"That was very scary, but at least the incident is done and over... But still, this whole situation seems strange, and if it's true that I only have one life, wouldn't I need to quickly level up?"
"I'm fine if I am going against monsters, I know my limit and I know their weaknesses, but if I meet a trigger happy player, wouldn't he just kill me? And even if I make it out alive and kill them in response, they can just respawn and come after me again..."
"This is not good, I need to try and remember everything about the Newbie Village..." Collecting my thoughts, I started to arrange everything to the best of my memories.
I remember rushing through this stage thinking that this is just a tutorial, but I was wrong and it ended up hurting me quite a bit. This place shouldn't really be called a Newbie Village, instead, it should be a Newbie Island.
Essential this place has everything you need to start exploring the rest of the world. There are various trainers that can teach you skills all over the village, and there are those hidden throughout the island.
I briefly remember that there are a total of 21 trainers in total on this island.
Unfortunately, these trainers will not teach you skills for free, as you would have to complete their introductory quest
The past me had just gathered a few skills, did a few quests, then chose to graduate early and be teleported outside of the island, and into the next region. Unfortunately, once you graduate, you can't go back to the island ever again.
The next region is much more difficult and vast and you'll be regretting you haven't carefully chosen the skills you wanted and learned more of the game by taking your time to explore more of the island. This resulted in many people dying repeatedly once reaching the next region.
"I should try the combat trainer, the quest is considerably easy, all you need to do was kill a giant rat and bring back it's tail, this will grant you permission to access the combat trainer skill shop"
Every trainer on this island will give you an introductory quest before you can access their skill shop. Each shop will have between one to five skills in which you can learn. But to learn these skills, you would need either coins or materials to make a purchase. The materials needed depends on the trainer, for example, the combat trainer would allow you to trade a few giant rat tail to learn one of his skills.
Also, this island isn't entirely small, but there are thousands of copies of the same island because this piece of land can't contain every player. Once players graduate, regardless of which island they came from, they will all be teleported to the same world.
If I want to live, maybe I should consider my pathway. I could stay here forever and perhaps just learn production skills to earn a satisfying living. Or maybe I should become a warrior and upgrade my vitality and strength so that that it would be harder for me to die.
But first of all, there were only 15 skill slots, which meant you can only have 15 skills at any given time. If you already have maxed your skill slot, but want another skill, you would have to delete one of your old skills to replace it.
Luckily, there was a method to let you keep your 15 skills and gain a new one even if you had maxed your slots. There is a method to increase your skill slot, but this method wasn't through leveling up. It is instead granted after grinding over a long period of time.
This method is called the Promising System.
It's not really a system per se but it's an addition branch of the game, albeit a really important one.
It is separated into three parts; Heart, Mind, Soul and is divided into weak to strong by its order.
There are various locations throughout the world that host Promising Heart Caves, Promising Mind Caves, and Promising Soul Caves.
The Promising Heart Caves is situated on this Island. It wasn't until one month after the game had launched that people had figured out this additional content. Which resulted in hundreds of thousands of players complaining in regret and frustration, but only a few percentages had decided to delete their account and make another to visit the island once again.
But what exactly are these caves? To be exact, they are essentially training areas. You must complete the requirement of the cave repeatedly for a long period of time in order to satisfy the caves. These caves seem to be alive but that is not important.
Across the newbie Island, there are three different locations, each host a different training regime. These three locations are essentially all related to the Promising Heart Stone.
A Promising Heart Stone is separated into three pieces, and you must complete a training course to get a heart stone piece. You must complete all three to build a complete heart stone in which it'll replace your in-game character's heart.
There is a catch, each of the three locations would take approximately 24 hours of playing time to finish, so in total it'll take 72 hours to complete the whole process.
Some say that this is a waste of time and would take too long. It is also generally very boring to grind in a training area for so long, so it is usually only competitive players doing this, that is not to say that people who are playing for fun won't participate.
The content of the rewards of this system can be debated, but personally, I think that it is useful.
Each heart piece will grant you 1 stat points for every attribute. If you make a complete heart by gathering all pieces, you will then be given +3 vitality stat points and a free permanent skill slot.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
In total, you would be granted 36 stat points for gathering the three heart pieces because there are a total of 12 attributes. That's not counting the +3 vitality stat points which makes it a total of 39. These stats are really nice because it is permanent while armor and weapon stats is temporary, if you unequip them, you will lose the bonus stats these weapon and armor gives you.
This Promising Heart System is important for competitive players because you can find yourself losing your armor or weapon in the midst of a fight due to the durability system, these permanent stats may help you slightly if you find yourself bare.
Also, if you compete in PVP, and find yourself against someone with the same level as you, these permanent stats will give you an edge against your opponents.
Now to the next one, the Promising Mind Stones. These mind caves are situated outside the island and you must graduate in order to access them.
I had personally never completed this content as it was far too taxing on your mind, only the most competitive will attempt to complete it. If I remember correctly, the first person to create a full mind stone was only within 9 months after the launch of the game.
There are five locations spread all across the map, which meant that you needed to gather five mind stone pieces to build the finished product.
Each training area takes approximately 1 full week to complete, which means that you have to sacrifice 5 weeks in order get the complete mind stone and of course, it'll replace your in-game brain which will in return, grant you rewards.
5 weeks does seem like a long time, but that is not counting the time you have to travel to each location. Just that alone will push away many people because traveling over a long distance, even in a game, is taxing on anybody.
A mind stone piece, like the heart stone piece, will grant you +1 stat points for every attribute. This will give you a total of 60 permanent stat points once you gather all five pieces.
Once the pieces are made whole, you will be gifted +5 Intelligent Points, +5 Wisdom Points, and two free skill slots.
If you had already completed the heart stone, with this mind stone, you will have a total of 18 skill slots, which will give you a bigger edge over other players.
Finally, the most difficult of all to gather, the soul stone. Nothing much is known of this, in fact, there is only one player who had managed to assemble all pieces.
This person is named GodOfSkilling, and yes he has an overbearing in-game name but it's justified by an impressive resume. This player went into the game with only one thing in his mind, 'skilling. It is rumored that he hated combat and he also hated talking to other players, so he decided to play with the environment instead. He was also the No.1 in terms of levels in mining and blacksmithing. He was the No.1 Skiller overall as he had a few other production and gathering skills in the top 10 level list.
Not much is known about the Soul Stone, there is a rumor that there are ten locations, but only eight is known to the public. Somehow GodOfSkilling found the last two caves and kept it to himself.
I sometimes wonder who would willingly spend hours and hours of time alone doing these things, but I guess GodOfSkilling perhaps wanted more skill slot because he wanted to learn more gathering and production skills.
'Sigh...'
"Just thinking of these seem tiresome and bleak, and a massive time waster"
"But at least it wouldn't waste too much time in the real world because time moves more quickly in this game then in the real world," It is common knowledge that time runs 2:1, which means that one hour in the real world is equal to two hours in this world.
I found myself walking in a daze through the near-empty village, of course, there are a few silhouettes wandering the streets, these are all NPCs.
"Now that I think about it, where are all the players? Is this a new copy of the island? Were there too many new players joining that they had to make a couple more?"
"Wait, didn't that mod say something about a launch? I seem to recall he said; 'just when the game was about to launch, a problem had occurred'"
"What does this mean? The game had already launched 2 and a half years ago, which equals to 5 years inside The Lost Promised Land"
A thought quickly brewed in my mind, but I shook my head and laughed. Reincarnation is already too much, but going back in time? It's unbelievable.
"Spare Chaang!"
"Bread!"
"Spare Chaang!"
Suddenly, I saw a group of beggars, each with simple names. Beggar Will, Beggar Sam, Beggar Mary etc...
They all looked similar to me, some of them were also females, but they like a group of sickly, hungry, muddy pigs. Some sniff around the area as they smelt something familiar.
I would never forget it but when they got closer to me, their eyes lit up like a sparkling star. They smelt something warm and tasty and despite their skinny weak figure, they seem to be granted a breath of life due to this smell.
"Shit, I can't believe I forgot about this"
"BREEEEAAAAD!!!!!!" All the beggars screamed like squawking pelicans.
"Scram!!" I screamed as I ran for my life.
Beggars have an innate sense of familiarity with bread, they madly crave bread and they can smell bread even if you have one in your inventory. They won't stop bugging you unless you leave their range of sight.
I couldn't help but tremble in fright when I looked back, it was like I was being chased by a mob of zombies.
"Piss off, this bread is mine!"
The mob didn't care, they wanted the bread even if they had to trample me to get it, but I would never let go of it.
"Wait... what's wrong with me? Is it because I'm a beggar that I also love bread like how they do?" I looked back once again, but I threw the thought to the back of my mind.
"I'm not anything like them!" I screamed as I ran through the street, I zigged and zagged across a few buildings in order to lose them, but I was quickly running out of stamina.
Luckily, after a few minutes, I lost them.
Sweat rolled down my every being as I gasped for air.
"Damn Beggars" I cursed. I was mad, but I was also grateful as I found out at this moment, how small I really was. I almost died by a stampede of beggars. It really shows how pathetic I really am.
After gathering my breath, I soon began to slowly walk towards my destination, the combat guild. This combat guild will of course host a variety of trainers that specialize in different kinds of combat systems, such as hand to hand combat, sword mastery, archery etc....
The combat trainer specializes in hand to hand combat and two-handed weaponry like clubs, maces, starves, greatswords. I really wanted to get some movement skills from this man because movement skills are really important in this game and I would also like two-handed weaponry related skill as the last time I played, I mained with a greatsword.
Suddenly, I find myself standing before the combat trainer.
"I want to access the combat skill shop, please give me an introductory quest"
"No," The man said coldly...
"No? What the heck, this isn't supposed to happen, hey trainer, shouldn't you give me a quest?"
"Get out of here, the likes of you aren't welcomed!" The man said as he glared coldly into my eyes.
I couldn't breathe, this guy was way stronger than me. At that moment, I couldn't help but wonder...
'Does this mean NPCs can't do quests? Or is it because I'm a beggar?'
'Dammit, this is troublesome because I can never get rid of my status for both...'
"What the heck am I gonna do now?" I inwardly complained due to the unfair treatment I was given by this damn NPC. My whole entire plan for the future was squashed to death right there and then.