First week
After the tutorial, I'm left in the central plaza of a mid-sized city. On top of my starting linen clothes I'm wearing half-plate chitin armor, and at my back there is bone hooked axe. All of my equipment falls into the bone category, except the leather glove with iron claws riveted at the fingertips. It has a simple crystal at the back of the hand and is a “Simple Iron Glory Hand” that increases a little my defense and curse casting speed.
Looking around I see a lot of newbies like me, with a visually wide array of weapons and armor. Thanks to a game mechanic that randomizes weapons and armor based on a series of pieces with different values, this game doesn't have your typical “assembly line” equipment. Even if two items have the same name, the parts that compose them makes them visually and statistically different, and even with that there are still things like the item level and rarity to take into account; you can be using a Dwarven Bronze sword and suddenly get a bone sword with better stats just because of those things.
Rarity levels are: gray for sub-par items, white for common items, blue for uncommon crafts, purple for masterworks, and orange for legendary items. Additionally, there's green for set items (Items that only bring out their full power when you have all the items in the set) red for cursed items (those who have huge stats for their level, but have negative effects on the wielder) and lastly, gold for “one and only” items. It means that if you have am item with golden name, nobody will ever have another on the server, unless you sell it to an NPC, something absolutely stupid, if you ask me.
Following your typical questline that helps newbies to level up and get equipment easier, I found myself with the task of delivering a letter to an advanced encampment. On the way I fought what I could find, using a curse called poison mist to activate small groups of enemies and raise their aggro. I notice pretty soon that, even if the game helps you, there is a certain degree of personal ability mixed in the combat system. When I was about to be attacked from a blind spot by a wolf, I struck its face with the butt-end of my weapon, making it retreat.
I was rewarded with a system message.
Fulfilling a special requirement has granted your Polearm skill tree a new move
New move unlocked: Reversal
Reversal
Attack delivered with the opposite end of your Pole.
If aimed at the feet can cause Knockdown, if aimed at the head can cause Stun
My strategy worked well enough, because by the time I delivered the letter and received the next quest, a Wild Goblin subjugation aimed at level 3 players and I was already at level 5. Anyone who has played RPGs or MMORPGs knows that at this point in game is fairly easy to level up, so my growth up till now isn't something miraculous, just a little bit above average.
Playing the +18 version of the game also has its things. When I sliced a wolf in half with my axe, its blood and innards flew everywhere. It was a little disgusting, but the worst of all was that I found a half-eaten hand that was holding a coin pouch. I guess that explains why animal-type enemies in RPGs drop these kind of things.
During this first week, I play around two hour in the morning and three or maybe a little more after dinner. The rest of the time I check my mail, browse through my usual sites on the internet and watch series and movies. The fourth day after I started playing I even went to the cinema, though I find it a little depressing to go alone.
Second week
As it is normal for a growing character, my equipment is a set of mismatched parts made of different materials between the items I get from drops and those that I receive as quest rewards. I wear a steel crown, a banded iron breastplate, bronze gauntlets, hardened steel boots, and the purple-named bone greaves I got from a field boss.
This game have sub-bosses scattered around that are challenging according to the level of the area, but they aren't anything like the dungeon bosses that need to be taken care of by full parties. There are also story-driven dungeons, but the bosses there can be considered mid-level at most. For now, at least.
I was able to clear the first few of these mini-dungeons on my own, but with the last one I had trouble fighting the boss alone. Fortunately, there is a stone tablet at the beginning of these dungeons that acts as a matchmaker to make momentary parties. It was infuriating to see how two of us were fighting the boss while the rest of the group just ran around picking up the loot from the boss' minions.
In the end, we fought for the loot from the boss itself. I got a new, blue-named glory hand just before a spellcaster froze me and a barbarian-type warrior smashed me down. Those were the two that had helped half-heartedly until the mid of the boss battle just to get loot. In any case, I got a new glory hand that increased defense, evasion and success chance for curses.
Arriving at level 25, I got a new curse called “Mark of hate” that allows me to brand a specific enemy. The enemy marked is hated by the enemies around it, so basically my skill makes that enemies ignore me for a few seconds to attack the monster I choose. This has made many boss battles easier. I need to make sure that I properly improve this spell, I have the feeling it's going to be one of the cornerstones in my playstyle from now on.
I've started cutting the time I spend watching TV to play longer sessions.
Start of the second month
I finally arrived at the main capital of the game world following the main questline. Up to now, the story has been more or less telling me that the white races are preparing for an invasion of the western continent and I'm a new recruit in the defense forces. The questline has been mainly missions about eradicating wild creatures, doing menial tasks for the army, like carrying messages or supplies, and some times I had to deal with small cells of invaders trying to set up camps.
I've finally been able to see Freyd in person, but only from far away. It made me mad to know that she doesn't even speak to you until you are at least level 75, and I just barely reached level 50. Part of my fast growth is due to my character build, but it's mostly because of what others may call stupid pride. The cheapest mount in the game is the Gray Donkey, but it's so uncool that I decided to walk until I got enough for, at least, a horse. Due to this decision, I saw myself involved in a lot of combat situations that other players with mounts evade completely. More fights, more experience, more loot.
I can still do normal quests on my own, but I no longer can do dungeons on my own. I've gone through several incidents trying to play them with other players in occasional parties, like the time three friends ganged up on me so I couldn't get any loot after being the one who took most of the boss' HP. In the end, I chose the strategy of cleaning the first few rooms of the dungeon, then restarting it. With this, I gain more experience points and raise the money I need to hire a cleric-type mercenary.
During the initial version, Afterdark Online had a slavery system. Through an item named Slavery collar, players could enslave another player they had just defeated in PvP, or Player versus Player combat. If a player got his character enslaved, he couldn't delete it, move it to another server or create a secondary character until the slave status wasn't lifted.
Due to complaints, service cancellations and the subsequent drop in the number of players, the second expansion eliminated the chance of enslaving players or being enslaved, and instead they totally reformed the slavery system. From that point on, only humanoid NPCs could become slaves. A slave trading guild was established, Mind Magic became a knowledge skill that allowed, among other things, creating slaves, and slave trading became a production skill just like Alchemy, Metal Working, or Jewel Crafting.
Unfortunately, stupid people tend to do stupid things when they are bored. Afterdark Online became a topic of discussion on TV, and sensationalist mass media ripped the game for promoting human trafficking and any other evil, real or not, in this world. As a result of this, the third expansion came in rushed and eliminated the whole slavery system. The fourth expansion brought the mercenary guild as a “politically correct” substitute for the enslaved NPC companions.
My armor is still a mismatched set of different pieces, but right now I'm equipped with an orange-named scythe that increases my area of attack. I've found glory hands with better basic stats than mine, but none of them had the additional bonuses of the one I'm wearing. +12% in curse success rate is too good to drop it just like that.
My growth is starting to slow down, so after thinking about it, I finally took the decision. The season pass gives me a discount in cash items, so I'm going to buy a few experience raising items.
I've started to play four hour sessions, followed by one hour of rest. I watch TV for a total of two and half hours a week, and I've started to cut into my sleep time to play a little longer.
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Third month
Thanks to the experience raising potions I'm buying, leveling up is almost as easy as at the beginning of the game. I went on a repeatable secondary quest to grind for a set of green-named helmet, breastplate, gauntlets and scythe called “Remainder of the Wraith” for which, obviously, you have to kill a mid-boss level wraith. The drawback is that the wraith only drops one item each time you defeat it, and the set is designed so almost every player can have a version of it that matches their playstyle. There are parts of wraith armor for every kind of armor, and there are wraith weapons for every kind of weapon.
The thing is, thanks to the exp pots, when I finally got the whole wraith set for my playstyle, I noticed that I had leveled up to 82. As a bonus, all the wraith parts I got and didn't need, I put them up for auction and made quite a hefty sum of money. Thanks to that, now I enter dungeons with two mercenaries: a cleric to heal me, and an attack spellcaster to soften enemies from afar.
I don't have to worry about them raising the enemies' aggro thanks to my advancements in Witchcraft. I've improved my Poison Mist to Contagious Poison Burst, I leveled up my Mark of Hate without evolving it, and added two new curses to my playstyle: Field of Blood and Field of Discord.
Contagious Poison Burst
Creates an explosion of toxic gas on the designated spot. All enemies within the range of the explosion are instantly poisoned for a duration of 12 seconds. Additionally, poisoned enemies will let out smaller burst of toxic gas every 3 seconds, affecting enemies in range accordingly.
Field of blood
creates a red zone around the caster. A fraction of all the damage dealt inside the red zone is instantly converted into HP for the caster, and a lower fraction for the caster's allies.
Two red areas can't be casted at the same time. Casting two areas of different colors increase exponentially the reuse time of both skills.
Field of Discord
Creates a black zone around the caster. The enemies inside the area will target their own allies during a period of time depending on the caster's M. Atk. and the targets M. Def.
Two black areas can't be casted at the same time. Casting two areas of different colors increase exponentially the reuse time of both skills.
When I meet the necessary requirements, I'm going to evolve Field of Blood into Blood Swamp; it does the same as Field of Blood, but it also reduces enemy speed and evasion.
Being level 82, the first thing I did was run to the mercenary guild to start Freyd's questline. I've been looking at her picture several minutes before going to sleep every night for three months, but it's nothing compared to seeing her in person. Her pale blueish skin looks soft like porcelain, the beauty mark by her plump lips looks suggestive, and even though she brushes a hand through her hair from time to time, she always has a lock of hair on her right cheek. She always looks around with sleepy eyes, and she never smiles fully, just lifts a corner of her mouth.
From this point on, I'm going to focus solely in getting as good a relationship as I can with Freyd. After a few days going on quests for her, I get the impression that she's one of those characters that are cold and haughty on the outside but warm and caring on the inside.
Nobody knows her build, because inside the guild headquarters she's always wearing a purple and white 17th century dress, though many people theorize that she must have Demon Summoning due to the eye with bat wings that floats behind her, at her left.
I've noticed that for the money I'm spending in 120 min. Exp pots I could just get a premium membership. That way, the Exp increase is working all the time and I have a few other perks, like free teleport between towns, access to the auction house from anywhere in the world map and an exclusive mount.
Fourth month
I had the chance to go to a special dungeon with Freyd as part of one of her quests. She told me herself about her build, and I decided to call it “Ice storm Spellsword.” She has magic aggressive stance, armored tunic on top of a normal tunic, and her knowledge skills are ice and lightning elemental damage, but in her right hand she wears a saber (curved sword). It seems that the thing that floated around her is a golden-named catalyst that not only improves her casting speed, but it also reduces the mana cost of her spells.
It was long and hard. The dungeon had several floors, each one as big as the dungeons I'm using to explore. It was even harder because when I was still at the mercenary guild, I received a system message saying that this quest would fail if I hired mercenaries to help me with it. In the end, the money I would normally spend on a mercenary, I used it to buy extra potions and crystals.
Crystals and potions are different in the way they work. Potions take time to work, or work slowly for a limited time, while crystals have an immediate and stronger effect. For example, let's say a health potion heals additional 250HP every 3 seconds during 30 seconds. A health crystal of the same grade would heal you for 2750HP instantly. Where's the catch? Potions can be bought from NPCs, crystals are manufactured by players and sold at the auction house; depending on offer and demand they can get ridiculous prices sometimes.
So, we went deeper and deeper into the dungeon, fighting waves of increasingly difficult enemies. Freyd and I were a good team; while I tanked groups of enemies she wiped them with her magic. She had very few opportunities to use her saber. We swept easily through group after group, if we took hours to complete this dungeon, it was due to its abnormal size.
Managing resources became really important. I forced myself to rely mostly on my Field of Blood during battle, leaving the potions for breaks between levels and the crystals for life or death situations.
The final boss of the dungeon was an Ancient Lich that summoned waves of undead to restore itself every time we shaved off a quarter of its HP bar. It was long, hard and stressing. At certain point I thought we were fucked because Freyd warned me that she had ran out of healing items, and when I moved to give her my crystals I received an attack that left me with around 40HP. I had no choice but to cast Field of Blood and Field of Discord at the same time, knowing that I wouldn't be able to use them again until 10 minutes after the effect ended.
All the effort was worth it, though, because I got two great rewards. After saying “This is for helping me release my land from this evil.” Freyd gave me a golden-named item: The Dead Man's Hand. It is a glory hand that looks like it's made with the scales of a black dragon, and the magic element on the back of the hand looks like a golden eye with a slit pupil. Stat-wise, it increases defense, evasion, casting speed and success rate for curses, and the attacks with claws of the gauntlet have a chance to cause freeze. If all of that was not enough, I can feed it other glory hands to make it level up with me. Do you begin to understand how unbelievable are golden-named items?
The other reward came by surprise while I was inspecting my new equipment. Freyd leaned on me and said to my ear, “This is for risking your life for me.” and kissed my cheek before turning around to enter the portal to go back to her guild. Is it because of the light of the portal, or her cheeks were a deeper blue when she smiled at me just before she disappeared?
After finishing that damned dungeon I didn't go out leveling or made any quest for Freyd for a little more than a week. I found out on a guide that NPCs react favorably when you give them items that match their combat style, and the increase is even higher if you give them something you made yourself. By the way, the Community Board was ablaze with topics about why the Captain-Commander of the mercenary guild had disappeared for hours without explanation.
So, I chose Metal Working as my production skill and spent long hours leveling it. This skill allows me to create rigid armors and a variety of weapons, as long as they're made of at least 75% metal. To create items successfully, you need to learn the recipes for the parts you're going to use. This means that, up to a certain point, you can control the stats your item is going to have. The item level depends on your character's level, and the rarity is calculated randomly based on your production proficiency.
“You haven't come for ten days straight, I started to think that you no longer cared about m... us. Or is it that you just wanted the rewards I can give, like so many adventurers and army recruits before you? Once they get what they want out of us, they just go on their way.” My heart skipped a bit when Freyd said that with a frown.
Her usually sleepy eyes opened wide when instead of answering I just gave her the armored tunic I had made for her. She disappeared for a minute and then came back, wearing the Bordeaux-colored robe with black meteor steel plates that resembled a skeletal structure. My heart fluttered again, and we chatted for a few minutes until I noticed there was somebody watching me.
The next day, the Community Board was full of rumors about Freyd. First she disappears for hours without explanation and a few days later she appears with a change of looks out of nowhere. People are starting to sniff that there is someone going higher than normal with the relationship quests. I must hurry.
From this point on, I only logged out to take care of my physical needs. I wake up in the morning, have breakfast and go one hour to the gym to keep my body tone, then I go home and play all day, stopping only to eat, use the toilet or have a quick shower. I sleep around three, maybe four hours a night.
Fifth month
It's incredible how well this system is designed and implemented. Freyd has told me about the increasing number of people who come to talk with her, asking if there is someone doing especial things for her that other people haven't done yet. She said that they practically demanded to be given the same missions and benefits, but she refused them saying that they can't come to her asking for benefits when it was they themselves who cut-off all kind of direct contact with her. It seems that one of them was even banned from the mercenary guild headquarters for uttering threats.
Thanks to that, I have to be very careful of when I contact Freyd. If I'm found out, the bullying will start and probably won't end until I quit the server. In any case, the quests I got from Freyd have become quite bland since I gave her her new outfit; it's just newbie quests like “go kill X monster until you get this number of Y item” or “take this item to that NPC because he will give you another quest.”
When I had just 3 days left to make six months playing Afterdark Online, I did a quest that involved taking all the items I had gathered in the previous quests to an artisan, who in turn told me to go retrieve an item from a frozen plain while he worked the materials I had given him. It was a little shocking to find out that I had to fight waves of ice giants just to get a frozen rose.
The artisan confirmed that I had the rose, and he gave me a very decorated fist-sized box, telling me not to open it under any circumstance. I didn't like the smirk on his face when I got the box and the rose to take it to Freyd, but I'm not going to fuck things up at this point for not following some simple instructions.
When I entered the mercenary guild, it surprised me a little to see that Freyd was at the top of the central stairs instead of her usual corner by the map table. I approached her with everyone, players and NPCs alike looking at me. When I arrived at the feet of the stairs, my eyes opened wide at the sight of the system message in front of me.
Warning!
If you choose to complete this quest, your character will become part of this game's history, and you will not be able to delete it, change your appearance, reset your skill trees, or modify it in any other way, though you still can level up as usual.
Are you sure you want to proceed?
I chose yes without a second thought, and I was allowed to go to Freyd and offer her the items, which she received with a radiant smile. Twelve members of the Coffin Guard, Freyd's elite battalion, walked up to us and stood six of them at each of her sides. They unsheathed their swords, and slammed their full-body shields, shaped like the cover of a coffin, on the ground. When everyone became silent, Freyd stepped down so she could be at eye level with me before speaking for the audience and for me.
“You have proven the depth of your feelings and your devotion towards me. You have brilliantly accomplished every one of the tasks I have asked of you. no matter how menial or transcendental it was. We have gone to battle together; we have striven together, we have bled together and you walked the thin line between life and death for my sake, and now you bring me this, so I must give a proper answer.”
She put the frozen rose on her hair and opened the small box, showing a pair of rings. My knees trembled a little when she continued her declaration.
“I, Freyd Leichnam, Captain-Commander of this mercenary guild, graciously accept Icor's marriage proposal; with great joy in my cold heart, I might add. May these rings be a proof of our oath of love, respect, fidelity and partnership. From this point on, Icor is to be called Icor Leichnam, and has to be recognized as my husband. Let it be known.”
“Let it be known!” the guard screamed in sync while hitting the floor with their shields.
And then...
Universal system message
Player Icor, (Race: Betrayed, Level 104) has successfully completed all the relationship quests received by Freyd Leichnam, Captain-Commander of the Mercenary Guild. From this point on, he will be known as Icor Leichnam. His character, and his deeds from now on, will become part of the game history.
I think things are going to get bad from now on.