Many magic items had a price but no place to buy them from. Even if you knew how much it cost, you couldn't find any channel to buy it from, and you might not even get it even after increasing your offer price.
Most adventurers preferred to accept missions from the Wizard Associations and the various churches of deities. Besides being able to get massive rewards, the most important part was that you could accumulate contribution points and be able to become eligible to buy certain magic items.
In his previous life, Zhao Xu had been unable to get any sort of bag of holding at all. There were even other classmates more powerful and richer than himself who couldn't get their hands on such an item. They couldn't get it even after offering twice the price.
So, when he touched a magic item that used an extradimensional space like this haversack before him, Zhao Xu felt a moment of pure glee.
For the year to come, the number of players with a bag of holding was going to be very few and far between. But he had actually gotten his hands on one just within half a month of the servers' opening.
"Mentor, this gift is really too expensive, I'm not sure about it," Zhao Xu responded very politely.
"It's just worth 2,000 gold pieces, so it's not that valuable. Besides, since I made it, the cost to me isn't even 1,000 gold pieces," said Antonya.
"You made it?" Zhao Xu asked.
"You want to make one too?" Antonya asked as she felt the eagerness in Zhao Xu's voice.
"I'm just curious, just curious," Zhao Xu scratched his head absentmindedly.
Of course, he wanted to make one.
Even if he could fill every part of his body with magic items, he still had many friends and family members he cared about.
If he was able to make some of these magic items himself, then, even if he couldn't become the most powerful player, he would definitely become famous as the wealthiest player.
"If you can grasp both the feat Magic Item Creation and the spell of Leomund's Secret Chest, then you'd be able to create this simple bag of holding, but there's no need to. It takes a long time to create items, and it would consume your XP," explained Antonya slowly.
"My XP?" Zhao Xu was hearing this for the first time.
In his previous life, there was talk about creating magic items in the forums. The high-level wizard players who knew about this were very secretive about it and kept mum about this topic. They didn't want anyone to know about it at all.
"It'll slow down your leveling-up progress. In fact, if you create too much stuff, you might even go down in level," said Antonya.
Zhao Xu nearly puked a mouthful of blood when he heard this.
You actually lost XP from doing this. Wasn't that like playing with fire and burning yourself in the process?
But when he thought about it that way, didn't that mean the bag of holding in his hands right now was an accumulation of Antonya's XP?
"Don't you look at me like that, otherwise I'll guarantee that you'd regret it," said Antonya slowly. "There are some feats that can help to lower the consumption, and you can also split the damage if you create an item with someone else."
"The more important part is that creating items is just my interest. I wouldn't go down in level even if I created a Wondrous Item that costs a million gold pieces. You think something worth 2,000 gold pieces is going to affect me in any way?"
When Zhao Xu heard her say these things, he knew that he had overthought the whole thing.
Antonya was a Legendary Wizard, and he would never be able to guess at her limits no matter how much he tried.
"Also, if you want to create items in the future, you don't have to go through such a troublesome process. You can always take the shortcut of a Wish spell."
Zhao Xu's eyes bulged.
He recalled how Antonya had just randomly cast the Wish spell in front of him to create gold pieces from nowhere. Could it also be used to create magic items?
In that case, if Antonya still took the time and used a feat to create an item, then it was really just for therapeutic reasons.
"There are some items that you'll need in the future inside the bag, you can look through them later. Enough of this nonsense, let's get to the topic for today. I'll be teaching you Skills, first," said Antonya.
When he heard this, Zhao Xu was so touched he was about to cry. He had finally reached the last step.
After half a month of training, he had finally managed to endure everything to get to the last stage of learning Skills.
"How many Skill points do you have?" asked Antonya.
Zhao Xu glanced at his message board.
Skill points: 40 [6 (Cloistered Cleric) +3 (Intelligence modifier) +1 (Human race) * 4]
"40 points.
"Then that's enough to go around," Antonya nodded with a pleased look.
Arthur's Skill Points came from your character class, Intelligence modifier score, and your race, and were awarded every time you rose in level.
Level 1 players would have a multiplier of four, and you would get Skill Points from those three areas with each time you leveled up.
Zhao Xu's Wizard class was worth only 2 points.
But since he was part of the almighty group of double elites, he could use either his Wizard class or his Cleric class, whichever was higher.
The last 1 point was added on because he had chosen his race as Human.
"What do you think Skill Points are?" Antonya asked as she turned back to look at him. "There's a prize for the right answer."
Zhao Xu was about to reply to her and stopped when he heard her second statement.
If an ordinary player heard this question, then they would immediately reply that with Skill Points, you could make a particular Skill more powerful than before.
But Zhao Xu had ten years of experience behind him, and he knew that this cause and effect had been understood in the opposite way.
Zhao Xu took a while to breathe in and out slowly to calm his emotions down.
Many players weren't clear on how to use Skill Points or even what they meant. There were even many others who put these Skill Points to the side and never bothered about them at all.
And then there were some who were puzzled about why they could sometimes use them, and why sometimes they couldn't.
It was only when the players got stuck and failed to reach Level 2, then they turned back and started to deal with these Skill Points.
Zhao Xu knew the answer, but he couldn't just say it ] like that.
The forums didn't have any official statement on how to use these points, otherwise, Antonya wouldn't have asked him about it.
He could feel that the 35 different Skills of Arthur were now accumulating in his brain and spinning round and round.
He regrouped his thoughts together and replied Antonya, "Skill Points can be used to exchange for the potential abilities you were born with."
"Oh? Explain?" Antonya's interest was piqued.
"So the gifts and talents that everyone is born with are supposed to be fixed and there's no way of deciding on what they are. Some people are good at jumping far, and then some people are good with their hands. But as characters with character classes and a system with character stats, we can use these Skill Points that are allocated to us…to help us to gain the talent in a particular area, and also to reach a particular level in displaying it."
"That's right. As far as I know, you players shouldn't know anything about this yet. You do have a strange sort of intuition. That's pretty frightening," Antonya complimented him.
When he heard this, Zhao Xu breathed a small sigh of relief. He got that prize after all.
In his previous life, by the time he had joined the game, basically everyone around him was warning him to allocate his Skill Points carefully.
That was something that would decide many aspects of his life, so he remembered it very clearly.
"Strictly speaking, Skill Points are something that you can use hard work to exchange for talent in a specific area.
"The level of your Skills will decide on the standard of that particular ability. It works for everything from handicrafts, performing arts, and training animals.
"By working hard and training hard, you can successfully use these Skill Points and, in this way, you can expand your talents to help you reach greater heights."
Zhao Xu nodded. There was no way you could use the points yourself. For example, if he wanted to allocate Skill Points to Forgery, he could only confirm the direction and then keep forging documents and accumulate sufficient familiarity with the process before this Skill Point would be consumed and become one of his actual Skills.
"So once we finish off all your 40 Skill Points, you'll basically be a master in your own right."
When he heard this, Zhao Xu took a deep breath of air.
"Mentor, so which Skills do I need to practice?"
"We'll go with Decipher Script, Concentration and Knowledge first. We'll talk about the rest after you hit Level 1 in these areas first."
"Mentor, which type of Knowledge?" Zhao Xu had a bad feeling about this.
"Arcana, Religion, Geography, History (Local), Nature, the Planes, Dungeoneering, Architecture and Engineering, Nobility and Royalty. We'll go with the main ones first, forget about the lesser-known ones for the time being."
Zhao Xu tried hard to stop himself from groaning. This wasn't three Skills. It was more like 30 Skills.
"Then Mentor, how do I train in these Knowledge Skills?"
"What sort of dumb question is this? By studying, of course."