Being low level mobs, the grunders didn’t drop much in the way of loot. Mostly just the loincloths that covered their groins, which I had no interest in taking. Unlike the elite grunders that had attacked our hamlet, these ones didn’t use weapons so there was little to loot on that score. It was a little disappointing.
“Don’t you find it strange?” I asked Hilly, “That these guys didn’t have any weapons?”
“Maybe they’re too stupid.”
“Don’t reckon so. Look at their settlement – they’ve got some organization here.”
Hilly rested her chin in her hand and thought about it. “Then the ones we ambushed were either scouts or foragers, and they weren’t ready for a fight.”
If this was true, their society lived on a hunter-gatherer system, but they didn’t have enough hunters to spare any to guard the gatherers.
“I don’t reckon we’ll need to worry about reprisals,” I said.
“The only thing you need to worry about is getting those corpses looted.”
After checking most of their corpses, I found four silver coins, 1 gold, and 38 coppers. I put the coins into my inventory, planning to share them with Hilly and Linc later.
“Any luck?”
“Nothing so far,” I said.
I was about to chalk this up for a failure when I looted the last grunder corpse. In its grisly remains, I found a rolled-up parchment.
My pulse quickened. I picked it up and opened it.
The parchment was old and stained with the crude ink that had been used to draw on it. Depicted on the sheet was a rounded hut with a thatched roof, with arrows pointing to the most important structural aspects of it. Drawn next to it were symbols representing wood, clay bricks, and hay, showing what was needed to build it.
Craftprints learned:
Clay Hut
A simple structure that affords protection from the elements and offers better defense than more basic wood-and-vine huts.
“Got it!” I said.
“A craftprint?”
“Yup.”
Having the clay hut craftprint meant I could build something a little sturdier than wooden panels leaning up against each other. We’d need to get some clay, but that wouldn’t be much of a problem.
“I’ll loot the wolves and then we’ll make tracks,” said Hilly.
I was ready to head back to the hamlet, when I noticed a gleaming yellow notification in the left corner of my screen.
When I clicked on it, a bell chimed.
Level up!
I saw that fighting the wolves had leveled me up to level three, giving me three attribute points to spend and unlocking another skill slot.
I supposed I had Hilly to thank for that, since she did most of the killing. She had probably earned most of the experience, while the small amount of damage I had done to the grunders had at least earned me something.
With three attribute points to spend, there was no need for careful consideration. I knew BaS, and I knew the class I was aiming for. I wanted to be a builder, and that meant I would rely less on strength and more on my other attributes.
I loaded one into agility, and two into intelligence.
As well as a notification telling me how my intelligence had improved, I received one for agility.
Agility Increased:
- Hand-eye-coordination improved
- Crafting speed increased
- Hand dexterity improved
This was interesting. If Hilly put her points into agility, she’d probably get a boost in her dodge ability, or maybe her sword precision would get better. Whereas my agility increases were ones that tied into my improvisation skill, in a way.
If I had accepted the spear fighting skill, then my agility boosts would probably have been split between that and improvisation. This was why it was so important not to accept whatever skill came your way. I had done that on my first BaS playthrough, and I ended up with a mess of a character.
Boosting my intelligence gave me the same increases as before – improvements in my crafting speed and so on.
The best part of the level up notification came last.
You have earned 1 perk. Please choose a perk.
I opened up the perk list. This being a level 3 perk, there wasn’t a great deal to choose from, and all of them related to crafting. There was a perk that allowed me one instantaneous craft per day, for instance, subject to the designs being no better than [crude]. Another perk improved my crafting speed if I was indoors.
It was difficult to know which one to pick, since I could only take one perk, and I wouldn’t unlock another slot until level six. Damn my frugal nature.
The best was a perk called ‘Improviser Artificer’.
Improvisor Artificer
Add one [weak] elemental property to your crafting creations.
Checking Sheesh, I saw the Improvisor Artificer perk explained in more detail.
First, any magical item in the game could be taken to an artificer, who would strip that magic effect away from the item, leaving it intact for future use. The magic would be represented as essence.
For example, the red healing plant that Linc had given me. An artificer could strip the ‘healing’ property from the plant. This healing essence could then be used for other things, while the leftover plant was mostly useless, unless it could be eaten or used to make tea.
For me, the Improvisor Artificer perk meant I could apply essences to something I was crafting, kinda like adding an ingredient to a recipe. Whatever I was crafting would then have some kind of effect based on the essence I used.
It was a lot to take in, just reading it like that, but most things in BaS were easier to understand in application than in theory. In short, though, I reckoned this was a useful perk to have once I had enough money to buy essences from an artificer.
Perk gained: Improvisor Artificer
Linc had respawned back at the hamlet, though he wasn’t waiting for us there when we got back. Predictably, he was way across the grassy field, inspecting something on the ground.
Josh: We’re back.
Linc: Be one minute.
One minute for Linc meant fifteen minutes for the rest of us. The rest of us being, people who live and operate in standard earth time. A Linc unit of time was slightly different.
“Evening,” said Hilly.
Linc looked up at the sky. “It’s still afternoon…oh. I get it. Sorry. I saw a few things to forage on the way. The scutch grass field is full of bernickles.”
“That doesn’t mean the same thing to us as it does to you, Linc.”
“Oh. Right. Well, Bernickles can be brewed in a tea that replenishes your health over time when you drink it.”
“That’s actually gonna be handy,” I said.
“Well, I try. How’d it go with the looting?”
We told him that we’d killed all the grunders and the wolves and found a clay hut blueprint. He was less than enthusiastic about it, but I didn’t take offense. Building wasn’t his thing. He loved to forage. I was the one who got excited about making stuff, whereas I was less enthused about finding a new rare leaf or something.
“C’mon, then, Survivor Jones,” said Hilly. “What did ya get?”
I shot Hilly a look.
“What?” she said.
“We don’t talk about Survivor Jones.”
“No we don’t,” agreed Linc. “The fraud. Anyway, I’ve got a bag full of shrooms, berries, roots, and plants,” Linc said, “and my foraging isn’t good enough to identify all of ‘em yet. I’ll have to work on leveling it.”
“Hilly? What’ve you got planned?”
“I’m gonna head to Westfell and sell these wolf pelts. It’s not far away. Linc, you can tag along if you like.”
“Eh, towns and stuff aren’t my thing. Even in a game.”
“There’ll be folks in town who can edify all your mulch for you.”
“It ain't mulch…but I guess that sounds good. Josh? Are you coming?”
“I’m gonna stay here and work on the hamlet,” I said.
When the two of them were gone, I got to work. First, I created ten [crude] shovels. This might have seemed like overkill, but I was beginning to learn that crude tools didn’t last long when you used them. The crude shovels were everything you’d expect – long sticks with roughly carved handles and flatted stones on the end for shoveling, kept together by vine string.
For a few game hours, I dug holes in the fields surrounding the hamlet. I was looking for clay. It took a few attempts to find some, but I hit on a fairly rich patch down near the lake. I shattered eight of my ten shovels during my digging, but I ended up with 99 ‘lumps’ of clay in my inventory. These took up one slot, with 99 being the limit before I’d have to use a new slot. I reckoned 99 was enough.
After a day of this I was coated in sweat, and my shirt was stuck to my back. Luckily, clothes in BaS had a self-cleaning effect, where over time, old stains would disappear. Much to the relief of the fanbase, that included odors, too. In BaS’s early days, stains, dirt, and smells had stuck to clothes until you washed them, resulting in a full immersion world where players avoided each other because of the smell. That, obviously, wasn’t so good for an MMO game, so the devs removed the feature.
Next, I headed to the yellowed grass near the grunder village for some reconnaissance, taking care to stay well clear of any wolves or stray grunder scouting parties. There was some activity over at the village, where a pack of grunders was dragging the bodies of the ones we’d killed across the field and through their village gates.
I ducked down low and stayed still. I counted to fifty in my head, then slowly rose above the grass stalks to peek out. The grunders were gone, and their village gates were shut.
Finally, I headed back to the hamlet, where I was surprised to see the fisherman and the boy waiting for me. I recognized Atticus, the taller one, but I didn’t know the names of the other two.
It was strange to see the NPCs away from the lake. I’d assumed they were very low-level Ais that wouldn’t stray from their turf.
“Can I help you?” I said.
“Just watching,” said Atticus.
“Watching what?”
“Don’t mind us.”
In real life, this would have been an ‘I’m calling the cops’ kinda situation. Not so in BaS. Sure, it was strange that the NPCs wanted to watch me, but I wasn’t worried. Human NPCs rarely ever attacked players, and when they did, it was part of a quest.
Even so, full immersion made it a little unnerving to have the fishermen watching me work. I positioned myself so they were in my peripheral vision, where I could keep an eye on them without looking at them all the time.
Trying to ignore them, I started on the clay huts. A clay hut could actually be made with most types of mud, but clay was the best. Unlike the wood and vine huts I had made earlier, clay huts had solid walls. I never thought I’d be happy to just have a place with solid walls, but I guess that was hamlet life for you.
In my menu system, there was a new tab next to ‘Improvisation’. This one was called ‘Craftprints’. So far, only the huts were listed but it would fill up when I looted or bought more points.
“What are ya doin’, mister?” said the boy.
“Hush now, Billy. Let the man work.”
Still ignoring them, I selected ‘clay hut’. A silhouette of a hut appeared on my display. There were twelve empty squares overlaid on it. Four on the roof, and eight on the main rounded structure.
From my inventory, I dragged eight lumps of clay and four bundles of the yellow grass. With each crafting square filled, I selected ‘begin construction.’
A timer appeared on my screen, and it looked like it would take a while. I minimized it and wandered over to the NPCs.
They were staring over my shoulder, at something behind me.
Glancing back, I saw that my clay hut was already taking shape. The basic structure was there, and it was filling out more and more as the timer turned.
“It’s building by itself!” said Billy.
“That’s right. I’m a wizard,” I said, “And I’m building a jail to lock you up in.”
“No!”
The shorter man laughed and ruffled Billy’s hair. “He’s just kidding with you, soft lad.”
“What is this place?” said Atticus.
For a moment, I was surprised.
This question was my second clue that Atticus, the other fella, and little Billy had moved up a notch in the Turing system. The first clue was the fact that they were here in Blade’s Rest.
BaS was a dynamic game, and a combination of my hamlet building and my earlier conversation with them must have caused the system to give them better AI. This happened fairly often, but it always amazed me to see how far we’d come in terms of AI and digital personalities. There were many NPCs in BaS who you would honestly think were human players, if they didn’t have NPC tags above their heads.
Even though Atticus and his companions had been given a boost, they wouldn’t be at the top of the AI ladder, and it was still a case of saying the right things to them. They weren’t perfectly intelligent – if I asked them what they wanted for their birthdays, they wouldn’t reply. Their AI was still nowhere near the top levels that BaS was capable of.
“Do you have a quest for me?” I said.
Atticus shook his head.
Mentioning quests was another trigger word with NPCs, and I was surprised that it hadn’t worked. If they didn’t have an AI generated quest for me, then what were they doing here?
“Alright, so what can I do for you?” I tried.
“I’m Atticus, and this is little Billy, and this fella here is my brother, Argyle.”
“Pleased to meet you all.”
“We love fishing,” said Argyle.
“Right…”
“All kinds of fishing. Fly fishing, angling, jigging. We just love to catch fish.”
“Is this going somewhere?” I said.
“Going somewhere?”
Damn it. I’d confused the AI.
“So you love fishing. What can I do for you?”
“Well, stranger,” said Atticus, “Fishing gets us out of the house every day, and that’s how us and our wives like it. Only, we can’t fish in winter. Gets too cold. So for a whole season, we ain’t got an excuse to get out.”
“We want you to build us a shack,” said Argyle.
“Down by the lake?”
“Yup.”
This wasn’t a quest, then. More of a mini-quest. These popped up a lot in BaS. It was going to detract a little from building Blade’s Rest, so there would have to be something in it for me.
“What are you going to give me in exchange?”
“For the gift of giving us the ability to fish all year round?” said Argyle. “That’s priceless. But we’ll give ya 20 gold and a spare rod, tackle, and some bait.”
Twenty gold wasn’t much in the scheme of things, but for a low-level player it was a decent chunk of change. Right now the only funds I had were the coins I’d looted from the grunders. As a builder, money was going to be harder to come buy at first because I wouldn’t be completing the kinds of fighting quests that came with rewards.
Then again, maybe this was the game’s way of evening it out for me.
“Fifty gold,” I said.
Atticus looked at Argyle. I waited, knowing that right now, the game would be measuring my bartering ability against theirs. Bartering was a skill, but there was also a hidden bartering stat that came under the umbrella of intelligence.
“Thirty,” said Atticus.
“Forty, and I’ll move your project to the top of my queue. I have a lot of building jobs lined up, you know.”
“Done.”
I told them that I would swing by the lake the next morning and build the shack for them. Only, when I said this, they didn’t leave.
“Uh…is that all?” I said.
“We’d like ya to build the shack now.”
“Right now?”
“No time like the present.”
“I’ve got stuff of my own to be doing,” I said. “I’ll be there tomorrow morning, and that’s that.”
Atticus gave me a stern look. “You drive a hard bargain, stranger. Fine. Seventy gold if ya do it right now.”
I wasn’t going to pass up the chance to earn an extra thirty gold for something I’d already agreed to do. Accepting the offer, I dutifully accompanied Atticus, Argyle and Billy down to the lake. It was starting to get dark now, and I knew that grunders would begin patrolling further afield once the sun had set. I’d need to get this done quickly.
They led me along the lake bank, to the exact spot where I had seen them fishing earlier. The grass of the bank was well-worn by their boot prints.
“Here we go,” said Atticus.
“Right here?”
“I’d be obliged.”
“I’ll set it back just a little,” I said. “If the bank gets muddy in winter, the whole thing would be unstable.”
“You’re the builder.”
Even as we spoke the night grew darker, prompting me to want to get back to the relative safety of Blade’s Rest. Luckily, I wasn’t building a shack the old-fashioned way.
“You realize that this won’t be some kind of fancy lodge?” I said.
“We just want something to keep us warm and dry.”
“Dry, I can do. Warm? Maybe not.”
“Just walls and a roof please, fella.”
Using my improvisation skill, I quickly constructed a ten-by-ten wooden shack, weaving the wooden walls tightly together using vine rope. It took maybe a few minutes.
I paced around the finished product.
It was nothing special. It looked like the kind of huts that bird watchers sometimes sat in when deep in woodland and trying to catch sight of a rare tit or thrush. It was better than shivering out in the cold, though.
“Well?” I said.
Atticus headed inside and strolled around. There wasn’t much room to stroll, so I knew he must be inspecting it. When he came out, he didn’t seem completely unsatisfied, at least.
“A little basic,” he said.
“Pay basic prices, get a basic product.”
“Does that mean you can make improvements?” said Argyle.
I couldn’t. Not right now. But I knew I would be able to as I leveled up my skill and found more craftprints.
“Sure, when I have time and you have coin.”
Atticus nodded. “Alright, then. Here’s your gold, as promised. We’ll be callin’ on ya when we want this place sprucing up.”
Items added to inventory:
- 70 gold
- 1x [mediocre] fishing rod
- 50x bait worms
“Thanks,” I said.
“Pleasure. Nice to meet ya, Josh Builder.”
I couldn’t be bothered explaining that I wasn’t from around here, and my surname didn’t match my occupation, like most folks. Instead, I gave them a wave and headed back to Blade’s Rest.
Linc and Hilly still hadn’t returned by the time I was back at the hamlet, which I was thankful for. I was equally thankful for the clay hut that had finished construction, and was sitting proudly in the center of the hamlet. Its walls were solid, its roof tightly thatched to keep out the rain.
Stepping inside, it had a distinctly earthy smell. Even so, it had the feel of a proper indoor roof. There was no draught, no cold. But not only that.
Buff gained: Indoors [Average]
- 5x speed health replenishment
That was a much better buff than the one I received when standing inside an improvised hut. I was happy with my decision to rebuild using clay.
Free from distractions, I completed three more clay huts. It took maybe twelve game hours, and the morning sun was casting red splashes across the sky by the time I was done.
With four clay huts in total, Blade’s Rest looked at least little more impressive than it had a day earlier.
When Hilly and Linc got back, Linc was carrying three dead rabbits tied together by string and slung over his shoulder, while Hilly was dragging along a dead deer.
I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I knew Hilly planned on hunting for food from time to time, but I never imagined she’d drag back a whole deer after her first expedition.
Linc waved to me. “Hey, Josh.”
Grunting, Hilly said, “A little help, Survivor Jones.”
Heading over to join them, I helped her drag the deer into the hamlet, where we placed it in the center of the four huts.
“We’re gonna be eating tonight,” Hilly said.
Standing with her hands on her hips, she looked at the clay huts.
“You like 'em?” I asked.
“Like them? This is almost as good as my house!” said Linc. “I mean, it’s not. Not really. But still.”
I laughed. “Thanks for the vote of confidence, in any case.”
That night, I built a clay firepit in the middle of the hamlet. Hilly butchered the deer, while Linc took care of the rabbits. At their request I crafted a clay cauldron for Linc and a clay oven for Hilly.
Separately, they each prepared dish for us to eat. Linc used the rabbit, which he scolded in the cauldron, along with a bunch of veggies and herbs that he’d foraged and identified. Soon, the air was scented with rabbit meat mingled with rosemary and basil.
“Now that I know which herbs around here are poisonous and which aren’t,” he said, while holding a bucket, “I can make us a stew.”
“Where’d you get the bucket?”
“Westfell.”
“Alright. And where are you headed with it?”
“Just to the lake,” he said.
He returned twenty minutes later with a bucket full of water, which he poured into the cauldron and started boiling. He added it to the rabbit meat, herbs, and veggies, and then left it simmering to turn it into a broth.
“Need any help?” I said.
“I’m good. You just take a load off.”
I wasn’t good with just sitting around doing nothing. Never had been, though from time to time I’d tried to get better at that by meditating. Forcing myself to clear my mind, I closed my eyes and listened to the sounds of the land around Blade’s Rest. The owls hooting. The wind groaning through the trees in the woods northwest.
Didn’t work. I wasn’t relaxed enough. So, I brought up my browser and checked out some town planning guides on the Blade and Sheesh website.
When the stew had been simmering for long enough Linc started adding spring onion and wild garlic and other herbs that he produced from his foraging pouch, sipping the broth every few minutes to gauge the taste. He looked like a scientist to me, tasting the broth and then adding tiny pinches of basil and oregano until he got it just right.
Hilly, meanwhile, simply cut up the deer, chopped the meat into pieces, and stuck them in the clay oven to roast. As a final flourish, she produced from her inventory a mini barrel of beer that she’d bought in their trip to Westfell.
“Beer?” she offered. “We didn’t get mugs, so you’ll have to drink out of the barrel.”
“Pass it over here,” I said.
“Grubs up,” announced Linc. “Hope you’re hungry!”
That night, we sat around the fire pit with our salted deer meat and our rabbit stew and our beer. It tasted divine, and the heat from the pit was just right.
Starting with Linc, we told each other a little more about our lives outside the game, and I had the best night that I could remember having for a long time.