Jax felt a cold breeze across his face, along with various smells and fragrances entering his nose. Slowly he opened his eyes. The view was incredible, snow covered houses, long icicles hanging down with the appearance of beauty. Jax looked behind him and saw a dense forest crowded with snow covered trees and the feeling of adventure and danger. Soon the voices of more and more people disturbed the peaceful scenery.
“The snow, it feels so real”
“Reggie, are you here, Reggie, where are you”
“Idiot he probably began at a different village”
“Why is it so cold…”
“Anyone looking for a party”
And so the onslaught of useless and annoying chatter began, at least Jax thought so anyway.
The tutorial lasted for 7 days, and was separated from the rest of the in-game word known as Dawn. This gave everyone the opportunity to adjust to the game and learn how to progress, or in many cases survive. The level system was split into for major groups being separated each 25 levels. At level 25 one would acquire his first class advancement and at 50 his next advancement and so on. After 100 no player knew. With 7 days the system calculated that the average player would be LVL 10, a few higher, but none should be past 13. Once the seven days were up the game truly began.
Jax opened his inventory to see what the starting items were.
Long rough spun tunic (Common) Defense +1
Short rough spun tunic (Common) Defense +1
Rough spun pants (Common) Defense +1
Rough spun boots (Common)
10 apples – Restores 10 health over duration eating
5 loaves of bread – restores 20 healthy over duration eating, can be interrupted, must be sitting down.
Rusty Iron Dagger (Common) Damage 4-8
-A rusty dagger, only use it if you must…
“Well that’s pretty basic”, Jax said. Wondering why he’d been hoping for something more. Maybe the game glitched and gave him the all-smiting sword, or the cloak of invisibility, but alas, to his disappointment he got bread and a piece of rusted metal just like everyone else.
Soon a large grin appeared on his face, it finally started, his new world, his new beginning.
He quickly checked his skills wanting to start his adventure as quickly as he could.
Element of surprise (Passive) – The first attack on an unaware target will increase the damage dealt by 30%. 45 second cooldown for each target.
Camouflage (Active) – Blend into the environment making it difficult for others to find you, effectiveness depends on their perception. Affect is lost after attacking or receiving damage. 20 second cooldown.
Backstab (Active) LVL 1 – Attack your opponent from behind to deal 120% damage. 12 second cooldown.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Small blade proficiency (Passive) – Proficiency with small blades cannot drop below 100%
Deadly Precision Passive LVL 1 – While observing or fighting an enemy, occasionally a weak spot will be identified for a short duration. If attacked, bonus damage will be applied. Occurrence – Very Low Damage boost 5% Duration 3 seconds
Deadly Lunge (Active) LVL 1 – Lunge forward with your weapon up to 2 meters. Enemies hit will take 110% damage. 5 second cooldown
Stunning bash (Active) – Use the non-lethal part of your weapon to bash your opponents head, target will be stunned for 1 second. Effect is doubled if target is hit from behind. Cooldown 20 sec
In Eden, there are very little restrictions on what weapons a player can use, to balance this freedom the method of proficiency was used. A player with 100% proficiency would be able to bring out the weapons potential, dealing the weapons expected damage, whereas a player with only 50% proficiency will only deal 50% weapon damage. So a Warhammer wielding priest and a warrior using a wand is possible, but in most cases impractical. In order to raise ones proficiency obviously he must use that weapon, of course there are other ways, but those tend to be difficult or outrageously expensive. All players start with 50% proficiency on all weapons except the ones that naturally belong with their class, Also if one doesn’t train with a weapon type the proficiency will decrease. Similarly, many magic spells can be used by other classes but proficiency is still in effect and in many cases harsher than with weapons in both increasing and decreasing its proficiency.
As soon as Jax finished looking at the skills he bolted into the forest looking for anything he can us his dagger on. Sure, there were quest and what not, but he didn’t care, in fact if it wasn’t for quest rewards being good, he’d probably wouldn’t do a quest until his class advancement. After all what he loved most was to explore. He quickly ran through the forest looking for something, anything he could kill. Soon enough he found it. He gripped the cold rusted blade in is hands feeling its texture and weight trying to adjust to it. He turned on his camouflage and slowly crept up behind the boar that was soon to be his pray.
Once he reached a 2 meter distance from the boar he activated deadly lunge using the effect of Element of surprise to deal bonus damage. He then quickly used stunning bash on the boar causing it to be stunned for two seconds. Afterwards he used Backstab causing the blade to sink into the boars back, which was a little awkward considering the back of the boar was on top but none the less the desired damage was done. He quickly attacked twice normally and withdrew.
-28
-24
-17
-18
Wild Boar LvL 2 Hp 113/200
The boar wildly turned around and began charging at Jax, who barely was able to avoid the charge with a roll to the side. Jax felt the freezing snow as he rolled away, once again in awe of the games reality. He quickly got up and attacked the boar with two more normal attacks.
-16
-19
Jax once again attempted to roll away but was to slow as the boar rammed into his side causing him to fly 5 meters into the snow.
-39
Jax quickly looked at his hp bar which read 96
“Whew, this is harder than I thought”, he murmured to himself focusing once again on his target. Boars were tough adversaries, especially early in the game. They had high health and defense and a nasty attack, the only withdrawal was that they had very simple attack patterns, usually they would only know to smash their tusk into the enemy. Jax quickly adjusted his tempo and began to walk towards the boar who was about to charge.
“These cooldowns are truly too long” Jax complained. He still had to wait 4 more seconds for his backstab. After some adjustments and loss of hp he was able to determine that attack pattern and speed of the charge. He quickly dodged the oncoming boar and attacked normally twice followed by a deadly lunge, he continued this until the boar gave a chilling yet realistic cry as it fell to the ground never to move again.
Jax sighed in relief, turns out this game wouldn’t be that easy. A level 2 boar pushed him to this extent, he looked at his hp bar 13/135
5% experience earned
Jax went over to the boar and picked up the items it dropped
He obtained a boar’s tusk and fur with 4 copper coins
The money system was the usual multiple of 100, Silver was 100 copper and gold was 100 silver
Jax grabbed his side as it was still a bit sore from the boar's charge. Pain was reduced to 5%, that being said a boars tusked ramming into your side still left a bit of discomfort.
Jax chuckled as he remembered a game where the pain setting was at 0%, of course, there were still messages that tells players when they were attacked or when something was wrong, but in that game one item was left out of those messages. That item was the fork. Soon enough players walked around with a varying amount of forks stuck in their back, it was a sight to see. Nothing was better than some of the top ranked players with their legendary equipment walking around showing off when they were oblivious to multiple forks sticking out of their back, unfortunately due to complaints it was patched. Jax remembered those days like it was yesterday, after all, he’s forked quite a few people himself.
“Let’s begin” he said, as he grabbed the cold yet deadly dagger in his hands as he started searching for his next target.