Chapter 3: Ready Primary Character (Updated)
In Fantasy Lyfe, a newly created character would start off with seven total stat points for each of the seven primary stats. Only forty two of these stat points were able to be distributed by the player. Each attribute had to have at least a value of one but, aside from that requirement, players were permitted to distribute their other forty two points however they wished.
Upon level up, the number of static (or predetermined) stat points are determined by whichever Class Titles the player has earned. Free (or assignable) stat points, however, are always equal to the player's level.
John's decision to put all of his stats into Intelligence left him in a very vulnerable state. The number of spells he could cast was surely impressive, compared to more balanced characters but the price he had to pay for that advantage was huge.
John may not have had any intention of sticking with this character but he would need to be careful, if he wished to make the most of his time with this experimental character.
Having finally recovered both his Stamina and his Mana, John set out once again looking for creatures to fight.
He had only traveled twelve meters from his previous position, whenever he noticed a red furred fox lying down munching on a rabbit carcass.
The fox immediately noticed him, since John's Perception wasn't high enough to be able to spot the creature earlier.
Preparing to cast his [Cast Lightning] skill, he suddenly froze, as another beast entered his field of vision. A Viper Python was slithering down the tree behind the fox. The fox was, from John's perspective, on the right side of the tree and the Viper Python's head snuck out from behind the tree and struck out with blinding speed at the fox, who was standing there facing John and snarling at him.
Less than a second later, the fox was wrapped firmly in a snake mouth coat that seemed to be slowly covering more and more of the fox's body.
At this moment, John saw an incredible opportunity. Pointing his palm at the fox in the Python's mouth, he unleashed the power of [Cast Lightning] directly into the exposed body of the snake's snack.
The large multiple meters long snake was stunned and lost its grip on the tree it was climbing on. It fell onto the forest floor and twitched several times, before attempting to shift its head to look for its attacker and finish swallowing its meal at the same time. A difficult task, considering the extra weight it now carried in its mouth.
Seeing that his attack seemed to be super effective, John began repeatedly casting and recasting [Cast Lightning], until the snake lay motionless with the smell of burnt flesh wafting from its corpse.
John looked upon the sight of his first two kills in this new game and smiled. 'Now that was fun! This is the kind of spell slinging action that I was hoping for! Now, let me check my Action Log to see if I received any experience!
/Killed Lvl 1 [Fox]
/Obtained 1 EXP
/...
/...
/Cast [Cast Lightning]
/Landed Critical Attack on Lvl 2 [Viper Python]
/Dealt 12 Damage to Lvl 2 [Viper Python]
/Killed Lvl 2 Viper Python
/Obtained 16 EXP
'Hells Yeah! First two kills and I'm on my way to level two! Now, about these Scales and Venom Sacs. I wonder how I'm going to get them off without ruining them. Hopefully there's some kind of assistance with that. John then decided to look through the rest of his Action Log, to see if he had missed anything else.
/System Alert: Congratulations, you've defeated your first opponent. You've acquired a new ability [Collect Loot].
'Wait, what? Collecting loot is an ability? Although, if it turns out to be something for which manual skills can be acquired concerning it, then perhaps I can do it manually, if I so desired?'
Targeting the fox's corpse, he activated his new [Collect Loot] ability...but nothing happened. He then targeted the Viper Python corpse and activated it again. This time, all of the snake's scales simply vanished, as if they had never been there.
After checking his Inventory, he realized that both the scales and the venom sacs were there.
*Player Inventory*
Viper Python Scales ×3
Viper Python Venom Sacs ×1
On top of collecting the required materials, his material gathering quest was also updated, thus, confirming for him that everything was working properly. Now he wouldn't feel compelled to check on his quests or notifications all the time, unless he was dealing with something unfamiliar.
During this encounter, John had cast his skill five times back to back and needed to recover his mana, once more.
A few minutes later, he continued his aimless trek through the woods and eventually happened upon three Direwolves. This time the Direwolves spotted him well before he saw them.
He looked up to see the three Direwolves running towards him and suspected that he might very well die this time. They were massive donkey sized wolves and they didn't waste any time selecting him as their next meal.
As the three Direwolves approached, John targeted the one on the right and began spamming his [Cast Lightning] ability, with both hands. Right before the wolves pulled into spitting range, he pulled out his right dagger and activated [Channel Lightning].
The right Direwolf was badly damaged at this point and he was sure that he could kill it, he just needed one more good hit. Knowing that he wouldn't live through this experience, he targeted the right Direwolf's mouth and shoved his dagger wreathed in lightning right down his throat. The other two Direwolves immediately began taking huge bites out of his flesh, none of which did he manage to survive.
John's weak body character then fell lifelessly to the ground and was turned into virtual sustenance for virtual wolves.
John's vision had gone black almost immediately, after his last attack. He wasted no time in opening up his Status Menu to check the Action Logs.
/Cast [Cast Lightning]
/Dealt 2 Damage to Lvl 3 [Direwolf]
/Cast [Cast Lightning]
/Dealt 2 Damage to Lvl 3 [Direwolf]
/…
/…
/Cast [Cast Lightning]
/Landed a Critical Attack on Lvl 3 [Direwolf]
/Dealt 18 Damage to Lvl 3 [Direwolf]
Looking at everything the system had recorded, he was a bit disappointed that the Direwolf hadn't died. Although, that's probably to be expected given that his Wisdom stat was only at two.
What did surprise him though was the critical damage he'd dealt, with his last attack. It was nine times higher than his other attacks. He suspected that the combination of both physical and lightning damage had something to do with it.
He was well aware that your typical critical attacks didn't apply here in Fantasy Lyfe. The tired old cliche of Critical Chance and luck modifiers had been cast aside for a more realistic and skill based approach.
The only critical attacks that were present in this game were obvious weak points like facial organs, biomechanical points like tendons, or any blow that managed to deal internal damage.
John rather liked this approach to things and it was one of the many factors that had made him so determined to play. He simply hadn't expected his pitiful Strength mixed with his Intelligence to cause nine times more damage than his normal attacks.
Suddenly, John's vision returned and he found himself lying on the ground just outside of the village. Before getting up, he checked for anything new in his status menu.
*System Notification*
You have died and all of your stored experience has been lost. Some Inventory items have also been lost. Check Inventory, for more details. Do better next time!
Just as he had expected, he had lost all of his earned experience. Fantasy Lyfe had a unique leveling system, wherein a player's overall level was tied directly to his highest level Active Ability or Active Skill. Experience Points could be stored and distributed to different Abilities or Skills.
This, of course, created a system where having loads upon loads of different abilities would severely slow down your leveling speed, since you would need to level up multiple times per overall level in order to keep your other skills from becoming obsolete.
The difficulty for leveling up any ability to a certain level didn't change, even if you already had an ability at that level. So, if John increased his [Cast Lightning] to lvl 2 and then wanted to increase [Conjure Lightning] to lvl 2, it would require the same amount of experience. However, if he wished to increase [Cast Lightning] to Lvl 3 the requirement would increase.
In order to assess his total losses, he checked on his inventory as well...one Viper Python Scale and that was it.
'Oh, well! It isn't like I had a whole treasure trove of goodies. I'll just have to be more careful next time.'
Realizing there was nothing to be done about his loss and not particularly caring about it, he got up, dusted himself off, and went back into the forest.
-----
Nearly six hours later, a black haired Forest Elf, with green eyes and wearing tattered brown robes, could be seen entering the village of Deresia, with an orange tinge above the forest canopy hinting at the setting of the sun.
John had died two more times that day and had not leveled up once. He managed to collect a moderate amount of materials but his weak body status made it hard to face off against anything more than one monster at a time.
Luckily, the Craftsmen, who posted the requests hadn't yet closed up shop and he was able to exchange the materials he had for cold hard coins. In this case only bronzes. Fantasy Lyfe had a fairly standard 100 coin system.
100 Bronze = 1 Silver
100 Silver = 1 Gold
100 Gold = 1 Platinum
With thirty two Bronze coins in his pockets, he went directly to the Redhead Tavern, the one he had been to when he first arrived, and ate some dinner and rented a room for the night. After confirming the game's incredibly accurate simulation of taste and spending a couple of hours meditating to try and raise his Perception attribute, he finally got into the straw bed and fell asleep for the first time inside of a video game.
-----
Sleeping inside Fantasy Lyfe wasn't like sleeping in the real world. It could be done but usually it was just a short break, where the player could browse forums and chat rooms while their character recuperated.
Fantasy Lyfe had a perceived time dilation, of six in game hours for every one real life hour. During the character's unconscious state, the player would resume their normal perception of time and would only need to wait about twenty minutes for their characters to wake up.
The characters only needed three full hours of sleep in order to continue operating at maximum efficiency. Thus, John had spent his time looking at the game forums to see how others were responding.
He discovered that most of the gamers were also blown away by this game's level of realism, both from its sensations and its lifelike NPCs. Some of the more silver tounged gamers were even boasting about how they were able to talk their way into some minor court positions and into a few other things as well.
Of course, there was only so far that fancy words could take you but those gamers undoubtedly had an advantage now and could probably progress in an entirely unique way, if they kept advancing their characters in that manner.
In Fantasy Lyfe, it was entirely possible to become a powerful character without ever obtaining a single Class Title. It was, of course, gamers like these that had the highest chance of achieving something like that via the game's many Professional Titles.
Some of the people on the forums had been complaining about the loss of Inventory items upon death but the developers had responded that this was a measure enacted to prevent the Kamikaze Method of obtaining rare and powerful artifacts. John didn't like losing his items either but he agreed with preventing players from running into a dragon's den, taking as much precious loot as possible before being killed by the dragon, and then walking away with loads of riches with little effort.
Exploits like that were best eliminated and, as the developers had mentioned, it also provides a strong deterrent against 'easy way out death and respawn' tactics, when faced with a disadvantageous situation. After all, this was supposed to be your character dying not passing out like some pocket monster or something.
He had also noticed a few players who had completely evened out their stats, with sevens across the board, confirming the developer's statements on the subject. Having only one stat point in an attribute was akin to having the strength of a ten year old. This, of course, John could well attest to, since just walking around seemed to tire him out.
Having an attribute at five seemed to be on par with a non-combat trained adult. As for sevens, let's take strength as an example, it would be akin to an adult who just completed his initial combat training in some military organization.
Overall he was quite excited after spending the entire twenty minutes reading all of the responses, he was ready to get back out there and finish testing his first character.
After ordering a quick meal from the surprised night staff, he placed the food in his Inventory, exited the Tavern, and reentered the Forest.
-----
John had spent the entire rest of the week testing out different races, weapons, and builds. He had quite enjoyed his time with these experiments and had discovered many interesting things about Fantasy Lyfe.
Now, however, he was ready to begin creating a primary character.
*Do you wish to delete your current Character?*
[Yes/No]
After confirming his decision, he once again entered the character creation space, for what must be the dozenth time. Quickly skipping to the one he wanted, John selected the Avian race, the Conjure Lightning ability, and Throwing Needles ×10 as his weapons.
During his other play tests, he had realized that this combination he had randomly selected, during his initial test, could actually be quite effective, if utilizing correctly. However, the lack of a long range physical attack left him wanting and so he had picked up the Throwing Needles and instantly took a liking to them. As for obtaining his Dual Daggers, well he already had plans in place for those.
Looking at his character's appearance which already looked almost exactly like him, he changed his eye color to a crystal clear blue and made his black hair long enough to reach the middle of his back.
The Avians all started off with fairly normal human looking bodies. The only Heritage Traits they started off with were a light hollow bone structure, elongated and thin features and frame, and a slight affinity with wind magic. They also possessed elvish looking ears and pale skin.
Having already become familiar with the naming sense of the Avians, which seemed to involve a lot of substituting vowels with 'y's at every possible juncture, he was able to choose a name before entering the world and so he did so.
*Character Status*
Name: Lezypher Nightwynd
Level: 1
Race: Avian [Bloodlines-0]
Class Titles: Caster
Professional Titles: None
HP: 10/10
MP: 860/860
SP: 20/20
Strength-1
Endurance-1
Vitality-1
Dexterity-1
Perception-1
Intelligence-43
Willpower-1
Recovery-8
*Accolades*
Unlockable:
[Mad Man]
*Active Abilities*
Arcane:
[Conjure Lightning] Lvl 1
*Active Skills*
None
*Passive Abilities*
[Caster Blaster] Lvl 1
The Recovery Attribute was not considered a primary stat and couldn't be upgraded via stat points. A person's Recovery Attribute was determined by the number of times their total stat points could be divided by five plus their highest and lowest active ability levels.
There were also items and consumables that could temporarily alter the Recovery Attribute and there were very time and effort intensive ways to train up your Recovery Attribute but this progress was drastically slower than with the other attributes.
The Recovery Attribute didn't just determine HP, MP, and SP regeneration it also determined how long certain status ailments would afflict you. An example would be something like a stun or blindness, if your recovery was high enough you may be able to recover from that state sooner than the offending abilities stated duration.
Typically one point of the Recovery stat was equal to one point per second of resource recovery. This would be raised to two points per second for a primary resource whenever a primary resource was established, usually by consistently using and upgrading one resource more than the others for five consecutive levels.
With all of his character's details tended to, he was now itching to get back into the game. During his testing period, he had discovered, on the forums, what the [Mad Man] Accolade did and it was OPAF. If there was one thing he had to have, for his primary character, it was that accolade.
*Would you like to confirm this character and starting location?*
[Yes/No]
'Hells Yeah, Son! Hells Yeah!'
Weekly Power Status
-- Power
Ranking 
-- Power
stone