A New Players Perspective: It is hard to be the new guy. Aard Mud is rich in rooms, mobs, and friendly players, but this is not a good starting mud for new players.

The amount of text zooming by when first starting is beyond intimidating. New players need to 'channel' to shut off almost everything to start with. The immortals should consider more friendly starting options.

On the good side, the low level mob areas are well defined and appropriate for new folks. And there is a lot of help available in the form of web sites with posted speedwalks and lots of other info. The monsters have plenty of gold and equipment. And there Newbie helpers available to answer the huge number of questions a new player will have on this site.

However, For new players, there is so much information that needs to be taken in, that you can spend hours just trying to get handle on basic play. For example, I spent a couple of hours looking up the equipment that may be picked up so easily, until someone mentioned that it doesn't matter very much at low levels on this mud.

Activities for players are also a mixed bag. There is an excellent quest system, with level appropiate tasks for new players. There are also frequent 'Wars' with players killing players without any real loss of equipment or stats. However, these 'Level' based battles are not appropriate for new players. Very experienced players manipulate the level system so that they can compete as low level players even after beating tens of thousands of mobs and maxing out their stats.

In closing, I would say that Aard Mud has great richness, but newbies need to watch out for this one.