[SP-F1] <<Earning a Living>> The Warmth of a Forge (Complete!)

[Aetharan 0]

Yesterday, when he'd finally gone back into town-- though not the Starting City.  Never again that place!-- Aetharan had run into an NPC who had helped him with some information he very much needed to hear.  He could learn the Blacksmithing skill from this NPC, but it was going to cost him.  With the pick he'd already won, he needed to go mining.  The NPC would give him directions to a safe mining location, and from there it was a matter of pure, grinding labor:  Two iron ore to trade for his hammer, another five for an anvil from the NPC.  He'd also have to lug home three large pieces of stone for the forge.  Each of the tools was going to be a basic one, but they-- combined with learning the skill itself-- would be enough to ensure that he got a good start.

Quest accepted, he decided it was time to head out for that mine.  At least he knew from the NPC that this was going to be a safe one.  Nothing would be trying to kill him out here except for boredom.

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Level-up.  HP improves to 8/13.

Out-of-combat recovery, 1 HP.  Aetharan now at 9/13 HP.

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

He reached the mine itself without incident, meaning that the only thing to do was get working, wasn't it?  He dreaded how dull this was going to turn out, but understood the necessity of it all.  Scroll through that menu, click here and here, and that spear vanished from his back only to be replaced with his heavy pick.  At least the weight was right.  Something was always just wrong, for some reason, about wielding smaller, one-handed versions of tools that relied mostly on strength to begin with.  It was one of the reasons he'd always hated those little camp shovels back in that other world.

Swing, thunk.  The crackling of rock as he broke it away from the wall, and his digging had begun.  Not that it began with anything but the breaking away of rock, in small enough chunks to be useless.

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Out-of-combat recovery, 1 HP.  Aetharan now at 10/13 HP.

(ID# 29131 results: Battle: 8 Craft: 6 Loot: 3 MOB: 9)

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan
Attaching dice.

[Aetharan 0]

At least he knew that he wouldn't be dealing with another wolf jumping him down here like had happened when he tried to mine the surface before.  Drudgery wasn't even all that bad, once you got into a rhythm with it.  The key was to focus his mind elsewhere-- if 'focus' was a word that could ever be applied to the chaos that was his mind.  He could at least try to herd the majority of those parallel thought trains in the same general direction, and for the moment, he chose to aim them at the question of his vision.  He still wasn't accustomed to this change in himself, and it brought up some reason to be hopeful for the real world.

After all, the VR gear he was wearing was only a first generation piece, and he was certain that others would come along, even if none of the ten thousand made it out of SAO.  In this world, he had the same kind of vision as everybody else.  The defective retina of his right eye just wasn't a thing.  It had never been programmed into the parameters, and the visual processing center of his brain was healthy, so the gear gave him sensations that he couldn't ever have in that other world.

Crunch!  Down came the pick.  Still nothing of use.

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Out-of-combat recovery, 1 HP.  Aetharan now at 11/13 HP.

(ID# 29132 results: Battle: 3 Craft: 10 Loot: 1 MOB: 7)

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

If the gear could do what it was doing for him, then perhaps the next generation could be configured in such a manner that it overrode one or more senses' pathways without cutting out movement.  That was a very comforting thought, to him.  A pair of microphones and a pair of webcams built into the next gen headset could, theoretically, completely nullify most forms of deafness and blindness.  There weren't exactly many people in the world whose glasses needed to charge over night, but glasses only corrected for a misshapen lens, and this thing?  It could make up for missing both eyes entirely, so long as the right parts of the brain worked.

Barely noticed by its owner, the pick swings.  This time, he breaks free a piece of iron ore.  One down!

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Out-of-combat recovery, 1 HP.  Aetharan now at 12/13 HP.

(ID# 29133 results: Battle: 10 Craft: 8 Loot: 15 MOB: 5)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 1/7, Stone 0/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

He paused for a moment's reflection before continuing his work.  It struck him that, unless he made it back to that other world to share this information, they might not even know about this potential use for the VR gear.  He then realized that they'd have to know.  It was feeding audio and visual information directly to the brain, bypassing the standard sensory organs.  Of course they had to know of that potential application of its capabilities.  After all, the prick who'd trapped them all in this world may be heartless and evil, but he wasn't the only one to have worked on the tech, even if he did take both the credit and the blame for this fiasco.

Aetharan could live with this.  Even if he didn't make it out, somebody knew.  Maybe there were already people in that other world using some second- or third-gen hardware to replace eyes like his right that just didn't work.  That thought made him smile as his pick came down.  Nothing useful.

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Out-of-combat recovery, 1 HP.  Aetharan now at 13/13 HP.

(ID# 29134 results: Battle: 10 Craft: 5 Loot: 3 MOB: 3)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 1/7, Stone 0/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

Thoughts remained on the topic of vision as he continued digging.  After all, it was kind of a big thing, wasn't it?  Though he was now satisfied that others would benefit from what he'd learned, whether he lived to share his observations or not, he now had to figure out exactly how to deal with it.  Even more terrible, however, was something that occurred to him.  "If I ever do go back to that other world...  I'll be blind on one side again.  That's...  not fair.  I don't want to give up this eye!  Not to go back to waiting ****ing tables!"

Okay, so that swing of his pick was less 'trying to do work' and more 'taking out his frustration on the rock', but a swing was a swing, right?  Not that it gave him anything but a bit of catharsis.

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(ID# 29135 results: Battle: 10 Craft: 3 Loot: 2 MOB: 9)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 1/7, Stone 0/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

He forced himself to pause and take a deep breath after that little outburst, straightening up and shaking his head.  "Don't be an idiot, Aeth.  Even if I can't properly see without help...  by the time I get back to that other world, they'll have a generation of lighter, medical override headsets specifically for this problem.  That's what I just decided, right?  It'll be like getting a pair of glasses that have to charge over night.  Put 'em on in the morning, and 'link start' becomes the magic phrase that turns on a right eye that works...  And for thousands upon thousands of others, the phrase that turns on eyes that work at all."  He smiled to himself, "I wonder...  if they'll let me meet one or two of the early-adopters, when I get out of this death game.  Goddess...  I really wanna see the look on their faces when the tell me about the first time they got to see a sunset."

Motivation to dig his way out of this world, and back into the other one.  Would it be enough?  He'd have to see.  For now, though, the only digging he was doing involved a mining pick.  Again, nothing but gravel.

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(ID# 29136 results: Battle: 1 Craft: 11 Loot: 4 MOB: 6)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 1/7, Stone 0/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

That concentration on sight was starting to slip as he kept swinging.  Instead, his mind wandered to the more immediate goals of becoming a blacksmith, and what he wanted to create in the first place.  Would he specialize in weaponry, or armor?  Probably a bit of each, really.  This wasn't really like those other MMOs, where each profession had several mutually-exclusive subdivisions within it.  His warlock had been a shadow tailor, and that had meant he couldn't make some recipes.  His paladin had been an armorsmith, and so could never make the best weapons.  That wasn't true here.  If he mastered blacksmithing in this death game, he could-- if he was very lucky-- make the best glaive ever seen and immediately follow it up with armor of the same quality.

Then again, if his masterpiece was a glaive, he'd be using that to slash and stab at baddies himself, rather than selling it!  Pick came down again, and he prayed for another piece of iron.  Luck was with him this time, as that second piece of ore did indeed pop out.

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(ID# 29138 results: Battle: 9 Craft: 5 Loot: 18 MOB: 9)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 2/7, Stone 0/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

He actually worried somewhat about the question of that pole-arm.  "Glaive.  Guando.  Naginata.  Half-pike.  Halberd.  Even the good old-fashioned war scythe...  all of 'em were designed for both, slashing and thrusting attacks.  Use it one way, it's a spear...  use it another, it's an axe.  Will the game let me craft any of them at all, since they're in that beautiful, fuzzy zone in between the two classes?  Heck, what about bludgeoning two-handed weapons?  Can I craft a Lucerne hammer?"  He shook his head.  "There's some kind of AI involved in the game, that much I know.  If I craft one of these pole-arms from memory, will it add a skill?"  That was a curious thought.  By 'inventing', so to speak, a new weapon category in this game's universe, would he force the controller to add an applicable skill (and, likely, sword arts) for it?  That would be a question to settle for the Lucerne hammer, at the very least.  If the game did let him build a glaive, would he be able to apply Spear and Axe skills and techniques to it individually as the situation demanded, or would it go that hypothetical 'new weapon type' route and gain a skill and set of arts all to itself?

The only way to find out would be to try building those weapons.  For that, he needed to bring this NPC his stuff.  Time to swing the pick.  Not that it does much more than produce gravel for the moment, which quickly fades away.

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(ID# 29142 results: Battle: 8 Craft: 3 Loot: 10 MOB: 5)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 2/7, Stone 0/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

He gave a shrug and went on swinging that pick.  He'd learn the answers to his questions only after he had a forge, so he needed to keep working on earning that.  Besides, if he understood the system well enough, acquiring his own shop would also mean, if he chose the site well, that he'd have somewhere of his own to live as well.  A forge, smelter, and anvil on the lower level, with some display cases and a good old-fashioned shop counter to stand at when he wanted to, and stairs up to a small loft bedroom.  That would be good.  Aetharan needed a place of his own.

Tink, tink, tink.  The pick swings, the stone breaks, and the work continues.  No progress, other than a slightly deeper hole in the wall, but that didn't mean there wasn't more iron to be found somewhere in there.

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(ID# 29144 results: Battle: 9 Craft: 11 Loot: 14 MOB: 2)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 2/7, Stone 0/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

He was getting frustrated again, and Aetharan knew that wouldn't get him anywhere.  It was just a question of keeping himself calm, and continuing the task at hand.  Swing that pick, tear down as much of this rock as it took, and go back to the NPC with the materials to get himself a forge.  He had to finish this quest if he was going to make himself useful to the others, after all, and if he couldn't do that then he may as well never have crawled out of that bed.  He could do this.  He could force himself to focus on one thing for long enough to do it.  At least everything he'd heard about the crafting system seemed to indicate that making a sword for somebody would be a matter of minutes, rather than weeks.  More like those old MMOs than trying to forge something in the real world.  Nothing useful this time, but he'd keep going.

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(ID# 29145 results: Battle: 6 Craft: 7 Loot: 7 MOB: 5)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 2/7, Stone 0/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

Aetharan could break this wall down until he had what he needed for the quest.  He could break the wall, then break monsters with what he'd pulled from it, then eventually break the game.  Oh, great.  His stream of consciousness was taking him in that direction again?  No.  Nonono.  Refocus, Aeth.  Short-term goals for the moment.  We can think about the bigger picture later on.  Right now, just think about that iron and stone.  You already have two of the former, enough for the NPC to give you a hammer.  Gotta get the other five for an anvil, and the three units of stone for the forge.  Keep going.  Nothing yet, but that's not a reason to stop.

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(ID# 29146 results: Battle: 7 Craft: 7 Loot: 4 MOB: 9)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 2/7, Stone 0/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

Dig, curse you.  Don't think about the math.  Aetharan knew that he was working within a gaming system, could feel (in a way) the rolling of the dice in his head.  A kind of hitch every few minutes during which the system made a decision as to whether actions attempted would succeed or fail, based in part on his skill levels, and in part on chance.  He needed to build up his skills, and badly.  At the moment, he estimated somewhere between a one in three or one in four chance, each time the system checked, that he'd find ore-- or fruit, or whatever else he was looking for that wasn't coming from a corpse.  He wasn't sure how much it would improve his odds, but he knew that investing in the Search skill would boost his chances in the future.  He'd have to put that high on his list of skills to train.  Hell, perhaps even before armor, now that he had at least a little mitigation.

That was right, wasn't it?  Floor four trash mobs should be pretty safe for him, as it was.  Enemy damage potential climbed at a quarter the rate of their health, and both were tied to floor.  With his current gear, an enemy strike worth two damage would be reduced to one, but a one would stay a one.  Thus, he needed to be seeking enemies whose typical strike was two.  No sense killing weaker trash.

For a moment, the rock-face in front of him looked to him like a wolf face.  He brought that pick down hard enough to destroy the mental image, and was rewarded by said chunk of rock breaking off into a usable unit of Stone, which made him chuckle.

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(ID# 29147 results: Battle: 3 Craft: 2 Loot: 16 MOB: 8)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 2/7, Stone 1/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

He actually suspected, as he was digging, that the system behind this all was actually calculating the mineral content and way the rock would cleave in advance for every foot or so he cleared, and that it was probably using his skills to determine such things.  This led to a pause as he shook his head, then murmured, "Should I start praying to the RNG until I get back into the other world?  Seems almost blasphemous.  It does make me wish that I'd somehow been able to bring my lucky d20 with me, though.  Maybe I can ask an artisan to craft one for me or something.  I'll have to look into that."

Hack and chop away at that rock.  He was glad that his pick's durability didn't seem to be decreasing at anything resembling an alarming rate.  He'd probably be sick of this long, long before it was in any danger of breaking, even if the RNG hated him for the rest of the day.

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(ID# 29148 results: Battle: 10 Craft: 8 Loot: 13 MOB: 2)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 2/7, Stone 1/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

He'd dug what, twelve or thirteen feet from his starting point by now?  Something like that.  It was a narrow tunnel, not much wider than his own shoulders, but it gave him room to swing that pick.  If his mind didn't wander so much, he might be able to get away with doing something like this on a daily basis.  Make 'miner' into a job here and call that good enough...  but then, while he might be providing a service, he wouldn't be creating anything in this world.  No.  He had to take it to that next step.  He might find himself back here pretty often, or at least in places similar to it to get materials, but that would only ever be step one for him, not the endgame.

It was funny, really.  Stone didn't actually break off in quite the way it should for how he struck it.  Instead, the game seemed to be giving him one of maybe a dozen or so animations per swing, with the wall receding in front of him and the occasional item entering his inventory.  He suspected that the moment he left this little shaft he'd started, it would all regenerate, and the next person to walk into the mines would never know he'd been here.

Nothing useful out of this foot of wall.  Had to go farther.

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(ID# 29149 results: Battle: 3 Craft: 9 Loot: 7 MOB: 6)

Aetharan leveled up.  HP now 15/15.

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 2/7, Stone 1/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

Okay, maybe he should think about the math.  He was working on his fifteenth foot into this mountain, and was assuming the system must be making one check per foot he dug.  Yesterday, he'd similarly dug 5 feet and got nothing.  On top of that, he'd spent about fifteen minutes searching for fruit yesterday, and found just the one piece.  If he considered the foraging to be pretty much the same as mining, then it was what...  five minutes' searching per check?  If so, that meant that the system had made some twenty-three checks for him, out of which he'd now seen four successes.  Call it 4/24 for simplicity's sake.  One in six.  It was a small sample-size, so he'd have to assume results were skewed one way or another.  Round to what, the nearest 5% chance for now?  That'd mean that he was looking at either a 15% or 20% chance of success.

Mind danced as he dug.  D20 rules.  Good old D&D.  If he was right, then he was looking at a skill check for which he had neither a bonus or a penalty, with a DC of what?  11 would be a 50/50 shot.  16 would drop his odds to one in four.  Not quite high enough yet.  Unless he'd already just been horribly unlucky, he was looking at finding a simple material being a DC 17 or 18 task.

Another foot of wall disappeared.  Nothing was added to his inventory when it did, which made him sigh.  "I really, really need to work on raising my odds of success."

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(ID# 29150 results: Battle: 8 Craft: 11 Loot: 9 MOB: 8)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 2/7, Stone 1/3

(OOC Note: Aeth is drawing conclusions from too small a sample size without knowing the actual odds or being able to see his luck, though I'm taking the artistic license of him having the right idea about how often a check is made.  I just find it amusing.)

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

There was nothing to do but continue the work, was there?  He was at thirty percent on this quest.  If his gut feeling was right, this fifteen-foot tunnel would be closer to sixty by the time he finally had all the materials the quest-giver NPC had asked him for.  He was up, he thought, to exactly that 4/24 he'd rounded to before that last foot of wall vanished.  He could live with this for now, but definitely had to look into ways to fix the problem.  Invest in Search, of course.  Maybe pay somebody for a good luck charm?  Ooh, and look into that Familiar quest he'd heard so much about!  An extra pair of eyes, even if they were just a friendly NPC, would be better than nothing.  Really just mobile equipment, right?

Foot sixteen crumbled in front of him as he continued swinging.  Again, no additions to his inventory, just the sound of vanishing rock.  At least he didn't have to haul the rubble back out the mouth of the tunnel as he worked!

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(ID# 29151 results: Battle: 3 Craft: 4 Loot: 7 MOB: 2)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 2/7, Stone 1/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

A little chuckle preceded our mad, long-haired man's breaking into song as he continued to work.  It wasn't particularly good, of course, but it did help him set a rhythm to the swings of his pick, and just how often did somebody wandering around the lower floors hear the Existential Blues being sung at the top of somebody's lungs?  "Elusive butterfly has just tiptoed past my door..."  Yeah.  There were some things that were likely one of a kind, even in this odd world and its death game, and a song that messed up?  Odds were pretty high that even if anybody else here had heard it, they wouldn't have thought to sing it!  Yeah...  Was he cracking?  Nope!  He cracked a long, long time ago.  Now he was just running with it as he dug.

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(ID# 29154 results: Battle: 1 Craft: 3 Loot: 7 MOB: 10)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 2/7, Stone 1/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

Continuing his quest, his digging, and his horrible singing, "Some girl with psychic powers, she says 'T-Bone, what's your sign?'  I blink and answer 'neon'.  Thought I'd blow her mind..."  Oh, he may be slipping, and that particular song almost over, but it was improving his mood.  Keeping with the theme he'd started, he slipped into Star Trekkin' right after.  Given that the work occupied his hands but not his mind, he may as well keep himself amused with some of the silliest songs he could remember, and the compilations of Doctor Demento's broadcasts had been a big part of his childhood.  "There's Klingons on the starboard bow, starboard bow, starboard bow..."

As the next foot of wall disappeared, he tried not to let himself keep track of the numbers.  This made 4/26.  Either the odds were lower than estimated, or his luck was terrible.

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(ID# 29155 results: Battle: 3 Craft: 9 Loot: 6 MOB: 3)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 2/7, Stone 1/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan

[Aetharan 0]

Sadly, Star Trekkin only carried him so far.  It was a short song...  and with this task, it was starting to feel more like this was going to be a round or two of Thick as a Brick!  No, keep with the light-hearted music.  Something to make him smile as he swung that pick.  "Fish heads, fish heads," swing.  "Rolly-poly fish heads," withdraw. "Fish heads, fish heads," swing.  "Eat them up, yum," withdraw.  This song would get him at least through the next foot or so of wall, he guessed.  That, and the next few minutes' time to kill.

Amusingly, it seemed that the RNG deities were pleased by the twisted little song.  By the end of it, at least, he was clicking the acknowledgement window for a piece of iron ore.  This sort of thing was how stupid little good-luck rituals were born, and the knowledge of that fact was enough to get him to grin even more broadly.

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(ID# 29156 results: Battle: 1 Craft: 3 Loot: 16 MOB: 1)

Quest Tracking: Iron Ore 3/7, Stone 1/3

Edited August 28, 2015 by Aetharan