The Copper Rose

by David Lingard

I knew I had no resources for the kitchen, and I wondered what would happen if I started but didn’t finish building it around the cooking pot – would it mean the end of my clan? It didn’t matter anyway, the quest didn’t give me a time limit (I thought that if there was one it would have) and everything I had I wanted to plough into building the Trading Forum anyway.

  I waited. And I mean I really waited for what seemed like a million years for my SP to rise alongside the construction meter on the forum but it was like waiting for a kettle to boil. Once the wall had been completed (saving myself five hundred SP that I didn’t have to not have to rush it), my workers moved their construction prowess over to the forum and we all started to work as one. The meter filled within just two days and by that time the leftover resources had been dropped off in our new construction zone. I was so pleased that my village seemed to be working like a well-oiled machine – regardless of whether or not oil was actually a thing in Freedom Online.

  “Excuse me could you tell me where a dwarf can get himself a drink?” A very broad accented voice came from behind me. It was a complete shock to be spoken to neither in Rachel’s own timid voice, nor the pigeon English that the goblins spoke.

  When I turned to face the man…er…dwarf, he was so typical that I could have almost laughed. He only came up to my chest, his long black hair flowing to join his equally long beard with two strands of each thickly plaited. Strapped to his back was an absolutely huge double-headed axe that I thought would probably have been a bit big for me even, but as it was with the dwarf’s terrifyingly muscular physique, I didn’t think he would have much trouble with it.

  “What?” I eventually asked after I managed to close my mouth. He just seemed so nonplussed by the whole situation. He was a damn dwarf approaching a human, in a goblin village asking about a drink.

  “I said…Where can a dwarf get a drink around here?” he repeated.

  “Well, nowhere.”

  “What the bloody hell do you mean nowhere” he attempted to mimic my voice. “What kind of village is this without somewhere to get a good drink?!”

  “Well, what were you expecting?” I enquired on my search for knowledge. I always could smell a quest from a mile off.

  “Are you some kind of imbecile? A TAVERN!” His voice boomed around the village causing some of my goblins to momentarily stop what they were doing.

  This was something that I hadn’t been expecting. What the hell did I ever need a tavern for? It’s not like I really desperately needed a drink or anything. Actually though, now that he mentioned it a tavern did kind of sound nice.

  There was far too much going on though and I needed to put a stopper on everything that wasn’t vital to me right now. The Trading forum had been completed along with the remainder of my perimeter wall and It certainly did make my village look like an amazing place to be – well compared to everywhere else I’d been so far anyway.

  “So are you just going to keep staring at me or do I need to introduce you to the ground?” The dwarf interrupted my tangent.

  “We…don’t have a tavern. Or anything like that actually…it hadn’t occurred to me to make one.” I replied.

  “Well you’d best start making one then hadn’t you.” The dwarf growled.

  You have been offered a quest

  You must build a tavern for the Coyote Creek Village so that all of the inhabitants can drink and partake in merriment. This is a requirement for Dwarven visitors in your village.

  Reward: Dwarves will visit the village

  Do you wish to accept this quest? Yes/No

  The second quest in as many minutes made my heart race, and this one certainly didn’t seem like just your average fetch and return quest. Unlocking dwarves could mean so many different things for the village but above everything, ever since the dwarf had first started speaking, I really wanted a drink. I now had two things to build, but the resources for neither.

  “You’re not a player, are you?” I asked in the realisation that by giving me a quest, the dwarf had revealed himself as another pre-programmed sprite. In response though, he just stared at me blankly.

  “Where did you come from?” I asked, attempting to go down a new route.

  “Talk to me once you get yourself a tavern. Until then I shall trade in the forum,” he announced. Clearly, he wouldn’t talk with me without a drink in his hands.

  The decision I’d come to was to remember my roots, that is, to carry on as though nothing had happened and address the needs of my clan and village before all else. Of course, the dwarf had a point but in order to keep both my clan and myself well fed, the kitchen was the number one priority at this point, not a tavern who would just be serving lovely cold, frothy...

  As soon as I woke up the next day, I made sure to check that I had the just-over two hundred SP in my account that I had been expecting. It wasn’t anything too serious but just knowing that it was accruing (and not for some reason resetting every day as I had secretly feared) made me feel pretty good about life.

  I had just enough food in the clan to summon a couple of feeders, but my gut was holding me back from doing so. I knew I needed them, but I couldn’t help but wonder if there wasn’t a better way of increasing our food generation.

  I analysed one of the feeders that I could see making his way towards the walls where he would presumably be off to herd beetles or some other task that I hadn’t bothered to check out since I’d been too enthralled in macromanagement, at some point I had forgotten to deal with the finer details of the Creek’s daily goings on, but there were certainly bigger fish to fry.

  He was level one as I had expected and I could see that I could spend one hundred SP to level him up to level two. What I didn’t know was what effect this would have on his food yield – i.e. if it would increase it and if so, by how much? but I knew there was only one way to find out. I quickly checked the village’s status then clicked to spend the one hundred points to increase his level by just one. I watched him stop moving for just a second, grow ever so slightly larger and then continue about his business. I could tell he had just placed his new attribute point into his strength. ‘Goblins, so predictable’.

  The updated settlement information told me that he was now going to be collecting an extra three food per day, which was definitely a good thing, but I also noticed that my SP generation rate had also increased by one point. A very welcome bonus indeed. It must have something to do with the relationship between the levels of my villagers and the amount of SP that they generated.

  I had to assess whether it was right to summon new goblins, or level the ones I had but at the moment the answer was simple, for the right here and right now, I needed to do both so I spent my last one hundred SP on another feeder and also used the rest of my spare food to summon two more new feeders at level one.

  For a settlement as vast and impressive as Coyote Creek was, I was very aware that I was now very broke. I had no more SP and no more food to spend and I’d never felt worse for it. The saying was right, it was better to never have it than to have it and lose it…or was that the other way around? Either way I felt bad about having nothing again and resigned to the fact that there would be a little more waiting around in my near future.

  Trees always made me feel better. The crack of the wood, the twang in my axe, the thud as each one hit the ground. I was not ashamed to say that the next few days felling trees were some of the happiest in the game for me. Everything was just shut away in the deepest recesses of my mind and when I finally reached level four in my lumberjack skill I was greeted with the most pleasant of sensations.

  I liked how fast my wood stash grew while I was manning an axe. I almost doubled production single-handedly and within a few days of solid, exhilarating work I was happy to report that not only did I have planks coming out the wazoo, but the food situation had righted itself somewhat, with the village now at a healthy surplus and having a little extra over in the reserves.

  Again, I had just a touch over
two-hundred SP and a million things to spend it on, but I was still firmly in the mindset that I would rather investigate other ways in which I could put them to good use than repeat the same boring process of summoning feeders and levelling them up. It wouldn’t have been too long before the village was covered in feeders if that was the only way to increase the food production.

  I analysed the Hydroponic Farm on a hunch and both meeting and exceeding my expectation I was greeted by an entire range of upgrade opportunities, each resulting in increased food in one way or another.

  Hydroponic Farm – Level 1 – Upgrade: 500SP

  The Hydroponic Farm provides a yield of crops at time intervals depending upon the crops in question and may require workers and/or additional resources in order to function.

  Upgrade Water System – Level 0 - 200SP

  Water with better nutrients means that yields are more even, regular and there is less of a chance of lost crops due to disease or malnourishment.

  Upgrade Labour – Level 0 - 200SP

  More workers mean faster crop production. This upgrade also comes with the added benefit that the farm can use unskilled adult workers and they have a small chance to gain the feeder skill.

  Upgrade Planters – Level 0 - 200SP

  More plants within the farm mean more yield.

  Plant Genetics – Level 0 - 500SP

  Researching what makes plants grow and selective breeding means that the crops are fuller, harvested sooner and produce a larger yield in the same space that they would have otherwise.

  Beyond each of the upgrades, I could see a network of interconnecting spurs and levels that would come available once the previous unlock conditions were met. Most were greyed out so that I couldn’t see what they were, but I knew that their purpose would be largely the same – to make the farm produce more food either by making larger yields, or by reducing the time between harvests. Again, with no experience I wasn’t sure what would be the best way to go about spending my ever-too-small pool of SP on, but I had the feeling that anything would have been a bonus at this point.

  I upgraded the labour section of the farm. It took a minute to work it out in my head, but at the moment there were two workers in the unit and by adding another slot I presumed that this would increase production by something like a half again. Yes I was well aware that more people don’t make plants grow faster so this might not have been the case, but I also felt as though just summoning more feeders to send out hunting or fishing wasn’t the best way to go about doing things. After all I was all about sustainability and who knows really, what if at some point we hunt the forest into a barren wasteland?

  The Farm didn’t seem to give any visual indication that I’d made the upgrade, other than the line of text next to ‘upgrade labour’ had changed from Level Zero, two hundred SP, to Level One, five hundred SP. Things were definitely going to get expensive around here.

  I was elated to realise that I could now increase the staffing of the farm from two, to four – one more than I had expected and I dutifully filled the space with two new feeders from the breeding hut. I knew I could have simply reallocated some of the others, but I wanted this to be a real fresh start for the future of hydroponic farming within Freedom.

  My food generation had instantly skyrocketed to nearly two hundred units per day, with the maintenance still at just over one hundred. I couldn’t believe that this upgrade had resulted in such a dramatic increase, but I certainly wasn’t going to challenge it. My pockets instantly felt heavy as I glanced to the breeding hut with machinations on what to spend my excess food on, but I knew better this time around. I made a mental note to spend just a little bit of it in the morning, saving the rest for a rainy day once again.

  Chapter Twenty-One, Balance

  T

  avern, check. Kitchen, check. Two new goblin traders and a goblin cook summoned over three days? You’d better believe that’s a check. You may notice that ‘goblin trader’ was a new profession available to the breeding hut and well, you wouldn’t be wrong, for as soon as the forum had been completed the little green, greedy wheeler-dealers had become available for hire.

  The tavern, the Hog’s Head was a stone building with a thatched roof, an odd combination but it somewhat made it stand out from the other buildings as one of note, which in my mind now it certainly was. This had been my intended destination for as long as it had been under construction. I wondered why I’d suddenly wanted a drink so badly, but I thought that I would think about that once I had a drink in my hand.

  Turning my back on the camp at large, I decided to move on to the next chapter in my journey – a swift drink in the Hog’s Head.

  Of course, I’d never really been one to socialise on any large scale, but I had partly felt it necessary to show my face in support of the village’s newest construction, and partly was now absolutely desperate for that drink.

  The Hog’s Head was a smallish building on the inside and was already packed from the long wooden bar to the door, but I managed to easily find room to sit and drink. I was not shocked that the only drink available was ‘ale’ and that it tasted exactly like ‘ale’ and came in a huge wooden tankard. It was like something straight out of medieval times.

  “What are those?” I said to the unfamiliar goblin bartender as I watched him scoop my tankard full of ‘ale’ from a deep half barrel. I’d gestured to a noticeboard with small scraps of paper attached to it behind the bar.

  “Them’s greencards! Not been in a tavern before?” the bartender spoke not jovially, like all bartenders seemed to be able to do without effort, but definitely less snappy for a goblin.

  “Greencards?” I asked, again very aware that I should make more of an effort than single word questions, although the goblins never seemed to care very much.

  The bartender pulled one of the scraps of paper off the board with his bony green hand and gave it to me. The first thing I noticed was that it was white and not green as its name suggested.

  You have been offered a quest

  You must find or otherwise make a pick axe of good quality or better for the dwarf, Gorin.

  Reward: Unknown

  Do you wish to accept this quest? Yes/No

  I scrunched my nose as I understood the implication. “This is a…quest?” I asked.

  “A QUEST!” The bartender practically roared with amusement. Thankfully for me, the ambient rumbling noise in the tavern had drowned out his amused cry to anyone not a part of our conversation. “Not really quest. More like want help.” He explained in his goblin way.

  “Right…and why is it called a greencard?” I asked accusingly with a single eye closed. It was kind of funny to me, but I tried to seem serious.

  “With Greencard, imm… imm… immunity from punishment.” He eventually spat out.

  “So if someone asked for someone to be killed, someone else could do it if they had one of those, and not go to prison?” I asked awkwardly, beginning to not like this implication at all.

  “Only killing card. You need OK those.” The bartender explained as his stride into the conversation with me widened.

  “Right,” I said, “and if I want to make a Greencard for myself?” The idea of making my own quests had come into my mind very quickly in this conversation, having realised the potential of such a loophole right away.

  “No. Not Leader” The bartender snapped, and I became aware that I had almost entirely lost his attention now, as he edged away slowly from our conversation. I understood the gesture and decided to let the goblin leave to his work.

  I could now pick up quests whenever I wanted, and that was the staple of every game that I’d ever played. Not only did quests usually progress the main storyline (if there was one), but side quests and fetch and return missions had always been accompanied with the rewards of experience and items at a rate that certainly made them worthwhile.

  “I see you’ve done my bidding!” The particularly dwarven voice interrupted my plans for side-quest ma
nia and I turned to see Gorin the dwarf standing proudly with his hands on his hips.

  “Gorin! How nice to see you again, I hope you are enjoying our tavern here!” I spoke as though I was a hotel manager doing my best to meet the needs of my guests. “I trust you have partaken in our finest apple cider, and we have an extensive collection of exquisite wines.”

  “Don’t give me all that rubbish, we dwarves drink ALE!” he boomed the tail of his sentence again, but it seemed as though people had gotten used to his inflexions already. “Now I offered you a quest and you have dutifully delivered, so I’m here to let you know that the dwarves will be visiting Coyote Creek here, if for nothing more than to trade and drink in your tavern.”

  A quest can now be completed

  You must build a tavern for the Coyote Creek Village so that all of the inhabitants can drink and partake in merriment. This is a requirement for Dwarven visitors in your village.

  Reward: Dwarves will visit the village

  Do you wish to complete this quest? Yes/No

  I hammered the yes button with purpose, dismissing the message from my view.

  “So, when do the other dwarves arrive?” I asked in anticipation of the unknown and different.

  Gorin pointed towards the Trading Forum and waters beyond. “I think they are already here!” he announced. I couldn’t see out past the wall, but my visions of a longboat crewed by heavily armed dwarves was well founded, as when I made it to our docking area that is exactly what presented itself. ‘Holy hell that was quick’ I thought to myself, but really who was I to question the mechanics of the game?

  In a terrible cliché, it all happened so fast. Within a few minutes of the completion of my quest, the boat had unloaded its passengers and all of them, at least fifteen as I’d counted instantly dispersed themselves amongst the village, primarily in the Trading Forum and the Tavern. Gorin stood by my side as I watched the new activity within Coyote Creek.