The Weirdest Noob

by Arthur Stone

The beard looked like that of a goat, and was forked to boot. The head resembled a pear turned upside down, with oversized eyes and ears like chewed-up pies. Rare tufts of greasy hair didn’t make him any more endearing. The stranger was wearing nothing but knee-long blue boxers with white polka dots. He had no shoes, and it was easy to see that he had short and cracked claws instead of toenails.

  “Are you an NPC?” asked Ross hesitatingly.

  “Uh… Why would you think that?”

  “You don’t have a name at all.”

  “Do you even know what NPCs are?”

  “I’m not entirely sure. Unusual players of some sort.”

  “Not quite. They exist to provide background for the game. You’ve read Alice in Wonderland, haven’t you?”

  “Sure.”

  “Well, there was only one player in Wonderland: Alice. The rest of them—the White Rabbit, and so on, were NPCs. Do you get it now?”

  “More or less. NPCs are controlled by software rather than players, right?”

  “That’s it.”

  “So, players have names, and you don’t—all I see are digits.”

  “They aren’t just digits—they’re my name.”

  “You used digits for your character’s name?”

  “It wasn’t me, actually. It’s a long story, and a sad one, too.”

  “I’m not in any hurry, actually.”

  “I have nowhere to hurry, either. How about not hurrying anywhere together?”

  “I’m all for it. So, who are you?”

  “I’m one of this world’s dinosaurs.”

  “Is that a race?”

  “You don’t have to be so literal. I’m one of those poor beta testers whose accounts have never been shut down as obsolete. They probably never will shut them down now.”

  “A beta tester? You took part in testing Second World? In the process of creation?”

  “I did indeed.”

  Ros decided that he had to befriend this person by all means—he must be a treasure trove of necessary information.

  “Look, what do I call you?”

  “I get it, the name’s hard to pronounce. Call me Digits—everyone calls me that here.”

  The ugly dude’s lips suddenly stretched in a pleasant smile that even the pickiest of aesthetes would hardly find any fault with.

  “You appear to be a newcomer, Ros.”

  “Call a spade a spade already: I’m a noob. I heard this word about a hundred times today.”

  “Only a hundred? Oh year, it’s Wednesday IRL, two more days until the Friday stampede. A standard work account, according to the squiggle…”

  “Squiggle?”

  “The symbol next to your ever so original username.”

  “I didn’t choose it.”

  “I didn’t choose mine, either.”

  “Look, Digits, I’m not just a noob, I’m a complete ignoramus. This is my first time in a game of this sort.”

  “With deep immersion?”

  “Not just that. The last time I saw a game was around five years ago. I was really into flight simulators. But there was no immersion there.”

  “That fad didn’t pass me by, either. Although I don’t think I missed any games. I remember games no one else probably has any recollection of anymore. I’m a dinosaur here, and I’m not any better IRL.”

  “I ended up here unexpectedly, and I know nothing at all. I just wander around with my eyes open wide without understanding anything. You’re the first person I’m having a normal conversation with.”

  “Right. Sounds familiar. Everyone’s in a hurry and you can’t find anyone to talk to. You should be in a hurry, too, by the way. A work account implies that you do work.”

  “My contract is only coming in tomorrow. At least, I hope so.”

  “Do you at least have any money or food?”

  “I have two Novice’s Rations.”

  “Oh? I didn’t know they still had them.”

  “I’d share, but I cannot give them to other players.”

  “Thanks, I’ll manage.”

  “I wasn’t just saying that. I actually wanted to ask you a few questions.”

  “Well, ask away, I don’t charge for conversation. Only we shouldn’t just be standing here—let’s get moving.”

  “Where to?”

  “You already have food, but I have to find mine before nightfall.”

  Digits turned around and started toward one of the streets leading to the square, carrying on as he walked:

  “I don’t want to stick my nose into other people’s business, but I’m just curious—why did you decide you’d be offered a contract tomorrow?”

  “My attorney said he would help.”

  “You have an attorney? You must be a big banana, too.”

  “It’s not like that, really. Still, he promised me a plush contract for a month.”

  “You trust this attorney, don’t you?”

  “Almost as much as I trust myself.”

  “That’s unwise. You shouldn’t trust anyone. Including me.”

  “How would you even take advantage of me? I can’t even pass my food to other players.”

  “Someone could damage your bag until it loses all its durability. It will fall apart, and the rations will fall out.”

  “And how would you do that? I can’t be attacked, after all.”

  “I wouldn’t—I’m level zero, just like you. Worse than you, in fact. A higher-level player, though, could bring a train of low-level mobs[5] and dump them onto you.

  “A train?”

  “You mean you’ve never played anything of this sort before?”

  “Never.”

  “You know, I actually envy you a little… Doing everything for the first time, with the whole world to explore… Anyway, I digress. Imagine a young wolf—a social mob around level 9-12. A level 30 player can kill one of those in two or three strikes, even with a crappy weapon, possibly without losing a single hit point. Young wolves don’t normally attack first, although you can draw the pack’s aggro in most cases—they’re much bolder when there are many of them. Now imagine a level 30 warrior with a proper invisibility skill.”

  “Invisibility skill?”

  “It’s a specific battle technique—comes in handy in any fight. You slip into the darkness, then move sideways and attack from an unexpected direction. Invisibility is lost the second you attack, but the fighters who have this skill tend to be nasty opponents. But let’s get back to our wolves. A warrior like that can draw a mob’s aggro—provoke it, as it were. For instance, he can hack at the wolf with a sword once, dealing some damage without killing it.”

  “I get it.”

  “The entire pack will attack the aggressor, and the warrior splits as fast as he can, sparing no Vigor points. He runs over to your location with a bunch of mobs following him—his personal train. Then he becomes invisible, and you suddenly find yourself up against a wolf pack all alone. All the mobs are enraged as hell, and all they want is someone to unleash their rage upon. And look at you: a standard level zero work character with the first virtual level and no combat abilities—not even a weapon to defend yourself with. So, the train is now yours, and you’re a slow runner to boot. Need I go on?”

  “I get it. There are ways of killing the likes of me.”

  “Indeed—and more than one. A high-level mage with skills doing mass damage can take out a crowd of players like you. But don’t let it bother you. The chance that you’ll drop something is zero. And you’d need to face a few dozen packs of mobs to have a cheap bag destroyed. They don’t damage bags much. Clothes get ripped apart a lot, though.”

  “Is that why you’re wearing nothing but your boxers?”

  “Say what? No, my clothes just got worn through all by themselves. I’m a dinosaur, remember? But the boxers mend themselves every new game day. They’re Novice’s Indestructible Underpants, after all—an epic[6] item of sorts.

  “When Durability reaches zero, clothes disappear?
”

  “They disintegrate into near-useless rags. Yours would be completely useless.”

  “So what do you need to do to keep it in a good condition?”

  “How do you keep your clothes in a good condition IRL? It’s the same here.”

  “And why didn’t that elf die at the end of the duel?”

  “Well, it was a duel—he had a single hit point remaining out of the three or four hundred he’d had initially. This is why he’s still alive. Had this happened in battle, he’d have gotten a free teleport to his designated respawn point.”

  “What do you normally do besides watching players fight?”

  “Duels are rare here. It’s a miner city, so you mostly get workers. Players with expanded accounts, even low-level ones, only end up here by accident, or to do some quest. Not many of those. There aren’t many mobs in the area, and even fewer quests of any value. We are at the very edge of explored world, and there doesn’t appear to be anything of interest beyond here. A boring corner of a boring province—the domain of miners and lumberjacks.”

  “Do you have a work account as well?”

  “Nope. It’s a stretch to even call it an account. But you can only have a single player per account. And not just per account, but in general.”

  “Who’s gonna check if you have another one?”

  “You use your actual personal data to register. You could take somebody else’s character, but who’d give you one and be left with nothing? Also, the system will instantly identify you as a different person once you try to log on, so you won’t be able to. They had a good reason to make the medical exam mandatory before registration. Only noobs believe they can register a single account for the whole family and take turns logging on with full immersion.”

  “The attorneys at my company use the same character.”

  “Well, that’s in 2D, or 3D at best. That’s hardly the game—more like a pale shadow thereof. Only useful for chatting. The account’s owner also has to be around with their bracelet on. Also, 2D connections lag a lot lately. As do 3D connections. Workers with such connections have drenched the whole forum with their tears already.”

  “That’s just what they do—log on in 2D. So, what’s wrong with your character?”

  “All the beta tester characters were rolled back to level zero before the game’s official release. The stats were locked. I have a single point of Vigor and Strength each. Nothing else—and no way to level up. Who’d need a ridiculous worker like that?”

  “Why don’t you delete this character and create a new one?”

  “I can play with this one free of charge.”

  “It won’t be that expensive.”

  “Yeah, for someone whose arms and legs work, and who has some money at least.”

  “Are you disabled?”

  “Quadriplegic. There’s no one to take care of me, so I exist side by side with vegetables like myself. The money I get is received by the center that takes care of my useless carcass. Second World have provided them with the equipment when they recruited the beta testers, and no one has taken it back. This is charity of sorts. What would you prefer—to lay around in the smell of piss, or to wander about here?”

  “A silly question. So you have no money at all?”

  “Well… Had I been a disabled person from the USA or Canada, there would have been something jangling in my pockets. But they put Mexico in the same sector as Canada and the US, and things have really gone south after the recent events here. One day you’re young and in perfect health, and then suddenly some psycho decides to express their disagreement with the government the only way their paltry brain can think of—by exploding a bomb in a café that, by a stroke of rotten luck, you happened to be passing by on your way home. And presto, you’re no longer the model of physical health. You try your best to recover with therapy and surgery, but it’s expensive—down here, insurance won’t even cover your cold medicine. And so you keep on paying. Next comes the moment when you can no longer pay, but you’re still a cripple. Believe me—vegetables like me cannot possibly have so much as a copper. Just debts and regret at not having kicked the bucket that fateful day. I should be grateful they didn’t take me to the dumpster, I guess.”

  “Sorry about prying—it just seemed strange to me…”

  “Don’t apologize. Might as well laugh at this twist of fate—I’m a cripple in life and in Second World. I’ve been trying to gather some coppers here—I sometimes come by a little spare change. I might have enough for a proper connection in about a year and a half. I hope I don’t kick the bucket before that—then it’s either curtains for good or getting stuck here as a noob forever, worse than any level zero player. I’m pretty much betting everything on that chance—if I manage to make some money, I’ll be able to keep on paying for the account from the profit I make here, and I’ll be able to lead a normal life, instead of… Although I do enjoy walking around Arbenne even now, as a crippled freak, and watching how it changes.”

  “Changes?”

  “That’s right. This world was originally designed as an evolving environment. A long time ago this was just a level place with nothing on it, with bunches of test bots and game designer characters wandering around it instead of the NPCs. Then the city was built. It had undergone a few changes before it started to look like this. No one has seen any game designers or bots here since, but Arbenne keeps on changing. Take a look at this house.”

  “OK?”

  “What do you see?”

  “A regular city dwelling constructed of wood, brick, and blocks of rough-hewn limestone. Stories: two. Rooms: eight to twelve. Attic: present. Basement: present. Dwellers: sixteen to twenty-four.”

  “That’s right. I remember a time when newbies visited this house on a regular basis. There were a few NPCs here giving easy quests—chop some wood, kill some pesky crow plaguing their vegetable patch, or take a letter to the post office. The rewards weren’t particularly impressive, but the quests weren’t the kind where you’d have to kill a few raid bosses, either. Then the Arbenne thread at the forum became drenched in the tears of the hapless noobs. The good NPCs vanished without a trace, and the house stood empty. The noob tears were duly wiped, the administration never replied to any questions concerning botched quests, and the house saw some new dwellers move in—a few NPCs, and, oddly enough, two players, a family couple.”

  “What’s so special about that?”

  “The new NPCs don’t give you any quests or quest rewards. They can pay you a few coppers if you help them with their housework, but it’s nothing like the way it used to be. On the other hand, virtually each one of them can tell you their life story, long and eventful enough to blow your socks off. There’s a veteran from an empire wiped out by an army of fire elementals who carried the heir to the throne out of the burning palace in his arms; or an old lady refugee who had to abandon her home in the country together with her sisters once the area became infested with the undead. And there are lots of others. You can glean a lot of interesting things from them. However, none will address you directly with a pitch like, ‘Son, I am one foot in the grave already, so let me share a great secret with you. Pay a visit to the Black Farm—there’s a pot of silver buried underneath the tethering post. It’s yours if you can dig it out. Oh, I nearly forgot—there’s usually a bunch of undead guards next to the tethering post, fourteen high-level skeleton swordsmen. They won’t treat you kindly.’ You go there, vanquish the foes, dig out the silver, and receive a system message, ‘The Buried Silver quest is completed. Your reward: 1000 XP points, one point added to your Heroic Reputation, and one more point added to your Notoriety.” This is how it used to be, but now it’s much harder to find a working quest, and they keep changing from one completion to another. So now the noobs are crying foul—they prefer things to be simple, easily digestible, and described in detail in guides. Well, what do you think of our new NPCs now?”

  “To tell you the truth, I didn’t understand much.”
>
  “To be absolutely truthful with you, I’m in a similar position. These changes are weird. There’s something about the way the game evolves that eludes me. The majority of the players are fools, so wherefore the extra complications to scare them off? I’m trying to make sense of it all the time. By the way, how did you read the stats of the house without touching it?”

  “Well… I just gave it a long hard look and saw the info window pop up.”

  “What’s your Perception?”

  “One point.”

  “Weird—that shouldn’t be enough to do it. What about Intellect and Mental Power?”

  “Also one point each.”

  “This is interesting… They are related, and I have long suspected that the connection works even at low levels…”

  “What are you on about?”

  “The stats. You know how Strength relates to Carrying Capacity, right?”

  “Not really.”

  “Let’s assume you have one point of Carrying Capacity. This means you can carry a load that weighs five kilos. However, if your Carrying Capacity is zero, you won’t manage it—Strength alone won’t let you lift more than four kilos. I’m not sure about the exact values, so this is approximate. Therefore, you’ll need two points of Strength. However, everything that boosts Carrying Capacity gives you a certain bonus to what you can lift, so, for example, you’ll be able to lift more than four kilos per point of Strength—say, four kilos and a hundred and ten grams. The greater your Carrying Capacity value, the greater the bonus. You can eventually go up to five kilos per Strength point, but I have never heard of anyone achieving it. In general, each stat gives you a bonus for many things, so the actual weight you can carry may depend on other factors but Strength and Carrying Capacity. There are hundreds of gigabytes of forum posts written on the subject, but no one has come up with any precise formula of which relates to what, and in what proportion. The proportions are also rumored to vary from race to race, and they are affected by the choices made by the player.”

  “So how does this relate to the house?”

  “Simple: one point of Perception will not let you get the info on the house without touching it, or even without stepping inside. However, raised Intellect and Mental Power can change things quite a bit. Other stats may play their part, too. But you’re a worker, aren’t you? What have you got? Vigor, Strength, Carrying Capacity, and not much Speed.