Excelsior

First of Ive really enjoyed my week on the shard.

The question I have is simple.

How open are you guys to a series of story based new player quests for folks below 21days to do between killing rats. I'm more than happy to post them, write them up and do all the dialogue and stuff but I cannot do the actual scripting. That said the aim would be to keep it as minimal for you guys as possible.

The reason I ask is that I have found that there is limited stuff a new player can really partake in early days. The aim here would be teaching them some stuff about playing UO, finding some gear and train their skills while playing with a goal rather than macroing away in quiet parts of the world.

I've spoken a to a few of the players and the consensus was that the start feels a little dead.

I thought the same thing too at first, but I decided to take advantage of the "no skill cap", and started macroing everything I possibly could.

That being said, I am very, very glad I did. Once I got to 21 days and started doing Mistvale I was thankful for the macro time. Some of mistvale can be a little intense for a new account.....Hide/Stealth FTW!!!

But that is proving my point.

Just how much of that macro time was unattended?
How much of that Macro time actually had you doing something rather than standing in a corner?

What I'm proposing is having a reason and direction for macroing the skills.
What I'm proposing is activities to do which engages a player to still gain those skills but actively rather than macroed.

True it isn't going to fill the entire 21 days but even a portion of that would be far more gripping and likely to hold people long term.

i.e
Quest:
If you had a quest to go sneak into Destard and Steal an Ancient Wyrm egg.

Now you could in no way to that as a new player without hiding/stealth.

Outcomes:
1. Reason given to actually macro those skills.
2. Learn where Destard is. (Helps knowing this for when you go do champs later in fel)
3. Learn what the interior of Destard actually looks like.
4. Learn what the nasty monsters in there are and which are easy.
5. Likely interaction with some of the more expierenced players.

Yes the majority of my macros were unattended, (ones that are permitted) just for the simple fact that I play from satellite internet I dare not venture out without adequate skills with a connection like mine.
I do support your idea, although I find the idea of exploring on my own and seeing what kind of new/different content this shard has to offer while training my skills on their own holds a higher value than questing, but that's just me. Quests and curiosity have their own rewards depending on ones play style.
I agree that quests that would take one to Destard, as you said, would be great. Then I would've discovered that my pet Dragon actually had no problem what so ever mowing down an Ancient Wyrm.....needless to say I was shocked when I seen how easy it went down compared to a Balron, which can destroy a fully trained dragon with little opposition.
I really like the idea of stealing an egg, or maybe making xxx amount of certain scrolls to deliver to whomever for whatever purpose an Admin could cook up. As a player that likes to discover custom content, I would like to see quests that lead new players to such new content.

Which areas do you feel are important to introduce new players to besides Destard? Which skills besides fighting skills and stealing/stealth do you think should be actively utilized in these quests?

I'm not opposed to adding more quests, but we do have a lot of projects already on the board, so no promises on anything happening quickly.

I found that taming in Moonglow and Delucia was a great way to get me on my feet. You could have a quest to tame animals sort of like a taming BOD and make the reward be mats for crafting taming items for skills.

With all that's different about this particular shard in regards to the OSI shard, a quest or two to highlight the differences would be a decent idea. For example, BillyBob the Noble needs you to tame and breed three cats or JimBob the dude who does things needs to get a thousand tokens to get his thing, help him collect tokens.

A lot of the quests seem to be, "Kill X amount of Y, collect A amount of B" it would be nice to break away from that pattern. It can get repetitive after a while. I'd be happy with a quest where you didn't kill or craft anything. Something along the lines of, "Oh no, there's been a murder in Castle British... Talk to all the NPCs in the castle to find out whodunnit," and then have a bunch of dialogue with clues and whatnot scattered in them. Was it Knight Mustard in the Throne Room with the Battle Axe? Alchemist Plum in the Kitchen with the Nightshade?

Anyhoo, that's my 2 cents.

Having a Clue style quest could be interesting. It may be able to utilize the Forensic Evaluation/Tracking skill, give players a reason to use such otherwise useless skills. (If it has a purpose here I don't yet know it lol).
As far as what areas should be pointed out to new players, anything that you feel should be shown off, "Hey look what we did different, and better."
How about an escort quest that cannot be completed using Gate Travel. Instead you have to walk them to point A to B in fel. Leading newer players to the Forget/Remember sparkle could be one of them.

Deacon wrote:Having a Clue style quest could be interesting. It may be able to utilize the Forensic Evaluation/Tracking skill, give players a reason to use such otherwise useless skills. (If it has a purpose here I don't yet know it lol).
As far as what areas should be pointed out to new players, anything that you feel should be shown off, "Hey look what we did different, and better."
How about an escort quest that cannot be completed using Gate Travel. Instead you have to walk them to point A to B in fel. Leading newer players to the Forget/Remember sparkle could be one of them.

Tracking is useful in Doom Gauntlet as one of the bosses hides and when his hp gets below a certain point.

Ok there does seem to be some interest. I actually have much of this written up for newer players to the RP community on Oceania back on the day. Some of it was adapted to another free shard.

Give me a little bit and I'll rework a chunk of it for to work with stuff on this shard and then post it. Will give me somehting to do while I murder X and Y.

What I meant by story driven has a mix of kill this and fetch that combined with talk to this person, go to that location and do that.

Off the top of my head I have the following skills in the list (Id have to check to be exact)

Fighting skills
Healing (of some description)
Magery
Taming/Lore
Hiding/Stealth
Player Interaction
Shard Knowlegde

Less important:
Tracking
Carto
Mining
Lumberjacking
Crafting

Areas.
Serpent Pillars
Dungeons
Lost Land entrances.
Tmaps
Shrines.

Basically any location they will need to know they can partake in some of the group activities like champ spawns in Fel.