"Hopefully…" I nodded, as I tried to stifle a yawn.
"You should go back to bed, Lyrian. You certainly deserve it."
"I wish I could." I shook my head, knowing that despite being tired, there was no way my mind would let me sleep. "I'm going to go to the Workshop. I need to work on a few repairs before we're set to go back into the Webwood."
"I understand." Aldwin nodded, still fixated on the glowing goop. "Good night, Lyrian."
***
Conjuring Light on myself I sat down in the Workshop, happy to have a moment to catch my breath. With a sigh, I saw everyone's armor hanging from several different racks. It's going to take a while to fix this all, wait! I hit level 10!
A burst of energy cleared my sleep-addled mind as I excitedly brought up my newly available Class menu.
Congratulations on unlocking the Spellsword Base Class!
You have successfully completed the first step in honing your magical ability and martial prowess!
You have gained a permanent increase to the following attributes:
Strength: +5
Agility: +5
Intelligence: +5
Willpower: +5
For every level you gain after level 10, you will gain an additional +1 in each of the above attributes, this increase is in addition to any racial increases that you already may have.
I paused for a moment as I digested the information I'd read so far. If I understood it correctly, when I leveled I would be getting: +1 Strength, +1 Agility, +2 Constitution, +3 Intelligence, and +1 Willpower. All in addition to the free 5 Attribute Points I could assign each level. Awesome!
At first glance, it felt the bonus attributes for achieving your Base Class and the added boost to Attribute gain would create a massive statistical imbalance between the novice levels and the Base Class levels, at least when it came to player vs. player conflict. But I quickly understood that was the point.
Reaching and unlocking your Base Class was supposed to be an important achievement and had to be rewarded accordingly. The way I saw it, the presence of such an imbalance was to motivate lower level players to work harder, or if that wasn't possible, group up together.
Eager to see what else was waiting for me I continued reading.
As a new Spellsword, you have been granted 3 Class Skill Points to help define your playstyle! These skill points can be used to learn Traits, Martial Arts or Spells. All skills are divided into three different categories, General, Class, and Racial.
General Skills can be learned or taught to any class as long as the required skill level has been reached.
Class Skills can only be learned or taught to a valid class, as long as the required skill level has been reached.
Racial Skills can only be learned or taught by members of an applicable race, which can include General or Class Skills, as long as the required skill level has been reached.
Please note that there are exceptions to these rules that can be obtained via quest rewards, traits, and other special events.
Please choose three of the following options:
Traits:
Arcane Sight
Type: Trait, Class Skill
Duration: Permanent
Skill Requirement: Any Arcane Tree Skill Level 9 or Higher.
Description: Endless practice and exposure to magic has given you the ability to physically see Arcane Energy.
Effect: Any Arcane based energy or magic within 60 feet of you is automatically highlighted by a pale blue aura. This ability can be suppressed at will.
Iron Mind
Type: Trait, General Skill
Duration: Permanent
Skill Requirement: Any Weapon Skill Level 9 or Higher.
Description: Practitioners of this style of fighting strive to eliminate every single unnecessary movement, both in and outside of combat. This mastery allows them to strike with sudden ferocity while dodging blows with inches to spare.
Effect: While in this Stance and not immobilized, you gain a passive 5% boost to dodge and attack speed. This ability can be suppressed at will.
Spells:
Jump
Type: Spell, General Skill
Duration: 30 Seconds
Arcane Tree: Abjuration
Spell Mastery: Abjuration - Level 9
Mana Cost: 80
Description: You temporarily reduce gravity's hold on you, giving you increased buoyancy.
Effect: For the duration of the spell you are able to jump up to four times your normal maximum.
Flame Dagger:
Type: Spell, Class Skill
Duration: Instant
Arcane Tree: Conjuration
Spell Mastery: Conjuration - Level 9
Mana Cost: 100
Description: You instantly conjure a foot long dagger made of fire centered on your fist, after you attack it vanishes in a puff of smoke.
Effect: You instantly conjure a dagger made of fire, this can be used for one attack dealing 100-150 Fire and Piercing Damage.
Minor Shielding
Type: Spell, General Skill
Duration: 1 Hour
Arcane Tree: Abjuration
Spell Mastery: Abjuration - Level 9
Mana Cost: 110
Description: You create a shield of force around your body that deters both physical and magical attacks.
Effect: You create a temporary, invisible shield around you that grants you +30 to armor and +5% Spell Resistance.
Shocking Touch
Type: Spell, Class Skill
Duration: Instant
Arcane Tree: Evocation
Spell Mastery: Evocation - Level 9
Mana Cost: 70
Description: You charge your hand with electricity, discharging it through the first thing you touch.
Effect: Your shock the next thing you touch for 30-55 points of Electricity Damage. This attack can be conducted through metallic weapons, items, and water.
Blink Step
Type: Spell, Class Skill
Duration: Instant
Arcane Tree: Alteration
Spell Mastery: Alteration - Level 9
Mana Cost: 110
Description: You vanish from one place and immediately reappear nearby.
Effect: You can instantly travel up to 30ft to any direction that you have line of sight to. Minor Intervening obstacles such as people, creatures, or light foliage will not impede the spell. Other obstacles will cause the spell to fail.
Martial Arts:
Power Attack II
Type: Martial Art, General Skill
Upgrade to: Power Attack I
Skill Requirement: Any Weapon Skill Level 9
Stamina Cost: 75
Description: You attack viciously with your weapon, putting more power behind it at the expense of accuracy and energy.
Effect: You slash viciously at the target putting extra strength behind the blow. Deal weapon damage+25.
Shoulder Tackle
Type: Martial Art, General Skill
Skill Requirement: Unarmed Combat Skill Level 7
Stamina Cost: 40
Description: Seeing an opportunity, you charge forth and slam your shoulder into your enemy, breaking their stride.
Effect: When successfully used, Stun enemy for 1-2 seconds with chance to knock enemy down based on Strength and/or Agility attribute.
Cleave
Type: Martial Art, General Skill
Skill Requirement: Any Weapon Skill Level 5
Stamina Cost: 75
Description: With a mighty swing you swipe your weapon in a wide arc in front of you, carving through your enemies.
Effect: Attack all enemies in front of you, dealing Weapon Damage+11.
Kick
Type: Martial Art, General Skill
Skill Requirement: Unarmed Combat Skill Level 5
Stamina Cost: 50
Description: You send your enemy reeling back with a powerful kick.
Effect: You kick y
our enemy for 10-20 points of damage, and knock them back 1-2 yards. Depending on your Strength/Agility score, you may also knock down the target.
My mouth fell open at the sheer variety of options available to me. I want them all! How can I just choose three of them?!
I grumbled as I started to think through my options. Okay! Think of what you need to learn now and what you can bug someone else to teach you later.
I eliminated the Martial Arts portion of what was available to me. As useful as those abilities were, I knew that both Drace and Aldwin already had similar, if not the same abilities already. I wasn't about to waste my precious Class Skill Points just to learn what they could teach me later.
That had me focusing on spells, which the longer I thought about it the more I realized that there was no wrong option.
Blink Step and Jump would give me absolutely insane mobility, but would practically force me to take an offensive ability to compensate. Shocking Touch is great to use with a weapon, but Flame Dagger does more damage.
I compared Arcane Sight and Iron Mind next, trying to determine which better fit my playstyle and personal goals. The Stance would be great to have, but I generally don't want to be in the position where things can hit me anyway, and if I am, what would a measly 5% difference do? Seeing magic on the other hand… That’s just useful no matter what and has great use outside of combat!
Hold on though, what’s Spell Mastery? Shit! I completely forgot about the other arcane trees! I took a deep breath as I brought up an explanation.
Spell Mastery – This field represents the overall complexity of a spell, as well as the tree of magic that the spell belongs too.
A caster who attempts to cast a spell that they have not yet attained Mastery in carries a 10% chance of outright failing to cast the spell for every skill level that they are below the Mastery level. Furthermore, there is an additional 10% chance, plus 1% for every skill level below the Mastery level, that when failing a spell that the caster will lose control of the spell and take damage equal to half the amount of mana the spell cost.
For Example: A caster attempting to cast a spell with a Spell Mastery of Abjuration Level 9, while their own Abjuration skill is Level 4, will have a 50% chance to fail every time they cast the spell and a 14% chance that on a failure, they will take half the spell’s mana cost in damage.
A caster cannot cast a spell that has a Mastery Level 10 or more skill levels above their own.
I struggled to wrap my head around the idea of Spell Mastery and found it to be a reasonably fair process and thought it added a level of realism to the casting process. It gave casters a reason to focus on training their skills, much like the other classes had to train their weapon skills. Both not to be a danger to themselves, and others around them.
Armed with that knowledge, I looked over my choices once more and finally came to a decision. I would take Arcane Sight, Shocking Touch, and Blink-Step. It was a balanced approach, giving me the ability to get into and out of a fight quickly, cause a few problems while I was there, then hopefully survive long enough for my friends to save me. It also meant I had to start training in an entirely new school of magic, to have a hope in not hurting myself. Thankfully leveling at least taught me all the Arcane Trees!
With that in mind, I wasn’t looking forward to a 90% failure rate in learning how to cast Blink-Step, and how painful that process was likely going to be.
With my choices selected, I looked to see if there was anything else left to do because I figured out where to assign my remaining Attribute Points.
You will gain an additional Class Skill Point once every 5 levels. Class Skill Points can also be obtained via quest rewards and special events.
Additional options to further specialize your class and play style can be achieved through Class Challenges, which are available at Levels 19 and 29. Rumors have also been heard of hidden Class Challenges available at any level! Be on the lookout!
Further information about Advanced Classes will be made available once reaching Level 29.
"Phew." I rubbed my eyes as I digested the rest of the information available. "Now… what to do about those attribute points…"
Attributes:
Strength: 40 (42)
Agility: 35 (37)
Constitution: 29
Intelligence: 39
Willpower: 15
Hmmm… I don't particularly need much Willpower… at least right now… I think it'd be a better decision to add it into Constitution. I assigned the points without a second thought and instantly felt my health improve ever so slightly. It will definitely help when I’m blowing myself apart with spell failures!
"Next… Leadership points." I said aloud as I dismissed my character sheet and opened the Leadership menu, assigning all four points into Improved Movement. Must have gained all these points during the fight with the Horror. I thought remembering that I had set my Leadership Experience ratio to 100%.
Resetting the Leadership Experience rate to 0% for the time being, I decided to check just how much experience I needed to reach level 11 for curiosity’s sake.
Current Experience 0/21,300
"Gah! Twenty-one thousand!" I gasped when I saw the massive number. "Wasn't level eight around fifty-four hundred?!"
I guess things are about to slow down now that we're in the meat of the game and through the novice levels!
Truthfully though I was happy to have a gradual leveling process. Practically every single game I had ever played was an all-out sprint to maximum level, to just be scratching level 10 after a few days of nonstop play was a refreshing change of pace.
Not to mention that levels actually seem to matter in this game too!
Extremely happy to know Ascend Online was shaping up to be a long term home, rather than a few weeks of hardcore play, I dismissed all the alerts and menus I still had open in my vision.
Where did Jenkins put that crate? Let’s see if I can make anything useful for level 10s…
Chapter 23
After finding the crate, I took a few minutes to come up with a crafting plan. Thanks to everyone’s efforts in hunting, harvesting, and mining we had a fairly decent amount of raw metals and materials to work with.
So what am I doing first? I thought to myself as I mentally started calculating what I needed. First, the Militia needs proper armor and spears. Then I need to repair the group’s armor and see if I can upgrade any of it. Probably better to start with the Militia armor and see if I can hit level 10 in Blacksmith and Leatherworking… the party is also missing out on bracers and shoulder guards…
Doing a bit of mental math to figure out how much material I needed, I came to the total of 128 pieces of leather, along with 93 Bronze Bars, just for the Militia’s armor alone. I’d likely need a bit more once repairs were factored in.
Alright… you’re wasting time. Let’s get started!
Diving right into the process of refining the materials, I found it much easier than I remembered. In fact, with both Leatherworking and Blacksmithing at level 8, I found the process of refining the leather and metal downright trivial and didn’t gain a single shred of experience during the entire process.
What used to take me three swipes with a knife to clean a hide properly now only took me one, leaving the hide clean and the cut straight. Similar being the case with pouring the bronze ingots into their molds, I no longer had to visually check to see how full it was, I simply just knew how much to pour before moving onto the next one. It saved me much more time than I was expecting.
Little over an hour and a half later I was slurping a bowl of Beetle Stew as I waited for the last batch of Bronze Ingots as they quickly cooled.
“Well… that both did and didn’t take long… considering how much I did…” I muttered to myself as I wiped my face with a sleeve.
Makes sense that crafting would speed up a bit as my skill increases, not to mention I feel pretty confident in plain refining… having done it over a hundred times now! I
doubt that’ll stay the same if I get my hands on more difficult materials…
Now with a veritable mountain of leather and bronze, I started on crafting the Militia’s gear. Starting with the items I had to make the most of – Bracers and Shoulder Guards. I grabbed a tool and began working away at the material. Unlike the refining process, however, I was happy to see my tradeskill experience slowly improving for every item I crafted.
The eleven pairs of bracers took me an hour to finish, propelling my Leatherworking skill just 25% shy of level 9. Stashing them off to the side, I then moved onto crafting the Shoulder Guards. Since I was only making a single item, rather than a pair, the process flew by much faster. By the time I finished my fourth Shoulder Guard the familiar and now addictive inflow of knowledge told me I hit level 9.
As expected, the new knowledge made the crafting easier, smoother, and most importantly faster. I finished crafting the Shoulder Guards in no time. The crafting process wasn’t quite yet trivial, as the refining one was, but I felt on the verge of the items being beneath my skill.
Ascend Online Page 21
