CHAPTER 2 CHARACTER CREATION
I was hovering in void. My skin felt cool. A mirror appeared before me. I was naked. My six foot two inch frame was an exact representation of me. I thought the scanner in the Cocoon must be very good as even my hair matched in length and color. Text appeared floating above the mirror, Avatar Name? I thought for a few minutes knowing this was a permanent thing and I didn’t want to have to live with something stupid.
I thought Daedalus, the great inventor. I thought it would be a good name for an enchanter. The name appeared above the mirror. With a thought I could change my appearance. I lengthened my hair to shoulder length and darkened it to pure black from dark brown. I left my eyes blue but lightened them a bit to a clear blue. I tried the “elf” appearance but quickly switched back to human. I added some two day stubble to the face and clean shaved chest and left the rest of the body as is. I hit complete and the game requested that this was my final edit and I thought ‘yes’.
I noticed a timer in my peripheral vision. The game launched in 23 minutes. Guess my vanity took about 30 minutes. The next screen displayed the ten game stats.
Strength 1 Carry Capacity, Small Hit Point Increase, Damage Increase on Physical Attacks
Constitution 1 Hit Point Increase, Hit Point Regen
Stamina 1 Stamina Pool Increase, Stamina Pool Regen
Agility 1 Improved Defense Rating, Ranged Attack Bonus
Speed 1 Movement Speed
Intellect 1 Learning Speed, Small Mana Bonus
Magic 0 Mana Pool Bonus
Channeling 0 Mana Pool Regen
Charisma 0 Interaction Bonus with NPCs
Luck 0 Improved Random Generated Items and Quests
Unassigned Points 10 (5 from level 1, 5 from choice of human race)
Stat points are gained at a rate of 5 for every level but the main way to increase is through quests and leveling up skills. I knew from my uncles notes that for my character design to work I needed 100 in my magic pool to start. This is the amount I would need to prep an item for enchanting. I entered 6 in Magic and raised Intelligence to 2. This gave me the 100 I needed in my magic pool. For my three remaining stat increases I selected one for charisma and two for channeling. It wasn’t a very strong character to start and my uncles melee fighter would probably grow much quicker but I only planned to play this game for a few hours a week at most to satisfy the requirements in my uncle’s will.
Regeneration was based on the game’s eight hour day cycle. The cycle had 6 hours of daylight and 2 hours of night. You regenerated your total hit point, stamina, magic pool over the eight hours. Stamina however increased stamina regen by 3% per stat point, constitution increased hit point regen by 2% per stat point and channeling increased magic pool regen by 1% per stat point. It meant very slow recovery but also created a huge market for recovery potions and buffs from other items.
After accepting my stats the next screen brought me to skills.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
You have 5 skill points (2 from level 1, 3 from choice of human race)
Skills were what made a character strong. The notes my uncle had collected gave me a pretty good insight into the skill system. The game had no official “how to play” manual and most everything was leaked intentionally by the designers or testers. All this information cold be found and collected on various forums and web sites. The game had boasted over 250 skills and 600 sub skills. A sub skill could not exceed its primary by more than a factor of two. For example one school of magic had a primary skill called air and had two sub skills, lightning and force. To raise your force to 3 you needed to have air at level 2. Skills can be raised in the game by practice. It takes an average of four hours of practice to raise a skill to level 1. Then it takes roughly 1.5 times the time investment to increase over the previous level. With this exponential cost of time means it would take a large investment to raise skills. You do get 2 skill points every time the character levels up. But you can see the problem, you can only have a narrow focus. Well that is where the questing system comes into play. Many quests give tomes that can be studied to raise skills as well. One more thing I should mention, your practice skill is independent of gains through leveling skill points and tomes. This means I could invest all 5 skill points in one skill at creation and then practice the skill for four hours to gain an additional level. Now skills also offer stat bonuses when you gain a level. There are also “TIER” abilities. The tiered level follows the prime number system, a new tier opens at skill levels 1,2,3,5,7,11,13,17 and so on. Skill actions and spells are also opened at certain tiers but you usually need to learn them from an NPC or book. That being said I had my skills picked out already. There were rumors that many skills were not listed in character generation but I just wanted to finish this so selected the skills I had planned on.
Earth Magic 1 Tier 1 unlocked: +1 Channeling, +2% damage Earth Spells
Earth Magic: Stone 1 Tier 1 unlocked: +1 Constitution, Tier 1 stone spells can now be learned
Enchant 1 Tier 1 unlocked: +1 Channeling, can prep objects to receive tier 1 enchantment
Enchant: Imbue 1 Tier 1 unlocked: +1 Magic, Tier 1 imbue spells can now be learned
Herbalism 1 Tier 1 unlocked: +1 Intelligence, identify and safely harvest tier 1 plant and fungus
My ultimate goal was to craft magic stone stat rings once I learned the tier one spells stone shape and tier 1 imbue stat spells. With slow magic regen I planned to develop alchemy to make magic restoration potions on the side. I confirmed my selection and the next screen popped up.
Prime Skill: Every player can promote three skills to “PRIME”, these can not be changed once selected. A player’s prime skill gain experience five times as fast as normal skills. I read it twice to make sure I understood. This was new to the game. It made a little sense as well. It was basically the games way of class generation. A thief might do stealth, move silently and back stab, while a mage might focus on a spheres of magic. If I was going to be an enchanter then I should promote my Enchant and Enchant: Imbue right away but I held off. I skipped to the next screen.
The screen had a view of my avatar in plain beige pants and shirt with some dark brown sandals. I was also wearing a black leather bracelet with a single stud in it and had a dark brown leather belt with a small canvas sack hanging from it. Not very imposing. I checked the gear by bringing up the hovering display.
Beige Cotton Shirt Sleeve Shirt, Weight 0.5 lbs, Defense Bonus 1
Beige Cotton Long Pants, Weight 1.0 lbs, Defense Bonus 1
White Loin Cloth, Weight 0.0 lbs, Defense Bonus 0
Leather Sandals, Weight 1.0 lbs, Defense Bonus 1
Basic Translocation Bracelet (BOUND), Weight: 0.0 lbs, 1 of 6 studs, the first stud will attune to your chosen starting location
Basic Bag of Holding (BOUND), weight 5 lbs, capacity 250 pounds, 10 slots (stackable)
Current Coin Balance: 0 copper pieces 510 silver pieces
I had a quick thought and brought up a web search to see if I remembered correctly. Yes, currency was in copper, silver and gold. A copper coin was about the size of a nickel and equated to $1.00 in the real world. It took 100 copper coins to make a single silver coin and that was the size of a quarter. It took 100 silver coins to make a gold that was the size of a quarter as well. Starting coins was 100 copper for a new player. The purchase of the promotional Cocoon gave you another starting 9 silver. That meant my uncle must have pre-purchased 500 silver coins or spent $50,000 on virtual money. I was shocked briefly before remembering the man. The timer in the upper right corner was now approaching game launch 5, 4, 3, 2, 1…….