For New Players

[Howlando]

With the chapter change, recently we've attracted a lot of attention from brand new players. We're very glad to have you! From the bottom of my heart you are truly welcome here. That said, EFU is probably a lot different than from what you're used to... for most of you, you'll most likely soon enough decide that EFU is not for you. That's fine, we have a pretty big playerbase already. But I have hopes that the sufficiently hardcore, persistent, and excellent among you will come to appreciate EFU's charms and decide to stay with us.

This post is intended to encourage you to do so....

- New players almost never read all of EFU's documentation. I don't blame you for this at all! There's a lot and who wants to spend all day reading stuff when you could be hunting worms instead. That said, I hope you'll at least review this post if you find yourself frustrated or about to quit. At least then you'll know if you made the right decision.

- The DMs are your friends. Believe me, we have not spent so much time and money building this place for the purposes of wordlessly griefing your level 3 PC with some powerful monster....

- On that subject, do not hesitate to use the DM channel (or IRC) to politely communicate with us if you have questions or concerns. We're also happy to assist with things like clearing your corpse if you die, offering advice, and generally trying to persuade you to continue playing here (assuming, of course, that you seem like a nice person and decent roleplayer)

- XP penalties for dying are harsh but that is how we like it. The alternative is for every character to rapidly reach a soft-cap and for advancement in levels to begin to seem meaningless. A harsh world is essential for maintaining interest in such an old server and old game.

- Spawns in the Underdark (and ruins, etc.) are generally randomized. This means that sometimes nothing will spawn, and sometimes - perhaps only one in ten thousand times - something crazy might spawn. Spawns have nothing to do with the level of the character that enters the area, but are randomly selected. Of course some areas are more dangerous than others, but even directly outside the gate (which you may note is not guarded!) can be dangerous to the poorly prepared.

- For the first time ever, in this chapter we are experimenting with a "zone" that is genuinely friendly towards low level PCs. I refer, of course, to Starag's Rest and the Worm Pits. This is a good place to start out, although there is plenty of other lowbie content elsewhere (but again, exploring can be dangerous!)

- You will die. It's basically inevitable, so you have to learn to not let it bother you. Eventually you will learn how to play EFU and death will become far more rare, but if you want to play here at the start you should be comfortable with the fact that you will die. That said, the server is designed to get you back up on your feet again once more and soon enough you'll forget that it ever happened.

- We will not approve your subrace application until we are comfortable with you. For the past eight years, there has not been a single incident of a brand new player (no matter how seemingly excellent a roleplayer they may have seemed or been) playing a subrace PC successfully with their first or second PC. Why is this? Lots of reasons, but partly because in EFU our policy towards subraces is that it is basically license to kill. That is to say, if you play a monstrous subrace we fully encourage and expect other characters to attempt to ruthlessly hunt you down and permanently end your character. In addition to this, we are also both demanding in subrace concepts (they must be truly excellent), inclined to use approval as a reward for players who have already contributed to the server by the successful completion of other PCs, and finally less likely to approve them at all during the early days of our fourth chapter.

So please don't be offended by the fact that we're not approving your subrace app, it likely has nothing to do with you.

- EFU is filled with customized systems and scripts that might seem bewildering at first. For example: figuring out climbing is essential to completion of some quests.... magic eaters might spawn in the Underdark if you cast magic without eating abjurer's nightshade... clerics require appropriate domains/alignment (assuming your god even still exists).... there are many new spells and spell adjustments.... it can definitely be confusing! But try to trust us that we've put an enormous amount of effort and energy into balancing things nicely.

- If you are victim to a bug, to an unfair situation (such as a transition death), to a poorly timed crash or moment of lag that results in your character dying when probably he/she shouldn't have... unfortunately, we do not reimburse XP. There are many reasons for this, but it's mostly because long ago we decided that, as unpaid DMs doing this in our spare time, we simply can't afford to spend the time to perform all the necessary investigation that would occur with these kinds of problems. And it would be unfair to reimburse some players but not others. We will, however, assist with clearing corpses (making it so you can safely respawn), sometimes offering TRs when we witness unfair deaths, and doing our best to keep the server smooth and bug-free.

I will add other things to this thread as I think of them.

[Dr Dragon]

Welcome to the server I remember when I suddenly randomly discovered EFU back in the old days, and found myself mystified. Sanctuary, and the Underdark will definitely do that. If you need any help with apps or subraces or have any questions feel free to contact me I am happy to help.