Spellcraft

by Andrew Beymer

  "What are you talking about?" I asked. "The stuff was clearly too high a skill level for me. There's no way I was going to be able to do anything with that stuff. That's why it was greyed out."

  "Please just humor me for a moment," Trelor said, holding up a hand. "Do you have any more goblinsteel? And by the way, that was really ballsy of you to go out there with the way Horizon Dawn is keeping a lockdown on things around that raid dungeon. Or so I've heard."

  The last bit about hearing what Horizon Dawn was doing out there seemed tacked on quickly. Like maybe he went for walks out there around the raid dungeon himself to get a feel for what they were up to. Which had me wondering what kind of mischief a person working for Lotus could get into out there if they ran into a Horizon Dawn patrol.

  The patrol would probably get the bad end of that confrontation if what I’d just seen with the three stooges was anything to go on. Then again it’s not like there were rumors of people being catapulted into the sky around the raid dungeon and doing some skydiving without a parachute. That seemed like the sort of story that would quickly make the rounds.

  I didn’t even need to check my inventory to know the status. “I don't have any. All of it’s back in my vault."

  Trelor waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. You should be able to pull up the recipe if you bring up your Smithing skill tree. Tell me what you see.”

  I didn’t know why we were even bothering with this. I’d seen the recipes back at the goblin forge and they’d been greyed out. I figured when a Lotus dev asked me to access Smithing recipes I should do it, though, so I searched the skill tree.

  Sure enough there was a menu option near the bottom that allowed me to pull up recipes. There were all sorts of things I could craft, starting at iron and going up to more exotic metals like goblinsteel. There were even more evocative names that promised some pretty kickass stuff for the person willing to go out and craft it. Like dragon armor. Wyvern skin.

  Sure that was a debate as old as time as to whether or not dragons and wyverns were different or the same, but in this case the game was making a distinction so I figured for the purposes of Lotus Online they were different creatures. A chill ran through me as I realized that the presence of those items on my crafting menu also more than hinted at the presence of those creatures in the game.

  Where were they lurking?

  “Got the menu up?” Trelor asked.

  “Yup,” I said.

  "Go down to goblinsteel, please," Trelor said. "Stupid fucking name if you ask me. Steel is something that’s produced by a manufacturing process, not something you dig up out of the fucking ground.”

  "Right?" I said. "I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that was ridiculous."

  “I just made the crafting system,” Trelor said. “I didn’t have any say in what the materials were actually called. Now take a look at the goblinsteel items. Do you see anything you maybe didn’t notice the last time you were messing with it?”

  “To be fair the last time I was messing with these recipes I was deep in enemy territory and just a touch distracted,” I muttered as I looked at the items and…

  Noticed an arrow next to the greyed out items. I thought of highlighting that arrow next to a goblinsteel sword and, sure enough, a list popped up showing the ingredients I needed for a goblinsteel sword. Which included goblinsteel, sure, but I also needed some iron ingots, wood, twine, and a few other items that obviously would’ve gone into making a sword in the real world that Lotus was trying so hard to replicate.

  Not being able to create the damn thing had nothing to do with not having the skill level and everything to do with not having all the right materials.

  "Are you fucking kidding me?" I asked.

  "I can assure you I totally am not," Trelor said. "The problem you had was you didn't have all the ingredients you needed. Not that you didn't have the skill level. Skills in this game don't work like that. You can try to do anything you want in the game. Sure it’s unlikely you’ll succeed at some things if it’s your first time trying it, just like real life, but you can still get skill points for trying. Just like real life. And the time it takes to master an ability is a hell of a lot shorter in this game than it takes to master something in real life.”

  “Well shit,” I said, shaking my head and laughing.

  “You said it yourself,” Keia said. “We were distracted while we were in those mines.”

  “And to be fair we’ve been getting lots of feedback that the ingredients list isn’t intuitively obvious,” Trelor said with a shrug. “All that feedback has been pissing off the GMs.”

  “Those fucking arrows are really translucent,” I muttered, still feeling like an idiot for not noticing them in the mines.

  “Why would it piss off the GMs?” Keia asked.

  “Because it’s a UI issue and not technically a bug,” Trelor said. “Which also means it isn’t going to get fixed any time soon with all the other fires they’re putting out. That’s how I was able to figure out your problem so fast. It’s not my first time at this particular tech support rodeo. At least it’s not my first time hearing about it. I don’t have to actually deal with pissed off customers.”

  "Holy shit," I said, looking the recipes over. "I can actually do something with all that goblinsteel ore!”

  "You can totally do something with all that goblinsteel ore,” Trelor said. "It's just a matter of finding a forge you can use."

  I looked around Trelor’s Oddments half expecting a forge to magically appear. If this was some book or movie this would be the point where the wise old gamer watching over the new guy conjured something like that up to make life easier on the heroes, but unfortunately there was nothing like that in evidence. There was a small Spellcraft table with a few gems lying about, and the Potions Table I’d used earlier of course, but no forge.

  "I don't suppose you could do something to maybe help me out with the whole forge thing?” I asked, knowing the answer before I even asked the question.

  Trelor frowned and shook his head. That was the answer I’d been expecting.

  "I'm afraid not dude,” he said. "I can help you out a little bit here and there around the edges. Push you in the right direction when it comes to finding out how to navigate the crafting system, but I can't interfere directly. Honestly I’m skirting the line revealing myself at all.”

  “But you did,” I said.

  “I did, because I fucking hate Horizon more than I hate the idea of getting fired and writing my own ticket with all the tech companies that want to hire anyone who worked on Lotus hardware,” he said. “Doesn’t mean I’m going to give you direct assistance though. Think of me more as an interested cheerleader.”

  "What about transporting those guys into the air and dropping them on the street?" Kris asked. "That doesn't sound like not getting involved to me."

  Trelor’s frown turned to a slight smile. Very slight. He shook his head and chuckled.

  "Those guys threatened me directly. You're not allowed to threaten Lotus representatives. Whether or not you know a person is a Lotus representative.”

  "Well shit," I said. “The way I see it we have two choices here, and both of them potentially involve getting into a hell of a lot of trouble."

  “And those are?" Keia asked.

  "We have a shitload of goblinsteel ore. You said it yourself, weapons made out of that stuff are really valuable."

  "You bet your ass that stuff is valuable," Keia said. "They use it for all the Horizon stuff they sell from this region."

  “Wait, you’re telling me they have to mine the ore before they can make weapons out of it?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure,” she said. “I just know Torian was obsessive about making sure no one but Horizon Dawn gets at the goblinsteel ore. That’s one of the reasons why they’ve so heavily militarized the area around the raid dungeon.”

  I turned to Trelor. “Is this an area where you can provide some insight?”

  “Why not? It’
s not like this is gonna change how you play the game. The whole system for how they use raw materials was an internal design decision. Horizon wanted to be able to create stuff out of thin air when they were strong arming us with access to their series of tubes, but the old man nixed that.”

  “The old man?” I asked.

  “John Reynolds IV,” Trelor said, a note of awe coming to his voice as he spoke the name of Lotus’s founder. “Naturally he was involved in Horizon trying to push us around since the final decision had to go through him.”

  “Right,” I said. “So you were saying?”

  “The old man said if they wanted to create stuff in the game they had to at least go to the trouble of getting the material, though I know they’re not crafting that stuff traditionally. I think the higher ups thought that restriction would be one of many things that kept them from getting a foothold.”

  Trelor frowned. His look was miles away for a moment. As though he was seeing something unpleasant.

  “Turns out they really outsmarted us on that one,” he said. “No one expected them to pull a Sixer move and turn the rules against us like they did by invading the game world.”

  “Bastards,” I said. Then the question that was the whole reason for us coming here hit me. “Speaking of internal design decisions. Do you know anything about why a bunch of my potions have stayed the same without a level limit while a bunch of other potions suddenly got hit with one?”

  Trelor smiled a thin smile.

  "If someone were to think about it then it might be entirely possible that there was an internal debate where devs were surprised by a potion that gave players a ridiculous advantage. Especially when said potion was a potion made from a flower called Nhewb’s Blessing that was clearly designed to give people an edge when they were new to the game, not at any level.”

  "That's what I figured," I said. “I was surprised it worked the way it did.”

  “You’re not the only one,” Trelor said. “Hypothetically speaking maybe there was a righteous freak out once certain teams realized there wasn't a level requirement for that potion, and maybe somebody, say someone who is very familiar with the crafting system that was used to create that potion, pointed out that it wouldn't be very fair to punish the person who discovered that potion even if it would be fair to make all the potions moving forward work as intended."

  Trelor spread his hands and shrugged with a huge grin splitting his face.

  "At least if I was a betting man then that's how I’d assume it went down. I'm not really all that versed in internal office politics, after all, being but a humble wizard running a simple magic shop on the edge of the magic district in a small out of the way goblin town."

  This was interesting on a couple of levels. Sure there was the part where I was sitting on a fortune thanks to a suggestion from Trelor, but there was also something more interesting going on here.

  Kris falling from a great height when she arrived in the game for the first time. The ingredients list not being intuitively obvious on the crafting screen to the point that Lotus was getting complaints. The Nhewb’s Blessing potions not having the appropriate restriction. All that talk about the GMs getting annoyed by UI issues because there were so many real fires to be put out.

  What Trelor was telling me, without coming out and saying it, was there were bugs galore waiting to be found. So far I’d profited from one, and I wondered what else was waiting to be discovered. The bugs were out there, just like the dragons, waiting to be found.

  "So I'm sitting on a fortune because some designer screwed up with a level restriction?” I asked.

  “Funny things happen when people are working on crunch time,” Trelor said with a shrug.

  A wave of dizziness washed over me. I’d already made a shitload of money just from selling a few potions and one spell infused weapon. I couldn't imagine what that fortune was going to look like by the time I’d sold through all the potions, let alone when I got access to a forge and could start cranking out real weapons.

  I turned to Kris, who held up her hands as though she was expecting an attack. Or, more likely, she was expecting the mother of all smartass remarks.

  "Don't you say a fucking word," Kris said.

  Like hell I wasn’t going to say a word.

  "All that time you bitched at me!" I said, riding right over my friend. "All those times you told me it was useless to pick those flowers, and now what's going on? We're rich!"

  "I mean I wouldn't say you’re rich quite yet," Trelor said. "The exchange rate is pretty nice, though. And if you were to take your money and reinvest, then…"

  I felt even more lightheaded. The exchange rate. Of course. I’d been so busy playing the game that I hadn’t thought about a money transfer. The game was new enough that most money exchanges were going from the real world to the game world rather than in the other direction, but…

  My head swam as the implications sank in. I quickly pulled up a window that connected me to the wider Internet. I nearly fainted when I looked at the exchange rate between the game and the real world.

  The dollar wasn't exactly in the greatest shape these days, a consequence of America abdicating its position as a world leader in the early 21st and suffering the financial consequences that came with creating a power vacuum that other countries were more than happy to fill, but that simply meant that the exchange rate was even more in my favor. Odd that virtual gold in a videogame would be worth more than the once almighty dollar, but that was the case.

  And that left me with more money than I’d ever had in my life. I’m pretty sure it was more money than my parents ever had, for that matter.

  "Holy shit," I said. “I’m rich!”

  57

  Business Plan

  “How much money did you get from the Auction House anyway?” Keia asked.

  “We’re talking tens of thousands,” I said.

  Her face did that thing where her eyes went all distant. No doubt she was checking something on the wider Internet. No doubt that something she was checking was the current exchange rate of gold to dollars.

  I could tell when she found that exchange rate and had done some basic math in her head, because her eyes went wide.

  “Holy shit,” she breathed.

  “I know, right?”

  “I mean you’re not like super wealthy or anything,” she said. “But you’re worth more money than anyone on our level!”

  That deflated me just a little. There was nothing like having the girl of my dreams telling me I wasn’t quite at the level of badass I was aspiring to in my boasts to take some of the wind out of my sails.

  “That’s still pretty good,” I said. “It’s more money than I’ve ever had too.”

  Not that I’d ever had all that much money to begin with, but still. That was a hell of a lot of cash floating around in my virtual bank account. More money than I ever thought I’d see, that was for damn sure.

  Suddenly the whole world felt like it was opening up for me. I’d been worried about what I was going to do when I inevitably graduated high school and was forced to strike out on my own thanks to dear old dad not believing in providing room and board after graduation, but with the money I had now I could get a down payment on a decent small efficiency apartment on a level of the arcology where I didn’t have to worry about tweakers trying to rob my ass of my newly acquired money.

  Sure it wouldn't last forever, I’d have to be careful with it, but I was still suddenly doing very well for myself.

  And I was going to have to keep that a secret from my parents. The last thing I needed was for them to see the money I was pulling in and suddenly start treating me like a piggy bank. I didn’t think my mom would do that, mostly because she spent all her time catatonic on the couch, but I wouldn’t put it past dear old dad.

  "If I might," Trelor said.

  "What's that?" I asked, my head still spinning.

  "If you have a chance it might be a good idea for you to take some of t
he money you just earned and reinvest," he said. "You might find that you can turn that little windfall you got from those potions into something even bigger. Maybe even beat Horizon at their own game?"

  He wiggled his eyebrows at that last bit, and I saw another world of possibilities opening up in front of me.

  "Damn," I said, envisioning a world where I was competing with Horizon for supremacy on the Auction House.

  I wouldn't be just needling them and pissing them off by creating embarrassing videos or reselling some of their gear that, at the end of the day, they’d already been paid for by the time I lifted it from their stooges and tossed it up on the Auction House at a discount.

  No, if I took them on in the Auction House, if I took a shot at creating a crafting empire that could somehow rival what they were shoveling onto the markets, then I’d be getting them in the only place that truly hurt a soulless multinational corporate conglomerate that was slowly taking over the world: right in the pocketbook.

  "I think we need to take some risks," I said, my decision made.

  I just hoped Kris and Keia would go along with me on this audacious plan that was starting to form in the back of my head, because it was going to be tough to pull off without some help. I glanced at Trelor, but what he’d said about being here more as a cheerleader was fresh in my memory.

  Besides, if I was going to pull something off then I wanted it to be because I did it myself. Not because I got a leg up from a Lotus employee. Unless, of course, I was getting that leg up by exploiting something he’d inadvertently let slip.

  "What kind of risks?" Keia and Kris asked at the same time.

  “We need to get to a forge so I can make some goblinsteel gear, and then hit that gear with spell infusions. If that starter sword I infused is anything to go by then I imagine we’ll start pulling down some serious scratch with decent weapons made of ore from the Goblinsteel Mines.”