As we walked through the busy roads of Hammerdown I began to realise how odd it was that Morden and Roderick were able to find out so much about the quests in the city so quickly. They hadn't been in the city for very long til I caught up with them after entering so there was no way they were able to traverse this entire city hunting for quests in that time. After pondering for a few minutes I realized I was probably missing something so I finally asked them about it.
"Hey Morden, how did you guys find this quest anyway?" I asked, "You weren't in the city for very long when I caught up to you"
"Through the quest long of course." He responded, and when he saw my confused face he continued, "The Quest log, you know, the thing that lists all publically known quests in the area? Wow dude, did you not even open the game menu?" He started laughing.
"H-how do I do that?" I asked nervously after learning I was missing out on a lot more than I thought. Unfortunately this caused Morden to laugh louder. Which prompted Roderick to speak up instead, though he was clearly fighting to not laugh himself.
"Just say Menu" he finally got out, "How did you NOT know about this? It was all in the help files you could read during the first login" After that he lost his struggle and started laughing.
"Hey, I was more interested in the lore files" I said a little irritated, "Menu"
Another blue window popped up containing several different options including Character Sheet, Quest Log, Settings, Inventory, and so on. I pressed my finger on the quest log button and a list of quest available in the area popped up. I ignored the laughing duo as we walked on and read through the log. It was just like Morden said, all public quests are listed here and all but one were way above our capabilities and even that one, a Hunting Quest, was still listed as very hard for our levels. The Hunting quest itself was to kill a mob called "Rockeaters." There was even an image of them for identification. They look a lot like Pangolins except they are more canine in appearance and the scales look as though they are made of stone. I closed the quest log after that and opened the lore files to see if I could find anything about Rockeaters. There was a little bit, but not much. Most of it revolving around how much of a pest they are to subterranian peoples like dwarves. This was because their tunneling would compromised the caverns those people call home and caused cave ins on grand scales. One recorded event was that the coronation of a Dwarven Emperor was cut short because the coronation chamber collapsed due to rock eaters killing hundreds. These things are worse than termites apparently.
"Yo Duran, snap out of it" I heard a voice call out while I was reading.
"What what?" I said suddenly confused about what was going on as I closed the windows.
"How did you not run into anyone walking around reading like that?" Said Roderick shaking his head.
"Dude I was reading up on the things we're supposed to be killing, which are called rockeaters by the way" I said grumpily.
"Well we're here" said Morden pointing towards a tunnel entrance that wasn't as big as the main tunnels, but still very sizable. "That's where the log says they are"
"OK, cool. So do you have a plan to handle this Morden?" I asked him. He had taken the initiative to lead this group, and since I was clearly lacking in gameplay knowledge I wasn't going to complain.
"Actually yes, I do. These things have tough scales, but a soft underbelly. Normally this would cause a lot of problems, but from what I was able to gather by asking around a bit they use a rolling attack from time to time. If we can hold out until then we can lure them into rolling into the wall and hopefully that'll stun em and cause them to reveal their weak underbellies. As for how we'll do that, you'll function as the puller and tanker Duran, meanwhile Roderick will attack at any weakness he can find and I'll keep you both alive with my Healing Hands spell. It's super shitty as it has a high cost for the amount it heals, but it's still better than nothing." Roderick nodded to him and pulled out two axes.
"Sounds solid enough to me. Roderick is easily our best chance for damage and you're the only one with heals." I said nodding to Morden. I had already expected this so there was no surprise. "Let's do this" I walked towards the tunnel with Morden and Roderick following behind.
Once inside I saw rockeaters everywhere. some were sleeping, others were munching on the walls, and some were even fighting each other for some reason. Probably over a food source or mate I didn't care either way. I picked up a palm sized rock and picked out Rockeater that was separate from the main horde.
"Ok, I am going to pull them one a time for now and see how we handle it, and I'm starting with that one." I pointed towards the one I picked out, "I'm going to lead it closer to the entrance of the tunnel to prevent unwanted aggro so be ready to move." I explained, and they both nodded. With that I threw the rock as hard as a I could at the lone creature and it bounced off it's scales. There was no damage but it did exactly what I was hoping it would do. The Rockeater turned around and looked right at me before charging in a rage.
I began backpeddling to bring it away from the group, but I didn't get as far as I hoped. This thing was fast as hell. When it got close enough it launched itself at me with it's front claws spread out ready to tear me apart and it's jaws open and waiting to take out a chunk of my hide. Since this since was almost as big as I was and faster than me I knew i couldn't sidestep it so instead I went under it and grabbed one of it's outstretched limbs and pulled it in such a way to cause the rockeater to flip over in mid-air. I took a scrapes from it's back claws for my effort and saw my HP bar appear in the top right of my vision suddenly lose 20 points out of 120. A sixth of my life gone in one hit, holy shit. At least I was able to flip it. While it was on the ground I let go of it's leg and wrapped my arms around it's neck to hold it down. I took another 10 points of damage as it tried to claw at me. Thankfully it didn't get as solid of a grip this time so the damage was lower.
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I began to choke the Rockeater as hard as I could. It squirmed and struggled viciously, but I was locked on tight. While I was holding on for dear life I saw Roderick lunge into the fray with a loud roar and began hacking at the exposed stomach of the rockeater. Blood went everywhere, and the creatures life bar appear and started dropping rapidly. It tried to lash out at Roderick but every time it did he would jump back out of reach before charging back in. After a third attempt it gave up on getting him and focused and trying to break out of my hold by clawing mercissly at my arms. Large gashes appeared and my HP started dropping in chunks. When I got to around 20hp I was about to let go when I felt a hand touch my head and my hp recovered by 50 whole points.
"I gotcha Duran, hold on a bit longer it's almost dead" I heard Morden say. I was a bit too busy to properly respond so I gave him a grunt. I took a few more claws to the arm before I had had enough. Enough though pain was set 30% of reality this still hurt! I tightened my grip on it's neck and shifted my weight before quickly twisted it's neck and an unnatural angle. A dull snap echoed out from the Rockeaters neck and it's body went still.
You have slain a Rockeater and gained 20 experience points!
When I saw the window I let go of the beast and laid out on the ground to catch my breath. I looked over at Roderick who had also sat down and was breathing hard.
"So," I said between breathes, "How much xp did you guys get?" I asked them.
"20" said Roderick still sitting on the ground.
"Same" said Morden happily. Man he had it easy this time around.
"Ditto" I said, "So who wants to bet that these things actually give out 60xp on a solo kill"
"Well, since these things amount to was is basically a trash mob for a lvl 5 group I'd say that's about right." replied Morden, "But they are all we got, and it was still 1/5 of what we need to level up"
"100 xp to level 2?" I said, "That sounds a bit low, unless there is a massive exp requirement spike later on."
"Don't know," said Roderick, finally getting to his feet, "Game just came out and there was no leaks so no one has any idea how the mechanics work yet. That said, you are a mad man Duran." He chuckled.
"Seriously, that was an insane way to deal with the rockeater" Morden Chimed in, "It takes half my mana to heal 50 HP so I can only use it twice when my mana is full, so we can't use that method again. Was cool as shit though"
"Sorry, just kinda went with the flow there." I said sheepishly, knowing it was a stupid thing to do. "next one will go by the plan."
Morden nodded, "Ready when you two are, we got 29 more to go"
"Hang on," said Roderick, "Was there any loot?"
I sat up, and examined the Rockeater corpse for a moment, but found nothing, "Unless you're a skinner there's nothing." I told him. In response he pulled out a knife.
"As a matter of fact," He said with a grin, "I am." He walked over to the corpse, and I stepped aside.
"Have at it man." I told him. He looked over the body a bit and probe here and there with his knife before beggining his bloody work. All in all it took about a minute for him to strip the leather and scales from the body. There was a lot of meat on the rockeater apparently, which prompted my next question.
"you think you can get some of that meat from it too? Might be worth a few copper, it not we can try and cook it ourselves." I explained. He mused about it for a second.
"I can try, but I'm not a butcher so don't expect too much." He said before starting to carved away the meat. After he was done the rest of the corpse disappeared, " Damn, it I had been more careful we might've been able to get the bones too. At least I was able to get the left ear as proof from the quest"
After that we began pulling more rockeaters, this time using the strategy Morden had thought up. I worked like a dream as we were able to kill the Rockeater before it recovered from the stun every time. After little over an hour's work all 30 rockeaters were dead and we had a nice supply of rockeater scales and rockeater hides. we also made it to lvl 3 with only 100xp left til lvl 4. After a quick discussion we stayed to kill another 5 extra Rockeaters to put us up to lvl 4. Every time we leveled they died faster and faster so it was easier and easier. After hitting level 4 killin them would probably be trivial, but we now needed 800 exp to hit level 5 confirming that exp requirements were growing exponentially.
"Damn that was fun," Said Roderick, "But we should probably turn in now, their numbers are getting lower and other people are starting to show up now." He pointed towards the groups of players who had begun showing up and attacking the Rockeaters.
"Yeah, I agree," said Morden. "I still want to get some training in my alchemy skill and learn how to use Mana Cultivation before I log today"
I perked up at that, "You have that too? I need to figure it out as well. Any ideas on where to start?"
"I figure the library might be the best bet to start off," He said, "Having two people sifting through the books would be easier than one if you wanna double team this thing."
"Definitely in," I said, "let's head to the Deep Dwarf distrit library though as they are the most well versed in magic among the dwarf sub-races"
"Wanna tag along Roderick?" Morden asked, looking at the red haired dwarf.
"Yeah, why not. I have nothing better to do. All my skills are combat based except for skinning so I don't have anything special I need to look into" He said with a shrug.
We left the Rockeater tunnel and walked through the city towards the turn in for the Rockeater kill quest. It turned out to be a simple city guardsmen who had put out the bounty on behalf of the city. He paid us 10 copper per ear for a total of 300 copper which we split evenly. After that we left the market district and headed for the deep dwarf district's library. Along the way we chatted about our experience with combat and the changes we noticed each level up. Morden noted that his mana increased quite a bit each level up allowing him to cast Healing Hands a few more times, but the amount healed hasn't changed yet. Roderick explained that it was getting easier to swing his axes how he wanted to, and that the damage was going up. As for me I didn't noticed too much during the combat as my punches couldn't do any damage to the scales at any point and I just got out of Rodericks way when we stunned them. It took us about 20 minutes to reach the library, which looked like a spiralling tower that reached from the floor of the cavern all the way to the ceiling. It kind of stuck out.
"damn, that's a big building," Said Roderick.
"Deep Dwarves treasure knowledge of all kinds," I said, "This Library is the most precious part of Hammerdown to them as they built it when the city was founded. They still haven't filled it yet though. So if you ever come across any kind of unique scroll, books, or tablets they'll pay good money to add it to the collection."
I looked at Roderick and Morden who were giving me weird looks, "I told you guys I read the lore files." I said with a shrug.