"So how does this work?"

There's this questionable food in the inventory dropped by the bandit.

It looks like brown bread with a piece of dry sausage, and no other descriptions attached.

They'll spoil within an hour.

Is it old, or is this how long food lasts in the game?

The system only reacted to questions in the tutorial, all it did was recommend doing it before.

Why won't it answer the simplest of things anymore?

It was a mistake to end that mission so fast, it could have run in the background.

Well, the game said it's repeatable, and there was something to ask from Tank anyway.

Argh, no, Arnim, focus, there are stuff to sort out first, and food to eat.

Let's go in a logical order before there's another ambush.

The status effects pop up when you think about them, so while taking a bite, look out for that.

The zombie spawn is close, but the bandit's meal should go down before getting there.

The taste is stale, and not much better than the food you can get in the Container Park.

The immediate effect is a doubled regeneration. Is it healing speed, or endurance?

It doesn't show a comparison, or how much HP will return in a minute, and the hearts are still slow to fill back up.

So do the potions give a much higher bonus for a shorter period?

This one lasts for five minutes, which could be an entire engagement.

The potions were more instantaneous and didn't stop the bleeding.

It tells me they wore out faster, after a few seconds.

So can eating before a fight save lives?

The spawn is more than a minute's walk.

The timer still shows five though, would every bite reset it?

Let's hold out with the last one right until the enemies show up, and keep an eye on that minimap, and its counter.

Past the fence, the villager NPCs no longer appear on them.

When the number shows anything other than zero, it means a player or bandits are nearby.

If that happens, on this level, the one thing to do is to run, because even being lucky almost cost my life.

It's already dark again, so the respawns might happen soon.

It's free Exp for the character and a nice distraction after those boring ratting quests.

Compared to the villager's basements, this is the wild west, though it's east of the settlement.

No luck, they cleared the first spawn, leaving nothing on the ground.

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The next one's a hundred meters further into the forest that surrounds Origin.

The moon and the stars shine so bright it almost doesn't matter whether it's day or night.

Still, ever since the bandit ambush, it's like playing a horror game.

It's a deadly boring one within Origin and a scary one outside.

Thank God for the proximity warning, coming from an atheist.

Against sniping from more than twenty-five meters, it won't help though.

Or if there's a monster out there that hunts the players, whom the game doesn't consider sentient.

Are there creatures in this world that are intelligent and don't have a soul?

Like a vampire for example, or a dragon.

Would they show up on the counter or not?

Even with the moonlight, it's easy to stumble when one eye is always on the number.

The hundred meters to the next spawn takes five minutes, and it's cleared too.

The clock suggests, that there are a few more minutes until they respawn, so let's look for a place to hide.

Better yet, there should be a place to stash away this stuff, at least the ones the character can't use.

They'd draw the gankers' attention, and after seeing what they can do, they're worse than bandits.

A random tree or boulder in the forest should work.

The system highlights quest items and loot drops flash up for a few seconds.

Later they will fade into their surroundings and become harder to find.

Unlike players, items don't have their names floating above, so they should be easy to hide.

Who said a hidden stash must be in the village, in a chest, and obvious to everyone?

Players won't find it here if they have no reason to look.

Hide it well enough so critters won't drag them out or eat it, and they should be good. The trick is to find it later.

Is there a way to mark a place on the map? Save the coordinates?

Find the items you owned before, and no longer have on you.

Those minutes until the respawn go by without finding the answer, and six zombies appear.

Most of the gameplay goes by with pondering, damn it.

"Hey, mind returning below the ground?"

The character has my real voice, and hearing it has a calming effect.

It could give away this position, except the zombies don't care, and the soul counter remains at zero.

Let's test the new sidearm on them.

Sure, they do better against piercing weapons than the rats except if you aim for their hearts.

That's their weak spot and Wroddit recommended stabbing them there for instant kills. It works better than chopping their heads off for sure.

It's great that their perception is so low, they will wait for the perfect aim, at least at first.

They will attack after that though.

Since there are six of them, it calls for a careful action plan.

Like strike from the blind spot, and take them out before they react.

The dagger should make it possible since it's much faster than the training stick.

Equipping the shield would be a good idea too.

In case the new weapon fails it will double as a bludgeoning instrument.

They worked better against the skeletons than anything else so far.

The plan is complete. The zombies do their zombie things, and the minimap still doesn't show anyone nearby.

It's another hundred and eighty free Exp and their cheapo crystals.

The first one falls to the perfect stab from behind and turns into pixels.

[You killed a Zombie +30 Exp.]

Before the rest could react, another jab at the heart of the closest one, and he's dust too.

They might be sluggish because of the fresh spawn, but the dagger is also faster than the wooden sword.

It allows for better aim and more strikes in a row.

[You killed a Zombie +30 Exp.]

Thanks, bandits, your jump-scare ended up helping a lot.

As they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

Thank God those guys failed. Using their gear should make me better at this killing business.

Of course, there's still much to learn from what the tutorial missed.

A third one goes down before their first response, which stops on the shield. This is great so far. The counterattack misses.

No problem, it's a great opportunity to see how much it would take to kill them without a perfect aim.

The first attack that missed the vital organ went into the shoulder. The second hit cuts into his neck, and the third into the stomach.

Fighting them with the axe, it took three hits too. He turns into pixels, so a sidearm is on par with a tool used wrong. The more you know.