The Curse of Hurlig Ridge_World Tree Online_1st Dive

by M. A. Carlson

  “Oh yeah, we are gonna have some fun tonight,” said Gavin, grinning and swatting me on the back, as I coughed and tried to swallow the thick beer down.

  The crowing rooster the next morning met an unfortunate end as my ‘Holy Smite’ destroyed the far too loud bird without a second thought. How could I have a hangover? How did I even get drunk? This game at this moment was just too real.

  “Oi!” came a loud pounding on my door. “Do not go killing my chickens!”

  It was Dogson.

  “So loud,” I complained, pulling my pillow over my head.

  “Get dressed and come downstairs, we will get you some breakfast and a hangover curative,” Dogson shouted through the door.

  Now that sounded promising. It was with great reluctance I crawled out of my bed then pulling on my shirt and vest as I seemed to have slept in my pants. I slipped on my sandals as I exited the spinning room and stumbled my way to breakfast. Rather than sitting at the bar this time, I dropped into a seat by a corner table, the one with no direct sunlight hitting it. Sadly, it didn’t seem to provide much if any relief.

  Dogson appeared a minute later setting a pint on the table. “Drink first,” he ordered.

  “Your hangover curative is more of the beer I drank last night?” I asked, not completely believing Dogson was suggesting ‘hair of the dog’. The irony was not lost on me.

  “Just drink it, you will feel better, then we can get some food in you and you get off to doing whatever it is you need to get done today,” the dogman ordered.

  I shuddered, as soon as I caught a whiff of the stout beer I wanted it to be as far away from me as possible. I swallowed thickly, bringing it to my lip and taking a drink. I immediately wanted to put the mug down and vomit but Dogson had a hand on the mug preventing such an action. Before I knew it, I was more or less chugging down the entire beer in one go.

  When the pint was empty, and I sort of slammed it down on my table. Dogson collected it and walked away ignoring my swearing.

  It took a moment for me to realize, while I was swearing, the room had stopped spinning. I no longer felt the need to vomit and every little noise was no longer an anvil hammering in my head.

  When Dogson returned with a hearty plate of breakfast a few minutes later, he ignored me when I tried to ask him about the curative. I wondered if he didn’t add something to beer.

  With my hangover relieved, I made short work of breakfast, it was just what I needed.

  It was then, I saw a few exclamation points waiting for me. What exactly did I do last night?

  Your ability to tell a tall tale gains you some new friends +1 Charisma

  Your successful flirting gains you some amorous attention +1 Charisma

  Your alcohol tolerance improves +1 Endurance

  Nice I thought and chuckled to myself. I’ll have to remember to get drunk more often if I wake up with more charisma and endurance for my troubles.

  Eventually, I walked up to the bar after giving the meal a few minutes to settle in my stomach. “Thanks for breakfast and the cure. What do I owe for you for the rooster I smote?”

  “It is fine, the missus is turning it into potpie for dinner tonight, just do not let it happen again,” he answered.

  “Thank you, and sorry again about the rooster,” I said. I didn’t feel too sorry, the rooster had it coming as far as I was concerned.

  “You are not the first and certainly will not be the last. Though I cannot say I have seen a rooster die by holy smiting before, so that was new,” joked Dogson.

  “In my defense, the noise was unholy,” I retorted with a little laugh. “Anyway, where I can pick up some mana restoratives this morning before I head out?”

  “The general store should be opening soon. If you head over now, you should only have to wait a couple minutes for Ned to open the shop, just do not let him draw you into debating the gods or you will never leave,” warned Dogson. “He is a good man but . . . well, you will see when you meet him.”

  “Right, and where is the general store?”

  “Oh, just head for the crossroad, it will be on the corner closest to my Inn.”

  “Great, thank you,” I replied. “Um, by the way, you wouldn’t happen to know who I was flirting with last night would?”

  Dogson let a few loud barks of laughter ring out before he shooed me away.

  I frowned, my curiosity wanted to demand I press for answers, but I had things to do today. Time to get moving.

  Class Quest Alert: Novice Warrior Priest of Issara – Your Goddess’ Path Lies Ahead

  You have been charged by the Goddess you now serve to mete out punishment on the murderer you vowed to bring to justice. Time Limit: 7:59:01

  Reward:

  Hidden

  Chapter 4

  ‘Ned’s Sundry’, the sign over the shop door read. Doors which were firmly closed. I could see a wooden sign in the window, also stating plainly the shop was still ‘Closed’.

  With a sigh, I sat down on the steps in front of the shop to wait.

  “Hey Mic, look, we got a new guy in town,” said a voice to my right in a British accent, easily drawing my attention. What I saw was a man probably at least dozen years older than me. He also had to be at least half-ogre based on his size alone, maybe full ogre, but with their intellect penalties it was rare one could even speak.

  “Blimey, it is a new guy,” said a decidedly more female voice, also with a British accent. This character was also very tall, only a head shorter than the other ogre, maybe she was a female ogre, they had those right?

  “Hello,” I greeted them both with as friendly a wave as I could muster. The pair were tall as I mentioned before but seeing them both close up was even more impressive. They were both at least a good two feet taller than me. Ogres were generally identifiable by their single eye and a small horn in the middle of the forehead which both had. While the man was bald the woman had short spiky hair colored hot pink. They were both muscular looking similar to professional bodybuilders and they both wore blue coveralls and a white shirt.

  “Nice to meet you, mate, I’m Olaf Crushhammer and this is my wife, Micaela Crushhammer,” said the man.

  “Nice to meet you both, I’m Bye-bye Jacko,” I introduced myself.

  “Ooh, good one,” said Micaela. “I make all the baddies say Bye-bye. Hasta la Bye-bye. You’ve got a built-in catchphrase, love. I totally approve.” She ended by giving me two thumbs up.

  “Thanks, I think,” I said laughing a little. This chick was an original character. I took a closer look at them, they were both level 3. Just guessing based on the mining picks hanging from their belts, they were professional miners, still, it was polite to ask. “You guys professional miners?” I asked.

  “Picks gave it away, didn’t they?” joked Olaf, patting the pick at his side almost lovingly.

  “Might have,” I answered.

  “Yeah, we’re miners. We make more in a week mining ore for 40 hours than we did in our jobs working between 50 and 60 hours each. The economy in the World Tree is so much better, regardless of the initial expense to get the two Seed pods,” explained Olaf.

  “Um, no offense but . . . how are you able to . . . you know . . . speak? I thought ogres took big intellect penalties, which left them illiterate and unable to talk for several levels,” I asked, not sure on the best etiquette here.

  “They are, but there is a little exploit we found, it let us get our intellect up to 4 so we could talk,” he answered.

  “Can you share?” I asked, my curiosity getting the better of me. I knew it might have been rude, but I just had to know more.

  “Sure, we met in the army,” started Micaela.

  “We learned a shorthand sign language from when we served. It let us talk to each other, which gave us intellect points the more we used it,” answered Olaf. “We’ve shown others, but it only seems to work for races with big intellect penalties and it only gives you just enough to be able to speak in complete sentences, then it
cuts off.”

  “Which royally bites,” complained Micaela. “It left us both short of being able to read. Now, any book we look at just blurs horribly. It’s a right bother.”

  “It’s still impressive, the way you both were able to boost your intellect enough to talk,” I complimented them. “How long have you two been playing?”

  “We’ve been playing since day one,” answered Olaf.

  This created a disconnect for me. How were they only level 3?

  “How . . . Um, why . . .”I asked, confused by how they could only be level 3 after almost 3 months in the game.

  “Why are we only level 3?” offered Olaf. “We spend all day mining, haven’t done anything but mine. The low-end copper we mine stops giving experience once you hit level three.”

  “So, why not go somewhere with better ore? Or just go kill some monsters and level?”

  “It’s all about supply and demand. Right now, the game is still new, only three months old. There are so many people starting and dropping professions in rapid succession, all in the search to find the one they enjoy. As a result, the demand for copper is through the roof. So, we bought ourselves an ore broker AI. Then we ship our weekly ore intake to it. It then takes a 10% commission on any ore it sells for us to pay for its maintenance. It then mails 10% back to us for our expenses here and deposits the rest in our World Tree bank account. I figure we’ve got three more months before the copper demand starts to fall. But, we’ve only got a month to go before our Seedpods are paid in full then we can mine part time and actually play the game the rest of the time.”

  “Very nice, it sounds like you two have got all your ducks in a row,” I complimented them.

  “We try,” said Mic, grinning.

  “So what classes are you going to go for once you switch to mining part-time?” I asked. I hadn’t read much on Ogres after I read about the illiteracy penalty they start with, so I didn’t know what all was available to them.

  “I’m going shaman all the way. It’s the only caster class an Ogre can have because it relies on the wisdom stat which doesn’t get penalized as an ogre. I’m totally gonna get a spirit wolf,” said Mic excitedly.

  “I thought I read about an Ogre mage a few days ago on the forum,” I countered. I truly had read about one.

  “Ha! Yeah right!” Mic jumped. “How could an ogre get their intellect stat so high? You would have to have a minimum of 50-Int to become a mage. Because of the ogre intellect penalty, you’d have to be at least level 10 with the maximum intellect to pull it off.”

  “Hey now, don’t forget I have to hold out until level 30 for my class,” chided Olaf. Seeing my confused look, he answered the unasked question. “I’m going Ogre Artillery, it’s a rare class,” said Olaf, with what I can only assume was a smug grin, it didn’t look quite right on his face.

  “I’m just telling you what I read on the forums, I didn’t honestly look too deeply into it. Now, what’s an Ogre Artillery?” I asked, my curiosity peeking out.

  “It’s an Ogre restricted class. Think warrior with a cannon mounted on his shoulder but you have to have 750 natural strength to do it.”

  “Ouch!” I said appreciatively. Some firearms existed but they were prohibitively expensive because they were so powerful, other than the cost the only downside was they are stupid slow to reload and fire. But to have a freaking cannon.

  “Yeah, it’s a pain. I have to get to level 30 before I can even start on it. Being unclassed to 30 is gonna be a bloody nightmare of a grind. Plus, the grind to 750-Strength, ugh! Then, I have to enslave a pair of dwarf, gnome or goblin engineers to work as my cannon crew, which is an additional pain, cause if you take the wrong pair of NPC’s it can turn the entire race against you,” Olaf groaned.

  For most classes, the stat point cap per level is 10 points, except for endurance which allowed 20. The game designers did this, so they wouldn’t end up with a level 1 player with a 1000 strength going around one-shotting everything in existence. Various races had an increase to various stats level caps, such as my own 50% increased cap for intellect and charisma. This meant I could gain 15 points to those two stats per level. As for the strength, only ogres could get that kind of strength. One of their racial bonuses more than doubled their strength cap per level. So, where I was capped at 10-strength points per level they had a cap of 25 points per level. On the other side, was their massive Intellect penalty. They could only gain 5 points of Intellect per level. Oh, and an NPC is a Non-Player character or citizen as they refer to themselves.

  “Can’t you just hire a crew? Offer them profit sharing or something?” I asked, curious about the enslaving a crew of engineers, it felt wrong to me.

  Olaf blinked a few times looking at me as if I’d grown an extra head. “I have no idea. The forums only say you have to force them to work for you. I wonder if anyone has ever bothered to offer to hire them on? Maybe there is a charisma component?”

  I shrugged. “It might be worth looking into.”

  “Ooh Babe, we’re totally friending this guy,” said Mic.

  You’ve received a Friend Request from Micaela Crushhammer!

  Do you accept?

  Yes

  No

  “Sounds good to me,” I said accepting, only to get a request from Olaf too which I also accepted.

  “So, what about you?” asked Olaf. “What class you planning to get when you can?”

  “I’m a priest already,” I answered. There was no need to hide it, I am a priest and my spells would make it obvious once I start casting. They didn’t need to know I was a unique class of priest.

  “Nice, healzor, now you’re an even better friend to have,” chattered Mic excitedly.

  I let it go, no need to disappoint them with my awful healing penalties.

  “Your age is showing Mic, no one says healzor anymore,” laughed Olaf.

  “He heals, therefore healzor, don’t try your logic on me,” stated Micaela firmly.

  “Howdy folks, I will have this door open in just a moment,” said a muffled voice from inside the store behind me.

  Looking over my shoulder a saw a thin man with an odd mustache and glasses working on the locks inside the store.

  “Take your time,” I called to him, standing from my seat on the steps.

  “So, what are you here for today?” asked Mic.

  “I need some mana restoratives,” I answered.

  “Ouch, potions are expensive at this level,” cringed Mic.

  “Just looking for mana replenishing water or juice or something. For after combat and between pulls,” I explained.

  “Oh, I hadn’t even considered that,” chatted Mic excitedly, earning a roll of the eye from Olaf.

  “I won’t bother with potions until I start doing dungeons which won’t be for a long time. I’m a lore hound, so I won’t leave this province for a long time,” I explained further.

  “Ugh, you’re actually trying lore? All the forums say its complete garbage, mate,” stated Olaf.

  “I got it as a natural profession with my race, half-high elf and I don’t mind cause I’m also half-human which gives me an extra profession slot. I doubt Lore is as useless as people say, I just doubt anyone has put the time into it. When I checked the forums before I started my dive yesterday, it said the highest level anyone had got lore to was level 3 and that was a pure High-Elf who started with Lore level 3. I started with Level 2 yesterday, I’m already up to level 3. If I get it to level 10 and still haven’t found anything useful for it then I might drop it, but for now, I’ll keep plugging along,” I answered.

  “He’s got a point, hon,” Mic added. “What was the game you used to play? The one where they said shamans were a complete waste of time? Who was the guy? You know the one, he completely wrecked the myth of shaman’s being bad and shocked the entire player base?”

  “Yeah, yeah, whatever. I’ll reserve judgment for now,” said Olaf, a chagrined smile on his ugly mug.

  “Alrighty folks,
come on in,” said Ned, finally opening the door to his shop.

  I entered first followed by Olaf and Mic, both of whom had to duck to get through the door and continue ducking while inside. “Mind me asking what you two are here for?”

  “Don’t mind at all. We both hit the level 3 cap of 75 strength yesterday so we’re getting better picks and bigger bags. Probably a few stamina potions too,” answered Olaf.

  “We wanted miner’s bags, right?” asked Mic loudly. I could see her hunched over a shelf or rack to the side of the shop.

  “I better go help the wife before she buys me a hot pink bag,” joked Olaf.

  “Right, you two want to get dinner tonight? I’m staying at the Dog House Inn over by the townhall,” I offered.

  “Sure, we’ll meet you there around 6:00 or evening bell as they call it here,” said Olaf.

  “Later then,” I said, watching only for a moment as Olaf went to wage shopping war with his wife. I made a beeline for the register and Ned as I could see foodstuffs and bottles of stuff on the shelves behind the counter he currently manned.

  “Morning and welcome,” greeted Ned. “What can do you for?”

  “I need mana restoratives,” I answered.

  “Potions or food based?”

  “Food-based, water or juice if you’ve got it?”

  “I can fill you up with mana-rich water, just need your canteen,” he said which caused me to cringe. My current canteen was filled with stamina restoring water.

  “I guess I need to buy a second canteen then,” I said. I was a little worried because I was down to my last 15-coppers.

  “Sure, a basic canteen will run you 5-coppers and the mana-rich water is another 5,” said Ned.

  I handed over the coppers cringing at my last 5 remaining. Hopefully, I wouldn’t need to buy anything for a while now. I would replenish my money shortly when I turned in the wolf paws and completed some of the quests I picked up.