Right, I played another MUD a while back where in order to balance things, they made a "tired old monk" that had a full set of actually fairly decent equipment. Light, not a whole lot of hit/dam, but high armor ratings. You could kill him easily with a group at like rank 13, but could still solo him on your own if necessary. I think it made it easier for newbies. See, you put yourself in their situation, they don't know where equipment is, much less the most likely place to find it lying around. I mean, I can actually get myself, with just a tad bit of luck, a decent set of equipment at level one, and I'm no where near as knowledgeable as a lot of other people here. Not sure I'm in favor of this idea, mind, but I just thought I'd throw it out there.
Tired Old Monk
Like the mith golems, tainted golems and kesrick?
It's pointless to equip yourself outright at level 1, it's pointless at level 10. Your primary focus should be leveling, which the quests exist for. Goto your guild in Rheydin and start the quests, by the end you should be atleast level 6, and after that point you have some equipment that will allow you to rank up to 10, hell, I don't even bother scrounging for equipment until level 20, maybe 25. You rank way to fast at the lower levels to make spending any time aquiring a decent set worth while. And if you haven't gotten down the speed ranking at that level, I'd recomend that first over learning where equipment is, the basis for speed ranking(knowing the lands) is far more usefull than knowing where alright equipment is at level 7.
I'm a bit off the mark I guess... but the sentiment remains.
WC
But how many newbie know where those are? Besides, you can't even kill those at that early of a rank, except the mith golems. I've never killed the tainted golems myself, so I wouldn't know.
So how would adding another mob help if they won't know where he is? Newbie chat is a great place to ask questions, so is central square, and so are tells, just so long as the new players ask in character and it isn't 'Got extra equ?' or 'U got staff?' they will find people are usually more than willing to help.
WC
I always get my first base set of eq at rank 10.
a decent weapon, some rings, some teeth, white gold bracelets...whatever I can find...and why?
Because with +15 hr I can get from EASY eq makes me rank twice as fast to 35, when I eq again.
I use the arena until rank 5 or 6, easy exp, then I do the quests which take me to around 10 or so depending on my exp pen. I only worry about having mithril/rings/teeth when I hit 15 or so. It does make leveling easier.
In most MUDs that I've been on to either fool around on or build on, at the very beginning there were MOBs (much like the ones we have in the newbie arena) that have farely decent armor that would give a good deal of AC and/or hit/dam. After a certain area though, that armor basically fell off and they had to get something else as their newbie arena didn't really connect to all major cities and two of the minor ones. With the way armor is in this game, I see no point in there being anything like this really. The reason being is there is usually all that stuff just lying around after someone has gone through the area. Just need to know where to look for decent armor, as there are some objects in the game that even have some low level decent armor for people to just go in and take.