[Quest Received!: Bloody Business]
[Quest Objective: Reach lvl 1 in Craftsmanship]
[Skill Acquired: Craftsmanship Lvl 0]
[Untrained Skill: 10x Time taken, 4x SP cost, 5x EXP Bonus]
[Item Acquired: Bronze Knife +7/+14 Damage 20/30 Durability]
"Here, you two can borrow my knives. In order to skin your rabbit you can open your crafting menu and select the option in the Woodsmanship Tab. Like this" The Butcher said.
It kind of broke immersion hearing the Butcher talk about menus. And it was really odd seeing the Butcher opening a crafting screen, switch to the Woodsmanship Tab, and stand still for a few seconds staring at the rabbit.
"Is there something wrong?" Tim whispered "He's just standing there."
Suddenly a rabbit skin and meat popped onto the table. The Butcher smiled as said to you "See? You do it!"
I selected the craftsmanship menu and found the skin rabbit task. Unfortunately since we were untrained it would take 5 minutes as well as 100 SP in order to complete the task.
While waiting for the task to complete we went on the global forums, ReadIt, to check up on the news. The AIs arranged a message board where people could share tips and voice their complaints. By far the loudest complaints were about the rewards for watching the cinematic. People were complaining that the rewards were two pointless, the Cheezeburger didn't provide any benefits, the chopsticks would break if you tried to use them as a weapon, a lot of people felt insulted for getting a Naruto headband. More people were jealous because they didn't get a Naruto headband. Other people were complaining that the perks were racist. Oddly enough all complaints were replied automatically by CustomerServiceBot who assured people that "Their data points would be aggregated and analyzed to improve the enjoyment of the game."
Interestingly enough in the crafting section there was a highly rated survival guide by "Moose Grylls, Survival Extraordinaire". It described techniques to create a trap with bait and sticks as well as how to skin a rabbit with nothing but bare hands. You break the skin on the hind legs of the rabbit and you pull it over the rabbit like you are undressing it.
[Crafting Complete! Received 1 Rabbit Pelt, 1 Uncooked Rabbit]
[Craftsmanship lvl 0: 10%]
It was going to take forever for level craftsmanship up by using an untrained skill so Tim and I decided that we would try Moose Grylls’s method.
Let just say it was a disturbing experience. Unlike the nice clean PG usage of the Craftsmanship skill, doing it manually gave us a 50% exp boost. So each skinned rabbit gave 15% EXP, and it took about 3 minutes. After practicing it a few times we were able to get the time down to around 1.5 minutes. It still took a massive 75 SP each time, but between constant references to the guide as well as laughing at each other’s struggles, we didn’t run into much of an SP problem.
After skinning 5 rabbits with the faster method, we were sitting on 85% EXP. I mentioned to Tim that we should skin the next rabbit the slow way, so we would be sitting on 95% EXP before we would level up and lose the Untrained XP bonus.
While waiting for my crafting to complete I browsed ReadIt again. There are two types of people who brows internet forums, there are the helpful benevolent Gods who are a wealth of information and write guides helping everyone advance. And there are leeches who only consume information, jealously guarding any secretes they do find. Whenever they provide information it would be outdated, misleading, or just so low level that it would not hurt them.
Naturally I was the second kind. I rejoiced that Moose Grylls created a subform, or subReadIt, to share the information he found. Newly added was information about how to start a campfire gut and cook your newly skinned rabbit. Grylls used a sharp rock, and it looked like it was pretty difficult to cut. Luckily for us we had a knife.
“Wow this Moose Grylls guy really moves fast, he is way ahead of us” I remarked
Tim Replied “It’s probably because he tries to be first, skipping through quests. Later when he needs to catch up his fans will donate lots of goods so he can complete the quests really fast.”
It seemed like Tim was right, Moose Grylls never mentioned anything about the benefits of Craftsmanship, Firemaking, Cooking, or Trapping level 1. He probably only hunted and cooked one rabbit, and only have a small amount of XP in each skill.
After the 7th rabbit was finished, we both had 95% XP. 90 Seconds later and one rabbit corpse left we leveled up!
[Crafting Complete! Received 1 Rabbit Pelt, 1 Uncooked Rabbit]
[Craftsmanship lvl 1: 10%]
[Untrained Skill Modifier removed from craftsmanship]
[You can now craft recipes with a higher level with a time and SP penalty]
Happy that I leveled up, I tried skinning a rabbit manually again, this time I did it even faster, it only took 60 seconds. But I didn’t get an SP reduction bonus and it only provided 1.5% experience.
It looks like leveling craftsmanship will be much harder compared to combat skills. But on the other hand by using the menu, skinning a rabbit only took 30 seconds and 25 SP. It really wasn’t worth it to do the manual way, so I skinned the last rabbit with the menu method.
[Craftsmanship Lvl 1: 12.5%]
[Inventory: 10 Rabbit Pelts. 10 Uncooked Rabbit, 1 Bronze Knife 15/30 Durability]
“Congratulations,” the butcher roared, “I knew you could do it! As a gift you can keep the knife!”
As least that saves me the trouble of stealing it I muttered under my breath. A weapon that doesn’t weight 60 pounds and does a lot of damage? Yes please!
“Now to gut it!” the butcher said. “Watch.”
Again the butcher brought up the menu, this is getting ridiculous, he selected Craftsmanship, went to the Dressing Tab. This is getting ridiculous I thought. He stared at the rabbit and a few seconds later the Rabbit was gutted and cleaned.
“Now you try” the butcher smiled
[Skill Acquired: Cut lvl 1]
[Cut things with a sharp tool! +1 Damage]
“Btw, if you decide to gut the rabbit manually, it is a good way to train Cut!”
Hearing this we excitedly gutted our Rabbits manually. It was dirty work, luckily for us as soon as you remove the organs from the Rabbit it would disappear, however we were covered in blood and guts from the elbows down.
After gutting our tenth rabbit we level up our cut skill to lvl 2.
[Skill Leveled: Cut lvl 2]
[+2 Damage, 10% Bonus to Craftsmanship with a knife]
The butcher happily congratulated us. “Great job! You can go use my washroom as well as well as my whetstone to sharpen your knife!” Our knifes were getting low with only 5/30 Durability. He continued “And here is a secret perk for your great job!”
[Perk Acquired: But I’m a Butcher! Rank E]
[Blood and Guts do not count as evidence if you commit a crime]
[Skill Acquired: Repair lvl 0]
[Untrained Skill: 10x Time taken, 4x SP cost, 5x EXP Bonus]
We thanked him, we got a ranked perk! Everything else so far has been unranked, and this was so useful. We probably could murder… I mean self-defense people and get away with it. We took turns washing up and repairing our bronze knife. Before we left he shouted “If you ever need some money, I’ll pay you 1 copper to skin and gut rabbits for me!”
It wasn’t a bad deal considering with our Cut bonus we could accomplish that in 54 seconds, but with no need of money we headed over to the village cook.
---
The cook was on the edge of the village, by the meadow of rabbits. We could see a mass of people running around dragging heavy swords, a futile effort. There were other people who attempted to put down crudely made traps, but the screaming and grunting of the sword carriers scared away all of the rabbits from the traps.
The cook had a few gigantic fire trench, it looked like he prepared ahead for the massive amount of players he would receive soon. The poor mayor had hundreds of players surrounding him and shouting “Quest Please”. Unfortunately he could speak to only one person at a time. To make things worse there were a few trolls who would shout “Tell me the background of this village!” and refuse to skip, wasting everyone’s time.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
The cook gave us the cooking skill and showed us how to cook… with a menu.
[Skill Acquired: Cooking Lvl 0]
[Untrained Skill: 10x Time taken, 4x SP cost, 5x EXP Bonus]
“So why do you have a giant fire trench when you can cook much faster with a menu?” I asked.
The cook replied “It’s so I can cook 100 rabbits at once. Got to be prepared for the lunch rush.”
This is amazing, since no one was nearby we had the whole space to ourselves. Excitedly we put all 10 uncooked rabbits over the fire trench. It wasn’t too difficult, hopefully the priest doesn’t mind if any of the rabbits get slightly burned.
We sat back and enjoyed the view, of many many players tripping over their feet and failing to hunt rabbits. One group of players formed a gigantic circle and rushed to the center, trapping the rabbits that ways. More skilled players would sneak up behind a rabbit, grab it and strangle it.
Although the spawn rate was fast, there were just too many players. It seems like skipping the cinematics was a better head start that we thought.
I took the time to browse random subReadIts. Moose Grylls had a new guide on respawning (he got himself killed trying to hunt a tusked boar). If you died you would black out and repawn back at the beginning 30 minutes later. You would lose 20% XP, have halved regeneration for the next 8 hours.
I tried looking up r/guides, but it seemed like we were ahead of everyone. There were a few good combat guides, so I bookmarked them. r/funny wasn’t very funny, it was mainly filled with complaints about how bad the game was. One video of a troll who successfully locked an NPC in a perpetual loop, preventing people from getting a quest had a score of -5000. It was cross posted to r/trollsonly and had +3000 points there.
Soon our rabbits finished cooking and to our delight, we got the XP in one giant lump!
[Skill Leveled Cooking Lvl 1: 50%]
[Untrained Skill Modifier removed from craftsmanship]
[You can now cook recipes with a higher level with a time and SP penalty]
[Inventory: 10 Rabbit Pelts. 10 Rabbit Meats, 1 Bronze Knife 30/30 Durability]
The cook congratulated us. “Congratulations on officially becoming a chef. Now if you would cook for me, I’ll pay you one copper for each rabbit you roast!”
Tim and I grinned at each other, of course we are going to take advantage of that. We each picked up 50 raw rabbits and started roasting them. It was a lot of work running up and down the fire trench, however we wanted to exploit this opportunity before other people came.
As we were finishing up, a crowd started to gather. People started yelling at us for hogging the entire fire pit, they wanted to cook also. By the time we finished cooking our 50 rabbits each, we hurriedly brought them to the cook (Inventories are so handy! I don’t even know if there is a max size”.
[Skill Leveled Cooking Lvl 2: 25%]
[Delicious! Foods you cook have the added effect of +1 HP/SP per min, for 1 hour]
[Money gained! 50 Coppers!]
We returned back to the church where we got the Food for the Poor quest. Surprisingly it was empty. Turns out some troll asked the priest “Please read the entire holy book out loud nice and slow” and he was only halfway through the first of 20 books. I guess that explains why a bunch of people nearby had their names in Red, indicating player killer.
Luckily for us, we were able to complete the quest by turning the cooked rabbits in to the Church accountant. Because we completed the task we were allowed to set our respawn point in the church. Having the church as our respawn point removed the regeneration penalty, and halved the wait time to 15 minutes. Unfortunately the XP loss was the same.
Afterwards we discussed our next options. The meadows were too crowded to level efficiently, the farms had already been pillaged of all its bait. And leveling didn’t give you very much bonuses, just a few stat points.
It seems like in this game equipment is the most important thing. Our knives were equivalent to 14 points of strength, and if you were lucky you could get 2 strength per level up. We decided the best course of action would be to try to create some armor and hunt harder animals.
A group of people walked into the church. One person lifted up his stone sword and hit the priest with it.
“Guards!” The priest shouted, and then the priest proceeded to take out an iron club and whacked the villain to dead. Brutal
The rest of the players all shouted “Quest Please! Skip!” in succession. Looks like there is a way for people to shut NPCs up.
Jack ChenHuman - AsianLvl 1HP200 (100 Base + 100 from VIT)HP Regen20 / Minute (10 Base + 10 from VIT)SP280 (100 Base + 180 from INT)SP Regen28 / Minute (10 Base + 18 from INT)Speed:109 (100 Base + 9 from AGI)SP280 (100 Base + 180 from INT)Base Damage (Min/Max)7/14 (1/2 Base + 6/12 from Strength)Strengh12Intelligence18Agility9Vitality10Respawn PointVillage Church
Perk Name:Perk Rank:Perk Discription:But I’m a Butcher!EBlood and Guts do not count as evidence
if you commit a crime
[tr]
Skill Name:Skill Rank:Skill Level:Experience:Chopstick Usage-MAX-You can eat with chopsticks like a real AsianStomp-27%+2 Damage to stomp attacks, 1 damage per levelCut-20%+2 Damage, 10% Bonus to Craftsmanship with a knifeCraftsmanship-112.5%You can craft simple things!Repair-010%Untrained Skill: 10x Time taken, 4x SP cost, 5x EXP BonusCooking-225%You can now cook recipes with a higher level with a time and SP penalty
Inventory10 Rabbit Pelts
Stone Sword, +5/+5 Damage
Stone Pickaxe, +2/+4 damage
Bronze Knife +7/+14 damage, 30/30 Durability
---
Thanks for reading!
I went back and put a placeholder table in chapter one. Once I have some more time I will whip up an excel sheet so I can generate tables faster and replace everything.
Constructive criticism is welcomed. Interesting ideas are considered, though my protagonist doesn’t have godly luck or ridiculous plot armor. I think VRMMOs should have an equal playing field, the main difference is that my protagonist is a little more cleaver than others.
I hope you enjoy the story. See you again soon.