I eagerly awaited as the load screen transported me to the vast new world of Gargantua. Immediately, I checked my status screen.
[Status]
Name: DarkWingAspirations82
Titles: None
Faction: None
Clan: None
HP: 120/120
MP: 100/100
STR: 15
AGI: 11
STA: 11
INT: 13
WIS: 13
CHA: 11
Skills: Appraisal, MP Recovery Up, HP Recovery Up, Accelerated Learning, Two-Handed Sword
Okay, I was decent, but definitely not outstanding. It was good that all of my values were positive, but the max starting value was 20 for any stat. I didn't have any near that. However, if I were to gamble and redux, there was no guarantee that my stats would be this usable again.
I decided to keep this for now and find a few quests to raise stats as soon as possible. The next thing I did was sign on to the forums and find a few groups of Dragonkin, mages, and two-handed swords like myself to join for advice when needed. I always admired those that could figure things out and I did a pretty decent job myself usually, but it never hurt to have additional knowledge banks. Finally, I approved the 14 gaming friends who automatically connected with me through my game pod and had created accounts here in Gargantua Online.
Now I was really ready to start my adventure.
I followed the guide to the town's adventuring hall, which was massive. The material of the exterior looked like glass and the shape was definitely a dramatic design in angles with columns made of large animal bone sculptures. Next to the guild was a large space with several customized in game vehicle options. They had a traditional hover car, hover limousine, round UFO capsule, hot air balloon, animal mounts, and more. In front of each was a description and limitation on purchases. You could own only two mounts at a time and several of the vehicles were already flashing "SOLD OUT" signs that indicated more than 1,000 had been sold and the game would restock in the next hour.
Geez, the prices on some of those mounts were astronomical. There were too many rich people who would explode quickly into Gargantua before hopefully losing interest. I went into the Adventurer's Guild and registered to receive my tutorial quests. I was given a long staff and a beginner's dragonkin ensemble which consisted of scaly pants, scaly harness, scaly wrist guards, and scale sandals which I equipped for the defensive power. My natural defense wasn't listed, but like all races, there was a hidden defense value that wouldn't exceed 20 based on your race selection to begin with. I hoped with my dragon body scales that I had a fairly high defense, though I knew golems would likely have the highest.
The tutorial quests consisted of delivery errands throughout the town that I zoomed through, knowing that someone would do an in depth tutorial of the characters in the starting towns and post it on the forums soon enough. That was the beauty of the interweb. The delivery quests gained me a variety of goods. I had a basic two-handed sword from the weapons blacksmith, a set of scaly shin guards from the armor blacksmith, a cape from the leather armory, a healing potion from the apothecary, an inventory holding bag or backpack (I chose bag) from the general goods store, and locations of lots of goods that I couldn't afford yet, but would look into soon.
I also found the town knowledge repository where memory stones and scrolls were stored for public perusal of Gargantua's history. I couldn't wait to turn in my tutorial quests and return to the knowledge repository. The external structure of the repository was made of the same glass material as the Guild, but instead of bones, heaps of ivy and gargoyle figures littered the exterior, like that crazy realization of Gege's building in New York that was eventually built in 2230 after being designed for more than 200 years. This building was a little shorter than the famous one, but still incredibly cool. The artists must have worked really hard on the visual concepts in Gargantua.