Stone Back Village

WELCOME TO THE LAND OF EASTERN ARAKOTH

A prompt appeared asking James to complete the controls tutorial. He dismissed it, selecting the 'Skip all tutorials' option as he knew the basics of movement through previous gaming experience and had learned the other basics from the guide.

James took a closer look at the village he spawned in and noticed a few unique buildings. The house closest to him was built with a dark coloured brick and had an exposed furnace on the outside. There was an anvil and a bucket of water in front of the furnace where a small but burly man was standing.

The man had no hair on the top of his head but had a few strands of brown hair behind his ears that had been tied into a plait and reached down to his back. He had a thick beard that had also been plaited and was long enough to reach his stubby knees. This man was a dwarf

The dwarf wore shabby clothes that had dark patches all over and more smudge marks could be seen all over his face and arms. He had slung a giant hammer that was as tall as him over his shoulders as he stood leaning on his anvil for support while a glowing yellow anvil floated above his head. This dwarf was the blacksmith that players would go to craft and upgrade their equipment.

James opened octanes inventory to see what items he would have spawned with. In octanes inventory screen, James saw four empty armour slots, each corresponding to a helmet, chest piece, pants and shoes. Alongside them were six empty accessory slots being two earrings, two rings, a belt and a necklace. The last slot was for the weapon but unlike the rest, it had an item.

[Old Twig]

Type: Staff

Rarity: Common

Attack Points: 15

Defence Points: 20

It seemed that offhand weapons usually give a little bit of attack and defence points, while main hand weapons only give attack points, however classes that only carried main hand would give both. James closed the inventory while frowning at the shabby equipment he had, but as he had just spawned in as a level 1 character, he knew he couldn't do anything about it. He had read earlier that new characters had a very low chance at spawning with a rare grade weapon, but that most players would spawn with uncommon or common equipment. Having received the worst option, James felt like karma was biting him back for winning the jackpot lottery.

'The system stinks'

Before looking around further, He had remembered the most important thing he had to do after logging in, check his mail. A little envelope icon at the bottom of his screen was blinking blue as an indication of received mail. James opened it and received the items he had purchased from the cash shop. First of all, he equipped the Suit he had bought along with a feathered pointy wizards' hat. The hat had unfortunately come in a dark blueish colour, so James had to open his dyes and found a nice jet-black colour to go with his black suit.

Another item that he had received was an autoloot ring. The ring was another cosmetic item but it's ability to automatically take loot from surrounding monsters that were killed was an overpowered ability that players labelled it as a must-have pay to win item. This was due to the fact that the time you would have spent in looting, would be able to be spend killing more monsters, effectively making the grind for better gear, more money and materials or just for exp exponentially faster in the long run.

The next few items were inventory slot expansions that would allow Octane to carry more before needing to unload his inventory. The last item on the list was a pet lootbox for which the guide had told James that pets served no purpose except to add to aesthetic value. Opening the box gave him a 'Mythical Dragon Pet', but as James believed that the small pet following him would be an annoyance he decided to put his pet on hide mode. He'd only received the pet box as part of a bundle for his other cosmetics so he didn't really care what he'd gotten.

Finally done with his important duties as a pay to win player, James proceeded to look around the village. The next large building across from the blacksmith was the potion shop. He knew this building was the potion shop because the shelves in the shop were stacked with vials containing many different coloured liquids. Once again, James was amazed by the graphical details that the game had produced as he could see small bubbles in the different coloured potions through the window of the shop.

If this wasn't enough of an indicator that the building was the potion shop, there was a little girl standing at the front, holding a vial of red liquid in her arms and a large yellow icon of a potion floating above her head. She had short crimson hair that hung loosely at her shoulders, a few freckles scattered around her face which hid behind an oversized pair of circle rimmed glasses.

Across from the potion shop, south of the street was the Inn where a picture of a bed and a full beer mug hung outside the door. The door to the inn was actually open, indicating that the building was one which players could enter.

James moved Octane through the open doors of the Inn and was greeted with a rather quiet environment. The tables were mostly empty with a only a few NPCs in the Inn sitting down and chatting amongst themselves. There were two NPCs behind the counter with floating icons above their heads. On the left was a Caucasian man who was dressed in a clean white outfit, his dark beard had been neatly trimmed and his black hair was mostly hidden behind a toque. As the cook, the floating yellow icon above his head was a full glass of beer.

Standing next to the cook was an old lady. She was as tall as the cook's shoulder and her face wore a smile that would warm anyone's heart. She would occasionally turn towards the villagers chatting and drinking in the middle of the day and shake her head with her hands on her hip, giving her a motherly charm. There was a bed floating above her head indicating that she was the Innkeeper, but next to it was a blue exclamation mark. A quest!

James looked further around the village and noticed that while there were several other houses, they were neither intractable nor enter-able. There was a farm on the east side of the village outside the wooden fence and the villager with the cattle and chickens earlier had moved them over there. James had found that there was another quest in the small village that he could take as there was a guard standing near one of the villages exits with a quest icon above his head.

'I'll just take them both and see which one's easier.'

As Octane walked up to the guard, the guard turned to look in his direction. An option appeared to interact with it.

"Hello adventurer! You came at just the right time. There are some wolf hunting grounds to the north of the village but it seems that they've been looking to extend their territory. I need you to go teach a few of them a lesson!"

The guards name, Roland, appeared above his head as he spoke, once he was finished, the blue quest indicator turned into a blue question mark. Subtitles had also run across the bottom of the screen for anyone who had turned the sound off. The quest log had also been updated and displayed the quest completion requirements as well as an option to show the path the quest location.

Current Quest

[Restless Wolves]

Kill wolves north of Stone Back Village for Roland 0/3

James knew that he could click on the quest log for more information such as the location or the rewards for the quest but as he had just received the quest and that it was the only quest he had, he decided to just go back to the Inn and check out the other quest. After returning to the Inn, Octane walked up to the innkeeper who still had the blue quest marker and spoke with her.

"How are you Octane? I might need to trouble you to go and collect some eggs from the farm for me. I'll give you some as a reward!"

It seemed that side quests would appear as a blue icon where as main quests, like the guards quest had displayed a green exclamation mark instead. Accepting the side quest had changed the current quest in his quest log to collecting eggs. Octane had already toured around the village so he knew exactly where to get the eggs from. Heading up to the farm, James had suddenly realised something he had not noticed before, there were no players!!!

As Stone Back Village was the starting town, James had expected there to at least be a few other players around, either from starting a new character or playing the game for the first time like him or even other veteran players looking to snag new players into their guild to boost numbers. But there were none. Taking the scenic route around the village before heading to the farm to complete the innkeepers quest, James had confirmed that there were no players in sight.

"You looking for some eggs eh? Just walk up to the chickens and press the [F] key to gather some eggs from them."

The villager gave Octane some information before another box appeared on screen explaining about gathering nodes. Gathering nodes were specific interactable entities that players could use to gather materials to craft items, more advanced players could even buy in game slaves to gather for them while they do something else. Most gathering nodes require some form of tool, like a pickaxe or a shovel but some nodes allow gathering without anything such as collecting weeds or gathering eggs from chickens.

As there was no open gate to the fenced off area where the chickens lay, James had Octane jump the fence into the pen and walk up to the chickens. The chickens ran away as he approached them which stopped him from being able to gather. James, realising what he should do, flitted about the pen, herding the chickens into a corner. After they got stuck trying to run away from octane only to run into a fence, the chickens sat quietly as James started the gathering action.

The gathering action took about 10 seconds and he could only catch one chicken at a time, as a result, it took James just over a minute to collect the 5 eggs he needed to complete the quest. The chickens would disappear after being gathered and would respawn, ready for gathering again after five minutes but since there were 7 chickens in the pen, James gathered all of them before returning to the Inn to hand in his quest.

"Oh, thank you Octane. Here, you can keep some as a reward."

Octane received 3 eggs for the reward which were placed straight into his inventory with the others. Part of the grey bar at the bottom had also lit up, one of its 10 sections had started glowing blue, it seemed that this was the exp bar.

After completing the old Innkeepers mission, Octane whipped out his [Old Twig] and headed out the village.

'It's time to teach the naughty doggos some manners'