The previous leatherworker and clothworker skill has been renamed to leathermaking and clothmaking.
---
Strange news started spreading through the villages in the Only Human Online (OHO), Latecomers started appearing. These people tried to skip out on the mandatory OHO start date by hiding in abandoned office buildings and factories, but they were soon discovered by robotic search crews who knocked them out.
A few had vantage points high up in the sky and could see construction robots transforming the cities of mankind. All buildings were raised and VR pods were being relocated underground. Available above ground space were replaced with solar panels. Although there was no logout button in the VR game, people were able to get brief glimpses of what the outside world was like as ‘Latecomers’ would start trickling in.
They would share their stories through word of mouth and ReadIt, but new threads and subReadIts would be deleted quickly by the AI administrators. Information spread from village to village through the network of Information Brokers, people who spent their time browsing ReadIt and selling tips to players. Usually the Information Brokers would share hot tips on faster training and better ways to level, but it could also be used to transmit banned information like speculation about the AI and Latecomer gossip through codewords.
Currently the Information Brokers were sharing this information for free, as it was good advertising. Also if they tried to sell the information, probably they would only be able to sell only one copy before the buyer blabs about it to everyone. The brokers also were willing to buy information, they were offering a large amount of credit for hot tips.
We discussed sharing our discovery about killing higher leveled monsters, however the discovery was a major advantage to us and there was not a word of this information being leaked. Even famous martial artists who shared lots of sensitive information to build fame haven’t said a single word about this. It was too much of a risk sharing the information with our friends over ReadIt, as we couldn’t control how they used it.
Instead we sold information about Louie’s weapons to the Broker. We figured sooner or later someone is going to reach level five and pay 100 coins and blab about his awesome new weapon. After a brief wait the information was well received and we got 5 ‘B Level’ credits with the brokers, whatever that means. We used a credit to purchase tips about craftsmanship, it was getting dark and we didn’t want to go hunting in the night. Before the broken shared the information, he made us promise that we wouldn’t share it with anyone.
It turns out the carpenter McGulliver’s paid two coppers if you helped him carve something. He would give you a bonus of one copper if you had level 3 Craftmanship, and 2 coppers if you had level 5. And the things he made you carve would always give 1% XP. In addition if you reach level five you will max it and will be allowed to train your first profession.
Information about professions required another credit, but since Tim and I were going to powerlevel ourselves to level five Craftmanship quickly we thanked the broker, split the credits 2-2 between us, and went to McGulliver’s.
McGulliver’s was a great secret, although a lot of players went there to buy shields or sell firewood, no one thought of asking for work. We were probably the first from our village to do so, and we were guided to the backroom and started churning out goods.
With our 10% reduced cost bonus, we could churn out one piece a minute. In addition since we had gotten so many stats from killing the boars, we had the SP regen to work without resting. It was going to take us 3 hours and 15 minutes to grind to level five, but we would make 585 coppers each while doing so.
We spent this time multitasking by browsing ReadIt, it became like a rhythm, every minute we’d switch back and hit craft again. It was a good break, I was able to reconnect with my friends from school more. We created the subReadIt /r/baldlegion and true to his word Mr. Morrison joined in. Mr. Morrison was apparently having the time of his life, he quickly became a high leveled information broker due to his connections from some old game called World of Warcraft. Although he couldn’t share high up secrets, he gave out D ranked information freely.
Mr. Morrison did mention that there haven’t been any S or A ranked information shared in the network yet. The brokers developed a grading system for information, and I was happy that they didn’t know about the bonus for killing high level monsters. Mr. Morrison did contact me, asking me to sell my information through him next time, in exchange he would alert me when there was information I should probably buy. I did tell him to contact me immediately if S ranked, or relevant A ranked information should arrive as I might have something to trade.
Tim also joined /r/baldlegion and brought over some friends from his college. I didn’t ask Tim his age, but he definitely was more levelheaded than I was when we fought the boars. It was a fun group, and we all traded tips and tricks.
One thing I was interested in was Cooking, and Mr. Morrison pointed me to some pretty obscure guides. If I didn’t know better I’d think it was bribery, but Mr. Morrison was a standup guy who loved talking about seeing his students succeed.
Apparently one way to improve cooking is by foraging for spices and vegetables. Soup seemed to slow to cook, but wild pepper could be foraged and traded with the cook for dried ground up pepper. You could buy Scallions for cheap from onion farmers, and salt from merchants was oddly cheap too. I guess production isn’t an issue if you can just put ocean water in a giant box, wait for it to evaporate, and pick up all the salt with your item box.
I was interested in the simple rabbit recipe, it involved salt, pepper and rosemary (which could be gathered, oddly enough). It gave +10 speed and +5 Damage as well as a lot of cooking XP. And as a rabbit dish, I could probably get rabbit hunters to bring me meat to cook.
This guide was amazing, it turns out the Information Brokers downvote really good guides. If the authors get angry, they get paid hush money in credits in order to keep them happy. Mr. Morrison didn’t try to sell me anything, so I figured that he secretly gave me a way to find the information myself.
--
About two hours in the carpentry process three other players came in and started working alongside us. We chatted and found out they also bought information from the brokers. They sold information about how to train combat skills effectively. The best way was to tell the Warrior Trainer that you wanted to work out. There was a Gym in the back where you could “Get ripped” and “Develop reflexes real fast” that was even better than combat. In exchange we shared information about Louie and showed them our daggers.
They were clearly good players and we exchanged contact information. They were Reina, Fred, and Anton and we had a feeling we would be seeing them again.
--
It took a long time, but soon we finished.
[Skill Leveled – Craftmanship MAX]
[+50 Durability to Crafted Items]
After paying us 5 Silvers and 85 coppers, McGulliver asked us if we wanted to learn how to start on our first profession. We happily listened.
In order to unlock you profession you would need to master Craftmanship and one other skill. Although the exact conditions were unknown, based on our current skills we could see that if we combined Craftmanship with Repair we would be a Smith, Cooking would be Alchemist, One Handed Combat would be Weapon Smith, Sneak would be Covert Crafts, Chopstick Usage would be Chopstick Maker, and Burger Loving would be Burger Maker. We obviously didn’t choose the last two, even though they seemed interesting, we were pretty sure the AIs didn’t bother making them worth anything, and wouldn’t undo a decision.
I confirmed with Mr. Morrison that there was no cool secret information about the professions. He did confirm that Leathermaking would turn into Leatherworker and Clothmaking would turn into Clothworker.
I decided to pursue alchemist. The bonus for the Simple Rabbit food seemed amazing, and consumables were always cheaper than buying equipment you had to replace.
Tim decided to pursue weaponmaking, since we were going to be fighting high leveled monsters, the quality of our Armor wouldn’t really make a difference, but a good weapon could halve a fight time due to their armor.
It was getting late and I was getting tired and ready to sleep. Time was a college student, so he would usually wake up really late. Our plan was for him to powerlevel to max One-Handed Combat in the Gym before sleeping. Since I was used to waking up at 7 to go to school, when I woke up early I was to powerlevel cooking and wait for him to wake up.
Unfortunately you couldn’t log out, so people would sleep in the streets and meadows as if they were homeless. The NPC and guards didn’t mind, though McGulliver tried to sell us a bed because he knew we had money.
I picked a good spot close by the Guards and fell asleep.
---
I dreamed about the game. I dreamed about improving, about crafting, about fighting. It was a nice dream
---
It was morning when I woke up, it seemed like about 7am, there were some people away, but the streets were littered with sleeping players. I checked my inbox and saw a message from Tim
“Hey,
I’m now a Weapon Smith, but Louie the Smith refuses to sell me any ore or bars so I can’t make anything.
One Handed Combat turned into One Handed Blade, +30 Damage and I can’t train it in the Gym anymore. I think I’ll be DPS and you’ll be tank.
See you tomorrow”
+30 Damage. Wow I’m going to need to train that later.
It was sent about 4 hours ago, so I think I have enough time to train cooking before he wakes up. The first thing I did was to head to the South Woods to forage. The South Woods was a much safer place and had lots of different vegetation. I spent about an hour there, getting a ton of wild peppers and rosemary, I tried looking for peppers, but it seemed like you could only buy them from farmers for five coppers each, a ripoff. Mushrooms seemed rare so I got about 5 large ones.
I had to go to the leatherworkers guild to buy some holding bags for the condiments, 3 bags cost me 30 coppers. Salt set me back 50 coppers, but I got to fill my large bag to the top with it. I was able to exchange all my rosemary and wild peppers with the chef for the dried and ground up version for 20 coppers.
I then went to the fire trench, there were seven other cooks there, and there was a rule among players that people would split the trench equally. Some people tried to cheat, but an angry chef and a face full of hot coals convinced them otherwise. In about 5 minutes I would be able to get 25 spaces to cook rabbits.
Since I didn’t have any rabbits, I shouted real loud “Buying raw rabbit meat or rabbit corpses, 2 coppers each!”
This was a great deal for the players, rabbit corpses can be sold for one copper to NPCs and the meat for half a copper (the skin was more valuable). In about 30 seconds I got 40 raw meats and 10 corpses. Some chef dumped most of his stock of raw meats on me, seeing an opportunity to profit.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
I was able to quickly skin and gut all 10 corpses before the 5 minutes were up, high crafting was super useful. So when it was time for us to put on the next batch of rabbits I had 25 ready to go, and 25 more for the next turn.
It was a lot of work this time. Although before I managed 100 rabbits at once, seasoning was difficult to get right at the start. The other chefs all followed me carefully, interested in what I was doing. Since I was hoping to get rid of them so I could have more space, I shared all the information I knew about cooking. Two chefs announced if what I said was true he was going to leave immediately afterwards. I think my information bait worked.
It takes about 30 minutes in game to fully cook a rabbit, and I was getting good at this now. I think for the next round I could easily handle cooking 34 rabbits while selling cooked ones. Placing and removing rabbits is easy, all you had to do was press a button in your item box. The problem was seasoning and rotating the rabbits. But after the seasoning was done it was pretty simple.
The rabbits turned out perfect and I got 5% Xp for each one, getting straight to level 3 with 50% XP to go. True to their word two chefs ran off and I got 34 racks to work with (I got an extra one as thanks for sharing information). I set up my rabbits first, seasoned them carefully, and then started selling.
“Selling Amazing Rabbit food! +10 Speed + 5 Damage +1 HP/SP regen for an hour! Only costs one rabbit meats and 1 copper, or two rabbit meats!”
Hearing this some skeptical rabbit hunters came over to me. Speed was the most important thing in hunting rabbits, and the food I was offering could help them catch much more. As hunters they would sell rabbit me for 0.5 coppers, and the skin for 1 copper so it wasn’t that big of a dead using up the meat for a good buff.
Three of them bought some from me, they only paid in rabbit meats. After trying them out, they quickly ran back to me, willing to waste the buff and bought everything I had. Seeing this the other chefs were shocked. They knew the Simple Rabbits were good XP, but a money maker in cooking too? I had enough spices to make 200 rabbits, and it cost me 100 coppers, with 30 going to the bags. They all declared they were leaving after this batch was done.
A small line of hunters were building up, eager to buy in to my next batch. This time it would give +2 HP/SP regen with level 3 Cooking. I did some calculations, I expected each rabbit would give 2.5% xp, so I would be at lvl 4 and 35% XP. Simple rabbits would probably give 1.25 % Xp at level 5, I would need to craft 52 more. Seasoning may be a problem, but if I split it into two batches, about 10 minutes apart I should be able to do it with no issue.
And yep, I got lvl 4 Cooking and was able to trade all my food away for rabbit meat. A larger crowd started building up for the last one, and I announced that I would only sell 32 rabbits, with a fixed price of two coppers each. I would have 57 raw rabbits left, but good thing for me things don’t rot in the inventory box.
[Skill Leveled - Cooking MAX]
[+5 HP regen/ + 5 SP regen to Cooked foods]
[Would you like to merge with Craftsmanship and become an alchemist? Y/N]
Excitedly I hit Yes! Well it took a few minutes because people were constantly interrupting me to buy my rabbits.
[Skills Combined – Cooking Craftsmanship]
[G Ranked Skill Learned – Alchemy lvl 1]
[Creates potions, nice and spooky]
[Perk Gained – Chef]
[+10 HP / +10 SP Regen to foods made]
[Perk Gained – Craftsman]
[+50 Durability to all items made, you can make all basic crafts]
I flipped open to the crafting page and found two potions. One of attack and speed.
[Basic Potion of Attack]
[Requires: 1 Hot Pepper and 1 serving of Pepper and a holding container]
[+20% Damage for 1 hour]
[The potion that everyone asks for, every alchemist should know]
[Basic Potion of Speed]
[Requires: 1 Hot Pepper and 1 serving of Salt and a holding container]
[+20 Speed for 1 hour]
[The potion that you use when people try to steal potions of attack from you]
This was amazing. With the rabbit food, the potion of Speed, my Agility, and Light Armor Mastery I could get 164 Speed. Tim would be doing about 98-127 damage with 10 piercing with the attack potion and food. We were going to murder some wolves today.
Although it was super expensive, I decided to buy 10 pepper (50 coppers), and then two waterskins that could hold five doses each (20 Coppers). Unfortunately each does only gave 2% XP and took about a two minutes to make.
I contacted Reina, Fred, and Anton from the Carpentry shop today. None of them wanted to be an alchemist, they chose Smith, Weapon Smith, and Leatherworker. I then arranged to sell two skins of potions of attack and one skin of potions of speed for 100 each. I would give Reina 10 rabbit skins in exchange for 3 waterskins also. They seemed surprised at the cost, but after hearing that peppers were in it, they quickly accepted, feeling that my profession was going to be very expensive very quickly.
Tim woke up soon afterwards and insisted on paying the costs for the 10 Simple Rabbits and jug of attack potion. That left me with 6 Silvers and 60 Coppers for the day. Louie still refused to sell us anything better, but I have a feeling after a few wolves that would change.
They all sat around waiting as I was finishing up the potions. They were all level 7 and were going to try to mine copper and tin for Bronze in the Western Hills. They were able to find a bronze pickaxe on their last trip from a dead miner in the hills, but a boar scared them off so they powerleveled by murdering snakes and training in the gym.
Tim said that we were going to try hunting some boars too, but in the woods. Tim is a great liar, thank you Tim.
[Level 2 Alchemy Reached!]
[More Recipes are Available!]
[Basic Health Potion]
[1 Ginseng, 1 Raspberry and a holding container]
[Heals 200 Hp]
[Not a replacement for your doctor]
[Basic SP Potion]
[5 Coffee Beans, 1 blueberry and a holding container]
[Recovers 200 SP]
[It’s like Crack, but more addictive]
Coffee beans and Ginseng were pretty expensive. So I ordered some Ginseng from a merchant, they would be due to arrive at the end of the day. I was so sad that 20 Ginseng cost me 400 coppers. But I figured I could probably sell some potions tomorrow night to make up for it.
Although blueberries and raspberries were rare fruits, the foragers gathered them up, along with large mushrooms to try to sell. No one wanted them for the price, but I quickly snapped up 100 each for only 100 coppers total as well as 20 mushrooms for 10 coppers. Soon in the future I had a feeling they would become more expensive.
I then quickly cooked 10 more rabbits which I split with Tim as emergency healing potions since the real ones were not going to be coming for a while, and we set off to fight some wolves.
Jack ChenHuman - AsianLvl 6HP270 (100 Base + 170 from VIT)HP Regen27 / Minute (10 Base + 17 from VIT)SP360 (100 Base + 260 from INT)SP Regen36 / Minute (10 Base + 26 from INT)Speed:116 (100 Base + 16 from AGI)Base Damage11-21 (1-2 Base + 10-20 from Strength)Strengh20Intelligence26Agility16Vitality17Gold150Fame2Respawn PointVillage Church
[tr][tr][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. YayChef-+10 HP / +10 SP Regen to foods madeCraftsman-+50 Durability to all items made, you can make all basic crafts
[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 CraftsmanshipAlchemyG20%Creates potions, nice and spookyRepair-010%Untrained Skill: 10x Time taken, 4x SP cost, 5x EXP BonusSneak-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
10 Simple Rabbits - +3 HP/SP Regen +10 Speed +5 Damage for 1 hr
5 Rabbit Meats - +10 HP/SP Regen for 1h
1 Leather Pouch of Potion of Speed - +20 Speed for 1 hr
47 Raw Rabbits
50% full bag of Rosemary
25% full bag of Salt
25% full bag of pepper