Blade’s Rest
Population: 3
Later that night, Blade’s Rest was raided by grunders. I counted twelve of the child-sized vicious rats, wielding primitive swords and bows, dressed in black leather armor that made them look like scarab beetles.
They snuck up on us and surrounded us, and we only knew they were coming when I got stabbed in the back and received surprise attack damage.
I barely had time to grab a crude spear from my inventory before three of them surrounded me and started hacking at me with daggers that dripped with some kind of black slime.
Linc died shortly after me, while Hilly put up a better fight, using her iron sword to take out two of the creatures. Even she couldn’t hold out against a swarm. I was on a resurrection cooldown, so all I could do was watch from a bird’s eye camera view as the little bastards tore her apart.
With the three of us dead, the grunders rampaged around the hamlet, hacking the huts to pieces. Then, they took the grunder corpses down from the poles surrounding our hamlet. One grunder cocked his leg and urinated on the wreckage of our huts, laughing in a high-pitched squeal as he and his group scampered away into the night. They became black dots on an already darkened landscape, quickly disappearing from view.
Linc and I resurrected first. Hilly was a higher level and had died a little later, so she resurrected thirty seconds after us. The three of us stood there looking at the sorry wreckage of our hamlet.
I sifted through the debris, seeing which of my hut panels and pieces of wood and vine string could be salvaged and added back to my inventory for crafting. Each hut had cost me at least 25 pieces of wood and 100 vine strings to make, and less than 20% of that was salvageable now. The grunders had really done a number on us.
“Why didn’t the corpses stop them from attacking?” said Linc. “They were supposed to be a deterrent.”
“A 50% chance of a buff isn’t a guarantee. Besides,” said Hilly, “I got a look at them. They’d tied strips of cloth around their eyes so they couldn’t see the corpses. Since they’re grunders, I’m guessing they have no problems getting around by using their sight alone.”
“That’s…that’s pretty clever.”
“Anyway. Does this mean we lose hamlet status?” asked Hilly.
“Nope. The menu says I have 48 in-game hours to rebuild a group of huts.”
“Little assholes. Can’t believe they did that,” said Hilly.
Linc shrugged. “Kinda asking for it. If grunders strung up human corpses around their camp, any half-decent person who passed by would get pretty pissed off.”
“I say we train up, craft some better weapons, and go slaughter them,” said Hilly.
“I heard a wise man talking about revenge and battle once, and he said something that really opened my eyes.”
“What was it?”
“He said, ‘When two tribes go to war, a point is all that you can score.”
I paced around the hamlet ruins. Given that we only had three huts, it didn’t take long for me to complete my circuit.
“I say we rebuild Blade’s Rest back to its former glory. We make it stronger than it ever was.”
“Stronger than three huts?”
“Exactly.”
“Alright, well, I’m in charge of security,” said Hilly. “So this is on me. The grunder corpses should have deterred them, but I think it had the opposite effect. The grunders who killed us were ranked [elite]. I need to come up with a defense system that doesn’t involve corpses.”
Linc nodded. “That’d be nice. I’ll go gather resources.”
“I guess that leaves me rebuilding this place,” I said.
With the other guys gone, I rebuilt the huts. If I had the skill or resources I would have built better structures, but right now improvised huts were all that was available to me, and we at least needed some structures to make this place feel like a hamlet.
Opening my improvisation screen, I first strung together wooden poles and vine strings, creating the panels that would form our huts. With these made, an ‘improvised hut’ option became available. I created three of them.
I had thirty-six decent-sized pieces of wood available. When I say decent sized, they were actually classified as ‘medium’.
On my improvisation screen, these were available for crafting into [crude] spears. I crafted all of them and then spent a few game hours digging small holes around each hut and then driving spears into the ground, slanted with the sharp end poking outwards, forming a basic defense for each structure.
Using my improvisation skill didn’t rank it up, but it earned me general exp. With that, came something very welcome.
You have leveled up to 2
- 2 attribute points unlocked
- skill slot unlocked
The level up system in BaS was pretty simple to follow. For every level up you earned, you were given a corresponding number of attribute points to spend. If you reached level 3, you got 3 points. If you reached level 10, you got 10 points.
As well as that, each level up unlocked a skill slot, and you could only learn a new skill if you had enough spare skill slots. Some of the more advanced skills took up two or even three slots, but I didn’t have to worry about that for a long time.
Here was where it became interesting. Above the skill system, was the class system. There were tons of classes in the game, and each class had a list of compatible skills. If you collected 5 of these skills, you earned a class.
For example, the ‘ranger’ class could be unlocked by collecting any combination of the following skills: tracking, hunting, foraging, survivalism, cartography, exploration, animal handling, stealth, and many more.
Class slots unlocked every 5 levels. A player could collect classes, and activate them at will, often earning a big boost that otherwise wouldn’t have been available.
Finally, there were perks. You got them every three levels, so I was close to earning my first perk. Given that there were many ways of using skills to earn EXP, available perks were often tailored around whatever skills you used to level up.
For now, all I had to worry about was spending my attribute points. I’d already put some thought into this.
Without even talking about it, it seemed we’d all fallen into roles within our town. Hilly was in charge of our defense, Linc was the resource guy. I was the builder. Eventually, I was going to have to craft some complex things, and that meant learning high-level crafting skills and using complex design blueprints.
Knowing the attitude requirements for such things, I put my first two points into intelligence.
Intelligence increased to 3
- Crafting speed increased
- Crafting options increased
- Skill potential improved
Those three things weren’t the only things that had improved in my character. There was a whole load of under the hood improvements that happened every time you increased an attribute.
I had, for instance, probably increased my overall mana, even though mana wasn’t displayed in the user interface and I wasn’t a magic user. Regardless, it would have happened. I had also most likely improved my skilltome comprehension, my perception, my ability to solve puzzles. Maybe even my communication, which could help with taming animals, though I doubted I ever would. A whole bunch of stuff that I didn’t see.
All the game showed me, however, were the things that had improved the most and which were most relevant to the character build I was creating. BaS was very clever that way.
There was one more thing that increasing my intelligence was almost certain to have improved – my communication skills.
I opened Teamspeak and sent a message to the others.
Josh: Hamlet’s rebuilt. Gonna explore.
Hilly: Gotcha.
Linc: You won’t believe some of the flora I’m finding. This place is incredible.
I wandered south through the field of scutch grass that surrounded the bare bones of Blade’s Rest. There was a dim outline of a path running through parts of it, as though there had once been a carriage track here, and it had been neglected and now the field was claiming it back. The breeze in the air was cold, sure, but there was a midday sun too and its warming rays counteracted it and made it the kind of perfect temperature where just a slight change on either side of the thermometer would ruin it. As it was, I liked it and I started to think that this was a nice place to build a town.
Ten minutes’ walk took me to the giant lake. It was called Black Salt Lake. The water surface glittered under the morning sun, and ripples appeared here and there to indicate the presence of fish. Anglers were scattered around the banks. Some of them were human players and they were fishing alone.
There were a few reasons someone would spend time fishing in BaS. The first was the simplest – they wanted to make money. There would always be a fishmonger in a town near a lake who’d be willing to pay for trout and bream. Some players wouldn’t be interested in money at all and might be simply earning the fishing skill to add to a class. Then there was the third breed, which I identified with the most. They would be wearing full immersion VR goggles and sensory tabs, and they’d be fishing just for the sheer pleasure of standing at the bank of a sunny lake.
Nearby, groups of NPC fishermen stood together and cast out their lines. I approached one group of them - two men and a young boy. The tallest and oldest of the men wore a green cagoule with a giant hood that he wore up even though it wasn’t raining. The other man was short and pudgy and bespectacled, and he wore a shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal the tattoo of an anchor on his forearm. The boy had on a straw hat to shield his head from the sun, and he had a small fishing rod in his hand. The men held bigger fishing rods, and they had metal bait tins by their feet, in which worms wriggled.
“Hello,” I said.
The taller man nodded at me and then focused his attention on his red float bobbing calmly on the lake surface. The other said, “Mornin’.”
The artificial intelligence in BaS was a mixed bag. At its top end, it was incredible, using the Turing 1.5 AI software to create characters that could understand what you were saying and offer contextual responses. Such AI was understandably a drain on the game’s resources, so it was generally reserved for the most important NPCs, such as those used in quests. Even these NPCs operated on an ‘if you can’t see me, I don’t exist’ kind of system. If no players were within fifty miles of the NPCs, they’d sort of shut down, and ceased drawing from the AI resources.
Other NPCs drew less on the Turing system, and as such their intelligence was a lot lower. You were unlikely to have a conversation with such folks. They might be able to answer questions such as ‘where’s the nearest inn’, but they wouldn’t have a dialogue on the advantages and disadvantages of increasing tax on imported salmon.
I reckoned the two fishermen and the boy would be way down on the scale, since they weren’t important NPCs. If anything they were decoration, here to add to the overall flavor of the game. I knew how to speak to such NPCs.
I used a trigger phrase which usually got an NPC talking.
“I have some questions,” I said.
“Sorry, stranger, but we’re busy,” said the tall, cagoule-wearing man.
Ah. I wasn’t expecting that.
“Ah, don’t be so tight, Atticus,” said the shorter man. Then he faced me. “What d’ya wanna know?”
A dialogue prompt appeared on my screen, listing options:
- Ask about the kinds of fish in the lake
- See if they have any fish for sale
- Ask about learning to fish
I already knew that, since this was a lake, there was likely a fishing hut nearby where I could purchase instruction in the fishing skill. Alternatively, I could buy a rod and then cast my line until I caught something, and learn the skill that way. Though BaS was immersive, it wasn’t quite as grueling as real life – I wouldn’t need to learn the real ins and outs of fishing in order to get the skill.
I wasn’t much interested in fishing right now in any case. I had two skill slots to spare, and I wasn’t going to fill one of them with fishing. Maybe Linc would like to do that. I’d talk to him about it later.
“Do you have any fish for sale?” I said.
The grumpier man, Atticus, nodded. “Maybe we could spare some, if you got the coin.”
This brought up a barter menu. On the left side of the screen was my inventory, filled with lots of crude knives, axes and the like. Although I only had sixteen slots, I had way more than sixteen tools. This was because items were grouped together and stacked. Crude axes took up one slot for instance, even though I had dozens of them.
On Atticus’s side of the window were all the uncooked fishes that he had for sale. There were sunfish, perch, bass. Each of them had the property of restoring health to various degrees. The sunfish offered the biggest health boost.
“I think I’ll leave it for now,” I said.
The window closed.
“Suit yourself,” said the man.
The NPCs would likely be programmed to be here at this time every day, which was good to know in case we needed to urgently buy some fish to restore our health. Fish could be eaten raw in BaS, but would offer better benefits if they were cooked. And on that score, anyone could cook things in BaS. You could learn it as a skill and cook things better so that you got more stat-benefits from your food, but it was still a skill that anyone could use without committing to a slot.
Heading off on my travels, I skirted around the lake, passing occasional players who were too involved in their fishing to notice a level two noob like me. One guy had two buckets next to him, and one was filled to the brim with lake crabs.
Soon I came to a wooden hut, where a sign read ‘Jessop’s Bait and Tackle.’ Just as I’d guessed, that would be where a player could learn the basic fishing skill quickly if he had enough coin. I didn’t go inside.
From the lake, a walk south took me into a stretch of yellowed grass which looked drained and brittle, like the vitality had been sucked out of this part of the map. My shoddy leather boots crunched on it, and every so often I saw a bone laying here and there. They looked like they belonged to long-dead critters.
My hackles started to rise. I knew a mob area when I saw one.
Sure enough, I spotted a wolf in the distance. Wolves were typical starter mobs, way less ferocious than their real-life counterparts. Even a level 2 crafter like myself should be able to take care of one. The problem would come if they were programmed with a pack mentality, where fighting one wolf would draw the attention of any others in the vicinity.
This beast was on its own and it was far enough away that I wouldn’t trigger a fight. Even so, I stayed still for a minute. As I did, red dots appeared here and there on my mini map, indicating the presence of other wolves scattered over the yellow plains. My improved intelligence had probably helped me discover them, since perception was an under-the-hood stat that came under intelligence.
I headed just a little further south across the dry landscape until I saw fences in the distance. Getting a little closer, I saw that they were seven feet tall fences made from wood tied together by vine rope, and they formed a perimeter around a grunder village.
There was a boulder to my right, sunk into the ground. Climbing it gave me a viewpoint so I could see over the grunders’ fences.
The grunders had twelve huts in their village. Round, solid-looking structures with clay walls and domed roofs made from thatched hay. Looking at them, I got a serious case of hut-envy. These were less like the garden sheds of Blade’s Rest and more like proper domiciles. They looked like they’d withstand a battering.
Josh: Can you guys meet me here?
I placed a custom marker on my map for Hilly and Linc to see. The grunder village had also marked itself on my world map as a discovered location. It was listed as Chief Oak’s Clan.
Hilly: I’m a little busy. What’re you doin’ down there?
Josh: I found the grunder village.
Hilly: So?
Josh: It’s a helluva lot better than ours. But I have a plan. Just meet me down here, it won’t take long.
Hilly arrived five minutes later, where she found me crouched on the ground so that I was partially hidden by the yellow grass. She joined me.
“Here,” she said.
She threw a fur chestpiece on the ground, as well as an iron dagger with a wooden grip. The chestpiece was a piece of armor designed to protect the front of your body, though fur was low down on the list of desirable armor materials. I slipped the chestpiece over my head and then adjusted it using straps that went around my shoulders. A notification told me that my defense had increased. I held the dagger in my right hand.
“Thanks.”
“Killed a couple of wolves on the way here,” said Hilly, “And they dropped those.”
“You could have sold ‘em, you know.”
“I know. Share and share alike, I say. We’re a team.”
“Appreciate it.”
Linc arrived soon after. He was wearing a ridiculous Davy Crockett style fur hat and he had a burlap pouch tied to his belt by string. When Hilly and I laughed at him, he gave us a twirl.
“Looking good, huh?” he said.
“You’re looking…uh…special,” said Hilly.
“There was a hunter NPC in the woods. He was looking for deer and I told him where I’d seen one. He gave me the hat and the pouch as thanks. It ain’t much, but it adds a dozen slots to my inventory. And boy, do I need it. Did I mention how many cool plants and herbs there are in this place?”
“You ain’t seen nothing yet,” said Hilly. “Wait until you leave Gobbler’s Creek.”
“Anyway, why were we summoned, your highness?” said Linc, looking at me.
“So the grunder village is over there, okay?” I said, pointing.
“We aren't gonna attack them, are we?”
“Nah, we’d get killed. But look at their huts. See how much better they are than ours? I want to make something like that. What I need is for us to kill a few grunders and then let me loot them. The game drops loot according to your skills. I checked on Sheesh. If we kill enough of them and I’m the one who does the looting, there’s a chance they’ll drop craftprints for the huts.”
“Let me see if I’ve got this right,” said Hilly. “I’ll do most of the killing, and you do the looting?”
“It’ll be for the good of the hamlet. That’s the goal, after all. Besides, the better a building is, the better buffs you get when you’re inside it. So you’ll benefit from this just as much as me.”
“Okay. Fine. But we better work out a loot system going forward. If I’m doing most of the killing for us, I want most of the loot.”
I looked at Linc, who shrugged as if to say he was okay with it.
I spat on my hand and stuck it out. “Deal.”
Hilly spat on hers.
Linc shook his head. “You guys are disgusting.”
“It’s only a game…”
We were waiting for two game hours before the grunder village gates opened and a party of them headed into the fields. There were seven of them, which seemed like a lot. Then again, grunders were on par with wolves in terms of difficulty. The three of us would be okay. We’d only died during the last attack because a) they’d snuck up on us and b) they were [elite] grunders.
My online research of grunders told me that they got a bonus for close combat, due to their claws and teeth. As such, I put my new dagger in my inventory, and I readied a crude spear so that I could fight with a longer reach. I gave another spear to Linc. Hilly thanked me but stuck with her sword.
The pack of grunders headed east from their village. We gave them some leeway, before heading off after them. We cut a wide arc through the field, keeping distance while slowly maneuvering ourselves behind them.
Moving this way, it was five minutes until we were completely behind them.
Hilly said, “Ready?”
“Yup.”
“Let’s get this over with so I can go foraging,” said Linc.
“Okay then. Get ready to grind some grunders.”
Hilly was the strongest and fastest of us. Not by a great deal, but her extra two levels showed. She must have put points into agility as well as in strength because she reached the grunders before we did, swinging her sword into one of them and cleaving it in half.
Linc and I approached from the flanks, Linc going left and me turning right. Armed with our spears, we charged at the creatures and, in a pincer formation, forced them to fall back into a compact group.
While Hilly hacked at them and Linc and I thrust our spears into their sides, the grunders had too many areas to defend against. In a few seconds, all of them were lying dead on the ground, bodies piled atop one another.
The battle gave me some EXP, but I didn’t level up yet. A prompt asked me if I wanted to learn [basic] spear fighting, but I declined even though I had a spare skill slot. I was going heavy on the crafting side of things, and I didn’t need a combat skill muddying that.
“Off you go then,” said Hilly. “Get looting.”
As I approached the grunders, a snarl caught my attention. I turned around to see a wolf launching itself at Hilly. She lifted her sword to block it but she was too late. The surprise attack must have given her a stun debuff, because she didn’t get up straight away.
Three more wolves appeared around us, heads hunched low and leg muscles tensed and ready to leap at us. Their snarls carried over the breeze, and their white fangs glinted sharp and bright under the afternoon sun.
Two of them pounced on Linc and brought him down to the ground straight away. I was going to help him, but a third wolf caught my peripheral vision.
I turned toward it, robbing it of its surprise attack. As it leaped at me, I dropped to a crouch and held the spear at an angle. The beast crashed into the spear tip which pierced a hole in its chest and then snapped off, leaving me with what was now just a long stick.
The wolf hit the dirt and rolled. It tried to get to its feet but then gave up and whimpered.
Running toward Linc, I saw that Hilly was back on her feet. She slaughtered two wolves by herself. I reached Linc and started whacking the wolves with my stick, though it wasn’t meant as a bludgeoning weapon and the damage it gave was tiny. Hilly soon joined me, hacking at the beasts until they were dead.
Unfortunately, Linc was also deceased.
“Sucks for him,” said Hilly. “Well, go loot your grunders. The wolf corpses are mine.”