[OOC] Side Quest - Sword Art Online

[Haeo]

@BlackPanther I was thinking packs of up to five wolves at a time with the leader of each pack at level 4 with the rest being level 3. The rest I was still debating.

[BlackPanther]

a bear or two maybe?

[Zelosse]

Remember cost and benefits. I'd only need poison on enemies that are worth the expense. I doubt that I'd need much at a time, maybe three doses worth. After all, I'm looking to make a profit too. You might want to work on things that enhance armor piercing or inflict other status anomalies like blindness or paralysis. There's also the potential for impact explosives applied to an arrowhead or thrown weapon.

Maybe, potions for drinking, poisons for single use weapon effect modifiers, tinctures for time duration gear modifiers, and oils for regenerative effects for durability or maybe pet alteration effects?@Zelosse

@Haeo

All good ideas. Heck we could even create something to change player appearance, or armor color. Vanity sells

[Haeo]

Well, the bears would probably be in a different area. Bears and Wolves don't usually hang out together. I was thinking that the wolves would be in open plains or fields and fight as packs. The bears could be in either a rockier area or they could be in the forests. One thing that I'm not sure of is whether or not to include those bloody foxes. If we do, they would be in the deepest parts of the forest and would hunt in pairs.

With this setup, the wild dogs would be confined to the western side of town in the plains and they probably are only active during the day. The bears and foxes are in the woods but the foxes are only active at night while the bears are always there. The wolves are always active but they're more numerous and aggressive at night and stay in the plains areas to the east of town for the most part.

For loot, here's what I have in mind.

Wolves[lvl 3-5]: Wolf hide (one step above Wild Dog Hide), Wolf's Fang (level 4 dagger, rare drop from pack leaders at night only), Wolf Tooth (material for various tooth, fang, or bone accessories)

Bears[lvl5]: Bear Sinew Bow (level 5 bow - Rare drop requires final blow to be a bowshot), Bear Hide (level 5-10 leather crafting), Bear Claws (level 5-10 weapon crafting/potion ingredient)

Foxes[lvl 5]: Fox Eye (level 5-15 potion ingredient), Black Fox Fur (level 5-10 leather crafting), Fox Blood Vial (level five required to wear-Amulet type accessory that also gives a bonus to anyone trying to tame a Black Fox as a pet)

Wild Dogs[lvl 2]: Wild Dog Hide (low end leather crafting item), Rancid Meat (weak poison ingredient), more money per kill than the wolves.@BlackPanther@Zelosse

[Zelosse]

I like it, but the spacing seems off. Granted we're going for accuracy but this is still an MMO to its core catering to thousands of players.
These things will be wandering around damn near everywhere aimlesslym

[Zelosse]

What I was thinking was more along the lines of general starting zone.
A jumbled mix of monsters wandering between the start and the surrounding area of bulls run. A chance to get players familiar with them before they go into the proper zones.
The forested areas and the gorge house monsters with intelligence. Hunt in packs, territorial, elite mobs and mini bosses, all with a big aggro range.
The fields of bulls run are littered with unaggressive trial monsters.

[Haeo]

@ZelosseMost players aren't going out at night, especially without a party. During the day, the wolves would only be in groups of about three and the bears would be alone in the fringe areas of the forest. All of them would have limited pursuit ranges. Also, this isn't a newbie zone. These monsters are on the far side of the second town. Every player here can be expected to be at least level three before they arrive and they would likely be expected to hunt the wild dogs first.

The Wolf Packs will have spawn points, dens. They will not wander far from these dens and stay away from the roads at night.

The Bears spawn in the forest and refuse to leave it. They also will avoid each other.

The Foxes are only in the deepest part of the forest and they are nocturnal only. In short, you have to go looking for trouble to find them at all.

Also, this is the highest level area before the first level boss dungeon. Since we have characters who are not beta-testers and are already stated at being level six we have to account for them being able to advance that far in a one day period.

[[Edit: There are 100 levels to Aincrad and the maximum character level, if I'm correct, was 100. If we were actually following the MMO pattern of the world then it would be impractical for any player to rise over level three before the first boss.]]

[BlackPanther]

@Haeo
i love how thought out you are going with it :) i was thinking something similar but my thought process didn't get that far

also i figure you could add some snakes near water areas or make them less common for poison skin and fangs. gives something harder to find then dogs wolves and bears and not quite as hard as foxes

[Zelosse]

Puttin' a lotta thought into this and I like it. We'll roll with that since its way more plausible.
But I do wanna keep in mind that each floor of Aincrad is gargantuan. I originally had a unit of measurement that just said "hella" on it.
What do you think would be an acceptable amount of time to travel in this area, given that teleportation is possible.
I'd thought of saying there were signposts or something that acted as a teleport location to certain safe areas across the first floor. Because walking everywhere one end to another in my mind would take up days. From start zone to the floor boss it would take a week of travel at least. I'm talking about on foot, overnight, walking.

The potential for people making camps during the initial exploration phase is very high so there needs to be areas, despite being in the forests or deep in the tunnels of the gorge, that are considered minor safe zones.
Monsters dont come close.

[Zelosse]

@Haeo
i love how thought out you are going with it :) i was thinking something similar but my thought process didn't get that far

also i figure you could add some snakes near water areas or make them less common for poison skin and fangs. gives something harder to find then dogs wolves and bears and not quite as hard as foxes

@BlackPanther

I was willing to let people find other animals and such. Even non hostile ones. There's bound to be more than just a handful of animals.
Vultures, hawks, giant ants, swarms of insects, giant frogs, snakes, wild horses, BULLS, etc.

[Haeo]

Well, from what has already happened IC, it takes one day to get from the Town of Beginnings to Bull's Run. So, either the scale of the map is completely unusable or the levels increase in size as we go up which would contradict the external view of Aincrad.@Zelosse

[Zelosse]

@Haeo alternatively it could be a really shitty map.
It doesn't display the stuff in the way, the pace you would have to take, the stopping, the fighting, the climbing, the backtracking. There's no yellow brick road in my mind that goes perfectly down the middle.
Except from first town to bulls run.

So that's not really a big issue. We're focused on meownsters

[Haeo]

You know, since the upper limit of character level was never stated in SAO, we could simply ignore the Boss dungeon on that map and assume that it's a limited region map. If that's the case then the bears and foxes would only be in special hostile zones and the wolves would all be level three.

The loot could remain as stated but people would have to be a lot more restrained about getting stronger and obtaining upgrades, like not getting anything better at all until after the first boss gets cleared... which took months according to canon.

@Zelosse

[BlackPanther]

there also could be dungeon specific monsters that drop better loot since it leads to the boss. with it getting progressively more difficult as you get closer with the most difficult being the boss.

[Zelosse]

@Haeo@BlackPanther

Bingo!

Its beautiful, maaaaaaan

[Haeo]

I've taken a minute to gather my thoughts on these matters so here's my proposal and the problems I'm still facing in a nutshell.

@Haeo alternatively it could be a really shitty map.
It doesn't display the stuff in the way, the pace you would have to take, the stopping, the fighting, the climbing, the backtracking. There's no yellow brick road in my mind that goes perfectly down the middle.
Except from first town to bulls run.

So that's not really a big issue. We're focused on meownsters

@Zelosse

This is very true and accurate. And, as we're focused on monsters I should remember that the entire first level would count as a beginning zone and would have a very, very limited variety of monsters and items.

<Snipped quote by BlackPanther>

I was willing to let people find other animals and such. Even non hostile ones. There's bound to be more than just a handful of animals.
Vultures, hawks, giant ants, swarms of insects, giant frogs, snakes, wild horses, BULLS, etc.

@Zelosse

I think that the variety would be in animals as opposed to monsters. The kind of things that give no experience and only food ingredients.

Puttin' a lotta thought into this and I like it. We'll roll with that since its way more plausible.
But I do wanna keep in mind that each floor of Aincrad is gargantuan. I originally had a unit of measurement that just said "hella" on it.
What do you think would be an acceptable amount of time to travel in this area, given that teleportation is possible.
I'd thought of saying there were signposts or something that acted as a teleport location to certain safe areas across the first floor. Because walking everywhere one end to another in my mind would take up days. From start zone to the floor boss it would take a week of travel at least. I'm talking about on foot, overnight, walking.

The potential for people making camps during the initial exploration phase is very high so there needs to be areas, despite being in the forests or deep in the tunnels of the gorge, that are considered minor safe zones.
Monsters dont come close.

@Zelosse

The SAO canon included teleport crystals and town to town portals but did not show any other forms of teleportation. They also showed neither camping nor equipment for it, leading me to believe that towns were not far apart. Most of the tough marathons were inside the dungeons themselves. I'd say about a day or two at most between towns and probably simple shelter being necessary for safe camping. Basically, buy or build a tent and use it to be safe inside through the night. Outside the tent is full nocturnal monster turf.

This seems to mean that the level of the monsters can be anything so long as players have the same level mobility. How flexible do we want this to be and when do we want to time-skip? The first boss was cleared after two months. What happens in the mean time would be pretty repetitive.

[BlackPanther]

@Haeo
maybe have a bit of interaction then time jump when everyone is ready? that way everyone is in the same time zone and in the areas that are preferable to the character... tossing out ideas

[Zelosse]

@Haeo this is an RP. We have a guy with a jackal pet, two fox girls, and general insanity.
We can afford not to be 100% canon the whole time or this WILL get boring.
We can afford to make our own stories bit by bit so long as its not totally ass backwards.
We're having fun too remember

[Zelosse]

I hope ladytale isn't gonna get upset at us plotting like this.

[BlackPanther]

guy with jackal pet is the best at blending in XD