As the midnight came, Balthazar was transported to the somnium space and them immediately to the game interface of vita-nova. He was in a white space and was quickly shown a notice that the game would be different than real life and stunts and tricks that can be performed in the game might not be possible in real life. He quickly clicked accept to progress further.
He was given three options indicating whether he wan't to choose the light faction, the dark faction or the neutral faction. As soon as he chose light faction, he was given the option to choose his race. There were six of them: humans, dwarves, gnomes, light elves, dryads or fae.
He already knew that the reason for creation of the somnium technology and according to military protocol he chose human. He was asked to choose a nickname. He first chose his old assassin nickname in his real life, "shadow blade", but the system informed that it was already taken.
Then he tried ghost, shade in multiple languages and a few more trials later, he had to finally settle on "shadow tyrant". Once, that was done. He was immediately transported to one of the beginner towns. He was just outside the town entrance. As he looked around, he realized that it wasn't the same town as in his previous life.
At that moment, many players had started appearing beside him and started walking into the town. They started to speak to the NPCs around the town hoping to obtain a trail for a quest. Some of them started to go out of the village into the wilderness to kill monsters. Everyone were busy with something or the other. He seemed to be the only one standing in place outside and observing the surroundings.
As he walked into the town, a notification popped up.
"You have reached the black rock village, adventurer. Please choose a primary occupation:".
There were twelve occupations divided into four main classes.
Warriors: Shield Guardian, Martial Artist, Berserker.
Weapons specialists: Swordsman, Assassin, Ranger
Magicians: Elementalist, Warlock, Summoner.
Healer: Cleric, Palladin, Druid.
He immediately chose what he chose in his previous life - Assassin. He was extremely familiar with the Assassin occupation, so he chose the same. He then decided to check his attributes.
As soon as he thought about it, his attribute panel appeared before him:
Character: Shadow Tyrant (Human)
Affiliated Village: Black Rock Village
Title: None
Job: Assassin
Level:0
Exp: 0/200;
HP: 100/100; MP: 100/100;
Physical Attack: 10
Defense: 2; Attack Speed: 6; Movement Speed: 8; Willpower: 0; Balance: 5; Focus/Search: Toughness: 1; Reflect: 1; Magic Resist: 0; Luck: *; Charm: *;
Attributes: Strength 3, Agility 5, Endurance 2, Intelligence 2, Vitality 2, Perception 2.
No Special Racial Attributes or weakness.
Free Attributes Points: 4
Weapon Master:
Dagger Mastery +5 (Apprentice Rank - Increases Dagger Damage by 5%)
Free Master Points: 0
Occupation ability 1: [Ambush]: 20% bonus Attack Damage when attacking an enemy from behind.
Occupation ability 2: [Pick pocket]: Can be used to steal money or items from unfriendly NPCs.
Skills:
Stab. Active skill, Requirement: Dagger, Increases damage by 5 points. Cool down: 5 seconds. Skill level: 1 (Proficiency 0/300)
Equipment:
[Novice Dagger] (White Trash, Dagger)
Level 0
Equipment Requirement: Strength 3
Attack Power +4
Durability 15/15
[Assassin's Leather Shirt] (White Trash)
Level 0
Equipment Requirement: Strength 3
Defense +2
Durability 15/15
The game was as interactive as he remembered. As soon as he clicked on a skill name a small video played in front of him depicting an assassin execute the skill.
Inside his bag, there were ten pieces of bread and ten pouches of water. The bread would recover 10 HP per second and water 10 MP per second for 10 seconds when at rest.
Every player of a profession always started with the same Attributes, equipment, skills and Basic Mastery of that profession. The only difference being the allocation of the Free Attribute Points.
Each player by default would obtain 4 Free attribute points with each increase in Level. With each rise in the level, the allocation of these free attribute points would result in the players unique style and personality.
Strength increases Physical Attack Power, Agility increases Attack and Movement speeds, Endurance the max HP and stamina, Intelligence increases Magical attack power, max MP and Magical resistance and Vitality increases the recovery rate of HP and MP. Every Job places an emphasis on different Attributes.
Balthazar had played as an assassin in his previous life. He had also read many guides for the profession and also for various parts of the game. So, he was quite confident that he would be successful and that he would be set apart from the others.
The skill proficiency and the level of completion of the skills had also played a very important role in the determination of damage caused by the skills. The better a person performs the skills, the faster the proficiency increases.
Skills with levels could also be upgraded through allocating skill points into it, to a maximum of level 10. However, skill points are only obtained every 10 levels. But bonus skill points could also be obtained through the completion of some hidden quests or main quests. Sometimes wild bosses could also drop skill point crystals.
Balthazar had 4 free attribute points in the beginning. He could use these to upgrade any of his attributes except the hidden ones Luck and Charm. Luck helped in improving the rewards and reducing difficulty of the quest and Charm allowed to have better interactions with the NPCs. These attributes were different for everybody and assigned randomly in the beginning. They could also be obtained in some special quests or from equipment.
Balthazar had added 3 of his free attribute points to Agility and 1 point to Strength. It was a bit different from the usual allocation of the free attribute points by the assassins. Players tend to mostly tend to allocate the attribute in a well-rounded manner.
Assassin occupation usually add in most of their points to Strength or Constitution as those are the weak points of the Assassins. But Balthazar knew that the hidden attributes were the most important for success. He knew a good way to get them in the beginner village and that is the reason for his abnormal selection.
Vita-nova is extremely different from the other V.R. games. Here, the player could move as freely as he wished, and it allowed a lot of flexibility. This allowed players to use their own moves to attack and escape or dodge attacks.
While playing vita-nova one had the option of using controlled mode, Half-manual mode or Manual mode. By default, it is always set to controlled mode. But the controlled mode consists of robotic movements and is suggested only for beginners to practice the skills. Balthazar had practice of most of the skills and directly chose the manual mode.
After adding the attribute points, Balthazar took a look at his surroundings. People were still pouring into the town. The players were crowding themselves around the NPCs who were giving out quests. The NPCs who gave out quest had a yellow dot above them. Such a situation made looking for an NPC a tougher challenge. Balthazar quickly equipped the dagger and leather shirt from his bag.
Most of the players were crowded around the village headman or the blacksmith or shops nearby the gate. But he knew that the best way quests at the beginner village were given by the priest at the temple.
Vita-nova had a lot of differences from the other V.R. games. One of these was how close the made the interactions of the NPCs to the real world. This included the modern technologies, politics and religion. Despite the improvement of technology, a majority of the mankind still believed in gods and religion still was a core part of the society.
Man still hopes for miracles, and holy places still are one of the most popular meeting places. This concept was also included in the structure of the villages, cities and empires of vita-nova. The temple in the beginner villages provided all the non-secondary profession quests and also gave more rewards and reputation for the same quests.
This differed from the usual V.R. games and most of the people missed the temple which was at the back of the village. People only came to be know about it an year after the launch, when someone posted about a chain quest he received from the beginner village. After that any newcomer or someone who changed his occupation always visited the temple in the beginner village.
He quickly walked past the crowd to the back of the village, where the temple was situated. He quickly made his way to the priest of the temple. The priest had a yellow dot above his head which implied that he was an NPC who gave quests.
"May the faith protect us from the darkness and improve our lives by the glory of the light," said the priest to Balthazar as a greeting.
"May the light protect us from the darkness," said Balthazar.
"The wolves have been very active these days. I had to hold 4 funeral ceremonies today. They have been a menace to our faithful followers. Would you be kind enough to help us eliminate these cruel beasts?" asked the priest.
"It would be my honor to serve the temple," replied the
"Brave adventurer, the twelve great gods see your faithful conduct, and may they bless you to be successful in your endeavours," said the priest.
'Ding! You have received a quest: Help the village against the menace of the wolves'
Balthazar quickly opened the quest menu and checked the quest's description:
[Help the village against the menace of the wolves] (Difficulty Level: Novice)
Quest Description: You have accepted the request of the village priest. Go to the hills outside the village and kill wolves to keep the village safe!
Progress: Wolves killed. (0/20)
The difficulty level was determined by 2 factors: first, the level difference between the players and monsters; second, the difficulty of the monster itself. The wolves he had to kill were only level 2 and level 3, hence the difficulty level was determined by the system as Novice.
After receiving the quest, he went ahead to the blacksmith, tailor, alchemist and bunch of merchants to receive a few more quests. He learned mining, smithing and alchemy from the blacksmith, the miner and the alchemist respectively. The secondary job menu got activated and a pickaxe and a basic alchemy kit appeared in his inventory.
He also got a quest from the merchant to kill rabbits which were ravaging his carrot fields. The rabbits were all level 1 creatures and that made the difficulty to be Novice.
[Help Hart to get rid of the rabbits from his fields] (Difficulty Level: Novice)
Quest Description: Kill the rabbits in the carrot field
Progress: Rabbits killed. (0/30)
He also got quests to collect 10 iron ores, 10 wolf furs, 10 rabbit skins and 10 red weed and blue weed from the blacksmith, tailor and apothecary respectively. Most of the collection quest from trade profession NPCs are repeatable. This was the same for the quests for the ones in the beginner villages.
He first decided to go the east of the village where the fields are located. The quest to kill rabbits was taken by quite a number of players. The field was filled with little horned white rabbits. Though they had fangs, they were small, had a small HP of 30 and didn't actually manage to cause any harm except for the default damage of 1. But they were too fast for the player's attacks to land on the rabbits.
Balthazar immediately pulled out his dagger and started attacking the rabbits. Balthazar had put most of his attribute points in Agility leading to a total of 8 agility. He had a better advantage in agility than the other players and could attack the rabbits with considerable ease. It hardly took him 4 or 5 hits to kill a rabbit. If the rabbits didn't attack the players, the players would hardly be able to even get close to the rabbits.
Soon, the players realized that it was a futile effort and that they needed to have more agility to attack the rabbits at the carrot farm. The experience the rabbits provided was also too low and it was hard to land a hit on them even in groups. Thus, the player began to leave the carrot farm in a few minutes.
Balthazar soon managed to kill 15 rabbits. He also got 4 rabbit pelts. Each rabbit gave him 5 experience points. Slowly a few larger rabbits came up which could actually hurt Balthazar and cause damage of 3 to 4 per attack.
[Monster Rabbit] (Elite Monster)
Level 1
HP 50
He started to find it harder to fight, when he received a call from Rudra. He quickly got out of the carrot farm and began chomping down on the bread to recover his health. He had earned an exp of 75 points.
"Hi Dude, didn't expect you to be playing the game. You all right?" asked Rudra.
"Ya, I would hate to miss the game. It would be so wrong to not play the game owning a V.R. capsule. It is a good diversion from all the things that occurred to me recently. I decided on human character assassin from Light faction. Which village are you at? I am at the Black rock village."
"Oh. I am at Silver leaf village. I also chose human. I chose to be berserker. Best of luck. See you when you come to the city. You are working on killing the wolves from the headman's request?"
"About that. Try taking requests from the temple than the headman. It has better rewards. See you at the city," replied Balthazar.
Once, a player reaches level 10 his level and attributes would be capped at level 10 even though the player could keep getting experience points.
He got back into the carrot farm and began to attack the rabbits, but only the monster rabbits came towards him once he got into the carrot farm. He realized that it was different from his previous experience when all the rabbits were normal ones and not elites.
He slowly carried on killing the elite monster rabbits. Every one of them began to drop a rabbit pelt and a copper or two. They also gave an experience of 5 points each. Soon, he managed to kill up to total 29 of the rabbits, when the monster rabbits began to scurry away from him.