{You have activated Create Quest. -10 Tower Points. 1693 Tower Points remaining.}

{You have turned “Unnamed Quest” into a Repeating Quest. -150 Tower Points. 1543 Tower Points remaining.}

{You have added “10 Gold” to the Reward(s). -1000 Tower Points. 543 Tower Points remaining.}

Personal harvesting tools are sure to be necessary later on, but the climbers have done well working together with the ones they have right now. The crafting classes have also each brought one of their own with them, so they aren't in desperate need of more yet. Wooden buckets are in the same boat, essential for when people are leaving the village and need to bring more than a single waterskin's worth of water with them, but while everyone's working together to form a support chain to the next floor, no one is in any danger of becoming dehydrated.

I also need to consider that if I give someone a bucket or a harvesting tool, they're likely to keep the item for themselves until they have more than they feel they need. With harvesting tools it’d take six days before they’re guaranteed to have a copy of one they already own, assuming the quest was the only way they got them, and they decided to have one of each. The buckets would be entirely subjective, with each person deciding on their own when they felt they had enough water to make it until they found another water source. What’s important right now are the upgrades to the village, and getting all of the older waves outfitted with a basic travel kit so they can secure a path to the next floor. Both of those cost gold, and are needed more immediately.

{Daily Quest: Slay 12 Monsters!

Quest Type: Optional Party-Participant

Recipient(s): All Climbers on Floor 1

Frequency: Every Day at 00:00

Description: You need to get stronger to survive. Kill 12 monsters to be rewarded for your efforts.

Monsters Slain: 0/12

Reward(s): 10 Gold

Confirm Quest?}

I considered adding notes about being able to sell monster corpses for money, but there isn't any need with climbers already instructing each other every day. Maybe later I can create some kind of instructional booklet for climbers. One of the village shops is a library after all.

Something to think about later.

All that's left for the morning is…

{You have activated Create Quest. -10 Tower Points. 533 Tower Points remaining.}

{You have added “50 Wood” to the Reward(s). -50 Tower Points. 483 Tower Points remaining.}

There, that’s the “50 wood for being outside of the village for 5 hours” quest, and combined with the repeating quests for health and mana potions, that’s all of the usual daily quests accounted for. I’ll save the rest of my points for any emergency quests, or to make another repeating quest tomorrow.

Now, before the sunrise, it's time to adjust the outside broadcast.

James spent hours reviewing the footage of the most recent First Battle, capturing each skill used by the new crafting classes, as well as the ones that didn't use a skill at all. Most of the ones that picked a non-combat skill told the others what they picked, and I can use that conversation to help show that those skills exist. It seems about half of the crafting classes picked a non-combat skill, and all but one of the crafters that died were from that group. I need to warn them that it's dangerous not to have a combat skill, but without scaring them from ever picking up a crafting skill. I'll show a few of the ones that survived without a combat skill, and how their party helped them. I should also include how each of them handled their harvesting tool as a weapon, what seemed to work, and what didn't. I don't have the knowledge of how to differentiate between the two in detail, but hopefully others will pick something up from seeing some attacks work, and other attacks fail.

James wrapped up his editing by the time the sun was beginning its rise. Having so few crafters to watch helped, I even wrapped up what I was working on before the first battle of the night. Only one thing left to do. Rise and shine, everyone! Confirm Quest. Confirm Quest. Confirm Quest.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

[The quests: “Portal March #1”, “Daily Quest: Slay 12 Monsters!”, and “Explore Floor One! Extended” have all been finalized and are now being sent to the proper recipients.]

As the three quests were sent out all at once James noticed the noise from angry or startled climbers was greatly reduced compared to before. I suppose most climbers have turned off quest notifications by now, or have gotten used to them cropping up around this time. Some of them are even being woken up by the notification noise? Should I adjust the time for all of my repeating quests to start each morning instead of at midnight, as a sort of alarm clock? The idea is ridiculous, but kind of funny, and it's not like anyone's leaving the village in the middle of the night. Maybe I really should make them into an alarm…

James entertained himself with further musings as he waited for the climbers to wake up, eat breakfast, and begin their morning assembly. A portion of the assembly was always spent ensuring the new arrivals were caught up in how to use the system, but as James had been recording these moments and adding them into the broadcast each day, the number of new arrivals actively listening was beginning to drop off. I wonder... I can't imagine it's a bad thing to be more informed about the game prior to being a part of it, but maybe there's a better way to ensure everyone learns everything they can. Maybe a daily quest that forces people to read about how the system works and open and mess with all of their menus before leaving the village for the first time? I'll ask 61-3 about that later

The exchange of information went both ways, however, as the new arrivals answered questions about the outside world.

"Society hasn't collapsed yet." One new arrival said with a dark chuckle. "I hear the government is workshopping solutions to the satellite issue, trying to get a replacement that can stay in the air below the space barrier, but the news hasn't said anything other than speculation on how they might do that. There's been fights breaking out in stores over things, people hoarding in expectation of food shortages and such but nothings been burned down yet."

A second climber joined in. "Everyone's speculating it'll get worse, before it gets better, with shipments over air and sea stalling until GPS and the like are up and running again, but a lot of countries are working together to try and solve the issue. Some have made efforts to try and destroy the atmospheric blockade, or the towers, but nothing has worked so far."

"I heard some people are trying to find a way into the towers, but no one's succeeded." A third finished. The conversation continued for a few minutes after, until it was clear no one else had any new information that hadn't already been discussed. Now that they had gone over the basics of the system, and heard about the outside world, the assembly moved on to the main order of business.

"As many of you have already mentioned, we've received a quest telling us how to get to the second floor. Specifically, a quest directing us to a new safe zone between here and the portal to the next floor. The quest further states that upon clearing that safe zone, we'll receive another quest to guide us to another one."

"None of the quests have lied to us before, so we think we can trust it. However, if the next quest doesn't appear or we don't hear from the scouting parties by the end of today, we'll need to reassess if the quests are capable of leading us into a trap."

It's nice hearing that they trust me, but I'm also relieved they're still a little suspicious. I don't have full control over the quests, and I'd hate to see them blindly follow a quest I didn't create as it leads them to their deaths.

"Our final order of business, is the news of new classes." The murmurings of the crowd increased at that, the noise coming from the older waves as attention fell to the twelve surviving crafters among them.

"We've spoken at length, to the new wave, and it appears everyone had the option to choose from five “Crafting” classes in addition to the six we're all familiar with. They are Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Alchemist, Enchanter, and Carpenter. We've seen buildings related to all of them in the Carpenter's Workshop's Village Management Menu. Each of the classes has some of the options from a specific combat class-"

James listened as they went over the standard classes each crafting class borrowed from. They're covering everything I tried to cover last night when I was updating the tutorial broadcast. If I knew they were going to go over everything in one easy to record explanation, I wouldn't have spent so much time editing! At least I still have a lot of video on how the crafters fought that I can still show while the audio from this plays.

"-so until we learn more about how the crafting classes function and how they can best survive, we ask any parties with a crafting class that don't stay near the village today to travel with a more experienced party. Those who volunteer to guide one of the new arrivals will also be tasked with helping them figure out how their recipe book works, and relaying that information back to us before tonight's meeting, where we'll discuss plans to help the crafters make the best use of their classes, in addition to the results of the scouting parties."

With all of their plans discussed, the meeting drew to a close. The four parties that agreed to scout set out for the Safe Zone where the quest's directions began, while the new arrivals that completed the tutorial with less than four members worked to organize themselves into new parties, and either pair with one of the volunteer mentor groups, or joined the group of climbers that wished to hang closer to the village throughout the day. The majority of crafters chose to join as the single crafter in a party of fellow new arrivals, but two of the crafters were taken in by veteran parties with an extra slot, and two parties were formed that had two crafters instead of one.

I overheard someone saying that the 'mentor' parties can only be those that are mostly made up of those who have been here for at least two days before, so most of yesterday's new arrivals will be on their own today. It doesn't sound like they're specifically excluded from asking for another party to help them, they merely aren't given as much focus as the newer arrivals. I hope the party from yesterday's friendly fire incident got the help they needed. I didn't see them during the assembly today or yesterday, but the leaders likely wanted to deal with it in private. I can't believe I forgot about it until now... It's getting difficult to keep track of everyone. Today, I'll focus on watching the crafting classes, and the four parties moving towards the next Safe Zone. James pulled up an observer of the 14 parties that fit his criteria, and let out a sigh. It's still too many to keep track of everything as well as I'd like, but it'll have to do.