Advice for Newbies
Well first off a warning. DM is not for the wussy who can't stand to see a character die. In fact it's most likely you'll have several chars die before you figure out what the hell's going on. I've seen it happen before and I'm pretty sure I'll see it happen again...and again...and again. So now that you know that, here's some tips to maybe keep you alive long enough to discover whether you like the mud or not.
1. Don't leave Eristan (the city you start in) alone until you can defend yourself or at least know your way around enough to run from stuff. Nearly anything in the hexes (the map of the world outside the cities and towns) can kill an unskilled and/or unwary person.
2. It's a baaaad idea to randomly attack stuff even in Eristan. If you wanna be a fighter, ask someone else how to get started because it sucks to die before you even know what the hell you're doing. DM doesn't focus on killing stuff to the exclusion of all else, probably because it's so damn easy to die.
3. Begging people for teaching is a good way to die fast. Sure you can ask politely if the person doesn't seem like he's doing anything else at the time but don't create your char and immediately shout "Hey someone come teach me magic!" like you're God or something and everyone has to bow to your wishes. Some people have more important things to do than teach some snotty newbie who acts like a 3 year old. Which brings us to...
4. Don't act like a snotty 3 year old. If you don't wanna wipe your ass, no one else is gonna get their hand dirty to do it for you. It's perfectly acceptable to ask questions as long as the person you're asking isn't trying to do 3 other things at the same time, but you'd damn well better listen to the answers you get. And don't be afraid to figure things out on your own...just because someone else does action x one way doesn't mean there's not another way to do it. DM is a very complicated game and various players have developed ways of doing things over time that the creators probably didn't intend. (Of course some of those were bugs, but the offending parties were presumably punished. *cackle*)
5. READ THE HELPFILES DAMMIT! That's what they're there for, and yes I know there's a lot of them but it's a complicated game and if you can't deal with it go play Pong or something.
6. It is possible to send tells to creators, which they will hear wherever you and they may be. That doesn't mean it's a good idea to do it. In fact, the only reason you should EVER send a creator a tell if he hasn't just sent you one is if you get stuck in a bug that endangers your char's life. If you send a creator a tell just to say hi or to bitch about something nonfatal, your char probably won't have legs anymore.
7. If you see a corpse with a ghostly figure or an aura around it, it's probably a dead player or someone's dead pet and if you harm it you're responsible for the consequences. If in doubt about whether a person, living or dead, is a player or an NPC, finger the name and you'll know soon enough.
Ok that's all I can think of. There's probably more but I don't wanna scare you TOO bad. *cackle* Above all, when playing this mud use some common sense. There's nothing to keep people from killing you just because they feel like it (although most of the current players aren't serial killers) so it's best not to give them any reason to want to kill you.
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