22. Glimmerthread Lacquer

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity." — Seneca

After respawning in Elynduil, Paul went into deep thought; the girl Holly seemed somewhat familiar to him, but he couldn't put his finger on it.

It did not take long for Holly to respawn next to him either, her petite frame starkly contrasting her daring act of jumping off a cliff to save time.

"Alright, I'll show you around the crafting and bank areas to store the mats after we refine them."

Leading the way, he was distracted as he made his way toward the building where players could refine hides into leather; thankfully, the building was instanced to your party, meaning that when you walked through the door, you would be in a separate space from everyone not in your party. 

Harbinger's Call often did this in extremely high-congestion non-combat zones, so it was not crowded and loud.

"Alright, I will do the refining; once I am done, I'll trade you the leathers that are your share, and you trade me your hides, and we will do it like that so we don't have to go to the bank between."

Claire stood beside him, watching him play the minigame, refining materials while mindlessly scrolling on popular streams. 

While looking at someone trying to do a quest to receive the ability to temporarily tame horses when, she suddenly heard Lazarus make a very happy yelp before laughing.

"I actually refined a Glimmerthread Lacquer without any passives; that is insane!" 

Walking over to realize she couldn't see anything, Claire looked at him excitedly.

"Is that a legendary upgrade material?"

Calming down a little bit, he shook his head.

"No, it is only epic quality, but what is special is that it is used for both leather and cloth materials, meaning it has double the supply and demand. Early on, when few people are able to get it, the demand will be even greater than some legendary materials since most people have nowhere near the capital to try to push their gear to legendary." 

"How much do you think it will sell for?"

"That is hard to say. We will need to wait two weeks and see what prices settle on. They will most likely be at least 10,000 thalor, though."

Hearing that, Claire sucked in a deep breath.

"Around $1,000 just like that, we need to return to farming!"

Seeing she was eager to return to farming despite looking like she would fall asleep when they were killing cows, he chuckled before returning to refinement. 

"From what I have seen, the passive to increase the quality of upgrade material upgrade drops has four tiers, the first at tailoring level 20 and then every ten levels until 50, which is the maximum for professions. Currently, I am 13, so towards the end of tomorrow, I should be able to the tier 1 passive; maybe we can get something good then.

Nodding happily, she continued to watch him refine, eager for any other luck they might have. 

Unfortunately, by the time Paul finished the rest of the hides, he had only gotten a decent amount of uncommon upgrade materials, which might sell for a few hundred thalor and a few rare upgrade materials that would sell for 1,000 thalor max. 

After splitting the resources as much as they could manage, they made their way to a large stone building with very few players around.

"This is the bank; you can store items or currency in it for storage or to transfer to another character; that is why it is so empty right now; nobody needs that right now."

When they entered, dropping stuff off was swift, and they were out of the city just over 10 minutes after entering.

While returning, Claire followed Paul down a series of highly convoluted paths that made his head spin and served the sole purpose of saving a few seconds here or there. 

"How did you manage to figure out such a strange route to this barn in such a short time?"

"Knowing I would spend much time there, I decided to scout out a path. It took around an hour, but it saved us around 4 minutes each time; added up, that was very worth it."

He was not lying. By the time he started playing, this glitch had been patched for months. He only knew the basics of how to set it up. Things like the route and optimal strategies were never something he looked into, so he had to make his own.

"You are either fortunate and skilled or hacking to find that glitch and understand it so quickly on the second day the game launched. Well, as long as we make money and get paid, I don't care."

"You do not have to worry. I am not hacking, and it would be a miracle if you met anyone who was in this game. We have to worry about making money and keeping this a secret."

Nodding, they continued on their way, enjoying the walk through nature before returning to the gruesome slaughterhouse that would likely flood Claire's nightmares.

"Hey Lazarus, how long do you think this glitch will last for?"

"When the update two weeks after launch drops, we are going to report it and get it patched, so until then, I guess."

Hearing him, her eyes bulged.

"Why would we do that? Doing this farm is going to make us extremely under-leveled, so shouldn't we sit here and farm as long as we can?"

Shaking his head, Paul looked towards the slaughterhouse.

"After that, it is very likely others will find the glitch and become our competition; not only would we get fewer hides with a dozen people squeezed together in there, but the price of everything we have farmed will plummet even another week after others learn of the spot enough mats could have been farmed to crash the market for years. Plus, I can already tell that by then, you will be so sick of killing cows that you will be happy to do anything else, even if it's just repeating a single dungeon repeatedly."

Thinking it over, Claire nodded, understanding the situation.

"Do you have a plan to catch back up with the mainstream players afterward?"

Giving her a sidelong glance, Paul seemed to be rendered speechless.

"What makes you think I do? As you said, the game launched a few days ago; how can I know everything?"

"You seem unusually informed, so you are either a beta tester or somehow have access to information the rest of the player base has. I like my odds of following your plan compared to going off by myself aimlessly."

Hearing her reasoning, he signed sincerely before explaining.

"Fine, my plan is pretty simple: farming large numbers of enemies a few levels higher than you is the best way to level up; it beats questing by a mile, so we will just go find a higher-level area with lots of melee enemies and farm them. From what I can tell, every ten levels, the XP to level up increases by a large amount. If I were to guess, people would find it much slower to level up after 30; from current progress, I think most players who have been leveling daily will be in the high 30s by the end of 2 weeks, and the very advanced groups will be in the lower 40s."

Walking into the slaughterhouse, he quickly set up the glitch, not worried about her trying to steal the secret; even sitting there watching him would be difficult to understand. Not to mention, their plan to funnel him mats would be faster than either one of them going off solo.

"Let's get back to work."