[Item Acquired - Leather Pants, Damage Block 10, Durability 30/30]
[Item Acquired - Leather Chest, Damage Block 10 Durability 30/30]
When Tim found out that we were behind and there were players who already hit level 3, he insisted we finish our armors quickly. We went to the local leatherworks and exchanged our untreated rabbit hides with tanned leather. Since we needed 18 total to complete both the Pants and the Chest, we purchased a few more as well as a needle and spool leaving us with only 10 coppers.
Luckily for us the leather armor could be created with the Craftsmanship skill. We tested it out by punching each other. Turns out the damage block does not stack, it only applies if you hit an area that is covered. If you get hit in the head, not only is no damage block applied, but you take 100% more damage from a critical hit. Unfortunately we had no way of making helmets yet.
Next up we went to the training field. One popular guide, made by Master Blade, apparently that was his real name, talking about acquiring the G ranked skill, one-handed combat. Apparently you needed to train slash, cut, and stab to level 3 with a one handed weapon (the guide suggested that you use a wooden stick rather than your stone sword). They will then combine and provide you +5 damage for all one-handed weapon attacks.
The training fields were pretty crowded, but it was pretty easy acquiring a spot. Since everyone else was only using sticks, we could just walk up and steal the dummy they are training on. If they got angry and hit us with the stick, we would just block all of the damage. Even if they tried using a stone sword, as long as we made sure our heads weren't hit it was pretty easy to heal through the pitiful damage
[Skill Leveled - Cut lvl 3]
[Skill Leveled - Stab lvl 3]
[Skill Leveled - Slash lvl 3]
[Skills combined - Cut, Stab, Slash]
[Skill Learned - One handed combat lvl 1]
[+5 Damage for all one handed weapon attacks, -10% cost of crafting one handed weapons, -10% cost of crafting when using a one handed blade]
[Skill Leveled - Light armor lvl 2]
[+2 damage block and +2 movement speed per piece (universal), -10% cost of creating light armor]
Light armor level 2 was really great. The damage reduction applied to all areas, even the head. In addition each point of movespeed gave a 1% bonus to movespeed (from base). If you had 200 movespeed you would move twice as fast as someone with 100 movespeed.
In addition once you get more exotic and high quality leathers, you could create gloves, gauntlets, boots and more. If you had a full set of light armor, an lvl 1 hero could easily kill people that were countlessly higher leveled.
Our destination this time was the eastern woods. Most players avoided it, because of the poisonous snakes and the fearsome tusked boars. We had a player repair our equipment, people were offering to do it for free because you needed lvl 5 repair before you could start Smithing, so the xp was super important.
---
"Ahh a Killer White Snake! I'm dying! I'm dying!" Tim screamed, a small famously deadly jumping snake jumped up and sunk its fangs into Tim and attached himself to Tim's legs.
"Relax you are fine." I noted. I was in a party with Tim and could see that he didn't lose any health and wasn't poisoned. Armor is amazing.
Suddenly a white flash appeared before my eyes and a deadly jumping snake attached itself to my arms.
"Ahh a killer white snake! I'm dying! I'm dying!" I screamed.
Killer White Snake was a popular nickname given by the angry players who died as soon as they set foot in the forests. The real name was Jumping Snake, after we calmed down we found that the Jumping Snakes were pretty easy to kill. Even if they did damage to an unprotected area the damage block of [Light armor lvl 2] was enough to keep us safe.
Each snake gave us 20% XP at level 1, 10% XP at level 2, and 5% at level 3. Unfortunately the benefits of leveling up were very small. Even though we gained two levels I only got +2 Str, +2 Int, +1 Agi, and +1 Vit. At least we leveled one handed combat, giving us +10 damage.
Suddenly the area got very quiet and the snakes stopped attacking us. We had killed about 20 each, and usually they happily rush towards us, free mobile XP, the best thing ever.
Tim motioned for me to stop, "Jack this is a little odd" he said. "I wonder if this is foreshadowing something."
It didn’t look that bad, the place we walked into had much less trees than normal, but the odd thing was almost all off the animals tracks disappeared, just a few hooved tracks. Wait a minute a hoof?
Crash! Suddenly from behind some bushes two tusked boars jumped out and charged at us.
Tim was in front but with a dramatic flourish he jumped to one side.
“Ole!” I shouted, cheering on my bullfighter friend. Instead of a happy look he gave me one of pure panic. It was then I realized the boars hadn’t finished charging.
“Ole!” I shouted while throwing myself into a roll onto the side, barely missing the boars.
I ran beside a tree, preparing to hide myself behind it if I was attacked again.
Tim yelled out “Get their attention Jack! You distract them while I’ll attack. Let’s go for the smaller one first.”
“They both look the same size!” I yelled back confused.
“Just do it!”
“Fine!”
I stared at the boars, giving them my meanest look. The boars were just standing there, waiting for us to make a move. We clearly couldn’t run away from them so I had to think of something.
“Hey Boars, your moma’s so fat that when she gets up to walk God comes down and asks her to stop shaking the earth!”
No response. The Boars just stared at us, waiting for an action.
“Hey Boars, why did the boar cross the road? Because the chicken kicked him out for being so boaring”
No response. I can’t believe these Boars have no sense of humors.
“Hey Boars, why are you standing there? Is the AI that programed you a mouthbreathing idiot?”
BAM! The boars blasted off, charging me like I insulted their mother and species. Tim started making his way over knife in hand, ready to stab whichever boar he thought was the smaller one.
A few moments before they hit me I ran behind the tree. CATHUNK CATHUNK I could hear the satisfying sound of two boars slamming into the trunk. But I couldn’t gloat for two long, I made a mad scramble to dash into the safety of another tree, it was about 10 yards away.
I glanced back and saw the boars were dazed, Tim was stabbing and slashing at one other them. Pretty confident for a guy who believes that agro from a mob could be held just by a few insults.
The boars stood back up glaring at me. I gulped and ran a bit faster.
As soon as I got to the tree Tim yelled at me to dodge. I jumped backed behind the tree and was surprised to hear the familiar thumps. It was only fair the monsters were stupid, after all the boars were level 10, and we were barely level 3.
One of the boars was having a difficult time recovering. Luckily for us the strong boar patiently waited so they could charge as one, giving Tim more time to chip away at the weaker boar and me more time to rest. The constant physical activity actually started to drain some of my HP and SP, turns out if you sprint for a long time you start burning some HP and SP.
It took about 4 rotations, but soon the first boar was down.
[Tusked Boar lvl 10 Killed]
[Lvl up bonus for killing G rated monster more than 5 levels above you]
[Lvled up to 4! +2 Str +2 Int +2 Agi +2 Str]
[Lvled up to 5! +2 Str +2 Int +2 Agi +2 Str]
[+1 fame point for killing a G rated Monster]
After seeing the notification we both were very happy, not only did we get two levels, but we got max stats from each of the level, this was unheard of. If we leveled up only by killing monsters much higher than us we would get much more stats than usual. I can already imagine the discussions Tim and I would have afterwards.
I was trying to figure out what fame points were used for when I hear a great roar. The other boar enraged! We must have killed its spouse!
The boar rammed the unsuspecting Tim. Taking out a good third of his health. The boar then charged at Tim, trying to trample over him but Tim rolled away.
I screamed and ran over to help, taking out my knife. But this time the boar started charging at me. Suddenly I tripped over an exposed root, and I could only helplessly watch as the Boar rushed closer and closer.
And then the Boar tripped over a stone sword. Tim brought it out of his item box right as the boar was about to pass by him. Because of this I was able to leap up and get some good hits in straight on the boar’s head.
20! 25! 40!
Even though the head had a 100% damage bonus, it looks like the boar had some good damage reduction too. My last hit landed on an eye of the boar and it looked like there was a special bonus for hitting that. I shouted at Tim to go for the eyes while scrambling out of the way of the boar.
Tim put his stone sword back into the item box and immediately I figured out his plan. I ran straight for Tim this time. The boar had some difficulty turning around so I was able to make it past Tim in time for him to trip the boar again.
It turns out magically making a 60 pound sword appearing from the middle of nowhere was too hard for the poor beast to understand. Me and Tim both jumped up and started stabbing the boar in the eyes.
It didn’t take long for us to blind the boar, and it was easy pickings after that. And for our efforts we were greeted with a great message.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.
[Tusked Boar lvl 10 Killed]
[Lvl up bonus for killing G rated monster more than 5 levels above you]
[Lvled up to 6! +2 Str +2 Int +2 Agi +2 Str]
[+1 fame point for killing a G rated Monster]
---
We split the corpses evenly and started returning to town. We each had 24 snake corpses and one boar corpse and we were both level 5. But today’s lesson taught us how beneficial killing higher leveled monsters were. Not only did you get an enormous amount of XP, but the bonus stats were amazing too. The catch was you needed good items.
Oddly enough the snakes stopped bothering us, maybe because we were higher leveled than them, they were level three, that they knew we weren’t good prey.
Our next goal was the “Protect the Village” quest. The wolves were level 11-15, which was perfect for us. A lot of people were complaining about the quest being too hard, the wolves would show up in a pack and kill them too quickly. But more people were complaining about the copper ore quest, the stone picks would shatter if you used them, and if you went back to complain to Louie the blacksmith, would he would demand you pay him back 20 coppers.
Once we got back we went to the master warrior to turn in “Way of the Warrior” quest.
“Congratulations!” the master warrior roared. “You are now a warrior! In fact you two are the first newbies to reach the rank from this village!”
We grinned hoping for some exclusive reward.
“Unfortunately we don’t do participation rewards, so they only thing you get is my recognition that you have become a true warrior. Fear not, you can now buy weapons from Louie the blacksmith with a 50% discount! It is still bloody expensive and overpriced, but now you only need to sell one of your parents into slavery in order to buy a decent weapon.”
[Perk Gained – Warrior]
[You reached lvl 5. Yay]
“Now” he continued “Train some more, come back and I will make you a fierce warrior!”
[Quest Gained – Way of the Fierce Warrior]
[Quest Objective -- Reach level 10]
The rewards were horrible, and the master warrior wasn’t joking about Louie’s prices. It would cost us a 100 coppers in order to afford a simple iron dagger. Louie refused to show us the goods that were higher priced, he was afraid that our poor eyes would devalue them.
“This is ridiculous!” We screamed, and an echo of players chopping logs and feeding the kiln agreed with us. Looks like the mining quest was a way for Louie to get some people to work for him for no pay.
Unfortunately the people who were able to unlock Smithing had no way of getting ores as none of them had a good pickaxe, and Louie refused to sell pickaxes too. So we decided to earn some coppers by working for the butcher. We could also level our craftsmanship by doing that too.
It was dull work, grabbing a rabbit and opening the menu to skin and gut it. But it was decent XP. It took us about two hours to finish 120, but it was well worth it. We leveled Craftsmanship to level 2, which gave everything we crafted a 10 durability bonus.
We then skinned and gutted the snakes and boars. It took a longer time, the boar took 30 minutes, giving us plenty of time to browse ReadIt and catch up with the latest tips and techniques.
Someone figured out there was a 10 skill limit, if you got a new skill you had to delete an old one or forget the new skill. And you couldn’t delete your useless ‘racial skill’.
Someone else found out that the cooking skill maxes out at level 5. Apparently that person was willing to trade cooked food that had good bonuses for raw food. He or she was able to hog their village’s fire trench because of this service. The player speculated you could upgrade the skill someone, the cook hinted something about seasonings.
Lastly Moose Grylls discovered a skill called Stealth. Not only was it good for sneak attacks, but you could also train in at the village by the mayor’s house where there were lots of guards. And since dozens of players were training at a time, you didn’t even need to be good at sneaking as there weren’t enough guards to catch all the players.
We took advantage of that and got level two stealth easily soon afterwards.
The snakes and boar gave enough XP to level craftsmanship to level 3, which gave a +20 durability bonus. We traded the snake and boar meats to the butcher in exchange for 50 rabbit furs. Other players were willing to trade leather for furs, 2 exchanges for 1 copper, and the leatherworker’s guild was cheap and didn’t hire players to do their work. Lvl 5 learthermaking was required to get clothmaking. Nobody knew if it was worth it, but the current theory of “if it is hard to get, it must be worth it” seemed to have convince a lot of players to work for so little coppers. We were even able to get players to pay us for the privilege of processing our snake and boar skins. It took a while, but ReadIt is kindof addicting and it wasn’t that bad waiting.
With our level 3 Craftsmanship we made gloves, boots, snake gauntlets, and a boar helm, and we also improved our current armor. Unfortunately each two piece set only counted as one armor piece for Light Armor 2. But still, +12 universal damage reduction and speed is nothing to scoff at. Especially when Tim and I smacked each other around to level it up to 3 for +18 reduction and speed.
Reluctantly we went to Louie and each bought a dagger.
[Iron Dagger of Piercing (Masterworked) Aquired]
[+15/+30 Damage, Piercing 10 (Ignores 10 points of armor) 70/70 Durability]
Nevermind Louie, I love you. This weapon is so great.
Jack ChenHuman - AsianLvl 6HP270 (100 Base + 170 from VIT)HP Regen27 / Minute (10 Base + 17 from VIT)SP280 (100 Base + 180 from INT)SP Regen36 / Minute (10 Base + 26 from INT)Speed:116 (100 Base + 16 from AGI)SP360 (100 Base + 260 from INT)Base Damage11-21 (1-2 Base + 10-20 from Strength)Strengh20Intelligence26Agility16Vitality17Gold40Fame2Respawn PointVillage Church
[tr]
Perk Name:Perk Rank:Perk Discription:But I’m a Butcher!EBlood and Guts don't count as evidence if you commit a crimeWarrior-Your reached lvl 5. Yay
[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 levelOne Handed CombatG20%+10 Damage, 10% Bonus to one handed weapon related CraftsmanshipCraftsmanship-34.5%+20 Durability bonus to crafted itemsRepair-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 penaltySneak-225%You so sneaky!
InventoryIron Dagger of Piercing (Masterwork) - +15/+30, Piercing 10, 70/70
Boar Helmet - 20 Damage block, 50/50
Snake Gauntlets - 15 Damage block, 50/50
Leather Armor - 10 Damage block, 50/50
Leather Pants - 10 Damage block, 50/50
Leather Boots - 10 Damage block, 50/50
Leather Gloves - 10 Damage block, 50/50
Stone Sword - +5/+5
Stone Pickaxe
Bronze Knife - +7/+14 30/30
--
Thanks again for reading this. I will try to do daily updates, but of course RL has priority first, I might catch up on the weekends or something. I will go back and update the chapters with better tables, and maybe more names. I think I want to name the butcher something. I think I’ll go with Rahul.