NPC lives where if I want to have another map pin to mark a less obvious spot?

Right, back to the baroness. Finally someone who would buy my stuff! Only, she has a limited money pool. Feeling like a wise and experienced player, I decided to just sell her my plates and goblets for now to preserve her resources. I found my "I'm here to help!" response to the baroness a bit too enthusiastic - I can't say that I was really feeling that I was there to save the zone. The further conversation options were pretty fun though, and I appreciated finally getting a bit of background on where I was.

I moved on to the next building. On my way over, I encountered a flaming sheep with a crown over its head and excitedly killed it for the quest. Then I giggled shamelessly at the quest text: "Predators have learnt to avoid the smell of smouldering wool." :D Quite. An evolutionary response like avoiding bunnies in case they are accompanied by polar bears, I'm sure.

Anyway, I really liked the hilltop feel of the next building, and greatly enjoyed meeting Sammie, its owner. I was able to sell her some gear, then decided to head back to the baroness and burn through her money pool since I was still carrying way too much stuff.

So, that's the overlong list of my adventures to date. While I like the zone, I feel that the best advice to new players would be to head to Serbule at the first opportunity to take care of basic needs like storage and sales, and then head back to the Hills for exploration when they are ready. There's nothing wrong with that approach really, just not quite like I'd envisioned things - I thought Serbule Hills would be more of a parallel zone. Serbule is a short enough walk away though that both zones can comfortably use the Serbule town as a base, and Durstin does point the way. ( I found zero storage in Serbule Hills so far. I realize I have a tendency to over-obsess about things, but I found the gear issue really distracting. My plan was to clean up my inventory and then explore and find new stuff, and since I couldn't get step 1 taken care of, I didn't enjoy exploring as much. )

I found the NPCs to be mostly pretty inaccessible, starting with Durstin's liking for ivory, figurines and calligraphy scolls. Yeah, good luck collecting that. I'm still not very friendly with him on my main character. I may be remembering the Serbule newbie experience overfondly in hindsight, but making friends with Mushroom Jack and Joeh seemed like such an obvious and easy process. In the Serbule Hills, I do find Sammie's love for calligraphy benches intriguing and a nice motivation for carpentry, but I didn't really note any other really obvious gifting options, except maybe rings for the baroness.

I really liked all the wells scattered around the zone - they really add to the atmosphere and it's nice to have random water sources around. I would prefer the well by the inn to be closer to the entrance just because I'm lazy. In comparison, the fountain outside the Serbule Inn is just so much more convenient when you are cooking since it's just a straight walk outside. I did enjoy the little bath tub by the Tapestry Inn.

For supplies, I found a butcher knife on Durstin and a saw on Julius, that was it. No shovels, no autopsy kits and no skinning knives so far, although I had gotten a kit and a knife from Lawara on the island.

Soo... I think I'm going to take my own advice and head to Serbule for now since my inventory is still driving me nuts. Once I have that taken care off, I'll head back to the Hills and take notes for another wall-of-text post.

I was going to write more fully on this when I've seen/done more but just quickly...

There are storage options and I found a nice one quite quickly. Just need to check around Tapestry Inn. Others I gained via Favor.

I found the sign first time through which helped but I did think it could stand out a little more.

I agree with a lot of what Tagamogi has said but will try to write more fully over the weekend but overall I really like the zone.

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Attienza

There are storage options and I found a nice one quite quickly. Just need to check around Tapestry Inn. Others I gained via Favor.

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Thanks, Attienza! I wonder if this one has been in the game for a while now. I have been around the Tapestry Inn many times in its previous South Serbule location and always felt there should be some storage box there but couldn't find it. Not sure if I'm completely blind, or if it's a new update for Serbule Hills that I missed because I was used to the previous Tapestry Inn setup.

Yeah, the posts were long, but quite detailed. I hope the devs can match it up to their experience.

I had the same experience with trying to get favor with the newbie NPCs and I mostly just gave up on running back and giving them stuff.

Ok, long newbie experience, part 2:

I went up to Serbule to dump out my inventory, and enjoyed the new Serbule Hills much better after that. While in Serbule, I delivered the bear repellent to Jara but otherwise avoided interacting with the NPCs too much. In particular, I did not to learn armor patching and first aid from Marna, did not try to learn any archery recipes from Elahil for my archery/sword character, and did not look for any lucky belts. I mostly resisted picking up any twink gear, although I did pick up a +1 speed ring and necklace (both white) that I ended up not using all that much.

Back in the Hills, I decided it was time to explore the spider cave at last. I really like the cave. It seems to have a nice progression of difficulty from being pretty easy in the beginning, to much tougher mobs in the back to the (at that time) utterly impossible megaspider in the back. I very much like the new alchemy recipes as well, and with the handily placed barrels and empty bottles spawns in the cave, I was able to make a poison protection potion right on the spot which I really appreciated. I wish the spider eggs were a bit more plentiful, but I can live with their current rareness.

After the cave, it was time for another bag-cleaning trip to Serbule, and then I wandered around Serbule Hills, exploring and actually trying to finish some of the quests I'd been given. I very much like the zone overall. It seems I was constantly finding apple trees and other goodies to forage, and I had great luck finding kill quests and fun mobs to kill. The zone feels very nicely laid out - you can tell when you are passing from one area to the other, and it doesn't feel like just random mobs wandering about. The goblin lumber camps and Ranalon settlements are very nicely done, and I also enjoyed encountering Mudtusk and his harem. The zone looks very pretty, and I enjoyed the light effects of the guard scrays at night.

On the happy NPC side, I like Durstin's limited cooking recipe list since I often feel overwhelmed by Fainor having so much to train. ( And I very much like the new cooking recipes themseleves! ) I also like it that the NPCs are more spread out, so they feel a bit less overwhelming than Serbule for a newbie just entering a brand-new place. Of course, the flip side to that is that with the NPCs being more spread out, it's harder to sell things.

I continued to be unlucky with storage. I found a footlocker in the Tapestry Inn but was unable to use it. I got a few NPCs to comfortable: Rappanel, Lana, Paul, Sammie, the baroness and Tyler, but it wasn't enough to make Serbule Hills as inviting a place as Serbule. The 5 storage slots from the baroness are nice I suppose, but somewhat out of the way and not much compared to all the storage available in Serbule without any favor. Tyler was genuinely useful, and I really appreciated him teaching me both shield and armor patching. My plan to be instant best buddies with Sammie was foiled when I learned the calligraphy bench recipe and realized that calligraphy benches require rawhide sheets.

Right now, I'm 17 archery / 17 sword, and I feel I've come about as far as I can doing Serbule Hills only play, which leaves me at a point where I definitely cannot do everything in the zone yet. I can maybe kill one goblin if I get him by himself, but two are decidedly deadly, and I haven't been able to take down any of the named I saw. The new gear drops I've been getting usually have major mods for abilities I don't have, so I've been hanging on to quite a bit of gear from the newbie island which makes me squishier. I haven't found any offhand items at all, so I'm still using my worn bow with -1 archery from the island. For arrows, all I have are 2 stacks of beginner's arrows, so there are only 5 total archery abilities I can use and they do not even include my new basic shot 2. The cure to all my woes is simple, of course: Go to Serbule and start training, and especially go learn first aid. [ I'm also thinking of dropping sword, since even with Serbule training, it feels there are so many abilities I cannot get yet which makes gear drops frustrating if I get unlucky mods. ]

I don't think Serbule Hills really works as a standalone newbie zone (if that was even the intent), but in conjunction with Serbule, I think it would be awesome. I think it would be nice to have a setup where newbies would switch freely between Serbule and Serbule Hills, and just do things in either zone depending on their current whim. Durstin already points the way to Serbule, I'd add maybe a couple more hints that it would actually be desirable to go there, rather than warning that it's a long and dangerous road when it isn't, really. Serbule could also use a couple breadcrumb quests to Serbule Hills, so that players starting out in Serbule know it's there and roughly at their level. It seems to be really tricky to get players to switch zones - we've all been taught that zone progression in MMOs is linear, so there's always a strong resistance to moving on to the next zone before finishing everything in the current zone. If Serbule and Serbule Hills can somehow be introduced as interchangeable, maybe that will wear down that resistance a bit and then maybe people will start moving on to Eltibule even if they cannot kill those mantises in Serbule yet (hey, I can dream...).
Anyway, removing armor patching from Marna might be an idea, to make Serbule players visit Serbule Hills. It also seems that Serbule Hills could use an archery or fletching trainer or something - maybe it's just that I'm archery focused at the moment, but it seems the Hills would be a nice setup for a solitary hunter hanging out near the old hunting lodge. Of course, they could already exist and I could have missed them. :)

On a completely different note, I'm undecided about the Serbule Hills graveyard. It is super inconveniently far from any of the mobs that currently give me problems, so it's always a really long walk back. On the other hand, it is in a really nice spot if your bags are full and you want to die on purpose to sell. So, I'm not sure if I'd prefer a second graveyard on the opposite end of the zone, or if I'm just going to look for a teleport pad closer to one of my trouble spots and bind there, for a faster return when I die.

Finally, I'm a bit played out at the moment, so I probably won't be doing much more with the zone for a while. It's been quite a fun experience overall, though, and I definitely look forward to coming back once I get my abilities trained up a bit.

A guildie with 60 Sword/Ment said he had problems with Surveying in South Serbule. The goblins zerged him down. At 60/60 in a newbie zone, is that supposed to be a problem?