by R. A. Mejia
As I strolled further down the street, I tried to guess what crafts were done in which buildings. The alchemy shops were easy to spot, even without the bubbling cauldron on their signs. They had the most chimneys of any of the buildings, which were no doubt used to vent the fumes from their creations. When I peeked inside, I saw not only cauldrons but also a veritable chemistry store full of glass vials, beakers, tubes, and piping.
I guessed that the signs with large green leaves were for the herbalists. When I asked a goblin in dirty clothes that was coming out of the glass structures what was inside, he told me, “Yeah, your guesses were good. We grow food inside for them fancy chefs, herbs and plants that magic people use. Nothing dangerous or special, just the normal ones everyone uses a lot. If you need special ones you gotta go outside the city to the wild or get them from the dungeon.”
As I continued my exploration of the district, I saw one of the most amazing buildings I could imagine. It had large two story high colored glass windows. It turned out to be for the glassblowers and the windows were for advertising as much as letting in light. When I looked inside, I saw that they were people sticking long metal tubes into furnaces and when they took out the tubes, they had white hot globs on the end. It was fascinating to watch them blow into the end of the tubes and use all manner of tools to shape the hot glass to make window panes, plates, cups, vases, and more decorative and artistic items.
However, I was most surprised to see a section of the Crafter’s District dedicated to art and painting. It was by far the most unorganized area, and it felt like a commune with a variety of painters, sculptures, singers, and other artists working together and separately to make items.
I spoke to one of the artists who was outside painting a starry sky in thick oil paints. The light-haired elf laughed at the misconception of their craft. “We are not just people who slap paint on a canvas.” He gestured to the studio behind him. “We are a group of highly specialized craftsmen and mages. Not only do we create beautiful artwork, but we also magically infuse it with spells that confer bonuses to the buildings it is displayed in.”
“What kind of bonuses could art give to someone?” I asked.
He shrugged. “The bonuses depended on the art itself and what the intention of the artist is.” He pointed at his own painting of a starry sky. “This for example, might confer a bonus to stargazing or to magic cast under starlight. But a statue of a famous warrior might aid in weapons training or give a defensive bonus to the occupants of the home while they were indoors. It all depends on the artist and the magic he chose to infuse into his works.”
I thanked the elf for his time and continued my walk through the district. I saw a building with a sign with a sheaf of papers that I thought was a bookstore. Yet, when I peeked through the window, I saw that it was dedicated to papermaking. I recalled how hard it had been to make paper by hand and looking at the tools on some of the tables inside, it appeared as if the craft was even more specialized than it had been on Earth. Not only did these craftsmen make normal paper by hand or with the aid of specialized tools like vats to boil down plants, frames and presses, and drying racks, but they also made magical paper--the kind that was used to make magic scrolls and spellbooks. Thus, there were also tools to infuse magic and crushed monster cores into a specially prepared paper. There were also areas to cut and bind the paper into usable products like books.
Interestingly, or perhaps wisely, the tanners, smelters, cloth factories, and other producers of raw materials were located outside the city so that the smells and soot from those endeavors were kept away from the main city.
I enjoyed exploring the area while it was uncrowded and thought that it was a great way to spend the late afternoon. Still, I had to remember that I’d come to the district in search of material resources. I talked to the few blacksmiths working that day, and they all told me the same thing: they got their iron, steel, and all their other metals from the Merchant’s Guild, who gave the Crafter’s Guild a bulk discount on purchases. If I wanted to get the same discount, I’d have to join either one or the other. Even then, I’d only be able to get a basic discount once I rose in their ranks. The only other way to get the raw materials cheaply I was interested in was to get them directly from the dungeon myself or hire adventurers to do it for me.
I considered my options as I walked back to the Gnomish Research Institute. I needed a steady supply of iron and copper--not just for my own personal repairs, but also for the crafting I did to advance my class and business. I couldn’t repair or fabricate items without the materials. Up until now, I’d only fabricated or repaired poor quality items made from wood or copper, but hopefully, I’d soon gain access to better schematics that needed higher quality materials. It was a staple even in the games I played on Earth that you needed better weapons and armor to defeat more difficult foes. You could never expect to beat the great lord of doom with trash items, even if you had high-level skills. If anything, I expected my combat potential to rely even more on items and gear since my class was focused on crafting and support, not combat.
As I settled in for the night, not having anything to report to my gnome handlers, I looked over my class quests. It had been too long since I’d earned any class skill points, and if I was going to unlock any more class abilities, I needed more of them. I only got one for each level I gained, so it was paramount that I continue to progress on these quests since they gave class skill points as rewards.
Practice makes perfect II: Fabricate 1,000 medium items.
Practice makes perfect III: Fabricate 1,000 large items.
Practice makes perfect IV: Fabricate 1,000 magical items.
Quality Assurance II: Fabricate 800 fine quality items.
Quality Assurance III: Fabricate 600 good quality items.
Quality Assurance IV: Fabricate 400 great quality items.
Mechanical Healer II: Repair 500 hit points.
Fixer II: Repair 500 durability points.
Magic Hands I: Imbue 100 items.
Magic Metalman I: Create 10 magical schema.
I’d already cleared the easiest quests to make poor or small items and to repair myself, and now, it was going to become even more time consuming to complete some of these. I knew from experience that the quest to repair myself for 500 hit points would take care of itself over time. After all, every day that I went down into the dungeon meant that I would have to repair the damage I took fighting monsters. If I took 20 points of damage every day, it would take me twenty-five days to finish that quest. Theoretically, I could also cheat and intentionally damage and repair myself to complete the quest faster. After all, I focused on avoiding taking damage while I was in the dungeon, so it might be a way to level up someone's combat or defense skills. Heck, now that I was thinking along those lines, I could potentially level several skills at once. If I let someone wail on me to raise their weapon skill, I could take the damage and repair it to complete my quest. Or I could defend against it with a shield and repair that to complete the Fixer II quest. I might even be able to raise my own skills. I wondered how I would go about getting heavy armor or shield skills. I knew Niala Applebrush was a Shield Maiden and she offered me some training. Maybe she would know?
I gave up on that line of thought and returned to thinking about the best ways to maximize my nights. Since I’d discovered the trick, I’d spent every night fabricating small poor quality copper nails for a single experience point each. A single nail wasn’t very much experience, but I could make and deconstruct them quickly, which meant that I could rack up steady XP every night. But now I needed to make medium and good quality items.
I had some access to massive amounts of free wood on the first level of the dungeon and a schematic for a poor wooden shield, which would qualify as a medium item. So, it was time to experiment. I had just enough wood left in my internal inventory to make one shield, so I sat in my room and called the command to fabricate the poor wooden shield.
“Command: F
abricate Poor Medium Shield.”
My left forearm split open and the cylindrical fabrication tool popped out, the tip glowing red. I pointed it at a place on the floor of my room, and a new notification appeared.
Fabrication area found. Estimated time of completion: 50 minutes. Please stay still.
I felt my body freeze, and I was unable to move. The fabrication unit beamed out a red light in a thin narrow plane, and while I watched, it slowly built the shield, layer by layer like a 3-D printer. The red light disappeared when the shield was finished, the fabrication unit went back into my left forearm, and I got a message.
Fabrication complete. 5 XP.
Even though it was just a single item, it had taken almost an hour to make. When I checked the item’s schematics, I understood why.
Poor Medium Shield - Components: 5.0 lbs of wood, .03 lbs of copper
The shield was an identical copy of the one I had dropped in the dungeon, and it was heavy, weighing more than five pounds. The time it took me to fabricate an item was directly tied to how heavy and complicated it was. So, although the shield wasn’t complex, it did weigh quite a bit. Thankfully, deconstructing it wasn’t as complicated, and it only took five minutes to break the shield back into its component materials. In a single eight-hour night, I’d be able to make eight shields at most. Even if I got more experience for making a medium item, it would take me forever to fulfill the class quests that required me to make 1,000 medium or good quality items. If I didn’t want to spend the next six months on class quests, I’d have to search for a medium item that was not only good quality but also light enough to fabricate quickly.
In the meantime, I went back to the easy XP, fabricating the copper nails. By the time daylight shone through my room’s window, I’d gained another 465 XP.
Chapter 9 - Level 5
I left a little later than normal to meet up with Greebo at the fountain outside the dungeon, and as I stepped outside of the Institute, I noted that the city had come alive once again. Crowds filled the sidewalks, and the horse- and mechanical-horse-drawn carriages plugged the streets. As I pushed my way through a group of adventurers that had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk to argue with one another, I realized how much I had missed the empty streets. The downside to people being out and about again, of course, was that my journey to the dungeon took three times longer than it had just a day before.
I found Greebo waiting at our usual meet-up spot and called out to him, and he waved his hand in response when he heard me. As I made my way past the stalls and throngs of adventurers, I made a promise to myself not to get such a late start again in the future.
My goblin friend looked much better than he had yesterday while he was hungover. “Hey, Greebo. You’re looking good, man. I mean, goblin.” I shrugged my shoulders and twiddled my thumbs as I realized the phrase lost something when you had to change it from ‘man’ to whatever race you were talking to.
Greebo squinted at me, unused to hearing that particular phrase, and responded, “Thanks. You’re looking right good yourself, mechanical man.”
Yeah, that didn’t sound right either. I guess not every idiom or phrase was going to translate to this place well. I moved past our awkward greeting. “Uh, so, how did your research at the Scavenger's guild go?”
“It was weird. The guild books didn’t have nearly as much information on the class abilities as you did.”
“I guess those Metalmen were heavy collectors of information. So, did you decide on what class abilities to get? You have, what? Five class points to use?”
“Yup. I decided to trust your suggestion and got the Scavenger Strength I and II and have two class points left.” He smiled and flexed his skinny arms. “I can now carry up to 275 pounds, and when I finish my first class quest, I’ll have the third point I need to take Scavenger Strength III.”
Normally, each point of strength gave 15 pounds of carrying capacity. His upgrades increased that by 5 pounds per ability point, which meant that Greebo had an 11 for his strength score. So, when he takes Scavenger III, which will give him 30 pounds of carrying capacity per point of strength, that will give him a total of 330 pounds of carrying capacity. “Wow. I’m impressed, Greebo. That’s almost double what I can carry, and I weigh a lot more than you, so that limits me even more. That new carry capacity will really help us get more materials and not have to come back up here to sell loot as often.”
He smiled and nodded. “More loot, more profit, right?”
“Right,” I said, giving him two thumbs up. “What are your class quests? Maybe we can organize them like I do mine and complete them simultaneously.”
“Well, I only got one quest--the guild wouldn’t let me take more than one at a time--but it’s called ‘Weight Training I,’ and I have to loot or gather 200 pounds of material. With my new class abilities, I figured it would be easy as a Scaledon pie to finish.”
I agreed with his assessment, and we headed into the dungeon to get started with the day’s work.
We spent the day on the fifth level of the dungeon, carefully clearing out mudmen and collecting their stone cores for our quest. I used my infusions of Gust and Light to clear the fog off the field and attract monsters for us, and we stayed away from the Mudmages entirely, quickly retreating any time one appeared.
Greebo’s Scavenger class paid off in spades as he got bonus loot that we otherwise wouldn’t have access to. In the case of the mudmen, that meant extra stone cores. By the end of the day, we had more than enough cores to complete our quest from the Adventurer's Guild and collect our silver piece reward each.
We invested in a special bag that the Scavenger’s Guild sold that expanded as you filled it. It wasn’t magical like a bag of holding or anything, but it would help carry any materials we collected. It cost 10 silver, most of what I’d saved, but the ability to max out Greebo’s carrying capacity was worth the investment.
We returned to the dungeon that day so that we could test out exactly how many materials Greebo could carry for us to sell. We focused on farming several different types of materials, ignoring the monsters when we could. We even returned to the third level of the dungeon and mined copper from the mine there. The poison cloud that had plagued the mine had dissipated after I defeated the monster and sealed off the source of the poison, and it was strange to see other people adventuring in there when it had been so empty before. We also gathered wood from the first level of the dungeon, though some of that was first used to repair the damage that I’d sustained earlier that day. While it only took us a few hours to gather the materials, it took several more to deconstruct the raw ore into its components: copper and stone. Once we maxed out Greebo’s carrying capacity and processed everything, we returned to the marketplace to sell our materials.
We found that the merchant’s guild had standing prices to purchase any materials en masse that came out of the dungeon, and as a result, no merchant would go above the set prices. Raw copper ore sold for 10 copper per pound but smelted copper sold for 25 copper per pound, wood sold for 5 copper a pound, and stone only sold for 1 copper per pound. It wasn’t a lot individually, but we had a lot of each material. We had 40 pounds of copper, 60 pounds of wood, and 85 pounds of stone. After selling everything, we made a grand total of 13 silver and 85 copper. The processed copper netted us the greatest profit at 10 silver. We only would have made 4 silver if we sold the raw copper ore, so my ability to quickly separate the copper from the ore was a huge boon to us. We’d also only have made half that amount if Greebo hadn’t taken the class abilities Scavenger Strength I and II. I only hoped he completed his first class quest soon so that he could pick up the third version of that ability and increase his carrying capacity even more.
A repetition of the previous night and day netted me 865 XP, which put me just over the required amount I needed to get to level 5. The notification congratulating me on my level came in the middle of a fight. Oddly, the notification also mentioned something about me choosing an
Artificer Specialization. I minimized the message to finish the last fight since I knew I’d have to research more about what it meant. Greebo was happy for me when I told him about it, but he didn’t know what specialization meant for me, only that some classes did it as they progressed.
Since processed copper turned the greatest profit, we worked exclusively on mining after a day of killing mudmen. While I could stay up all night working, Greebo couldn’t. We spent two hours digging for ore and then another two hours deconstructing it all, which netted us 62 pounds of refined copper and 101 pounds of stone, which we sold to the Merchant’s Guild for 16 silver 51 copper.
After separating from Greebo that day, I hurried back to the Gnomish Research Institute and then spent an hour describing my day and my plan to use my ability to deconstruct materials to make a profit. The gnomes were interested to see the limits of this experiment since they hadn’t thought of that application for my tool. I also told them that I’d reached level 5 but hadn’t seen exactly what that meant and that I would talk with them again after I had enough time to look over everything. They agreed, and I headed to my room to look through the insane amount of detail on my potential specializations. When I got back to my room, I eagerly pulled up my character sheet.
