I woke up facing up the sloped ceiling of my new house, in a room that could be considered large in terms of living space. As opposed to the little house I spent nights in, only to remove the dirt clogging the entrance and discover that I was encircled by monsters of all kinds, this new house was exuding a feeling of safety that I couldn't ignore.
I felt at ease when getting up, as it was unlikely some monster could ambush me due to the numerous windows my new home was built with. This thought alone allowed me to loosen up, and as I was slightly struggling to not fall into idleness, I decided it was time to go back to playing with this puppeteer of a quest system.
Even if I knew that creating a bed was a considerable feat for the rest of my adventure, I couldn't be as surprised as when I saw that I opened up a new chapter in the quest book. According to the book, I was now situated in "Tier 0.5 - Stone Age", and a new tree of objectives was unveiling before me.
It was also one of the first times I was offered a real choice to pursue multiple objectives that will hopefully serve a higher purpose. I was tasked to either gather sand, gather gravel, gather clay, or create some smoothen up stones. It seemed rather tiresome to get gravel, sand, and clay since the only places I saw them were near water sources, which were coincidentally far from the village.
The last quest was to create some smooth stones, and seemed more accessible, as it only required a smelting operation of cobblestones, with the benefit of being the only task at hand with a clear succession, letting me think that it would be the best entry point in this new objectives.
Taking some cobblestones I've been storing in my chest, as well as some wood logs, I lit a fire in my furnace, adjusting the amount of combustible so that it would last as long as there was still cobblestone to be burned.
Waiting for the smelt operations to finish, I started going through the quest system to see past tasks and futures objectives, and I began to theorize something about the quest order that I believed would let me save time in completing them. As the quests were positioned in a 2D space, links could be freely formed between them, but it also meant that tasks required to unlock a new objective were in the same direction or would be the origin of an intersection of lines.
This observation made solely from the bed quest chain was enough to make me wonder if I could apply the same principle to new quests lines, and as such, I could theorize that the quest more likely to be a requirement for the objective after the smooth stone task, was the clay gathering quest.
Letting my furnace do its job, I headed to the river bank, behind the forest, and started looking for a clay spot, as this was the most promising spot I found when I wandered around the first day. It took me little time to finally found what I was searching for, a broad, deep clay spot. However, it was sunk deep in water, and I would have to swim and dive to gather the clay I needed. While not being a real problem in itself, it made the task significantly harder, and I couldn't go back to the village as early as I envisioned.
Having gathered enough clay to complete the objective I was tasked with, it didn't open the path of a new task as I thought it would, but since I haven't yet completed the smooth stone quest, it wasn't out of my expectations, and I would have to continue diving in the quest tree to deepen my understanding of it.
Before going back, I took a minute to observe the slowly flowing river's scenery, brimming with life and a freshness nonexistent up on the hill the village was constructed on. While the river wasn't that far that I couldn't travel to it when I wanted, it was still quite a tiresome journey that could be made better by some sort of road.
I returned safely to the village, without crossing the path of an animal, dangerous or not, and was soon back to my new base of operations, where the slow smelting process hadn't finished yet.
Still waiting for it to finish, I headed to the fully grown garden situated behind my house, thinking that it would make a decent farming spot once the trees and overgrown bushes were pruned.
I started using my axe on some of the higher trees to only be left later with the job of chopping down simple trees. I also unrooted several plants and destroyed several bushes that were obstructing my urbanization work.
I ended up with a differently elevated plot of land, cleared of vegetation and trees, which I would certainly be able to transform into a profitable farming plot once flattened up.
Equipped with my still sharp shovel, I removed the excess dirt, which would undoubtedly be used to remove some difference in elevation at places below the ground I wanted to flatten.
Albeit tiresome, the task was quickly done, and in no time, I had before me the flat terrain needed to plant my vegetables. I started to dig it to bring out a soil refreshed with its various fertilizing elements.
However, as opposed to the little farm I decided to make near the water pond, I could see that the irrigation wasn't adequately distributed as I thought it would, but the lack of water was obviously the cause, which would, in the end, prevent or at least slow down the growth of my food. Leaving this problem behind for the moment, I went back to my home to check the state of the stone smelting operations.
Finally getting the newly created stones, I was able to open up the path to the new quest, which tasked me to make another unique tool that could be used as a primitive mean to grind some blocks, metals, and such to a fine powder, allowing me to mix them.
The crafting of this mortar required the previously smoothen up stones and some flints as a sharp blade used to crush the items that needed to be reduced to powder. Albeit being a new tool in my toolbox, this one seemed rather feeble in comparison to the mallet I've made before, letting me believe that this one would break soon enough.
However, after completing the task that needed me to fabricate this mortar, I unlocked a quest requiring me to finish the clay objective, which I already did, validating my theory.
Fortunately, the new task that was given to me was a blessing in disguise, as it required me to finally make a bucket, which would help me tackle a wide range of issues, ranging from emptying the old village's well to start properly irrigating my farm in the town.
The objective made heavy use of my newly crafted tool as I needed to reduce the clay to a small pile of dust to properly mold by hand a clay bucket. It took me quite a large stock of clay to do this, but most importantly, the whole operation almost destroyed the mortar, leaving it in a state where the previously sharp blade was dull and cracked everywhere.
As it was a relatively simple tool to make, it didn't bother me that much that it could break soon enough, given that I could make it anytime I wanted, provided I had a couple flint lying around.
Having created enough clay powder to mold them in a bucket form, I made it relatively quickly, but unfortunately, it wouldn't be enough to contain liquids. Fortunately, as the quest description pointed out, I needed to burn the unfired clay bucket to make it properly usable.
Sorting through my chests' storage for some wood to use as a combustible, I found out that I was starting to be low on wood, in which case I'd be soon needing to chop some trees down.
Placing the wood in the furnace, I lit a fire inside with the molded clay bucket, waiting for it to be burnt as a brick bucket. The operation was shorter than with the smooth stones but took a significant time, which I patiently waited in front of the waving flames, observing the intricate patterns that emerged from the oven. After a while, I took out the resulting object, a sturdy object containing various fluids.
I hurriedly went to the old well with this bucket in my hand and greedily took some water. As I took the maximum I could, the bucket was dripping from the tipping water, and all I could do was transport it to a place where this water would be needed before I spilled it all in the wild.
Fortunately, it wasn't a long walk until the farm plot I started digging, and I could safely drop the water in the hole I especially made for it. As soon as I placed it, the land started being irrigated, tile after tile, and I could feel the life starting to come back to this scorched plot.
Immediately after, to not waste any more time in cultivating, I planted the vegetables and berries I've unrooted from my little farm near the pond, but it only amounted to half of the new field as I built it more prominent than the previous one. This would hopefully be enough to feed me for the days to come.
In the hope that I would gather new plants that I could plant on the new farm, I decided to exit the village for a bit, wandering in the forest to unroot some bushes and discover fresh vegetables, berries, and fruits.
However, due to a miscalculation on my part, it ended up being dark before I could find anything new to plant, and I was forced to go back in the village and in my house, as the darkness started to engulf everything on their way, without proper light.
As I finally arrived at my house with everything being pitch-black around me, I was able to go to bed and let myself succumb to the gentle torpor that accompanies the passage of time, happy with the progress I made, and concerned about those I would do the next day.