Hilly-Rose, who told us she preferred being called Hilly but had also adopted the stage name of Lil Ro during a failed attempt at music stardom when she was twelve years old, had been recruited by Blade and Sheath four weeks ago. They put her on ice - metaphorically speaking - until today, at which point her employee login credentials for BaS activated.
“Sit by the fire, traveler,” said Linc in a stupid wizard-like voice – “And tell us your tale.”
“Huh?”
“We’re gonna be working together. So let’s get to know each other.”
Hilly shrugged and settled down in front of the fire. The flames flickered upon her blood-splattered shirt. “Well, okay,” she said.
Hilly’s tale wasn’t much worth waiting for, she told us. Outside of BaS, Hilly had tried lots of jobs, trades, and college courses. She’d tried so many that it was like she was trying to collect them.
“It exasperates my sister Lou, but nothing sticks with me. It’s like I got this weird tweak of personality where I get heavily invested in something for a few weeks or a month and really delve into the details, but then the interest wanes. Before I know it, I’m moving on to something else. Same reason I’ve had tons of relationships and never celebrated an anniversary, and why I’ve lived in eight different countries.”
“Nothing wrong with itchy feet,” said Linc. “Usually a sign you’ve got some scratching to do. Where are you living now?”
“I burned through my savings, so I’m back home. Evanston.”
Hilly had already leveled up three times, which put her ahead of Linc and me. I asked her what she’d been up to during that time.
“So I logged in, I started here, waited around a while, then got bored. Started exploring a little and kept getting attacked by grunders. They killed me three times in a row and gave me some real bitches of debuffs. Then I managed to get one of them. I knocked the little shit out and he dropped these leathers. They’re my size. Who knew? It got a little easier after that, and then when I leveled up and scored a point in power, it got easier still.”
“We’re lucky you came back when you did,” said Linc.
“Ah, well. You’d only have died. It isn’t like you die in the game and die in real life, like some crazy sci-fi movie.”
“So I guess that makes the three of us,” I said. “Between us, we’re supposed to build a town, huh?”
“Yup. We just need to settle on a name.”
“Is that important right now, when we don’t even have a chair to sit on, let alone any buildings?” said Linc.
Hilly shrugged. “I’d just feel better getting it done. Naming a thing makes it more real.”
“Alright. How about Danfoss,” said Lincoln.
“Eh, that’s not particularly bad but it doesn’t seem right.”
“Nantwich.”
I shook my head. “Sounds like a place you’d read about in Anne of Green Gables.”
“Mirfield,” said Lincoln. “Trudi. Garial, Luling, Kinkallen.”
“Where the hell are you gettin’ these from?” said Hilly. “Are you using a fantasy town name generator or something?”
“…yeah.”
“I have something,” I said. “What about Hill Valley?”
Hilly and Lincoln looked at each other.
Then shook their heads simultaneously.
“This isn’t a hill.”
“And it ain’t a valley.”
“I know,” I said. “It’s the name of the place in Back to the Fu…you know what? Let’s settle on a name later.”
Daylight seeped into the sky not long afterwards, marking the start of a new BaS morning. Hilly, who had appointed herself as the head of security for our community – when it actually became a community – gathered the corpses of the grunders. There were three of them.
“Whistle while you work,” she sang, almost under her breath, “just whistle while you work…”
She took three of the biggest branches that Lincoln had brought from the woodland and she drove them into the ground. Unhappy with how deep she got them, she removed the branch from the ground, dug a deeper yet narrower hole using the tip of her sword, then stuck the branch back in so it was upright, like a pole.
She shook the pole. It stayed put. “That’ll do,” she said, then dug another two holes for the other branches.
Then, she used vine string to tie the grunder corpses to them. They formed a grisly triangle, with a dead grunder staring out from each point. It looked less like the peaceful village I had in mind, and more like the future construction site of Vlad the Impaler’s holiday home.
I was about to tell her that stringing up corpses wasn’t the best way to start building a town, when I got a notification.
Buff received
Your current location has received a buff.
+50% deter [weak] grunders
+10% deter strangers
That changed things a little. I hadn’t realized that stuff like this would give our town buffs or debuffs. I guessed it was part of the whole player-content system. The things you did mattered.
Linc eyed the corpses. “Really?”
“It’ll stop them attacking while we’re building stuff,” said Hilly. “Unless you got a better idea?”
“At home, when I had mice in my house, I laid humane traps.”
“And did that work?”
“Not really. I see now that what I should have done is killed the mice and then strapped them to tiny popsicle sticks and arranged them all around my house.”
“You mock,” said Hilly, “But if something works, it works.”
From the ground where the grunders’ corpses had been, Hilly looted three bows and twenty-six arrows. She gave a bow to each of us, and we split the arrows between us. I got six.
The bow was a yew recurve bow, named for the tips that curved away when the bow was strung. It was simple and looked homemade. Though I guess, in a sense, every weapon in BaS was homemade. Made by whom was the question. The bow I now owned was so basic that it was probably more useful to me if I deconstructed it for its materials.
“Can we still use these without some kind of archery skill?” asked Linc, pulling the string back and twanging it.
I nodded. “Sure, in the same way you could use one in real life – just because you haven’t practiced, doesn’t mean you physically can’t use it. Having a skill just increases your chances of scoring a hit and it increases the damage you’d do. It’s easier in BaS because you don’t need to learn the basic techniques. It’s like we discussed before – the game gives you a kind of fake muscle memory, and it’s boosted when you take a skill to the next rank.”
To test this, Linc nocked an arrow and aimed at a grunder corpse. His arrow went way over, but he seemed impressed. “I never fired an arrow in my life, but it felt natural. This game’s really something.”
With his next hit he stuck an arrow in the grunder’s belly, making its corpse wobble.
“Alright, alright,” said Hilly, yanking the arrow out and checking the tip, then wiping it on her shirt. She tossed it back to Linc. “Waste not want not.”
I was pleased with Linc’s thawing mood in regard to the game, and I nocked an arrow to show him how it was done. I had already done archery in real life. When I was a kid, my dad used to take me to Easter Park near our house, where they offered classes to under 10s. That basic knowledge didn’t add much to my in-game character technique wise, but it meant I felt a little more confident.
I nocked an arrow and pulled the bowstring tight and aimed at a grunder. Holding my breath, I released. My arrow flew on a true course toward it, before arcing right and sailing away.
“Closer, but still a shitshow,” said Hilly.
She readied an arrow. Squinting, she let loose. Her arrow thwacked into the wooden stick holding the grunder upright.
Shrugging, she said, “Guess none of us are Robin Hood right now.”
“What happened to waste not want not?”
“I’m only human. I had this urge to show the both of you up. Besides, as long as you don’t lose or break the arrow, it’s okay.”
“What’s the plan now?” asked Linc.
“I reckon we get as much wood as we can, and explore the area some more at the same time,” I said.
The three of us went into the woods and spent all day collecting wood. First, we combed the perimeter and collected every branch and every decent-sized stick, and we piled them up back at our base.
Next, I made a crude knife for myself, and we started cutting away vines to build up a hefty supply of them. Hilly, possessing an iron sword which she’d looted from grunders and then used to kill even more grunders, was more adept than Linc or me at cutting through the branches.
I quickly found that crude knives and axes made crappy hewing tools, and my arm started to tire by the time we had a decent supply.
Finally, we used our crude axes to chop away the biggest branches that our tools would allow. As a test, I tried cutting down a tree using a crude axe, but the tool fell apart after two strikes and it barely made a dent on the trunk.
Back at our base while I started working with the wood, Hilly and Linc went exploring.
“Got a hankering to stretch my legs,” said Linc. “Been a while since I had a good walk. In real life, I mean.”
“You a cripple or something?” said Hilly.
“If I was, you reckon that’d be the best way to ask me that?”
“Sorry. I’m not good with…you know…talking. I didn’t mean anything by it. I just mean, lots of folks play BaS for the sense of being able to walk again, with full immersion and stuff. Hear it’s used for physio, too. It doesn’t help physically, but it’s great for building up confidence. And that’s half the battle sometimes.”
Linc explained what had happened to him with the ‘fucking pothole’ - as he put it – and how he wasn’t going to be walking much further than his bathroom anytime soon.
“I ain’t gonna complain about us having a forager around. You know what my favorite part of BaS is?” she said.
“Killing stuff?”
“Nope. Grub. The fact that food in here tastes like food. I got a helluva sinus infection when I was a kid, and stuff just hasn’t tasted right since then. In here, though, no such problem.”
“You can’t taste at all?” I said.
“I can, but it's muted. Except for in BaS. The game gets around it. Stuff tastes great in here. I wanna eat some nice rabbit cooked over a spit.”
“Do we have to eat to stay alive in here?” said Linc.
“You really are the biggest noob in the world, aren’t you?” I said.
He shrugged. “They gave me a manual and I read it. Or I tried. But I’ve always been an outdoors kinda guy. Paying attention isn’t my strong point.”
“We don’t have to eat, but you can get buffs from it, so it’s worthwhile. And some foods restore health, too.”
“Plus things taste great,” said Hilly.
The two of them headed toward the woodland, quickly becoming tiny dots in the distance. Way over in the mountains, I saw movement. A few shapes scuttling over it, but they were way too far away to make out. It could have been some players crossing over it, or maybe NPC critters on some kind of pre-programmed patrol.
I reckoned at some point we’d all have to venture over to the mountains and spend a few days mining. There would be coal deposits near the surface, as well as metal ores hidden deeper. Eventually, we were going to need to construct things using metal, and it’d be great to supply ourselves rather than having to buy resources from merchants.
While they were gone, I opened up my improvisation menu. I was greeted with the same options as before - Crude axe, crude Bole, crude knife, crude spear, and crude hammer.
None of these were what I needed, but there was a way to fix that. According to the guides on Sheesh, ranking up in improvisation increased the options available. For most crafting classes, you could also buy craftprints that allow you to make stuff, subject to having the correct skill rank and materials.
For the next few in-game hours, I used my improvisation skill to instacraft lots of crude hammers, knives, and axes. Soon, I had so many that I could have equipped an army with them, as long as they didn’t mind knives that blunted quickly and axes that couldn’t wait to fall apart.
One thing that caught my attention was that even though the tools were all listed as crude, some were slightly better than others. One crude axe, for example, had a thicker handle than another and just looked more solid in general. I guessed that even within the [crude] category, there was variation in item quality.
Finally, after amassing a pile of the shoddy tools, I got a notification.
Skill leveled up: Improvisation
New rank: Novice
- Improvisation quality increased
- Improvision speed increased
- Improvisation options increased
*Reward gained: Crafting chest*
As well as earning me a rank increase in this individual skill, my use of improvisation had steadily been earning me general EXP. Right now, I was 80% toward earning level 2, at which point my attribute and total skill capability would increase.
As for becoming a novice in improvisation…well, it had various bonuses.
I tested it out by creating a crude axe. The timer that appeared as I was crafting went by much quicker. Not only that. The axe itself looked sturdier, and the stone edge that acted as a blade was sharper. Holding it, it felt a lot more secure now. I wouldn’t be able to fell a tree with it, but it was better at least. The new axe was listed in my inventory as an [improved] crude axe.
Leveling my improvisation also improved the selection of things that I could make. These included buckets, bowls, and even crude bedframes. I still needed the correct materials to make the things, of course. If I didn’t have the materials, then the improvisation options in my inventory were greyed out.
In my inventory was the crafting chest that I had gotten as a reward. I was used to getting reward chests from previous playthroughs of BaS. You usually got them for special events, such as leveling a skill for the first time, reaching a memorable level, or conquering a dungeon.
I dragged the chest from my inventory and set it on the ground. It was the size of a shoebox and had a flat, rectangular lid. It was also locked by a small padlock fastened over a latch, the type you might secure a garden shed with.
I yanked the padlock. The latch rattled. Turning in a circle, I saw no sign of a key.
Scratching my head, I stood for a moment and regarded the chest, wondering if I was going mad. Would the game really reward me with a chest that I couldn’t open? Was there something I was missing?
The only thing I could think was to use a hammer. Taking a [crude] hammer from my inventory, I started bashing the padlock. After eight swings my hammer fell apart.
“Damn it.”
I accessed my improvisation menu and crafted another hammer. Unlike the others, this new hammer came out as an [average] improvised hammer. The handle looked like it was made with something approaching competence, and the hammer head seemed kinda solid.
After a dozen blows with the new hammer, the padlock shattered, and I allowed myself a celebratory fist pump.
I opened the chest.
Craft Chest opened:
- 1 [mediocre] blacksmith hammer
- Crafter’s Gloves
- 500 nails
The blacksmith hammer and the nails were pretty obvious as to their purpose, but the crater’s gloves interested me. They were a deep tan leather and reached all the way up my forearm. The fingers were padded thicker than the rest, likely to avoid the accidents that occurred when you were working with hammers and metal all day.
When I put the gloves on, I got a notification:
Crater’s Gloves
- Crafting speed increased by 25%
Eager to try out my new skill rank and my new gloves, I got to work.
It was time to create something that resembled a building.
From the list, I selected ‘wooden panel.’ To create this, I needed five or more long wooden sticks and enough string to lash them together. In my improvisation menu, I could vary the number of sticks however I liked if I needed to create a bigger panel.
I created four panels to serve as walls, and then two more panels that could be slanted and become a roof. When these were ready, an option in my improvisation list was available.
Improvisation:
[Small] Wooden Hut
I created the hut. A timer appeared, and this one went so slowly that I minimized it on my screen and started looking up strategy guides on town building on the Blades and Sheesh website. Town building was a complex beast, and many factors decided whether a place failed or flourished.
A water supply was one of the key ones. Luckily, Sas had arranged for us to start close to a lake, and with two separate streams a little further to the east and west. We wouldn’t struggle for water. Nor would wood be a problem, with the forest not too far away. I reckoned at some point, Linc, Hilly, and I were going to have to go to the distant mountain, too, and collect stone and metal.
Your [Small] wooden hut is complete.
Warning: Inventory full
Lacking a bag or container of any kind, my starter inventory was comprised of sixteen squares. Six of them were taken up by some of the things that I had crafted, such as the crude axes and knives. The other ten were filed by the wooden hut, waiting to be placed.
One thing was clear – I was gonna need a better inventory system.
In any case, I had a hut to place. I set it within the borders marked by the grunder corpses strung up on wooden poles.
It was a small structure, a little taller than a garden shed and only a little bit wider inside. Stepping into it, I could stand without bending my neck, but only just. Still, after spending hours in a full immersion outside field, it was nice to be indoors. I almost hoped it would rain so I could hear it patter on the roof. No such luck – it was an annoyingly sunny day.
I had only been in there for a second when I got a notification:
Buff gained – Indoors [Minor]
- 1.5 speed health replenishment
This was new. I had never gotten a buff for standing indoors before. After thinking about it, I decided it must be because I was standing inside a structure that I built. Sure enough, a quick check online revealed that only the creator or owners of a property received a buff while standing inside them.
For the next few hours I got to work creating more huts. I had enough wood and vine string for three of them, with plenty of smaller pieces of firewood left over. I divided my time between waiting for my improvisation timer to run out on the huts, and using the VR notepad system to make a vague plan for what I needed to make next.
By the time Linc and Hilly returned it was night, which meant they’d been away for thirty real minutes. Linc rushed in excitedly, and he headed straight into a hut and clomped around in it.
He popped his head out of the doorway. “This is really mine?”
I nodded. “It’s just a crappy hut.”
“Sure, but it’s my crappy hut!”
Hilly approached me, taking in the sights of three wooden huts in the middle of nowhere, with grunder corpses nearby.
Linc left his hut. “So. You’ve been busy.”
“They aren’t much,” I said, “But at least we’ve met the requirements of having a group of buildings.”
“So this place is a hamlet now?”
“Not quite.”
On my menu system was a listing for ‘Property management’. When I accessed it, it showed me Hut A, Hut B, and Hut C. When I clicked on Hut A, I saw the following:
Hut A
Condition: 5/5
Owner: Unassigned
Designation: Unavailable.
Getting scored five out of five for something was usually great, but not in this case. Condition ratings went all the way up to ten thousand. Basically, my huts were a strong wind away from being blown to Oz.
As for the designation, the Sheesh guide told me that player-created buildings could be designated as shops, colleges, guilds. All kinds of things. You had to meet certain criteria to make that possible, and the structures themselves had to be made to a certain level of craftsmanship. Wooden huts made from untreated wood by a novice improviser couldn’t be designated as much other than ‘dwellings’.
Selecting the ‘owner’ tab, I was presented with three options – me, Linc, or Hilly. I chose myself. For huts B and C, I accessed the management system and changed the ownership status to Linc and Hilly.
When I assigned hut C, another prompt appeared.
You have satisfied the requirements for Hamlet – Level 1. Would you like to assign this location as a hamlet?
“Are you guys seeing this?” I said.
“Yup.”
Hilly nodded.
“Lemme just check the guide and see if there’s anything we need to know or we’re missing before I accept,” I said.
The guide on Sheesh had the following to say with regards to creating hamlets:
Once a player has satisfied the requirements for hamlet – Level 1, they will get a prompt asking them to finalize it. This can’t be undone, and the hamlet they create will become a location added to the BaS map.
It won’t show on the main map because only important places appear there. It will, however, appear on players’ minimap when they are close enough to the hamlet. The higher the level of the location, the stronger its ‘map signal’ will be.
If the player who creates a hamlet stops working on it or even deletes their game character, the hamlet will exist until it is claimed by another player. If it isn’t, the hamlet will ‘degrade’ and eventually wither into dust.
Players can only own one hamlet/town/city. If a party of players takes joint ownership, this limit still counts.
“Once we finalize this place,” I said, “We can’t make another one unless we dismantle it. I don’t wanna do a whole heap of work just to find out we placed our hamlet in the wrong place.”
“But you already set your huts here,” says Linc.
“They didn’t take much to make. I’d rather lose a few huts now if it means getting a better location.”
“Linc and I have explored some,” said Hilly. “This place is close to a travelers’ road which has links to a few towns and cities and forts nearby. There’s Dustpost, Westfell, Reenview. Some good trading links there.”
“Plus the lake will be good for fishing, and there’s plenty of game to hunt around here. Not to mention the herbs spread over the field and the woodland,” added Linc.
“What about the grunders?” I said.
Hilly made a dismissive motion with her hand. “Low level critters. I wouldn’t make any decisions with them in mind.”
“There’s also something else to consider,” said Linc. “The devs arranged for us to start here. I think this is where we’re supposed to build anyway, so any talk of moving is probably moot.”
“Then we’re settled on location. We just need a name.”
For the next ten minutes we each offered suggestions on names for our little settlement, only to be vetoed by one or both of the others. Linc kept offering the names he got from an internet generator, while I suggested variations of places in Tolkien’s Middle Earth. He was especially fond of the Shire. Hilly had a thing for western movies, and she suggested things like Tombstone and Yellow Rise and Dodge.
“We’re getting nowhere here,” I said. “Let’s just think about this. What kind of place do we want this to be?”
“We gotta build a town. That’s what Sas is paying us for.”
“Sure. But there are different kinds of towns in BaS. Dustpost is where you go for combat training and quests. Westfell is full of colleges. Reenview has tons and tons of all kinds of traders and crafters.”
“Can’t we just keep building?” said Linc. “What’s that saying? Build it and they will come?”
I shook my head. “I was reading a guide on Sheesh. For later hamlet and town levels, one of the criteria is having a certain number of folks visiting the town. That means we gotta make it appetizing. It also means we can’t keep the grunder corpses strung up. Especially when they start to rot. This place will start smelling like a crypt.”
“So we need a reason for players and NPCs to visit our little slice of BaS rather than the hundreds of other places in the game,” said Hilly.
“Exactly. Any ideas?”
When neither of them was forthcoming, I told them that I had a suggestion.
“I got an idea from both of you,” I said. “The way Linc was bumbling around, and how Hilly’s favorite thing about the game is the taste of the food. I think we should make a place for new players. Only, something different from the starter towns where you get quests to go kill rats and stuff. Some people play BaS because it’s an escape from reality, right? It’s a nice place to be. So I say let’s make this a place for new players to go, where they can relax and enjoy full immersion for what it should be – an escape.”
“You got a name for this little slice of digital heaven?” asked Hilly.
“I do, but maybe it’s stupid.”
“C’mon. I once visited a street in England called Butt Hole Road. It can’t be worse than that.”
“Okay then,” I said. “Welcome to Blade’s Rest.”