Suggestions for player retention

I am going to list some suggestions to help retention of newer players for the HD client. Right now newer players can’t function without asking for help, which has and will cut down on newer players continue playing. Having the new HD client looks godly, but it only matters so much if the new players don’t keep playing.

Overall, these suggestions are meant to “Streamline” the process to eliminate confusion and allow newer players to understand how to play lineage 1.5 without having to ask for help or gear from other players.

  1. Update the guide area on the website (-reapply command and exchanging for doll coins for example) by cleaning up a lot of information that’s not important anymore. And make a very straight forward guide so new players can see the progression and know exactly what they need to do and what to expect without having to scroll through an extensive guide. New teleport npc "EXP Areas"

I see you have a starter guide when you first login on a low level character, but if you close the window I’m not sure how to reopen it so it would be beneficial to maybe have that guide as an item they can reopen in their inventory.
A tier 1 guide would be like

Do A (Equip the soulshots and gear in your inventory, place the health pots on your skill bar)
Do B (Hit Dummies to level to 31 then talk to the EXP Areas npc and teleport to the level 1-50 zone)
Do C (Farm EXP and gear in the area until you reach level 50 then use “-warp 2” and talk to the EXP Areas npc again to teleport to the next leveling zone, keep doing this until you reach level 100)
Do D (Tier up to reaper at level 100 using a Charged spirit blade) “Details how to get it”
Do E (Start out at Tier 1 reaper level 1 and level to 100 again)
Do F (Tier up to tier 2 of your Main Class at level 100 using Pandora’s box) “Details how to get it”
Do G (Start out at tier 2 Main Class level 1 with 50% more damage and level to 100 again)
Etc Etc

A tier 5 guide would be like

Collect Ancient Oil at ____ or ___
Collect Ancient Ore at ____ or ____
Collect Sky Tickets by collecting badges at ____ or Termifract Ore at ____ “Details how to turn into tickets”
Collect Rusty Limit Breaks at ____ or ____
Collect Termifract Ore at ____
Visit the npc in Sky Castle to make Blessed Limit Breaks for rare gear using ___ crafting recipe or visit the npc in Tunnel to make flames for limiting breaking gear you have two of using ___ crafting recipe.
Limit Break your X gear to level 40 or XR gear to level 50 for increased stats.

  1. Get rid of the Crack Of Time and place a teleport npc in Silverknight town. “Maybe make these areas part of the new leveling areas.”

  2. Get rid of the current Hunting Guide teleports for the npc “matt” And replace it with a “important teleports” link, within that link have the most important places to teleport to such as (HDES npc for water/fire/earth/wind, Aden Doll Coin Exchange, Gludio Doll Bag, Eva Kingdom level 2, Dragon valley, Gypsy Town, Ivory Tower, etc). Add a new teleport npc named “EXP Areas” placed beside “matt” that only has the best leveling areas on it to make it easier for newer players.
    3.1. Streamline the leveling process. Instead of having a million different areas with mobs, create dedicated areas for leveling with suggested areas for each tier grouping 1-2, 3-4, and 5 ( level 1-50, 50-75, 75-100 ). So the npc should have around 9-12 places to teleport And include the leveling range in the name of each teleport link.

Example with 4 links to click on with each showing around 3 more links (area name with level suggestion).
NOTE " " is for notes

Tier 1-2
_____ 1-50 “Still using nightmare essence with no grade or drops B grade”
_____ 50-75 “Still using nightmare essence with no grade or drops A grade, or A and S grade”
_____ 75-100 “Still using nightmare essence with no grade or drops S grade or / and drops S80 grade
Tier 3-4 “Drops items similar to Zajako that can be reasonably upgraded to Zajako and rarely drops Zajako”
_____ 1-75 “HDES quest npc”
_____ 75-100 " UG level 3, Drop better S80 or weaker x grade like haunting armor, hidden blade”
Tier 5 “Pre End Game content”
_____ 1-75 “Drops pre boss gear (like before vala gear)”
_____ 75-100 “Drops pre boss gear (like before vala gear)”

Tier 5+ “I can farm this regardless of level because of gear, so you could base it off gear instead of level”
_____ 100+ “Ancient Oil” “Two spots for Oil”
_____ 100+ “Ancient Oil”
_____ 105+ “Ancient Ore” “two spots for Ore”
_____ 105+ “Ancient Ore”
_____ 110+ “Outside Tunnel” “More Dillos in main tunnel :smiley:

  1. Give players tier 2 and below nightmare essence 24/7 and change the starter set to pumpkin gear or make the gear progression drop B grade - S80 grade with no crafting as you go to higher level areas.

  2. Make older outdated gear drop in the tier 1-2 area so that they are geared enough to hunt UG once they turn tier 3. And make semi outdated gear (or new gear that’s similar to Zajako gear that can reasonably upgrade to Zajako gear) drop in the tier 3-4 area so players can progress in gear some while they farm.

  3. Make codex of time, weakened spirit blade, and keys easier to obtain. Right now donating is a must in order to even do dailies or tier up (unless someone gives them pages of time or the weakened spirit blade/keys). And while donations make the server survive, it shouldn’t be a mandatory thing for a new player just starting out but for players wanting to progress faster.

I’m sure there is more that could be added to aid the new players. I feel like the guides on the website have been the same since 2012 so it would be important to update them with the new client. Hopefully some of these can be implemented since it is very confusing for new players to figure out what to do without help from experienced players.

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As someone who just started out I agree. The only reason I am still here is because of me playing lineage since beta. If I hadn’t known where everything already was I would have quit day one. It was still rough just due to all the changes which turned out to be alot of fun. If not for a bunch of people giving me random decent gears I too would be far behind and also probably would have quit.

I don’t think you would need a guide all the way to end game content however up to T2 would be nice. (that is also coming from someone who’s still not even got to reaper.)

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Tier 1 and 2 you would be farming Thebes(crack of time, then go to the temple and stand on the symbol to teleport in). Getting to the crack of time can be difficult for new players if it spawns in gludio. Or dragon area (5gc teleport item from Ives I believe) and hunt blue / green snakes. This is where I farmed throughout tier 2 as a bow elf. I’m sure there are other spots too, it just depends on your gear, and will power to farm for hours. Leveling gets way easier once you hit tier 3 because underground is one of the best exp spots in the game. So t3-t5 is a lot easier grind.

Don’t forget about tier 2 cream to level faster as tier 2. Lasts an hour and it’s random low / medium / high dose. At t5 a high dose is around double exp.

If you’re willing to spend gc, you can spend around 355 gc to get 100% exp increase for 2 weeks. After the initial purchase, you only need 180 gc for 2 weeks each time. There is a sxp one as well. Everyone uses the sxp one to help level gear as our gear takes 10’s of millions sxp per level with 40+ level.

For going reaper, you can go to second floor ivory tower and teleport to the basement using npc at stairs. There is a rift guardian (50% chance) which would be hard to kill if he’s even spawned, but straight down is a demon which can drop the weakened spirit blade. Like a 18% chance. Although most people will gladly give you one to help out.

As a new player who played Lin 1 back in the day, I agree there desperately needs to be more organized and accessible info for new players.

For example, a new player has no idea what the different jewels do. If I had known to equip topaz off the bat, it’s a whole different gaming experience.

Explanations of items in the library would be immensely helpful too. Okay…it’s a material…for what? I don’t even know what to save and what to throw away.

PS - I still don’t know wtf mountain dew does even though I’ve drunk several.

Just save everything. You can’t go wrong with saving everything, if you are getting too many items in your warehouse, make an alt prince and make a clan. Then you can use your alt prince inventory and the guild storage to store items that you want to keep, but don’t “normally” pick up. Like for instance, just store the materials you get in the dailies in your normal warehouse since it’s a daily thing. But if you keep a holy crystal and want to save it, chances are its gonna be awhile before you get another one.

Mostly everything is on the website. Jewels are explained in a post called Pandora has a new bag. I still use the search function for the message boards alot as most of the relevant info is there. And a ton of answers are just a post away on discord. See you in game.

I agree there is a lot of info on the website, but new players don’t even know what info to look for. It’s one thing for a page on a website that a new player may or may not know exists (it took me awhile to even find the ‘message board’ section of the site, and even when i did it didn’t look helpful until i found the Guide category) to have info about jewels and brooches, it is another thing to recommend which jewel a new player should equip.

I really think when someone says: “the info is all here if you just look for it,” they must have played this game for a long time and are vastly discounting how confusing it is for new players. Then people say, “just ask.” Well, I’m asking. I’m asking for new player guides that actually explain the game. I’m asking for the Library to actually explain what potions do, which spellbooks are for which class, what materials are FOR, which items are just junk leftover from deactivated quests. A lot of that information cannot be found in the message boards.

I’ve been trying to, and that is good advice on making a fake pledge for storage…but…can’t there be an easier way? I mean, it kinda sucks to have to save everything because you can’t figure out what is junk and what isn’t. It becomes time consuming and burdensome in a way that just isn’t fun.

Warp 8 also has communal storage which is additional to your bp & personal storage

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the communal storage, is basically elven storage, just don’t need mith ore to take items out

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I agree that the info available is outdated and hard to sort though. The last thing new players want to do is to sift through 1,000 pages of outdated suggest and info that is no longer relevant. Not to mention, reading a book to be able to do basic stuff is very frustrating. Yeah you can search, but you have to know what you are searching for, and that in it’s own right is a difficult task at best. I agree that in the interest of player retention, there should be steps taken to help new players understand at least where to go to level. Many do what I did and go to the old places I used to level in L1 only to die a horrible death, this is discouraging and people have a hard time with it. I know I field many questions from new players and the #1 question is “Where am I supposed to level??” I still have the same question as I continue through the tiers, I understand it varies with gear however, it could be better laid out in the game. That on it’s own would make a big difference so players could feel like they are making some sort of progress and not just get pissed off and feel like the server is PTW.

-Ben

I’m not even sure most long time players know where to level at low levels WITHOUT GOOD GEAR. I remember complaining that FV was getting boring and was told to do sky. With AC of about 50 and DR at 12 this was extremely bad advice.

The codex of time is available to new players with Easy and Normal modes (no Hard or Extreme). The one caveat is that IF your antivirus software thinks the codex is a Trojan, you never even know you’re missing it.