A New World, an immersive game experience

Chapter 19: Browsing the forums

'Truly the atmosphere in this world is just so much better than in our world.' Eldrian thought as he watched the sun go down along with Vivian.

For the most part, the world of Gaia resembles earth very much. But something stood out very clearly. Like the sun appearing blue in the sky, instead of yellow like the sun on earth. The moon also appeared to be a blueish silver color, with no craters visible as they watched it starting to rise in the sky.

The sundown looked a lot different from those on earth. Eldrian found it hard to try and explain, but in some manner, it looked more like this world's sun was a part of it, than he had ever experienced on earth.

"Are you ready to go home?" Vivian asked after having watched the magnificent sundown. Now it was starting to become dark, so they should get going soon.

"Ah, sorry about that Vivian. I was just lost in the sunset. It certainly was beautiful." His voice sounded much more peaceful than normal.

"I agree, it was different today, seeming to be more graceful... Are you ready?"

"Sure, lead the way," Eldrian said as he stood up. Surprisingly his body wasn't sore after such a rigorous exercise.

'Certainly, this makes one remember it is a game.' He thought as he felt that he truly wasn't stiff. 'Or maybe it is just due to magic. Ha, but I can't use magic yet so it can't be due to that.'

While his body wasn't sore, Eldrian did feel tired. Or rather he felt that his body was tired. It is a very weird feeling, with his body not being sore like normal after exercise. Instead, it felt like he had finished an exercise after he had rested. It was a very unique feeling, like being out of breath even after you had rested for hours.

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'I must say, Diane can certainly make a delicious meal with very little spices. The taste of the vegetables and meat just mix so well. It feels like they were meant to go together.' Eldrian mumbled as he stood up and took off his headset. Currently, the time was almost 8 in the morning.

After having gone with Vivian to her house, he enjoyed another hearty meal prepared by Diane before going to his temporary bedroom to log off. Eldrian felt glad that he did go with this route since when he logged off, he got a notification from the system stating;

'Due to player resting in a peaceful environment player will experience increased recovery. Due to player resting on a bed, player will gain double the effect.'

This was a very nice boost, or at least Eldrian believed it was. As the game hadn't been explored a lot he was unsure how this works exactly. But he was certain it would help with the recovery of his fatigue levels and maybe some other things too.

With his thoughts still about the benefits of sleeping in a bed, in-game, Eldrian headed to his PC to see what people are saying on the forums.

The first thing Eldrian looked for was the tipping system in the forums, as he had only read that it existed before.

The tipping was called Gaia's blessing. When a player found a post helpful, funny, or entertaining then they could tip the content creator for it. There were a few limits in place, such as only registered players could receive tips.

No other accounts could gain Gaia's blessing. This was to both ensure the information and encourage people to join the game.

The company stated that if you receive a certain number of blessings you will not only get 90% of the money, since the company commissions the missing 10%. Stating that it is for the maintenance of the forums.

The other thing they promised was an in-game surprise which players will have to discover later on.

There were no complaints about the company taking a cut, since they already offered a connection to the game servers at a very low price. With it only costing 20 dollars a month to keep your membership active. When a person considers all the benefits coming with being able to play the game then it was clearly very affordable.

If a player wanted to compare it to say a gym membership it becomes even clearer that the company is being very kind. The game, at the minimum, gave every player an extra 6 to 8 hours per day, while a gym membership costs 40 dollars just to use some equipment in a room.

Eldrian continued to browse the forums to see if there was any other surprises that he had missed. He did indeed find a few things, like the fact that the company had made a platform for trading IRL money for IG money. Using the platform would be much safer than doing it alone and for this security, the company is charging a 5% fee.

Eldrian was left speechless when he saw that currently, one silver was trading for 5 dollars. This price was determined by demand and not set, thus this price was constantly changing around 5 dollars and wasn't exactly 5 dollars.

Eldrian felt conflicted after he saw this. Currently, he was learning about the in-game systems and how everything worked. So, he wasn't going to start earning money anytime soon. Seeing that if he sold just 4 silvers, he could cover his gaming costs for the month he was quite attracted to the idea to just go animal hunting like the other players had been doing.

From what he saw on the forums players made around a silver after a day's hunting. In that, they didn't get ambushed and die that is. This meant making money via the game was certainly possible.

Eldrian thought about it for a while and decided to keep to his action of rather learning from the NPCs than rushing into the world. Since he felt it would certainly give him a larger bonus later on.

His reasoning was simple, he had already gotten a failed magic weapon. This was an amazing thing, since he felt if he were to auction the weapon it would likely reach 2000 dollars, the equivalent of 4 gold.

He felt it would go to this price since he knew that this was around where normal weapons peaked.

Certainly, Eldrian would actually easily make over 10 gold if he did auction it since currently, it was the first and only magic item discovered. If the situation around magic weapons were discovered he would be able to earn much more in fact. Luckily no one knew of these situations or he would really be tempted to sell it.

Eldrian also noticed that players still hadn't figured out the main cause for leveling up their proficiencies. Most players had difficulty talking to the NPCs since there was no preset dialogue they could follow. Instead, they had to approach NPCs in a certain manner to gain access to the NPCs' information.

Much like in real life. A martial arts master wouldn't waste his time explaining everything to everyone who asked. Instead, he would ask them to show him why he should spend time on them. The current players didn't like this system, as it required a lot of their time.

'I don't know if I was just lucky, or was my training and finding it fun the key?' Eldrian questioned himself, since he had gained a lot from simply approaching Old Sword and trying his best to fulfill the quest he received.

He remembered Old Sword said something about him being the only player to have been able to talk to him. He felt that each NPC would have some way like this to filter the seekers from the doers.

After a bit more contemplating Eldrian finally decided to post about the basics around leveling weapon proficiencies. He felt if he waited a few more days then he would lose his chance to earn some tips.

*How to gain proficiencies effectively* Eldrian named his post, writing about how for bladed weapons you had to focus on edge alignment to gain the best effect. For non-bladed weapons, it was generally ensuring a good hit. Like with a medieval warhammer(*1) you had to ensure that the pike struck the target in a good manner, much like edge alignment.

Eldrian didn't mention that there were other things that affect it too since he hadn't found out what they are yet.

After reading through his thread twice Eldrian found it nicely worded and concise. 'Hopefully, I can make some quick cash from for this month's connection cost.' He hoped as he posted it.

Seeing that only about an hour had past Eldrian decided to surf some more on the forums. The common complaints were still everywhere. He also found a lot of professional groups posting their successful hunts.

All the posts had one thing in common. This was that the death penalty was too harsh, making leveling almost impossible. Even after spending two days in-game they still hadn't managed to gather 2000 XP to level up. The reason was that they lost all their XP if they died.

To get 2000 XP they would have to solo kill a 100 animals. The highest record was 4 solo kills and 25 kills with one partner, or so a post claimed. This post was for attention-seeking players, who wanted to show off. It acted much like a ranking system, with players giving proof of their deeds and the thread creator then sorting it all into a list.

They also complained about the meager gains from killing the animals. In Phallos, Eldrian's kingdom, the animals were normally wolves. With each wolf only giving around 20 to 45 coppers depending on if they damaged the fur or not.

As Eldrian read this he thought that that was just natural. The wolves they were fighting were only common animals, not a monster variant of the wolf animal. This meant that the wolf's fur was only usable as clothing, the claws too weak to repurposed for weapons, and the same for the fangs. The meat was also not liked in the kingdom.

The biggest contribution to the low amount of income for players was not the low income per wolf, but rather the fact that they could end up searching hours for a wolf.

This was natural since the NPC hunters aimed at killing all the wolves near the city, to make it safer.

After Eldrian looked at another of their videos he was surprised at how skilled they had become at killing wolves. This was to be expected since they have been spending 2 days only doing that he soon realized.

In this video, it was a very crude method. A man with a melee weapon rushed a wolf. As the wolf attacked the man, the man just tried to block fatal strikes while an archer shot at the wolf. With the wolf either having just attacked or dodged it often failed in dodging the following arrow.

Doing it this way the melee player didn't die but did take damage. The wolf on the other hand was killed in just a few seconds. They again complained that if only wolves were more common they would be able to make a killing.

'Okay time to go exercise!' Eldrian tried motivating himself after having spent around another hour online. He certainly had to lose some weight soon as he did not want to become a meme!

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1) The warhammer in this chapter is a medieval warhammer, shaped more like an ice pick than a hammer.

The fantasy style warhammer, being just a massive hammer, will be called a 'warhammer', and this ice pick styled warhammer from medieval times will be called a 'medieval warhammer'.