Other various tips off the top of my head.
- 'help' is your friend, but be warned there's some gaps in help files. Try variants with a space, a - dash or an _ underscore if the help term you're looking for is (potentially) two words.
- help map, map a1, map a2, map a3 - all very useful.
- Denver's grid is based on a 5x7 structure. Every 7 squares north or south is a major west-east street like 14th, 15th, etc. Every 5 squares east or west are the north-south streets also as shown on the map.
- Turn your automap, autopeople, autoexits, etc
ON. It's not 1992 anymore folks, unless you're specifically looking for that throwback nostalgia - don't shoot yourself in the foot and ignore the vmap. (ps - that's the command to look at your automap without moving, 'vmap'). Turning this stuff on/off is done through the 'option' command, 'help opt' or 'opt <map/exit/people/etc>'.
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info #(or <keyword>) while in a shop will let you get info on an item. Once you've bought it 'look'ing at it or 'examin'ing it shows you some level of info, but the rest can only be gleaned through the 'identify' spell, or going back to that vendor to refresh your memory.
- Deckers, go for wealth as either your first (then buy best deck you can find out of the gate, and use that to make money / earn karma) or your last priority (build your character with high int/will and appropriate computer skills to speed up your early game decking grind, earn money with meat world autoruns from 'Johnsons' found around the city.
- Casters (shamans/mages/elementalists/etc) - willpower is your first key stat, but don't ignore quickness either. Body and strength will keep your alive in a fight, so don't neglect there too much. Combat spells are best cast @ odd forces (3,5,7) as there's increased TN's for your target to deal with them, but no increased TN's for you (those increase on the even #'s for you). Spell foci are nice and all, but don't get caught up sinking karma into them early game. They can be lost, destroyed, stolen, taken away, etc. Shadowrun is fairly unforgiving, and if 1/2 of your combat ability is built up in various foci - you're in trouble if you find yourself naked.
- Casters with the 'conjure' skill will want to use the 'order <mob> <action>' command. Remember the following ; they have to materialize first (order <mob> mat), then have them follow you (order <mob> follow <player>) and guard (order <mob> guard <player>) you. Mobs can not cast spells, period - I know, it would have been fun... but so easily abused too. Mobs can hold/wear armor/weapons, but they're also tempermental and may just up and decide they hate you some day (or you go linkdead/disconnect/afk, and they break their bond when you reconnect) and require killing to get any expensive gear back.
- Riggers are not 100% complete, I'm sorry to be the bearer of bad news. It's been this way for years, mostly because there's nobody who's played a rigger long enough on tabletop, willing to stick around and suggest/assist/expand, and test. Mostly the stick around part though. That said, as a rigger there is a lot you can do, and a lot more you can do with GM's custom creating items for you to play with - but it's not terribly automated, and not as fleshed out as it will be (eventually). That said your rigger would still make a damned fine street-sam / cyber-wared up combat character, as something to pass the time / break from Rigging until/when it's finished.
- The 'Shadowclub' and 'Mana Burn (east of Pearl Plaza) are the two hangouts for mid to high level characters, where you'll get the most/best RP. Seven Shades and Club Apocalypse hold lower level J's (Johnsons, job-givers - help job, job info, job accept, job drop, job reset).
- The current job system has a 'job reset' command, that resets your wait timer and target #'s back to 10-12. Please feel free to use this, if you should find yourself failing your rolls when asking for a job from a J, and your time/targets start climbing to 12, 15, 18, 20+. Everyone else spams the reset command to keep targets @ 10-12 to get a job, over and over. It means rooms with J's get a bit spammy, and characters with hearing amps have to learn to ignore it.
- There are a lot of little hidey holes and secret shops that sell a handful of items all around the map, both Denver (south of 'the wall), UCAS (north of wall), or the UTE Nations (Grimmway Park/Redfeathers area, accessed via the Helicopter).
- Find PC's, roleplay with them to break the ice, start asking about where you can find better gear - go from there. Some players even have their own 'biz' license. These players are able to act as merchants and sell items from their inventory to players. You can quickly check for these such players with the 'list <player>' command, though they are rare at a cost of 1mil nuyen. These PC's make a living out of knowing where to find the best of everything, and being able to get you kitted up.
- Spam the 'who' command, hell - map it to a handy button on the keyboard. Sometimes people log in and out very quickly (30s - 5mins) as they're checking on something, or get distracted IRL. If you have a quick question that's been frustrating you for hours, sometimes they can answer it quickly before leaving again - freeing you up.
- OOC and newbie help channels for assistance, just fire away with questions. Be patient with waiting for replies, sometimes people wander away without marking AFK - for up to 15-20mins.
- Set up aliases for rapid-movement. As example, going from The Shadow Club to Pearl Plaza I set up a macro/alias called 'b2p' (bar-to-plaza) that exits the club, gets on and cranks my bike, goes east 30 times, north 7, east 2, north 1, gets off bike and draws weapon/shield/activates foci. Do the same in reverse to return, right down to the 'job complete' and 'job accept' to pick up a new one. This will make running jobs pretty mindless and easy, for some great coin and karma gain.
- Macro/alias for things like getting on and cranking your vehicle. It gets to be a pain having 1001 keys in your main inventory, but similarly painful to manually open the container, take out the right key, hold it, geton bike, crank, etc. Simplify by macroing these kinds of things.
- Learn to use the 'draw' and 'holster' commands well, as they'll save you actions in putting things into/out of containers, time in combat, and spam to your fellow players.
- I also use MUSHclient triggers to log all oocs and tells to a seperate notepad window within MUSHclient is very handy, especially when rapid moving as shown above. It's easy to miss tells and oocs in all that movement/map spam, and can save you having to page-up 50 times to find that flash of purple text you missed. It's an easy trigger for '* oocs *' and '* tells you *', send '%0' and output to a notepad(append). You can then mini/cascade the windows within MUSHclient itself, and arrange so the game window and notepad are both visible at all times, like this;