2) Restarting

''T1T$/0V3®/A$$3S and bingo. Damn, never would I have imagined such a dumb joke I made with a senior would actually help me screw with a multi-billion-dollar corporation's code. I wonder if Chad even remembers this little Easter egg we made? Doesn't matter either way; let's see what I can do with this!"

For the next few hours, Sam sat next to his computer and ran thousands of tests on the game's source code and found out multiple exploitable vulnerabilities, but he had no time, energy, or drive to mess with Divination Studios' code.

Every hacking attempt has failed before Divination Studios' amazing security, but what is even more impressive is how they have managed to bankrupt every single person who has tried to hack into their systems.

Hackers are miserable creatures; if you threaten them enough, they will give up. With the safety of a black hoodie gone, they all gave up. Fighting a billion-dollar corporation as a single hacker when you're on the wrong side of the law seemed a bit too idiotic, causing over 99% of the hacking attempts to stop within the first month.

Sam wasn't about to poke a hornet's nest by messing with their source code and modifying the game, so he only explored around and looked over the gameplay features to try and get a competitive edge over others.

"Hmm? The sun is already up? Damn, can't believe I spent the entire night reading code. Well, time to destroy this hunk of junk headgear. I have the source code downloaded and on a document. Seriously, damn is it big! Terabytes of code in 1 document. Dominating the game will be interesting. I'll have to get better at the combat system, but I have good eyes, how hard can it be?"

With his plans finalized, Sam deleted his previous account and completely destroyed his headgear and threw it away into a dump a few kilometers away from his apartment.

With that out of the way, he spent half of his last paycheck on buying a new headgear and truly began his adventure in Realms of Conquest.

Afterwards, all he had to do was create an avatar and an account. With a newly created account and a slightly modified appearance, he loaded into a majestic void, where the only thing visible was a galaxy of spheres beneath his feet.

A small woman wearing green suddenly appeared out of nowhere and said, "My name is Gaia, young man. I am the supreme god of this world. Do you need my help to find your place in this world?"

This was the tutorial AI and the AI, which controlled the in-game world completely. It is, in a certain way, the god of this world and it was offering Sam the tutorial. Having already seen this and multiple guides on how to create a character, Sam answered with a smirk, "Yes, please."

With his knowledge of the game's technical mechanics, Sam knew one thing about it, that only the developers did, and that was a major vulnerability only exploitable in the tutorial moment of the game, the only moment in the entire game a player is allowed to execute a command to the AI god.

The beautiful druid woman, with green leaf hair, stretched her hand out, as a screen appeared. "I will guide you through this world, so take my hand and tell me, what is your name?"

A small window appeared in front of Sam. His mouth was grinning ear to ear, as he input his username in

[T1T$/0V3®/A$$3S]

And suddenly, Gaia turned into a version of herself dressed in red clothes, and the talent selection menu appeared in front of him. "Sucks that I have to leave dev mode after this tutorial. If I could keep it forever, this stupid in-game restriction wouldn't even matter."

Gaia soon said in a robotic voice, "Talents selected for test: strength, intelligence. Proceed?" Sam's grin finally calmed down, and he answered, "Yes, this will be all for the test. Also, final command for you, change username to samshank."

After that, Gaia's dress suddenly returned to its former green variant, and the tutorial resumed. "samshank, what a good name, nice to meet you. Now le-"

"Thank you, but I don't need the tutorial for this. I have watched a lot of videos on how to make a good character, so I'll do it on my own."

Gaia's avatar sighed in disappointment and disappeared. To replace her, a screen appeared where a normal player would select their talent, but Sam's talent was already chosen, so he instantly pressed accept, and next he chose where he wanted to begin.

"I'll choose my original starting location. Holy Amber empire, copper town." With his destination set, a small green sphere near the middle of the galaxy glowed, and Sam's avatar was pulled into it with the world blurring, as if he was approaching the realm at hyperspeed in a spaceship. Gaia stood in a void with a smirk on her face and chuckled as Sam sped off, her eyes sharp.

With a flash of white light, Sam appeared in a very familiar location. Players in cloth roamed the streets, looking for stuff to do and exploring the world. Sam quickly checked his status and smiled.

Name: samshank

Class: civilian Level 1: 0%

Health: 12/12

Strength+: 1

Agility: 1

Intelligence+: 1

Constitution: 1

Perception: 1

Charisma: 1

Creativity: 1

Armour value: 2

Free stat points: 5

Skill points: 0 Skills:

He couldn't help but smile at this amazing status screen. If anyone unfamiliar with Realms of Conquest saw it, they would be confused by why it was so low or what the + meant, but Sam knew the significance of this simple addition.

Realms of Conquest took a different approach to an RPG. The traditional versions of VRMMORPG were popular, but they required a lot of min-maxing, and the skill ceiling was basically who did their math the best. Such mechanics turned off new players and were nothing but tedious grinding, so the developers took a new design choice for the stats in this game.

They created a status system, where instead of tens of thousands of points, the highest stat in the entire game after 3 months of being public is a 17 in strength a ranker has. They made acquiring stats the goal of the game and the ultimate reward.

Stats are increased by using stat points, but the amount you need to increase a stat changes after each upgrade. Taking a stat from 0 to 1 will cost 1 stat point, but from 1 to 2 will cost 2, from 2 to 3 will cost 3 stat points and so forth. Increasing a stat to 17 would mean investing all stat points from level 1 to 31 solely into that single stat.

This balance decision simplified calculations and made the game a lot easier to understand for everyone, so they wouldn't have to have a math degree to calculate how buffs and stats stacked on top of each other and simplified the system aspect of the game, focusing more on the gameplay.

The game has hundreds, maybe thousands of classes, some still unknown, which would traditionally throw said balance away, but they decided to only allow classes to influence skills. They will not have any effect on player stats, so how do they make playable characters more unique?

That was solved by the talent system. Talents in a certain stat decrease its upgrade cost by 20% permanently. This would seem small in the beginning, when 1 level up can get you 2-3 stat upgrades, but when it goes up to requiring 5 level ups to improve a stat, your talent will cut it down to 4, saving an entire level's worth of stat points, which doesn't include the already saved points even before then.

Most classes use 2 stats, a main and sub stat, so this stat distribution system is perfectly balanced, but having two talents will give a huge competitive edge to anyone, especially if it is a new player, as gaining a discount past level 20 is already amazing, but starting with 2 discounts means you will be almost unparalleled in growth potential.

It sucks how careful these devs are. Seriously, implementing a check to make sure no one has more than 2 talents even with their anti-hacker security being through the roof is just excessive.

After finding said vulnerability and being able to acquire 2 talents, Sam wanted to get the maximum 7 talents value, but the developers had implemented a special system to check a person's talent amount. It is run at all times on all accounts, and having more than 2 will result in a permanent ban, with a secured ban. The amount of processing power wasted on this would be astounding and almost unmaintainable, if not for Gaia.

The only reason 2 talents are even allowed is that 2 quests award a special trait with the ID "main_character_factor." This will grant you talent in your class's sub stat.

Such an upgrade is welcome at any stage of the game, but having started with two talents, the amount of stat points saved will be plentiful and allow the player to develop a 3rd stat, the booster stat.

Sighing at the cleverness of the main god system, Sam invested his stat points into the stats he will need for his main class.

Name: samshank

Class: civilian Level 1: 0%

Health: 26/26

Strength+: 3

Agility: 1

Intelligence+: 1

Constitution: 2

Perception: 1

Charisma: 1

Creativity: 1

Armour value: 4

Free stat points: 0

Skill points: 1

Skills:

*At least the game is generous with what it considers a 20% off and rounds upwards.* Satisfied with his stat distribution, Sam went to check on his equipment and see what he could do about the awkward situation,

(A.N. Here is all the math for those interested. Health= 10XconstitutionXlevel+ 2XstrengthXlevel. Armour value= (ConstitutionX2+equipment+special bonusrs)Xspecial bonus. I made the math simple to not annoy myself with spreadsheets and annoying and overcomplicated stat screens, where someone wears 17 different pieces of Mythical grade, buster combo armour with 23 different stat bonuses on each piece. Looking at you ROTSSG. 

The rounding thing is also VERY generous. Basically 20% of 1 is 0.2 and 20% of 5 is 1, but the system considers them the same, so 20% of 6 is the same as 20% of 10, 11 is same as 15 and etc. But it also work the same way when rounding down. The math is easy and not annoying)