[Shield Durability: 0/600]

Not again. Good thing I came prepared.

I drop my worthless shield and reach in my pack for a fresh Wooden Great Shield without missing a step. Meanwhile a herd of angry boars chase me around a wheat field, their health falling rapidly.

Since getting the achievement skill Interceptor I haven’t had to drink as many potions, but I find myself going through shields at record speeds.

[Interceptor, you are a once-in-a-generation shield master.

When defending with your shield, 70% of damage taken is transfered to your shield]

Even with the level 6 Shield Proficiency skill, I can’t keep up with the damage being transfered to my shields. When I first got to the next town of Dustry, I checked with their blacksmith, but she didn’t sell anything with more durability than the shield I already had. So I bought two more Wooden Great Shields and ventured out into the unknown. Now I’m beginning to wonder if I should have purchased a few more…

With the last of the boars dropping dead all around me, I stop my running and go to retrieve the loot.

[+57 Raw Pork Steaks

Cooking ingredient, value: 6 cp]

[+20 Boar Tusks

Quest item]

Then I walk around, setting up scarecrows the boars knocked down. Once I’ve erected six, I make my way back to the edge of town where I build a campfire and cook up the steaks.

[Pork Steaks, a delicious juicy steak

+35 HP for 12 minutes

Material required: Raw Pork Steak]

I can always use more health. It’s a shame similar food buffs don’t stack. My inventory is full of bread loaves that give +25 HP that are worthless to me now.

I take six minutes to repair my two busted shields, and another minute to take out the damage the third sustained. Then I go to turn in my quests.

Auntie Em owns a big farm in Dustry, and like everyone else, she’s had her hands full preparing for the town’s Founder’s Day festival. She stands on her porch with her hands on her hips, glaring this way and that, muttering to herself.

“Where is that girl? Just like her to wander off with her dog at a time like this…”

I keep expecting her to give me a quest to go find Dorothy, but so far it’s just been odd chores.

“You,” Auntie Em glares at me, and I jump. “Shiftless farm hand. You get them hogs cleared off yet? What about my scarecrows? I need them set up right away.”

Gulp.

I may have gotten stronger recently, but I still struggle holding even the most basic conversations with NPCs.

“Y-yes, Ma’am. I-I p-put the s-s-s-s-scared…”

“Yes? Speak up, boy!”

“S-scarecrows. Back. Where they belong.”

“Good,” she nods sharply. “And what about the hogs?”

[Would you like to turn in the quest items for quest: Hogs Gone Wild?]

Relieved I don’t have to speak for this one, I turn over the boar tusks.

“Very good,” Auntie Em nods again. She reaches in her apron pocket and pulls out twenty coppers, which she places directly into my hand. “Here’s your wage. Ordinarily I wouldn’t bother hiring outside help, but with the festival just around the corner and those good for nothing hogs tearing up my wheat fields… At any rate I’ve no more use for you. You might try up the road, Farmer Potts’s place. I heard he’s having some trouble with a dead donkey. Run along, now,” she shoos me with her apron, then goes back to muttering. “Ah, we still have so much to do before tomorrow night. Where is that girl…”

Dustry is a farming town, much larger than Bluebell Village. There are plenty of players running around, and just as many NPCs. Outside the town are homesteads like this one, and hilly fields as far as the eye can see, bursting with wheat and all kinds of produce.

Players arrive in the town on the eve of the Founder’s Day festival to find it beset by all sorts of pesky problems for which an adventurer’s assistance is conveniently required. So far I’ve fought off hoodlums that were thrashing the prize watermelons, killed more toads that were about to attack a child who’d been neglected in all the excitement and fell down the well, and braved cat-sized wasps as I went to pick flowers for the garlands. Now that I’ve finished helping Auntie Em with her pig problems, I’m on my way to help this Farmer Potts.

Ahead of me, I watch another player approach the old man in the road atop a horse and cart with a dead animal in the back. They speak a moment, and the pair of them head off, leaving behind a clone of Farmer Potts for me to interact with as I approach.

“F-farmer Potts?” I great the old man. He looks down at me from beneath a straw hat and spits chewing tobacco just in front of my feet.

“Here now, just the feller I needed,” says the old man. “Ol’ Bitty picked a fine time t’ drop dead, what with the festival tomorruh an’ all…” he indicates to the dead donkey in the back of his cart. “My son’s out diggin’ a hole at the edge of our property, but the damn crows won’t let me get out to ‘im. Don’t supposen you’d run alongside the cart an’ keep ‘em off me an’ Ol’ Bitty till I get her over there? Ol’ girl deserves better than t’ fill their nasty bellies…”

[Would you like to accept escort quest: Deadass?

Reward: 1 Pouch Of Fine Tobacco]

Wait, seriously? He’s going to pay me in tobacco? This, I have to see.

I verbalize my acceptance of the quest and it begins immediately. I trot alongside the farmer’s cart for a bit, looking upwards for the crows he mentioned. In no time they swoop in, enormous birds with wingspans that far outreach any crow I’ve ever seen. I think I’ll pull them with my Noxious Spores aura, but at once I notice an interesting dilemma I have not faced until now.

These birds are swooping in and out, now inside the range of my aura, now outside of it. I’m beginning to see a flaw in my character build… 

Why didn’t I realize it before? Until now, I haven’t faced a single ranged opponent. Oh, the Toads had their spit attacks, but those slime balls barely flew five feet. But these crows, diving in and out of range to attack me, they only get about half the effect of my aura. And a monster with greater range than fifteen feet, that won’t get even one percent of it…

Feeling troubled by this development, I continue to run alongside the cart, letting my aura do it’s work as the birds keep diving at me. I intercept as many of their attacks as I can with my shield, but with so many attacking, I can’t mitigate every blow, and some of them strike directly.

[-37 HP]

[-40 HP]

[-41 HP]

It’s been a while since I’ve had to drink a health potion. Fortunately I have a thousand of them stored up in my inventory, where they stack up to one hundred per slot. Meanwhile, my shield continues to take a brutal punishment, and I’ve got to switch it out as the farmer pulls up beside a large hole in the ground.

He’s reached his destination, but my work’s not finished. It takes me another two minutes to kill all the crows with my aura, a long and particularly frustrating battle, made all the more frustrating by the realization that they don’t drop any loot.

Weary from my ordeal, I walk over to where Farmer Potts still sits in his cart, waiting for me.

“Y’ done alright, young’un. Here, ‘tain’t much, but the laborer’s worthy of his hire.” He tosses me a leather pouch and I catch it in my gauntleted fist. “Don’t worry about Ol’ Bitty. We’ll get her in the ground alright. Y’ best head on back to the village, more folk’ll be wantin’ your help, I ‘spect.”

[Pouch of Fine Tobacco

Pipe Packing Ingredient, value: 16 cp]

Wait, it’s not just an item for resale? This game actually lets us smoke pipes? I laugh without meaning to, for the moment forgetting my irritating battle.

Curious, I pull up the forum to find there’s a skill called Pipe Packing where players prepare cigarettes or pipes with specific ingredients that give bonuses to select skills such as grappling and unarmed combat. It seems the devs wanted to use specific mechanics for enhancing various classes, rather than having alchemy potions boost everything across the board. Perhaps not unexpectedly, it’s been a controversial decision.

The conversations are varying, a lot of them having to do with moral panic over smoking being a beneficial feature in the game. Some say it makes smoking more attractive to young players especially, others say it’s actually helped them with their addiction. Long time smokers are happy to see the mechanic, they don’t understand why they should be villainized for enjoying their vice.

                 <BBLBADDIE>replied: I don’t see what the big deal is. Alcohol has been a long time feature in rpgs and no one gets upset about that.

                 <BFocusD>replied: The problem is that alcoholic beverages tend to give the player handicaps, while Pipe Packing makes certain players stronger. It’s particularly devious as SPark, the well known e-cig company, is a subsidiary of  SMark company. It’s basically just a way to hook kids on this stuff and get them to buy it in the real world. They are profiting off of grooming kids to smoke!

                 <reddot>replied: thers an alternative if you dont want to smoke yu can just medidite to get the same bonus it’s a skill just like poipe packing

                 <Mayhem20XD6>replied: Whats the fun in that? bahahaha

                 <angelinchains>replied: Smoking’s just part of the roleplay immersion, people need to chill tf out. If they want to play a lawful monk character they can just take the Meditation skill. If they want to play a tough guy brawler, let them smoke. You have to give your age when you make the account, and kids under eighteen aren’t given full access to every single gameplay mechanic the same way adults are.

                 <moremilkmommy>replied: that’s just the problem! I want to smoke tooooooo and f*ck all the big booby bitches

                                 [<moremilkmommy>] account has been removed.                 

                 <Mayhem20XD6>replied: BAHAHJAHAHAAHA

Guess it really is a moral dilemma. But it doesn’t particularly make me think less of SMark company, even if they are selling more of their e-cigarettes in the real world because of it. I tend to agree with angelinchains, for a lot of the players, it’s all part of the roleplay immersion. I just feel bad for the players that want to smoke, but can’t because they don’t have space for the skill. Or did the devs make allotment for that as well? At any rate, it doesn’t affect me.

I toss the tobacco in my pack and promptly forget about it. I have other things on my mind…

“Ranged opponents, huh?” I mutter to myself as I take a seat a ways off and go about repairing my shields. It’s only a matter of time before I face one. An archer or a spell caster, or a monster much quicker than the crows, who darts in and out to do terrific damage while my aura hardly touches them…

I’m going to have to think of a way to handle this kind of opponent. Invest in a bow, perhaps, and train myself how to use it. I should have enough Agility. Though I wonder if the Defender class is able to equip a bow. I know sometimes certain classes have these restrictions…

Just then I hear a sound like laughter, rather close by. I look left and right, but all I see are gently swaying fields of wheat. The heck? Am I having auditory hallucinations, now?

I return my attention to my shield, only to hear the sound of laughter once again. Above me?

I look up just as a shadow passes over my head. Someone flying?

They swoop down suddenly and stop just in front of my face, causing my heart to race wildly with surprise.

“Hello, friend.”