by Galen Wolf
Tracking (Allows me to track individuals who have passed that way at a rate of one minute before per level - so at Level 10, I can know who's been there 10 minutes before. Level 2, not so great)
In Stealth I got:
Sneak - allows you to hide while moving. Actually quite useful.
Blending. Allows you to throw off mobs by making them do a sudden spot check. Combines with your Hide skill. If mobs fail their spot, you are hidden, but like Hide, Blend is broken on moving. Only works in shady and shadowy areas or at night. Will not work in brightly lit surroundings.
In Herbs I got:
Crabapple - ability to identify and prepare crab apples. Grow in forests and gardens. Doubles player size, making it difficult for mobs or players to shove or drag you and making it easier for you to block doors and exits. If used as a poison to immobilize enemies, they get a Dodge save against it.
Curly Waterweed. Grows in freshwater and gives 10 protection from cold damage for two minutes per level.
In Survival:
Skinning - skinning animals to produce skins which can be made into leather by those with the Tanning skill.
Call Steed - call any loyal steed within earshot. Not that I had a steed.
The Orphanage even gave me a starter bow and 100 arrows. Base shortbow damage of 1-6 with no Strength bonus to damage like you would get with non-ranged weapons. To hit with the bow was using my DEX bonus. My DEX was 20, so my DEX bonus was 10. I was going to be able to hit stuff at least with the bow.
2. Learning My Trade
Now I was Level 2, I considered going to fetch the Easter Egg from its hidey hole in the weedy pool. But I looked at myself, my skills and my gear. I was still going to die. I needed levels. At least one. The way to do that was to join a Pick up Group, or PUG. These were notoriously unpredictable. You could get a fantastic group by chance or be thrown in with a bunch of no hopers and fail the dungeon. But what choice did I have?
The city of Vinab lies where the Great River comes to the sea. It is also stuffed full with starter dungeons. I checked on my HUD for groups that were looking for more. There was one that was nearly full; the standard party size was six and four had already joined. I could tell by the icons in the party advertisement that they had a priest, a warrior, wizard and a rogue. Rogues are what thieves call themselves when they don't want to seem so scummy. Technically, I think people with thieves skills from the good city of Vinab call themselves rogues to differentiate them from the thieves of the bad city of Horrabia. Simple.
I applied to join the group and they accepted me instantly, which maybe on reflection should have made me suspicious.
I rendezvoused with them at the entrance of the dungeon down a narrow alley. There was a broken wooden door and in the soft mud around the door there were small lizard like footprints of what I guessed were kobolds. I took a look at my companions.
The warrior was tall and beefy with long blonde hair. His armor was clearly beginner but he seemed very proud of it. He wielded a double handed great sword, and I wondered how proficient he was. The priest, perhaps technically only, was a woman. Of course in these games you never really know who is a woman — you can play whoever you want, which might be liberating for many. For all I knew this hot chick could be an obese Australian sheep farmer, sucking on a tinny in a small hot room in the Outback. Still, she seemed kind of nervous and kept darting shy glances, as if seeking reassurance.
"This is my first time," she said.
"Don't worry," the warrior said, "I'll look after you, honey."
I groaned. It looked like we were going to play true to trope. At least for him and her.
The wizard was a grey-haired man with a tall pointed felt hat and a robe upon which were embroidered stars and suns. This did not look like standard wizard beginner gear. That gave me hope he might know what he was doing.
The rogue had a black mask on his face and studded leather armor that showed off his lithe figure. He looked the most confident of all of them. I guessed this was someone experienced who was beginning with a new alt. He said little as we stood there while the warrior commenced Level 2 flirting and drew girlish giggles from the Australian sheep farmer priest. The wizard was also quiet - seemingly lost in his thoughts. He had brought a spell book with him and was leafing through the pages and smiling as if visiting old friends.
I shrugged my shoulders. "Okay. We ready?
The priest said again, "I've never done this before."
The warrior predictably repeated, "Never mind. I look after you honey."
I smiled. "So that's a yes we're ready?"
The priest nodded, meeting my eyes then shyly glancing at her feet. The rogue didn't say anything, just strolled to the dungeon door. The warrior elbowed past him and shoved it open, making a tremendous din, beat his chest and roared into the darkness, "I am come! Xoxo**!-1, the Great, has come!" That must be his name.
"Well that's alerted everyone to our arrival." I sighed.
The warrior turned to me. "Don't be such a smart ass, dude. I bad ass and not care about enemies." He kissed his greatsword. "And when they meet this baby, the tiny kobies will know the meaning of pain." He went to high five the rogue who ignored him and stepped past into the dungeon.
I shook my head and followed them in.
It was warm in there and quite dim as there was little natural light. I said, "We doing this the stealthy way or the noisy way?" I looked for the rogue, expecting some support from him. Rogues usually hate how burly fighters find traps with their faces. But the rogue was long gone into the shadows.
"The noisy way!" said the warrior. He winked at the priest. "Yeah, baby?"
S/he giggled. I imagined Bruce sweating in his undershirt squeezing his beer can hard.
After about 10 paces we saw a rope descending into the depths.
"Looks like that's the way to go," I said. The rope was swinging slightly, all that betrayed the fact the rogue had already shinned down. I looked at it and sized up how I was going to descend. The warrior pushed past me, walked to the edge of the pit, reached for the rope, missed and fell like a stone.
I heard the clatter of impact and groans of his pain as he crashed to the floor some 15 feet below. The wizard snickered. The priestess looked alarmed.
I grabbed the rope and lowered myself down and the wizard and priest followed. The warrior lay in an untidy heap. No sign of the rogue. He was probably scouting ahead. In fact he still hadn't said a word. I suspected he planned to zerg to the end before the rest of us even got halfway. PUGS often went this way. He probably thought he was doing us a favor by letting us come with him. It was clear by now the rogue was experienced, possibly the wizard too–but certainly not the priest or the warrior.
Then we were all at the bottom and with a smile on her face because it seemed that she at least knew how to do this, the priest stretched out her slender hands and cast a minor cure wounds spell on the warrior. A white light spread out from her fingers and wrapped itself around the warrior's broken leg, knitting it together.
"Thanks, man," he climbed happily to his feet. "I owe you, baby."
"Maybe you could think about just hanging back a bit?" I scratched my head.
"It doesn't go with my character, dude," he said. "I like to be leader, you know?"
I exhaled heavily. "I think what we should do is let the rogue scout the way for us and report back whether there are any traps. Make sense?"
The wizard nodded.
The priest shrugged. "I'll just go with what everybody else says."
"Okay let's make our way." I peered into the gloom ahead. The rogue had disappeared — or perhaps he was using his stealth skills so that even I couldn't see him. I looked back at the sorry bunch I was with. At least the way these dungeons were instanced meant any offensive magic or weapons used by the party wouldn't hurt party members.
"Hate to be dark down here," the warrior said.
"What?"
"Is too dark." He gestured around.
The wizard didn't react. I went and waved my hand in front of his face. Coming back from somewhere far away, he shrugged, then clicked his fingers and a soft blue ball of light appeared, casting gentle shadows all around.
I said, "Well I'm guessing the rogue hasn't found anything we should worry about, or he would have reported back."
"Let us kill!" the warrior roared, brandishing his starter greatsword above his head.
"Let's go forward cautiously," I said.
"Fuck caution! Fuck it. I fuck it like dead fish," yelled the warrior. The priest blushed girlishly at his bad language. She was overdoing the chick acting. Had to be a dude.
I took my starter bow from my back, knocked the arrow and began to inch my way forward.
"Dude, you gonna have to go faster than that," said the warrior already striding ahead.
I sighed. The guy was going to get himself killed - and probably the rest of us too. It seemed the priest was now his little girlfriend because she ran after him. The wizard still said nothing and stood at the back. For all I knew he was watching porn on another screen because he was paying no attention to what he was doing here. I guessed he would just follow us along at the back to get XP and whatever loot we found and that would be that.
Something moved ahead in the gloom.
The priest blinked rapidly."What's that?"
"Stick close to me, babe," the warrior said, pulling her to him with his mighty arm, then squeezing her armored ass. She gazed up adoringly as he added, "Nothing is gonna hurt you when I'm here."
I held the bowstring taut. The movement came from a low round shape and I could hear a squelching noise. In the blue light of the wizard's spell I saw a slime was approaching. If the rogue had run into it himself, he hadn't dealt with it. I guessed he had no interest in any of the side quests or side XP that could be gathered from the dungeon; he was just going to finish for the completion.
The warrior ran forward with a shriek and began to slice at the slime. He succeeded in cutting it into three large parts all of which had independent life and began attacking him. There was a sharp stink of hydrochloric in my nostrils and I saw the warrior's armor fizz as the acid from the slime ate into it. The warrior shrieked in pain and his own personal priest cast another Cure Light Wounds spell.
"Don't hit it with edged weapons," I yelled. "All you'll do is cut it into pieces and each part will attack you."
Between gritted teeth the warrior shouted, "I know this already. Look at my sword." He held up his beloved starter great sword, and I saw it was more than half gone from the acid.
I said, "There's nothing my arrows can do against it either. My suggestion is we ask the wizard to use some magic to destroy it or even just slow it so we can jump over. They're not fast and I don't think it'll catch us."
"Okay, I'm up for that," the priest said.
I turned to the wizard, "What about you?"
He looked baffled as if summoned from miles away. "Huh?"
"Can you blast the slime?"
"Oh, sure." He clicked his fingers and a ray of fire sprung from them, hitting and destroying the first slime. In the Greenwood you get no XP in the dungeons for any individual creatures. All XP comes from killing mini-bosses or solving puzzles within the dungeon and in any case it was only awarded at the end. If we didn't survive the dungeon, we'd get no XP.
"What about the others?"
"Yeah, yeah." The wizard clicked his fingers again and blasted the left slime and then the right slime.
"You're a handy guy to know," I said. "Play this game much before?"
It is forbidden in the Greenwood to reveal who your alts are. It's just one of the game conventions. He shrugged. "Some."
"Well that works for me," I said. "I like a guy who knows what he's doing. "By the way are you multitasking?"
"What? Me?" He even blushed. That confirmed my suspicion that part of him was far away in a virtual harem boffing girl toons, or maybe boy toons, or maybe both. I've seen Spartacus.
I cleared my throat. "Let's go."
We walked forward more cautiously this time. The rogue hadn't dealt with those mobs, and I suspected he wouldn't have dealt with any of the others that awaited us. After about twenty yards into the brick-walled cellar tunnel that made up this part of the dungeon I got a strange tingling feeling. It took me a while to realize that was my Spot skill working. "Stop! Hey," I said. "There's something here."
The wizard clicked his fingers and cast what I presume was a Detect Traps spell. The spell only worked at low levels because only higher-level rogues and rangers can detect serious traps. But this was a starter dungeon and the spell should be some help. I looked around and saw there was a door glowing green. I walked up to the secret door, but I was flummoxed. I guess the rogue (who had now left us) could have opened it but none of the others here could so we had to leave it behind. Abandoning the secret door, we made our way slowly around the corner as the corridor turned left.
The war party of kobolds jumped out of nowhere.
Four or five them rushed us and the warrior tried to fend them off with his half eaten sword. The priest pulled up a shield and took out her mace and began to lay about her. That was not, however, a good use of her skills. I would have much preferred if she'd stood further back and concentrated on healing people.
I started firing arrows into the kobolds. My aim wasn't bad due to my DEX, but it was taking two shots and sometimes three with my starter bow to kill them. To be fair to the warrior, he'd obviously put some points into his strength because he was doing damage. He didn't look like he had a lot of skill but he certainly had plenty enthusiasm. He was taking hits though but at the same time performing the useful function of keeping the kobold's aggro while I peppered them with arrows.
It seemed that our wizard was also joining the fray because he was sending out the odd Scorching Ray to fry kobolds out of existence. I wondered how much mana he had because once his mana ran out he wasn't going to be much use to us. I guessed he had a knife maybe but no strength and would do one to two damage at best, if he managed to hit anything at all. But for now he was still firing Scorching Rays and that would do. I tend to worry too much.
"Hey!" I called to the priest. "You're gonna be a lot better use to the Party standing back and healing your boyfriend. Look he's already taking damage."
The warrior was bleeding heavily and looking tired. The kobolds were jumping up at him like rats at a dog and were hitting him because of his low armor rating - starter armor badly damaged by acid wasn't going to offer much protection.
The priest nodded—at least she was able to take instructions—and she started to heal. The white light dashed from her fingers and wrapped around her boyfriend and he began immediately to look better.
Maybe we would get through the dungeon alive. Then a kobold shaman approached and cast a Fog spell. I guessed that it worked the same way for his group is for ours—any offensive magic cast by one of our party members would not affect us, and so although I was completely blind and I couldn't see shit to shoot, the kobolds could see us fine.
"Hey—I can't see," shouted the priest.
"Me either," yelled the warrior. And I heard the scraping of metal and a cry of pain and I guessed the kobolds were knifing him good.
"Can you focus your healing on him even if you can't see him?"
"I don't know, the priest said. I'll try."
Good on you, Bruce, I thought.
I saw a faint white light in the middle of the fog as she cast a healing spell on her boyfriend. That worked a little, but we were being totally outclassed here. I heard the crackle and the zing and then smelled the electricity as a Lightning Bolt slammed into the brick above me. I was the target of the shaman's aggro.
I fell back around the corner. The wizard was standing there with a blank look on his face. I guessed he had reached a good bit in his harem adve
nture and it was taking all his attention.
"Hey!" I tapped him on the forehead. "Can you kill this shaman, Mr. Wizard?"
There was a pause and life came back to his eyes. "Oh, yeah, sure." He cast a low-level spell that I think was Gust of Wind. The shaman's mist was blown away and we could see our enemies again. My warrior friend was in a bad way.
"Can you heal him?" I shouted to the priest.
She stood there looking bewildered. "Trying."
"Well, do it—and quick. I think he's on his last legs."
She nodded and cast another healing spell. I could see from the look on her face that she was not a happy girl. "I'm nearly out of mana," she yelled.
That did not bode well. I hoped that within this dungeon there was some kind of recharging shrine, and that we would get there before long.
I had a thought. I reached into my inventory where a batch of the Kura poison nestled that I'd found growing in a little creek that ran through Vinab. You had to drink it for it to take effect, but what if I smeared it on my arrow? The thought crossed my mind as I crushed the weed and wiped it on the head of my next arrow, that it might paralyze me too, but I guess it worked like offensive magic, you couldn't be hurt by your own attacks. I knocked the arrow to the bow and shot the shaman just as he zinged another Lightning Bolt at me that I was able to save against because of my high Dodge save.
The arrow thudded into his scaly chest and his eyes widened. But he didn't freeze. So poisons didn't work on NPCs. The warrior, now healed a bit, grinned and went to slice off the shaman's head with the acid damaged greatsword. "I champion!" he yelled and gave a meaty fist pump.
The priest applauded.
"Go for the magic users," I shouted. "Kill them first."
The warrior frowned. "Who?"
"The kobies casting magic. Like that one." I pointed.
The warrior ducked and jumped right and the lightning bolt sailed over his head.