6 Chapter 6 ~ Fizzy Glaxxy

Logging in, I was greeted by the usual prompt screen asking which world I wanted to log into, however the options had been updated.

---------------

Choose location:

The Hub

Vertigo: Soul Deck / Last log out point

Yevelia

New World

---------------

When you logged into TruShift you had access to every world connected to The Hub. Each time I'd chosen New World I had been overwhelmed at the sheer volume, everything from old arcade games made into virtual hang outs to fully fledged space battles, and hyper realistic fantasy lands. Thankfully the system had pretty robust search options so you could easily narrow down what you were looking for.

The Hub was the main city connecting every world together. If you just wanted to browse through the worlds in something more like a shopping mall than a list of words than The Hub was the perfect place to go. They also had all the other trappings of society, from avatar customization, to mounts, and battle arenas ready to engage in. I knew friends who hardly ever left The Hub, preferring the glam and extravagance of every world meeting.

The last two were Yevelia, and Vertigo.

TruShift gave you options to customize the list, of course. You could delete worlds, or sort them into directories for easy access. In my time exploring The Hub before Jupiter joined me I added and deleted many names from my list, mainly dance clubs and food worlds. Places without challenge that easily lost my interest.

I'd been spending a lot of time in Yevelia and Vertigo recently, so that wasn't unusual. But I found it interesting that Vertigo gave me two choices; the Soul Deck where I could connect with other players, or my last exit point. I had expected Vertigo to be like other worlds and allow me to go back to their designated log in point, usual the same spot a player exited, or a nearby safe zone. It appeared that the bar was acting as a mini hub for the game. It was likely other worlds had a similar feature, but this was the first time I had come across it. That probably meant it was rare.

I moved to select my last log out point, but hesitated. I still had questions, and Vallet might be able to answer them. If I went to the Soul Deck I could try to get some information. It might mean losing my quick spawn at the last location I exited, but that location seemed to be very close to a bear. A bear that had been all to happy to eat me. If I went back through the portal I had a better chance of changing my path, finding different creatures, and avoiding the bear until I was confident I could beat it.

Vallet had already proven to be a font of information, and if I came to her with the right questions she might even answer them. I was certain there would be a few things the guild wanted to keep to themselves, it only made sense when you were trying to control a worlds economy. But Bannershroud was only tenth in strength on the server, which meant they could be looking for an edge to move up the rankings. Bringing in new blood, or finding something overlooked by others, would give them a good chance of doing that.

Information would help me, too, whether I chose to join the guilds or not. Death by a bear seemed like poor alternative.

Decided, I mentally clicked on Soul Deck. The darkness of the waiting room shifted around me. A moment later and the interior of Soul Deck faded into view. It looked just as it had before, with several people gathered around the mini ring at one end cheering on a battle, tables filled with people dickering over card trades, and one Vallet sitting at the bar drinking something swirling with purple sparkles.

She was wearing a hiking outfit today with ankle boots, skin tight black jeans, and a hip holster with guns and knives. A hat sat on the counter next to her. It looked like she could have been going into a forgotten temple, not a virtual forest.

She looked up a second later and smiled when she saw me, then waved me over to join her.

"Cas, good to see you again," Vallet said as I approached.

I took the stool next to her and the bartender, the same AI run barkeep from before, was standing in front of her, making a drink. I found it interesting that the NPC went through the trouble of actually making the drink, pouring different liquids into a cup and adding ice. In a world where creatures could be summoned out of thin air it seemed a little strange. Maybe the authenticity was important to the atmosphere. One section had to keep the players grounded after all.

He set down a purple sparkling drink to match Vallet's in front of me before wandering away to help someone else.

"How is your deck?" Vallet asked.

"Right to the point?" I asked with a smile.

She leaned back in her seat to look at me. "There's no point in beating around the bush here. The first level of Vertigo is pretty straight forward. Most people get through with a couple of small animals, maybe a large insect, and then the large animal guarding the gate to the second gate. You're stats still say level one though so you haven't made it to level two."

"The black bear is a little too strong for me to take yet. I'm hoping to get through tonight."

"A black bear? Well that should come in handy."

"Isn't it the same for everyone?" I asked, a little puzzled. I shouldn't have been. Things changed in most games, either through updates or algorithms. I shouldn't have been surprised that it would change in Vertigo as well.

Vallet gave me a smile. "You'll find things are always changing around here. Have you thought about where you'll go once you get through to the second floor?"

"Is there more than one place to go? I thought it was all about making it through the portals to get better cards."

"Well, it depends on the kind of deck you're trying to build, of course. Certain levels have different areas, like ocean or mountains, where you can capture different creatures. On the second level there's a small shire with NPC's and a few players living there. If you find a shire you should always keep as a frame a reference, there is usually one on every fifth floor."

"Every fifth? Then why is it on the second?"

"In most games it would be on the first but I think the designers of Vertigo decided you needed to work for that first shire. Most players who come here give up before they make it through the first portal. No sense in giving them access to the first city to clog it up with non-players."

"That makes sense," I said, then took a sip of the drink. The purple sparkles seemed to pop in my mouth and cause a subtle fizz as the cool liquid went down. It was sweet, and fruity, but not over powering. "What is this?"

"A Fizzy Glaxxy. It's something like the Gargle Blaster, but with less lemon to punch you in the face."

I chuckled. I had a Gargle Blaster on another world when I first came to The Hub and I knew exactly what she meant. Some things could be recreated in VR that weren't quite as authentic offline, and while the Gargle Blaster tasted amazing, the trade off was feeling like you got hit by a truck if you drank too fast.

"Can you find drinks like this in the shires?" I asked.

"Sometimes," she said with a chuckle. "They do have bars there, but not nearly as extensive as the Soul Deck. This place is unique."

"I'm starting to see that. So what can I find in the shires?"

"The usual thing. Inns, restaurants, practice rinks, a few quests, and NPC's to train you. There are usually a dozen players in the first city, too. Or you can just go back into the field and find whatever is spawning nearby."

"I am a bit of loaner, but I might check the village out. I'm going for a well rounded deck to make it worth joining in a tournament, after all."

She leaned a little closer. "Then you are considering the tournaments?"

"I am. It seems like the fastest way to learn what's out there, and about different styles of fighting."

"Very true. The next one is in six days, so if you're ready I would love to enter you in. We do separate the tournament by level so you won't be overwhelmed, though the grand prize must be an overall win. You don't have to be part of the guild to join in. Even if you're not ready to fight I can still send you an invite to come view the battles from the stands."

"I'd rather fight than watch, but I'll keep the invitation in mind."

"Good. Now that we've discussed the pleasantries why did you come to see me?"

I blanched. "Is it that obvious?"

She chuckled and patted my hand. "Don't worry, dear. That's why I hang out in the bar so often. I'm here to help when I can. Sometimes that means encouraging you to join the guild, and sometimes it's a helpful push in the right direction."

"That's fair," I said. I took another sip of my drink before continuing. "I've been reading through the forums and there is a lot of information out there, but there were a few things I couldn't find information about. I thought it would be easier to ask you then to post a question on the forums."

"Possibly. The forums do move quickly, and questions sometimes get lost in the shuffle," she said, her eyes focused on her drink.

I smiled at that, confirming what I already suspected. I might get more from her body language than I would from the forums. She didn't come right out and say the guilds were keeping secrets, but she didn't need to.

"What were you interested in?" she asked.

I looked down at her outfit, and the guns holstered at her side.

"Your weapons, for one thing. I couldn't find weapons in the auction house. Do players even get weapons to defend themselves?"

She glanced down as though she forgot what she was wearing, and she probably had. In virtual space weapons had no weight when they were in your inventory.

"These are for show," she said, patting the side arm. "Purely cosmetic in this world. Vertigo is all about the pets. There are shields, and a few boosts you can get to help you, as the player, but you aren't going to fight. Your pets will, and almost all of the gear is made for them."

"That's what I was afraid of," I said.

She must have seen the concern on my face because she reached out and patted my arm.

"You don't have to fight out there, if you don't want to. There are plenty of people who play Vertigo and never actually go through the levels because of that. Maybe they don't like the woods, or the fact that they might get eaten by some big monster out there. It doesn't matter, Vertigo has options. Some people just trade for the cards they want, and bring in money from outside to buy the really big cards."

"But wouldn't that limit you for placing in tournaments that are level locked?"

"Yes, but a few people found a way around that. There are some higher level players that offer runs through zones for payment. Vertigo has a few tricks up its sleeve to discourage that, but if you're high enough level that doesn't matter."

I shook my head. "I've no interest in having someone else run me through a zone. I doubt I'd learn much about fighting, or my pets, if all I did was buy them."

She nodded in agreement. "Very true. The more time out there you spend the better people tend to do in tournaments and arena battles. I've only seen a few people who bought their way in actually do any good. But most of the people who buy in are all about the collection, not the battling."

"I suppose that's fair. I think I'll still be fighting my own battles, though."

She gave me a wide smile. "I knew I liked you."

I drank the rest of the Fizzy Glaxxy and set the empty cup on the counter. Residual sparkles hovered around the rim of the glass, winking in the overhead lighting.

"What about spells and equipment?" I finally asked. "I haven't found anything in the forums about farming it."

Farming items would have been the ideal way to get them. Go to a certain place and fight until the item dropped, or multiples of the items so you had extras to sell. In nearly every roll playing game out there it was the way people tracked how to gear up and level up in a game. The lack of farming guides for Vertigo had been one of the more unusual thing.

"Ah," Vallet said, lifting her glass up. "That is because you can't farm in Vertigo."

She drained her cup while I looked at her in disbelief.

"You…you can't?" I stammered. "How is that possible? The items are clearly out there, I saw some in the trading chat, but no one knows where to find them?"

"Oh, you can get them," she said, gesturing to the bartender to refill our drinks. "You just can't farm them. You'll find that the land beyond the portals changes periodically. A few landmarks, like the villages I spoke to you about, stay put, but other features move about the landscape, or disappear entirely. That's why you will fight a bear to get through the portal, while I fought a mountain lion, and someone else fought a dire boar. There isn't much that is permanent in Vertigo."

"You mean Vertigo is one giant rouge-like?"

She chuckled. "More like a rouge-lite. The landscape, creatures, and locations change, but it doesn't do it every time you enter. There's also no perma-death, and you don't have to start over from scratch when you die. There are even some instances inside Vertigo, like mini dungeons that come and go. "

"I see, so farming guides would be impractical."

"Yes, exactly."

The bartender finished making our drinks and we both took a sip of the effervescent liquid.

"As for equipment and spells," she said, setting her glass down again, "most of them will be inside the mini dungeons, but once they are defeated they usually move. That's why there aren't any public guides available."

I seized on the word public. She was talking about guild secrets. The forums had been wiped of any talk about spell locations, temples, and a lot of information about dungeons. It was completely possible that any person who got high enough level to dungeon dive had also been contracted to a guild. It would make sense why all the information was behind a password.

The fact that she said they usually moved also meant there were some dungeons and temples that didn't move, like the villages, or didn't move as often.

There was something strange about that. Having guild secrets was one thing, wiping out any mention of a temple, or spell locations, was another. If temples and dungeons moved as much as she implied they did then there would be no need to hide the locations they could be found in since it was chance on who found them.

Unless there was a pattern?

It was possible that key features within Vertigo moved to specific locations and could be found if you knew the pattern. Some old computer games used tile sets and swapped around tiles to make the player feel like they were in a different zone, but if you learned the tile sets, and patterns, you could get through without a problem. Rouge-likes were notorious for using tile-sets, and if Vertigo was running like a rouge-lite it would make sense that it would have some tile sets as well.

Of course modern VR games had massive amounts of data, and a lot of it was arranged, and rearranged, by the AI system, so it might take a lot of runs before you figured out the pattern. That would leave the guilds, who horded the information, in the lead to have access to a temple or dungeon once it appeared.

And considering any money made in vertigo, like all hub worlds, could be exchanged for hard cold cash I had a pretty good idea why a guild would fight to keep that information hidden. Likely the moderators on the forum worked for the guilds, and they helped suppress the information. It was an old trick, but a really useful one.

It made sense to hold back information like that, but it also annoyed the hell out of me. They already went through the process of capturing their deck, and leveling up. They already knew the secrets. They didn't have to be greedy bastards and keep all the spells to themselves.

I took a sip of my drink, knowing the answer already.

"And you would be happy to help me find a dungeon," I said. "If I joined the guild."

She smiled, but said nothing.

Many people inside The Hub choose a world or two that they spent the majority of their time within. It was a great way to make money if you could find something you could exploit. Some players just wanted to master a specific game world. I had a feeling the guilds of Vertigo had a lot of players that were dedicated to the guild, even more than Vertigo itself. I hoped that was because they loved the game, and nothing else.

"Well, I appreciate you letting me know about the temples. I'll have to keep my eye out for one."

"If you find one let me know. I love discovering new spells."

"Sure thing," I said, standing up. If there was good reason to. It wouldn't hurt to give her a little information if I got some in return. She clearly used kindness to get into a new players good graces and get them in the guild, but kindness could work both ways if played right.

We said goodbye and I made my way up to the portal, ready to get back to Gill.