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Acting on a hunch, you cancel out of the tooltip and put the Bound Item away.

"Menu: Crafting Screen."

You're greeted by a screen that wouldn't feel out of place in a survival game, with several tabs of recipes for simple consumables, crude gathering equipment, makeshift armor, and primitive weapons. "Primitive" being a prefix indicating the weapon's quality and material tier.

The selection of weapons you can craft is significantly greater than the ones from the Bound Item, offering a selection of stone or flint swords, axes, and maces, as well as bows and slings constructed from wood and plant fiber, though selecting many of them also brings up a tooltip suggesting that certain monster types may have physiques ill-suited for some weapon types.

More pertinently, unlike the Bound Item, the crafting menu actually provides statistics for the weapons. And while you lack the knowledge and context to say how good (or bad) the numbers are or what they mean, you can at least make some educated guesses.

Daggers lack reach or any ability to penetrate armor and deal the lowest base damage of all weapon categories. However, they have by far the highest multiplier for strikes against "vulnerable spots" and a very low stamina cost. Simply holding a dagger gives the wielder access to the "Spot Weakness" sustained ability that highlights these vulnerable areas and openings in the opponent's armor.

Spears' main selling point in high reach though, given your small stature, you guess that'd go more toward making up for your natural disadvantage. Their other advantages include a below average stamina cost and decent armor penetration against "soft" armor types. Their starter ability is a passive called "Spear Wall", which gives a bonus to the armor penetration stat for every allied spear wielder attacking the same target.

Shortbows seem to be decidedly mediocre ranged weapons with low base damage, range, and armor penetration, with their only saving grace being a relatively low stamina cost. The shortbow's starter is an attack ability called "Traceless Shot", which, as far as you understand from its tooltip, prevents the projectile's path from being highlighted to other players through their Perception skill.

You eventually close the crafting menu and once again look at the Bound Item hanging off your belt.

>Bind the dagger
>Bind the spear
>Bind the shortbow
>The material requirements for primitive weapons look fairly simple. Do some field tests before committing to a choice
>Other

>>3460657
>The material requirements for primitive weapons look fairly simple. Do some field tests before committing to a choice
Two-handed greatsword
For a kobold, should be a longsword.

>>3460657
>>The material requirements for primitive weapons look fairly simple. Do some field tests before committing to a choice

>>3460657
>Bind the spear

>>3460657
>Bind the spear

>>3460657
>The material requirements for primitive weapons look fairly simple. Do some field tests before committing to a choice

>>3460657
>Bind the spear

>>3460657
Shortbow is the best option if we're maining a different weapon and want the shortest time to recraft that weapon on respawn.

Dagger is arguably the best weapon for raw dps even if we main OTHER weapons. Just hold the dagger to look for weaknesses and then strike with your actual weapon.

>The material requirements for primitive weapons look fairly simple. Do some field tests before committing to a choice

>>3460662
>>3460697
>>3460947
>>3461021
No need to rush the decision.

>>3460749
>>3460882
>>3461008
Spear.

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TGO is not all that different from other VR games in how it compensates for its players lacking the skills their avatars purport to have. For material gathering, this means creating an invisible bubble around you, which highlights any potential crafting components. It's a small bubble, only a couple of meters across, and you assume expanding it will involve some combination of Perception and the various gathering skills you've noticed in the skill tree. But for now, it creates a nice balance of requiring you to use some common sense for where to find what you need, while saving you from the hassle of manually differentiating between, say, a craftable branch and a useless stick.

Some twenty minutes later, you are the proud owner of a primitive grade dagger, spear, and shortbow. As well as a plant fiber shoulder bag - well, more of a net, really. You also discover that, in addition to the Bound Item, you've also started the game with a couple pouches containing some fire-cooked fish - a consumable that helps reverse the effects of fatigue - and a couple of poultices that you assume are healing items until you read their tooltip and realize they're actually used to cure the Bleeding status effect.

The most notable feature of your new weapons is the quiver you craft alongside the bow, which automatically comes with ten flint-tipped arrows. The arrows themselves are not a craftable item, but a helpful tooltip informs you that expended ammunition automatically regenerates outside of combat.

While gathering an crafting, you also end up traversing some of your immediate area, picking your way through muddy ground, shallow water, and large patches of springy moss. Somewhat surprisingly, you don't run into or see anyone else during that time - neither Champions, nor other monster players. But that's fine by you. You chalk it up to the one choice you actually were given after launching the game: between being dropped straight into the action and being put somewhere safe to figure stuff out. Needless to say, you chose the latter.

>(cont.)

File: murk lurker.jpg (255 KB, 958x707)

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You get the chance to try out your weapons when you run into a pack of three creatures that the game identifies as "murk lurkers." They're not doing much actual lurking, instead idling on a muddy bank next to a brackish pool. Each one is approximately the size of a large dog and, as you approach, they animate visibly and two of the three dive into the water, disappearing beneath the duckweed covered surface, with the last remaining on shore and staring you down while emitting a series of strange, low-pitched yowls.

Your first arrow only barely grazes its flank and you grimace - without the weapon skill, the game does nothing to compensate for your own lack of proficiency or for the crude weapon you're using. But it's enough to aggro the lurker, which begins rushing you in awkward, loping hops, followed by its friends who quickly reemerge from the water.

Your second shot strikes the creature's hind leg. It yowls in pain and loses rhythm, limping visibly. This erratic movement causes your third arrow to miss completely and you realize you won't have time to shoot a fourth. Worse, because of the lead creature being slowed, the two others are catching up to it, with all three set to reach you more or less simultaneously.

>Dive into the thick of it with your dagger. Try keeping one lurker between you and the others to avoid getting surrounded while targeting vulnerable areas
>Play defensive with the spear. Stay mobile to avoid getting surrounded and poke at the lurkers where and when you can
>You're pretty sure you saw Climbing on the skill tree and there's one of those ludicrously large trees nearby. Hopefully these things won't be able to follow you
>Simply run - test the game's aggro/reset mechanics and try for a more advantageous pull
>Other

>>3461338
>>You're pretty sure you saw Climbing on the skill tree and there's one of those ludicrously large trees nearby. Hopefully these things won't be able to follow you
>While the 2 healthy lurkers jump at the tree, fall onto the injured one with your dagger and aim for weakpoints along its back

>>3461358
>d there's one of those ludicrously large trees nearby. Hopefully these things won't be able to follow you
>>While the 2 healthy lurkers jump at the tree, fall onto the in

Seconding this.

>>3461358
I'll throw my vote behind this as well.

>>3461338
>Play defensive with the spear.

>>3461358
>>3461371
>>3461434
We have green light for Operation Dropbear.

>>3461456
Running skirmish is a no-go.

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You wheel around and take off running, feeling a tingle of dissociation, as various move-assist subroutines handle direction, balance, and the hundreds of simulated muscle contractions that translate your intent into motion that has you leaping over rotting logs and maneuvering around deep puddles. You've known people who never could get used to the feeling: who could only ever handle a VR body that was a 1:1 analogue to their own flesh and bone.

You always felt sorry for them.

Mindful of the chorus of wails and yowls behind you as the lurkers give chase, you hop onto a massive, gnarled root and run along its length toward the trunk, fighting to maintain speed even as the incline increases and then rapidly turns vertical. Finally, just as your body is exhausting the last vestiges of its momentum, you latch onto the tree with your hands.

Which is where the move-assist abruptly ends - while you may know the Climbing skill exists, you still lack any actual ranks in it, and so the game leaves you to your own devices, clinging to the rough bark and trying to scramble further up as best you're able in a body that suddenly feels a lot heavier and more awkward, while the stamina bar you've placed near the bottom of your vision begins depleting at an uncomfortably noticeable rate.

Still, this is not the first game you've played with jarring transitions between movement states. And you know enough about climbing to force your body to cooperate - more or less. Enough to scramble up a couple meters before the lurkers catch up and begin hopping beneath you - damn those things can jump - and snapping at your legs and tail.

It would be nice to keep going - to climb to a branch on which you could rest on and recover. But, for one, you're not sure you even have enough stamina to reach even the lowest one. And for two, you're not sure how much time you have before the game decides the lurkers can't path to you and resets their aggro state. Which is decidedly not what you want.

A quick glance over your shoulder tells you that the wounded lurker, which fell behind as you ran, is just now catching up to the other two. Switching to a shaky, one-handed grip on the tree, you use the freed limb to draw your flint dagger and activate Spot Weakness - with an immediate uptick to your rate of stamina drain, but also resulting in several areas on the lurkers' bodies becoming outlined in a soft, green glow. Mostly places you'd expect: eyes, necks, kidneys and so on. But there is also one such spot along the creature's top, at what you figure would be the base of their neck.

You feel a manic grin (or whatever the kobold equivalent is) creep onto your face as you take a deep breath and use both legs to push yourself off the tree.

>(cont.)

You twist in midair, lining up your body even as uncertainty grips your mind: did you get the force and angle right? What if your target moves unpredictably? What if you miss? What if you miss the spot? What if you hit but fail to penetrate the hide? What if, what if, what if - a hundred doubts enclosed in a second's plunge.

Then several things happen in quick succession. The dagger plunges into the highlighted spot. You land on top of the lurker with a dull thud, the impact driving the air from your lungs. The creature rears up, wailing in surprise and pain. The dagger's blade snaps, causing you to lose your only grip. your other limbs fail to find purchase on the lurker's slimy, thick hide.

You slide off and fall to the ground, barely registering a message about being awarded experience for a kill. A moment later, the lurker's body lands on top of you. There is an audible crack - and your entire left leg goes numb.

The handful of moments before the remaining lurkers descend on you proves wholly insufficient to either free yourself or equip the spear trapped under your own body. One of the creatures leaps forward, its bladelike forward limb piercing through your chest. Your whole body goes numb, refusing to respond. Then your vision goes black.

>{{You died! So sad!}}
>{{Loading...}}

Darkness. A moment of vertigo. Then, weight, sound, sensation. A new body.

You still look the same, more or less, and you're still in the swamp - though you note that the lighting here has a completely different quality. A quick check shows that you still have your Bound Item, though everything else you've had is gone: including the food and poultices you received on first log.

You realize you're shaking slightly. Death isn't something new or even that uncommon in your VR experiences. Hells, did you expect any other outcome when trying a fancy stunt in an unfamiliar body and without any skills to support it?

It's that you were trapped. Unable to fight, run, do anything. Just... lying there. Immobile. Helpless. Useless...

You shudder. And look for a distraction.

>(cont.)

First - the death tooltip. The item loss you already knew about. The geographical displacement and a lack of anything resembling a body marker - you did not. You're still in the same zone, but you could've respawned anywhere within it. You're also told that new accounts are subject to a 3-day grace period during which the death penalty doesn't apply - though there is no mention of what said penalty actually is.

Another tooltip reminds you that TGO monster characters are significantly weaker than heroic or adventurer characters you may have been used to in other games and asks if you considered attracting NPC's of your monster type to form a warband. The "Tell Me How" button holds a promise of something lengthy and complicated, so you leave it for the moment, recalling that your character sheet icon lit up sometime during the fight - though obviously you were too busy to check at the time. You open it now, only to be greeted by yet another tooltip, which asks if you'd like to activate your racial trait.

A couple minutes of reading later, you're aware that the kobold trait - Environmental Adaptation - is a supernatural ability that lets their physiology adapt to whatever biome they find themselves in, modifying their appearance and providing them with various skill and skill growth bonuses. Though the option to do so is, rather unhelpfully, buried under two layers of submenus - explaining how you first missed it.

The list of options is fairly lengthy, offering adaptations for a range of various biomes and environments, such as deserts, mountains, frozen tundra, and even subterranean caverns. The menu recognizes you as currently being in the Sunken Forest zone and suggests the Aquatic and Arboreal adaptations as most compatible picks. The first offers increased lung capacity, faster swim speed, greater range of vision underwater, slower stamina drain while swimming, and improved Swim skill growth. The second offers faster climb speed, ability to recover stamina while "at rest" mid-climb...

"Well that would have been useful to have five minutes ago..." come to think of it, the option did light up right around the time you started climbing that tree.

...slower stamina drain while climbing, and improved Climbing skill growth. You also note the warning that pops up, stating that once chosen, an adaptation takes 15 minutes to come into effect and the option will then go into cooldown for 7 days. Not a permanent choice then, but still one that needs to be weighed carefully before committing.

You leave the decision for the moment, intent on going back and reading the warband tutorial. But as you do so, you note another element of the HUD that has lit up: the minimized chat window, its icon pulsing softly, indicating the presence of new messages.

You grimace.

>Might as well open it, if only for a moment. That glow's just going to start annoying you otherwise.
>Ignore it. Keep ignoring it. So hey, how do those warbands work anyway?
>Other

>>3461672
>Might as well open it, if only for a moment. That glow's just going to start annoying you otherwise.
>Check if you kept the exp for the kill
>Check if your hunger or whatever reset on respawn
Nice. Given the relative weakness of base kobold, the shortbow is looking better and better. Traceless shot the first few kills to gather materials for a slightly not terrible weapon.

>>3461672
> Check yo messages

>>3461694
support

>>3461694
This

>>3461672
>Might as well open it, if only for a moment. That glow's just going to start annoying you otherwise.


>>3461694
Especially given our possible adaptions lend to mobility and evasion rather than anything else. If we can get a few other archers into a warband we can try some sort of vietcong-esque strategy.

>>3461672
Check your messages.

>>3461672
Oh God, we're a Kobold. Check our messages.

>>3463359
Kobolds can be scary motherfuckers if they're smart about it.

>>3461694
>>3461731
>>3461854
>>3461906
>>3461939
>>3462662
>>3463359
Stop pretending this is a single player game.

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With a small sigh, you open the chat window. It's still defaulted to regional chat.

>[bznach.0420]: yo
>[bznach.0420]: yo, ny1 here
>[bznach.0420]: fuck
>[bznach.0420]: fuck, fuck FUCK
>[bznach.0420]: died again
>[bznach.0420]: fcuk this shit
>[bznach.0420]: kobolds suck
>[bznach.0420]: just keep dying
>[bznach.0420]: whatev gonna reroll
>[bznach.0420]: ahhh, fuck it
>[bznach.0420]: fuck this game
>[bznach.0420]: fuk the devs
>[bznach.0420]: im out

As you're reading, a couple more messages pop up.

>[System]: Tarnished Glory Online servers will experience a temporary downtime for maintenance and weekly patch deployment. You can read the patch notes here. We apologize for any inconvenience.
>[System]: Patch deployment in: 15 minutes

Welp.

That's not a lot of time, but enough to do a few minor things. Like checking the skill tree to confirm that yes, you did retain your progress toward the first rank in... a number of skills, actually. Athletics, Acrobatics, Bows, Daggers, Climbing, Crafter, Gatherer, and Toughness.

It isn't much progress, mind you, with around 1-5% for each skill, but it does confirm that TGO is one of those "improve by doing" systems. You do note a counter for something called Unbound XP in the skill tree window, which currently stands at 0, but somewhat annoyingly, unlike so many other things, it doesn't have its own tooltip.

You find yourself drawn into browsing the skill tree, considering potential builds. One of the skills that immediately draws your attention is Leadership, as it seems to relate to that warband window - the description suggests that it influences the size of your personal warband, the total number of warbands you can command, and the rate at which they gain or lose Cohesion.

You also check your character's stat screen and confirm that yes, aside from the losing your equipment bit, dying has restored you to full health and stamina, removing all fatigue penalties. Then, remembering the player in chat mentioning something about a "reroll" you dive into the jungle of options and submenus and eventually confirm that yes, there is an option to change your character to another, random race, though in your case the option is locked for another 6 days and 23 hours.

By now, the downtime warnings are being posted every minute, so you log, finding yourself surrounded by the soft glow of your VR lobby. As the launcher begins downloading the rather substantial update, you decide to browse the patch notes.

>(cont.)

A lot of what you read is fairly esoteric - to a new player, at least. But it mostly seems to be slews of balancing changes, drop rate adjustments, and UI improvements that you'd expect from a game that launched a week ago and whose devs are now reacting to feedback.

Your general impression is that the monster characters are getting buffs across the board, mostly in the form of increased resilience and base damage output from Primitive grade weapons. Kobolds specifically get a slightly increased base stamina pool and an increase to base warband size from 3 to 5. In the UI improvements section, you also read that, upon respawn monster players now retain a nav marker to their bodies for 1 hour, and that the requirements for increasing Infamy rank have been made more explicit.

On the Champion side, most of the notes seem to revolve around various skills having their minimum Renown requirements changed, and adjustments to conditions for losing or regaining something called Heroic Spirit.

By the time you're done browsing all the patch notes, the update is approximately 80% done.

>That's just a few more minutes. Log in as soon as you can. You want to get shit done.
>Take some time to browse forums and message boards to see what others are saying about the game. You're particularly interested in... (write-in)

>>3464188
>Prepare food/drink/toilet stuff
>Paranoia check to make sure you're still in the real world, you're not slowly turning into a kobold, the VR skills aren't affecting your real life skills, and you didn't forget about that 12-page essay assignment that doesn't exist because you're not even in school right now.
>Look up Unbound XP on forums/message boards

>>3464184
>Toughness
>3 days no death penalty
I guess we know what we're grinding for a while

>>3464188
Look up places to get good starting gear.

>>3464188
>That's just a few more minutes. Log in as soon as you can. You want to get shit done.

>Prepare food/drink/toilet stuff
>Paranoia check to make sure you're still in the real world, you're not slowly turning into a kobold, the VR skills aren't affecting your real life skills, and you didn't forget about that 12-page essay assignment that doesn't exist because you're not even in school right now.
>Look up Unbound XP on forums/message boards

>>3464188
post you minx

>>3467782
Sorry, but my schedule prevents me from doing regular updates. Best I can do is daily, but with no set hour. Already writing though.

Wikis are your preferred source of knowledge, since they at least carry the pretense of being vetted by multiple contributors instead of being some rando's speculation/shitpost. However, Tarnished Glory is a new enough game that speculation is pretty much all there is, forcing you into a forum trawl for finding what you want.

And what you want is info on Unbound XP - and, luckily for you, that goes for everyone and their aunt, since the official TGO forum is flooded with threads asking about what it is, what it's used for, and how to get it.

Somewhat predictably, it turns out to be XP you can assign to almost any unlocked skill in order to boost its rank without having to actually train it. "Almost" being the operative word - you're apparently unable to put Unbound XP into crafting skills, speculation being that it's the devs' way of preventing players from immediately derailing the economy by keeping low tier gathering skills and material market relevant.

Acquiring Unbound XP, for Champions at least, is limited to specific daily quests: mostly bounties, with some cynics already declaring that UXP or UXP boosters will soon become cash shop items despite dev promises to keep it purely cosmetic.

Information on how f2p players can acquire UXP is scarcer, but you eventually read that it's gained through actions made available upon reaching Infamy 1 and picking an Archetype.

This, naturally, leads you to look for info on Archetypes, only to immediately get stuck in an absolute mire of posts bitching about how unfair, difficult, and absolutely impossible the game is for monster players, how difficult it is to accomplish anything without dying, how Infamy requirements are bullshit, how OP Champions are and how TGO is "free2die" or "free2job". Matters aren't helped by threads being derailed by posts like "itt, poors bitching about being poor, lol".

What information you do find indicates that the particulars of Archetypes differ depending on the particular player's race, which complicates forming some sort of baseline regarding them. One thing everyone who reached Infamy 1 agrees on however is that it represents a significant power boost, with new, playstyle-defining abilities.

Impossible to miss in the complaint-filled threads is that an overwhelming portion of it comes from players who were assigned kobold characters, with opinions ranging from "too weak" to "absolute garbage." Only made worse by the fact that most kobold players were seeded into starter zones, where they faced a tidal wave of Champion players during the initial post-launch rush in what was likened to an unceasing, day-long massacre. "I don't mind difficult games. I don't even mind unfair games," a particularly bitter post concluded its take on the situation. "But where I draw the line is games where I just die over and over and over, and accomplish nothing."

The rest of the thread consists largely of posts like "+1" "This" "Agreed" and "lol, git gud scrub".

>(cont.)

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Realizing it's been nearly half an hour and that the update has long since finished, you disengage from VR for a few minutes, just to use the toilet and make sure you're topped up on food and drinks - which you are. It's been awhile since you've been able to just play what with one thing and another, so you've stocked up for a small marathon session.

After lowering yourself down into the rig, you continue to lie still for some time, waiting for your breath to calm. Hearing it slowly become subsumed by the steady hum of the cooling fans. And then, as the headset descends over your face, even that is drowned out by the comforting embrace of the headphones.

>{{Welcome Back to Tarnished Glory Online}}

>((Loading))

Darkness. Weight. Vertigo.

You're right where you logged off. Same trees, same mud, same stench of rot. Same scaled, scrawny, but hale body.

The HUD's definitely different though. Things have shifted around - it looks like the update has reset your customizations back to default. The single biggest change is a bunch of text off to the side that hasn't been there before.

>Infamy Rank Progress (0/3)
>--Gain Kill/Assist credit on a Champion kill (0/3)
>--Gain Silver or better participation in a combat event (0/1)
>--Gain Silver or better participation in successful raid event on Settlement Type: Homestead or larger (0/1)

Grumbling under your breath, you start rearranging the HUD again, trying to find a way to make the objective list less obtrusive, seeing as the devs apparently forgot to provide a minimize function. It's only after awhile that you notice that you forgot to minimize chat again - and that it's become active.

>[coolpig.6689]: hey
>[coolpig.6689]: uh
>[coolpig.6689]: do kobolds not suck now
>[bourbon.4238]:lol dunno
>[bourbon.4238]: got more meatshields so that's nice
>[bourbon.4238]: they still dumb tho
>[coolpig.6689]: wanna group?
>[bourbon.4238]: lol sure
>[bourbon.4238]: where r u?
>[coolpig.6689]: uh

You lose interest and minimize chat again, this time taking proper time to find the option that disables alerts.

With the HUD once again sorted, you look around, thinking about your next move. As you do so, a nav marker labeled "My Body" floats into your view. It's... huh, nearly two kilometers away? It's been how long since you died... and when did the timer on the marker start? On login? On server restart? It doesn't say.

Anyway. Focus. The forums made Infamy 1 sound like a big deal, so that should probably be your aim. But those objectives sure don't seem like something you could accomplish as you are. So you should first...

>Try and reach your body. It did have a few consumables and covering that distance should provide a nice chunk of progress toward movement skills
>See about getting a warband started. They seem important
>Other

>>3468082
Oh, I wasn't expecting unbound to be that, but sure.

>Try and reach your body.
>Train defensive/HP/exhaustion related skills. You've got a low durability race and 3 days of no death penalty.

>Try and reach your body.
>Train defensive/HP/exhaustion related skills. You've got a low durability race and 3 days of no death penalty.

Next time logged out, look online for info about Winged Kobold's, their rarity, chance of repawning one upon death etc or how to unlock Wings via Wiki or Quest etc.

>>3468082
>See about starting a war band.

>>3468091
support

Wonder if theres any unique conditions you unlock by eating your own corpse

>>3468212
Fucking vicious and sweet man.

>>3468212
Fucking vicious, I’m all for it.

>>3468091
I'll go for that.

>>3468212
And for this, if we get there in time.

>>3468082
>>Try and reach your body. It did have a few consumables and covering that distance should provide a nice chunk of progress toward movement skills

>>3468212
And this.

>>3468091
>>3468170
>>3468683
>>3469199
Go for the body.

>>3468212
>>3468400
>>3468683
>>3469199
And eat it?

>>3468178
Get a warband going.

>>3471222
Need that mad Kobold disease perk, brah.

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Not knowing how much time you have left before the marker (or the body - the patch notes weren't very clear on this) expires, you set off at a run. But soon you find yourself needing to jump and climb over dead logs or dying trees, and even swim through sections of muddy water. Soon after you set out, you also find yourself having to either go around or simply run away from groups of monsters. Mostly murk lurker groups and weird ostrich-looking things with long beaks full of sharp teeth that the game identifies as "tallbirds." It's all good though - this gives you an opportunity to take a decent look at the stamina system.

You have a stamina pool that begins depleting the moment the game decides that you're performing something arduous, such as moving above jogging speed, or climbing. This pool begins replenishing fairly rapidly after approximately two seconds spent at rest or simply walking.

However, the game also keeps track of a stat called fatigue, which applies a steadily growing penalty to your maximum stamina. Something you note is that fatigue seems to be an absolute value rather than a percentage, and that the more arduous the task you're performing, the quicker it accrues. This, combined with your lack of skills and with what the patch notes seemed to imply about kobolds having poor stamina in general is what contributes to your stamina pool being down to 60% of maximum by the time the marker places you at 100 meters from your body.

And you do feel tired. The game does a fairly realistic job of simulating the heaviness of limbs and slowed response time. This won't translate to your real body, of course - there's been a fair bit of technology and legislation erected as a barrier between the real and the virtual since a number of high profile incidents in the early days of full immersion - and you won't get to experience the pain of overtaxed muscles or lungs that burn with every breath (for reasons of more legislation), but you appreciate this bit of tactile feedback all the same - it's certainly superior to the abstraction of some "Tired" status you've encountered in other games.

You're forced to slow down significantly for this last stretch of distance, as the terrain gets particularly difficult, forcing you to work your way through tangles of gnarled roots and thorny growths. Finally, you poke your head out of a bush - and find yourself on top of a low, muddy escarpment that you only vaguely recalled from your last time in that area. Your body is ahead and slightly below you, hidden behind the roots of the tree which you climbed during the fight.

But the problem is, someone already got here before you.

>(cont.)

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He's too far for your HUD to pick up any information, but you immediately realize you must be looking at a Champion. For starters, the avatar is clearly human dressed in proper (if somewhat patchwork-looking) armor, and wielding a metal sword.

He's also wearing a hood that makes him look "cool" and "mysterious" while mostly playing merry hell with his peripheral vision and has colored his outfit in the starting dye palette's best approximation of black. Definitely a player.

By the looks of it, he's about to engage a group of murk lurkers - maybe the same ones that killed you, for all you know. As you watch, he extends his free hand outward toward the creatures and waits as a ball of energy appears in his palm.

And waits. And waits.

It takes at least four seconds between when he assumed the pose and when the ball shoots off leaving a trail of blue flame, and strikes one of the lurkers in the side. The creature yowls in pain and immediately begins charging the man, followed by its friends.

>Continue watching from your vantage point. Let's see what makes Champions so "OP"
>Use the fight as a distraction to get to your body without being noticed
>Hey, a chance to get started on the Infamy objectives. Convert your Bound Item into a weapon (which?) and join the fight
>Other

>>3471493
>Continue watching and wait for him to leave..

OP is there an trap skill?

Can we craft a slightly sharpend shovel?

>>3471493
>>Continue watching from your vantage point. Let's see what makes Champions so "OP"
I was gonna YOLO and pick a fight, but I don't think this player is crazy enough to take our corpse with him. And even if he does take the corpse whole, that says a lot of things about how their inventory works.

>>3471505
Traps exist, but TGO's logic treats them as structures as opposed to items, requiring a designated construction zone and a construction/architecture bench. It's a gameplay consideration to stop people from simply shitting up open world zones with tripwires and stuff..

A slightly sharpened shovel sounds like a weapon skin from the cash shop.

>>3471551
I was thinking about digging holes and chopping heads. But alright op!

I repick my vote >>3471505

to this >>3471505

>>3471552
>>3471533
to that

Rolled 64 (1d100)

>>3471493
Convert to a dagger and stab that motherfucker once he’s tired from the murk lurker fight.

>>3471493

>Convert Bound Weapon into a dagger and gank this mofo with the murk lurkers.

>>3471493
Use the fight as a distraction to get to your body without being noticed

>>3471493
>Hey, a chance to get started on the Infamy objectives. Convert your Bound Item into a weapon (which?) and join the fight
Dagger.

>>3471493
>>Continue watching from your vantage point. Let's see what makes Champions so "OP"

>>3471493
>>Hey, a chance to get started on the Infamy objectives. Convert your Bound Item into a weapon (which?) and join the fight
Dagger

>>3471493
To be honest champions don't seem that powerful if a spell with a 4 second wind-up couldn't kill a trash mob in the starter zone.

>>3471761
We can find out by doing, and we don’t have a death penalty for the moment.

>>3471493
>Bound weapon to shortbow, snipe him once he's engaged with the monsters.

>>3471939
He could be a lv 1 mage or trying out a weaker spell for the first time. Maybe it also has other effects like a self buff.

>>3471533
>>3471553
>>3471761
No YOLO

>>3471606
Not really YOLO

>>3471582
>>3471597
>>3471717
>>3471845
>>3472111
YOLO
>>3471582
>>3471597
>>3471717
>>3471845
Dagger YOLO

>>3472111
Shortbow YOLO

>>3472306
Make sure to sneak and look for an opening to crit with find weakness instead of diving into the fray with a butter knife.

File: daggerbold.jpg (33 KB, 564x524)

33 KB JPG

There's something to be said for hanging back, observing, and figuring stuff out.

On the other hand, you're currently under a three day noob shield - and what better way to learn what doesn't work than by fucking up with no real consequence?

As you slide down the escarpment, you catch sight of the player charging up another energy orb. But judging by how long it took to cast and how quickly the lurkers are closing the distance, there's no way he'll get it off by the time they get in melee.

Unfortunately, you miss this initial clash by sliding straight into a bush, and, since you're attempting a covert approach, keeping bushes and terrain between you and your target, the fight from that point on becomes a series of disconnected, momentary glimpses that show the player surrounded, seemingly wounded, but nevertheless keeping the lurkers at bay with his sword.

Along the way, you take hold of the Bound Item and when the option comes up again, you pick the dagger. You hear a quiet hum and the item vibrates in your hand for a moment, reshaping itself, suddenly gaining heft and substance.

Bound Weapon Acquired: Tarnished Dagger
Weapon Skill (Daggers) Acquired: Rank 1

Intent as you are on closing distance quickly and quietly, you don't really have time to stop and examine your new weapon's stats in detail. However, you do note that it's at least made of metal as opposed to flint. And that its durability is set to "Unbreakable."

You also notice yourself making some unthinking adjustments to how you hold and carry the blade, though you quickly try and shift your thoughts to something else. You're not supposed to pay too much attention to move-assist interfaces, cause it kind of runs counter to how the whole system is supposed to work. It's kind of like muscle memory than you don't actually have. Only not really.

You tried reading up on that once and it just gave you a headache. All you know is that, for best results, you have to focus on projecting a clear intent - and the computer will take care of the rest.

>(cont.)

Finally, you reach a point where you can clearly hear the battle: or at least, a succession of angry yowls rising above laughter. You dash to a moss-covered rock, crawl behind a rotting stump - and suddenly the player is just a few meters in front of you, with his back turned.

At this distance, your HUD at last provides some information. He's human and a Champion who goes by the name "Lord Supreme". He's wounded - there are punctures and blood all over his legs and trousers, and what you assume to be the HP bar has been depleted by about a third.

Somewhat surprisingly, you find all three lurkers to still be alive and largely unhurt, save for a few superficial cuts and the burn left by the earlier spell. They surround Lord Supreme, every now and then lunging forward to inflict another gash to his legs or lower torso with their blade-like forelimbs. Meanwhile, the player... simply stands there, laughing.

You lose a moment on simply staring, taking in the absurd scene.

A moment later it clicks and you realize he must be grinding something. Maybe Toughness, maybe an armor skill. But that's how it usually goes with defensive skills under "learn by doing" systems. Still looks stupid as all hell though.

And is extremely exploitable. Instead of rushing out immediately like some idiot, you simply crouch down behind your cover, watching the player's HP bar deplete slowly - far too slowly for your liking, to be honest. It took one unlucky fall and one strike from a lurker to kill you, and by a rough estimate, the guy you're watching could withstand at least thirty, given the sliver each attack shaves off.

It's only once his health falls below half that Lord Supreme decides enough is enough and simply thrusts his sword at the next lurker to make the lunge. The blade spears the creature through the head and it dies immediately.

Granted, it was the most heavily wounded one of the bunch. But still: one attack. And the guy wasn't even trying.

Still,. this isn't the time to second-guess yourself. Lord Supreme's back isn't quite turned toward you, but he still has his hood on - which you sincerely hope actually does block his peripheral vision, as you break cover and rush him while he's still distracted by the lurkers. The "plap, plap" of your feet on mud is obnoxiously loud in your ears, but the other player either fails to notice or has no time to react, as what follows happens in the space of approximately two seconds.

>(cont.)

You activate Spot Weakness only to see a distressingly small number of areas light up on the man - most of them out of your reach as you realize that the height difference between a kobold and a human is... significant.

You make the decision to go for the one vulnerable point you can reach reliably - the back of the Champion's knee. The dagger sinks into his flesh and then jerks in your hand as you rush past the man, your momentum ripping the blade free as you dash out of reach, weaving around one of the lurkers, which, luckily, ignores you. Skidding to a halt, you spin around, ready to admire your handiwork.

Instead, you feel your heart drop into the pit of your stomach. Not only is the man not crippled, down on one knee and immobilized like you hoped. Worse, your perfectly aimed strike against one of the vaunted vulnerable points did a grand total of... 5% of the man's health pool. Give or take.

Lord Supreme is staring at you in what you assume to be confusion at your sudden appearance, which persists all the way through another round of attacks from the remaining lurkers.

Then realization dawns on his face and he snorts quietly.

"That was fucking weak," he declares, turning around and beheading a lurker. "Let me show you how it's done, scrub."

>Holy shit, kobolds really do suck. Run. Run while you still can.
>Hey, 5% is 5%. Just nine more hits and he's yours. Yeah. You just need to hit him nine more times. And avoid getting hit even once.
>Other

>>3472704
>>Hey, 5% is 5%. Just nine more hits and he's yours. Yeah. You just need to hit him nine more times. And avoid getting hit even once.
bring it on Lord Inferior

>>3472704
>>Hey, 5% is 5%. Just nine more hits and he's yours. Yeah. You just need to hit him nine more times. And avoid getting hit even once.

We're not really killing him without getting him to aggro other mobs.

>"Well hurry, up, it's your turn in the fight." Keep talking nonsense.
>Get into a stance with one hand on the ground. Pick up some mud.
>Pocket Mud to the face, then....
this is really not gonna work
>Hey, 5% is 5%. Just nine more hits and he's yours. Yeah. You just need to hit him nine more times. And avoid getting hit even once.

>>3472755
Better than nothing, supporting. Fight dirty.

>>3472704
>>3472755
whoops forgot to link

> Well hurry, up, it's your turn in the fight." Keep talking nonsense.
>Get into a stance with one hand on the ground. Pick up some mud.
>Pocket Mud to the face, then....
this is really not gonna work
>Hey, 5% is 5%. Just nine more hits and he's yours. Yeah. You just need to hit him nine more times. And avoid getting hit even once.

>>3472704
>20XX
>not a part of the superior kolbold Master race
>calling me a scrub
>laughingkolbolds.jpg
>prepare to be shanked harder than your dad in prison

>>3472704
>Holy shit, kobolds really do suck. Run. Run while you still can.

>>3472704
>Maybe you could show me how to dress instead? I hear shit brown is really popular on corpses this season.

>>3472704
We should taunt him as we kite mobs into attacking him and throw shit so by the time he clears the npcs he'll be low on health and tilted, and thus more likely to make a fatal mistake.

>>3472704
>Hey, 5% is 5%. Just nine more hits and he's yours. Yeah. You just need to hit him nine more times. And avoid getting hit even once.

See this is why we need like, another 20 kobolds with us. That way we could all stab the bastard at once and insta-gib him.

>>3473041
+1

>>3472755
This is me

>>3472704
Minor adjustment after pocket mud:
>insult him and claim we threw monster shit in his face while throwing more at his mouth
>bait him to fire energy balls in our general direction and aggro more monsters
>keep moving behind him while singing rick astley until he clears his head and targets the monsters

Hey, 5% is 5%. Just nine more hits and he's yours. Yeah. You just need to hit him nine more times. And avoid getting hit even once.

bait him to fire energy balls in our general direction and aggro more monsters

>>3472990
>doubting the superiority of our draconic lineage over the virgin champion's monkey ancestry

>>3472746
>>3472747
>>3472755
>>3472792
>>3473127
>>3473164
In for a penny, in for a pound.

>>3472990
Better part of valor, etc.

File: kobold skull.jpg (110 KB, 894x894)

110 KB JPG

Real time, persistent, unrestricted terrain deformation is still as much a pipedream as it was at the advent of immersion VR. There hasn't been a server built that won't shit itself when thousands of bored players all decide one day to buy shovels and try to change the course of a river, Or reach the bottom of the map to see what's there.

Which is why when you quickly crouch and make a scooping motion while Lord Supreme's back is still turned, it doesn't leave an actual mark on the terrain - though the game still recognizes the action and generates a glob of mud in your hand.

"Sure thing... Lord Inferior!"

The other player freezes at your taunt, then wheels on you - or on where you were a moment ago, as you're already rushing toward him at an angle, trying to force him to put weight on his wounded leg as he spins to keep track of you.

Annoyingly, he's having no trouble doing that. It's as if the back of his knee wasn't a gory mess - he seems to have suffered zero loss of function.

More annoyingly, Spot Weakness is unavailable - you've turned the skill off after the first attack to let your stamina recover and only now noticed it's gone into a 30 second cooldown. Was that the case before the patch?

But you're committed now, the Champion lunging at you with an enraged yell of "Die, you little shit!" So you fling mud toward his face.

Not because you expect it to do any damage or to blind him. Not even because you expect it to hit, given your nonexistent skills. But because, even in the realm of VR, a thing flying at high speed at your face, is going to make you flinch.
And flinch he does, hesitating for a moment, which you use to duck under the belated swing and dash past him, your dagger opening another gash in his thigh.

Damn it, you don't think his HP bar even moved that time.

"You're weak as shit!" Lord Supreme taunts, then snarls angrily as the last remaining lurker lunges at his again. "Oh fuck off, you piece of shit!"

He turns to kill the creature and you take the opportunity to dash in again, hoping to score another hit to the back of the knee. A mistake, as it turns out.

>(cont,)

Instead of attacking the lurker, Lord Supreme pivots on one leg, the other shooting out from under him in a somewhat stiff and awkward looking wheel kick. Which nevertheless takes you off guard and, had you been a human sized target, would've certainly planted his foot firmly in your stomach.

With you being half his height and moving off-center, it "only" clips the side of your head.

Numbness. Everything goes dark. For a moment, you think you died again.

But then feeling and vision returns and you're on the ground, no longer moving. Largely, you realize, because you've rolled right up against Lord Supreme's legs. Who grins a cruel grin and proceeds to do his best to stomp you into the mud.

Your vision may be swimming and your limbs unresponsive, but your intent could not be more crystal clear. It proves just enough to coax your body to twist out of the way as the muddy boot thuds down right next to your head.

"Hold still, you shitstain!" the Champion curses, lifting his leg for another try.

Which is when you slip your palms under the sole of his boot, brace your back against the ground, and push with all your might, causing him to overbalance and fall backward with a surprised yell.

It seems Champions aren't immune to basic physics, at least.

You're staggering to your feet almost before he hits the ground. your vision is dark around the edges, there's a "Concussed" status floating around the top of your HUD, and your max stamina is now below half.

>All or nothing. Jump on the guy and start shanking every vulnerable spot you can remember before he recovers
>You don't have the stats to be going at him with just a dagger no matter how clever you get. Use the opportunity to make a sprint for your body and hope the other weapons are still there
>It's obvious you're not going to win this alone. Taunt him and run, try to draw him into more monster spawns
>Other

>>3473394
As you said friend, in for a penny in, for a pound.
>All or nothing. Jump on the guy and start shanking every vulnerable spot you can remember before he recovers

>>3473394
>You don't have the stats to be going at him with just a dagger no matter how clever you get. Use the opportunity to make a sprint for your body and hope the other weapons are still there
Throw some fish at him Incase some monsters smell it
Eat some fish
Use your corpse as a flail

I suspect ragdoll is in full effect, and the things about ragdoll is that even if they don't hurt or weigh anything, having one in your face still blinds you.

>>3473394

>All or nothing. Jump on the guy and start shanking every vulnerable spot you can remember before he recovers

>>3473394
>All or Nothing
If we actually get to where we’re gonna kill him then taunt him about being a champion that was taken down by a lone kobold.

We’re molding ourselves an arch rival right here, right now.

>>3473426
That's assuming a lot, given that he can just bear hug us and end it.

>>3473394
We're not going to be able to do much up close with our stamina this low and I doubt we can kill him right now, to that end we should get our cooked fish to fix our fatigue and kite him into mobs while plinking at him with our bow if we're not too concussed to shoot.

>>3473434
Addendum to this:

Make sure to block his sightline with trees as we run and turn erratically if we hear him charging a spell.

>>3473434
Support

>>3473434
We do not have a bow. Our bound weapon is a dagger, and will remain so until our death.

>>3473533
The bow is on the corpse

The dagger will remain bound even after death

Did you all not know that when you picked the dagger?

>>3473394
All or nothing. Jump on the guy and start shanking every vulnerable spot you can remember before he recovers
Site on him and his sword arm and keep stabing his face.

>All or nothing. Jump on the guy and start shanking every vulnerable spot you can remember before he recovers
Additionally, try and kick the sword from his grasp while he's down. He'll be a much easier fight without a proper weapon.

>>3473560
That's a good point

>>3473394
If there's a weakpoint on his hand, stab and take the sword. If it's too heavy to swing, chuck it into the water

>>3473570
Sounds good to me.

>>3473535
So you want to jump over to the corpse to try to grab a bow this guy may’ve already pocketed or destroyed?

I figured the dagger would be perma-bound. That’s fine by me.

>>3473617
Why would a champion feel the need to fuck with our tier 0 garbage?

>>3473764
Tier 0 garbage still sells for a coin or two. You telling me you don’t loot everything you find when you’re low level in an mmo?

>>3473863
I stop by like lv 3

>>3473764
Well to be fair we started the fight with him, and he probs gets off smacking noobs

>>3473394
>All or nothing. Jump on the guy and start shanking every vulnerable spot you can remember before he recovers
Just stab him in the face. A dagger deep in the eyes is going to kill, no matter how weak, and if the game doesn't allow heavy damage for that, then it's shitty and rigged.

>>3473934
Of course it's shitty and rigged. That's the whole point!

>>3473934
That's the power of pay-to-play!

>>3473934
At the very lest getting stabed in the face/eyes is going to make it hard for him to react and swing the sword which we dont want him doing.

>>3473400
>>3473407
>>3473426
>>3473544
>>3473560
>>3473570
>>3473617
>>3473934
Just stab him in the face a lot.

>>3473434
Run for your body.

File: ouch.jpg (104 KB, 562x807)

104 KB JPG

You launch yourself at the Champion, landing on his chest just as he begins to rise.

"I'm gonna shank you harder than your dad was in prison!" you yell, unleashing a flurry of stabs at his face. "It's funny how you call everyone shit when you just ate shit!"

It's nonsense. Noise. A distraction. A way to psyche him out.

The first problem is that you're at least fifty kilos too light and far too small to effectively pin him - or even his sword arm - with your weight alone.

The second is that despite you getting in a few good hits that put out an eye and begin chunking his HP, this is a game and he doesn't react like a person being stabbed in the face.

Your Concussed status makes you slow to react as a hand closes around your neck, pulling you away. Stabbing the forearm and wrist, needless to say, does nothing to loosen the grip.

You're slammed into the ground, driving the air from your lungs. A heavy fist slams into your side and you hear ribs crack and give way.

You're released and try crawling away, but numbness descends, robbing your body of any remaining strength. You hear Lord Supreme stand up and, moments later, his silhouette looms above you.

"You actually thought this would work?" the grin on his bleeding, ruined face looks positively grotesque. "You thought you could solo Lord Supreme? You dumb motherfucker. You shitty, free to play scrub."

He extends his hand toward you, an orb of blue flame forming within the palm.

And there is nothing you can do except lie and wait. Helpless. Useless...

"Honestly, do everyone a favor and uninstall," you hear as the glow intensifies until it encompasses your whole vision. "And then neck yourself."

{{You died! Poor thing!}}
{{Killer: Lord Supreme, Renown 1 Champion}}
{{You provided: 38 XP across 5 Skills}}
((Loading...}}

>(cont.)

File: swamp7.jpg (876 KB, 1101x698)

876 KB JPG

You sit up and look around. Different place, same swamp.

You get up, considering your next move. The first thing you check is that the Tarnished Dagger is still with you - it is. Second thing you check is your body marker. This time it's only 600m away.

You also open the skill tree to see that you've made a nice chunk of progress toward ranking up a number of skills, Athletics being the furthest along by far.

A sudden chime startles you and you close the window only to see that three more markers have popped up on your HUD:

>Event: Sunken Battleground (gathering, defense, combat) 2.7km
>Event: The Toad King (gathering, escort, combat) 3.4km
>Event: The Naga Beastmaster (hunt, defense, combat) 5.1km

All three markers have a timer attached, which is currently at 59 minutes with change and counting down.

It's somewhat against your better judgment, but you're curious enough to open up the chat window and see if anyone's commenting on what just happened:

>[manoftaste.6662]: nah
>[manoftaste.6662]: my sister
>[wizzerd.2774]: ew
>[wizzerd.2774]: gross
>[System]: Attention, players! Countdown to daily regional events for the Sunken Forest has begun!
>[System]: If you wish to participate, please proceed to the designated markers on your HUD!
>[wizzerd.2774]: OwO wat dis?
>[pipeguy.3076]: a fukken scam
>[pipeguy.3076]: ignore it
>[pipeguy.3076]: unless you like getting ganked
>[banon.9100]: but it says here I have to get event participation for my Infamy rank
>[pipeguy.3076]: pff, sure, go ahead then
>[pipeguy.3076]: good luck getting anything except shitty bronze wit
>[pipeguy.3076]: *with champs doing their dailies and killing your ass
>[pipeguy.3076]: it's like
>[pipeguy.3076]: you die
>[pipeguy.3076]: all your dudes die
>[pipeguy.3076]: you die 5 more times
>[pipeguy.3076]: event ends still at stage 1
>[pipeguy.3076]: then
>[pipeguy.3076]: AT LEAST YOU TRIED
>[pipeguy.3076]: HAVE A FISH
>[pipeguy.3076]: fuk that
>[maxtheawesome.5989] lol u just have 2 git gud

You close the chat window again and consider your next step.

The idea of a round two against Lord Supreme crosses your mind. You died fairly close and if you hurried, you could probably track him down again even if he's wandered off. Though it's clear that you can't just rush in with a knife and hope to win: you'll need to make some preparations.

Then there are these events that just popped up. It sounds like some players are not too taken with them, but... well, you will need to participate eventually if you're hoping to rank up your Infamy. Might as well see what they're all about?

Other than that, you could... just grind a bit? Improve skills, gear up, maybe finally get a warband started?

>Pursue revenge against Lord Supreme
>Begin heading toward one of the events (which?)
>Other

Also, what venue of improvement will you focus on? (you can vote on multiple, but arrange them in order of priority)

>Skills
>Gear
>Warband

>>3474357
>>3474592
That's not really....well, whatever

>>3474596
>Make way to your body, but from the treetops instead. Practice going tarzan while death by fall still isn't a big deal
Can we agree with the arboreal adaptation? Crafting stuff with fruit and treebark should replace fishing anyway.

>Skills
>Warband

>>3474596
>Pursue revenge against Lord Supreme
We've not really got anything better to do, maybe talk to people in chat and see if we can't get another monster-player or two to join us and equalise the odds.

>Warband
I'd like to think that making use of our expendable war-band should make our levelling faster by giving us a way to disengage and equalise numbers in a fight. Also because I'm curious what we can get our hands on.

>>3474608
+1

>>3474608
I think our adaption should probably be that. Fact is fighting from water isn't anywhere near as common in our forest-swamp area as fighting from the canopy.

>>3474608
Arboreal adaptation doesn't provide extra crafting options though. It mostly just makes the kobold better at climbing.

>>3474635
His point is that by being able to climb the trees faster / easier and shit we can probably harvest more stuff from up there more easily / quickly.

>>3474635
Access to fruit and wood gathering spots that are safer.

It's not like we can go spearfishing in the near future anyway

>>3474618
+1

>>3474639
>>3474642
Ahh, gotcha. Sorry, I definitely misunderstood what you meant.

>>3474608
Supporting.

>>3474608
Vote.

>>3474608
I have to disagree on the adaptation though.

The water adaptation, I feel, will net us more materials for crafting. Because what player actually likes swimming? We'll get all the sweet materials on the bottom of the lakes and such in this area.

Also I feel that with the adaptation we'll probably easily outstrip most competitors in the water. It should accordingly provide us with an effective and unexpected avenue for ambushes and retreats.

>>3474729
I don't agree, but it's nice to go on a blow by blow of this.

My main contentions is that water ambushes are pretty hard to do. Neither adaptation helps with stealth, but it's more likely for someone to not look up compared to someone not looking at the water they wade through, not to mention that swamps have pretty shallow waters. We're not THAT short.

As for materials, I'm pretty sure that shellfish and corals don't hang out in swamps, and the swampweeds are comparable to fruits/vines. We can swap adaptations later, but until we get some spear or fishing skills, I think fruit will do us better than fish.

Also we lack the sheer weight and strength to pull a crocodile. We wouldn't be able to drag Lord Failure into the water, let alone keep him in there.

>>3474596
>>Pursue revenge against Lord Supreme
>Skills
>Gear
>Warband

>>3474845
Changing to
>Pursue revenge against Lord Supreme
>Skills
>Gear

>>3474596

>Skills
Warband
Gear
We need more mos to gank with if we cant hit hard better get lot of usif we had 3 of us sittinf on him it could have worked.
>Event: Sunken Battleground (gathering, defense, combat) 2.7km

skills
warband

>>3474596
>Other: Head towards last corpse, loot prior two corpses, avoid Lord Supreme for now but note direction of travel if we see them
>Skills
>Warband
>Gear

>Arboreal adaptation

>>3474618
>>3474643
>>3474892
Get revenge

>>3474901
Event: Sunken Battleground

>>3475129
Other: Corpse recovery (which will happen anyway since we'll be heading for the body marker as a reference point)

>>3474608
>>3474621
>>3474633
>>3474690
>>3474722
>>3475129
Enable Arboreal Adaptation

>>3474729
Enable Aquatic Adaptation


After counting up the improvement priority votes, Skills were top priority in all but three cases, Warband was consistently second priority, and Gear was hardly mentioned at all, knocking it down to low priority.

Also, FOR ABSOLUTELY NO REASON AT ALL, could I have six rolls of 1d2?

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>3475208

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>3475208

Rolled 2 (1d2)

>>3475208

Rolled 1, 1, 2 = 4 (3d2)

>>3475208
just incase

Rolled 1 (1d2)

>>3475208

File: kobold slinger.jpg (43 KB, 564x768)

43 KB JPG

You start by picking Arboreal as your environmental adaptation from the character screen. After the predictable "Are you sure?" warning, reminding you that changing adaptations again won't be possible for seven days, you're treated to a 15 minute countdown before the option takes effect.

However, not wanting to waste time, you set off running again, heading for your new body marker. This time, you're a lot more focused on reaching the destination as quickly as possible and take a few risks by barreling straight through lurker mobs instead of going around them - you want to get there before Lord Supreme has a chance to wander off too far.

On some level you realize it's irrational to want revenge on some random asshole who killed you in a fight you went into specifically to see the gap in strength between you and a Champion. You justify it as wanting to maintain a stable baseline against which to compare new tactics.

Also, the way he went about killing you was pretty high on the asshole tier. If anything, he deserves being put into place.

Athletics Skill Acquired: Rank 1

Having the skill rank up literally mid-stride makes for an immediate and noticeable improvement. The small window that pops up to display the bonuses says it's only a 15% speed increase, but it's as if an invisible weight was suddenly lifted off you: you suddenly feel so much faster, more maneuverable, so much more... in control.

The other bonuses - reduced stamina drain from running, slower global fatigue accruement and a percentage bonus to your max stamina pool - are just a cherry on top, and after awhile you realize that you're grinning broadly as you weave between trees with mud spraying out from under your feet, enjoying your newfound speed.

Far too quickly, the distance to the marker drops below 100m and, once again, you slow down as you enter the area that has already claimed your life twice.

Lord Supreme isn't here anymore, nor do you see any other threats - it's been no more than 5 minutes since your fight and it seems the lurkers haven't respawned yet. This gives you the opportunity to approach your body.

...which has been dismembered and mutilated in a savage fashion, the head and torso heavily charred.

"Ok, guy definitely has issues," you mutter to yourself as you turn away, heading for your other body.

What you find is a pile of broken and moss-covered bones that seem to be deteriorating before your very eyes. Evidently, the game only keeps corpses around for so long.

To your pleasant surprise, it has not been looted - an inventory list pops up the moment you approach:

>Swampweed Poultice x2
>Fire-Cooked Fish x2
>Plant Fiber Bag x1
>Primitive Spear x1
>Trash x2

>(cont.)

The window offers "Transfer" and "Retrieve" as options, but the former is disabled and picking the latter causes all the items to physically manifest with quiet "pop" sounds, scattered across the ground.

Assuming those two piles of splinters and dried out fibers have once been your bow and quiver, it seems like there's some sort of on-death deterioration mechanic for gear. It would also explain why everything else you pick up has acquired a "Salvaged" tag in their properties list.

You quickly reequip yourself and head back to your second corpse. You've noticed a Tracking skill in the skill tree earlier, but since it too is unranked, you assume that the time window to follow Lord Supreme's trail is going to be fairly limited.

Returning to your second body, you find and activate tracking mode, which causes a transparent overlay to appear in the center your vision, highlighting an absolute mess of various footprints criss-crossing the skirmish site.

Annoyingly, this also causes everything outside the overlay to fade and go out of focus, making you feel like you're viewing the surroundings through a pre-VR computer screen with a very low FoV.

Having the skill unranked also provides next to no useful information. Your own tracks are labeled as such, but the best you get from others are "Medium Biped (Unknown)" and "Medium Quadruped (Unknown)".

Although...

You notice that the lurker bodies scattered around your own light up slightly while in the overlay as well. On a hunch, you attempt interacting with them - and discover that you can manually bind creatures to tracks, in this instance changing one set to be labeled as "Murk Lurker".

You also confirm your earlier fear, as you see certain tracks fading away at what you estimate to be a fairly rapid walking pace. Hurriedly, you make a couple of laps around the skirmish site, until you find a set of Medium Biped tracks heading away from the area in a more or less straight line.

>(cont.)

The biggest issue is getting used to switching in and out of the tracking overlay. The transition takes a couple of seconds and the constant changes to your field and depth of view fuck with your head a little, but you'll take, along with backtracking occasionally to pick up the trail over getting ganked because you had no peripheral vision.

That said, finding Lord Supreme proves rather uncomplicated: he seems to follow the path of least resistance through the terrain, diverting only after spotting some monsters: you happen upon a group of tallbird corpses, followed by another bunch of dead lurkers. All bodies show up missing body parts or their skin, though after some consideration you attribute that to the Champion harvesting resources rather than just being a creepy motherfucker.

You find Lord Supreme as he's engaged with a third group of monsters: a total of six lurkers, which are doing a fairly good job of depleting his HP with rapid attacks. He waits till his bar is down to two thirds and then dispatches them one after another with heavy, decisive sword strikes. Then, as you watch him pull out a skinning knife, kneel, and begin harvesting the corpses, you realize his HP is regenerating rapidly, his wounds and blood fading away until he appears completely unhurt.

The same happens after the next fight he gets into, which he initiates with his usual four second energy bolt. This time you pay closer attention to time passing and determine this post-combat regeneration begins after approximately 15 seconds. You also notice that, despite fighting a smaller group this time, Lord Supreme still only let his HP drop to two thirds before retaliating.

Perhaps you came closer to actually killing him than he liked.

You use the tracking overlay to bind him to his footprints and, satisfied that he seems to be set in a pattern, you wander off, confident that you can more or less follow his trail while doing other things.

Such as testing the finally finished Arboreal adaptation.

There are noticeable physical changes. Your hide, while still gray, has darkened a bit and developed some dull green patches. Your claws are now like a cat's - curved and much sharper. You immediately try climbing a tree and there is no comparing it to your earlier attempt: even with your skill still unranked, it seems almost effortless. And while you're not one hundred percent sure of this, you think your leg and foot joints are more articulated than they used to be, allowing for greater grip strength and range of motion.

The adaptation's XP rate boost proves significant enough that you hit Climbing rank 1 within the next 15 minutes. In addition to further improvement to the speed and ease of climbing you get another boost to your max stamina pool and global reduction to fatigue factor. You suspect that the same may end up true for Swimming, though there are no large or deep enough bodies of water along Lord Supreme's route to make testing this theory viable.

>(cont.)

You also take a few minutes to craft another bow and quiver, followed by practicing archery on lurkers from the safety of low branches. You score several kills, in the process reconfirming that wounding monsters causes loss of function and that it's even possible to instantly kill one, as you discover by virtue of am extremely lucky shot that goes straight through a lurker's eye.

You refrain from harvesting resources from the corpses however: your crafting options for monster bits don't look particularly interesting: mostly consumables and a set of hide armor, which you decide would offer next to no protection against a Champion. So you decide to focus on leveling archery.

Weapon Skill (Bows) Acquired: Rank 1

In addition to reduced stamina cost and a flat +2 to your quiver capacity, the most notable feature of this rank is the addition of a path prediction mode to the arrows, though at this rank the delay before it appears is massive: a whole 6 seconds, requiring you to keep the string pulled back while steadily draining your stamina.

Speaking of which, you notice your max has dropped below 70%, so you eat one of your cooked fish, whose tooltip claims it restores 30%. Then you watch the bar climb back up slowly over the next few minutes - not intended as a combat consumable, it seems.

Looking over your skill tree, you realize there isn't much else that you can see being useful for your rematch against Lord Supreme - at least nothing that you can see yourself ranking up anytime soon. So, after confirming the Champion's latest location, you turn your attention back to the warband window.

Reading through the tutorial tooltips, you find out that warbands are customizable AI companions who start out weak and with only basic equipment, but can apparently grow stronger over time and have their behavior customized with various presets. The single most important stat governing warbands seems to be Cohesion: it decides the NPCs' "combat awareness" and ability to work together, their response time when given orders, and also which warband abilities the player has access to, along with their cooldowns.

The tooltip then offers you an option of going through a "live" personal mini-event in which you demonstrate your worthiness as a leader to several NPC kobolds, with the reward being a boost to the warband's starting Cohesion. Alternately, you're given the choice of simply spawning in a ready-made warband already under your command - albeit with below average Cohesion.

>Do the mini-event. Though it might complicate keeping track of Lord Supreme, depending on where exactly it takes you
>Just spawn the NPC's in

>>3475361
>Do the mini-event. Though it might complicate keeping track of Lord Supreme, depending on where exactly it takes you

>>3475361
>Just spawn the NPC's in
Wait. So were doing monster hunter buttsniffing. This is amazing.

Not necessarily voting for this, but we can headshot him with the trackless shot, then send an NPC kobold to pretend to be us. Where we dropbear on his head with dagger.

>>3475361
>Do the mini-event

>>3475361
>Do the mini-event. Though it might complicate keeping track of Lord Supreme, depending on where exactly it takes you

>>3475361
>>Do the mini-event

>>3475361
>Mini-event

Damn guys, don't want to level your scoutflies?

>>3475463
We can track him again later, we have him tagged now. If we follow with others, they might get training in tracking too and we'd be more prepared for an advantage if one shows up. If we had our warband when we first fought him, we might had won, but he's a lot more prepared for ambushes now. Doubt even three of us could take him down from 2/3rds, ambush or not.

>>3475463
We will level our scoutflies when we have to find him again after going through this event.

>>3475361
>>Just spawn the NPC's in

>>3475378
+1

>>3475361
>Do the event

>>3475361
>Do the mini-event.

>>3475361
>>Do the mini-event.

>>3475361
Do the mini-event.

Rolled 58 (1d100)

>>3475361
>The mini event
Do it.

Rolling to recruit kobolds that specialize in fucking up people with "supreme" in their name.

>>3475361
>Do the mini-event. Though it might complicate keeping track of Lord Supreme, depending on where exactly it takes you

Seems like the stat increases for levels are pretty big. If we're lucky and they aren't even bigger with players, then over time the comparative gap in our strength should minimise. Also, regarding the 15% increase in speed, does that include dodging and that sort of thing or is it purely non-combat?

>>3476330
The stat increases probably have exponential diminishing returns, or there's a harsh skill point limit that will force us to specialize. If we keep on getting 15% increases then we'd be sprinting miles in a matter of seconds pretty soon.

>>3476337
That or there are relatively few levels. Not to mention the possibility of "resetting" into a higher level form or something.

>>3476346
I do wonder about the details of the specializations at Infamy 1 and on further. Could prove quite interesting if they have actual physical effects.

I'm also betting kobolds get OP later on to make up for being so weak early on.

>>3476356
I'm just waiting to find out Kobolds get special ultra-effective trap crafting abilities as well as their warband's ranged units being more effective.

>>3476356
Fingers crosse that happens.
Though im gussing most people rage quit way befor anyone finds out

>>3476463
Don’t kobolds have explicit ties to dragons in some canons as well?

It would make sense if monster characters ended up stronger than individual champions by video game logic.

>>3476628
Kinda like goblin slayer
Most gobs are shit one hit kill though the special ones are good as high ranking advturers.

>>3476628
It does make a degree of sense, especially given the fact that the heroes can beat us very easily at low levels on both sides. Meaning that either the game developers expect us to use overwhelming numbers or there is something else.

>>3476789
Given that a level 1 noob can do 5% and each kobold can form their own spearwall, I don't think it's as unbalanced as it seems.

I'm guessing dieing is just less painful for p2w players, since they don't need to re-recruit and re-equip warbands.

>>3476839
5% on a critical hit with the enemy unaware (though to be fair with shit-tier equipment and no skills).

Lord Supreme doesn't seem to be equivalent level to us though, we're Infamy 0 whereas he's Renown 1. Seems like he might be a pretty shitty player overall to be honest.

>>3475378
>>3475426
>>3475448
>>3475457
>>3475459
>>3475487
>>3475602
>>3475632
>>3475642
>>3475671
>>3476325
>>3476330
Tutorialize me!

>>3475380
>>3475484
Just gimme the goons.


>>3475380
>monster hunter buttsniffing

buttsniffing?

>>3477415

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8eqpwdVREzU&list=PLWh6NCsYRKjO6AOls9j1tzdkH73JSCeas

File: tallbird.jpg (136 KB, 1033x773)

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You pick the event option and have to suppress a groan as the marker that pops up a few moments later is located over a kilometer away.

Oh well. Maybe you can get the whole thing wrapped up quickly enough to still come back and track Lord Supreme down.

The run to the event marker is a formality, if an enjoyable one - your improved speed means that nothing you aggro stands the slightest chance of catching up to you. It seems that movement speed is the one stat kobolds are good at.

"To better run away from everything with, my dear," you call out to a tallbird that appears in your path, zipping past it while it's still mid-aggro animation and disappearing around the bend to the sound of an angry screech.

During the trip, you regularly check the skill tree to keep track of the rate at which your Athletics is increasing, trying to gauge how quickly you'll be able to reach Rank 2.

Seven to eight hours of nothing but running, you realize after doing some mental math. Which probably explains why the increases just from the first rank were so generous. Ouch.

As you close on the event marker, there is a change in the... quality of your surroundings. Nothing overt, nothing you can exactly put to words. The... clarity of the environment, maybe? But you've played enough VR games to recognize it as a sign of the game doing something in the background.

>{{You have entered an instance}}

Yeah, something like that.

>(cont.)

File: game trail.jpg (114 KB, 500x750)

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The terrain ahead turns uneven and heavily overgrown with dense bushes, the foliage closing in around you claustrophobically and more or less forcing you down a faint, winding game trail. You follow it cautiously and soon enough you happen across what the game was guiding you toward: a body.

It's a kobold, though unlike you, this one's hide is a uniform dull blue, though its arms are stained with dark brown, almost black spatters all the way up to the elbows. The way he fell indicates he was following the trail toward you and, as you approach, your HUD identifies the corpse as a "Muckraker Kobold (Dead)" The cause of death is obvious - a deep, bloody gash across its back - as is its purpose: you don't even need to engage tracking mode to follow the trail of bloodied footprints.

You check the corpse's inventory as a pure formality, expecting it to be empty - only to be proven wrong when a single item appears on the list.

>Tear of the Buried God, 3/3 (Cracked)

You retrieve it and it manifests as a small, seemingly moss-covered orb next to the corpse's hand. Its description identifies it as a weapon augment, which unlocks an attack that inflicts poison damage, but according to the description of its "Cracked" status, it won't regenerate charges and will be destroyed once all of them are depleted.

This, naturally, leads you to examine all your weapons, discovering that your Tarnished Dagger does in fact have a single augment slot you've missed before. Though, in fairness, you were sort of busy with other things when you originally bound it and haven't really bothered to examine it in detail since then. An oversight on your part, but at least now you know.

You pocket the the surprisingly heavy Tear for the moment and hurry along the trail, remembering that you wanted to finish this as quickly as possible. Soon enough, the path begins to open up slightly and, nearby, you hear the barking of a dog.

A handful of moments later, you reach a clearing located on the muddy bank of a wide, brackish stream. A half dozen Muckraker corpses litter the ground, presumably victims of a still ongoing fight that threatens to swell their numbers by two more.

>(cont.)

File: misshapen brute.jpg (416 KB, 1630x1984)

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The kobold nearest to you is wielding a spear against what you automatically think of as "gnoll" even though the game labels it as "Misshapen Brute." The dog-headed creature wields a wicked mace and wears crude armor that nevertheless deflects all attacks from his opponent, who continues to dart in and out of range, narrowly dodging the brute's swings. You immediately notice that the Misshapen's armor only protects him from the front - he has no back plate and the leg plates are held in place with straps.

The other... well, you suppose it qualifies as a fight... involves a kobold archer on a flimsy looking watchtower and the creature that is the source of the barking - a Misshapen Hound, which could pass for a dog only if dogs had thick, chitinous plates growing along the top of their heads and back, and were covered in thick, warty hide instead of hair. As you watch, the archer leans out over the edge of his platform and shoots an arrow, which bounces off one of the hound's plate. In response, the creature bays loudly and charges head first into the watchtower, causing the whole structure to shudder and tilt slightly.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out what the game expects you to do. Though, annoyingly, you note that aside from the watchtower, the clearing lacks any trees or other objects you could conceivably climb. Looks like the event doesn't want you simply cheesing your way through the encounter.

>Help the kobold fighting the Brute (write-in suggested tactics)
>Help the kobold fighting the Hound (write-in suggested tactics)
>This is a "help one and the other dies" situation, isn't it? Screw that, break script by aggroing both the Brute and the Hound (and write-in how you expect to survive deal with both at the same time)
>Other

Also:

>Slot the Tear into your dagger
>Keep it for now

>>3477451
>Slot the Tear into your dagger

>Aggro the hound and the Brute
First run over to the brute and slice his leg armor off while they’re still fairly unaware of us, poison him while we do so.

Then run up into the tower and snipe the brute and dog with the other kobold.

>>3477451
>>Help the kobold fighting the Hound (write-in suggested tactics)
Poison the Hound, then shout at the archer to shoot the brute. Don't fight the hound directly after that, get it to ram into the brute while poison ticks down.

>Slot the Tear into your dagger

>>3477451
>>3477462
support

>>3477451
Slot the Tear into your dagger
Help the kobold fighting the Brute (write-in suggested tactics)
Just run around him and stab in the back and cut straps hold plates in place.

>>3477552
Try to keep his back truen to the spear guy so he can just keep on stabing

Rolled 11 (1d100)

>>3477462
>>3477466
How about a combination?

Approach the brute first while we’re still seemingly undetected and attempt the slash his leg armor off and poison him. Then, actively aggro the dog and attempt to bait it into ramming into the brute.

We can try to poison the dog during this time, however failing that we should climb up to the relative safety of the tower.

Command the spearbold to keep their backs to us on the tower as best he can, and if he starts to look like he’s struggling make him flee (we can shoot their backs as they pursue, or if they come for us instead he can re-engage from their rear. A catch-22). Command the archer to focus with us on whichever target of opportunity is best, but I suspect we should emphasize taking down the brute first.

>>3477451
>Equip tear and shank the brute

>>3477689
C-clearly low numbers are good here.

>>3477691
Well, luckily it doesn't count.

I hope.

>>3477451
>>This is a "help one and the other dies" situation, isn't it? Screw that, break script by aggroing both the Brute and the Hound (and write-in how you expect to survive deal with both at the same time)
>Slot the Tear into your dagger

>>3477462
Supporting

>>3477689
I'll go for it.

File: aggrobold.jpg (117 KB, 900x988)

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Ok, so just as I was about to make the post tallying up the votes, I misclicked something and the page refreshed and ate everything I wrote. And fuck redoing all that again.

The gist of it was, the majority of posters seem to want to try and rescue both kobolds and are favoring engaging the Brute first, poisoning it and trying to cut away some of its armor. The opinion on what to do next is split between simply taking cover on the watchtower and trying to use the Hound as an improvised, living battering ram. So, based on prior votes from the two prior fights (yoloing off a tree and yoloing at the Champion), I'm making the decision that the MC would favor the flashier/riskier plan.

>>3479423
Notepad++, my friend

>>3479423
Considering there's no big penalty for dying, I am all for the YOLO tactics.

>>3479426
Well there will be after 3 days of gaming.
Im gusing lose of stats or something

>>3479518
Probably, also death timers.
But for now we don't have to worry about it.

File: Tear of the Buried God.jpg (63 KB, 564x564)

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It's a matter of a moment to bring your dagger and the Tear together and to confirm that yes, you are certain you want to augment this particular weapon. The mossy orb disappears from your hand and the dagger glows a sickly green for a moment. A new ability icon pops up on your HUD, but you're already running out into the clearing, your path curving to take you behind the Brute.

"Spot Weakness. Earth's Venom," you subvocalize, slicing upward. The dagger glows again, the blade opening a gash from the back of the Brute's knee and along its thigh, cutting through the straps holding its leg plate in place. You immediately jump backward as the creature spins around with a pained roar, swinging its mace in a wide arc. You grimace as you see it stumble slightly but remain upright - the knee didn't actually light up as a vulnerable spot and the entire cut felt shallow. Evidently, the Brute's hide is thick even in places where it's unarmored. But at least there is now a very clear "Poisoned" status coloring its outline a dull green on your HUD.

The kobold you've just relieved takes this opportunity to stab the Brute's unprotected back with his spear, resulting in another roar. But you're moving again, running toward the Hound attacking the archer, because depending on how the event is scripted, the other kobold's death timer may have already been triggered by you choosing your target. And indeed, the Hound is moving away from the tower and turning in a tight circle that highly suggests it's lining up for a charge.

You adjust your course for an intercept and, as you come into Spot Weakness's range, you find very few areas lighting up - pretty much just the face and eyes. As another arrow pings off the accelerating monster's neck plating, you forgo a stab and simply barrel into it, shoving with both arms against its shoulder and hoping physics will do the rest.

They do: the Hound loses rhythm, staggers sideways, fails to compensate and falls, rolling with the momentum - then immediately begins scrambling back to its feet with a snarl, its eyes locked firmly on you.

Aggro: drawn.

>(cont.)

File: misshapenhounnd.jpg (246 KB, 975x550)

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"Shoot the Brute!" you yell in the direction of the archer. "Aim where it isn't armored!"

Will he listen? Can he understand this complex an order? Do Tarnished Glory Online's NPCs even have voice recognition? All very good questions that you kinda wish you thought to ask before getting into this fight.

Because right now you're too busy running back toward the Brute, who has re-aggro'd on the spear kobold, the snarling behind you indicating that the Hound's in pursuit.

"Hey! Uh... Muckraker Sentry!" you call out the spear kobold's name and actually see his gaze snap to you. "Um... go evasive! Incoming charge!"

"I don't understand!" the kobold yells back and your heart sinks slightly as the Brute's back looms before you. Oh for... you do not have time to figure this out!

"Disengage! Just... run away!" you shout the only thing you can think of. And then you're out of time.

You've crossed the clearing at a dead run, trying to keep ahead of the Hound, so the fact that the Brute is currently leaning forward as it delivers an overhead smash is pure luck. Luck that you utilize by leaping onto its back, scrambling up, and launching yourself off its shoulder off to the side.

While still in midair, you look back to be treated to a view of the Hound crashing into the Brute at full speed, the force cutting the latter's legs out from under him, causing him to fall over - right on top of the abruptly stopped Hound.

You yourself fail to stick the landing, hitting the ground shoulder-first, causing your whole right arm to go numb. Not broken - you've noticed the game really likes to exaggerate bone-snapping sounds - but it still barely responds as you pick yourself up.

The Brute is down on his back, suffering from a "Dazed" status for another three seconds. The Hound looks mostly unharmed, but is trapped under the Brute's legs - though already making vigorous attempts to get free. And the spear kobold... is out in the stream, wading away from you through the waist-deep water.

Well, you did tell him to "run away." At least he listened?

An arrow passes above your head and bounces off the Brute's chest armor.

>Run over and stab the Brute in the eye before it recovers - it should be a guaranteed kill
>Attack the Hound while it's still mostly immobile - getting through its defenses requires precision you'll lack once it gets up
>Other (also suggest orders for kobolds)

>>3480116
>>Run over and stab the Brute in the eye before it recovers - it should be a guaranteed kill

>>Other (also suggest orders for kobolds)
Order the spear kobold to try to pin the Brute/Hound while they're down

>>3480116
>>Attack the Hound while it's still mostly immobile - getting through its defenses requires precision you'll lack once it gets up

>>3480116
Stab the brute in the eye.

Better to eliminate 1 enemy than start to damage the other.

Call the spear kobold back. We’ll need him when dealing with this dog.

>>3480116
Run over and stab the Brute in the eye before it recovers - it should be a guaranteed kill
Get the spear guy back in the fight

If we take care of the brute this then we should strategize on ways to deal with the dog.

I’m thinking we can probably immobilize it again by getting it to ram into the tower (and getting the tower to collapse on it). We would, of course, want to get the archer out of the tower first...and that’s likely to require keeping the dog distracted (hopefully with spearman backup) for a minute or two.

Once it’s pinned hopefully we and the spearman can deal with it without too much trouble.

>>3480116
>Run over and stab the Brute in the eye before it recovers - it should be a guaranteed kill
Tell the spear guy he can come back now.

>>3480116
>Run over and stab the Brute in the eye before it recovers - it should be a guaranteed kill
>Call the kobold to come back

should we be worried about the archer hitting us while we do this

>>3481232
Somewhat, yes.

Then again it’s also an important test of how smart the AI is.

>>3480155
>>3480188
>>3480247
>>3481150
>>3481158
Kill the Brute

>>3480161
Attack the Hound

----------

>>3480155
>>3480188
>>3480247
>>3481150
>>3481158
Call back the spear kobold/get him to help with the Hound

>>3480155
Have the spear kobold try and pin the Hound unfortunately, by the time he gets back, the Hound will be free

>>3480396
Have the archer vacate the tower, trick Hound again into ramming it

>>3482405
It sure would suck if these guys are just wiped out when they or we die.

File: spearbold.jpg (59 KB, 530x651)

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"Hey! Muckraker Sentry! Come back!"

As the words leave your mouth, you run up to the Brute and, switching the dagger to your left hand, you sink the blade in the creature's eye, pushing it in all the way to the hilt. The creature shudders, an unearthly whine escaping its mouth and its name turns to "Misshapen Brute (Dead)".

Then the body shudders again as the Hound burst forth, freeing itself from under its weight. The monster snarls, looking this way and that, until its gaze locks onto you.

You just barely manage to dodge its pounce, teeth closing a hair's breadth from your arm as its head whips toward you when it flies past. You recover while it's still scrambling to wheel around - the Hound may be only the size of a large dog, but its bulk and weight are still a detriment on the soft, muddy ground.

"Muckraker Lookout!" you yell at the archer, getting an idea. "Get out of the tower!"

"I don't understand!"

Oh for... But you're too busy leaping out of the way of another pounce, virtually identical to the last.

"Climb down!" you yell and the archer, mercifully, begins to move. But then you glance over at the spear kobold and realize that he's still a fair distance away from you - and jogging at a leisurely pace.

"Sentry! Faster! Attack the Hound!" you dodge yet another identical pounce. Huh. If you can get the timing right... You square off against the dog monster as it wheels around for another attack. If it comes in straight like that... and it does... it leaps... now... and you step here and set the dagger... here!

Your arm jerks as the dagger strikes the side of the hound's head plate, the impact heavy enough to spin you around, knocking you off balance.

"Fuck!" at least you didn't waste an Earth's Venom charge on it - mostly cause you forgot about the augment.

"Misshapen Hounds have tough hides!" the spear kobold calls out, nearly within range. "You need weapons that can pierce through!"

"Are you being a tutorial right now?!"

"I don't understand!" the Sentry then stabs his weapon into the Hound's side, and though the spear barely penetrates, it's still enough to cause the monstrous canine to yelp and do a rather impressive sideways leap that carries it a couple of meters away, after which it retreats a few more. And begins lining up for a charge.

A quick glance tells you that the archer has descended the tower and is now aiming its bow, lining up another shot against the Hound.

Meanwhile, the spear kobold slides one foot back, levels the spear at the Hound in a two-handed grip and a small icon appears under his name.

"Braced for charge," he declares in a calm - if reedy - voice.

>Yeah, no, if he gets charged, the Hound will bowl him over with sheer weight and momentum. Switch to bow, reaggro the monster and continue trying to make it ram the tower instead
>It's obviously an ability of some sort. Trust in the power of tutorial NPCs. But maybe also switch to a spear for that Spear Wall buff
>Other

>>3482602
If we’ve got a spear switch to it and get the spear wall buff+attempt to help.

Otherwise standby and be ready to help take the thing out. If it’s mauling him at least that means it’s still for a minute.

>>3482602
>It's obviously an ability of some sort. Trust in the power of tutorial NPCs. But maybe also switch to a spear for that Spear Wall buff

This is a tutorial, it's not rocketsurgery.

>>3482602
>It's obviously an ability of some sort. Trust in the power of tutorial NPCs. But maybe also switch to a spear for that Spear Wall buff

Time to see how significant the spear wall buff is. Inb4 it's completely broken with more than 5 spears so we just make some kobold sarissas and go Alexander on the ass of our enemies.

>>3482602
>It's obviously an ability of some sort. Trust in the power of tutorial NPCs. But maybe also switch to a spear for that Spear Wall buff
>As soon as our spear breaks, stab again with the dagger(no poison). Less for damage, more to make sure we draw aggro

>>3482602
>>It's obviously an ability of some sort. Trust in the power of tutorial NPCs. But maybe also switch to a spear for that Spear Wall buff
If we upend it and have an exposed area to stab, swap to dagger

>>3482602
It's obviously an ability of some sort. Trust in the power of tutorial NPCs. But maybe also switch to a spear for that Spear Wall buff

>>3482617
>>3482657
>>3482661
>>3482680
>>3482683
>>3482740
Trust the tutorial!

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Working off the assumption that a tutorial quest on warband mechanics would at least try and sell you on the idea that warband members are useful, you decide to trust that this is something that the spear kobold is supposed to show you.

Also, realizing that this is a good chance to try out the Spear Wall buff, you quickly grab the spear off your back just as the Hound begins its charge.

Another small buff icon pops up both on the other kobold and on your own HUD, but you're a bit too busy facing down an enraged, snarling bundle of muscle, hide, and armor plates rushing your way.

Even knowing this is just a game it's surprisingly difficult to simply... stand there as every sense, simulated or otherwise, is screaming at you to get out of the way.

Then, just as the Hound makes the final leap, its jaws poised to crush the Sentry's head, the kobold thrusts his spear into the creature's chest.

In the real world with real physics, this wouldn't have mattered: the simple size difference would ensure that even if the kobold's weapon struck true, the Hound would've kept going through sheer momentum, bowling over and crushing its target.

Instead, the monster stops - as if it ran face-first into a wall. For a blink of a moment you see its entire body warp around the spear point and the air itself seems to distort with the dispersed force.

The sentry merely slides back a few centimeters, but otherwise remains standing. A moment later, the original icon winks out and he pulls back his weapon - only to plunge it back into the Hound's flesh.

It takes you a moment to realize that the monster's still alive, though inflicted with the Dazed status, and another to remember that you too should probably be attacking. With a yell, you leap forward, toward the Hound's flank, thrusting your own spear into its hide.

And it's certainly far easier to pierce than it was with the dagger. You assume the passive helps as well, though glancing at it in between strikes you note that the bonus to armor piercing it gives is fairly unimpressive - though given that it's supposed to scale with numbers, you can see it adding up quickly.

Nevertheless, between the two of you, you make short work of the night-defenseless Hound, dropping it before its Dazed debuff expires.

Almost immediately, the other kobold's stance relaxes - he stands up straight and raises the spear upright, planting its butt against the ground.

"Seldom are Tribeless a good omen," he tells you. "But today one saved Targun's life. Gratitude, Tribeless."

He bows his head toward you and as he does so, his designation as "Kobold Sentry" is replaced with "Targun".

"Koriat's life was saved too," you turn to see the archer approaching. "Gratitude, Tribeless."

He bows too, his name similarly updating.

>(cont.)

In the pause that follows, you belatedly realize that the game is expecting a response from you - a suspicion confirmed when a tooltip pops up asking if you'd like to enable conversation prompts: a standardized solution to the problem of socially awkward, shy, (or simply dull) people who found themselves struggling when faced with advances in the interactive AI field.

You enable the prompts. Not because you're socially awkward, or shy, or anything. Simply, commercial AIs employed in VR gaming are a far cry from being Turing grade and in interactions such as this one are usually programmed to respond to certain key words or phrases - and you find having those prompts floating on the edges of your vision preferable to navigating your way through a forest of "I don't know" and "I don't understand".

>Also, you don't play VRMMOs for the cliche-laden cringefest that usually passes for lore. Just talk enough to figure out what the event's next objective is and then take as many shortcuts through the conversation as you can to get things moving
>Actually, you are one of those "I play it for the story" people. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure, and you have a fairly high tolerance for both cliche and cringe. Take your time exploring all the conversation options and figuring out the plot
>Other

To get a bit meta here, since I want to make sure people understand what they're voting on, this is basically a choice on what the quest's main focus will be: having the MC not care about lore will lead to him focusing more on PvP and player interaction, and mostly have his interactions with the world involve grinding and doing events/quests purely for the loot. Conversely, having him care about the lore will lead to more interactions with the world and AI-guided NPCs - though that certainly doesn't mean he won't have run-ins with Champions and other players.

>>3486018
>You're not especially a fan of kobolds, but becoming some dragon hybrid IS tempting.
>Play the plot focusing on any ascension or dragon cult mechanics, keep away from tribal politics. Ham it up to keep the warband loyal if they're not fans of dragons.

>>3486018
Actually, you are one of those "I play it for the story" people. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure, and you have a fairly high tolerance for both cliche and cringe. Take your time exploring all the conversation options and figuring out the plot
Mignt as well havw fun with it, i play for fun not grind.
Also we can become the hero of the lizards

>>3486048
Yeah i like this.

>>3486018
>>Actually, you are one of those "I play it for the story" people. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure, and you have a fairly high tolerance for both cliche and cringe. Take your time exploring all the conversation options and figuring out the plot

>>3486018
>Actually, you are one of those "I play it for the story" people. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure, and you have a fairly high tolerance for both cliche and cringe. Take your time exploring all the conversation options and figuring out the plot

>>3486018
We one of them RPers

>>3486048
>>3486080
>>3486635
>>3487579
>>3488034
We a RPer now.

>>3486045
But dragons tho.

>>3488087
RIP dragonborn

wonder if we can become a dogbold

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"What are these creatures you fought?" you opt for the least self-aggrandizing prompt. "I have never seen the like."

"Misshapen," Koriat, the archer, is the one who answers. "Warriors and servants of the Hidden Kings."

"Muckraker Tribe is servants too," Targun adds just as you're about to ask the obvious followup. "The Misshapen know this. But they attack."

"Sometimes, Misshapen go wrong in the head, attack everything," Koriat replies and shrugs. "It happens."

"But crazy Misshapen act different. They snarl and bay," Targun shakes his head. "This one spoke while fighting. Called Muckrakers thieves."

Huh, given their interactions, having both kobolds survive was accounted for as a possibility by the event. Neat.

"Why would he think you're thieves?" you ask.

"This stream come from a deep place. Buried place," Targun points at the brown, brackish water lazily flowing past. "Sometimes, it carries things. Hidden Kings came to tribe, said: you Muckrakers now. They say, put up nets. They say, scour mud. Find things. Bring things. All things. Keep none. But all Muckrakers know this. All tribe knows punishment for theft. The tribe good servants, the tribe obeys."

"And what is the punishment for theft?" you ask, even though the answer is rather obvious.

"Death," Koriat says.

"Death," Targun echoes. "For whole tribe. So Koriat right: Misshapen just crazy. Tribe would not hurt tribe by stealing."

"Maybe..." Koriat suddenly looks pensive and turns his head toward the trail that brought you to the clearing. "Soon as Misshapen appear, one Muckraker just start running. Misshapen throw axe after, hit, then fighting start," he looks toward you. "Did Tribeless see a Muckraker?"

>Admit to finding the corpse - and the Tear of the Buried God. It's pretty obvious that this is what the plot is about, so you might as well keep things moving
>Mention the corpse but not the Tear - just in case this is a trap option that will make the NPCs like you less, accuse you of the theft, or some other contrived misunderstanding
>Deny seeing anything - mostly cause you're curious how the game is going to handle that
>Other

>>3488158
>Admit to finding the corpse - and the Tear of the Buried God. It's pretty obvious that this is what the plot is about, so you might as well keep things moving
Either we can remove the Tear and pretend the expended charge was from the damage, or we just get these guys and whoever else we can find to go tribeless. No muckrakers, no problem.

>>3488158
>>Mention the corpse but not the Tear - just in case this is a trap option that will make the NPCs like you less, accuse you of the theft, or some other contrived misunderstanding

>>3488158
>>Admit to finding the corpse - and the Tear of the Buried God. It's pretty obvious that this is what the plot is about, so you might as well keep things moving

>>3488158
Mention the corpse but not the Tear - just in case this is a trap option that will make the NPCs like you less, accuse you of the theft, or some other contrived misunderstanding

>>3488158
>>Admit to finding the corpse - and the Tear of the Buried God. It's pretty obvious that this is what the plot is about, so you might as well keep things moving

>>3488158
Admit to finding the corpse and the tear

I mean, we just picked it up. Their guy is the one that stole it. Better they know the truth and that it’s better they throw in their lot with us than wait for the Hidden Kings to send more soldiers their way until they eventually succumb.

>>3488181
>>3488206
>>3488780
>>3488788
You just found the thing on a corpse, honest.

>>3488202
>>3488400
You ain't seen a damned thing.

>>3489074
The alternative to having found it on the corpse is that we planned this out all along just to acquire these two followers...which is a completely baseless allegation, of course

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"I did see a corpse with stained arms like yours," you nod. "And it did have an injury that could've come from an axe. But that's not all," you draw your dagger and examine it to find that the Tear had, effectively, replaced the pommel - you present it to the Targun and Koriat. "This orb was in its hand."

The two kobolds simply stare at it for a long moment. Then, in unison, they look up to stare at you.

"Tribeless... used the orb?" Targun's eyes are wide.

"Orb gave Tribeless its power?" Koriat sounds awed. Or perhaps fearful.

"Uh... yes," you shrug, doing a quick scan of the prompts being suggested. "Is that unusual?"

"Yes!" the archer exclaims. "Hidden Kings say orbs powerful, important. To Muckrakers, they just stones, but Hidden Kings say, that's cause kobolds weak, unworthy. Fit to serve only."

"But if Tribeless kobold and he can use them..." Targun trails off, apparently unsure how to finish the thought. Then Koriat makes a distressed noise.

"If orb stolen and Hidden Kings found out!" Koriat exclaims. "Hidden Kings punish all of Muckraker Tribe! Is why Misshapen here!"

"Oh no!" Targun'ss face falls. "Then the village-"

"Tribeless!" Koriat looks at you imploringly. "Tribeless fight and save two where two would have fallen. Could Tribeless fight to save more?"

"Koriat should not ask this," Targun says in a heavy voice. "Muckrakers already indebted to Tribeless for aiding tribe. Chief needs decide if more debt can be added and Koriat not chief."

"Koriat promised to protect Muckraker Tribe. Koriat already failed promise," he gestures toward the kobold bodies scattered across the clearing and gives the other a hard look. "As did Targun. Tribe need more warriors. Here stands a warrior," he motions toward you. "So Koriat making decision. If decision wrong, chief say so after. And... Koriat accept punishment."

Targun bares his teeth, looking ready to argue. But then he looks down, sighs and turns toward you.

"Koriat correct. So Targun ask too: would Tribeless help Tribe?"

"I would," you nod simply.

"Gratitude," Koriat and Targun once again bow before you. "But we need hurry - village in great danger."

In most games you've played that had similar quests, this statement of urgency would be followed by you taking your sweet time exploring the battlefield and looting corpses. TGO, however, is nice enough to autoloot everything, ask you what you want to grab now, and hold everything else in storage until you exit the instance.

That said, the loot isn't much to speak of: a few consumables and Primitive weapons. For now, you grab a few poultices and fish meals to eliminate the fatigue you've built up in the fight and you exchange your spear, damaged in the fight, for an intact one. Then you follow the two NPCs down a path out of the clearing.

>(cont.)

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Both Koriat and Targun are now part of your Warband window - albeit marked as temporary members, which locks you out of altering their equipment or default combat behavior. You can, however, view their abilities and skill tree, and you quickly discover that, in terms of raw stats, they're both significantly better than you, with most of their skills being Rank 2.

Most notably, Targun's rank in Spears gives him access to the Chargebreaker ability you've seen him use earlier. The description states that, in addition to cancelling out a struck creature's momentum, the ability also increases the attack's damage and armor piercing value based on how fast the opponent was moving. However, the ability does warn that there is an upper limit to how large a creature can be affected by the ability based on the weight and size difference between the ability's user and the target, modified further by the user's Spears and Athletics skills - though the bonuses are percentage based.

Koriat's Rank 2 Bows ability is Plunging Shots - a passive that increases projectile damage based on the difference in elevation between the attacker and the target. Oddly enough, the bonus is only to damage and not armor piercing - though this at least explains why he was doing so poorly against the Hound. Koriat also carries a dagger for self-defense in melee, though he has only one rank in that weapon skill and you're not sure how Spot Weakness works for an AI - assign a higher priority to hitting specific body parts?

As for the Warband itself, having the two kobolds join it has unlocked access to the "Remember Your Orders!" ability, letting you remove mind-based crowd control effects such as taunts, confusion, or hypnosis from all warband members (including yourself) within a radius around you. With your current Cohesion being "Good" you gain two charges of this ability with a sequential cooldown of one minute.

The path you're traveling behind the NPCs turns into a narrow gully with steep walls and overgrown ledges - giving you a distinct impression that you're about to be tutorialized again.

And so it is to your complete lack of surprise that you round the bend to mind yourself confronted with another with another Misshapen Brute - armored as well as the first one, but armed with a long spear and carrying a tall tower shield that, upon seeing you, he immediately brings up to hide the entirety of his body - while also blocking off nearly the entire width of the gully.

"Path blocked!" Koriat informs you somewhat belatedly.

"Can't we go around?" you suggest.

"Too far," the kobold shakes his head. "This shortest route to village. We must fight!"

How? - is the question. It's obvious that attacking the Brute head on is just asking to be skewered and there is no obvious way to go around it. The NPCs have drawn their weapons and dropped into a combat stance but, to the credit of whatever script's guiding them, they have not charged forward to their deaths.

>(cont.)

>Nothing about the Climbing skill (or Arboreal Adaptation for that matter) says it's exclusive to climbing trees. Scamper up the gully's wall and drop on the Brute from above
>Since this is still technically a tutorial, this encounter would have to be designed around the assumption that a player with no skill ranks or knowledge of the game would attempt it. The situation will probably resolve itself without your input if you just wait
>Other

>>3491104
>Nothing about the Climbing skill (or Arboreal Adaptation for that matter) says it's exclusive to climbing trees.
>Koriat climbs up the left wall to a ledge and starts shooting
>Targun keeps the tower shield from moving
>Throw a piece of fish meal over the brute, incase it attracts birds or mobs to distract the brute
>We climb up the right wall. Stick to shooting if we've got an angle on the head or arm, otherwise get ready to drop
I don't really think we should talk this out.

>>3491101
>Nothing about the Climbing skill (or Arboreal Adaptation for that matter) says it's exclusive to climbing trees. Scamper up the gully's wall and drop on the Brute from above

>>3491104
Nothing about the Climbing skill (or Arboreal Adaptation for that matter) says it's exclusive to climbing trees. Scamper up the gully's wall and drop on the Brute from above
Tume to over thow the hidden kings

>>3491104

>>Other
Have Korlat go up the gully walls for plunging shot goodness.
Spear wall setup with Torgun initially.. see how the brute reacts.

>>3491104
We’re gonna keep on doing Dropbear until t fucking works.

>>3491104
>>Nothing about the Climbing skill (or Arboreal Adaptation for that matter) says it's exclusive to climbing trees. Scamper up the gully's wall and drop on the Brute from above

>>3491104
>>Nothing about the Climbing skill (or Arboreal Adaptation for that matter) says it's exclusive to climbing trees. Scamper up the gully's wall and drop on the Brute from above