BlueYellow

Dissonant Steel Online

A rather repulsive demi-human walked up to them, being almost pear-shaped and pudgy with short blue hair, cat ears poking up on the top of his head as well as a long narrow tail matching his haircolor extending out of his tailbone, clad in leather armor with a longbow strapped to his back and two daggers at his side. "Hmm... I don't know Chief. They should have Dryad to get the [Nature's Child] Racial feat. But i guess class selection could fix that" the fatcat spoke, appearantly of the Nekomimi race.

"Well we have a stock of [Essence Remodeling Fruits] if she joins. She can turn into a Dryad no problem to get their racial feet, as well as [Forest Spirit]'s racial feat [Nature's Bounty] once they evolve to the advanced class." The instigating hulk of bulky armor and bad manners spoke, shaking his head slowly before looking the modestly clad elf over again from top to bottom.

The rangertype stroked his double chin and nodded slowly, "Yeah, that would work. They could be useful if they specced into [Herbalist], [Druid], [Farmer] or later on advanced classes like [Doctor], [Field Medic], if we are in a dire need for healers. We'll see about the rare, mythic and legendary classes once she gets few dozen levels under her belt

The pair talked among themselves as if Totsurugi wasn't even there while the petite elf slowly leaned back, mentally and physically trying to distance herself from these people. She got a bad feeling that they guild was rather predatory, likely micromanaged to hell and having strong separation from new members to senior members, it was typical of charismatic assholes to want to consolidate power and prevent anyone but themselves from even having a voice. From behind the two large men came rather short characters, no taller than five feet at best, clad in sturdy bronze armor with large battleaxes on their backs with magnificent, immaculately kept beards that reached down to their belts, two twin dwarfs from the looks of it, both looking identical from each other in all but name.

"Guys, we don't need another healer" Rhalgr, the left dwarf spoke, leading the second dwarf; Bhalgr to chime in, "Aye brother. We've got potions and self heal and regens a plenty. What i would like to see is [Parasyte], [Arcanovore], [Manaphage], for heavy damage, crowd control and denial, then later on [Blood Occultist], [Herald of Xan'thur], for the ritual and sacrifice spells to fit with the theme."

"Oh god the herald... Do you know how bothersome their rituals are? They need special rooms, special equipment, materials, instruments, sigils and half of the time the spells don't work or it leaves the bound subject frozen, half mutated or blown out of propertions like you just turned bighead mode on and if none of that happens sometimes they don't have a collission mesh so they just fall through the floor as soon as they touch it... Though their rituals are indeed powerful, their thralls could be extremely useful for defending the base." The half-giant chief spoke up, holding the bridge of his nose between two fingers and shaking his head. "Though tests have shown that the magic works based on symmetry. If your magic circle or room isn't pixel perfectly symmetrical then the math in the code multiplies irrational numbers, causing buffer overflows that disable most other bits of code"

The Rhalgr was about to speak up before a heavily armored bearded man with an axe walked up to them, Totsu was about to stand up and try to leave before noticing that this person did not share the other's guild and did call out to her, referring to her by name, seemingly the person who had called them here to meet, their friend and savior Usernames.

He spoke up, talking about an "alt" and continuing, asking if she was trying to recruit the people in front of them. Thinking quickly, he probably meant to insinuate that she was a veteran of this game and was making a new character or "Alternatives" based on the term "alt". Cogs started to turn in her head before she just shook head head and spoke up in a soft voice, "Oh, you finally found me" and looked towards the officers from the predatory guild, "I wouldn't want to associate with these airheads. They are still going on about the [Naturalist], [Dryad] combo. It's like they have never heard that multiple advanced classes of elves are much better suited since they have much more practical skills and magics for harnessing nature magic" The elf said before standing up and walking towards the axe wielding lifesaver, "They probably are just following guides on the internet written by some teenager with too much free time instead of talking to the elite info brokers and it shows."

Seeing as their potential fresh meat seemed to already belong to a guild in all but title they just huffed and turned away, "Well let's find someone else since they clearly don't want to join" the neko said, swatting the half-giant in the back of the head as they walked back further into the cathedral towards the new players, "This time don't pick on alts who say they already have a guild Althor, learn to listen once in a while, christ."

Totsu turned her head towards the much taller, pleasant and beardier man in front of her and gave a wide smile, "Thanks for getting those people away... it's scary how people act while anonymous and disconnected from real life" she spoke before blushing a bit, a feature she didn't even know the game could mimic, S...sorry for... uh... Getting lost, i didn't know where to look for you. I am not used to these kinda games. I think i told you, right? This is the first game i've played other than some mobile timewaster... i couldn't even come up with name so i just went with what i know but... Looks like you're talent in making up names followed you in～" she winked and chuckled a bit.

Dissonant Steel Online

Totsu looked down the streets, walking down the midtown markets and looking at the stalls, spotting a variety of foodstuff as well as a plethora of different variety of items, either gathered, dropped from mobs or crafted by players, nothing that fancy. While there were some things there that would fit her current level they were far away from her current budget which could afford her maybe a few days worth of room and board in the city, with the expectation that she could go do some odd jobs or sidequests for extra chance.

Getting a ping in her system messages they opened it up and chuckled a bit at the overly jovial response, reading it over slowly before looking around, the skyline was rather intimidating now that she was first really sinking her eyes into it and absorbing all of the information around her though there was no doubt which building they were talking about, amidst the various townhouses and city halls there was one which stood out as if flouncing it's significance.

"I finished the tutorial, it looks like i will have to learn a lot of things in this game. I picked a Naturalist i think it was, like i absorb plants and it makes my spells more powerful, I'm an Elf, think i did a pretty good job making them"

The path towards the objective wasn't that hard but she would have to cut her way through the markets for a stretch and even just from a cursory look it looked like players had a lot of agency over the markets, many of the houses had been converted into shops, tanneries and smithies, a variety of scents barraging her senses while she walked through, some of baked goods, another of tanned hide, yet another of the humid steam coming from the searing furnaces. There were even those who just had smaller stalls along the streets selling whatever, hide from monsters, various teeth, claws, tusks and bones and even raw material such as ores, lumber and other resources.

More curiously there were those who didn't sell tangible goods but rather they sold arguably the most valuable resource of all; Knowledge. They sold maps to dungeons, guides on how to de-activate traps in raids, floor plans of various guilds for use in raiding and general meta knowledge such as today's broken class/skill combo and whatever glitch the developers patched in or out in this cycle of content.

A few tables towards the end just before she took a turn up to the cathedral's courtyard she saw a booth, a large creature, lithe creature with a almost oval looking skull, thin yet elongated with two piercing eyes; front facing. It had four arms, two of which held a book and quill and another two were organizing radiating crystals, their booth sign saying "Scribed Class Crystals" with some of them bearing price tags utilizing currency denomination she hadn't even heard of before.

Suddenly Totsu was interrupted by a game message, opening up the menu and spotting there a small banner saying Guild Invitation with a timer counting down, 299, 298, 297. Opening it she was prompted with a banner of the guild in question. Offensively pink with white horizontal stripes with two prancing unicorns facing each other and what looked like a rudimentary sketch of the age old trollface between them, with their name up in the header

Rakthor Goldtusk has invited you to:

Jazzcreamed Unicorns

Large raid guild looking to train new players!

Blinking a few times, and looking around, not seeing anyone, Totsurugi opened up their system menu and started too type out another message

Hey Users, Did you just invite me to a guild? I got a message from a "Rakthor Goldtusk" who seemed to be rather fond of pastels and unicorns. Coming to the think of it, you never told me about your character, how will i find you at the cathedral?

Totsu finished climbing the set of stairs leading towards the cathedral, coming to a central plaza with a large fountain topped with a statue an important something or other. She slowly sat down on the fountain, using it's ledge as a bench and took out her book, starting to catalog from memory the various spell modifier that they had learned from their time in the tutorial, that is of course until someone approached her;

"Hey newbie, my guild and i could use a Naturalist on our team, can you pick ... ... ... ..."

Totsu knew he had said something, listed off several classes or races no doubt but it just went in one ear and out the other with only a vague recollection of syllables in between, she recoiled a bit and tried to back away from the Half-Giant in front of her. A towering man with gold trims on their armor in every fold and piece, jewels set in their armor in his pauldrons, a large one in his chest and one on his horned helmet all in various different colours, he carried a greatsword on his back which looked ornamental but she couldn't get a clear view of it from here

"I... uh... Sorry i am actually waiting for a friend" She tried to defend herself, looking around to see if she could spot them around here anywhere

"No need to be shy there, my guild is one of the top rated on the server and if you stick with us we can guarantee that you get legendary loot as fast as possible"

"I'm sorry sir, i'm really not interested... Could you please back off"

At this point some people were starting to look over their way but so far no one seemed to coming between them, at least no one that they could see past the towering man.

Dissonant Steel Online

Powering the system on for the first time, experiencing that rather alien feeling of all you senses switching, no longer feeling your body laying there motionlessly on the bed, instead being pulled into a bright other reality. There had been a multitude of safety equipment crammed into a surprisingly small form factor, monitoring things such as pulse, breathing rate and other vitals, as well as a force shut down if your body got dehydrated or overly hungry.

Getting to a login screen and creating a new character, entering the name they had been used to forever now; Totsurugi, having it accepted and moving to another screen where a bunch of people were all stood in a perfect circle, everyone's back facing inwards and towards whoever happened to be looking at them. Cycling through the settings, Male Characters, Female Characters, Genderless Characters. Stopping on Female and moving through the staggering amount of different races, all from eight foot tall and four armed to three feet tall with tails and most everything one could imagine there between. All having names and some stats below them, "Plus Dexterity, Minus Strength" "Plus Intelligence, Minus Dexterity"

This whole selection felt rather overwhelming, not really sure on what to pick, being a but put off by the fiendish looking creatures, but then again Totsu's bar for fiendish wasn't that particularly high, being repulsed by the likes of orcs and goblins. Scrolling round and round until something caught their eye, a Female Elf, tall and lithe, long, pointed ears.

Elf (Female)

Stat Bonuses:
+Intelligence
-Strength

Selecting it brought another wave of sensory overload as the amount of sliders and options berated their senses. Hair Length, Hair Color, Hair Style, Bangs, Hair Side (Left), Hair Side (Right). Staring at it for a few moments before steeling themselves and meticulously going through the options, leaving a surprising amount of them alone, not being one to fiddle with minor or fine detail like the shape of the point of the ears or lobes, chin structure or cheekbones but changing most of the larger options, facial type, hair color, eye color, height, build.

Getting into a state of flow as they built out, finally finishing with something they felt a remarkable sense of kinship with, almost like they could imagine this being something they would look like if they had been born in a fantasy world instead of playing an immersive video game. Long flowing golden blond hair with sideswept bangs, a single small braid going over each ear at the side with the bulk of her hair flowing just below her shoulder blades. A pair of grass green eyes and a young looking face fit for someone going on their very first adventure.

Finishing the setting before being taken into the next selection, an immense selection of classes with a tip in the top left corner saying "Recommended for Elf. Magic, Ranged, Stealth" with a display next to that reading "Show: All". Fiddling a bit with the settings, changing the filter settings to "Show: Recommended Only", their friend had not told them to worry too much about it and if they didn't like the class they started out as it wasn't the end of the world and changing it could be accomplished, although it would take a bit of doing. Scrolling through a few of the classes now, not being particularly interested in the Archers, Assassins and Druids they were coming across. Scrolling down to a class that caught their eye.

Class

Naturalist: Harness nature's infinite bounty into your own strength.
Starting Skills:

-Adaptive Bolt: Fire a magic bolt at a target, damage type is dependent upon the last thing you absorbed.
-Absorb: Leech the life force from a living, non-sentient target you are touching, gain back 20% of the hunger/thirst value it would have provided if it would have would be cooked and consumed.

Main Stat: Intelligence
Weapon Type: Staff

After accepting a final confirmation messaged popped up, accepting that the selector faded away and everything became black for a moment. Light and color returning as they looked around and they were in the body of their creation, experiencing the world in first person. Situated in a small Elven hamlet. She took a timid first step forward, it felt rather strange, feeling a leg move and touch the ground as if you were really there. Looking back over herself she wasn't wearing much, from outside appearance it she was only wearing a royal azure blue robe that reached from neck to just above her ankles with long sleeves.

"Are you ready for your initiation?" came a voice from just ahead, a tall Elven woman had walked up to her, the name "Rania Mirana <NPC>" hovering above her head. Totsu froze, not knowing what to say or how to possibly respond, mostly stemming from the fact that she didn't know how what the AI would respond to. After a few seconds of silence words popped into her head as if they were ideas, embarrassingly, those were "Yes" and "No"

Answering in the Affirmative they were lead through the village, past the wooden huts and longhouse, going into the nearby forest where she was handed a long wooden staff, with a long wooden shaft, four feet long, the wood looking unprocessed yet still finely crafted indicated by the twisting spiral of the handle with the head of the staff being a perfect circle of the same twisted, spiraling wood. A brown, furry critter was pointed out to them, a text above their head saying "Squirrel Lvl.1". Rania stood a bit back before speaking out, "Try taking it down with your Adaptive Bolt"

Totsu held the staff up, focusing as she saw a HUD come into focus, seeing her own health, MP bar and a short skill list, currently only indicating two. She instinctively reached her staff out before speaking "Adaptive Bolt!" and seeing the top of her staff glow before a translucent projectile shoot forward bending and lensing the light around it, hitting the squirrel. A bar above it's own head going down by a third as well as a larger more defined health bar appearing at the top of the HUD indicating "Target"

Shooting out two more times and the squirrel lay dead, multi-colored orbs materializing above it. She closed the short distance between them before crouching and holding a hand above it, seeing the orbs move into her hand before a small window popped up above the corpse of the rodent

Squirrel Lvl1

Squirrel Pelt (Hunter)
Squirrel Tail
Rodent Eyes (Hunter)

Pressing "Take All" on the screen caused the squirrel to glow before seemingly exploding into particles with a screen popping up

Skinning Failed (Hunter Class Required)
Items gained:

[Ruined Pelt]
[Squirrel Tail]

Pouting a bit before simply shrugging and standing up, the taller elf walked back towards her, "Well done. Adaptive Bolt also has the special effect of inheriting the damage bonus of things you use Absorb on." and as if carefully scripted, walking to a patch of moss, "Try using Absorb on this moss here for a Water Damage bonus to Adaptive Blast"

Standing up, Totsu walked over to the moss, placing her bare hand on the moss before speaking, "Absorb" and feeling a surge of energy enter through her hand, like taking a shot of espresso she felt more awake and less fatigued, watching the moss go from green to yellow to finally a brittle gray in front of her, devoid of life. A small message window popping up, "+10 Water Damage."

"Adaptive Bolt among the weakest spells a mage can learn, but harvesting nature's bounty and using it to your gain, it can be one of the strongest." Rania explained as Totsu spotted a new element next to her skills on her HUD, a blue icon with a ocean-wave like icon and four orb-like dimples below it, "Though nature's bounty is not infinite. The larger target you absorb, the more spells it will enhance but the longer it will take to absorb. Try attacking now"

Spotting another squirrel a bit away, she raised her staff and readied another spell, "Adaptive Bolt!" Totsu called out, this time the glow turning blue and sending a cyan bolt of energy into the squirrel, bursting into fine droplets that shimmered like mist in the sun, this time dropping it's health bar by half instead of a third. "Adaptive Bolt!" she called out again, sending a second bolt into the squirrel which caused it to fall over, dead.

Approaching again, spotting that the four orbs on the HUD had dropped by half, now showing only two, she leaned over the corpse, absorbing the essence orb and seeing the HUD popping up again, this time only touching the listing for the Tail and closed the window, causing the squirrel to explode into particles again, a message popping up displaying her acquisition of second tail without a failure message.

Being told to repeat it, Totsu stood up and spotted another squirrel, firing two consecutive blue bolts at the furry critter and following her usual habit of picking up the essence and tail just as she saw a screen pop up.

LEVEL UP (3)

Doing a double take on her level up screen as The helpful guide came came back closer, with another explanation, "With each thing you kill, you absorb their essence, that essence in turn makes you stronger. Stronger things have stronger essences, A God won't benefit from killing rodents either, it would do you good to always seek stronger and stronger pray, not only do they impart their essence to you but might also be hoarding treasures of great value which makes you stronger than killing their previous owner ten times over."

Totsu spotted quickly an icon with a ! sticking out and with her curiosity getting the best of her she decided to click it, making a popup appear.

Spend Level up Token
Race.
Class.

Totsu pressed on "Race" first and saw just one option, "Elf (1)" and suddenly things started to seem more clear; if she had started the game with one class level and one race level, starting at level two would be functionally the same as the game's first level. She back out of it before looking over at it again before pressong on "Class" which made a separate screen pop up, this time with only one option, her starting class of Naturalist which she promptly selected.

Naturalist Leveled up. Skill -Utilizing Absorb (Passive) learned

"Not everything gives a base damage increase" Came the instructive voice of her teacher as if the level up had prompted her to teach her about her new skill, "Take this for example and absorb it" was followed by the taller elf handing a red mushroom with white spots on it out. Picking it up she saw a message pop up, "[Amenita] picked up"

Totsu held the mushroom and focused on it, speaking out "Absorb" and watching it glow a green hue before it started to shrivel up quickly before it crumbled to dust. Seeing another window popping up with the information "Poison effect added." and getting the gist of it now so reached her staff towards the squirrel, chanting out "Adaptive Bolt" and sending a light purplish bolt forward. Colliding with the squirrel with a impressive splash of particles. The squirrel started to run towards the pair, it's health bar now showing an icon below it of a purple drop and a timer below it. The original hit had taken just under half of it's health, solid chunks counting down every so often, the rest of the health dropping to 0 as it reached them.

When Totsu was finished collecting her spoils the teacher came back, smiling, "You did admirably, This concludes your initiation. I have something for you as a way of reward" Rania congratulated, handing out a leather bound notebook, Identified as [Naturalist's Notebook]. As she accepted it she saw another level up screen and Quest Completed. Quickly opening the menu and applying her Level Up token into her class again she saw a window pop up saying:

Naturalist Leveled up. Skill -Probe learned

"It's good practice to note down what gives you what. You don't want to be in a situation where you are adding fire damage against a Fire Creature. Probe can be a good spell to use. It allows you to learn something's effects without consuming them so there are less mistakes. Now please follow me back, i have a mission for you"

Totsu stood up, hanging her staff up on her back before attaching the book to a metal loop on her robe and walked with her tutor out of the forest, walking back to her sleepy hamlet and back to one of the longhouses where Rania walked towards a table, a few things laying down including a simple hooded shawl, a leather satchel and a small wooden box that had been sealed with wax and a cord going around it. "There is a larger village here to the north" Rania started, packing the box into the satchel before handing it and the shawl over, "They have not only an active market but frequent carts and carriages going to the Great City further to the North-East. Gives this package over to Lizantha at the General Goods store." she explained before handing over the [Traveler's Shawl] and [Leather Satchel].

The young apprentice put the shawl over her head and strung the satchel over her shoulder before nodding and turning around, heading out of the village and walking northward, entering the forest again that seemed to encircle the entire settlement of elves. Walking through the forest but getting side tracked quickly, spotting carious forest critters like more squirrels, woodpeckers, living mushroom creatures that seemed marginally stronger than the small rodents, even having a run-in with a large tree creature identified as "Ent Lvl.8" which turned out to be far, far stronger than anticipated, getting hit once and... rather than pain there was a rather off sensation, there was no mistaking that they had been hit but it had a dream-like feeling towards it. The level 3 Elf quickly made a run for it after seeing her health drop by a frightening amount for only a single hit, taking more damage to her bravado.

After being confident that she lost it, she sat down and started to rest, seeing her health meter slowly starting to crawl upwards and noticing a notable dip in her Sustenance meter. Looking around herself she saw what looked not entirely unlike a head of cabbage, green in color, globular and having notable protrusions on it. She took it carefully in her hands before breathing out and focusing on it, "Absorb" she chanted, seeing the customary green hue around it, the vegetable's natural green color starting to wilt and rot, going yellow before getting shades of gray and black, taking a noticeably longer time this time around, taking a full thirty seconds before it crumbled into dust and gave her a prompt "+15 Earth Damage added. Knockback Effect added." as well as her hunger and thirst bars going up the small bit they had been missing.

Totsu grabbed her staff and pointed it at a squirrel in a tree, smiling and taking aim before chanting "Adaptive Bolt!" and firing out a brown projectile which looked like it had bits of debris and dust circling around it. It collided the the squirrel and sent it flying back about half a foot before it crashed into the tree, taking a majority of it's health bar before falling down from near the top, landing on the ground and the rest of it's health disappearing with the impact. The damage buff icon seemingly disappearing from that one shot.

She sat there stunned before a smile crept on her lips, ending with her bursting out laughing and leaning back, laying down flat in the patch of dirt and grass, "User was right about this game. It is pretty fun to play" she spoke out into the empty void to no one in particular, taking in a deep breath and closing her eyes, listening to the sounds of the forests around her. She looked around some more, "Hmm... I wonder what else i could stuff into this..." she wondered, looking around for more things to absorb after collecting her essence and usual tail.

She tried absorbing anything she could get her hands on and trying out their effects on various rabbits, mushroom monsters and poor unlucky squirrels who's population remained remarkably steady considering the genocide faced by the dainty little magic discovering Elf. She discovered more water elements, poisons which weren't nearly as potent as the mushroom she had been given initially, more earth elements and a what looked like a pepper which fired a fiery bolt, setting the rabbit on fire but seemingly defying all known laws of fire previously known to the panicking Elf who thought she would upset a certain Public Service bear with her reckless magic use. She went on for a while until she saw a familiar message which pulled her out of her murderous rampage and back towards reality

LEVEL UP (5)

Naturalist Leveled up. Skill -Essence Absorb learned

Getting the level-up made her snap back to reality, putting another point in her class and reading over her ability, smiling as she realized what it could do. "Hm... I wonder if..." She trailed off to herself, walking the forest and picking up a few things, some peppers, finding another one of those weird cabbage looking things, offing many small forest critters, finding it easier and easier by every level to kill them but getting less and less experience from doing so. Using the new ability, a smaller MP bar appeared under her normal one, it only went up to a small-ish normal value by now but she imagined it would increase with her own levels, so for now she set up maxing it out, finding that it didn't get spent with every spell she cast, just the spells she chose to cast with it.

Finally, finding again her foe who had scared her off last time, she walked around and positioned herself just right, standing so the Ent was between her and a tree. She started the process of absorbing her cabbage first, gaining the Earth Damage and Knockback effect. "Adaptive Bolt!" she called out with gusto, sending a brown projectile hurling towards the Ent and hurling it backwards, slamming into a tree and seemingly getting stunned for a few seconds. While it was prone against the tree and getting up, she took a pepper and absorbed it, gaining a single use of a Fire Damage. She recoiled her staff, taking a deep breath and focusing all of her energy, feeling her Temporary MP bar start to drain, draining more and more by the second as the injured treefolk started to make her way over to her.

After the anticipation of what felt like eternity, her Temp. MP bar had finished and was fully depleted, lunging her glowing staff forward she hurled a right massive red bolt of energy forward, shouting "Enhanced Adaptive Bolt!" with gusto. The creature caught on fire as soon as the bolt made contact, taking a great chunk of it's health as well as starting to flails around as the inferno threatened to consume it's mighty crown of leaves. Absorbing another small veggie and hurling a second bolt, the fearsome creature lay dead, granting a nice rewarding chunk of XP.

Totsu jumped with joy, running over and scavenging what she could, receiving the essence normally but looking over the corpse the didn't seem to be a lot she could scavenge, seemingly having burnt away most of her bounty but at least it lay dead now.

She started to head finally towards the village, remembering she had a package to deliver and likely some goods to sell, however some squirrel tails and rabbit feet probably didn't sell for half a kingdom. The town she arrived in was bigger than the hamlet she had come from but not by overly much, there were a variety of people walking around, all with a <NPC> tag over their head. Walking through a wide street she assumed to be the mainstreet for the village, she came across a building with a hanging placard, a picture of a coin-purse embossed and painted onto it so assuming that was the intended destination she walked inside.

After handing the package off and getting a scripted thanks in return and a short exposition dump like many others, having the cart and carriage system set up, telling her about the frequent travels between the city and here if she would want to as well as a hefty bit of XP as congrats for finishing this overeasy quest, between the foraging, treefolk murder and quest it was enough to get her to receive another popup

LEVEL UP (6)

Naturalist Leveled up. Skill -Parasite learned

Wanting to try out her new skill but also thinking she spent way more time that she was meant to here she quickly sold off her wares she had collected, only getting about a single copper piece for each of them, mostly as expected. She made her way out of the shop before heading down the street in the direction she had received in the info dump from the shopkeeper, heading towards the cart before boarding, seeing another message pop up.

You are leaving the Tutorial Area, experiences beyond this point may differ from what you have experienced thus far, Dissonant Steel Online is an ever changing game influenced by player choice, are you sure you want to leave the Tutorial zone

Pressing the "Yes" that popped up on her screen, the carriage pulled off before everything faded to black. Waking up again shortly after as if waking up from a sleep, they were pulling into a large gate, the horse drawn carriage walking through the bustling thoroughfare between the gate and the drop off point. Jumping off she looked around with bewilderment before quickly shaking it off and opening a system menu, "Right... So User mentioned that you could still open the chat while logged in" she explained to herself, scrolling through a list of settings before finally seeing it and sending her friend a message.

"Hey, i just finished the tutorial area and am in the Kingdom now. You said you wanted to meet up when i get here?"

Dissonant Steel Online

WIP

Persona

Username: Totsurugi

(Abridged) Personality: Has been trying to loosen up from stoic and professional facade they were seemingly used to but after meeting more friends online gradually started to open up. They don't like to talk much about themselves or their life but if you happen to hit upon something they are interested in they can talk to ages, rant even just to tell someone about how much they love that particular subject before promptly apologizing nearly each time they conclude such a rant.

(Abridged) Backstory: They were busy a lot of the time, talking about how they were buried in studies and training, once mentioned that their family owned a company but didn't elaborate much further than that, historically only managing under an hour of socializing per day and often would disappear for several days only to reappear on weekends, apologizing over their hectic schedule. Seemingly fell off the face of the earth for about a month until just recently when they came back online without any explanation but seemingly a lot more free time.

Game

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Level: 6 Titles: <Acolyte> Skills: Races (1) Elf (Main) (1) skills Stat: -Strength +Intelligence -Perseverance: Stamina, Thirst and Hunger decay at half their normal rate from non-magical sources. -Magic Sense: Able to sense magic around themselves. This ability servers as a binary and can sense if there is magic and not the strength of said magic and only a vague direction unless within 3 feet. Combat Classes(5) Naturopath (Main) (5) skills -Adaptive Bolt: Fire a magic bolt at a target, damage type is dependent upon the last thing you absorbed. -Absorb: Leech the life force from a living, non-sentient target you are touching, gain back 20% of the hunger/thirst value it would have provided if it would have would be cooked and consumed. -Utilizing Absorb (Passive): Absorbing natural Alchemy Ingredients bestows 20% of their effect as if they were eating. Harmful effects are added to the next cast of Adaptive Bolt. -Probe: Absorb a minute sliver of a valid target for Absorb to learn the effects they bestow -Essence Absorb: Absorb the essence of a dead creature and convert it Temporary Elemental MP, Temporary MP can be used to cast spells with slight elemental damage boost. Temporary MP lost and converted to Hunger/Thirst at 20% efficiency at next rest. -Parasite: Grow a magical parasite over a valid target for Absorb that is still rooted. Over the duration of the spell it will draw nutrients from around it as well as it's own life force into an [Unaspected Lesser Mana Gem]. The target wilts and crumbles at spell's end, leaving the gem behind. Other other skills -Basic Action: Shortcut skill for automatically performing basic actions, such as sleep, eat, pick up, etc... Inventory Equipped -[Acolyte's Robe] Stats: Armor +30 -[Traveler's Shawl] Stats: Armor +5; Minor Weather Protection. -[Wooden Staff] Stats: Intelligence +100 -[Naturalist's Notebook] Stats: N/A; Records unique plants, species and ingredients effects learned through Absorb or Probe. [-Leather Satchel]

Stats: Total:9823 Armor:35 Vitality:1211 Strength:1038 Dexterity:1211 Intelligence:1484 Magic Power:1211 Constitution:1211 Luck:1211 Expertise:1211

VR MMO games. 1x1

I've posted this a few times before but this time around I've actually gotten around to define it in less nebulous terms.

Basically what i want out of this is a bit of interplay between the real world and the virtual world, the real world would be near future, maybe within the next 50 years or so. I already have a character worked out for this.

As for the world and game there are two options that i would be interested in though if you have any ideas i'd love to hear them.

The first one, is practically much like Overlord if you are familiar with it's systems, the system works about the same but just with our flair on it if you are familiar with it. If you're not, it works like this. Instead of there being defined classes and being defined and regimented, it's a bit more open ended. There are hundreds of races, some base races and some upgrades from that, such as a Skeleton being able to upgrade to a Lich, etc. Then there are hundreds if not thousands of classes, but they work in a unique way. The max level is 100, each class only has a maximum of 15 levels so you can pick up many, many classes. There are rarer classes that can only be unlocked with specific conditions, like there might be a unique class for the world's top PVP player, for the highest ranking leaderboard or so on, there are even classes that need other classes to unlock, for example Common classes have 15 levels, uncommon 10, rare 5. So you might have 15 levels in Mage, 10 levels in Pyromancer and 5 levels in Infernal Soul, each unlocking another. And some class being race specifics, like Elementals having specific elemancy classes, multi-limbed creatures having classes that spec into multi-hit combos or dual wielding, perhaps dual dual wielding.

The second game system is much more like an Isekai and would be more of a long term stay game, a MMO which could potentially replace your life. Combat is much more fluid, you battle with swords and weapons just like you would in real life, there are Sword Arts and combat arts for example that use Mana or Ki or whatever resource to enhance it, i'm a fan of a system similar to Sword Art Online, where a certain stance or a certain combination of moves automatically activates the move, either by taking a certain stance before attacking, focusing your energy into the hurty bits or otherwise. Magic would be much like the studies of science, yes there are your fireballs and curing spells but magic is much less a rigid set of skills and more an aetherial entity that can be controlled, as such the creations of new spells are possible if you are skilled enough. The more powerful the skill's effects, the higher the cost and complexity is and this increases exponentially, going from a simple lightning spell which requires maybe an command word and a sliver of mana, to massive rituals which requires components, magic circles and an entire league of mages contributing to it. It's much more open ended and would practically have everything a fantasy isekai world would have but it being a massively immersive videogame instead.

All of the worldbuilding, factions and kingdoms is open for suggestion, though i have a particular fondness for Sword&Sorcery style, with kingdoms, magic, knights, et cetera, where villagers could pay a commission fee to a local adventurer's guild for anything, escort, slaying monsters, procuring rare items, you name it.

I am also on discord and would at the very least want to do the setup there. Setup for these kinds can take a very, very long time if they are done one message per hour over PMs, so just for speeding the process up a bit i'd prefer the setup at least be over instant messenger.

VR MMO games.

Touché

VR MMO games.

This isn't exactly a government function so i don't see why transparency is needed for the setup of a roleplay

VR MMO games.

He's nice. And also knew to send a PM instead of posting four words in a reply to this post.

VR MMO games.

I've tried recruiting this a few times in a few places but i always get "i'm busy" and "school is a bastard" so now with the silver lining of school being closed in a good chunk of the english speaking world i thought i'd try my luck at this again.

I've had a craving for this kind of RP. In a near-future world where technology similar to what you would see in things like Ready Player One or Sword Art Online. Basically the premise is that the current hot new fad in the videogame world is Full Dive Virtual Reality, it essentially involves your body 'going to sleep' in a sense while your mind stays active and is uploaded into a virtual world, so you could play videogames with unprecedented realism because you are quite literally there in the world, of course with all of the safety nets that fantasy offers, like respawns and redos, etc.

I was quite hoping for a MMO type deal, In a Sword&Sorcery setting, similar to Lord of the Rings or even World of Warcraft to make a more suitable theme. Basically a time similar to the middle ages, a time of castles, kingdoms and knights except with a healthy splash for fantasy, where magic is taught, monsters are killed and adventurers roam the land solving problems and side quests.

Anyone interested in it? I'm mostly active on Discord, PM for info

VR MMO games.

I've tried recruiting this a few times in a few places but i always get "i'm busy" and "school is a bastard" so now with the silver lining of school being closed in a good chunk of the english speaking world i thought i'd try my luck at this again.

I've had a craving for this kind of RP. In a near-future world where technology similar to what you would see in things like Ready Player One or Sword Art Online. Basically the premise is that the current hot new fad in the videogame world is Full Dive Virtual Reality, it essentially involves your body 'going to sleep' in a sense while your mind stays active and is uploaded into a virtual world, so you could play videogames with unprecedented realism because you are quite literally there in the world, of course with all of the safety nets that fantasy offers, like respawns and redos, etc.

I was quite hoping for a MMO type deal, In a Sword&Sorcery setting, similar to Lord of the Rings or even World of Warcraft to make a more suitable theme. Basically a time similar to the middle ages, a time of castles, kingdoms and knights except with a healthy splash for fantasy, where magic is taught, monsters are killed and adventurers roam the land solving problems and side quests.

Anyone interested in it? I'm mostly active on Discord, PM for info