“Error detected”
[Damn, it was too good to be true.]
“Name unreadable… Please say name…”
“Sam…antha”
“Welcome to the World!”
The opening credits play and Sam finds himself in the beginning area.
[This game is far too easy to hack kukuku.]
A message appears before Sam.
Welcome! Unlike other games there is no starting tutorial and you are allowed to explore as you please. Of course we won’t leave you without help. The villagers in the nearby village are very helpful and are happy to answer any questions you have about the game. Some may even make requests of you and provide rewards for completing them.
Also you may have noticed there are no starting classes. This is a game without limits. Advance yourself as you please. There are jobs such as Knight, Farmer, Blacksmith and so on that can be acquired and will improve your growth in many ways but they are optional and only gained by questing for them.
To access the system menu please make a fist, extend the fore finger and middle finger and make a swiping motion downward. This menu also has the logout button, game settings and real money shop.
[Well it all worked. Time to logout and make my real character.]
Making the system access motion he attempts to logout. Sam makes the system access motion again. Then again. [Why isn’t the system menu appearing?] A few more attempts at various speeds and Sam is starting to worry. [Could the dream within a dream messed up the interface reader?]
He guesses that the motion is not being read since the helmet interface is attempting to read Sam’s mental action in his lucid dream and not this one. [Will I be stuck here until my real body starves? Will this become my death game? Will I have to panic and ask random players for help and be ignored? HA!]
Sam knows he’s perfectly safe as he has been reading information about the game for many weeks now on forums. He’s even read the hardware and safety manual that came with the game. All to better know how to exploit the game of course.
The developers might have thought their game is hack proof and didn’t bother spending any time on security. They did however spend a huge amount of time on the games safety features. There are many monitors on the helmet that will wake up the player if any problem is detected. The helmet will even auto-call emergency services if the health of the player is in danger.
Even if nothing is wrong the helmet will force player logout after eight hours of continuous game play. Sam read many player complaints about being forced to logout in the forums. The helmet also includes safety features to prevent any kind of power surge getting though and no onboard battery that could catch fire. Truly a no trapped in virtual space and death game possible helmet. So Sam now finds himself trapped in virtual space. [Well guess that’s what I get for hacking.]
The starter area is a generic grassy field with a few trees here and there. Situated in a large valley with mountains on all sides but the west. A river runs down from one of the mountains and out the west side as well. A small village sits in the center of the valley adjacent to the river.
Sam looks around and decides to head to the village. [Might as well learn about the game while I’m stuck here. Also need to find a secluded spot to learn about some personal things as well kukuku.]
As the game is still relatively new the starter area is packed with players. Who seem to be taking numerous hits from starter mobs as Sam walks pass. His starting gear of skin tight breeches, knee high boots, and snug fitting white blouse helps this effect even more.
By the time Sam reaches the village he has quite the following of male players. It’s only a matter of time before one of them works up enough courage to say something annoyingly stupid.
The only question in Sam’s mind is how to deal with the inevitable pick up line. Does he accept or does he crush the poor man’s hopes and dreams in the most public and insulting way possible. Sam has much experience playing the G.I.R.L. (guy in real life). After all it’s one of the easier ways to get free gear, be lazy, and otherwise get into parties inner circles quickly. It’s also great for causing a great deal of mischief and distrust between party members.
How Sam deals with the initial interaction will determine which party type he will join. If he accepts he’ll join a desperate male party which allows him to essential do nothing but be eye candy while getting power leveled and most of the choice gear. However he’ll have to constantly deflect all the real life hookups and phone number requests. Also he’ll have to play a healer or ranged job which isn’t really his style.
Next he could call the man a sexist pig and join a bitter all-female group. Which has some fun vicious gossip options but tends to betray the prettiest one in the group because of jealousy. As he’s likely to be the prettiest one this will not likely give him the easy power leveling and non-public game knowledge he currently wants.
He could always try to act naive and use that to get into a long term stable party. The best stable groups are those made up of married couples, but groups composed of coworkers or long term friendships are almost as good. The thought of destroying a stable group after taking everything they have does appeal to him. Sadly stable groups rarely play enough to truly power level others and he plans on deleting this character soon anyway.
No the only real option is to get the beta male white knight harem. Being the queen bee will allow him to determine where the party goes and how loot is divided. Great for forcing the almost slave like boys to give him the best pick of loot, all the quest drops first and even go pick up quests to share with him. They will even give out their closely guarded gaming secrets in an attempt to impress him with their expertise.
With decision made Sam enters the village and then looks around slightly confused. Like succulent bait for hungry wolves this slightly vulnerable appearance will draw in his first victim of the day.
Within moments a smarmy looking shorty saunters up. Sam knows that this player must have increased his height to the max and still came up short. A true manlet with short man syndrome, perfect for the reaction Sam wants.
“Hey beautiful, how’s about you and me go penetrate some pussy mobs together?”
Sam slowly looks the shorty up and down and says quietly in a haughty voice, “I doubt your sword could reach. Combined with your obvious lack of weapon control I’m sure all would be quickly disappointed. That is if you could even draw it without accidently stabbing nearby children. Maybe you should keep solo playing till you know which side to grip? Now toddle back to mommy and let me talk to someone who can properly show a woman around town.”
With each sentence the midget gets redder in the face. The only thing holding him back is his knowledge of the games player versus player settings. Unless in same party, on fiends list or pvp flagged one player can’t get within an inch of touching another player. Even if those settings are true a player still can’t touch the eyes, mouth or below the belt/above the thighs without additional setting flags.
However at the realization of his own impotence the shorty is driven into an incoherent rage. “You fucking cunt, I’ll show you!” He draws his short sword and his name goes red with pvp setting turned on. “I dare you to fight me, step outside the town and I’ll show you how a real man handles his sword.”
Sam looks frightened and backs away timidly. “I just logged in to the game and a man is going to assault me? Someone please help!”
Several of Sam’s potential party slaves’ flag red and attack the enraged would be lady killer. After a short and obviously disappointing battle Manlet is vanquished.
“Thank you. Can some of you help me start in the game?” Sam says as he looks around. Sam notices several players flagging themselves for pvp after the fight in an attempt to appear that they helped. He sends out party invites to three that flagged red after the fight.
Those flagged for pvp but can’t look a woman in the eye are likely the right level of useful but obedient slaves that Sam wants. For job types Sam has to guess which ones to pick based on gear as only the player name is displayed. Guy in white robe, guy with black hat, and a guy with a bow. Hopefully an archer, healer and mage. Perfect leveling team for early levels as mobs are fairly weak and made for solo play.
“Thanks for joining my party. I’m Samantha, please call me Sam, and I would love to hear about how to play the game from you three.” The three stooges introduce themselves but Sam ignores most of what they say.
Sam learns that the one with the bow is an elf archer hopeful, he’s still on the quest to actually be an archer. With annoying Legolas looks except with curly red hair. Sam calls him Carrot.
Next is the dress wearing human altar boy. Sam calls him Bowl for his bowl haircut. At least he has healing magic.
Finally Potato, who is a lowly human rogue. Short reach daggers, paper thin armor, no hp, useless combat skills and worthless out of combat abilities. Rogues tend to know a lot about games and know what sells well so he’s not a total waste. As for the name Potato, the reason is simple, he’s a couch potato. He spends all his time at the auction house and commons area making shady business deals while never leaving town.
At the end of introductions Potato ask Sam, “Have you decided on which job you will be going for first?”
“I was thinking of maybe something like a swordsman or better yet magic swordsman.”
“Magic difficult. Takes time.” Says Bowl.
“Well let’s start by buying the best swordsman starting gear. We can collect all the basic adventurer quests as we walk around town as well.” Offers Potato.
“That will be great! Hopefully it’s not too much, I mean I really don’t need all of that do I?”
“It’s no problem for a genius businessman like me. It’s always best to use the best right? As for the magic part I’ll buy you the starter books. Most of the quest is just memorization and math problems. Only reason it takes so long is the difficult practical tests.”
“Oh thank you so much!” Sam gushes.
The newly formed party walks only a couple feet before an NPC guard speaks up. “Welcome to the village of New Beginnings! Normally an entrance fee is charged at village gates but with the troubled times and influx of new heroes such a fee is being waved. Please stay awhile and listen to…”
If you come across this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.
Potatoes keeps walking toward a nondescript wooden building, “Ignore the mobile sign post. He just goes on about typical story fluff. Ah here’s the adventurer’s guild. Sam you should register here first. The ID card gives free entrance to towns, access to teleport gates and cheaper merchant prices. This will also be where we pick up many of the basic quests. Although there are many hidden quests and job specific quests that we’ll need to hunt around for.”
As Sam walks up to the registration counter. “If everyone gets an adventure ID card what’s the point of all its perks?”
“The card gets confiscated for doing criminal acts or if you have a bad reputation with the local adventurer’s guild. Unless you plan to go evil it’s not an issue but all evil players have to get their quests and items via player controlled towns or middlemen.” Potato explains.
“I see you’re a new adventurer, thanks for choose Adventure Guild United to begin your questing. I’ll be your quest receptionist Maggie. Please fill out these forms.”
Sam fills out the meaningless forms then gives them back to Maggie. As the NPC puts the forms into what suspiciously looks like a paper shredder a familiar cutting and humming sound can be heard.
Laughing at the odd look on Sam’s face Carrot responses, “Ha ha everyone has that same look when the booth babe does that. It’s basically a magic paper shredder that converts the forms into an ID card.”
Sam looks around the guild as the magic paper shredder hums. There is registration counter with three receptionists at three counters. No post office one worker at five counters here. Then what looks like a small convenience store. Of course instead of selling snacks and magazines it sells potions and basic adventuring equipment. Like a convenience store it also sells dubious herbal supplements and lotto tickets.
Another store like counter is next to it with a blackboard listing numerous items and their prices. Apparently this games version of a pawn shop which buys junk mob drops. Finally the rest of the area is taken up by a pub with several NPC’s and a couple players eating and drinking. The pubs walls are covered in large yellow sticky notes. Apparently these are the quests of the adventurer’s guild. Sam picks up all the beginner quests off the pub’s walls.
Ding. Maggie takes a laminated card from the magic paper shredder and hands it to Sam. [Laminated card in a fantasy game? Thought this was supposed to be realistic. What is this, magic plastic? And sticky notes for quests? No wonder people’s first reaction to the game was so poor. The realistic feel is completely destroyed by this parody ambience.]
Sam remembers reading a developer post about this. The rest of the game is very immersive but the developers thought this would be too much for new players so made the first town a combination of the modern world and the game world. They hoped this would ease new players in to the game. However it just comes across as a poorly crafted game world.
Maggie asks, “I see you’ve made a party already would you like to register a party name?”
Sam thinks a bit then, “Sure, call us Samantha’s Newbie Guidance Operation.”
“That’s an odd party name… Well the next place to visit is the guardhouse next door for the swordsman job quest.” Potato guides the way.
Entering the guardhouse it looks more like a modern dojo with mirrors on the walls, polished wooden floors and a bunch of men in martial arts Gi top’s and yoga pant bottoms slashing wooden dummies with wooden swords. [Wasn’t this supposed to be western magic fantasy? Silly mix of random kendo with yoga class feel going on here.] It was almost like someone who didn’t understand modern culture was asked to make this first area.
Sam walks up to the man with a black belt watching everything, “I wish to learn how to fight can you teach me?”
“Well lass I can teach you everything about the martial arts. Which school would you like to learn?”
Sam decided to be an ass and say, “I’d like to learn Kunst des Fechtens.”
“Late medieval, renaissance or early modern? Also blossfechten or harnischfechten?”
“Uuun” Sam was not expecting the NPC to know anything about real sword techniques. Sam knows nothing about them either other than reading about the German long sword style name in a manga recently. “What do you recommend?”
“All fighting arts of early modern combat with harnischfechten so you can learn with armor. I also recommend picking up zweihander, kurzes schwert and schild techniques as depending on opponent it can be useful to switch weapons.”
“Sure that sounds good…” Sam has no idea what that means but the martial instructor seems very pleased about it all and says “Great then you should get four of the arts weapons and practice swinging them around a bit to get a feel for them. A thousand times each or so.”
“Bangin, I think you just found an upgraded quest! Did you train in that sword school in real life? It sounded German?” Carrot asks.
“Err no? I just wanted to see the NPC reaction to a sword school I read in a book.”
Potato replies, “You lucked out then. Normally the quest givers seem bored and give out just basic rewards. But if you ask them just right or complete a quest really well they sometimes look happy and can give out really good rewards. An upgraded quest. Mostly it’s not worth doing since it’s easier to just complete a lot of normal quest than to figure out the trigger to upgrade one.”
“I hadn’t heard of that. I only heard something about common and hidden quests?” Sam questions.
“Oh that’s the quest classification players give quests. Easy to get quests are called common and normally in the adventurer’s guild. Market quests are market demand driven. If there is a famine for instance a lot of provide food quests will show up from merchants and in adventurer’s guild as well.
Market quests are mostly player driven. Either by direct request to the adventurer’s guild for supplies if the player has a lot of gold and doesn’t want to farm the items. Or by indirect when the player asks for a house built then the NPC’s will create the quests to get lumber and nails and such.
Hidden quests are the harder to find quests. Uncommon hidden quests just take talking to a random town NPC or picking up a mob drop that sort of thing. The rare hidden quests take a lot of work to find like befriending the entire starter town or climbing the highest mountain, waiting 12 days then talk to the hermit that appears.
Oh there are also joke quests but those ones never give rewards and you should avoid them.”
“Joke quests?”
“Ya, devs Easter egg quests I guess. For example there is a sculptor that will give you a quest to become a legendary combat sculptor. Supposedly an unbeatable combat class that also sculpts. Talk to him and he’ll give you a chain of quests to get him items and do chores around the house. None of the quests has a reward. Once you complete the chain he tells you the secret to becoming a legendary combat sculptor.
‘The secret is to get others to give you free materials then sell everything for as much as you can.’ He then laughs at you and runs off.”
“I’m surprised no one has killed him yet.”
“Oh they have, many times, but he always resurrects as a powerful undead then one shots players. Even worse he loots all their gear and sells it on the market for outrageous prices. Of course you also get evil flagged for killing an NPC so it’s just not worth it.”
“That’s so mean. I guess I’ll avoid talking to any nasty sculptors. So how do I keep track of all these quests? Is there a limit?”
“Ha this game has no limits! At least that’s the ad line. However I recommend never picking up more than ten quests normally. A lot have hidden time limits and it’s hard to keep track of more than that. As for quest tracking the next place we go will have an item for that.”
Sam’s NGO walks in to the next building. A little bell rings as the door opened. Looking around Sam sees a variety of weapons and armor on racks in a large room. Behind the sales counter he sees a window into a blacksmith’s forge with several blacksmiths hammering various metal parts on anvils lined up in a row. It reminds him of many car mechanic shops he’s been in.
Carrot walks up to the counter and rings the bell. “Yo blacksmith you have customers.”
One of the blacksmiths comes to the counter, “What can I do you for?”
“This sexy lady needs the best gear you can make, dawg.”
“Uhm I need a schild, zweihander, kurzes schwert, harnischfechten I guess?”
“Harnischfechten? You must be new to the Kunst des Fechtens. I know just the gear for it. Hold on a second I’ll need to go to the back to get it.”
The blacksmith walks to a door on the far side of the room and leaves. When the blacksmith is gone Potato takes a blue glob out of his belt pouch and places it on a display dagger.
“What’s that for?” Sam asks
“Oh it’s to start the next quest, you can wait for it to happen normally but this way is faster.”
Sam hears some clanking and a grunt. The door opens and the blacksmith returns with an arm full of swords and armor. Putting it all down on the counter he points out each of the pieces. “This is the kriegsmesser or war knife in the common tongue.” Looks to be a curved single bladed one-handed sword. “Zweihander” A very long two-handed sword. “Buckler” Dinner plate sized metal round shield. “And dagger, decided against the staff and polearm, better to focus on the zweihander for now. Also as a new student full plate is just too much so instead a cervelliere (metal skull cap), metal breastplate and the rest being leather gear.”
“Full plate? Unless you have a strength over 40 and endurance and grace over 20 you can hardly move in the stuff.” Potato comments.
“Indeed it’s better to build your strength with weapons practice and footwork first. Also for such a large purchase please accept this complimentary item bag to hold it all in.” The blacksmith puts a small belt pouch on the pile of gear.
“That doesn’t look big enough to hold any of this.” Sam comments.
“Don’t worry its magic and can hold up to 10 item stacks. It’ll increase in size if you level up various carrying skills. Hey blacksmith what’s this blue glop?” Potato points to the dagger.
The blacksmith walks over and looks at the dagger. “WHAT? Those pests are here again. How can this be? I just had someone exterminate them an hour ago! They are always infesting fields, undermining buildings, destroying equipment. Whatever! You four do you want to get a special item? Just go into the sewers and exterminate every last blue slime you see. Make sure the little pests pay for ruining my beautiful equipment displays.”