Haru: Acolyte, Level 10/20
Optifex: Initiate, Level 10/20
Haru walked up to the acolyte job master, curious how getting new skills and spells worked. Then inspiration struck. “Hey Opti, how does the whole job system work?”
The initiate looked over his shoulder, immersed in menus. “Oh, you need to buy the skills with dobluens. Some abilities and spells will have a level requirement, like having healing to level 5, or hand-to-hand at level 10. Stuff like that.”
Haru nodded slowly. It seemed straightforward. She engaged with the acolyte job master.
“Hello HowRude,” the master started, “it looks like you have a core there. If you give it to me, I’d be happy to expand your abilities.”
A menu popped up that prompted Haru to accept or deny giving her job core to the Acolyte master. She accepted and the core disappeared from her key items. From beneath her, a circle of light expanded under her feet, and sparkles flowed up from it. The sound of a chorus sang out for a moment. Then a rush of multiple victory fanfares stacked up and playing almost at the same time deafened.
Haru’s acolyte job level expanded to 20!
Haru leveled up three times!
To her left, another deafening blast of the victory fanfare surged when Opti turned in his orb.
Optifex leveled up three times!
Haru looked around, expecting Emu to pop out excitedly announcing their level increases. But as the dojo was silent, she raised her eyebrows. “Ding.” She smiled.
She knew that because the job orb was turned in, it would allow her to change jobs and also add a subjob. But she decided to test Opti again.
Haru looked over to the initiate. “Say, how does this whole job-switching and subjob thing work again?”
“Oh, that,” Opti started, “It’s pretty simple. You can swap to any job you have unlocked. So right now, we only have the base jobs available. There are other tier 1 jobs we can go quest for, but that would be pretty hard. They’re very high-level quests, but they would make tier 3 jobs available.”
Haru folded her hands and listened intently.
Opti continued. “Like Star Squire is one of them. It’s tier 1 but it’s a tank-caster that eventually turns into Astral Knight which has a boatload of requirements that need to be fulfilled in order to unlock.” Then his eyes started to wander. “I wonder if anyone has even gotten to that point yet. There’s a huge quest chain to get through before it even becomes available.” He placed his hands on his hips. “Not to mention that it requires six jobs over level 30. And on top of that all, you need the Artifact Weapon for Paladin…”
Haru swallowed hard at the firehose of information suddenly beset upon her. “What about subjobs, how do those work?” She held back wincing, worried about getting pummeled by even more information.
Opti’s eyes widened. “Oh yeah! So how it works is that you can now equip a different job in your second slot.” He opened his menu and pointed at the empty space in his status description. Initiate was abbreviated ‘ITE’. “Whatever job you take here will have a max of half your level rounded down. So if you are level 20, your subjob max level is 10. If you go to 21, your subjob max level is still 10. No fractions of levels.”
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Haru nodded, feeling a lot more comfortable with this information as she already knew it.
Opti continued. “But the catch is, you need to already have levels in that job. So if you pick Apprentice as your subjob, it will still only be level 1. You will need to level that as your main in order to gain anything from it as a subjob. Oh, and one more thing, your subjob doesn’t level with your main. You need to level them separately.”
Then the initiate propped his chin with his clasped hand. “I wonder…” The light in his eyes faded.
Haru tilted her head.
“Why did we design it like that?” Opti searched the floor, lost in thought.
Holding back a gasp, Haru started to think he might be remembering something from his life.
“It could be how much play time was being left on the table.” Opti pointed. “No, I think it was more complex than that. It was more social…” Then he snapped his fingers and flicked his wrist. “That’s it, we wanted to make sure there was a better distribution of jobs being played. There was a risk of people just hiding away on their mains.”
“Opti?” Haru piped up.
“Yes?” The initiate turned to her.
“What are you talking about?” Haru blinked.
Opti cleared his throat and looked around, his face painted with distress. “I—I’m not sure. Something just took over me.”
Haru got the sense that the inability to log out was related to this strange amnesia befuddling her friend. Seeing his duress, the acolyte decided it was best to let him recover from whatever gripped him. “Why don’t we level a subjob? I like acolyte but maybe it would be a good idea to get a jump on some levels to help the others when they come back.”
After a moment, Opti looked at his job master, then to the Legionnaire job master. “I think that’s a good idea. Why don’t we buy skills and then go head back to the starter area to get some levels.”
Haru spoke to the Acolyte job master again and then looked at what she could purchase. She could pick up the magic defense passive and a holy-based DoT. She needed 3 more levels in the healing ability to get a stronger healing spell. So she bought the two abilities she could manage and then looked around.
“Where do we go to change our jobs?” Haru didn’t know but worried her question would cause Opti to spiral into distress.
“Oh, we can go to the player rooms, that’s probably a good place to head to next.” Opti pointed out of the dojo.
The two trekked to the elevator and returned to ground level. They were near the auction house, where masses of players bustled back and forth.
“This way,” Opti motioned, walking toward the main bridge, “Thankfully Fairbank’s player rooms aren’t too far away.”
They crossed the bridge and continued down a set of smaller streets. The stucco houses were colored in varying worn pastel pinks, blues, and yellows. It was a pleasant view against the harsh and bright white needle that towered over the city. They came upon a stone tunnel where a steady stream of players ran into, and emerged from, just over a small wooden footbridge which crossed a peaceful canal.
“Here we are.” Opti pointed at the tunnel. “The player rooms. I hope at some point they release player housing though.”
Haru looked at him nervously. “Do we share one, or…”
“No,” Opti shook his head, “We each get our own. It’s where we can change our jobs and manage storage.” He looked at her and waved. “I’ll go change my job setup, see you in a few.”
Haru watched him disappear into the passageway and followed just after him.
Inside was a simple room, in a small apartment overlooking the harbor. It had wood floors and a dull blue wallpaper. The only furniture within was a single bed and a lit fireplace.
Haru looked around and leaned to look out the window. She hummed, thinking about her own apartment and wondering if she would even have a place to stay after all of this was over. She then thought how Vernal would probably like to sleep on the windowsill here. Worried about how her feline friend was doing, she sat on the bed not far from the window and looked out at the boats coming and going afar.
Then she noticed a small corkboard next to the window. It was targetable. Haru poked it and a menu appeared. She could store items, send and receive mail, change jobs, decorate, and leave. Tempted to spend time sprucing the place up, she decided that while it would probably make her feel better, there were more important things to deal with.
She pressed the button to open the job change menu. It asked if she wanted to change her main job or subjob. She chose to change her main job, then swapped to Apprentice. Then she changed her subjob to Acolyte.
A wisp of light danced around her, and she felt a sudden weakness as her HP dropped. She was now an Apprentice 1/Acolyte 1.
Then, thinking back to Alara, she decided that perhaps having a staff would be a good idea. Maybe it was time to do a little shopping. She exited to the street and looked around to find Opti.
“What do you think about buying some gear?” Haru called out.
He shrugged. “That food was so expensive…” Opti whined.
Haru sighed, deciding that wasn’t going to stop her.