Sam currently needs teammates to safely activate his skills and grind for a bit before his cheating power kicks in and widens the gap between anyone at his level and himself to an insurmountable degree.
Sam entered the room with his temporary teammates and widened his eyes when he saw what was happening inside.
Sam looked at the guy twerking on the table with wide eyes. *Are these college kids? WTF? Did they take the name 'party' a bit too literally? I get it, the game's super realistic and cool, but do you really have to test it by doing that?*
The two guys and the girl suddenly realized someone had entered their room and got a bit embarrassed.
"Hello, hello. I am samshank. I just started the game and was looking for a party to join. I am a level 1 Berserker Knight, but I will activate Unconventional Shield as my first form, so I can also work as an offensive tank. I have 3 in strength and 2 in constitution, with a talent in strength."
The team looked at Sam, and the guy who was twerking a minute ago looked at him with scrutiny and said, "That would be a decent defensive team, but are you sure you can fight well? Most Berserker Knights are just slow and bad at anything. How offensive can you be?"
Sam thought for a bit and said "**** ********* ******-" The guy laughed hysterically and said, "Okay okay, that's offensive enough. You can join us. Dear god, this guy's a riot."
Sam smiled and said, "Thank you very much and sorry for you having to hear that missy. Once again, I am samshank, but you can just call me Shanks."
The guy, who appeared to be the leader, said, "Clever name. My name is LuciusHair, but you can call me Luci. I am a silent bard, also level 1, with a talent in agility."
The slightly awkward-looking second guy looked at the now sitting Sam and said, "M-my name is GamaBlunt, but you can call me j-just Gama. I am a biomancer with a talent in i-intelligence and 3 stats in intelligence and 2 in constitution. Also level 1."
The last one to present herself was the only girl there, and she looked on with her head held high and said, "I am VioletHale. You can call me just Hale or Violet is fine. I am a stabber swordsman, with a talent in agility and 4 stats in agility, 2 in constitution and strength."
Sam narrowed his eyes at that and asked, "So you were solo before and need a team now? What's up, you found a dungeon?"
The girl looked surprised and said, "Yes, actually... You sure you don't have like 5 points in perception or something in intelligence?"
Sam chuckled a bit and said, "I have rolled a nat 20 on charisma and intelligence IRL, so at least 1% of that should transfer over into the game."
After scoffing, Violet continued, "I found a dungeon of goblins below ground outside of the city and got a quest to exterminate them. That's why I am here looking for a team. Luci and I actually know each other IRL, so I helped him get a headgear, and he joined my team. Gama joined us not too long before you came."
Sam extended his hand a bit and formally met the actual party leader this time and shook her hand. "We have a healer, a damage dealer, a tank, and a support class, so we can go out and grind a bit, familiarize ourselves with fighting and level up a bit before going to the goblin dungeon."
Everyone nodded their heads, and Sam added a bit, "I managed to win a favor with the receptionist before coming here, so could you guys wait outside of the association for a bit? I'll get something good and catch up."
The two looked at each other and shrugged. Violet then said, "Sure, but be quick. I don't want someone stealing my dungeon. They are rare and really fortuitous if you can fully clear one."
The two friends left, with Gama tailing them slightly behind. *Tsch.* Sam's smile and friendly demeanor disappeared right after, as he narrowed his gaze at Violet. After a few minutes of contemplating, he exhaled and left to finish his presentations.
Sam turned around and went towards Cecile. She was still on shift, but he was okay with taking the heat from some random players getting mad at him skipping the line and walked directly up to Cecile.
He smiled a toothy grin and said, "Cecile, my main woman, can I borrow like 3 silver? I'll pay you back within a week, I swear. I lost all of my money and can't afford equipment."
Cecile looked slightly surprised and said, "Since when have you become a gambler? Anyway, don't worry about it. You can keep the three silver. It's not that much anyway."
Sam smiled and said, "Thank a bunch! You can't imagine how much you have helped me!"
With a smile and a small wave, Sam left the adventurers association and saw his teammates outside the building, while everyone in the inline players cursed him out.
Luci piped up and said, "That was fast. What did you even do?" Sam smiled and showed them 1 silver coin. The three widened their eyes at that and Sam said, "I'll need to buy a good sword, so I'ma take Gama and check out the shops. Where should we meet for the leveling session?"
The two friends blinked their eyes at me, and Violet said, "I'll be at the southern slime field, teaching Luci a few tricks. Come meet us as soon as you guys buy the new sword."
Sam smiled and waved them away and turned to Gama, who flinched a bit. "What's up? You seem a bit jumpy."
Gama fiddled his hands a bit and said, "I-I am not t-that good at talking to s-strangers." Sam nodded his head and put his arm around Gama's shoulder. He was a head shorter than him, so it was quite an easy task. "We are going to be teammates now Gama, teammates need to communicate and talk to be effective. Some might not be good at that initially, so try doing stuff like callouts when you see danger or heal someone or buff someone. You'll get used to it after a while. Who knows, we might even become good friends. Come, I'll buy you a pendulum for creature magic."
Gama widened his eyes and stuttered out, "D-don't you want to buy a sword for y-yourself?"
Sam smiled and showed two more silver coins, while Gama looked in astonishment, "H-h-how?"
Sam smiled and said, "I can be quite charming. The receptionist took a liking to me and gave me some extra cash to buy equipment. Imma buy a special sword worth 2 silver and 20 copper, so I can afford you the 70 copper pendulum."
Gama nodded his head and said, "T-thank you!" Sam smacked Gama's back a bit and chuckled, "You remind me of myself when I was still in college *I can remember it like I quite literally graduated just last year*. Keep your head up and don't let anyone give you up. Also, don't mention this to those two muffin heads. They are a team and overpower us individually. We need to stick together and not let them bully us while maintaining proper team balance!"
The young adult looked at Sam with a bit of admiration as they went to buy said equipment, and Sam got his hands on the two-handed sword he was planning on and a decent creature magic pendulum for Gama with his borrowed money.
[Copper Greatsword(quality 1)]
+3-8 damage to attack
Ability Greatsword: a mightier swing generates a mightier attack.
Durability 29/35
Weapons and equipment in Realms of Conquest rarely give stat bonuses to players, as the value of a single stat point goes up exponentially with each level up. That's why weapons have a damage boost, general durability, and special abilities based on their quality and materials used. If the wielder wants anything other than pure power, then they need to find a suitable craftsman, who can make higher quality gear, as item drops are extremely rare due to dropped items having a mob's spirit in them and being a minimum quality of 2.
Only a few of even the rankers have quality 3 items. As a blacksmith, who worked for a guild as a crafter, Sam knows how to craft items and give them slight magical power, with his intelligence stat, but such items can only go up to quality 2 and require heavy investments to turn into quality 3.
On the other side, artisans specializing in creativity can easily make good quality 2 equipment. Artistic classes are the easiest and hardest to play depending on your natural, real-life skills.
Most skills have a two-factor usage, user and system level. While the system level is easy to understand and see, user is a lot more complex. On a system level, all that matters is your charisma/creativity/perception/intelligence depending on what type of artist you are. A painter would focus on creativity and agility/perception, so they can make better and more detailed paintings. A sculptor might put their stats into creativity and strength/perception, so they can make more durable sculptures and so forth for other artist classes.
These are system level bonuses, but they can be superseded by user input. If the human themselves is inspired enough or a genius artist in real life, they won't need the creativity stat at all; they can directly create a tier 2 or 3 sculpture that can actually give stat bonuses to people who view them or give them an aura range, which buffs players within said range.
As long as the artist themselves is competent enough good enough at their craft, they can create artifacts like no other class. That's not to say being an artist is easy; that just shows how difficult making quality equipment worth wearing is in this game.
One sculptor managed to create a quality 3 sculpture with his creativity and intelligence. Said sculpture was the talk of the entire community, as it had amazing effects. Just what was publicly said before the sculptor had to sign an NDA was impressive enough.
This statue was bought for over fifty thousand credits by a ranker, as looking at it will temporarily increase the viewer's armor value by 10%, and being within a certain range of it, a range you can see it from, will grant you complete immunity to effects similar to fear, as looking at the statue would dispel such effects.
*I can make myself a quality 2 greatsword in the future. For now, this bad boy will do just fine.*
Sam conversed with Gama while they walked towards the slime field south of Copper Town and saw his two other teammates talking to each other while killing slimes. Sam waved them down, and the two of them approached to help kill slimes.