Starting Out on Bad Connections

[Miradus]

I'm sure I'm not the only poor bastard on a permanently shitty link. I've lost a ton of cool characters to that, though if I can make it to about 24 hours played I GENERALLY can survive most of the pitfalls of a lost link.

I don't play pure crafters hardly ever and don't have a desire to switch my entire playstyle to that just to make sure I don't die linkless.

For those of you who also suffer from this issue ... what are some methods you've used to get out of those initial first days?

[Riev]

Trust in sparring partners to disengage if they're beating on you too badly (good luck).

I used to have a timer that would just send a carriage return to the MUD every once in a while to make sure the link would stay alive, or be my early warning system.

I've had ping ginka.armageddon.org -t on the side to see if I have drops.

In the end... you're going to get scrabbed.

[valeria]

My rural internet connection is periodically unreliable.  Fortunately, the 4G on my phone is usually at least 1 bar, so I have a MUDclient on there that I use to quit ooc from.  But I'm far more likely to die in the desert to player stupidity (walking into dangerous creatures, holes, whatever) than link loss, so take that with a grain of salt.

[Miradus]

I have the combo-problem. Player stupidity coupled with occasional linkloss.

Stupidity: Go into risky area knowing it's cloudy and your satellite connection may barf on you.
Connectivity: A gith screams "Agagagamaga Ba!" from the east. #SESSION DISCONNECTED.

From where I sit I can look up and see my modem. If it's got a blue bar, then I know I may be dog-slow and laggy but I'm connected ....  but when it turns white I know there's a mad scramble to not die while I wait for it to connect and turn blue again.

Doesn't help to be connected to a satellite probably kicked out the cargo bay sometime in 1977 with less bandwidth than a modern, internet-connected refrigerator.

I think the Martian rover is more responsive than my connection some days.

[valeria]

That sucks man. One of my friends once described rural satellite as "a butterfly sneezes in China and my internet goes out."

[Miradus]

That sucks man. One of my friends once described rural satellite as "a butterfly sneezes in China and my internet goes out."

Your friend isn't wrong.

Satellite gets messed up by rain or heavy cloud cover. Your bandwidth drops dramatically. And I live in a tropical jungle where I get ~270 inches of rain per year.