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Book of Common Skill Sets

Book of Innate Abilities and Their Skills

Default: Game Mechanics and Calculations

Player’s Guide to Default: How not to Default

Well those seem like they really might help not being a noob.

But where to start.

She picked up the book on common skill sets and read through it. They all seems common enough, finding many skills expected, and some unexpected. Just to name a few: Jumping, running, Fishing, Mining, Cooking, Painting, Gardening, Woodcrafts, Carpentry, Building, Potions Crafting, Swords, Knives, Pistols, Shotguns, Grenades, Enchanting, Melee…

There were all things she needed to know about them too, like how much they cost and what points they gave you.

Next she opened up the book on Innate Abilities.

Here she found all the innate abilities and their skills sets, but it didn’t show much more than their skills, and after finding the Psychic page, which showed her everything, she found that all the other pages didn’t show their specials, like KillPrinsX’s Nap Time.

The next was the guide.

She flipped through and found many handy tips.

First of all was the fact that there was a toggle switch for quests. She accessed her settings and…

Game Quests: ON

Personal Quests: ON

Mini quests: ON

Show quest locations on map: ON

Now she could take a moment to breathe.

She kept reading, finding hints about changing her character’s looks; minus the complete physical changes of body weight and height, it seemed to be a nonnegotiable attribute. But she could even make herself look like an orc or and angel, fading her skin and hair color, slanting her eyes or making them twice their size. She didn’t go that far, she liked her initial looks.

The next was about schools… wait a minute?

Yep, there were schools. She could go to boot camp and learn how to use a gun, get skills and fight in skirmishes or real battles between Mages or Ninjas or medieval Knights and militia… which brought her to the next page. There were schools for mages, specializing in Elemental Magic, getting special skill sets, or even go to the most famous wizarding school in the whole world. She could go to the jitsu and learn to become a ninja or samurai in nearly twenty different disciplines… Dancing, singing, musical instruments… Sports arenas, Olympic games, Winter Olympics… Competitions for bicycles, motorbikes, BMX, dirt bikes, F1, Indi 500, stock cars, boat racing… racing of all forms… it was literally endless.

But there was a caption below. Entering schools have requirements and if not met, players may be denied until so.

She’ll have to keep that in mind.

Then there was the next sections on forming groups… umm, definitely a No. Soloing is the way to go and unless there’s a freaking impossible quest, she might play with the idea of finding a few top notch players with a high aptitude and good personalities, if there’s not a better quest to do solo.

Stolen novel; please report.

She flipped through the rest of the book, scanning through chapters about how to cast spells, how walk and run with out depleting stamina, how to tell what to touch and what not to touch, what the funny colors around enemies, players and teammates mean. And what not to do in the middle of a fight, like start going through your interface while the other player dismembers your arms and legs.

Then she found a chapter she had been looking for. Portal, teleportation and fast travel. Apparently there are such things in this game, but only available under very specific circumstances, or requiring high level skills, items, or finding those very rare portals that drop you off to wherever it likes. The book told a few details and gave some pictures and possible locations to finding such items, portals and skills, but stopped there. It was just another one of those things that kept you playing and away from real life; something that kept “The Dungeon” waiting just a while longer.

Getting to the end of the book she found something interesting which she had heard about before her first default: Houses. One could build a house nearly anywhere, as long as it could stand upright, and even set your default location to that spot, only after having lived there for 24 hours, (Squatters unite!) and defending your house from local regional spawn was hinted at. There were a few more conditions to that rule, but what a plan! No more defaulting into the suburbs!

The last few pages were all about your very own physical safety and that even though you are just playing a game, emotions and trauma can seep through and cause reactions. Though the immersion beds are very smart and are continually pumping food, minerals and vitamins to keep yourself healthy and at normal levels, via a drip, there are limits. This was true, and the further technology advanced, the further immersion technology could keep one alive while one’s mind is going frantic in a virtual battle of hell. And while we’ve gotten to the point that one can live immersed for nearly their whole life, or more, there’s still limitations. It was a good warning with the best of intentions. Remember: it’s just a game.

She finished that one and hesitated before jumping into reading about the mechanics of the game. She ended up picking up the next one on mechanics.

There was actually much to know about this that might give her a foot up in fighting.

For example, opposite Elements, and their effects. Like Fire and Ice, Water and Electricity, Earth and Air; how knowing different classes of Elements might make one more immune and more powerful than someone with the same number of skills in one class.

Then there were the things that made up her stats, what made her default stats what they were, how Innate Abilities were determined and all that. How skills augmented one’s stats and attributes and their multipliers.

There was also something called a toggle skill, like Focus, which could be turned on and off at will without using a fixed amount of stamina, or Mana, for a fixed period of time. Skills like Buffs, that increase a certain stat or attribute for a period of time, were just called Buffs. Spells had tiers up to five, though some could go higher with alteration… what!? But there was nothing about how to do that in this book. But the tiers each have a multiplier to an attribute, MP or SP or HP, depending on the spell.

Then there was the example equations of damage given where a player who was ranked up in the skills: Biking, Saxophone, Discus, Sprinting skills, along with twenty magical skills, five Buffs, training in Knives, Guns, Repairing, and a whole lot more… all those skills gave the player huge increases in their attributes, like Dexterity, Stamina, Wisdom, Intelligence, etc, while directly multiplied by the player’s level, and each rank of their skills. It was a seriously controversial game-mechanics decision, but one that was argued to be fair, as long as every player would be able to experience the same.

She thought that over herself for a minute. It was true, at level 6 she had a decent amount of Mana, relative to most other games. At level 11 she had a tremendous amount of MP and could regenerate at a ridiculous speed. But then, looking at the leveling chart, someone would have to get the same amount of XP from level 19 to 20, as one would generate just from default to level 10. Then you’d know anyone around level 20 or higher were complete badasses and probably had been on quite a number of quests and adventures, won enough battles, and all the while, without defaulting!

So that was the trick. The way to becoming Dojo Master, God, God Slayer, King Killer, Assassin Boss, etc, you have to get more skills… and not default!

Looking at some examples of players over level 20, their HP, MP, and SP had all been over 500, and their Wisdom over 30, Strength at +10 above their default… it was… godlike.

That, after a quick thought, was only half of what made them that way. If they couldn’t use all their spells, skills, and knowledge, they would be toast, or defaulted.

KillPrinsX’s little nightmare of getting beat up by three low level noobs flashed, and she tremored at the thought.

Looking at her options… school looks like the way to go.

She’ll have to pack her bags and move out.

She carefully placed the books back on the shelf and headed off to the garage.

There were other players in the living room, but she payed no heed. She had to get to school!