by Kit Falbo
This time I pull out a piece of obsidian and shape it the same then set it into the other side of the cross guard. I dual cast and feel all my mana flow into it. Laslow’s eyes widen, I don’t know if he learns the spell or just got an inkling.
I inspect my completed work.
Venomous Black Heart Iron sword. Well crafted, good quality, 32 durability, 6-8 slashing damage. Enchanted +3 searing damage, resists durability damage. Venomous, 1-3 poison damage per second lasts 4 seconds. Black, attacking magical barriers costs 1 durability with a 50% chance to destroy the barrier. Heart, while equipped welder restores .5 hp a second.
I feel giddy, but also wary. It costs so much mana. It is bad enough to enchant a blade while crafting it without now needing to spend this much mana artificing it to compete with Hephesty and Marvlin.
“Almost nice enough to sell in my shop. I’ll give you three gold for it,” quips Laslow.
“I’d like to see what I can get selling it myself, first.”
“Fair enough Chess.”
“I didn’t tell you my name.”
“You’ve been working at Byron’s workshop every day for days, just down the street, and it’s not like you don’t put yourself into the blades you work.” I inspect the blade again, and it does say Crafted by Chess. There is no option to remove that notice, just one for renaming the blade.
“Will you be here if I need help?”
“Possibly, but I would be wary of owing someone too many debts.” I nod and watch my mana bar slowly climb. I really need to figure out how to finish all my blades. I give Laslow my humblest of thanks before leaving the shop anxious about finding a solution.
I hit the shops. Forty silver for a low-grade mana potion cut into the cost too much. I imagine I’ll need to buy crafting materials eventually, as the number of slots on blades will outpace the rate Jasper is currently collecting them. I’m sick of the herbs, even though I still have a bunch in my inventory. I find myself cringing at the idea of using any more.
With my mana filled up again, I pull out one of the poor-quality enchanted swords, since that is the only quality I’ve made so far outside of the one I rushed to Laslow. Only one slot is available for attaching materials. While in the street, I take out the small spotted noss shell and place it on the pommel, channeling almost all my mana to meld and empower it with its True Nature. At least I can slowly peck away at it while I think. Maybe another search of the forums at the game shop?
Ahead, I see an enchanter’s shop. These are dominated by the guild symbol of the profession. Most shops have personal names. Enchanters just use their guild symbol, a glowing hand. I lean by the door and wonder if I can rent space there. My mana starts to recharge faster, and a weaselly little man pokes his face out.
“No loitering!” he yells in a shrill voice and throws a fireball at my feet.
I hop away. Jerks. I inch closer to the front of the building. I’m basically laying against the face of it, and I see my mana start to rise fast. Online there had been a mention of an aura for those working on the profession, and apparently the walls didn’t contain it all. Hanging out front would probably just mean more hotfoots. Even with all my charisma, after all the comments from everyone about enchanters, I can’t imagine they would let me work there cheap. I step back to the other side of the street and look at the shop. It’s sandwiched by two other stores, sharing walls with both. One is a jeweler, and the other is a cobbler.
I enter the cobbler’s shop, and the man working there pauses from his current project. “Welcome to My Left Shoe. What can I help you with?”
I give him my widest smile. “I was wondering if I could rent out some space from you.” In the end, I manage to procure space in the cellar, where, if I hunch in one spot closest to the enchanters’ shop I manage to siphon off some of the benefits. I had tried the attic, but it didn’t work.
It cost 1 silver a week, and he is reluctant until I also agree to buy his best pair of shoes. They cost me two gold. The shoes are excellent quality. For ten times the price, I can commission a masterwork pair. I’m just glad he didn’t have any in stock. Where before I was fine walking, now it feels like my feet are being massaged with each step. When I inspect the shoes, I can see five open artificing spots and a notice that the shoes have to be balanced to work.
I head to the bank and fetch the twenty-five poor quality enchanted swords and a bunch of the crafting resources and haul them back to the cobbler’s to get to work. Trying to stretch my resources costs me a few items. Apparently, shells don’t like to be cut in half. It is time to do my first sales.
*
First up is the Holy Exchange, the player auction house. It costs five silver or a dollar to put an item up. If your item doesn’t sell or sells for less, that amount is lost. Twenty percent of an item’s value of a completed auction is taxed. If it sells for ten dollars or gold, you’ll only get eight. There is the option that if someone pays in cash, you can get gold instead, which is the only real way to buy gold in the game. It also turns out there isn’t a way to exchange gold for cash. Hephesty and Marvlin are already selling pieces. I can see one is at twenty-five dollars already. I dump my first batch onto the market so they can be bid upon for the next five days.
I step outside into the marketplace. There are vendors, NPC, and players hawking wares in the street. Items that aren’t worthy for the auction house are unloaded here. We spend the next hour looking for crafting materials. The artificing had given me a loose idea of what benefits different kinds of items could provide. I stumble upon a raw gem filled with blue and purple, called a pools stone, being hawked by a companion in the market. I buy it and remember the heart gem I used back in Laslow’s. I end up spending another hour splurging on materials that might work. If it is possible to get multiples of gems or other materials that interest me, I do. I’m twenty gold lighter as I make it back to the cobblers.
I buy two good quality pairs of shoes and head down to the cellar. I first work with the duplicates I bought, to test the effects. I leave the shop with two more items to sell, wearing a pair of sparkly blue and violet shoes. I may look silly, but I did manage to make a pair that focused on helping my mana issues while crafting.
Shallow blue waking pool’s power leather shoes. Excellently crafted, excellent quality, 50 durability. Lessens discomfort. Enchanted. Shallow. Ignores terrain and low water restrictions to movement. Blue, offensive actions gain +1 magic damage and added visual effects. Waking, +5 mana regen per second when equipped. Pool’s, after gaining experience gain mana equal to half the amount of experience gained. Power, +3% increased Strength of all spells, spells cost +3% more mana to cast.
I shouldn’t need to chew that damn herb any more while working, and hopefully, it will be enough of a boost that I won’t need to take as much as a break while enchanting at the forge. I decide to log out and take an early lunch before heading back to Byron’s to try them out. I can use the time before lunch is delivered to call Mel and ask him to advertise my new auctions on the forums and message boards.
Chapter Seven- Casey Ellis
The Immersion Arts weekly staff meeting is packed, which of course means Frank is here. I’ve done my best to avoid him since the Chess incident. If he had let it drop after Sun was satisfied, I would have continued doing my best to just ignore him, instead of avoiding the asshole. But he had the gall to suggest a few times that I had somehow snuck in and fixed the phantom exploit on the chess master NPC. Sun sternly told him to drop it, but his glares whenever we pass tell me he hasn’t.
Sally opens the meeting, we all turn to her. Except for Frank who, I see out of the corner of my eye, is staring daggers at me. “It’s been two weeks since release day. We’ve had no major glitches or flaws.” A smattering of applause fills the conference room. “Our earliest concerns about players stalling on the Kingmaker quest has been relieved, as player made items are entering the market at a greater rate than expected. Our earliest projections have players rushing to complet
e the final phase of the questline in a little more than eight months.”
The fact that player-crafted items are key for the ability to survive in the more difficult zones of the world has been a concern, and one of the reasons why it was one of the few bits of information that we released prior to release day. When release day hit, and we saw that players avoided the enchanting and crafting classes and even the option to take professions, we reached out to Timmon and Abel. As unpaid consultants, aka alpha testers, they had helped design the economy. Early on we nudged them to use what they’d learned to kick-start the economy.
Sally continues, “Everyone should be prepared to begin focusing on continuing to develop the next arc of the game once we have our king and Kingmaker named. If anyone has any initial concerns, we would love to hear them.”
Frank clears his throat and raises his hand. I groan silently inside.
“Yes, Frank?”
“Can we go over why the Kingmaker quest is advancing so fast?”
I frown, Frank hates the designed quests. He especially hated Kingmaker, calls it a gimmick, a two-million-dollar prize for a game that cost three hundred million to make. His preference was to have all the quests be AI generated and bristles at the limitations on that put into the game. With him as the AI architect, I could understand his issues here. Like having a pet lion only to have it declawed and caged. Everybody loving the NPC has probably also fed his ego.
Sally gives Frank her winning smile, though I can tell by the corner of her eyes she didn’t see this interaction going well. “There has been a large expansion of player enchanted and created weapons and items, the heart-blood of Fair Quest’s economy and the path for players to advance to the more difficult quests. The better the equipment, the quicker players can both level and work toward the Kingmaker’s quest goals. As we had hoped, the initial early burst of enchanted items thanks in part to Timmon and Abel, has gotten many more players interested in crafting. We then use our models to extrapolate when players can get powerful enough to complete the main quest line. We’ve gone over this already during the Kingmaker development meetings. The ones you chose to skip.”
Frank smiles back, but even his best smile ends up kind of smarmy. “I may not have graced the meetings, but I still received and reviewed the relevant data. Under the best-case scenario, we were projecting twelve months until there was a new king. Quite a shift considering our poor start.”
“Timmon and Abel are contributing greatly.”
“Greatly but not the most, and not enough to throw off the projections.” He shoots me a glare, and I have no Idea what he is getting at. “In fact, it is one player unbalancing the situation.”
“Frank, none of this is misbalancing. Everything has been reviewed. Players are not your area. If you have an issue with any one individual in particular, we can have a more appropriate meeting to deal with your concerns.”
Frank starts to flush.
“Sally!” Sun puts his hand up stopping the conversation. He walks over to Frank and puts a hand on his shoulder, bending over to whisper into Frank’s ear. Sun nods his head to the group and starts to walk Frank out of the room, “Sally, continue. There is much more news to go over.”
She continues with her presentation, and all I can think of is, what the hell Frank.
Two hours later I’m back in my office. I have an email from Sun. “Meeting. My office. 2:30 Be there Casey”. I guess it is too much to hope Frank won’t be there, though I don’t know why I’m being dragged into this.
Inside is Sun, Sally, and Frank. “Ok, what did he say I did now?”
“Nothing,” Sun assures me, while Frank’s look tells me otherwise.
“It’s your player’s fault the schedule is off track,” Frank says, pointing at me.
I’ve no idea what he’s talking about. “What?”
Frank continues on, “That kid Nate is producing more and more powerful items. More than we ever predicted would be possible at this point.”
I blink, wheels spinning in my mind until it clicks, the kid that beat Gioachino.
“He’s not my player, and we really should stick to the player’s in-game name for privacy reasons. So, Chess is a crafter. I don’t see the problem.”
Frank is gritting his teeth. “He’s only able to do what he is doing because he got that blip of an achievement from you.”
Such a hungry dog with a bone. “Look, I have supported and still supported skill-based achievements. I like that a grandmaster or the next Bobby Fischer can come in and win them. Chess won fair and square. I even verified with Dimitri, if you want to double check with him. But if Sun wants to change his mind on having skill-based achievements in the game, I won’t protest.”
Sun pops in, “I’m actually thinking of adding more of those, even if that gives some players advantages for having real world skills. Perhaps we can add martial skill competitions for fencing or Judo. I think the value of it outweighs the occasional unforeseen consequences. That man you hired Dimitri has been asking if he can return his fee and get around the NDA, so he can share some of those games we sent him with peers. He was disappointed when we said no.”
I still don’t see why this meeting is happening. “So, what’s the problem?”
“Chess has received another exploit,” Frank bursts out.
Sally just rolls her eyes. She brings up an eagle eye view of the city. Players have privacy inside most of the buildings in the city. Characters are walking up and down the business district of the city center. There are not many players. It is away from most of the action outside the city. “This is what we have, and there is no proof, so it is a moot point.”
We watch the video and Sally starts to narrate. “Chess had just left Laslow after having learned his profession’s spell and skills. He even managed to use his starting empowering spells while melding the crafting items. Something we consider an advanced thing because of the mana pool required to do it. Empowering then melding would have produced lesser quality effects.”
Frank butts in, “He was only able to do that because of that game achievement.”
Sally ignores him and continues. “He spent time going into shops and looking at stalls before he made it to the enchanter’s store.” A completely generic player character in work leathers stands next to the door thinking. Then we watch as the NPC shoots a fireball at him causing him to dance away before approaching the building again until he’s leaning against the wall farther from the door. Chess walks away to the other side of the street stares, then enters the cobbler shop next door. “He then approached the NPC cobbler and purchased some crafting space in the cellar. He leaves, returning with swords he had made at the smithy.”
Frank moves into the conversation, “He had to have been told that the mana stone aura of enchanter’s shops can extend past the physical shop. It doesn’t take him long to come out and take his finished products to the market.”
I still don’t see why I’m here. “Frank, it looks to me that he figured that out on his own. It’s not like he went straight to the cobbler. And he still has to rent out the shop, costing him however much to use it.”
Sally pipes in, “One silver a week, and he purchased a two-gold pair of cosmetic shoes.”
“I wouldn’t call that cheap, though if you like, we could probably patch in a lower area effect from the mana stones in the enchantment shops.”
Sally shakes her head, “Too late for that. He crafted these next after his stint at the market.” She pulls up an item display for mana boosting shoes. “We make that change, and he’ll probably just bedazzle some pair of pants and never leave the smithy again. The expectation that crafters will make or get crafting gear has always been there, so none of this is shocking. Timmon and Able are already getting such gear ready, and news will spread fast from there.”
I look at the room. “Ok, so why am I here?”
Sun speaks up, “I promised Frank a second opinion. He thinks someone from inside the company or with ac
cess may be helping this player, even for that early achievement, though he can’t say how. Sally thinks he’s just a smart, motivated player. He’s already looking to be one of the higher earners from the auction house. I chose you because of your previous interactions.”
I sigh, “All I did was verify that he legitimately beat Gioachino. If the kid’s smart enough to do that, he can probably figure out how to borrow the buff from the enchantment shop and that he needs crafting gear. I don’t see how this is a problem, other than that this kid should be playing and not spending all day making items to sell.”
Sun nods. “Straight farming for money isn’t ideal, but it was always a risk with the economy set up. As it is if he doesn’t change how he’s playing, Chess will run into the mandatory social quest. Frank thinks that’s just another way to game the system. But considering he hasn’t stopped crafting yet, I think he would rather just stay working. Frank, does this satisfy you?”
Frank glares at the room, “For now.” His body language screams that isn’t the case as he forcefully makes his way out of the room.
Sally lets out a long breath. Sun gives her a pat on the back and speaks up again, “He really is a genius at what he does. I’m sure he’ll move on to some other thing to be angry about soon enough. There’s a log of a test character he was using in beta to play chess against Gioachino. He never made more than eight wins. I think there’s some pride riding here for him. How are the mock ups for the next phase of Fair Quest Casey?”
“The political side quests should be developing soon. Frank can be happy that they rely extensively on his AI-generated quest system. It also helps that we had the base of everything set up and active in case we needed to explore that route if Kingmaker stalled. I’m still working on the northern kingdom stuff, running simulations through the AI clusters before we open that area to explore in the next expansion.”