16. Let’s Not Talk About It Anymore

  I cycled through Paula and all of her friends over the next few real-time hours, giving advice, sparring, and showing them tricks on the obstacle course, and just generally sharing my experience. Paula gave the go ahead to include Lucine and Katrine both in our group as PUGs, and she was leaning towards a yes on MrGreen as well once I explained that a group of ten would require two tanks and that Philip wouldn’t be cutting in on Rick’s spot anymore than having a left and right tackle in football, an analogy which the sports oriented kids understood well enough.

  Eventually they began to reach the end of their dedicated Training Hall hours, and we moved on to the next step. Shopping!

  Perhaps unsurprisingly, the PUGs decided to come along, and because they had been Paula approved I slipped them a few silver as well. I had to be careful with passing out currency especially; I had so much of it, but if I gave away any significant amount to someone with less than a thousand hours they might feel tricked into limiting their accounts in ways which would feel unfair to them later in the game. Or not. It was hard to tell, and easier to just avoid.

  “So, what do I do since I wasted all of my money yesterday?” Rick asked, somewhat nervously.

  “Here,” I said, and I took the items I made from him out of my inventory. “These are at the upper limit of what I can craft for you based on the raw materials you gave me. A [High-Quality Iron Mace], a [Medium Quality Oak Buckler], a [High-Quality Iron Sallet], and about a dozen broad-head arrow-heads. Keep and use the first two, they’re what you should have bought anyway. Trade the helmet for a set of [Medium Quality Boiled Leather Armor], and trade the arrowheads to Sam, who can either use them to practice fletching her own arrows, or she can buy arrows from a fletcher and simply attach these.”

  “That’s it?” Rick asked. Then he looked ashamed and said “I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, it’s just that, I thought there was a lot of metal in that armor yesterday.”

  “Poor quality metal,” I explained. “We had to smelt it several times to remove the impurities. In the game, they compensate for this by taking a portion of each smelting as a sort of ‘lost mass,’ where the impurities are the mass that’s lost.”

  “Oh. I believe you. I didn’t think you were trying to cheat me or anything, I just thought there would be more.”

  We traded the items, with Rick making one transaction to accept the arrows from me, and another to trade them Sam for fifteen copper each. I sent him off for his replacement armor, warning him that he was not to trade any more than the sallet for his armor, and not to trade it for anything except exactly the armor that I had told him to get. I advised him to get a few [Cheap Beginner’s Healing Potions] with the money he’d made from the arrowheads, as those would be handy for later.

  MrGreen went with him. He didn’t say it, but it was clear to everyone that the college student was there to keep the younger boy on task, and possibly to spend some of the money I’d just shelled out to buy stuff of his own at the same shops.

  Kevin was excited to pick out a spear for real. All of the noobs were excited to finally spend the money I’d given them as [Greeter]. We split into two additional groups, with Sam, Kevin, and Lucine heading towards the martial vendors for their respective purchases, while my sister, Lewis, and Katrine came with me to pick out clothes and focuses.

  “So, [Katrine], you haven’t attuned your avatar right? Have you planned it? Do you know what sort of mage you want to be?” I inquired.

  “Doesn’t really matter. Whatever’s coolest,” she admitted.

  “Um, well, what’s cool and what’s useful aren’t exactly mutually exclusive,” I admitted. “A lot of mages focus strictly on damage, which actually really limits their usefulness in a group, and also their ability to solo stuff. ‘Glass cannon’ is a really bad build. You want to focus on three to five good damage spells of at least two different elements. A DoT of each element, a direct nuke, and one or two backup nukes. Beyond that, most of your spells should be control or support spells. Weakening an enemy, crowd control, dumping aggro, that sort of thing.”

  “So, I’ve already picked up [Scorch] and [Firebolt] from the library, as well as [Frostbite] and [Ice needles]. So I’m covered, right?” she asked.

  “Ah … um, well, the problem with that selection is that Ice and Fire are opposed. You cannot attune your body to both of them at the same time. It can be a little frustrating because you can learn the spell , and you can use the spell . And because you’re a mage, every time you use, say [Firebolt], you’ll move a little bit towards a fire attunement. But then if you start casting [Ice Needles], you move backwards. And attuning fire will strengthen your fire spells and weaken your ice spells, and vice versa.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Oh. Shit,” she muttered. “So they’re useless? I should, like, tear two of them out of my spellbook?”

  “I wouldn’t, not until you’ve either committed to attuning either Ice or Fire. Then tear out the other element and let the page replace itself. You should have plenty of room in your spellbook and plenty of time to make up your decision.”

  “Mkay. So what other options do I have?”

  “Lightning and Water are opposed, as are Earth and Wind, Light and Dark, Life and Death, Holy and Unholy, and Arcane and Nature,” I listed. “Some of those sound like duplication, but you can have an Unholy Light and a Holy Darkness, for example. But those spells are more for clerics than mages, you have to commit to in game roleplay to unlock Holy and Unholy abilities.”

  “But not Life and Death?” Paula asked.

  “No, those are base magic, no religion required,” I confirmed. “Holy and Unholy denote good and evil, while as life and death is just … well, it just is. Although most holy clerics focus on the ‘life’ aspect, the god of death is not evil, and the death magic that her cleric’s cast is considered ‘holy.’ Demonic clerics, meanwhile, have an equal smattering of Unholy combined with all of the other elements. It’s actually Unholy’s biggest weakness; you can combine it with anything to get a vast array of variety, but it has a single hard-counter. Demonic Clerics get BTFO’d in PVP by Holy Clerics and Paladins all of the time.”

  “How common are Demonic Clerics?” Katrine asked, intrigued.

  “In PvP, not very, on account of the hard counter, and also because of other limitations their required role play limits them to. But NPC Demons are everywhere once you get to the higher levels. And even without Demonic Clerics being prevalent, Clerics are still powerful in PVP and PVE both. If you’re thinking of going as a Cleric slash Mage, that’s a really powerful route. Everyone will ask you to heal, but you can just [Smite] them until they shut up. You’ll have to research which deity you want to pledge to eventually, but for now you can just go to the cathedral and ask to speak with a priest or priestess. They’ll give you a list of ‘prayers’ which work just like the spells you learned at the library, and also more literature about the pantheon of deities that you can pledge to. If you do want an unholy patron, you’ll have to find a shrine to them hidden in the wilderness though, and I won’t help you with that.”

  “I don’t want anything with such an easy hard-counter,” she said.

  “Doesn’t it bother you that its, like, blasphemous?” Paula asked her.

  “Whatever, it’s just a game,” Katrine answered. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to go check out this church, okay?”

  The rest of us just shrugged. She left, leaving me, my sister, and Lewis.

  “So, how do you two know each other anyway?” I asked as we walked into the clothing shop.

  “Weirdly enough, it’s because I didn’t know about her brother and told her I thought it was awesome that her family was so involved in EternalRealms ,” Lewis explained. “I mean, it is! It’s just that everyone knows that Paula’s big brother died playing it and so nobody talked about it. But everyone also knew that her uncle works for the company, and her parents are shareholders, so I heard that talk. I just went up to her and told her how awesome I thought that was and the entire hallway went silent and I freaking panicked, man, because I thought I said something incredibly stupid to the coolest girl in school.”

  “I am not the coolest girl in school.”

  “You kinda are. Or were, at least, this was back in junior high. Anyway, she just kinda smiled and said ‘Yeah, it is kind of cool. My brother loved that game so much he played it till he died,’ only it was, like, a happy thing. I still thought my social life was dead until she sat down with me at lunch the next day.”

  “Luke really did love this game,” I said. “It was about the only thing that kept his mind off of … you know, what was happening to him. Let’s not talk about it anymore.”

  “Yeah. Let’s not. But Lewis is right, that is how we met. He’s the guy I started talking to about the game after I stopped hating it and realized that … well, like you said, Luke loved it. If Luke loved it, then I should at least give it a chance, right?”

  “You don’t owe this game anything,” I informed her. “Live your life the way you want to. That’s what Luke would want you to do. But if you want to visit his world, the place that made him happy, I think he’d like that too.”

  “But let’s not talk about this anymore,” she suggested.

  “Right, let’s not,” I agreed.