Without him realising, an hour had passed while he was recalling the earliest of his new memories; all the important events that took place, all the tactics and guides he had read about on the forums by other players, and anything that could be important.
After he had made a rough plan on what he needed to do, Axel finally regained his focus and looked around, only to notice that there were a bunch of noble-like NPCs surrounding him, with pitiful expressions on their faces.
Only then did he notice that someone had placed a hat next to him while he was leaning again the wall and looking at the sky, and the hat was not full of copper coins.
'This…'
Axel was completely dumbstruck at what had just happened.
'It appears begging is more lucrative than hunting…'
Silently he reached out to the coins in the hand and collected them into his inventory, before putting on the cap, performing a bow that did not lack the etiquette of the Roland Empire that he had performed countless times in his previous life, and fleeing the scene.
Since his Fame had reached 15, he could be considered someone that many people had a vague recollection about. Probably, one of the nobles passing by must have thought he was a familiar face, and stopped by, attracting the attention of even more noble NPCs, and seeing the condition he was in, with no armour or clothes other than the basic undergarments that the game did not allow you to remove, they must have thought someone cheated me or something and decided to spare me some change.
'What is one man's garbage is another man's treasure.' This phrase rang true in Axel's mind, the pocket change to those noble children and young adults was something that solved an incredibly important issue to Axel.
Without hesitation, he made his way to Bard's Beginner Archer equipment shop, with his newly inflated total of 135 copper, amounting to 1 silver and 35 copper.
Currency in Evolution Online had a rather simple currency system. 100 copper equalled to 1 silver, and 100 silver equalled to 1 gold. There was no higher currency in the game, at least for the beginning few updates, only much later on would platinum coins, that were valued at 100 gold, be released.
"Welcome back young lad. What can I help you with."
Such beginner NPCs had incredibly low artificial intelligence coding, since their main function was only selling items to players. However, conversing with any NPC was never a bad thing, since hidden quests that had not even been discovered in his past life could be anywhere.
"Hello Mr. Bard. I would like to purchase equipment for myself."
"Sure."
A trade window popped up in front of Axel, with quite a few items. But Axel stopped reding through it after a while, and looked at Bard and spoke.
"Can I see everything you have to offer? Within 135 copper that is."
"Sure"
With another monotonous response, another window popped up in front of Axel.
This time, quite a few items caught his eyes, but before anything else, he bought a bronze dagger for 10 copper.
Equipment in Evolution Online were divided into divided into grades, starting with White; which was the cheapest equipment that was available at the beginner NPC shops, and were the general drops from weak mobs. Next came bronze, which was slightly higher in level.
This could be seen from the description of the equipment.
Bronze Off-hand Dagger: A dagger used as an off-hand weapon by archers for melee combat
Effect: Attack + 3
Durability: 15/15
On the other hand, the white equipment had a different description.
White Off-hand Dagger: A dagger used as an off-hand weapon by archers for melee combat
Effect: Attack + 1
Durability: 10/10
Not only was there such a difference in stats, but the price was also different, with the white dagger costing only 5 copper, half of the bronze dagger.
Other than that, Axel also bought a skill from the NPC shop for 60 copper
Beginner Weapon Mastery : Dagger (+1 attack when using a dagger)
This was a skill that an archer required in order to equip the off-hand dagger. Of course, he did not bother with purchasing a bow or arrows, since such equipment, especially while fighting low-levelled mobs, was basically a sink-hole of money.
Each arrow, even the lowest white equipment, cost 1 copper, and with his pathetic default hit-rate of 10%, it would require at least 10 arrows to kill a normal mob; 10 copper per monster. And this value would double if the shot that actually hit the monster, did not die it instantly.
What you would get from the monster would at best be 2 copper, which meant that you were losing money the more you fought. Compared to melee characters like Warriors and thieves, Archers were a sinkhole of money, and therefore were incredibly unpopular.
Only after reaching level 50 did Archer's begin to get skills that made them increasingly more powerful in PVE and PVP, but it also made the character harder to play with. But at least until he started fighting monsters that gave a large amount of money as loot, he could stick with his dagger and fight in melee.