I blinked in surprise, suddenly being back in a body with a full suite of sensory inputs was jarring, to say the least. What was even more jarring though, was the fact that there was no character creation screen, or class select, or tutorial, or helpful tips… there was nothing!
I was… standing in the middle of a forest, gentle sunlight falling on me from between the branches overhead, a nice breeze caressing my skin. As for a UI, there were five empty squares at the bottom of the screen, ten green hearts hovering above the squares, a line of ten water drops under the hearts, and a line of ten loaves of bread under the droplets. To the right of the five squares was a meter bar that was orange on the top, and blue on the bottom, with a happy green line right between the two.
“Health, thirst, hunger, temperature…” I guessed, my extensive experience in gaming coming in handy. The squares were a bit trickier to understand until I started exploring my new body a bit more. I was life-accurate, as best I could remember of what my real hands and feet had looked like at least. I was wearing what seemed to be linen cloth pants, no shoes, a cloth shirt and… a rich black belt stitched with crimson and purple threads. I ran my hand over the belt, and saw that in succession, the squares at the bottom of my vision were gently highlighted. I could feel square indents in the leather belt, one on the front of my right hip, one on the back of my right hip, one directly at the small of my back, and then two more on the front and back of my left hip. Five indents, five squares… “A quick use inventory.” I deduced. “That means…”
With a thought, my real character inventory popped open. There were thirty slots, all empty. Above the inventory was an image of myself, looking forward with a glazed over expression. The image was wearing the same linen clothes that I was, and when I raised my hand, the image mirrored the move. “Cool.” I commented. To the right of my image was a classic gaming armor outline, the helmet on top, the chest next, then the pants, and finally, a boots slot on the bottom. Separate from the armor slots was another slot, labeled ‘OH’. “Off hand…” I filled in the abbreviation for myself, getting the gist of the gearing system.
The armor spaces, health, food, thirst… all of that made sense to me completely, but what didn’t make any sense, was that to the left of my character image, opposite the armor slots, was a two by two grid. Four squares that had no label of any kind.
I minimized the inventory and character screen, pushing that mystery off for the time being. I looked around the pleasant forest I found myself in. “The tags said it was a survival and exploration game…as well as an rpg and all the other stuff…” I found talking to myself helped me think, and I’d been doing it ever since I went PI. If I didn’t have any friends and family around to talk to, there was no one better to have a conversation with than myself, right?
I walked up to the nearest tree. The second I got close enough, a small box appeared at the top left corner of my vision. “Oak tree.” I read off. Looking down at the ground, the same box appeared. “Grass… well that’s insightful…”
Walking to the next tree, I once more saw that it was an oak. Glancing around, I noted that all the trees were oak trees, and that nothing else was really growing here. I started walking, wondering what kind of exploration game had only one type of tree in it, when I heard an odd sound. I stopped dead in my tracks, my head swiveling, searching for the source. It sounded almost like a rumbling, but with something else behind it. It was kind of like what a giant parrot might sound like if it was mimicking a cat’s purr…
That was the last thought I had before I died. my vision went blood red, and pain surged through my back. On the lower right hand of my screen, a small outline of a man appeared with a segmented body. The head, body, arms, upper legs, lower legs and feet were all separately highlighted, and in that moment, the body section was lit up red, noting that it had been damage to the torso that had killed me.
Just before my vision failed, I saw a flash of vibrant green, purple, and red feathers, then everything went dark.
You have died!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
Ten thousand miles!! I blinked at the number, not understanding. I didn’t have an option to ghost run back to my body? Not even a chance to release spirit? If the players spawn in a ten thousand mile radius, then how would anyone ever find each other? How could groups form? That just didn’t make sense! If you found something cool, then died, did that mean you’d never be able to find your way back? What the hell happened if you had a full set of gear? Did it stay behind with your dead body?
I was worked up and frustrated by the lack of answers when I respawned, the world simply popping back into reality around me. I was still wearing the basic linen clothes, and there was no hint of injury on me. I looked around. “Birch tree…” I muttered, noting white bark all around. Immediately I went to the nearest tree, jumping up to grab one of the lower hanging branches. It snapped off and then shrank into an itemized form. This was fairly common for FIVR games when inventory space was a game mechanic. Things would minimize so they could stack with similar items or be easily handled, traded, sold, etc.
Stick
That was all the in-game info the item held. I sighed, then slipped the stick into my inventory. Instantly, it appeared on my belt, on my right hip, back at full size. I grabbed it off my belt and this time it didn’t itemize, remaining at its about two foot length. With a thought, I put it back into my inventory, this time focusing enough to tuck it into my main inventory, not my quick access belt. The stick vanished. I opened my character page just to check I still had it, then minimized the window when I confirmed its existence. “Okay, item management, understood.” I nodded to myself. “The game had crafting tags too…” I opened up my character screen again, then moved the stick into the two by two grid to the left of my image. “Okay, so that’s like a crafting grid.” I closed the window, the stick bouncing back into my normal inventory when I did. “That means I can make stuff…” I looked around, thinking about what I could craft first when I froze, fear locking up my muscles against my will.
There, standing between the trees, deep in the shade, was a person. No, not a person. This was clearly a zombie, or undead of some kind. Half its face was gone, revealing skull and exposed jaw bone. Its dead eyes locked on me, tiny red sparks living in each milky white pupil. It raised its arms, and only then did I notice it was holding a large bow, an arrow already nocked.
“Shit.” I grunted, just as the arrow was sent flying, striking me right in the forehead, killing me instantly. This time, just in the moment before death, I saw that the little man in the corner of my vision had its head turn red. I also noticed this time that my ten hearts above my quick action bar, that I’d previously thought noted my health, were actually still at seven out of ten hearts… and yet I was dead…
You have died!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
When the world re-appeared, I was standing in a great open plain, wheat colored grass spreading out in every direction, small hills stood as the only thing to break up the scenery. “Shit.” I repeated. At least with the head shot, there had been no pain…
My ten hearts were refilled and with a thought, the little man in the bottom right reappeared, all my body parts a pleasant green color. On a whim, I opened my inventory, confirming something that I’d been dreading. The stick was gone… every time I died, my whole inventory was lost. I had no doubt that if I ever found the spot I died, my stick would be sitting on the ground, waiting for me, or inside a bag or headstone. That was how these games went, but at this point, I had no way of ever finding that location ever again. It could have been one mile to the north, or eight thousand miles to the south. Even then, both distances were equally unlikely to be safely traversed by me at that moment. Five minutes in the game, and two deaths under my belt.
“I just need to—” there was a rush of wind, then piercing pain in my shoulder as I was jerked up and off of the ground. I gasped in surprise, then tried to look up at what had grabbed me. I saw only the underside of something large and half-furred, half-feathered. The talon-like grip tightened on my shoulder, causing my whole right arm to go red on my character indicator, with my torso quickly following it. Glancing at my health, I was missing three hearts again, and yet I wasn’t dead. “Stupid…health…system…” I growled through the pain.
Suddenly, abruptly, the pressure on my arm vanished. I felt a moment of weightlessness, then began to fall. I screamed myself hoarse in two seconds flat, then was forced to spend the other several seconds of fall time coughing and sputtering as the ground raced to meet me.
You have died!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
“What the hell?!” I lashed out and kicked a downed log in yet another forest, this one spruce. my character indicator in the bottom right hand side of my vision blinked, and my right foot turned yellow, a half-heart vanishing from my ten heart health pool. “Shit.” I snapped, limping slightly as I tried to walk off the pain.
“What did I get myself into?” I wondered aloud as I came to another spruce tree, bracing against it for support. “Three deaths in five minutes doesn’t look good on a gaming resume, folks…”
The tree I was leaning on let out a suspicious creak. I looked at it, then frowned. “No way…” the tree burst from the ground, roots springing up to coil around my limbs. “Shit!” I screamed as the pine tree nearly snapped itself in half in an effort to pummel me to death. It only took one strike from a thick upper branch to do the deed, my entire body flashing red as the world went dark.
You have died!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
“Okay Chase, focus!” I commanded, breaking into a run the instant I respawned. I was on a hillside, with only a few trees scattered across it, high grass patches, and a bunch of rocks strewn about. As I ran, heading for for the top of the hill, I scooped up a rock, shifting my grip on it, readying it as a weapon.
I made it to the top of the hill and started taking in my surroundings. At the base of the hill was a line of trees, light green in color…oaks, based on what I’d seen before. Turning, I saw that the trees were a different color on the opposite side of the hill, looking closer, the leaves were a darker color, one I’d hadn’t seen close up enough to get a name from the game. Scanning the forest, I found an odd line, denoting where the two tree types met. They didn’t intermingle, not even a little bit. “Biomes…” I said to myself. “Okay, I’m starting to get it. Oak forest, birch, pine forest, dry grassy plains… I’m on a small hill biome right now, probably…” I nodded to myself, trying to order what I knew about the game so far. It was only a couple minutes later when I noticed that the shadows of the few trees that grew on the hill had noticeably shifted.
He looked up and saw the sun was dipping down towards the horizon. “No, it was noon when I got here… or at least the sun was high in the sky.” I reasoned to angrily to myself. “There has to be an accelerated day and night cycle.” I concluded. “Bird creatures, zombies, murder trees…” my eyes darted around in every direction. “If everything Is trying to kill me, I need to stay away from everything… simple as that…” I glanced down at the rock in my head, then suspiciously at the nearest tree. Growing on the rocky hill, the tree was much smaller than most I’d seen so far, and certainly smaller than any of its brothers down below at the base of the hill. I figured that even if it turned out to be…‘alive’, it was too small to catch me off guard and worst comes to worst, I could outrun it.
I hefted my rock, and stalked over to the tree. The plant made no move to kill me as I approached. Reaching up, I tore a branch off of it, a few leaves despawning after the removal. The stick itemized in my hand. Opening my inventory, I put the rock and the stick in the crafting rid. Nothing happened.
Undeterred, I moved the stick to my belt, then drew it like a sword. A two foot long stick and a fist-sized rock wasn’t much in the way of defense, but it was all I had. On that note, I started going around, collecting more rocks, some smaller, some larger, sliding all of them into my inventory.
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I felt no increase in weight, which made my mood improve instantly. Inventory weight management was a burden I simply could not have dealt with at the moment. The stones stacked, small round stone, large, medium, etc. Only when I had about twenty did I move back to the top of the hill and sit down. I took a large rock, and two medium ones out of my inventory, setting the large one, about the size of a cantaloupe, on the ground.
I lined up the two medium stones, then smashed them together as hard as I could. “If it worked for the cavemen, it should work for me.” I reasoned. Three strikes later, one of the medium rocks cracked, then vanished. In its place, a stone shard was left in itemized form. I picked it up. With a thought the itemized version of the object de-itemized, turning back to real size. I ran my finger down one edge, happily finding that it was rough, sharp enough, and happily jagged. A decidedly better weapon than a blunt stone.
This time when I put the stick and the stone shard in the crafting grid, something actually came up, an output slot appeared with a phantom item in it. ‘Stone dagger’. There were no stats or damage numbers for the weapon, but I was beyond caring at that point. Smiling, I selected the stone dagger. The stone shard and stick vanished from the crafting grid and the stone dagger popped into the crafting output. With a flicker of thought I moved it to my inventory.
“Okay, I think I’m getting the hang of this.” I said proudly. Standing up, I put the dagger in my first quick access slot. The dagger appeared on my right hip, ready to be drawn. Only when I looked back up at the sky did I realize that I had just burned a good portion of the daylight away. It had been ten minutes of experimenting, but the sun had plummeted nearly to setting.
Panicking slightly, I started making my way down the hill. If nothing else, I wanted to know what type of tree the darker leaf forest consisted of. On the off chance I ever respawned in this area, it would pay for me to have some landmarks to go off of. “Maple.” I read off. “A bit anti-climactic, if you ask me.” I was about to make my way back to the top of the hill, it being the only place I figured I might survive a night, when I heard a soft, and very non-dangerous, cluck from within the trees.
That got my attention.
I only needed to take five or six steps into the woods before I saw…a chicken. It was brown feathered, and absentmindedly pecking at the ground. I glanced at my hunger meter, and to my dismay, saw it was nearly half depleted. “Oh no, you’re going to make me kill and eat that chicken, aren’t you?” I asked the AllCraft gods. There was no response. I nodded to myself. “Yup, I gotta kill the chicken.” I took one more step forward, then stopped. Bright eyes flared from deeper in the forest. The instant I saw them…
You have died!
(What are you doing here?)
You’ve been petrified!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
I respawned a moment later. “It’s telling me how I died now? And questioning my entire purpose in life at the same time... How considerate.” I commented sarcastically. “What the hell petrified me?! The chicken?” I opened my inventory, already knowing what I’d find. No stone dagger, no stones…
It was only when I closed my inventory that I noticed…I was in a new biome. Looking down, my bare feet were sunk down to my knees in snow. Looking around, I saw fresh flakes drifting down from an overcast sky. I saw a lake nearby, the first body of water I’d seen in AllCraft, only it appeared to be frozen solid…
I was about two steps from where I’d respawned when the cold suddenly struck me like a hammer. Apparently respawning granted temporary environmental immunity…
I was shivering uncontrollably in seconds. Looking down, I saw the temperature meter next to my health was dropping. Fast. It bottomed out before I made it a hundred yards. I felt a strange sensation on my left inner forearm. Looking, I saw a snowflake icon blinking on my skin, like a living tattoo. “Debuffs… great. As if the game wasn’t hard enough.”
No matter what I did, the debuff icon gave up no more information. Was it counting down, would I die if I stayed cold for too long, or was it meant to just be uncomfortable?
Those answers became apparent a few minutes later. my vision was narrowing, a blue haze making it difficult to walk without tripping over my own feet. I was moving slower and slower. Every time I looked at the debuff icon on my inner wrist, it was brighter and flashed slower.
Less then ten full minutes after appearing in the snowy biome, I died.
You have died!
(You should probably leave, it’s dangerous here.)
You froze to death!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
“Keep the stupid advice to yourself, will you?” I barked up at the sky the next chance I got. The next respawn put me in yet another forest, but this one had its trees more spread out. It was fully twilight now, and things were getting rather dark… I took three steps, then died again, this time seemingly at random.
You have died!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
“No informative quip this time?” I sniped at the game as I respawned once more. I was in the mountains this time, high up. my cold meter started dropping again, but the cold wasn’t nearly as biting as before. I started moving, and the temp meter stabilized, my body heat countering the cold.
That did nothing to stop the sun’s progress though… the sun fully set a few minutes later, just as I was trying to decide whether to hike higher up into the mountains, or try and descend into lower, and hopefully warmer, levels of the game.
The decision was taken out of my hands a few seconds later as the sound of pounding feet alerted me to something approaching. The night in AllCraft hit hard. It was as dark as pitch, and even though on the far horizon I could see the moon rising, it was still too dark see anything in any sort of detail. That’s why when the thing running towards me drew closer, all I saw was a wall of muscle, white fur, and a large fist crushing down on my skull before I died.
You have died!
Are you having fun yeti?
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
“Please tell me that wasn’t a yeti…” I groaned, flopping down onto the ground the next time I respawned. “And now the game is cracking dad jokes…fantastic.”
A groan caused me to look up. A zombie, much like the one that had killed me earlier was lumbering towards me out of the darkness, as if the shadows had spawned it from nothing. Luckily, this one didn’t have a bow. Unluckily, it wasn’t alone.
“And the dead rise during the night. Survival game… got it.” I muttered, feeling slightly defeated. “Come on Chase…determination…dedication… you’ve got this.” I tried to cheer myself up. Within seconds there were at least five zombies coming at me from all directions. I was summarily executed moments later via bludgeoning. Not pleasant.
You have died!
Your face was turned to mush!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
You have died!
You were pulled apart!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
You have died!
Your heart stopped due to the cold!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
You have died!
You were mauled to death!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
You have died!
You suffocated to death!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
You have died!
You lost a limb and bled to death!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
You have died!
Your skull…popped…!
You will now be respawned in a ten thousand by ten thousand mile radius of the nearest world center!
The night dragged on, what seemed like hours, or days, or weeks of constant death, teleportation, respawning, and more death. I felt my focus waver and my mind wander as I was constantly smacked with bursts of fear and pain every few minutes. But through it all, I put my head down and continued on. Respawn. Search. Die. Respawn. Look around. Die. Respawn. Fight. Die.
When the sun finally rose, I was ragged, mentally exhausted, emotionally sapped, pissed off, and fighting with everything I had. A stone dagger was in my hand, sweeping from side to side in wide arcs. The zombies groaned and walked forward, unbothered by my antics.
I lunged, stabbing the nearest gray skinned, half decayed monster. The zombie staggered back, grunting, but then lurched forward once more. Through the night I had managed to kill a grand total of two zombies, TWO, and one of those times another killer tree had ripped itself out of the ground and tried to murder me, but missed and hit the zombie I was fighting instead. I took the opportunity to take one more swipe at the undead mob while it was on its last legs. The body turned to smoke the moment it died, leaving behind a leather chest piece that was almost completely falling apart, a chunk of rotting flesh, and a piece of coal, all in itemized form. I had swept up the loot with glee, also noting that I suddenly had a level above my health and an xp bar reading an ecstatic ‘1’. There was a brief moment where I believed I had actually made progress… Then an enormous shadow had pounced on me and crushed my chest in, the weight of the beast alone too much for my body to handle.
That was a long time, and many, many deaths ago, but I was wiser now. I jumped in, stabbed, then skipped back, repeating the dance over and over, chipping away at the zombie’s health until… the mob groaned its last groan, then burst into black smoke. I didn’t bother going for whatever loot it dropped, simply moving on to the next closest zombie.
It took the sun several minutes after rising before its rays actually landed on the zombies that were hounding me. The moment the sun finally made direct contact, the zombies burst into flames. Sickeningly, they kept on fighting, groaning and grunting as their bodies were eroded by the purifying light of the morning sun.
I put in as much work as I could, and eventually, I was left standing alone in a forest clearing, residual smoke from two more spots drifting into the air. I was breathing hard. my arms were orange colored with damage on my character indicator, and my left leg was yellow. Other than that, my thirst meter was missing seven out of ten water droplets, my hunger was down to one loaf of bread, and my overall health was at six out of ten hearts. I was in bad shape…
It felt like no matter how long I rested, I couldn’t catch my breath, and as I tried to recover, my thirst and hunger indicators continued to drop. “Whelp, I never died of thirst before.” I muttered, annoyed. I had a stone dagger, and my level read ‘2’, whatever that meant. I hadn’t gained any stats or health increases from the levels, but I still cherished them. They were a mark of what I’d just gone through, the only metric of progression I’d been able to achieve and hold onto so far.
I scooped up all the loot from the zombies. It amounted to several chunks of rotting flesh, a tuft of grass, a rotting fish (weirdly) and three pieces of coal.
“Okay, so I walk until I die, I guess.” I said, swaying on my feet. “How…about… I…go—” I turned with every word, but stopped when I said ‘go’. my head tilted slightly as my eyes tracked an odd sight. It looked like smoke was rising in the distance. Not black smoke, like from burning zombies, but fluffy white and gray smoke, like from a campfire. Only, there were several streams of the stuff. “No way…” I muttered, taking a step in that direction without even fully processing what I was seeing. “There’s no way that’s a town.” I said, not willing to believe such a thing could exist in such a godforsaken game such as this.
I tried to move through the lightly wooded forest as fast as I could, scared out of my mind that every tree, every falling leaf, could and would kill me. Somehow, miraculously, I made it through, only tripping and falling twice.
My eyes went wide in surprise and hope as I saw what could best be described as heaven itself. Walls, wooden walls, and beyond that, houses! Cabins, more like, but still! The village was tucked between the arms of a massive lone mountain which rose up behind it like a silent guardian, steep cliffs making an impenetrable natural barrier on three sides of the settlement. The only vulnerable side was walled off with huge logs, with an open gate in the center. There were even a few people milling about the opening even as I stumbled toward it!
“Hi!” I called, so relieved that I didn’t bother trying to compose myself. “I’m Chase, please, can I come inside? I’ve been dying all night! It must have been at least a hundred times!” In truth I had no idea how many times I’d died. All the night had become was a blur of non-stop dying and non-stop pain. Regardless of the situation, I’d kept fighting. That at least, I was proud of.
My smiled faded slightly as the people standing at the gate didn’t even turn to acknowledge me as I approached. “Um, excuse me?” I tried, my mind starting to work again. There were no players in this game, so these were NPCs… very limited NPCs, apparently…
“Excuse me?” I tried again, moving closer. None of them were armed, and they were just grouped up, four of them, looking at each other, sometimes gesturing, and occasionally letting out a sigh, or pleasant hum.
I slowly hobbled past them and through the open gates, eyeing the NPCs warily. They made no move to stop me. “I’m going to assume I’m welcome here.” I said tentatively. I’d never played a game where the NPCs weren’t at least a little protective of their homes…
Turning away from them, I faced the village at large. It was a simple affair. Several buildings sat in a row to my right. To my left were two larger buildings. Through the glass windows, I could see lines of books in one of them, and furnaces and an anvil in the other. “Library and a smithy.” I mused aloud. “Not exactly the most desirable assets a town this size could want.”
I walked down a basic road, pounded flat by many feet walking the same path over and over, NPCs following basic programing, clearly.
At the end of the path was the largest building in the village. It was a hall, like from a viking history book, but without any skulls or animal furs. It was built from simple oak wood planks and logs, as far as I could tell. I noted that the front doors of the hall were open, and following viking tradition, I waltzed through them and made myself at home as an honored guest. The moment I crossed the threshold, I saw that there were two long tables running up the center of the room, with a large old wooden chair sitting at the top of the hall. Several more NPCs were walking about in there, but it wasn’t them that drew Chase’s eye. It was the food and drink laid out on the long tables. Loaves of bread, cooked fish, cooked chicken, simple wine, cups of water. My identification window was nearly flashing too quickly from one thing to the other for me to read.
Without hesitation I sat down on a long bench seat and began tearing into a cooked chicken. my hunger bar began to refill as I chewed and swallowed, the food tasting strangely delicious, despite its average looking appearance. I ignored the cup of water, instead grabbing the simple wine. my thirst meter started to recover as well, but I noticed that every water droplet I gained back from the wine were now colored a light red color, the same color of the wine. I had no idea what the color change really meant, if it was good or bad or other, so I ignored it and kept eating and drinking. I discovered that the moment my hunger bar hit max, my health began to recover slowly, all of the aches and pains fading the more I consumed.
It was a long time later, well after my hunger and thirst had replenished, that I noticed that an NPC was standing nearby, watching me with a pleasant smile on his face, far different from the blank and oblivious expressions of any of the other NPCs that I’d seen so far.
I swallowed hard, then nearly choke as the NPC waved at me. “Welcome, Adventurer!” The NPC said. “Welcome to Mountlock Village!”