Atrocity

"XP and dying?" The dashing noob was confused. "I kill monsters to get XP, and when I die, I respawn. What else is there?"

The plain-looking man smiled. "This is what I mean by the not so obvious stuff. New Dawn is a great game, don't get me wrong, but their tutorial skips over a lot of stuff. To fully understand it, you either need to be an experienced player of this kind of game or spend hours reading through the help centre."

The dashing noob nodded. Although he did not fully understand what his friend was on about, he could tell that the important explanation was about to come.

"For starters, XP can be gained from anything—not just monsters. Monsters, NPCs, and players all provided XP. The XP systems for monsters and NPCs is complicated, so I won't go into it, but the XP provided for killing a player is relatively simple to calculate—the total XP is 20% of their total experience. For example, at level 40, a player will have earned at least 145,700 XP. So, the player or party that kills the player will earn a total of 29,140 XP. Then the XP is split between one more than the number of people in the party, with the extra portion being a last-hit bonus."

The dashing noob chuckled and scratched his head. "That's a lot of maths. Is this really necessary?"

"You can enjoy the game without knowing all this, but if you want to actually get good at the game, numbers will become more important."

"That makes sense, I guess. What did you want to say about dying?"

"There was more to say about the XP system, but…" The man sighed. "I want to explain the respawn system. It has sparked some controversy, but the respawn system in this game is possibly the simplest in this genre—you respawn where you last logged in.

"There are limitations to this. For instance, you cannot login in boss rooms, so you can't get stuck in a respawn loop there. As for getting stuck in high level areas or repeatedly getting PKed (killed by a player), the devs seem to think it's not an issue. Their official stance is that mobs move about randomly and likely won't be there the following day, and players will eventually get bored. Unofficially, one dev said, 'Just don't play the game for a few hours while players and mobs leave. Go outside, you fucking virgins.'"

That comment had lead to the developer's immediate firing. It's a simple rule—don't insult the people you're trying to sell to.

"Wow, that's a little blunt." The dashing noob, while knowing it was rude, could not help but feel that perhaps some of these players could do with being away from the computer more. He sent a thinking emoji. "Is it really that simple?"

"Yeah, watch." The player logged out and then logged straight back in. "Quick, kill me. I'll respawn here in a minute."

The noob killed his friend as he was told, and a minute later, his friend reappeared, just like when he was logging in.

"That is convenient. It's annoying in other games when you die and have to run across the whole map to get back."

"Yeah, a pain. Oh look, now, it's not as pronounced here as we're low levels at the moment, but I lost some XP."

"Ah, I'm sorry, I didn't know."

"Haha, don't worry. It was just a couple of XP—I'll make it back in seconds. No, what I wanted to warn you about is level drops. When you die, you'll lose some XP, but if you reach 0 XP progress on your current level and die, you'll drop a level. This doesn't often happen, but it's worth keeping in mind."

"Yes, I wouldn't want to get careless. So, I basically always need XP in my gauge? I can just kill any old thing to gain 1 XP."

"No, you can't. That brings me onto my last tip. XP gain is dependant on level, at least when it comes to monsters and NPCs. If you defeat something a much higher level than you, you will gain a tremendous amount of XP. However, if you defeat something that is too much weaker, you won't gain any XP."

The plain-looking man looked around and saw a woman walking down the street with her baby. "Ah, follow me."

He jogged over to the woman with his noob friend following behind. "This woman is level 2, which means that we will probably get about 10 XP."

The man punched the woman in the head. She disappeared with a 'poof!' and her baby dropped to the floor.

[You have killed a villager (Level 2).]

[You have gained 9 XP.]

The same message appeared on both of their screens as they were in the same party.

"Now," the experienced player continued, "if you kill that baby, we won't gain anything as it's too low levelled."

The noob clicked on the baby. And with another 'poof!' it disappeared as well.

[You have killed a villager - baby (Level 0).]

[You have gained 0 XP.]

…

"Just kill that baby even though we gain nothing from it. This lower life form means nothing to us!"

Wilbert had been listening to the pair's conversation since he heard mention of skills and XP, but he had not looked towards them as he did not want to draw their attention.

However, when he heard such shocking words, he instinctively turned his head, and he was just in time to see the man's foot land on the baby's head.

The baby, still lying on its mother's warm corpse, was instantly murdered. Under the force of the muscular guy in thick boots, the baby's head popped like a watermelon in an industrial press. It's grey brain matter, laced with streams of red blood, exploded everywhere. It covered the mother, who even after dying was holding onto her baby as if trying to protect it. The gooey mess even covered the two men, but they did not seem to care.