With the sun starting to lower itself we head to Thalia’s first, reluctantly, very reluctantly.
Why? Well because I have no idea what will happen to me when I enter that dangerous zone. Also with these two beside me, I may have to do a lot of explaining which is SO embarrassing. I really don’t wanna!
We knock on the door and once she tells us to come in, we walk inside (I’m hiding behind Husky of course).
She gives us all a look and smiles as we enter. Though the smiles towards each of us differ quite a bit; Jöt and Husky receive a welcoming smile and as she send them past her she licks her lips at me. *Gulp*
Taking us to her alchemy table, she continues working on stirring some shock-blue liquid which smells, familiar
…
..
.
I shouldn’t ever come here alone.
“So what are you lovely men doing in my house?” She asks us coyly
“Of course to bless our eyes with your visage but also to give you the procured materials” Jöt transformation happening right in-front of us is pretty strange indeed.
“Oho” She does seem to like getting flattered (although it’s a bit of a strange flattery but
whatever) “Good that you got them for me, I was running low on them”
We take out our herbs passing high quality grass and our, poor quality snowberries (Thankfully it wasn’t disastrous when we took the whole bush). She looks impressed at our grass and quite unimpressed by our berry picking.
“Ah there’s a huge difference in quality here but it should still work” With a thankful nod she passes us both 2 minor healing pots (recover 55 health per minute? Wohoo!) and we take them graciously.
Jöt does a little eyebrow wiggle which seems to say, what about your personal ‘reward’?
She grins at the quite eager Jöt and gets close to him before flicking him on the forehead.
“Eh?” we all stand there a window open in-front of Jöt.
As Jöt gets engrossed in the window Thalia makes her way to me and I prepare my forehead, closing my eyes in anticipation.
…
..
.
Her soft lips press onto mine and I open my eyes in decent shock (well I’m not too shocked, I’d entertained the possibility and seems like I was right, but still!). Thalia retreats after a second with a sneaky smile on her lips.
Thalia Dakrheart has given you teachings of a new skill
You have earned a new skill: Alchemy
SKILL:Alchemy [lvl1]Passive Skill [0%]This skill will allow you to create potions of all kinds. Success of creation will be dependent on skill level and personal levelRecipes Known:
Minor Healing Potion
Minor Antidote Potion
*Twitch*
Ah so this is how you learn skills off other people. Interesting but I’d prefer it if I didn’t get kissed. Especially when I glance as Husky who is to my right and grinning wildly with eyes staring at me almost saying ‘nothing happened huh?’.
It’s a misunderstanding Husky!!! Don’t believe this predator, I’m just a victim here!!!
Thankfully Jöt is too engrossed with his window that he doesn’t notice the situation. I wonder why he’s still so engrossed?
…Ah that’s why.
I click on the Minor healing potion recipe
RECIPE:Minor Healing PotionRecovers 50 health over 1 minuteIngredients: Frost Grass x2, Snow berry x 1Instructions:
Boil Frost Grass
Crush Snowberry and then separate moisutre of berry through evaporation
Collect moisture and mix until blood-red with boiled Frost Grss
Hmm, so I actually have to do basic chemistry to make a potion? Well at least it does give me an inkling of an idea that I can make multiple potions from the same types of herbs.
Checking the antidote potion, I see that to be true as the ingredients are the same but the snowberry is boiled while the Frost Grass is crushed.
Thalia, seeing we’ve all read our new skill (Husky asked for it and Thalia gave him a small flick for his troubles, so yeah he got the skill too) gives us a small demonstration of how to use them.
She fools around with her alchemy equipment and we watch her slowly create a health potion. Within a minute it’s done.
That was pretty easy.
She shows us the minor health pot and we see its medium quality giving 55 health per minute.
She then gives us all the necessary ingredients and has us fool around one at a time with her equipment.
The results? Well Husky dropped his vial and Jöt burnt his grass. I did slightly better until I mixed it too vigorously and made the potion go orange.
Thalia just giggled behind a covering hand and had us retry the process a few times…
After a few tries Husky finally made a medium-quality potion while Jöt made 2 so far. I only made one but it was medium-quality too.
As we fooled around Thalia had us use different quality ingredients showing us that the potion quality is affected by that.
Apparently, making a mid-quality potion was the max we could get because of our ingredients.
Also if we made a slight mistake but still got the potion made the quality was lower, which made sense however the opposite was still true and when she gave us a poor and a mid quality ingredient we could still make a mid quality potion.
After we did it manually for a bit she had us do it automatically. Because we had the necessary ingredients (She did give us vials to use), we had the option of just clicking a ‘create’ button that appeared under the recipe window. This gave a poor quality potion which restored 50 health per minute as it said on the recipe but it was instantaneous.
So there’s up’s and down’s to both methods but if you need to mass produce you can.
Another interesting fact that I didn’t remember (Well I didn’t want to because it kind of made me remember of that time and aah nononono); I get a 10% bonus potency to my potions. Which means my poor quality is the same as a mid quality which is extremely good. I mass produce mid quality potions which I am extremely happy about.
Of course I don’t mass produce the potions and show of my quite broken skill bonus…because then I’d have to explain to the others… I don’t want to do that, no siree(Although, Husky kind of already knows in a way?).
All in all, it was quite a good time learning how to make potions (took a whole 2 hours, jeeesus, but we did level up our alchemy once by making repeated failures).
As we left Thalia told us we could come anytime (*Shiver* she put too much emphasis on anytime there) and make potions with her equipment.
Grateful, we bow and exit. All happy with our new skill, we notice its getting close to sunset.
Deciding we shouldn’t go hunting, we pop in the blacksmith and repair our weapons and armor for a shocking 5 silver! (Husky’s full body plate took 3, the rest of our armor took 1 and the weapons took 1 too).
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With that, our party purse once again dropped down to: 4 silver and 22 copper (me and Husky paid with our personal bank of 1 silver too).
Still seeing as though we had 44 copper by the end of an entire day of hunting yesterday, this is a huge difference. However it is still not enough to buy anything from the blacksmith. We do, however spend 3 silver on a pickaxe since we’re going to need it to mine for our quest.
Speaking of quests, we go back to our temporary home and get greeted by the usual “hello, how was your day”, as well as the deadly bear hug from Cindy. Maybe I should increase my toughness or I really might get crushed one day.
Varg isn’t here at the moment so we relax at the table taking in the gorgeous smelling food that wafts from her cooking pot. She once again puts some spicy flakes into the meal furthering its delicious aroma.
We wait for a good 5 minutes chatting about what our favorite food is (Pineapple rice if you were wondering, absolutely gorgeous) before Husky suddenly stands up and heads over to Cindy (who is cooking dinner if you were wondering).
“Cindy, can I help you with the cooking?”
“Eh?” We all raise our eyebrows at Husky wanting to try cook. No offense to the big guy but he’s almost 3 metres! Just saying it may be a bit difficult for him.
Cindy however, quickly regains her composure after being directed the question (I think she’s having the same thoughts as me) and with a grin has Husky stir the soup.
She quickly grabs a stool and has Husky sit on it (so he’s at least able to cook without looming over the pot) while she stands behind and starts to direct him how to stir soup.
“First you stir it 13 times clockwise and then let it heat for 30 seconds. After that you continue stirring clockwise for another 12 times before letting it heat up for 30 seconds. Then you continue with this for another 11 times.”
Surprisingly detailed? Also when Husky stirs it counter clockwise he gets a chop to the head as she tells him off. Apparently it ruins the texture if you do that.
So we watch Husky cook our dinner and although the aromatic smell lessens substantially it’s still pretty good. Also, when Husky finished cooking the meal a window pops up in-front of him and he smiles happily as he dismisses it.
Varg came in about a minute ago and gave Husky a curious glance before taking his place at the table. Now it’s a small table for 4 people, and we have 5 (2 of them are giant too). So how do we all fit around the table? Well Varg, Jöt, Cind and Husky take up a side each and I am next to Cindy on a stool. Cindy originally told me to sit on her lap but I fervently declined the offer. NO way am I doing that. It’d be too embarrassing and she’d probably feed me as well Ohh soo embarrassing!
Anyways. Husky serves the meal and once again sweating profusely through my eyes (A True Nord does not cry), I eat the spicy meal.
Throughout the meal Husky asks Cindy what the soup is made of.
Unsurprisingly it’s quite basic; Venison and a couple of veggies. Pretty simple but still quite delicious
…
“Ah! Cindy, where’d you get this spice” A brilliant thought that came into my head
“Oh that? It’s just crushed antler”
…
..
.
For some reason I feel quite barbaric seasoning a meal with crushed antler. I’m not the only one either; Jöt and Husky both raise their eyebrows in mild shock, but then again, we are in the middle of nowhere so we shouldn’t be surprised.
Still finding out that crushed antler is actually spicy is an odd thought indeed. Is it the same in the real world?
Pushing back the question, I finish my meal on time with everyone else and we, “aaah” as we sip the last of our soup. Nothing like a warm meal after spending hours in the freezing cold.
After dinner Husky shows us the new cooking skill he got and we immediately ask Cindy to let us cook tomorrow for dinner as payment for staying (as well as getting the cooking skill of course). Once again I say that one can never have too many skills.
Once the plates were gone and the table cleaned, we all go do our own things for a short while: Jöt heads off to chat to Linda while me and Husky (I half-forcefully drag him) go to Thalia’s for some alchemy practice.
“Sooo….” Husky gives me large grin
I…laugh nervously “It seems she likes me”
…
..
.
“I wouldn’t have guessed. Hah!”
Thankfully I don’t need to explain the situation as he takes that as an explanation, but for some reason he’s looking intensely over my head.
“So what’s with The Conqueror title?”
…
..
.
I open and close my mouth a couple of times
“A-ah it’s just that…I got this title when she…um, you know…” My face starts heating up, nono don’t do that, face!
Husky lets out a short laugh before giving me a pat on the back (sending me face-first to the snow) and he puts a finger on his mouth saying he’ll keep it a secret before laughing his way down the street.
Once my head cools in the snow, I catch up to him and enter Thalia’s.
She is reading a book, one of many of the scattered books and when we enter she just motions to the table saying “go ahead” while giving me a wink.
Shivering, I head to the table.
Me and Husky take turns creating potions (because it’s more fun that way) and after an hour and a bit we have successfully made 21 potions. All are mid quality and 10 are mine, giving 61 health per minute whereas 11 are the normal 55. I of course keep my secret because even though Husky knows of the title, he doesn’t have to know about the quite impressive bonus. Or he might try and conquer someone himself (Actually I think he’ll try to conquer someone just to get the title itself).
But we improve our potion proficiency a good 60% and are now officially almost broke. Why? Well we had to buy some vials (10 copper per one, so 21 was 2 silver 10 copper) and then some snowberries (because no way we’re going to go find some with Gannor out there. It was 1 silver for a stack of 10. So another 2 silver 10 copper for 21 of them). We were careful to not make any failures so we took slightly longer with each potion.
However because of that we’ve got all mid quality and no failures. However our party purse is at 2 coppers. (also we only used mid quality grass so 42 of those are gone)
The whole party purse thing is just that I carry all the money basically due to me being leader(?) (and also because it’s easier with one person keeping count of all the cash). They trust me, because well…there’s nowhere else to go so I can’t run away and I did get them free lodging too.
Anyways
So now that we’ve made our potions and now that we’re pretty much broke, we leave the shop (Thalia did offer a discount if I paid with kisses but I HASTI-Respectably declined, much to Husky’s amusement).
Returning back to the house Husky gives him half his potions while I get to keep all mine (because that way I’ll be a walking healer with my potions. They agreed to the idea).
With that done, we bid Cindy and Varg goodnight and we all log off while lying in our furry mattresses.