Locke found himself standing in the streets of a medieval style town with plenty of people going about their business. The buildings were either made of cobblestone, chiseled stone, or wood with a few merchant stalls here and there. Looking ahead he could make out a large open area with a stone fountain in the center. That area seemed to be more densely populated so one could assume it's the central hub of this town. As Locke started moving towards the central hub he was interrupted by a voice.

“Hey listen!” A somewhat high pitched voice shouted.

Locke looked around until his eyes fell upon a small round yellow light flying above his head that had two bug like wings. Due to the light, there was no way for him to tell if this entity had a body the wings connected to. Also when he heard the voice his mood was somewhat irritated for some reason but decided to suppress it for now.

“Who or what might you be?” Locke inquired.

“I am the tutorial fairy assigned to you for your stay here, my name is Frey. My functions are limited to basic answers to your questions as well as a tour of the facilities located in the starting area.”

“Alright sounds good, give me one second. Status window.”

[https://i.imgur.com/UcsPcE8.png]

Viewing the status window and browsing through the menus in these types of games typically gave a good amount of information. Locke decided to start here to see if he had any initial questions.

“Frey can you give me a summary of the different attributes and their effects?”

Between looking through the system prompts and getting some answers from Frey, Locke had a brief understanding of what the attribute points did. Also from the looks of things you start with 10 free stat points to allocate to any attribute you wished. This should help players specialize their characters early on. By default, a player will receive 5 more points when their character levels up which is done by obtaining enough experience.

Strength (STR) – Increases melee damage as well as the damage of certain ranged weapons, Inventory carry weight, can move or carry heavier objects.

Vitality (VIT) – Increases maximum HP by 10 per vitality attribute. Increases resistance to poisons and disease.

Agility (AGI) – This determines your avatar's movement speed and reflexes.

Endurance (END) - Reduces the amount of Stamina consumed by all actions, Increases defense against physical and magic attacks.

Perception (PER) – Increasing this attribute will heighten your senses.

Intelligence (INT) - Increases maximum MP by 10 per intelligence attribute. Ability to control mana is increased per point allocated.

Wisdom (WIS) – Increases MP regeneration by .1 every second per wisdom attribute. Increases resistance to mind based attacks, curses, and fears.

Charisma (CHA) – This attribute will determine how NPC's react to your avatar during conversation. This does not affect other players.

Some of the attributes don't specifically reference exactly what one attribute point does. I don't know how fast I would be with 100 agility or how much damage my punch would cause with 100 strength. Are we supposed to figure this out on our own? Oh well, no use dwelling on it yet.

Once Frey was done answering questions it flew forward turned around and yelled. “Should we get going? There are plenty of opportunities in the tutorial to take advantage of.”

Locke followed along deciding to check out the sights so to speak. There was one key interest he had in mind since starting this game and he hoped the tutorial would provide some insight on how the system worked.

The Depths of Magic hyped everyone up that its magic system will be one of a kind. Being a mage in previous games was very basic at its core. You learned the spell from a skill book or trainer and cast said spell for a specific mana cost. When that spell was used the effect caused would be exactly how it was designed and could not be altered. Sure some spells could be used in interesting ways to get different desired effects but that was all.

Most systems for The Depths of Magic were well explained in news articles and development blogs provided by the company. The magic system was not one of them. The only explanation offered was that no other game will be able to mimic how magic synergizes with the Second Brain anytime soon, and to look forward to it.

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Locke was always interested in trying a mage focused class or maybe even a hybrid that used both melee and magic. The general problem for him was the magic systems that games had in place were too simple and annoying. This is why he always ended up playing melee classes. He also was never very fond of the bow/ranger style classes. There was always a high level of skill required when using a melee weapon compared to magic in previous VRMMO games at least in Locke's eyes. Most would argue differently but he never agreed. Usually, mages would learn their spells from a skill book or trainer with a single button as long as their skills or attributes were high enough. Then they could do whatever they wanted with that magic, there was no training at all it just worked. How hard was it to chant fireball and explode an entire area right after they learned the spell? Heck, that same spell that mage learned in a few seconds could kill a swordsman who has been honing his skills for years in a single shot.

He noticed his status window currently displayed him as a human with no class. This most likely meant there will be a way in the future to obtain a class that will specialize his character to be more magic focused if he so chose. He was thankful that the system didn't force him to choose a class before he had a chance to test out how magic worked.

“This is the Merchant District where you can purchase supplies needed for the dungeon tutorial or artisan professions. This includes but is not limited to food, weapons, crafting materials, and camping supplies. Over here is Artisan Quarter where you learn and train crafting & non crafting professions.”

“Can you give me a brief explanation on professions? What is a non crafting profession?” Locke asked.

“Crafting professions deal with the creation of adventuring equipment like weapons and armor. Non crafting professions are focused on topics like construction and agriculture.

“So it's like that....alright please continue the tour.”

Professions dedicated to constructing buildings and farming, would people actually be into something like this? Who am I kidding, of course, there would. It could be people trying something new or maybe its just their hobby that they can explore without actually dealing with the real life expenses and repercussions for doing so.

After a few more destinations Locke decided to ask Frey about the large grey portal in the distance that seemed to have quite a lot of people loitering around.

“Oh, that is the dungeon tutorial and the next step in your progression before you enter the real game. The tutorial we are currently residing in is designed to help the players get used to the systems pertaining to what your character can accomplish while playing the game. The dungeon tutorial's purpose is to highlight one of the game's main features, combat! Just like in other VRMMO games, you can enter either solo or with a party of up to five people to fight monsters. Doing so would allow the player to acquire experience to level up, materials, equipment, or to complete a specific quest. Keep in mind that most dungeons end up being monster subjugation, but that does not apply to all of them.”

“Alternatively if you don't want to focus on combat there is an artisan tutorial that will test players in its own unique way. To get there you can go down the first street on the right after entering the Artisan Quarter from the central hub.”

After that explanation, the tour continued. During which time Locke figured out a way to tell the difference between a player and an NPC. The player's name above their head would be displayed in blue text while the NPC was in green. If you are unsure what an NPC is it just means a non playable character in this case an AI created by humans.

The questions and answers between Locke and Frey continued for a while until they reached the destination he was most interested in.

“This is the Magic Training Grounds and Training Center. You can test your basic magic in the Training Grounds or get personal training from an instructor inside the Training Center.

Locke stood at the entrance to the Training Grounds to observe the area. The courtyard was an extremely wide open space surrounded by four foot walls, there were wooden training dummies littered about in a disorderly fashion. The ground was solid stone with no foliage in sight. He could see a large number of players shooting small balls of fire peppering the dummies. They didn't go up in flames or anything like that but there was definitely some visible damage being done to them. After a while of observation, he noticed some of the more worn down training dummies appeared to have mended themselves of any damage taken and looked practically new.

Locke decided to open up his Player Menus and looked at what he had for spells. There was nothing showing in the list.

“Hey Frey, how do I go about learning that fire spell the others seem to be casting over there,” Locke said while pointing towards the other players, if you listened closely there was a hint of excitement in his voice.

“There are a few NPC's designated as trainers in this area that will teach you the spell.”

Locke entered the training grounds to find a trainer as instructed but was getting increasingly worried about the state of the magic system. The first thing he noticed was everyone using the exact same spell which was obviously firebolt. The second problem was the constant yelling of “firebolt” “firebolt” “firebolt” from the players around him.

He let out a sigh. “I thought they said the magic system was unique, this looks to be the same as other games.” Locke voiced his thoughts aloud while waiting for Frey to hopefully correct him. It didn't speak a word.