The Intermission Pt5

My second question turned out to be both easy and hard to answer, coming from a low leveled player asking about combat titles.

The first was kill titles, such as killing x amount of goblins overall or even in a day, which would make that species easier to hunt. The next were small and large achievements such as making skills from kills or general combat achievements. While I did not mention Tasmanian which would have been a giveaway of sorts to certain informed parties to know something about my spin technique, I did reveal and explain the Crit Learner title and my Crouching Figure for stealth.

Both of them were dependent on critical hits, and the latter only because I got two stealth kills with crits during my first stealth attacks against a tiny camp of low-level gobs. If this fellow did not already have A Crit Learner, then he was probably already a lost cause.

With the available weapons and stats for classless characters, critical hits were the main ingredient to survival in the early stages if they can't stat train to cover the difference. Unless he learned magic early on, which was the essence for classless crowd controlling without a skill like 360 Edge.

While this player and I were speculating different forms of combat achievements like the obvious decapitations and special kills, I got my third question and my first donation from another random and then Cryptid. The second question asked about stat training methods besides working out, which has already been touched upon above and should have been fairly common knowledge already.

Now I revealed the less orthodox training methods I have put my people through, such as fleeing for Agility and Endurance. Since familiars like Duck and the ice birds were not exactly plentiful, I encouraged the use of mobile attacking skills such as jumping and redirecting attacks to replace some aspects of physical crowd controlling skills. While using a sword and similar weapons would not be so easy to use ranged weapons like bows and knives could be used to disrupt enemies to gain distance in these maneuvers.

I also made a point then and there that all players should be experience farming the lesser skills of other weaponry and abilities which would encourage them to have a more versatile and utilitarian fighting style. Weapons were not class restricted in this game and only certain kinds had stat restrictions previously.

Now that the guillotine of level restrictions on equipment had been brought down, everybody would be stuck using uncertain-tier equipment and the need for versatility would be greater than ever. If a person was not already using or could not make their own weapon of greater ability than their level, then players who could not make up for a lack of skill with active experience would be at a severe disadvantage.

"Has he been like this the entire time?" My father asks suddenly from oddly close to me, turning out to be looking down from behind me to see what I was doing on my phone. "Leo, you're in a restaurant chair. Not you're gaming chair. Join us."

"But, I'm saving on gold conversions by receiving donations from players who already liquidated their assets," I argue while calmly returning my attention back to my phone. "Right now the only way to convert is through the forums which takes a fee on any form of currency exchanging. If I get ten silver, one was paid to the system. If I convert one grandpa gold to fifty silver through the forums, five goes to the system. If I spend my grandpa gold in an NPC shop, my grandpa gold is still one-one ratio so all my change comes back in total value. This is just to keep me from spending my good gold on small stuff."

"Penny pinchin' biscuit," Dad says with some censorship, returning to his seat under the withering gaze of my mother. "Well, the least you could do is at least start a conversation about the game. Gerard and Ivana's parents are going to be playing the game soon."

"Ivana said we could make money in our sleep by being something called crafting mules?" Go's father says uncertainly, looking to his kids further down the table. "Gerard said he could help us with our leveling in a few more days so all we have to do is learn all of the profession skills until you guys get back from your quest. I'm actually a basic warrior with a spear specialization for when I want to advance my class. Lillian, here, is my dedicated healer."

"He lost control of a smithing maul in his first few swings and it bounced back off of the anvil knock him out," Lillian herself replies with a small smile while sharing a look with my mother. "He was out for more than five seconds while I was healing him. Even with a leather helmet on, it was bloody and terrifying. But it was… interesting, plus the some of the monsters are cute."

"Cute?" My mother parrots questioningly. Most of the monsters shown through my gameplay were giant ferrets, big and ugly naked mole rats, sickly green goblins, miniature and full sized werewolves, and just generally giant birds and bugs and trolls. Nothing a sane person would consider cute.

Considering the fact that watching her husband almost kill himself was considered 'interesting' then it was safe to say she was not entirely sane.

Smiling brightly with pride, Go's mom says, "Yes, big-eyed and adorable. We came across these weird rat-like things called tree vermin and when I said I liked it Martin just threw one in a sack so I could start feeding it and make it familiar with us. Now I have some skills for familiars and Herman The Vermin even has his own cute little leather armor."

This… I simply gave my father a look and sadly shook my head before simply turning back to my phone.

In the short time I had bothered to follow the table talk I had received another question that came with a donation on the spot. This lady was a classless healer who had recently discovered how to branch out into tamer class skill and wanted to know how to safely capture and tame certain types of familiars.

Whenever I caught familiars, it was either by wrestling them until the end of combat, offering blood, or roping them up in numbers to end combat. However, I had just learned that literally bagging smaller creatures was functional. Since most of my experience was in humanoid familiars, I told them honestly that I generally punched the mobs until they gave up and captured them but there were other methods.

Then I made brief mentions of being able to train familiars like classless characters so that they can pick up different combat skills. Which was why I liked humanoid familiars because it was generally easier for anyone to learn physical skills. However, I did bring up how elemental and other magical familiars could easily be taught supporting skills that could make life easy.

I even went so far as to make a list of all the different types of mobs that I had captured from the Nightwing named Duck all the way to trolls.

After discussing familiars, I received another question not only from Cryptid but also from the classless healer who said her achievement named her a medic with that could evolve into a better titled class after a set of listed achievements were completed. She was probably one of the reasons why classless players were cornered into support characters.

However, they both asked about how to learn and use different forms of magic. The healer already had experience in magic, but she had miraculously figured out magic on her own by way of self-healing and branched out to other people upon further explanation. This was how she achieved the medic perks.

Her issue, and somewhat Cryptid's as well, was that she could not figure out how to branch into different forms of magic while Cryptid was stuck with fire and ice magic through thermal regulation. He had no idea how to start on producing electric mana while she could not branch into the basic elements at all.

In her favor, though, was a basic mana manipulation skill even I had only just recently picked up that allowed for telekinesis. Except, she had an actual Telekinesis skill. I simply told them both my trial by fire method for learning concussive air magic from being used as a target dummy and then how to replicate mana more than anything else.

Some magic required a trick, like using bio-electrical currents in the body as the base for lightning magic. From her, though, I donated ten silver and asked if she would be willing to compare telekinetic abilities while pointing out that mine was based in integrating mana with an object through alchemy before achieving free control over it within a short range.

Their method of telekinesis was more cost effective in that you simply wrap an item or part of it in mana and direct it by will. My method was limited in range and in that I had to be actively transmuting it, but hers could literally through stuff outside of its own range. Her range was also limited by Willpower and yards while mine was limited by physical reach.

This was definitely a powerful universal ability that had little restrictions except a level to Strength ratio, each level of Telekinesis allowed her to manipulate objects equal to ten percent more and more of her Strength stat. I made my own gratitude known and asked that future readers of the posts show their gratitude to her as well for share a personal ability.

As for Cryptid, I expected the he was silently making great use of this back and forth to help him branch out into several new magics. I myself had learned a great deal from another person's learning experiences and was happy I asked about it.

The very next question that popped up turned out to be an interesting one. They said that it stemmed from something I had just shared and wanted to know how to make friendships and other relations with NPC more easily. If the average person wanted to find someone to use magic on them like I had, they would have to find a class trainer at the cost of taking a class or another player they could trust not to PVP kill them.

Even though I had a method of sorts worked out, it only worked if the NPC showed some form of interest in me. Except with Ferithar, that started with an interest in money and materials. Or Canley, because I took the initiative to take him under my wing.

Mostly, I could only emphasize the point of treating them respectfully, recurring business where possible, and trying not to be obvious. They are independent artificial intelligence but there is still that part of their coding where they are supposed to have an interest in players. Once you miraculously trigger that, just work with it without actively sucking up to them.

I did make mention of certain cases like Canley where you get this hidden undying loyalty from certain NPC if you can play your cards right. I could probably tell that kid to stab another player in the back for me and he would do it.

After this the questions started becoming more and more plentiful, branching into how to copy certain skills and aspects of other classes with differing amounts specificity. I had to wave a big disclaimer right at the start about how I was only familiar with some class skills in general so I might not be of much help here. However, I gave a brief rundown of different magics that I knew which would be the easiest place for them to start.

I chose to give out the Enchanted Warrior mastery and basic skills in my possession but kept things like Beast Mastery to myself despite giving out the Animal Husbandry title and perks. As well, I did not tell anyone about there being different kinds of psychic powers such as being a medium. This alone would make wild undead monsters consider a player neutrally.

These talks continued back and forth with multiple different people who would pop up simply to ask for clarification in the middle of a consultation without ever having asked the original question. Thankfully, these interrupting players would usually leave a donation so I was not worried. In fact, most people with questions were now giving donations first.

By the end of dinner, I alone had managed to rack up several new gold coins while discussing skills, titles, and now crafting. Next on the agenda for tonight was to go to the cinema so everybody could enjoy a nice family movie for my siblings. In the car I was able to switch to the AR visor and picked up much more speed in my responses.

However, things finally started slowing down after I made a brief table of alloys and materials that I knew of from studying or reading books in the game. I did not give out any designs or recipes, but I talked about the different utilitarian aspects of various forms of weaponry to help players decide on what suits them personally. I only had a few recipes, like the original alloy and the ancient alloy, that were universal for weapon purposes so different actual and theoretical alloys were openly debated in the thread.

Nobody had really even gotten into the actual subject of alchemy with me despite my having mentioned it in previous responses, which somewhat let me down. I personally did not care for the overly advanced forms of medicine making but my general knowledge for plants and parts B grade and below on the Imperial Continent was pretty good.

When we finally got to the theater, though, the thread picked up speed as more and more people came out of hiding and started opening up. Many people came out to talk about skills, mostly their own, and boast about how they were working on sets of techniques while giving out something like their most basic move. If they actually had a good technique, something along the lines of 360 Edge, I would gladly give them a single silver in donation.

It was my thread to begin with, so being the first person to show leave a donated reaction on a post was like telling everyone else that this was good shit and they should pay for it. Many of the people I donated to received other donations, specifically the skills that I approved of. Those posts made a few golds worth of silver in the over a short time.

I finally put my visor away when we got to the giant cinema building because we were somehow an hour early for the movie we wanted and my brother and sister wanted to play old school arcade games.

*