Cartography Section

[Murkyn]

I was just wondering if there are plans to put the difficulty ratings back with the map listings - as a fairly new player I don't know most of the areas off the top of my head and it was really helpful to know which areas I could venture into and which ones would be insta-death.

[jezer]

I understand your comment. However that information often doesn't mean very much, and a lot of that information was wrong in my opinion. Typically areas have both small, high solo and group mobs. So how do you say?

Xp areas - in a general sense go something like this for new players...

VK Town (lvl < 10
Blasters (lvl < 20)
Catacombs (20+)
Murkwood (35+)
Shadow-keep (40)
Lyme etc (3x40)

More Class Dependant Areas...

Mage Tower Ruins 40+ (Warrior)
Sheol 40+ (Warrior)
Sakura 30+ (Warrior/Monk)
Dark Dreams 35+ (Warrior/Cleric)
Masion 38+ (Mage)
Koz 35+ (Thief)
Infirm 40+ (Thief)
Hive 25+ (Monk)

This is a rule of thumb, not the case for every player. XP is mostly about finding what works for you. The road between 2x40 and 4x40 is real slow. The xp required becomes very high, but your power doesn't increase much, it's more your stability/fortitude as a character that increases.

The real experienced players you won't find in these areas for long, if at all... mainly because they kill a few mobs in a lot of areas for better xp yield. Kill history sucks, and punishes the newer players the most. The players who die exploring will always end up becoming better players for it... (Although some don't seem to learn) There is no substitute in this game for exploring - interestingly enough it's often the least thing that is done. XP and areas is such an individual thing it's pretty hard to "generalize."

Maybe don't look at "areas" in regards to difficulty... look at "mobs" individually.

Clear as mud?

[*Breeze*]

I understand your comment. However that information often doesn't mean very much, and a lot of that information was wrong in my opinion.

exactly my reasoning for not putting it there in the first place.

i may however mark a few of the areas as newbie friendly or something
someone want come up with a list of em?

[Thraxas]

What I liked on the old site was the ability for players to comment on an area, it wasnt very obvious and not many ever added comments, but potentially much more useful, particularly if comments included the classo and level of the person posting.

Not sure I agree with all that Jezer says, particularly on the specifics of which classes work well in each of the areas he lists, but agreed that hardness is mob based rather than area based in most cases.
What would be interesting is some way of querying by area what level players are killing stuff there e.g.

(excuse the formatting please)
Cont.Area.....Prime............Number of kills by level...............Number of deaths by level
..................................1x40 2x40 3x40 4x40 5x40............1x40 2x40 3x40 4x40 5x40
AH Penguins Wa...............20 ....10....10....5....1..................1.....0.... 0....0....0
AH Penguins Ma ...............80.....40....45....20....10 .............34....21....0....0....0
etc.

so you can see mages hit penguins more than warriors do but also die there more often upto 2x40, generally looks like a 1x40 2x40 area for mages rather than warriors (made up stats btw penguins is a newbie area)

This level of detail may be too much handholding for the imms to want to provide for all areas but for some newbie areas perhaps? ... It would also be invaluable for very new newbies to find what areas are for them. Its got to be easy enough to collect this sort of info, and maybe reset monthly or yearly or by reboot.

T

[Murkyn]

Makes sense, I guess I'll just go back to the hit and miss method. I know that overall zone level is not necessarily an accurate thing, but since there's no list of mobs and their relative strength it doesn't leave many options for us newbs who don't want to stay on VK forever.

Don't get me wrong, it's not that I'm lazy or don't want to explore, in fact I really enjoy finding new areas and knowing my way around a world, however I find myself very reluctant to do so in this game. It's not the dying part that bothers me, it's the possibility that my corpse will be looted by a mob that's way beyond my level, causing me to have to totally re-gear my toon or beg for help to get my stuff back that I find discouraging.

Maybe I should just leave all my eq in the vault and start exploring naked instead lol.