Landmarks are your friend. Pick something you can see from a good distance away, and explore the entire area where it is still visible. Then pick a new landmark and do it again. String landmarks together in your mind until you can look around yourself from anywhere in the zone and know where you are because you know where a landmark you see is in relation to the rest of the zone.
NOTE: Some landmarks may be more obvious than others. Maybe you are in a zone that is full of trees, but there is only one spot in the zone that doesn't have any trees. That absence of trees can be a landmark.
I would say always follow the edges of a zone. That has worked well for me.
Hail everything that doesn't want to kill you, and see if you can find any quests.
Open all the vendors to see what they sell. Could be some cool unknown items.
Remember how you got where you are so you can find your body later.
Always have an exit strategy.
Test pulling different mobs to see how they react.
Put all your gear in the bank before going into a hole you know nothing about for the first time :P, just in case you can't get back to your corpse. Maybe have an explorer set of gear you don't mind loosing so much.
Collect all the unique items you run across and see whats craftable.
Read any books you find for more information.
Go with friends :P
-Az
Aside the posts above already mentioned (which is about most already)
Look at other players already there, so you know where they are placed
On entering a zone, look around for safe spots and move away from the entrance point.
As said above by VicNuggets, zonelines are usually not targeted by mobs (maybe now they will be, lol)
Check if Kilsin made an all nighter: opening post: November 13, 2017 6:54 AM EST
Also look up and down; just in case.
Look for paths, roads, trails
Klik on stuff to check for interactions (or deviations that could be triggers, like doors)
Walk against walls\stuff, just to check if it responds or you can pass through
Forage
Do a bit of running, turning, moving, to check the lagg factor
If any non natural looking structure is present, check it for inscriptions
Very important: check your chat windows for zone related messages, warnings, environment
Don't forget to turn on sound (or even turn music off before entering, so you can hear the glees of ghouls behind you)
Kilsin said:When scouting a new zone or area, what are some tips that you can give to new players in the MMORPG genre? #PRF #communitymatters
find the highest spot, from there scout for the biggest and meaniest mob group, run through the mobs screaming, pick them up and train them to the city.
such heroic acts of selfless valor are always appreciated by the community.
As far as new players in a new zone. Make sure they know the ends and outs, quick exits of the zone, safe spots, closest vendors, hostile areas etc.. I would also make sure they have me on their friends list so that if anything goes wrong or if they have any more questions along their journey they would have quick access to a fellow journeyman who is more then willing to give them a helping hand in their time of need. :) #communitymatters
Landmarks for sure. It makes it way easier to tell people how to find things without maps when everyone is referencing landmarks.
If I knew the zone well, and could offer advice on things/places where they would definitely want to bring some friends along, I'd do that.
Apart from that, I'd tell someone.... take it slow, but have fun! Exploration is all about seeing for yourself, after all.
Saicred said:TAKE YOUR TIME!!!
Don't rush through it. Take your time to explore it and enjoy it!
This and be awear of your Perception skill so you have engouh for the zone you are going to explore.
Try to get bind at the nearest city in case you die. Get a run speed buff from a shaman or druid. Perhaps invis if you can. Have /loc hot keyed and hit it regularly especially if you get attacked so you can find your corpse if needed. /con everything you see so that you know roughly the level of the mobs. If everything cons red then go back or find another way like hugging the zone walls or asking for a higher level character to help you get somewhere safer. looking for tall landmarks will help you get your bearings as well as keeping track of your direction via the compass. Make friends..especially with clerics :)
Kilsin said:When scouting a new zone or area, what are some tips that you can give to new players in the MMORPG genre? #PRF #communitymatters
In most modern MMO's? There is no explicit exploration or scouting. In fact, there is no opportunity or point to it. The quest hub draws you to every place you should go, and trying to go elsewhere is pointless, inefficient, phased, and/or met with walls or cliffs of death or invisible barriers. (swtor, neverwinter, wow, rift, gw2, etc)
If you're asking what scouting in Pantheon might be like? If you intentionally kept yourself ignorant, I guess you could not have the inevitable maps that will exist by launch day, and just follow the path, if there is one, and ensure you have a speed buff and/or invis/stealth, as others have said. But that would require knowing there is going to be speed buffs, invis and/or stealth available via out-of-group buffs or class/role skills & spells. Which we don't know for sure, yet.
So, presuming none of that is available, turn on the chat/combat log, setup a hotkey for /loc, and use it judiciously.
Before anything else, know you're going to die. Corpse recovery is going to be painful; we saw an excellent example of that in the twitch stream.
So...
1. Use whatever form of sense heading there is and get skilled in it before you go exploring new zones.
2. Be aware of your surroundings and remember landmarks. Write them down with locations so you can find or avoid them starting with the zone in point.
3. Hugging walls may not be an option as zones are no longer rectangular, but try and follow the countour of the zone and again, make notes of what you see and where you see it.
4. Stay away from zone in/outs. While mobs may/or may not path there normally, it's a guaranteed area for people in trouble to run to with a dozen mobs on their tail eager to kill you if they see you.
5. Listen to the surroundings, "listen" to chat", listen to what your perception is telling you.
6. Ask for help from people if you get lost or if you lost your corpse. Others may be able to help you or have abilities to help you if you lost your corpse.
7. Be careful, don't go running blind along a path in an out door zone. While they inevitably will lead somewhere, what you may find may not be what you're looking for.
8. Be careful, don't go running blind in a dungeon. There's likely going to be one or more unfriendlies just around the corner.
9. If you're exploring, try to find a group with fellow explorers.
10. Pick up everything you can pick up. It may be useful to someone or your self.
so many more things...
Without disagreeing with anything said above or trying to be original - the advice I would give a new player is:
1. If there is a stables or other means of transportation that needs to be unlocked by clicking on it or going close to it - make that a high priority. It is really annoying to take half an hour to get back to somewhere that you could get back to in 5 minutes. This is *not* an argument in favor of rapid transportation - but if it exists, tag it whenever you find a new depot.
2. Don't assume that the enemies are the same level you are used to or just marginally more powerful - be alert.
3. Don't assume that anything you see that isn't a player is an enemy. You don't want to attack the local guards just because they do not look like you and wind up rapidly kill-on-sight.
4. It is convenient to find a town, city or quest hub so that you know where to go to sell things, buy things, or for protection if it has guards that actually do guard. Not to mention to see what quests there may be so that you get the quest to kill 50 giant moles before you kill them rather than afterwards. More efficient that way. Also if certain items can be turned in for better rewards than the NPC merchant price best to learn that early on.
5. Make sure you remember which way to go to zone out - you may find a rather urgent need to do so. A building in town that you can enter may also protect you if you can zone-in while in combat. Even if you cannot you may be able to zone-in before a large load of trouble chasing someone else notices you.
1. Never play for more than 8 hours at a time...actually, make that 4. And get up every hour to stretch!
2. Friendships forged in MMOs are as legit as the ones you forge elsewhere.
3. When in doubt, default to kindness, but if not in doubt, give them exactly what they deserve...but never compromise your own morals.
4. Talk to people, even if it's just for five seconds or a passing wave. Especially important if there's some sort of dispute about to occur. 90% of disputes can be resolved with polite discussion.
5. Best way to memorize a zone is to go to a few different places many many times and take note of things you see along the way. I navigate forests via identifying particular fallen trees now. It's surprisingly accurate.
6. Run around and die a lot trying everything at low levels. Rez? What rez?