Player Starting Items

[Baruuk]

Good afternoon folks. I'm relatively new to server creation - have gotten my server up and running locally and am very excited about trying out some concepts that I have. I've been playing with George's tools, etc and have learned quite a bit from the forums here - thanks to all of those who have helped.

I do have one question that I haven't had much luck in searching for yet: Is there a way to modify the starting items a player has? I'd like to start every player with a set of their home city "newbie" armor (the low end stat stuff) without the trouble of doing the collection quests for it. It's a low end way of twinking folks out without overdoing it imho. I suppose I could simply create a merchant in each person's home city with their race's armor at low cost (or no cost) and call it a day - I just wasn't sure if there was a way to have each character appear initially with a bag of items to start them out.

I guess my thoughts on how I'd like my server to eventually turn out is something in between PEQ and EZServer. Both have advantages/disadvantages - but I'd like folks to solo or duo all the way to 65/70 and later need 1 group for raid content (or use bots). Thus, I'd planned on introducing defiant gear at various tiers or introducing custom quests to upgrade armors by trading in old pieces (with a component, etc) for an upgraded version. These are just ideas of course. It's tough it seems to find a way to appeal to the casual crowd (something Hunter has done a great job at with EZServer) while making it challenging and not overly easy.

Thanks in advance on my question above - I'm very excited to be able to work behind the scenes on a game I've loved for 10 years.

Baruuk

[ChaosSlayerZ]

yes there is a table in DB for starting items

however, its a little bit confusing, as it deals with various variations of race/class/deity combos, and inserting newbie armor for EACH, and keeping track of insert in slot id, could be VERY tiresome.

going with 0 cost merchant will be a far less headache to set up

[Baruuk]

Thanks much - I wondered about that.

[Caryatis]

If you are talking about giving the same stuff to everybody regardless of class/race(ie want everybody to start with a bag of food and gems or something) that is easy, just make the fields relating to race, class and zone(I think, cant remember) 0 and then you don't have to go through and add for every combo(look at the rations, they are the same for everybody so you can see how its done). If you want to give specific stuff then its going to take more time or the merchant.

[Baruuk]

Ah nice - thank you Caryatis :) That's a good point. Now I have to decide which approach to take. Was trying to make it a bit more 'natural' but I'm not certain. Now if I can just get an SoD client to connect to the server :) Gonna go post about that now after no luck troubleshooting.