Shattered Kingdoms

Once you reach a certain level of knowledge in the game where you know all the tricks and many of the items that the SK-masters use you then start to feel the desire to use these yourself.

You know there are rings and bracelets that boost every stat, but you don't know where any but one or two of them are.

You know there are scrolls or vials that would let you brew spells at a much higher level, but you don't know where to get them.

You know there are staves of harm and scrolls of 3x harm, but you don't know where to get them.

You know there is a place where you can go to skin NPCs and get as much mithril as you need, but you don't know where they are.

You know there is a way to level a character to master in 50 hours, but you only know of 1 or 2 leveling zones per rank and you end up spending a lot of time trying to get a couple more levels in a zone that isn't really right for you.

You know that there is a quest you have to do to access an area and get some item or other benefit but you don't know how to start the quest or figure out how to solve it.

You know that a khopesh or some other subtype of weapon is really good, but you don't want to specialize in it with your merc because you only know of one weapon of that type and it's made of tanso.



Then let's say you've been playing a character for a while and you're a religious leader or something and one day you invest a new character into your religion. A couple weeks they've GMed and since they know how to get all of these things and how to lead groups through all the elite areas of the game, everyone looks to them as a leader in an IC sense.

You are then forced to roleplay IC that your guy is just dumb and 50 years of experience didn't teach you anything as useful as this 21-year-old half-elf. You might as well step down so he can lead for a month or so before deleting.

Additionally, the way that the game is set up, there is no benefit to sharing something that you know with another player. Sure they might be an ally of yours now, but teach them some secret now, and every future character they make will be using it. Most of the elite secrets only offer one reward, so only one person can benefit at once. Showing others just gives you more competition.

It's really not something that you can fault the players with encyclopedic knowledge for and you can't really fault the designers for putting in good benefits for secret quests and secret areas.

I think it is just too easy to transfer knowledge from one character to another. You may have spent 1000 hours exploring with your sorceror, but many of the things you learned will be used on your next 100 hour old character. That's why you see low-level swashbucklers requesting gates to specific named NPCs in areas they may have never been to. You'll see characers without gate, teleport or rift spells using the names of the portal stones. You'll see characters enter the outter planes for the first time and successfully lead a group to the temple of murder as though they'd done it 100 times before.

You earned the knowledge by playing that sorc for 1000 hours, but your character didn't. I would like to see more players make this distinction, but I can't see how you could expect players to purposely gimp themselves just for RP.

This is SO familiar to me, in many many ways! (and those bitches enforcer interrogators!)

Guess what? Most of the time knowing where this stuff comes from is pointless (skins being somewhat of an exception). Do you really want to know where it comes from? PK. As for levelling, honestly, if you hit different areas and get people to go with you, you'll level plenty fast. It might not be GM in 50 hours, but who cares?



You aren't forced to do any such thing. Guess what? Leaders don't have to be physically strong. That is what they have followers for. You certainly have to have something to back up your right to lead, whether it be a superior intellect, great charisma and a knack for leadership, maybe you're a tactician, or maybe some of each. Honestly, I find that people look up to those who have great RP and decent PK skills more than those with great PK and only decent RP, but maybe that's just who I choose to be around.



Funny, I've done this, and I've seen others do it as well.

Ah well, I suppose some people just won't let go of their sense of inadequacy and just play for fun. You want all that neat stuff? Earn it. RP for it, PK for it, steal it, beg for it for all I care, but do it in game. Crying about how life isn't fair on the forums isn't going to help much.

Note: Yes, I know that using OOC knowledge is against the rules, but if a character is shown something (even if by someone else who is breaking those rules) how can you stop that character from using that knowledge later? They did not break any rules in gaining that knowledge. This will give an advantage to some, but as I said, complaining about it will not aid you. My advice: go do something about it in game.

So very true.

To be fair, I don't think it is so much a complaint as pointing out the current way many players operate. That is the current state of the game and one of the things that people find frustrating.

Yes, my post wasn't intended as a complaint from my point of view, but an attempt to explain the transition from someone who is "just happy to play the game even if they never level and never win any fights" to someone wanting to take their play to the next level.

Addressing specific points witherwood brought up-



Perhaps it often comes from PK, but when the items are destroyed or used up, the people with the knowledge of where to get them are the ones who will be able to get them first through non-pk means. Since the items are rarely just sitting in their locations, it is very difficult to find the location IC without being told. Nevertheless, knowing the spawn locations is a great advantage.



Who cares? People who don't like to waste time when they know there is a better way. The best players obviously care about their leveling speed otherwise they would not be pushing the time-to-GM to such low extremes.



Of course you're not normally forced to step down because you don't know the ins and outs of the game, but it does make it difficult to play a "wise old" character when the new characters seem to be born with the knowledge you've acquired. Even worse if they know more than you. What a weird situation when a knight asks his squire to show him how to navigate the outer planes.



SK is a game for fun, but it is also a competitive game. It is not a "sense of inadequacy" to acknowledge that some players of the game have knowledge of areas, items, tactics and quests that give them a distinct advantage over you.

Extremely rare is the player who does not use his personal knowledge of areas and items to enhance his individual characters. Surely there are some admirable exceptions, but using one's vast encyclopedic knowledge of SK to better a new character is not something looked down upon by the playerbase the way patroling or killing lowbies is. I don't think it necessarily should be looked down upon or ever will be.

Okay, since this is newbie impressions...
Master level fighter class bashes NPC that cons below
While bashed, NPC script fires twice using the harm spell
Master level fighter drops below 60% HP before killing lower level NPC

What's wrong with this picture?

A true newbie wouldn't know the difference between scripted casting and not being able to cast while bashed.

Unless they're 14 or something they'd know.

Okay how about this one.

If they make it to master they are to some extent no longer a newbie.