[Rat has bitten you for 3 damage. Remaining HP 35/50]
[Rat has scratched you for 2 damage. Remaining HP 33/50]
[Rat has scratched you for 2 damage. Remaining HP 31/50]
Dakkon dropped the lamp to the floor, which bounced once and then rolled, illuminating dozens of flickering eyes.
The bottom of his screen was awash with the spam of combat messages, hindering their usefulness. “OVERLAY!” Dakkon screamed, stomping around and brushing away rat after rat from his torso. Three bars and a clock overlaid onto his vision. The red, HP, bar was draining quickly and he knew the flood of distracting messages wasn’t making matters any easier, “SYSTEM MESSAGES OFF!”
Dakkon backed up onto the stairs, tearing away the last rat from his leg, flinging it to the ground, and descending upon it with all the savage fury of a mother gorilla defending her young.
He cleaved the first rat in half. The powerful strike caused a panic amongst the swell of rats, which began to scramble away. Like a man possessed, Dakkon leapt towards the fleeing mass of rats.
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Dakkon shoveled what amounted to approximately 10 rats’ worth of furry, wet mass into his cloth bag. He grabbed the lamp and strode upstairs with an unwavering thousand-yard stare. He kicked open the door to the kitchen, walked up next to the old woman and poured the contents of his pack onto the table.
A tangled, gruesome mass tumbled out onto the counter top. Dakkon tossed the cleaver and lamp to the side and held out a hand to the old woman palm up, staring through her.
“Gods you’re filthy,” The old woman said, clearly disgusted. “Weren’t you wearing tan and off-white before you went down?”
Dakkon refocused his stare on the woman’s eyes and, reflexively, she held her tongue in favor of pulling out 20 coppers from a box stored in the nook where she worked. After the woman handed the money over to the wild-eyed rat mangler, Dakkon picked up his ruined bag, shoved his canteens back inside, and walked into the main room of the bar where he sat in a corner. Then, he summoned a media console and began to watch soothing videos of kittens at play.
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After an hour of rehumanizing himself, Dakkon assessed what he had gained. First, and foremost, a profound and passionate hatred of rats. Second, a better understanding of what system messages needed to be configured so that his screen did not become a wall of text—Dakkon took a moment to make the necessary changes and to toggle system messages back on. Third, a paltry 20 copper coins. And, finally, the knowledge of how it feels to be covered in biting rodents.
Well then, what had he lost? Primarily, some chunk of his sanity had been cast deep into the void. His clothes were so covered in holes and nicks that they probably wouldn’t hold together through a sprint. His bag was now an ugly, fur-matted, splotchy red mess and would likely smell foul by morning. “Anything else?” Dakkon wondered. “Right. The Traveler’s Tack. I guess that makes acquiring more food my new number one priority.”
Having had system messages turned off during the majority of the fight, and while turning a quest in, Dakkon had no idea what the state of his EXP looked like. “Character!” Dakkon summoned his character window and was a bit saddened to see he wouldn’t be gaining a level on his first day in the game.
|————
|Statistics ( ][][ )
|————
|Strength: 10 ( ? )
|Stamina: 10
|Agility: 10
|Dexterity: 10
|Intellect: 10
|Luck: 0 ( X )
|Free Stat Points: 0
|
|Hit Points: 50/50
|Endurance: 50/50
|Mana Points: 50/50
|Leveclass="underline" 1
|EXP Until Next Leveclass="underline" [
Just as he was about to close the window, Dakkon noticed something that had not been there before. A new symbol next to the word ‘Statistics.’ Dakkon selected the symbol and a new window opened before him:
|————
|Traits ( ][ )
|————
|Heroic — 1 0% [
|Hunter — 1 0% [
Selecting ‘Heroic’ pulled up a description of the effect:
|-Heroic: Gained from battling with reckless determination. Every rank in Heroic increases critical strike chance by 1%. Current effect: +1%.
Selecting ‘Hunter’ had a similar effect:
|-Hunter: Gained from slaying multiple animal-class creatures in a short period of time. Every rank in Hunter increases overall damage dealt to animal-class creatures by 1%. Current effect: +1%.
“Awesome,” Dakkon thought, legitimately pleased for the first time since he started playing. “I guess I’d better give Traits a looking into.” He turned back to his media console and through it, scoured forums and wiki sources for information on Traits:
In Chronicle, players gain experience in multiple ways. When a character’s main experience meter is filled to 100%, their level increases by one; they gain an amount of Hit Points, Endurance Points, and Mana Points as determined by their stat distribution; and they are awarded with five free stat points which they can distribute into strength, stamina, agility, dexterity, or intellect. Increasing a character’s level is an important part of powering up that character.
Traits are comparable to a character’s skills. For example, someone wishing to become a better fisherman can spend time fishing. Eventually they will unlock a Trait, or even multiple Traits, related to fishing. Utilizing a Trait gains experience. When a Trait’s experience meter is filled to 100%, that Trait levels up and becomes both more powerful and more difficult to level up again.
It is important to note that when a player character dies, they are forced to log out of the game for 11 real hours, or eight hours shy of four days in game time. A killed-off character loses a random amount of gold carried on their person, but never exceeds more than half. There’s a chance that a deceased player character will drop a random valuable item on death. The chance and number of items dropped also increases if that character is marked as a player killer. Finally, there’s the ever-looming guarantee that a felled player character will lose 20-30% experience from each and every one of their EXP bars. That means spreading oneself thin is a much riskier way to play the game. When Non-Player Characters die, they remain dead no matter how important the NPC.
Dakkon also learned that most players made their first goal finding a trainer who would unlock for them a character class. Character classes can be changed while resting, and multiclassing was even possible with some restrictions—so it didn’t matter much what a player’s original class choice was. All that mattered was getting one. From there, it was easy to have some work commissioned for the player in the form of quests from their trainer or from a guild. Upon reading how most people easily obtained a character class and started quests by simply visiting a trainer, Dakkon was jarred away from his reading by slamming his forehead into the table he sat at.