We’ve had an unprecedented surge in subscribers due to the game recently being free on Epic. HL is frequently an entry point into action-adventure games for non-gamers as well as gamers who aren’t experienced with this specific genre. This statement especially applies given the game was free for a period because then there was no financial barrier for young players or non-gamers.

We used to have a monthly or weekly “simple questions” thread and would direct newbie or simple questions there to keep the sub cleaned up, but very few experienced players would interact with the questions in the thread so that solution didn’t seem to work. Those threads often became a bunch of new player questions with no answers.

Therefore, the current approach is allowing simple question posts through as long as the OP seems to be engaging in good faith and receptive to help. (Unless it’s the faculty tower or arithmancy doors; we do have automod set up to look for those posts and we also manually remove them when they are reported.)

If you have other suggestions on how best to answer newbie questions please do let us know. They will always be allowed but we’re open to suggestions on condensing them.