I will eventually do tables...but right now I just don’t have the time to figure out the huge complicated one. I’ll experiment with the how-to guide later and replace all the previous tables when I’m comfortable.
Enjoy!
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[Your item: Icetusk Leggings has sold for 1 gold and 23 silver!]
Ian looked at the prompt in surprise and put down his cup of ale.
After Ian and Marcus had returned to town, they immediately went to a stone structure that had this air of finality to it, as if would exist for all time. Broad columns of stone decorated the front of the building, dividing the fairly busy foot traffic that the players and locals provided like rocks breaking waves. This place was known as The Exchange.
There was even stone carving decorating the walls and columns, depicting fierce battles between the Brinane warriors and the various surrounding species that constantly threatened their existence - naga, Ice Demons, the Trolgol tribes… there were even carvings of Ice Revenants and undead, though no one around here knew why they were included as they were myths most often included in bedtime stories.
Inside, players could find an exchange desk and place any of their items on a global selling platform that operated through the system. They could then choose variable bid and buyout amounts, as well as the time frame for which the item would be listed - all in an effort to get the highest price for their exchanged item.
What bewildered him momentarily was that it had reached his reserve price so fast. He’d chosen to have the item listed for 12 hours with a starting bid of 75 silver. It was a suitable price in his mind and felt like a great sum of wealth. However, he also listed a hidden buyout option where, if the price was reached in the bidding, the first person to choose the buyout option could just go ahead and reserve the item.
It had only been an hour since he placed the item on the Exchange, though if he thought about it with his rusty mind, it would make sense. There were over a billion players at the moment. If one assumed that there were a 100 million players browsing the Exchange at any given moment, which is less than 10% of the total population in the game, then it stands to reason that there were probably many within that number who found that item useful. Guilds, for instance, could buy it in order to equip newly leveling characters.
In any case, it didn’t really matter to him who bought it. Ian was now feeling pretty rich with his 1 gold and 32 silver after having sold everything in his bag besides the green dagger.
Turning to Marcus who was busily chowing down on a roasted pheasant, he slapped one of the silver coins on the table and motioned to Marcus while flagging down the waitress. She was a comely little girl and judging by how the Innkeeper and his wife kept an eye on her at all times, you could tell that she was their daughter. Ian smiled at the protective gazes while standing up and leaving.
“Where are we off to, Anarch?” the large templar questioned while licking the grease off of his fingers. The sound was obnoxious and Ian frowned as he shot a look at the man.
“We’re heading to the mail array over by the fountain. I received notification that those mail leggings sold.”
Marcus roughly brushed his hands against the furs on his body and mused, “It’s always fascinated me that your kind can receive “prompts,” or whatever you call it, straight into your mind.”
Ian chuckled. “Your people are more intuitive by nature, right?”
The templar nodded. “That’s right. I can look at a person and tell what level they are, or what class they chose. Names aren’t included in that usually unless the person has an extreme level of either infamy or renown.”
“Makes sense.” Ian’s eyes swept over the fountain as they walked into the right plaza.
The temperature was palpably warmer here than the streets they’d just traversed. In the center of the fountain was a stone statue of a huge warrior that was wielding an axe and shield, battling against a vicious looking Trolgol - a strange hybrid creature of a troll species and some water humanoid race known as the Mogol with muscular arms and fins. The Brinane was wearing full plate on top of warm furs that prevented the encroaching chill of the icy water that the Trolgol thrived in. The creature also had armor and a tri-pronged spear in the shape of a triangle.
The waters below the display were produced via a hot spring that that bubbled up from the ground below. As such, the entire area was about 10 degrees warmer than other areas in the coastal town and steam continuously billowed up. Lots of players and locals lingered here for that reason, preferring the warmth to the ever-present biting chill of the North.
Ian walked over to a small platform where a slanted tablet lay, runes inscribed all over its surface with arcane power flowing through the diagrams. Being so close to the magic, he felt an innate calling in his high elf blood reaching out to the energy coursing through the structure. It was a strange feeling that passed before it really even had the chance to affect him.
Reaching out, he held up his hand to the plate that looked like an arcane lectern and called forth his character sheet in his mind.
[Verifying identity...complete.]
[You have one message containing: 1g 23s from The Exchange. Do you wish to retrieve it?]
Ian pressed the holographic accept button and the money automatically transferred to his bag. He was so thankful that it transferred through space rather than him having to take out the gold and put it in his bag. If he had to do that, he may as well be asking to be robbed.
Feeling a weight come floating off his chest, he looked around suspiciously for any hooded women nearby. He didn’t want a repeat of what happened before. If she took him for all he was worth again, he’d be handicapped when he went out to grind. Again. What was her deal with him anyway? Did he look at her the wrong way or something?
Shaking his head, he turned to the templar next to him who was curiously surveilling the surroundings. He said, “Alright, let’s go get those professions now. And some better gear... and some bags.” Receiving a grunt in reply, he plodded off back towards the trade section of town.
***
“Ah, that feels so much better to look at than a blank profession section.” Ian looked down at the character sheet in front of him with a contented smile.
Name: Anarch
Race: High Elf
Class: Novice
Level: 3
HP: 120 MP: 170
Strength: 10
Agility: 10
Vitality: 12
Intelligence: 16 + 1
Wisdom: 12
Spell Hit: 86.75% (against lvl 3 mobs)
Spell Power: 17
Crit Chance: 5.17%
Unspent Skill Points: 3
Active:
Racial: Innervate
Blessing of Intelligence (1/20)
Healing Light (1/20)
Passive:
Dagger Proficiency (1/20)
Sword Proficiency (1/20)
Stave Proficiency (1/20)
Primary:
Jewelcrafting (1/200)
Tailoring (1/200)
Secondary:
Enchanting (1/200)
Runecrafting (1/200)
Tertiary:
Mining (1/200)
Skinning (1/200)
Quaternary:
None
General Professions:
Lockpicking (1/200)
Cooking (1/200)
Fishing (1/200)
Triage (1/200)
Literacy (1/200)
His reasoning for the order of his professions was carefully planned out. In Turen, the primary two professions receive a 25% bonus to leveling speed. After that, each subsequent tier results in a -10% decrease to this bonus. Following this schedule, secondary would yield 15%, tertiary would yield 5%, and quaternary would yield -5%, etc.
Turen was viewed with a “long term” mindset by the people and the company, so the developers and the AI chose to not place a limit on the number of professions a player could have. There had already been several other VR games that did this, thus everyone had come to expect it. However, they instituted the graduated experience gain in order to encourage a sense of specialization into the market place.
With enough time, a player could theoretically max out all of the professions, sure, but those last few would take years, because leveling a profession is not as easy as it appears. At higher levels, like the 180-200 range, a player may not have a recipe or design schematics with which to level it, so they basically can’t do anything further until they either find an appropriate recipe on the Exchange or procure one through dungeons and raids.
An interesting caveat to this rule was found out 5 years from now by a pair of real life friends who were discussing crafting outside the game.
Previously, it’d been proven that players could only craft a recipe or design that they’d seen before. In order to skirt the high prices of designs, people had tried all kinds of methods in order to share or sell what they knew. However, every time they tried to go around the system in-game, they failed. It wasn’t until these two friends discussed the crafting design outside of the game, down to the letter, and tried to create it from scratch when they logged back in that something unique happened: recipe discovery.
The second player had managed to successfully craft the item from scratch, earning a +1 to his profession level in the process. Perhaps other guilds had already known about this possibility and just kept themselves, or maybe it was a newer feature that the game instituted - no one knew for sure. What it did lead to was an era of experimentation and design and a decreased reliance on the system-assist crafting function.
It was later determined that a recipe was only discoverable if a) the player was in the right profession level range for the item and b) he or she had had no prior interaction in the game that discussed the process of creation. It was a strange loophole that maneuvered players into spending more of their time outside the game to memorize recipes and designs so that they could receive the bonus profession level points.
Clever marketing strategy? Was it the game AI who tried to make them do that, or was it the developers? No one would fess up to it, but players had their suspicions which they rarely ever tried to follow up on.
General Professions were altogether different from the others.. They did not receive this graduated experience gain and instead leveled at 100% of what the devs considered “normal” profession speed, nor did they have recipe discovery. This enabled any and all players to pick these up and pursue at their leisure. In fact, many players who came to the game were more interested in the fishing and cooking aspects than anything else, sometimes opening stalls or restaurants to sell what they produced.
For Ian, he’d chosen the order listed for the express reason that crafting professions were the hardest to level by far. Tailoring and Jewelcrafting would benefit him the most in the long run followed by Runecrafting and Enchanting, so he naturally chose those four to have the highest bonus tier possible.
As for the tertiary section’s gathering skills, they directly supported his main crafting professions. Tailoring actually used a fair bit of materials from animals and creatures - the rest, the cloth in other words, had to be created or found on humanoid mobs. Only these types would drop cloth and different level mob tiers would drop different quality cloth. In fact, this was the rule for all gathering professions.
Each zone and creature had what is referred to as a drop table, a list of possible things that could spawn or drop when a mob is killed. For example, the Iceblood Vine that he ran into during his first grinding session was a 1-10 area herb. It could appear in higher level areas, but really it was mainly found in starting zones that were icy and had winter climates. That boar, if skinned, would give Light Tundra Leather, or Light Tundra Leather Scraps if he was unlucky.
When he leveled up to the 11-20 area and could finally grind there, he would encounter a whole new different drop table of mobs and gatherables.
The plan was to gather and mine whatever he came across to go ahead and be working up his professions alongside his level. It wasn’t the fastest method to gain levels of course, but it was the most efficient, and Ian was all about efficiency. He’d rebuilt the Reformed Anarchist Movement from the ground up on this principle, and it was likely the only reason they’d been able to grow to be such a large thorn in the US government’s side.
While Marcus and Ian walked down the road back to their previous hunting ground, the latter pulled up the new gear that was sitting in his inventory just waiting to be equipped.
Red’s Skinning Dagger
4 - 7 damage
Requires level 3
Vest of the Budding Mage
15 Armor
+2 Vitality
+2 Intelligence
Requires level 5
Leggings of the Wand Jockey
14 Armor
+1 Vitality
+3 Intelligence
Requires level 5
Bracers of Fizzle Power
8 Armor
+3 Intelligence
Requires level 7
Simple Jack’s Cape
6 Armor
+2 Vitality
+4 Intelligence
Requires level 9
Gloves of the Wannabe
This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.
12 Armor
+4 Vitality
+3 Intelligence
Requires level 9
These were the cheapest, best pieces of gear he could find - besides, of course, the white dagger. His staff was than-, er, unfortunately busted. Each went for around 10 silver because they’re so low level. The only thing that made him crack up was the names of the pieces. It wasn’t that different from when he’d played before, but were the names really that absurd last time? He couldn’t wear them yet, but at least he could stay out and grind until level 10.
He’d also picked up 4 bags that had 12 slots each, but those were pretty cheap at this point. The game had already been out for a year and a half - it’s not like those were anywhere near being the best quality bags out there. Judging by the creator credits on them, the same tailor had made all four of the ones that he bought. He or she was probably trying to use the bags as the best way to both level up their Tailoring and also make a bit of coin while they’re at it.
In no time at all, the pair reached the edge of the clearing where he’d killed Icetusk. Ian suddenly thought of something and turned to the barbarian templar beside him. “Marcus, I forgot to tell you something kind of important…”
Marcus scrunched up his face. “Is it that you’re being hunted?”
Ian was alarmed. He immediately thought through it and started scanning his surroundings before turning back to Marcus. “How did you know?”
Well…” The templar scratched his beard after crossing his arms. “We’ve had this persistent little shadow following us. They never get close enough for me to identify the level or gender though. Just the one following.”
“Shit.” Ian said simply while a shiver ran down his spine. If the agents found him now, his chances of surviving for long would be practically nil once they started to employ their guild resources. He brought his voice low with a grimace, “Can you tell where they are now?” The templar nodded and then turned to cut his eyes towards the road behind him nonchalantly.
Ian immediately positioned his body to face that direction and cupped his hands as he shouted with a slight french accent, “I’m not sure whether it’s just a misunderstanding that you’re following us, but is there something we can help you with?”
A few moments passed before a ripple of shadows unfolded by a large coniferous tree near the road. Trace wisps of smoke and indistinct shadow drifted away until it revealed a lithe figure that stared with piercing light brown eyes. The mouth was covered by a scarf below and masked the majority of the face. All of the figure’s garb was designed around being nondescript and casual, but he could tell by the animation of leaving stealth that the person was at least level 50 and had spent a great deal of skill points towards stealth.
Ian sucked in a breath of cold air once he saw the hair peeking out from under the hood. It was her! It had to be!
She walked forward cautiously until she was about 20 feet away from the pair, all the while scrutinizing Ian’s face with this analyzing gaze, like she was trying to extract some secret. The closer she got, the crueler her eyes became, but never lost their inquisitive light.
Seeing this, Ian felt a little better. Such an expression would never appear on agents familiar with his picture.
A faint, melodic voice came out through her mask, “Are you Ian Czolgosz?”
Ian squinted his eyes suspiciously and then tilted his head. “That anarchist guy from America?” He continued to use his accent, fervently hoping that she would give up.
“You must be,” she sneered, her honeyed voice bottoming out into one filled with venom. “I’ve been tailing you long enough to hear how you speak. What normal player would bother to alter their voice only when they get approached by someone following them? In any case, I don’t believe that there’s someone who looks exactly like the World’s #1 Most Wanted to such an extent.”
Ian released the tension from his shoulders and wiped the look of confusion from his face. This fucked up his plans so much. He sighed, “In the flesh. What can I do for you?”
Her eyes flashed with hatred as she flung herself at him. “Bastard, you can die!”
Ian backpedaled, but the hairs on his neck instantly rose when she disappeared in a puff of shadow. In an instant, she used the rogue ability Shadow Teleport to appear behind him, whipping up the snowdrift into a white vortex that flung it everywhere like a . Slowing himself, he tried to fling himself forward to avoid the backstab. Time seemingly slowed down as his head turned to the side, watching the blade approach his spine.
A cold harrumph came from the side. “I think that’s enough of that.”
Marcus finished casting his spell Aegis and a bubble of pure divine energy appeared around Ian’s body, blocking the dark blade that had almost reached its target. The templar then dropped his shield in front of his body and blurred, launching a Shield Charge point blank.
All at once, Ian turned around and watched the two fly across the snow, leaving a trough five feet wide until they arrived at a nearby tree.
A dull thud rang out and the girl slumped to the ground with a pain-filled moan.
He couldn’t see the prompts since he hadn’t actually gotten into contact with her yet, but Ian could tell that she’d be stunned.
Striding over, he patted Marcus shoulder and then heaving a breath to calm his beating heart. That was the third time today that he almost died. Seeing she was coming out of her daze, he couldn’t help but say, “Why the hell do you want to kill me anyway? I have no idea who you are!”
“The name’s Anna. Anna Waters.” She grit her teeth as she put a hand on the trunk of the tree, pushing her body up into a half kneeling position. “I’m the daughter of the policeman you murdered a year ago at that Electric Plant in Pennsylvania!”
A flood of memories came back to Ian’s mind as he stared into those raging eyes. The Electric Plant was one of the first acts of what the government classed as domestic terrorism. His newly formed group had targeted that town because it didn’t have any vital services linked to the grid there like a hospital. The town was supposed to be an easy public demonstration to get people’s attention, because who doesn’t get pissed and want to know why the power’s gone off?
The problem was that it went wrong from the get-go. A policeman had followed them because he’d seen some of their duffel bags when they were loading up earlier that day at a cheap motel. Deciding to play it safe, he’d followed and inevitably called in backup when he saw what Ian and his cohorts were doing. After Ian had made sure that the plant went down, they ran for it, finally getting shot at by the police as the distance widened.
It was only by using Ian’s contingency plan that they were able to escape. Later on, he’d heard that an officer had been gunned down, but it was impossible that they had done it. The news had been hard on him. They’d never been involved with the death of another human before that day.
He shook his head at the furious girl and kneeled down to look at her on the same eye level. “The first time I killed an officer of the law was February 16th, 2098, after they shot and killed my best friend. The Pennsylvania demonstration happened in November of ‘97. Hell, we didn’t even have guns that day!”
“Liar!” she screamed, hot tears in her eyes. She’d ripped off the scarf at this point to get a deep breath, revealing a perfect pair of lips that tragically uttered, “They showed us footage of you turning around with a gun in your hands!”
“That was a stun gun!” Ian spoke coldly, an icy feeling seeping into his heart. “If it looked like a real gun, then I can only say that they doctored the video, because we did not have real guns on us that day.”
“Liar!”
“Listen!” Ian’s eyes drilled into her. “I’m sorry that your father died. I really am. But I was not the one that did it.”
That statement made her rage all the more and Marcus had to step in, threateningly baring his sword halfway out the scabbard. In the end, all she could do was weep and stab at the ground with her dagger.
After watching her vent, Ian stood up and turned away, rubbing his hands together to create warmth. “I asked around after that incident. You want to know what the cops said? That it was friendly fire, but the government told them to hide that detail in the report. It’s a lot cleaner to pin the blame on a budding
,” Ian spat out the word, “than be truthful. It’s embarrassing to their public image, after all.”
He looked back at the kneeling girl. “I don’t why your father had to die that day, but I want you to know I’ve always admired him. Everything about him and his life declared that he was good man, heads and shoulders above the rest. That kind of thing is so rare in public service these days... Anna.”
At the sound of her name, she looked up with puffy red eyes. They were like swirling pools of hatred framed by a surreal beauty. Her cheekbones, her perfectly proportioned eyebrows, even the way her chin was shaped was fascinating. Had he ever seen such an angelic face before? The only imperfection was the grief that warred against the desire for retribution.
With as much sincerity as he could muster, he looked back into that overwhelming sadness and denied it the closure it wanted. “I did not kill your father.”
With one last sob, Anna dropped her head downward. The tears on her cheeks detached and fell to the snow below. With one last groan of frustration, she suddenly dissolved into ash, the subtle breeze that flowed between the evergreens surrounding them picking up the particles and scattering them in the air.
Marcus leapt forward with wary eyes. “Shit, she has Vanish!”
Ian waved a hand. “Let her go. She needs time to process the information I gave her today, anyway. After that... I doubt she’ll be a threat to us anymore.”
The templar sheathed his readied sword but kept his tower shield out, poised to launch another Shield Charge should she try to get the drop on them again. Meanwhile, the breeze had finished picking up all of the ash it could. A few strands even lazily landed in Marcus’ wild black beard.
Ian straightened his robe, which was getting a rather uncomfortable chilly draft from the disturbed air flowing by his feet, and started plodding through the accumulating snow towards their boar paradise retreat.
“Let’s go. I want to get to level 5 before we head back for the night.”
Grunting, the templar turned and followed along behind the high elf novice.
***
In a town across the world, five portals opened up simultaneously right in the middle of the town square. With a flashing view of a tunnel made of light, five figures materialized at the same time.
Agent Anton Gray swept his eyes back and forth over the fantasy world and people set before him, a hint of amusement in his eyes. Turning to his squad, he called out to them. “Roger, Mikhail, Candice, Eliza...you all good?”
He got back several nods whereas Eliza tousled her hair, throwing a flirtatious look back at him. A small smile cracked the edges of his lips. He’d had to pull some strings to get this particular field agent to come to his team. Practically every agent in the country wanted in on this deal. Hunt the world’s #1 terrorist while playing a video game? Yes, please.
He check his own person and noted the beginner warrior gear that adorned his body. It was just a few pieces of mail armor accompanied by a sword and buckler. Anton had been briefed on the game for the better part of half a day. After learning that tank classes were the core of every team, he’d felt that it was obvious what role he had to play and picked a human paladin straightaway. In fact, all of his teammates had picked the human race, come to think of it. Strange.
“Sound off your classes.” They’d all coordinated roles beforehand, but there were a multitude of ways to go about it, so they allowed for a good deal of freedom.
Roger looked perpetually bored. He had these pair of lazy eyes that regarded the world with mute apathy. Other than that, the best way to describe him is tall, lanky, and slimy, like the greasy kind that gives women the creeps when he slicks back his black hair. Gray was almost convinced that the man was a contracted felon masquerading as an agent, despite the numerous reassurances he’d gotten from the Director.
Waving a hand, Roger pulled out a staff. “Mage, here.”
Candice stepped forward next, her short blonde hair hardly reaching down to the eyebrows that sat on top of a face that was the very definition of the word “stern”. She had this imposing air of discipline that was always around her and a “no nonsense” attitude that gummed up the other squadmates’ attempts to be friendly.
Anton had read that she was one of the ones who’d served in the 4th World War and participated in the subjugation campaign of the southern american countries. 90% of her file was redacted, but he had been able to gather that, except for her, the entire platoon where she was stationed had met a gory end in the amazon. How she inevitably made it to the FBI, he had no clue.
Reporting in military fashion, she replied, “Sir, I chose a strike druid,” and then immediately morphed into a giant black mamba that coiled up until it was eye level again with everyone. Its scales were as black as night and shined in the waning sunlight with a hint of the sunset’s golden red. A drop of venom glistened on the tip of a fang as Candice unfolded them experimentally and bared them at the group for inspection.
The wide, gruff agent stepped forward next. Mikhail was a second generation Russian American. His parents had fled into the icy waters of the East Siberian Sea after the foot riots of Logashkino, surviving aboard a rat-infested freighter all the way to the Bering Strait where they managed to plead onto a passing American cruise liner. From there, they rode all the way back down to Oregon where they applied for refugee asylum, and then later citizenship.
Mikhail grew up wanting to serve the nation that saved his family, so whenever Gray looked back into those pale blue eyes, he would see a man willing to die for the cause. He was a true patriot, unlike the RAMs that they’d constantly had to hunt.
Mikhail gave a nod and took out a giant two handed hand. “Barbarian here.”
Anton was secretly pleased at the fit. A true warrior needed to be on the frontlines at all costs. Anything else would be a waste of his potential.
Last, but not least, Eliza cutely stepped forward and produced a staff with a flourish. She was an auburn haired college grad who’d also just graduated from the academy. Gray had met her when he’d gone to give a short presentation on counter-terrorism inside American border. He’d felt that they’d really hit it off, so when everything had played out the way it did, he rushed to get her in on it.
The way he looked at it, this was a leisurely turkey shoot, not some pressing manhunt. The fugitive was trapped and no longer had a body to return to. What was there to fear? They may as well enjoy their time in the game.
Feeling the rough grain of the Crude Staff, she winked and said, “Cleric. I’ll be healing all you fools, so be good to me okay? I expect lavish meals as compensation for timely heals.”
Shaking his head, Anton was just about reply to her nonsense when hurried steps came from behind him. Turning around, he was greeted by an imposing man in full plate. Once the figure saw that they were already there, he sighed in relief and walked up to them.
Sticking out a hand, he offered, “Agent Gray?” Receiving a nod he went on, “Nice to meet you all. My name is Claude and I’m a part of the Valorous team. I help run guild operations and scheduling. If you’ll come this way, we’ll get you set up with some equipment and money so that you can get started.”
Smiling appreciatively, Anton fell in where the rest of his team, Candice having transformed back into human form, and walked down the heavily crowded street.
Gazing around at the bustling stalls and players who talked animatedly with each other, he paused to feel the hot Turen sun on his skin with closed eyes.
Opening them back up, he caught a disappearing glance from Eliza who hurriedly looked back towards Claude as he talked about the city and its history.
He could tell. He was going to like it here.