There was one stream of a player still in character creation. The clock on the screen indicated that she was in hour 4 of character creation. Apparently, she had figured out how to unlock an advanced character creation tool as she was manipulating parts of the face to an incredible degree.
Another had a guy indicating that he was in hour 3 of just doing press-ups. His schtick was as a fitness streamer, and he apparently had decided, for variety, to do his normal fitness routine in the game. One of his mods had put up a gains tracker, and supposedly, he had received two points in strength, one in endurance, and another in Charisma when two of the sailors had joined him. This one had thrown up some questions in the stream, as his chat was still arguing about that last stat not being in the list on the character screen.
I dipped a roll into the soup and brought the flashing group chat up. Ava had redacted chunks of the text, but that stopped after someone reminded everyone of our no spoilers policy. Reading between the lines, after the ship part of the tutorial, there was some kind of rep grind before you could go to Landing.
Christoph: This game is so much fun!
Darksider: I can’t get past how immersive it is.
Peachy: Totally, it’s good on XLS, but I made the mistake of trying Hubby’s GoldStar…let’s just say our savings are taking a hit.
BenchPress: ahh man, it looks amazing, but I'm working all weekend! Why did it have to come out early?! All my holiday was booked for the release date.
GoldenFist: Did you hear about DynaKing? He live-streamed quitting his job and racing home to play.
Kenda: Anyone figured out how to grind stats and skills? I thought I had done the same as Berrytone, but she gained cooking skills points and a fancy Chef’s Knife, and I just got a pat on the head from the Cook.
Darksider: It seems like it is actually skill-based. A lot of the streamers who do other things in real life are getting rewarded for their skills. Like Berrytone, she was actually a top-tier chef before her streaming career took off. One of the Olympic gymnasts was talking about how much the game lets him use his tumbling skills and actually rewarded him for using some of his skills.
Peachy: I still use her cottage pie recipe. Her cooking streams are must see watches!
Vikan: Anyone know if Teacher-boy is in game yet? He’ll be able to tell us if the new TN Pods are half as good as advertised.
Peachy: At the price they are asking for, they’ll need to be.
Voice: Last I heard from him, he made the mistake of picking the female statue.
Vikan: LOL
Peachy: ROFL
Kenda: Lol
Darksider: ha
Christoph: muppet.
BenchPress: huh?
GoldenFist: They made an oversight in char creation. When you choose your race, you also choose your sex. Quite a few players, though, are picking the statue based on the weapons they are wielding and then finding out they are locked in.
Peachy: You can’t go back; restarting brings you back into that screen. Right now, you get one character slot, and there is a 24-hour confirmation window before your character is deleted. So if you picked the wrong one…you are stuck with it, or not playing…
BenchPress: OMG, really?
Kenda: One of my besties has been spamming our group chat with clips of OhSoCuteKitty’s breakdown. She has been hate-watching her all afternoon. Supposedly, the best car crash theatre she has seen in years.
Jacobs: @Vaxil got in game, but he hasn’t sent me his char name yet, and I know he can see this, because he is green.
Jacobs: @Vaxil
Jacobs: @Vaxil
I finished the soup, using my last roll to clean up the bowl as much as possible. Put the bowl in the sink and let it fill with water, and turned back to the group chat before Jacobs got a time out for spamming, again.
Vaxil: Sheesh, bud, I was eating. Yeah, I'm a muppet, but in my defence, it’s not like it warned me or anything.
Vaxil @Jacobs - Aenara Ravenscroft, and I’m guessing you are Jacobs Jacobson?
Jacobs: Close. Jacobs Von Jacobs the III ??I’ll add you to the group when I get back in.
Jacobs: Where are you up to?
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Vaxil: I was training with the Weapon Master before I accidentally got exhausted
GoldenFist: Still on the ships? Didn’t you start at four? Honestly, I don't think there is much benefit in spending too much time there. Just go and see the Captain on the Indefatigable and get the [redacted] over with.
Darksider: We don’t actually know that G. It’s not like anyone around where we are, spent much time in it. Exhausted is tough; you just got to wait for the debuff to clear. Getting food is probably a good choice.
GoldenFist: Area chat is pretty convinced, no one is coming out of the ships much better off, seems like it is just a buffer so they can give new players somewhere to learn how to play without hostiles to fight.
Jacobs: Ahh, pm me when you get out of the tutorial, until you are here, I can’t invite you. I wouldn’t rush the ships, though, get what you can from it, despite what G is saying, some people have got bonus equipment and skills that others didn’t. We are also about to go into the first dungeon, which is supposed to take a couple of hours if we get it right, and one of us tour-guiding you will save you the hassle we had of getting lost constantly!
GoldenFist: Yeah, the [redacted] sucks, and the [redacted] and the [redacted] were unnecessarily [redacted].
Darkside: Popped. See you all later. This is supposedly challenging.
After a quick toilet break, I headed back into the virtual world. Going by the clock, I had about 5 more minutes before the debuff should expire, so I took a few minutes in my virtual office to check emails before walking over to the Valkaria door.
Inside the room, there was the same bench I had sat down on; my avatar was still sitting there, her chin on her chest like she had fallen asleep. As I approached, she became more and more ghostly until she was little more than an outline.
“Merge with your avatar to return to Velkaria,” the disembodied voice announced. I sat down into my avatar. As soon as I was close enough to the same position, the world brightened slightly, and I could hear the sounds of training blades striking other blades and dummies.
I looked around and, unsurprisingly, the handful of people whom I had spoken to before were no longer around. I got up and made my way back to the dummy I had used before. Someone else was attacking it, so I walked up to the one next to it. The face lit up at the target location. My first four strikes all got me a ding.
I was feeling the rhythm of my practice, and it was almost becoming second nature. I found myself needing to think less about what I was doing. Just responding to the different places it lit up and attacking with whichever attack I knew, that made the most sense. The problem with this, though, is that it gave me more time to think about what I was doing other than the strike itself. I was being static. Literally just stood here wailing. None of the spars I had observed did that. They dodged, they swerved, their feet moved. Storm and the Weapon Master shifted all over that circle. To quote Dune, feints within feints. The attack was asking for a side chop. I stepped with it. The crack sounded good to my ear. The confirming ding from the dummy, even more so.
[Skill gained - Melee - Blunt - Quarter Staff - 1 rank]
The recognition of my progress from the system… well, that was priceless.
I started moving after that. It wasn’t what I had been told, but it felt right. I also started to see patterns in the way the lights lit up. That was one of my strengths. In other games I had played with my friends, I was often one of the first to see what we needed to overcome the boss or the mechanic. Sometimes it was just a feeling I needed to be somewhere else. Sometimes it was something more tangible. Here, it first showed itself in my swinging for an attack before it had lit up.
“Acceptable progress.” Commented the Weapon Master from behind me. “My next lesson would have been on moving. Instead, we will skip that to the final lessons that I will teach you. This is a powerful, but risky attack.” He demonstrated a one-handed swing, which came from behind and right around. The crack when it collided with the head of the dummy was the loudest one I had heard yet. “If it lands, it will do considerably more damage than your other attacks, but by its nature, it is riskier. With one hand, you gain reach, but at the cost of a less secure grip. The longer wind-up time gives your opponent more opportunities to get inside your guard, block or parry your attack. Done right, it could win you the fight. Done poorly or just at the wrong time. It might cost you your life.” He watched me swing once. “No. From here,” he repositioned my arm. “Around like this,” he moved the quarterstaff along the trajectory it should follow. “To land like this. Try again. ”
He watched me swing the stick again a few times. “Good. Next is blocking and parrying. Easy to learn, difficult to master. First blocking. When someone swings at you like this…”
“...and that is pretty much all you need to be told about parrying. Get some rest and then practice that attack some more. Once you feel confident enough with it, find some of the others to spar with. Only way to really learn blocking and parrying is to do so in a fight. Win three spars and then come and see me.” I watched him walk off and headed over for the bench. My stamina was feeling a little low…
Half an hour of swinging the big attack, I went looking for someone to spar against. Where the dummies had taken up one corner of the deck, the rest was made up of various crowds of people standing around a roped-off circle with two people fighting in it. Seeing someone I recognised, I walked up and stood next to her.
“Hi Diane,” I said to her.
“Hi?...” confusion on her face replaced by recognition. “Oh, welcome back, Fakie.”
“The Weapon Master told me I should try sparring. How does it work?”
“Err, just wait for a fight to finish and then step into the ring!” she replied with a grin.
“Ignore the short menace!” said the guy next to her. Tall looking, with a large sword in his hand. “Here, we take it in turns; the winner stays on. Most circles are like ours. The ones over there. “ He points to the ones closest to the way out. “Are for people who have passed the Sword Masters Challenge and want to train more.
“They are also betting tokens for some reason.” A voice adds from the far side of the swordsman.
“Victory! Johanson,” said the sailor who was acting as the referee.
“Well, that is my three wins! Thanks, everyone.” One of the fighters says as he steps out of the circle. His opponent was also leaving, his shoulders slumped in disappointment.
“Why don’t we let the two newcomers face each other for the next fight?” suggested someone on the far side of the circle.
“You are just looking to see if either will be an easy win.” Chuckled another. I looked around no one seemed to be opposing the idea, and it would get me my first fight quicker. I stepped into the ring.
My opponent was a big fella, probably close to seven feet in height. His weapon of choice was a large wooden club. He grimaced as he stepped into the circle.
“Not a fan of beating on girls.” He said with a deep rumble.
“That’s ok, she isn’t one,” called out Diane.
The giant's face lit up. “Well, that makes it ok then.” Short menace indeed.
I don’t want to ever be hit by that club. Luckily for me, he was slow with it. Every attack of his was a fully wound-up smash attack. The first I dodged simply by stepping to the side. I’m surprised he didn’t break the deck’s boards from the blow. He was also seemingly ignoring my own attacks. Now I'll admit, they weren’t as clean as I was getting from the dummy, but enough of them felt like the strong ding induces I had been consistently getting near the end.
“Stand still and let me hit you!” my opponent demanded, as I dodged his latest swing by ducking under an arm and getting behind him. I waited for him to start spinning on one leg to turn towards me, and I did a thrust at the weight-bearing leg. He went down.
“Victory! Ravenscroft,” the sailor called out.