@DanC: The dropship to get to the space station, from the entrance of the guild, is north, east, southeast.
@Dark,
Perhaps this will aleviate your fears about sharing quest info or asking about areas. Here is the announcement letting up on the requirements, as well as making some newbie improvements, pasted in full:
> Note 799 titled 'The New Deal (Flaxen, Tue Oct 28 15:31:13 2014):
Hi everyone,
The wizards have been discussing the best way to attract new players
without sacrificing what's great about 3k or our current existing, loyal
playerbase. We've come to some conclusions that are going to change 3k
greatly in many ways -- some obvious, some subtle. We are calling this
"The New Deal".
Our goal is to appeal to and fit in with the modern gamer: players who can
easily communicate outside of 3k (IMs, text messages, tumblr, whatever
else), who can easily opt to play and finish a graphics-rich AAA game in
under 20 hours, who are now used to high-quality, story rich games with
little repetitive content, and who can sit in front of the TV with their
iPad playing a mobile game. We want to do all of this while staying true
to the roots of 3k as a challenging old-school text-based role playing
game.
We hope to remove some of the more archaic or cryptic elements of the game,
to remove barriers to usability, to increase information to players, and to
create an *optional* linear, guided journey for a new player. One of the
guidelines we are using is "challenging, not punishing"
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ea6UuRTjkKs for details).
We believe that these changes will have almost universal appeal, and the
end result will appeal to old and new gamers alike.
The first of the New Deal changes are already in game:
1) a mudwide panic command
2) a mudwide repeat command
3) a mudwide flee command
4) acs/wcs are now visible as numbers on weaker armour/weapons. (Higher
power armor/weapons still need a guild power to discern/compare)
The next set of the New Deal changes are rules based:
1) Quest cheating is no longer illegal. It's no longer quest cheating.
Feel free to collaborate on or discuss quests, missions, stories, etc.
Please respect the wishes of players who do NOT want to hear spoilers.
2) Players under level 50 will be allowed into newbieland. If a player is
caught griefing (making life difficult for other players) they will be
punished accordingly.
And the following set of New Deal changes will be coming soon:
1) New players will get their choice of core guilds (fighter, sorcerer,
cleric) at character creation. (Note that quitting a core guild is free,
so this makes no change to the transition to a standard guild).
2) Low level players will log into the game with a basic set of gear
(main+weapon). We're looking for your feedback on whether it's better for
mid level players and up to use a command to get this gear, or whether it
should continue to autload, but have the option to be blocked (or both).
In some cases these changes may devalue or even outright negate existing
skills, guild powers or VAFs, but we cannot be bound by past decisions in
our attempt to move forward. In some cases, these changes may seem like
they are killing off sacred cows of 3k, and in some cases, they definitely
are meant to do so.
Please feel free to provide feedback, of course, though we prefer you do it
on the thread I have created on the CoT forums online
(http://forums.3k.org)
The Wizards of Three-Kingdoms
Note number: 799/858
It really is just due to them not updating help files properly that it seems quest info is still illegal to share. They really should fix that.
The screen reader flag is 3Scapes exclusively.
As for the quest, I can't remember if it's the tutorial or the mayor himself that tells you, but yes the fragments are scattered throughout newbieland. That means they can be in any one of the mirrors, just look for the sneaky bandits. And of course if you need more help than that, feel free to ask someone, hehe. It's actually a skillquest, which I thought was illegal to share, but it turns out that's not illegal either. As for getting more info, for whatever it's worth, you just type questlist and the number of the quest you want to view info on, which usually isn't much. Same goes for skillquests.
As for weapons, whichever weapon has the highest weapon class is better. In this case, the only reason the sword may be prefered over the axe is because the axe is two-handed, so you can't use a shield with it, and the axe doesn't have the newbie shock power. But for the vast majority of the game, higher Weapon class equals better weapon. You'll need appraise skill to see weapon class above 15 and armor class beyond a certain point though.
The game does have a lot of guess the verb quests, but since quest info is legal to share now, this isn't a problem anymore. Even before it became legal to share quest info, questing isn't required and only provides small benefits.
When they made quest info legal, there were literally people shouting things like, "Who wants to help me complete my quest list?" And someone even started a forum at qinfo.dyndns.org for the sharing of quest solutions, though you have to be approved by an admin to see any of the forums. It is definitely legal though, on 3Kingdoms only. Only a few guilds still restrict sharing of quest info for their specific guild quests and secrets.