Witches in this game were like combo of druids,seers and shamans. They could do precognition, rain hexes and curses, bring chaos or they could just pray and heal.
The witches used multiple weapons to cast their skills. The staff was multipurpose one- could cure or curse. Nia could now used daggers, knifes etc as cursed items. For precognition, she got a basic seer set- a cup of turtle shell and pair of runestones.
Lady Heidi, her mentor witch, comforted her though. As she became stronger, she could use other seer items without worry. She could use items of druid or shaman too. All in all, being a witch was like 'jack of all but master of none' , at least at hands of normal players/NPCs. Why else would there be a saying like- there is not bad or weak profession, only a bad or weak player.
After learning few basic curses, hexes and healing spells, Nia went to the next pit stop. She was on time. Chatting with Lady Heidi had given her few extras but eaten up time in 4 hours of extra stats.[The stats were gained after having a fine breakfast at grandma Esla along with patrolmen.]
She made a sort of loop around the village, not taking the same route as she came in to meet Lady Heidi. This meant she met and helped many NPC's but the countdown clock was ticking more close to zero. She did not see the chief Tomashi near village square. Today, his subordinate was handing out quests to all th players who had queued up and filled up the village square.
After a day of playing and exchanging ideas, now the players knew having quests gave them direction in grinding up the levels and gave extra XP too. Of course a number of things decided which type of quest you get and what type of difficulty is the quest. If you are still struck as level 1 or 2 players, you can just do collecting quest or be an errand boy. If you had higher levels, had high quest clearance rate, you would get better quest and you would be sent to higher level monster areas.
Tomashi's subordinate looked like a no nonsense type of man. Even his posture was rigid. But his way of working was indeed very efficient by the looks of the speed of queue clearing. He did not chitchat. He would look into some documents [ probably quest clearance rate, level of player, if he or she was in a party before etc.] and directly gave out quests.
Nia did not even go near village square knowing that she would not get any information on why chief was not sitting in his usual place. Her next stop was Aurrum, the shop keeper. She thought he was a extreme miser, shrewd businessman, a person with a far vision. And today's meet satisfied her completely and enforced her belief.
Aurrum did not mind losing his extra storage bag. He, in fact gave her more XP for the quests completed as she had finished it ahead of schedule.
Nia gained two levels just by completing quests given by him. It should be known that as the levels increase, the Xp needed would not just double but increase many folds. Even in such situation, she gained two levels. Suddenly, with nearly half day of grinding [on previous day. You couldn't have forgotten the famous 'chicken farm' scenes, right?], her levels were on par with very good players.
The first tier of players were all legends and guild owners. They would occupy top ten or even top hundred spots.
Next tier would have elite guild players. They would hop in to top hundred once in a while but would always stay within top thousand at least.
The third tier would be very good players. They may or may not belong to guilds. They had excellent mechanics, played the game well enough.
If they joined the guilds, they would obviously receive a cash salary in real world. They were that precious to the guilds. All the guilds would like their place to be filled with such players. Alas, that would be impossible dream. Most of the guild players would be passionate people, grunt workers etc. So these very good players would work as their party leads or party heads.
Thanks to the generous XP, Nia's level was on par with such people. [Did you even guess that such collecting type of quest would give so much XP? You must remember that these so called very good players were always grinding. They were in monster maps whole day and they had rushed back as soon as they woke up this day. And their monster clearing rate was very high, multiple times higher than Nia's monster clearance rate. Her rate was on par with real Noob/ new comer level.]
But something else happened then. Something that made Nia decide losing extra stat time would not at all matter. She had gained something that made her so happy that if she knew how to dance, she would have danced then and there at Aurrum's general store. Even the shopkeeper was brimming with smile and it was not his typical salesman smile.