beginner tutorial / quest

[theTrav]

I know many people hate em, but have an NPC standing by the RoB.

When talked to the NPC will answer basic FAQ questions, steal an IRC bot for that maybe.

More importantly, the NPC will offer new players quests:
1 - Here's the pottery skill, please bring me back 16 pieces of clay.
2 - Nice clay, have some LP, please turn the clay into pots and then fire them in my kiln here
3 - Here's some apples, please put soil water and apple cores in the pots and plant them around the RoB area
4 - Wow, thanks, come back in a few weeks to see the fully grown apples, a great source of food or wood. Be careful not to chop them down too young though. Here's some LP

solves a few problems
1 - new players get basic tutorial stuff
2 - RoB becomes less of a waste land

[Caradon]

There's no reason to chop apple trees down to begin with, The logs they offer are ridiculous.

[theTrav]

There's no reason to chop apple trees down to begin with, The logs they offer are ridiculous.

maybe just have the NPC give random seeds then

[Jackard]

i suspect we'll only see brodgar not become a wasteland when they finally remove brodgar

[sabinati]

a few ideas on this:

possibly have the tutorial quest in the starting room, that would start with a welcome dialog and explanation of the basic interface (lclick, rclick, shiftclick, ctrlclick, etc).

maybe a secondary tutorial, could still be in the starting room, or the starting room could be expanded. the secondary tutorial could have brief explanation, then prompt for a character "type" e.g. farmer, hunter, craftsman, i don't know. this would possibly give a little more info on the ins and out of that skill set, as well as granting a skill or two for "free" upon completion of a quest.

tertiary tutorial, as described in the OP, maybe, naybe not. i don't love it or hate it.

another thing i've been thinking is that it seems silly to have to buy the non-incrementing skills for the skills that increment. i have 1 farming skill! why can't i farm?

[theTrav]

possibly have the tutorial quest in the starting room

the main problem with that is that people tend to walk out of the starting room before they do anything. having it outside means that noobs can easily go back to it if they forget something.

If you are talking about some serious changes to the starting room which would prevent that from being a problem, then sure have the tutorials take part in there... I hope the change doesn't mean established players are FORCED to take the tutorial though.

another thing i've been thinking is that it seems silly to have to buy the non-incrementing skills for the skills that increment. i have 1 farming skill! why can't i farm?

Seconded. I blew about 500+400+300+200 = 1400 LP on melee the first time I spawned and still couldn't even attack a cow, that was mega frustrating.

[Jackard]

possibly have the tutorial quest in the starting room

the main problem with that is that people tend to walk out of the starting room before they do anything.

Thats not much of a problem - the devs can add a check in the form of simple puzzles or questions to make certain
you understand the concepts before leaving. (The former probably being the better method of teaching.)

And in the unlikely event that veteran players didnt have an option of skipping the tutorial, its not as though it would
even be that much of a nuisance - how often do you really go through the start area?

i believe "changing the start room" was implied by sabinati anyways since you couldnt fit a tutorial in the current one

[Blaze]

For now, you can at least add 2 NPCs:
One can explain how the game works with has an interface similar to the old innkeeper. The other will give a small LP boost (1,000 should be enough) to start newbies off.

Move the chest closer to the staircase, so the NPCs can be placed symmetrically.

[sabinati]

yeah, the start room would have to be changed a bit, but i did notice when i inherited a char that died, i had enough LP to get pottery and fishing, so i dug some sand and caught some fish (this was on the old map, so you didn't get clay from the shallow water, otherwise i would have made a few treepots).