Bowl (Common)
Crafting Grade: C
Durability: 9
A vital utensil in any kitchen, or chemistry lab. Can be used for everything from cooking to mixing chemicals.
Effects: Used in a variety of recipes.
Cost: 30 coppers
He still hadn’t mastered the shape, so most of his bowls were Cs. He put them all for sale, keeping only one to himself so that he could mix slip when crafting. Even as he added new items to the marketplace, some of the ropes and pots he had listed were already being sold.
You sold 1x[Weak Rope] for 80 coppers.
You've sold 2x[Earthenware Gardening Pots] for 72 coppers.
Jack also decided to follow his cousin's advice and sell the cheap tinderbox he had purchased last time, which was one step away from breaking. The system only offered him ten coppers for it.
He frowned. Wasn't this price much lower than what he had paid for it? Why hadn’t other similarly priced tinderboxes appeared the last time he was shopping? The cheapest one he could find at the time was 83 coppers.
He tried to understand the disparity between the price offered and what he had found when buying. Finally, he found the reason. An option was ticked by default in the market filters. It made it so that only items with five or more durability appeared.
As he turned it off, a never-ending list of junk appeared. Plenty of items with one durability were up for sale. Even so, there seemed to be a market for it because they were constantly disappearing even as he looked through the listings. He couldn't help but feel a little curiosity toward the restorer profession. He wondered how it worked.
Curiosity satiated, he put the tinderbox for sale at 10 coppers. It was better than nothing. When he was finally done dumping all the items into the marketplace, he checked the calculated amount of money he would make once it all sold. He was going to make over 26 silver!
"Finally! I’ve got some decent money to work with," Jack thought, feeling proud of himself.
Even though, in theory, all Jack had dumped on the market was worth 26 silver, he didn’t already have the money in his hands. Putting an item up for sale didn't necessarily mean someone would buy it. At the same time, the game was bustling, with many players still joining. The market was hot, and items sold quickly.
Jack already had sold four silvers worth of his supplies, and now and then, a few coppers trickled in as, somewhere out in New Earth, some aspiring gardener purchased one of his pots or an aspiring chef or chemist bought one of his bowls.
It was time to plan his next moves. He still had a long way to go before reaching level 10 in pottery and bushcraft and finishing his rare quest.
As he thought of how he would need to level bushcraft a few more times, Jack checked the price for his newest bushcraft recipe out of curiosity. [Survival Stew] sold for eighty coppers, as much as a rudimentary tinder box.
However, crafting it was challenging. It required not only three ingredients but also water and a pot. He also needed to set up a fire and feed it for a while. Eighty coppers was more than fair for the stew. According to the guides he’d read online, each [Survival Stew] generated a generous amount of profession XP, but he was leaning toward keeping on crafting ropes to gain the next level. It sounded simpler. He knew how to make it, and the ingredients were available everywhere.
Jack proceeded to look for items to help him get through this quest quickly. Not only did he need to buy a new tinderbox, but he also desperately needed a pair of mittens. He had almost died from crafting ten pots, but if he crafted twenty or thirty, he would surely die. He wrote ‘mittens’ on the marketplace, and many listings appeared.
Sackcloth Mittens (Common)
A recycled pair of mittens crafted from the remains of sackcloth. It offers little protection against fire, but it's better than nothing.
Durability: 9.
Fire resistance: 1
Special effects: [Hot! Hot!] - Prevents burn effect from low-temperature fires.
Several such mittens were for sale. A pair of mittens with 10 durability went for 60 coppers. From his earlier experience with a tinderbox, these things were practically disposable. He bought three pairs. They were barely passable and offered little fire resistance, but at least they presented the [Hot! Hot!] effect. It would prevent him from gaining the burn debuff, drastically increasing his survivability.
He also looked for tinderboxes. He bought three for a silver piece each, hoping this would prove enough for three or four fires. It wasn’t much, but the card he had played earlier at Jenny’s would only buy him one hour at a time, and that wouldn’t be enough to get him to pottery level 10.
Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.
Finally, Jack purchased a bush knife for one silver and 50 coppers and three brushes to help him glaze his ceramics for 50 coppers each. This should help him advance to the next level in both professions.
Bush Knife (Common)
A sharp, short blade that can be used for various tasks. A bush crafter’s best friend.
Durability: 14
Damage: 7
Weasel Brush (Common)
A stick with some weasel hair at the end. It can hardly be called a brush.
Durability: 9
After using a tinderbox, Jack had a clearer idea of how little ten durability was. He could understand why players down the road would invest in buying better-quality items that would last them longer. Sadly, he wasn't quite there yet.
Jack looked at his empty inventory and sighed. All that hard work and it’s already gone, he thought. At least in the game, he could see progress. Outside, work didn’t feel like it ever paid off. He wished he had earned more. He was really looking forward to buying some nicer equipment. With better stats, he would have more stamina and health and finish this quest earlier, too.
Jack decided to return to the hill. He would stay there making grass ropes until he reached level 4 in bushcraft. After leaving the market, Jack stopped by the fountain and refilled his bottles. He had used most of the water making slip and crafting rope and pots and would need more. He then ran the short distance to the hill he’d been using for crafting.
As he started yanking grass around what he pretentiously thought of as his hill, he faced a setback. There was no sunlight. He studied the progress bars over the drying grass. They had gone up to 10 minutes.
It was a bummer. Drying time more than tripled at night. "Of course," Jack muttered. He shook his head and got back to work, knowing that complaining wouldn't make the grass dry any faster. He kept uprooting stalks until the very first bits had dried. After ten minutes, Jack looked at the hill. What was once green had turned into a brown, bald mound of dirt. There were rising bars of different tones of red and yellow everywhere around him, slowly shifting to green. In a weird way, it was as if he was seeing spring shift into summer. He never thought he’d find something oddly satisfying in such a tedious task, but there it was.
As he collected the dry grass and gathered it into a pile, he considered what he was doing. Here he was… essentially, doing gardening, one of his father’s many jobs. He had always sternly refused to stoop as low as this and do this kind of menial work, but God had played a cruel prank on him.
At least here, his back didn’t ache, and he took comfort in knowing that, in reality, he was comfortably lying down in bed. Most importantly, his father couldn't see him doing this job. After their argument last night, he didn’t want to let his father see him do this kind of work. That would be too humiliating.
On the other hand, he enjoyed some aspects of this tedious work more than he cared to admit. While he worked, the sting of his recent breakup wasn’t as painful. Furthermore, no boss ordered him around telling him what to do. He was his own man and could work as he saw fit.
There was another reason he preferred this work in the game over outside. In real life, this was a dead-end job. People like his father did these dull tasks day in, day out, every day, with no hope of getting a promotion or improving their lot in life. In the game, however, there was always the prospect of a new level, skill, or a new recipe or technique around the corner. Furthermore, if he got tired of bush crafting, he could shake things up by changing to pottery.
Finally, the grass dried. Jack sat next to the pile and, wetting the fibers, began weaving cords. After tying the ends, he used the bush knife instead of biting the grass with his teeth. Grinding had just become a little less bitter.
Congratulations! You’ve crafted [Weak Cord].
+5XP in [Bushcraft]
Congratulations! You’ve crafted [Weak Cord].
+15XP in [Bushcraft]
Jack steadily crafted cord after cord. Thanks to the techniques he learned online, he got a string of successful As and Bs. Wetting the fibers added cohesion, and wrapping them around his wrist and elbow as he braided allowed him to keep tension on the cord. Finally, using a bush knife to cut the loose ends made the cuts cleaner. All of this added to the crafting grade. Good thing, too. If he got anything worse than a B when crafting cords, he no longer got any experience.
After a few minutes Jack started feeling bored. He tried reviewing why working hard in the game was better than working hard outside. Still, the peace and satisfaction he felt earlier were buried under the tiredness of doing the same thing over and over and over again. But what would he do if he stopped? Pine over Lydia? Ruminate on his father’s sermon? At least when doing this, he got some relief from his anxious thoughts. He would choose the lesser of two evils and keep crafting.
After an hour of grinding, his resolve waned, and his appreciation for menial work plummeted. Even the prospect of moping started to look nicer than crafting. He was feeling tempted to leave the game and grab lunch or something. However, just as he was about to give up, by the time he was crafting his 45th cord, he got a system notification that was a breath of fresh air.
Congratulations! You’ve unlocked a new title: [Consistent Quality].
Consistent Quality (Common)
Description: You take pride in giving your best when crafting.
Effects:
S grade unlocked;
+5 stamina.
Requirements to unlock [Consistent Quality]:
Craft 10 A-grade items in a row. {complete}
“Aha! Here it is!” Jack celebrated. He had read about this title online and hoped to unlock it. Thankfully, he had just succeeded.
In New Earth, there was another way for a player to become stronger besides equipment and levels: titles. These were given as rewards for completing special quests, dungeons, or unlocking hidden achievements.
[Consistent Quality], in particular, was one of the easiest to obtain and common knowledge by now. Other rarer titles, not so much. When he browsed the auction website, he found that, in addition to equipment, players also sold information about titles. Some of them were sold for a pretty penny. Divulging them willy-nilly would kill their commercial value, so information about better titles was kept secret.
The increase in stamina granted by [Consistent Quality] was negligible but still better than nothing. The most special thing about it was that he could now obtain an S crafting grade.
According to the guides, S-grade equipment sold for much more money than lower grades. The ratio of crafting quality and pricing was exponential. The better the grade, the more astounding the profit a craftsman could make. At the same time, getting an S was tough. Only hardcore craftsmen managed it, and only sometimes.
He reread the title description: You take pride in giving your best when crafting. “Do I?” he asked himself. “And am I giving my best?” He supposed he was. He was doing his best to get As and Bs and level faster.
After rereading the title’s description, Jack felt strange. His heart was beating faster, and he had goosebumps. He was happier than he imagined he would be from obtaining this run-of-the-mill title. This reward was just what he needed. It renewed his motivation to carry on and finish this quest. Jack kept crafting.