We had retreated into a rock-formation to recuperate, when Menja suddenly spoke up.

“Gotta go for a few minutes.” he said and I could hear the urgency in his voice.

“Do you need me, love?” Venja instantly asked in response, cementing the idea that they knew each other in the real world.

“No, I don’t think so, you can stay in the dream. Maybe I’ll join you in a few minutes.” he continued and then, he was gone. Well, his character was still there, maybe in the log-out process, which took thirty seconds while out in the field, thirty seconds in which you could be attacked, maybe even killed. Next to a pillar, log-out was instant but it seemed as if he had been called away by something important.

I looked over to Venja, raising an eyebrow, curious what was going on but not sure if I should just come out and ask.

“We’ve got a collicky baby, so Menja decided to stay awake and play on the computer instead of going into the dreamstate. Sure, you can link your babyphone to the chip but there’s still a bit of time-lag.” Venja explained with a smile, noticing my look. I just nodded not quite sure what to say to that.

“You think we’ll manage to kill the boss with just the three of us? The Quest explicitly says that it is even more dangerous than the rest.” I asked, changing the topic.

“Maybe. But I’ll keep looking, maybe we’ll get lucky.” she agreed and moments later, she once again asked in the area-chat if someone wanted to join before settling in and pulling a small knife and some wood from her inventory.

“What are you doing?” I asked when she started to use the knife to whittle off some wood.

“Woodcarving. I don’t think I’ll go the crafter-path, but I might. Sure, combat is fun but there won’t be too many dedicated crafter, so I’m not sure.” she answered, without looking up.

“How does that work?” I followed up, hoping that she’d share some of her tester-experience.

“You can pick two professions, all of them scale with different attributes. I think there are even more professions than there are classes, but I’m not sure. But there is a bit of a trick to it, you get unique abilities depending on what reaches certain milestones first.” she explained, and I was utterly confused and expressed that confusion.

“Well, the professions get levels, just like classes, just that professions don’t level by killing things but by crafting things. There are even special crafting-quests that add experience only to the profession. If your professions are higher than your highest class, new levels in the profession give you the same five attribute-points that you get when your class levels, but only once, just the highest of your professions and classes gives them.” she cleared up some of the confusion.

“And the milestones?” I probed further.

“Once you reach level ten, either with a class or a profession, you get an ability based on what you reached it with, so if you level your Class first, you get a different ability than you’d get if you levelled the profession first. Those abilities and your attribute-distribution is what differentiates a crafter from a combat-character. Oh, and and some professions have specialisations, just like classes, but not all. I think the gathering-professions don’t have any but most crafting-professions do.” she continued with quite a bit of new, and rather valuable, information.

“And you are a woodcarver?” I asked.

“Sure, why not. That way, I can either go into the more arcane crafting, making wands, magical staves, scepters and all those nifty things for casters or I can go into bow-crafting, or even start making furniture, if I feel like it. I doubt I’ll start that last one, I think that’ll be something for the hobbyists, but hey, to each their own. I’m just glad that there’s more to the game than kill things.” she finished with a grin, before focusing on her carving again.

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Just then, she stopped carving again, her eyes glazing over a little, giving me the impression that she was staring at something far away. Moments later, another player was added to our group, this one called Gareth, playing a scout. After a round of greetings, he was asked to move towards us but warned of the wolves.

Before Venja could go back to her carving, I asked her about getting skills, if there was a list or something like that.

“Honestly, even us Beta-Players aren’t sure, at least those I spoke to. Thing is, if you play using direct control, you learn skills by doing them, at least to a point. For example, that insane maneuver you did in the last fight, jump-kicking the wolf to push yourself into a sprint, I doubt that there’s a skill for that. It might become one, if you you repeat it a few times, there were a few players in the beta that claimed to have gotten a title named Innovator or something like that, for inventing skills that were added to the overall class, but I’ve yet to see it. But that only works for direct control players, not for those using peripherals.” she began to explain.

“If you don’t learn skills by performing them, you can learn them from a teacher if you have the linked ability high enough, that’s how peripheral players get their skills.” she finished, before looking into the distance again and, again, about a minute later a fifth player was added to the party, this one a Templar named Dworf. I had to groan when reading the name, wondering if I might somehow be able to get him killed on the quest. For him, we needed to get back towards the bridge over the river, or things would get… interesting. I had managed to bypass that bridge by my slightly insane stunt of jumping over the river, but I doubted that a dwarf could do the same. Short legs make for short jumps and all that, albeit Dwarves are known as deadly sprinters.

We told them that we had to wait a moment for our druid to return and maybe a minute later, he did just that.

“Okay, the baby looks much better, I doubt I’ll have to get up again.” he explained and I instantly noticed that his face was now changing with his voice, demonstrating that he was directly controlling his character.

“Sorry for that.” he said directly to me, before greeting the two newcomers to the party.

“Don’t worry about it, real-life comes first and all that.” I told him, using the standard response. And, in all honesty, I hadn’t suffered from his short absence, I had been able to ask Venja a few questions and she had managed to find two more players to complete the quest with, so it was purely a win.

“Let’s go, we need to get the others.” Venja said, putting away her whittle-stick. I nodded my agreement and turned back to the wolves we had already killed but that had respawned in the meantime.

Killing them a second time fulfilled the quota of wolves killed for the quest, but sadly, there was still the big, bad wolf that we needed to kill and it would be rather impolite to leave our two newcomers hanging, so I was prepared to kill wolves until the two of them had their twelve wolves slain.

We managed to get to the bridge without trouble and there, we took on the last two wolves between us three and the two newcomers at the same time, using a slightly changed tactic.

As soon as we were close enough to see and help them, the templar, wielding a warhammer and a large shield, began his attack. At first, he made a throwing motion with his hammer and a glowing projectile, shaped like a hammer, struck one of the wolves. Meanwhile, the templar himself, his shield now having a reddish glow as well, went after the other wolf. I wasn’t quite sure why he did it that way, but he now had two wolves going after him, so I targeted one of those wolves and charged myself.

The other newcomer, the scout Gareth, aimed at the same wolf I was charging at, using a crossbow. His bolt arrived at the wolf before I did and a debuff appeared on the wolf, when I focused on it, I learned that it increased the damage taken by the wolf. And increasing the damage it did, my charge-attack did even more damage than normal, taking a good twenty-five percent off the wolf, causing it to turn to attack me. But the Templar was having none of that, using his shield to hit the wolf, which caused it to turn back to him. Grinning, now that someone else was having their attention, I started to attack with a vengeance, especially once Venja joined in and I used Call to Battle to spread my rage to the other two.

With five players, killing the wolves was child’s play, the Templar seemed to easily be able to take their attention, hiding behind his shield and only whacking them from time to time, to make sure that he kept their attention. The scout, on the other hand, increased the damage Venja and I dealt, while adding his own damage to the mix. Because of that, Menja could simply lean back and toss the odd heal to our Templar, keeping him comfortably healthy.

Sadly, what they also did was reduce the amount of experience I gained, down to about forty exp for each wolf, instead of seventy I had gotten when working with just Venja and Menja. But everything had a drawback.