~Prologue~
Marissa
When Marissa got to [Lugh’s Courtyard], she made a beeline for the building all the way to the right, as she was told. The [Warrior’s Rest], as the sign before it clearly displayed, was not only eye-catching, but also easily one of the largest buildings that she had seen in the city so far. It was more akin to a massive open air market with stalls and tents that was covered with a pavilion.
Judging by the abundance of icons on her minimap, it seemed that this was the place to find all of the various [Path] and [Dedication] trainers. She was sure yet why exactly there was an [Arrow] trainer in addition to the [Seeker] and [Keeper] trainers, but she was more than happy to find out.
Following her current quest, which was just called [Dedication], led her to [Deadeye Cillian], the [Arrow] trainer. She found the NPC standing outside a pretty impressive display of plants. It looked as though he was the proprietor of a plant nursery, and with no players currently engaged with him, it looked like his idle animations had him working with the plants.
When she approached to talk to Cillian and hit the interact button, a prompt came up with a few ‘dialogue’ choices. The first was just [Hello.], and the second was [I was sent to find you by Commander Frigg] - which was her quest option.
The grayed out options were what intrigued Marissa the most though. [Train [Arrow] Skills] was the expected option, though it wasn’t selectable for her right now. [Enhance [Arrow] Skills] and [Alter [Arrow] Skills], however, were far more intriguing. Marissa desperately wanted to know how those two options functioned.
And finally, [Adopt the [Path] of the [Arrow].] was also grayed out. But displayed next to that were two requirements; [Minimum Level : 30], and [Trinity : Warrior].
Marissa grinned. It may have some requirements, but any ability to swap classes without having to make a new character was great. She couldn’t tell if there was a limit to how many Paths you could pick up on one character, but it did seem to be limited to only picking up other Paths in your Trinity role. So Hibiscus would presumably be locked to Warrior Paths, but that was fine.
Any ability to swap to play a new class for a while would be absolutely huge at endgame to stop players from getting too exhausted by always playing the same class. That was good.
Marissa clicked through her quest options, just skimming the quest text. She hadn’t paid much mind to the story so far, so she felt like it wasn’t worth it to start now.
“Yup…Mhm…just give me - Thank you.” She muttered to no one as Cillian finally gave her directions to the two Dedication trainers. [Grove Keeper Reit] and [Perfection Seeker Una] were both nearby and were highlighted on her map.
First things first, though - before leaving, Marissa clicked on Cillian again to check out the Enhance and Alter Skills options.
Enhancing skills seemed to do exactly what it sounded like. She didn’t have any of the currency to enhance any of her skills yet, but they appeared to be strict numerical enhancements. Each skill could be enhanced 5 times, apparently, before topping out. And she couldn’t see any limiting factor on this page that would prevent someone from enhancing all of their skills to the max eventually.
The page also displayed a bunch of [Arrow] skills she hadn’t learned yet, along with their required levels. Evidently, she would continue to learn [Arrow] skills all the way through to level 90, so that explained why the [Arrow] trainer was separate from the two [Dedication] trainers, if she would need to come back here regularly.
The Alter Skills menu was far, far more interesting. She had expected something more along the lines of what she had seen in other MMOs, where you could slot in extra effects or slightly alter skills a little bit to better serve your desired playstyle. But what she saw instead felt almost excessive.
This page only displayed the skills she already had, so Marissa clicked on [Venom Fang], the first ‘real’ skill she had received. And the following screen displayed a myriad of selection boxes and sliders. The [Confirm] button was grayed out because she didn’t have any of the currency to Alter skills yet, either, but the page itself still got her excitement going.
Altogether, the screen was basically an alchemical concoction of what made up [Venom Fang] as a skill. There was a checkbox filled next to [Damage Over Time], with sliders denoting the [Duration] of the DoT as well as the [Might], and even the cooldown. Moving one of the sliders moved the others as well, presumably to keep the skill’s output balanced. Marissa could alter the damage to be higher, which extended the [Duration] of the DoT and made its cooldown longer. The opposite was also true.
But what intrigued her more was the other options. She could turn the [Damage Over Time] selection off, turning the skill into a simple damage skill, giving it a much shorter cooldown but also less damage. But she could also add in a [Slow] component, a [Dazed] component, [Vulnerability], [Weakness], [Confusion], and more.
Whatever she chose to add also altered the slider portions of the skill as well. She could even add multiple, but that quickly spiraled out of control. She laughed when a version with [Slow], [Vulnerability], and [Confusion], plus a higher [Damage Over Time] gave the skill a nearly 10 minute cooldown.
It was fascinating to look at, and even more so for the implications of being able to do something like that. And the possibilities of what this system could do at high levels with a multitude of abilities available could turn into.
Of course, balance would be a concern, and no doubt there would be some kind of meta eventually, but the possibilities were insane. She laughed in spite of it all. PvE would be crazy enough, but whatever PvP was allowed would be a nightmare.
Eventually, Marissa clicked out of the menu and went to go decide on her Dedication.
[Grove Keeper Reit], to begin with, was also within Cillian’s little nursery. Reit, however, had a few other players around him already and wasn’t doing any sort of idle animation other than conversing with the players.
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
When Marissa spoke with him she clicked through the dialogue until the game showed her a pop up video of what some high level [Keeper] gameplay looked like. It seemed like the [Dedication] would be a mix of archery with more classical druidic style magic. The example casted some kind of spell that trapped the target in vines before peppering them with arrows, several of which glowed with different colors.
One of the arrows popped on contact to surround the target in more vines, right as the first effect ended. The enemy started moving toward the example [Seeker], but appeared unable to attack. Then the example summoned a bear spirit to attack and distract the target while they called down a lightning bolt, then ended the fight with a final arrow shot that exploded in a huge briar of thorns on contact.
When the short video ended, another pop up appeared.
[Dedicate yourself to the Path of the Keeper?]
[Yes] [No]
[Note : Dedication can be swapped while in any [Haven].]
Marissa grinned again. [Haven] was the term for any safe zone in the game, which meant she could presumably swap between [Keeper] and [Seeker] basically at will. Knowing that, she simply clicked [Yes] to move on.
The [Path] symbol that had been adorning her status read out on the bottom of the screen changed from the [Arrow] symbol to the more embellished [Keeper] symbol. The basic design was unchanged, but a nature theme overtook the whole thing, making the relatively simple arrowhead shape appear covered in vines and leaves.
And Marissa’s grin widened further when her quest had her still walk over to talk to [Perfection Seeker Una], even after picking [Keeper] for now. She quickly clicked through the dialogue with Una to see the same pop up again, this time just referring to [Seeker].
She clicked [Yes] once more, and her status bars changed again. The [Arrow] symbol lost the nature theme, and instead depicted three smaller [Arrow] symbols in a pyramid, with all three surrounded by a larger, slightly more ornate, arrowhead design.
This time, with the quest now leading her back toward the [Artisan’s Quarter], she took a moment to look over the new skills that [Seeker] had added to her bars.
The most eye-catching thing was that her right-click ability had changed. She noticed it with [Keeper] too, and that one had been a different icon from the [Seeker] option she had now. When she hovered over it, the skill was labeled as a [Dedication Signature Skill], so it seemed likely to her that right click skills were meant to be the backbone to each [Dedication]’s playstyle. Or at least central to it.
For [Seeker], the skill was named [Master’s Shot]. It was still essentially a charged shot in the same vein as [Full Draw], but it had an additional effect. While charging [Master’s Shot], glowing weakpoints would apparently appear on enemies, and if she aimed and hit them it would do a chunk of bonus damage - changing the max 600 [Might] to 800 [Might]
Marissa wasn’t usually a first- or third-person shooter kind of gal, but she dabbled. Her aim wasn’t perfect but it was more than good enough to to hit glowing weakpoints on AI enemies, for sure. She wasn’t sure about using [Seeker] if they ever got into PvP though.
The two other skills that were added to her bars were also strong additions to her current rotation.
[Critical Eye] was a buff with a 10 second duration and a 60 second cooldown that boosted her critical hit chance. It also boosted the bonus damage from [Master’s Shot] by 400%. So it clearly was designed to be used in tandem with it, because that damage boost would make [Master’s Shot] her highest damage attack by far at essentially 4000 [Might] if she landed the shot precisely.
Second was [Snipe]. The skill said it was channeled and it was canceled by movement. But without testing it, what it seemed to indicate was that Hibiscus would take a knee and take steady aim, adding both range and 25% damage to her attacks as long as she didn’t move.
Marissa liked that. The [Seeker] abilities all rewarded skill and enemy knowledge - knowing when to use [Snipe] to get the most out of it, and being able to reliably hit the [Master’s Shot] weakspots would be key to getting the most out of the class.
Marissa was back into the [Artisan’s Quarter] in fairly short order, following the quest markers around to grab her free equipment. Along the way, she noticed that there was now a small [Swap] button by her [Dedication] icon that allowed her to swap between [Seeker] and [Keeper] with just a click.
She decided to stick with [Seeker] for now, as constantly swapping while also trying to learn how to play a ‘new’ class could get her mixed up. It would be better to focus on learning [Seeker] for now, and then start to splice in [Keeper] when she started to get bored.
Thankfully, when she got to the armor shop, she learned a few more useful things. Both of her [Dedications] shared gear types, which was great, but that wouldn’t always be the case. The example the armor vendor gave was the [Mage] Path, wherein [Invoker] was a cloth wearing magic slinger, while its other [Dedication], [Rune], was a medium armor wearing melee combatant.
For now, being able to use the same gear on both [Dedications] gave her a convenient boost. And your character’s level was [Path] based, not [Dedication] based, so they would even both level up together. That could be something of a double-edged sword.
While she was confident in using the learning tools available to her when deciding to swap classes later, she was just as positive that she would see people at the endgame swapping [Dedications] and having no idea how to play their character. It was common enough in other similar games.
Once she was finished in the armor shop, she moved onto the blacksmith. While the armorer wasn’t particularly interesting because basic armors didn’t have anything other than stat boosts included, weapons were far more interesting.
Weapons were broken down by [Archetype], into [Family], and then into [Type], and sometimes [Class]. For example, Hibiscus’ current weapon was a [Ranged], [Bow], [Shortbow]. It seemed that the [Archetypes] were broken down into a few big categories - [Melee], [Ranged], [Magical], and [Other]. Beyond that, there were enough breakdowns that Marissa decided to just focus on what was available to her through the quest.
[Seeker] and [Keeper] both only used weapons that were under the [Ranged] section. That gave her [Family] options of [Bow] and [Crossbow], which then broke down further into [Short Bow], [Long Bow], [War Bow], [Hand Crossbow], [Crossbow], and [Arbalest].
All things considered, she had enough options, and each seemed to play pretty differently as each weapon [Type] had a completely different basic attack. The [Short Bow] had a quicker basic attack that allowed Hibiscus to move while shooting, while the [Arbalest], for example, looked like a huge crossbow that would severely limit movement in trade for higher damage.
Marissa couldn’t help but smile; once again - even with only six options and her handful of skills - she could see how different choices could give her wildly different builds.
For now, she settled with a classic - the [Long Bow]. It’s basic attack string was slower than the [Short Bow], but she was able to move slowly while shooting it, unlike with the larger [War Bow]. It was a good balance and felt like the natural place to start.
With her equipment upgraded and a new quest in her journal - which asked her to go meet with a [General Finn] - Marissa hit the [Sprint] button and pushed Hibiscus back out into the city.