Draining magic energy with attacks won’t be that good. In my mind I divide this scenario into 3 stages: the first one, where there are many people, but enough other things to hunt, that it isn’t worth it to try to kill other people, the second one, where huntables are dwindling, and everyone who was good at hunting is now at a somewhat high level, but it’s now worth it to go after other people for xp, and the 3rd one, where there are few people left, and now the main reason to go after other people is not xp, but because they are a threat
Draining magic energy won’t be good in the first stage, because it doesn’t help when you are hunting animals, and it won’t be good in the second stage, because if you did enough hunting, you’d have leveled up to where you could one-shot people anyway (if you couldn’t already), since I’m assuming leveling up doesn’t also increase health
In the desert? I don’t think it matters. Nobody would give a crap about the desert, especially if people with an advantage in it lived there. The forest is probably gonna be prime territory for hunting things for xp, and once the people there have killed each other/leveled up a bunch, they should be able to steamroll anyone else hiding in any less relevant area of the map, even with environmental disadvantages
However, since the forest will inevitably get burnt down. Some people might settle on the sandy edges of the lake afterwards, or there could even be people living on the lake (ice/blizzard/frostmetal etc wizards who freeze natural water to make a platform to sleep on)
they don’t mean every registered forumer, only the currently active ones. I’ll concede that it probably is true that some of those forumers will stay in the desert. I don’t have a good estimate but I think active forumers would be over 100 people depending on how active “active” is. I don’t think forumers seem as dumb in person as on the forums, but inevitably, some forumers will be dumb. However, I think those would be the most likely to conform, and the least likely to come up with their own ideas and go their own way. Now, you may manage to kill a few forumers in the desert. Since the desert is vast, and you have no magic sensing at first, it could take days to do this, though, and if anyone else picks sand and tries to live in the desert, you may have to compete with them as well, and if these forumers dehydrate or starve before you get to them, then you can’t get any xp from them
If I give you an answer now, I’m probably going to change it later, but if you want something to critique, then, how about using lightning magic to hunt in the forest, and, once that’s gone, living on the shores of the lake?
Obv the fire takes time to spread, but the forest is going to be burned down, because it’s prime hunting territory, and where there’s hunting, people are using magic, and some of them have heat magics. It’d be like asking people to hunt with grenades and flamethrowers and ofc they’re gonna start fires in the process
