Wow, great news on the suggestions.
With Armour that's one thing I'm not sure about myself at the moment, since it seems very few items actually give armour rating, though I haven't explored the merchant's district fully. Also, as a ranger who relies on swiftness I'm guessing wearing hulking plate or chain is a bad idea? That was why I chose the leather armour skill.
Then again as I said, I am never a fan of huge amounts of eq balancing in game and would much rather have a combat that can be won by your tactics in battle rather than your ability to minimax certain numbers, after all I doubt many real knights agonised about whether their battered spiked steel gauntlets were better than their well crafted bronze gauntlets .
Actually now that I'm out of the newbie area, I'm finding I like the gold costs in so much as they mean selling loot actually means something to your character, and are something to work towards, plus of course they make quest rewards from gold drops have a point.
Oddly enough, I'm finding no problem with abbreviations, since the game is a modern mud and will happily extrapolate from what I put in, EG fire P hood for when I want to shoot at one of those sneaky hoodlums in the newbie area.
@Mirage, oddly enough I'm also a ranger, though of the reptile race who apparently like snacking on the frog people .
The way archery works, is once you've equipped your bow, you need to decide what shot to fire, rapid, deft, or precise.
Each shot comes with a degree of risk. The higher your risk, and the worse your position, the more likely you are to miss or critical fail.
Rapid fire will increase your position, whereas precise shots will dicrease it. So combat is usually a matter of using precise when in a good or better position, then using rapid fire when your in a bad position.
In addition to this, you can advance and retreat. This doesn't actually mean advancing on or retreating from your target, it means moving either forward or back in the room, and obviously as a ranged fighter you want to be as far from your target as possible.
so my usual method, given that at the start of combat your always at the centre of the room with your target, is to retreat then start firing, and if the npc comes to get me, to advance/ retreat past them to the other end of the room and continue.
I've also found abilities that slow enemy movement down useful, like the reptile race's acid spit, or when I got it, immobilising shot.
This is also one of the few occasions I've found in a mud where I turn the prompt off completely. Usually I like to customise it to show a percentage of my hp, but in this game, since combat is in general more tactical, I prefer the psace to look at what I'm doing, then again I freely admit I like the full flavour of the combat messages for this one, which obviously necessitates cutting down other information.
speaking of prompts though, I am not sure at this stage if the game has a hunger and thirst system, since I've found and eaten food, but tdidn't overly notice effects from it, though obviously since there are skills in the wild to rest, camp etc, and if a crafting system is planned this is something I wouldn't mind clarification on, EG perhaps warnings when your character was hungry or thirsty.
Actually, from the little I've seen so far, it looks as if wilderness in the game is going to be interesting, particularly for rangers, since whilst there isn't a crafting system as such, you can already cut trees down for wood, which presumably is used to make fires with the camping skill and to fletch arrows (though I've not found any metal yet so haven't had chance to try fletching).
I'm away this evening at my parents, and since I don't have a working laptop there at the second won't be able to get back on tempest until tomorrow, but I'll be looking forward to it.
Btw, is there a way to give a one off donation to the game? I'd b more than happy to donate to keep things running, but I'd rather not commit myself to a monthly patrion account since finances on a monthly basis are a little tight at the moment.
With our dreaming and singing, Ceaseless and sorrowless we! The glory about us clinging Of the glorious futures we see,
Our souls with high music ringing; O men! It must ever be
That we dwell in our dreaming and singing, A little apart from ye. (Arthur O'Shaughnessy 1873.)