Shattered Kingdoms

I do believe that leveling speed is almost exactly where I'd like it as a player. Perhaps its a bit too fast for those who are able to take advantage of the system better. I really think there are some important points brought up in this thread.

I agree that some NPCs do things which make it a pain in the [REDACTED] to level off of them. I really believe there should be additional content added to the game. I think that every area in SK should be considered viable for leveling, at least in some instance. Wilderness areas, cities, outer planes, etc. Quests should be found almost everywhere you go.

I agree that there is an emphatic need to level your character up to GM. There's so many reasons, I don't think I need to illustrate them all. Necromancers, scouts, and anyone with enchanted gear will be at a disadvantage unless they make getting to GM a priority.

I think I can see both Dulrik's points and the general theme of this thread both. I'm hopeful that there are solutions which will continue to improve the gameplay for each individual.

Wow Achernar, you just signed yourself up for an -awful- lot of work

Levelling will always be too fast for the twinks. My current has 300+ hours, and isn't even champ yet (master3). Yeah, I guess I'll just get a flood of "u suxx0r" replies, and maybe it's because I've never yet got a char past champ 2 in 7 years of playing that I don't know the levelling areas that well. But should I have to know them? For me to know them, it'd be OOC knowledge, wouldn't it?
If anything, anyone who makes GM in under 50 hours should get dumped back to journeyman, or below even. Don't make the rest of us suffer to try and penalize the twinks.

206 hours, Master 4. Just set hour requirements for higher levels, or age requirements. Either that or simply ignore the twinks--they'll still be able to go from 1-50 in under 100 hours.

A lot of good suggestions here to think about.

By the way, I want to say that even though I said the speed of levelling is still probably too fast on average, I also don't have any current plans to slow it down from where it is now.

Animate dead allows a necromancer to turn the corpse of a player or NPC
into one of the walking dead. The strength and specific type of undead
created depends upon the power of the necromancer and the skill of the dead
person whose corpse is to be used. A necromancer may animate many undead at
one time, but eventually their energy will run out and they will return to
the earth. Animated dead are especially vulnerable to having their magic
dispelled. This is NOT a resurrection spell!

Five types of undead can be created based on the power of the corpse:
skeleton - unnaturally quick and also has a chilling touch
zombie - able to take more punishment than any other undead type
ghoul - these undead bring down their prey with poisonous bites
wight - a bane to populated areas their bite spreads black death
wraith - flying swiftly across the sky with a paralyzing touch

Because of the link between a necromancer and his animated dead, he will
receive a small portion of the experience awarded from their attacks.



I can solo this NPC, and have been for the last 10 hrs for XP, but I can't animate it? I shouldn't have to be GM to play the game, but I can't animate a mid-level NPC that my char can solo? Do you see why we grind out levels D? Do you see why it is so important to GM before we start "Playing" the game? Its frustrating that I can solo something with no armor or HP but I cant animate its corpse, and you want to SLOW down leveling and my char even more useless for longer?

Am I an experienced player? Yes, I have been playing this game non-stop from 2000-2005 and off and on since then. I am used to these restrictions and I can level at a decent rate, and will put off RP especially any form of RP that might get me potentially killed until I GM. That said, for a noobie this has got to completely BLOW. If I didn't have friends help me out as a noob I would have been completely lost, and [REDACTED] like this would have made me quit in a heartbeat. Hell, it was hard enough trying to figure out to cast magic missle with my first char, much less figuring how to play the damn char.

I don't think that particular argument is very valid. It's not like you are unable to animate something until it is 10 levels lower than you. Necromancer's just have to be equal to the level of the creature whose corpse they want animate. Why do you feel you should be able to animate the corpses of creatures who are theoretically more powerful than yourself? Whether you can kill it naked or not isn't really part of that equation. Sure you are going to be able kill some citizens naked, but what does that prove?

Any chance on getting yes/no/maybe responses to my original ideas?

I disagree, when I was first getting into SK I was FAR FAR FAR more tolerant of things than I am now. As a new player you accept things no matter how they are because you don't know any better.

I don't know about everyone else, but when I started, my first character (a drow swash) got to level 18 in 80 some odd hours before I died due to reincarnation. I had a blast with him. I didn't care about levels much when I was new. I had fun going around killing goblins, interacting with the people who came and went from there, doing the fountain RP in the center square of Teron. Any time I got pk'd, I'd self-defense some goblins to death, buy a crappy sword, and go disarm a member of the enforcers for their barbed shortswords. I was back in business. I guess I just don't get why everyone is so caught up on this. True newbies shouldn't be getting discouraged. Just play for fun.