MAngband

So, amidst the grumblings of low level characters about how the game is too hard, etc....

Conn shows up today, and goes from level 1 to level 19 in under a few hours. (by no means a record, but certainly very respectable).

Given he'd taken a rather long break, this does help to demonstrate it's simply a matter of technique.

Dying a lot?  Read a tutorial or survival guide.

a little [glow=red,2,300]scuming[/glow] at the lower lvls will help out...!!  ::)

or instead of scumming there's my technique, which is take a > every time you see it until you hit 1200 or so, then wait until you have lows and/or FA .  It works sometimes, really!  Granted, this is from one of the dyingest people on the server, so take this advice with a grain of salt.

1200 without FA? hey, whats that group of orange c's! and the blue R? Carrion Crawlers and a Basilisk? What are they?
;D

What I tend to do with a new character is this: If it's a warrior/paladin/ranger/rogue I'll roll till I get 18/50 str..this gives 3 blows with a whip.  Sell my weapon, buy a whip, buy all the cheap ac I can (gloves, boots, cloak etc ) you can usually get around 20 ac with a warrior,  12-15 with the others since they don't start with chainmail...scum 50' till you can afford a recall then scum for > pick up everything you see near the stairs and keep going > till you're around 1k..recall and you'll generally have 3-4k worth of stuff and usually are around level 15-20 by the time you're done too.  My best is a level 20 character in around 15 minutes but you can die realy easily with this technique.  Probably only around 1 in 10 characters makes it but it's generally faster than other ways.

       Just an idea...
I often see newbies enter the game with their first char as a mage or rogue class.  These classes take some skill to play early on.. without macros and knowledge of spells they can be quite hard in the beginning.  The newbies end up dying repeatedly.  (I myself have trouble playing with low level mages) Perhaps starting as a warrior for a time would add some playing experience before branching out to a mage or rogue?