Rare enemies were not the only enemies that could drop Rare items - there was a very small chance Uncommon enemies could do so, in the same way there was a very small chance for Common enemies to drop Uncommon items - but the chance of a Rare enemy dropping a Rare item was high.

Chan Si acquired a stack of 20 Rare consumables, [Sporing Bomb], it was a very powerful consumable for its level, dealing large amounts of Wood DoT damage in an AoE, and for a long period, with an extremely rapid tick rate of four damage instances every second!

The damage would even stack!

Now that Chan Si had these, she upgraded challenging the Grotto of Endless Emotion from a maybe to a sure thing. She would use these items to clear out the dungeon quickly.

She wasn't some idiot who would save consumables for later ‘just in case’, she would make use of them to speed up her farming! Her time was worth far more than some consumables, even powerful ones. She could always buy better ones later, if they were truly worth it.

All the other items dropped by the Overgrown Sobbing Shroomlord were only good enough to be sold.

Before Chan Si's party would be allowed to enter the dungeon, they would need to hit level 20. Since she had already acquired the Red and Purple Mushroom on a String, Chan Si would graduate from the Weeping Forest to the Laughing Forest where she could farm more efficiently.

The Laughing Forest had a higher concentration of fey enemies than the Weeping Forest, which tended to have lower health, meaning Chan Si's group could farm higher level enemies effectively as long as they could handle the many debuffs being thrown towards them.

Of course Chan Si could handle such a thing!

One of Pickapart's full weave effects, formed from three Light Pulling Weaves and two Dark Charging Weaves, was [Breaking Dawn], which would provide 40% debuff resistance for 15 seconds.

By starting with two casts of Dark Charging Weave before the three Light Pulling Weaves, then casting an additional Light Pulling Weave, it would then activate [True Starfield], which would increase healing received by 40% for 5 seconds. From there Pickapart could use a Gravity Binding Weave to transition into the main damage routine of Dark Weavers.

Like this, the fey of the Laughing Forest were butchered by Chan Si, tiny smiling heads littering the ground.

When Gearme hit level 20, he received his first Talent!

He could decide to specialize his Quick Shot in one of two different directions.

The first was [Instant Shot], it reduced the time it would take to use the skill from 1 second to 0.25 seconds.

The second was [Agile Shot], it would make the attack from Quick Shot travel four times as fast and be undodgable.

Which one a player preferred usually depended on their build, both had their clear upsides. For Chan Si who's skill in accurate firing was already tremendous, she felt Instant Shot was clearly the better choice, and thus had Gearme select it.

With that out of the way, she farmed a little longer to get the rest of her party to 20. Gearme was still 20 at this time, though he would hit 21 before the rest.

Pickapart's Talent was for her only non-weave related [Skill], Grasping Shadow.

The first selection was [Grasping Shadows], it allowed the [Skill] to be used on all valid targets in a small AoE.

The second selection was [Reaching Shadow], it increased the range of the [Skill] to three times what it normally was, and increased the base damage.

Chan Si boldly selected Reaching Shadow, as the additional range was far more meaningful in potentially breaking the game than the AoE effect, since she barely used the [Skill] for its intended purpose of pulling enemies in the weave AoE anyway.

Under most circumstances Chan Si would select AoE effects for game breaking potential due to possible interaction effects, but she felt the overall field of exploits enabled by increased range gave her significantly more opportunities to apply the [Skill], whereas the potential applications of AoE movement were only marginally more flexible than the base [Skill].

Level 20 also came with the second non-weave related [Skill] of the class, [Black Lining]. It was a concentration spell, meaning it would last for as long as the Dark Weaver wanted, and their mana held out, though it would count as using a hand and thus they would be slower with their weaves while using it.

The target would have their buffs deplete twice as quickly, and their debuffs deplete half as slowly, while the [Skill] was active. It was a very good [Skill], but very mana intensive; about sixteen seconds of persistent use would deplete Pickapart's mana completely, and that was with her focus on Acuity!

Dual Elemental Master had to select one of their elements to specialize in at level 20, which would determine which set of [Skills] their Talents would apply to. Of course Sunshine selected Light, which gave a choice for the Gentle Light [Skill].

Option one was [Harsh Light], it increased the Force multiplier of the spell from D to B.

Option two was [Restful Light], it would also restore an amount of Stamina to the target equal to 20% of the amount healed.

Harsh Light was the best choice, and it wasn't even close. Such a huge upgrade in the Force multiplier of the heal would help keep it relevant at the higher levels, making it Chan Si's most efficient heal in 90% of cases.

No buts, no internal argument about the potential applications of stamina restoration. Sunshine was there to heal foremost, and heal she would. She might not have been a Force-focused build, but she would still get good amounts of Force as she leveled, including from her bone gear.

Finally was the choice for Ulna. Her's was for Trained Limbs, the [Skill] that made her unarmed attacks deal decent damage.

[Trained Limbs, Trained Mind] would add on E multipliers from the three mental statistics to her unarmed damaged, making it C physique and E in all others.

[Perfected Limbs] would provide 100% debuff resistance against any attack speed slowing effects so long as Ulna was using unarmed strikes.

The damage boost from Trained Limbs, Trained Mind was better than it seemed, especially since Chan Si was dumping the additional stat points into Force. However, Ulna's role in the group was being a pillar of reliability, a Tank far before a source of damage.

Perfected Limbs would ensure that in critical situations, Ulna would still be able to perform to her peak. Late game the benefits of selecting Perfected Limbs would only be displayed further, as attack speed would be far more important than base damage for Ulna's overall damage output.

Thus, Perfected Limbs was selected.

With all the Talents out of the way, Chan Si's party was fully prepared for the Dungeon.

Almost.

In the process of farming the fey, Gearme finally found an appropriate level 18 piece of Chest armor, [Smirkingwood Breastplate] which gave a much larger boost to his Physique. He enchanted it with two more stacks of 1% physical damage increasing and equipped it on the way.

The five - and two pets - entered the Grotto of Endless Emotion through its cave mouth entrance.

[Dungeon Start: Grotto of Endless Emotion] [Dungeon Type: Puzzle + Boss] [Dungeon Time Limit: 2 hours]

The display information for the dungeon quickly faded from view, though a timer remained in the corner of Chan Si's five character perspectives. Most people could complete the dungeon much faster than two hours, but since it was an early level dungeon there was a lot of leeway for newer players, and to get them used to idea that dungeons had timers.

The Grotto of Endless Emotion was divided into many small sections separated by huge walls of vines. Each section, save the entrance and boss section, had two giant flowers, one laughing and one weeping, along with some enemies.

After killing the enemies you would need to select the giant flower that corresponded to which forest those enemies came from in order to progress. Selecting the wrong flower would kick the players to the start of the maze and reshuffle the puzzle.

It was incredibly simple to understand even though the dungeon did not explicitly spell out the association. Even players who were bad at puzzles would be able to understand eventually through regular pattern recognition. Such was the state of early dungeons.

Though, Chan Si had a better idea than doing the dungeon as intended.

The huge walls of vines were effectively not climbable due to thorns injuring the player as they climbed up it, though merely holding onto would not do more than an initial instance of damage.

Thus, she had Gearme jump to about halfway up, latch on, and then jump further up to the top. Although the top was still covered in thorns, they were not programmed to injure players walking on them, only players climbing on them.

Chan Si was far from the first player to come up with this solution, in fact she had read it on the wiki.

The rest of her party had no easy means up, but that was fine. Gearme took out the stack of 20 Sporing Bombs and dropped them into the areas below after quickly memorizing what group the enemies belong to.

One bomb, two bombs, so on, nine bombs.

Like this each of the first nine sections out of ten were eliminated quickly without danger. Chan Si's party rushed through as the ninth group was dying, quickly selecting the correct flower in each section without stopping.

After reaching the entrance to the tenth section, instead of going inside, Pickapart used Reaching Shadow on an enemy, which Maybetasty then tanked.

The rest of the enemies were sporing bombed by Gearme and tanked by the rest of the party while they swiftly died. Then Maybetasty lead the enemy back into the room where Pickapart used her weaves.

Picking a flower wouldn't do anything until all the enemies were dead, and the next room was the boss room. Gearme jumped down from high above to land into the weave AoE. When the weaving was finished, it was mostly buffs; Breaking Dawn, Light Escapes Gravity, and Dark Infusion were the important ones.

The second the weave expired, Chan Si's party killed the enemy with prepared attacks, plucked the appropriate flower, and rushed through the doors into the boss room in order to be there while the buffs were still ongoing.

The boss was not some giant mushroom creature or sinister looking fey. Rather, it was an old man named [Oliver]. Half his face was smiling brightly, while the other half sagged and occasionally dripped with tears. His bent body leaned on his mushroom staff, and tiny leaves formed his bushy eyebrows.

Naturally, as an old man in a boss room, he was incredibly dangerous. A level 30 Rare boss!

The moment the party entered, Oliver began casting a spell that targeted everyone by waving his mushroom staff around. It was a powerful debuff. The longer the party stayed clumped up, the more and more debuffs the boss would cast, until the party facing him was useless and he finished them off.

At least, that was how it was supposed to happen.

Instead, Chan Si's debuff resistance offered by the Dark Weaver was too great for the boss to penetrate at this low level. The party threw two spore bombs each - including Maybetasty who spat their's - which was fast, a 1 second use time.

All of the bombs applied to Oliver which, when combined with the Dark Weaver's buffs, dealt mass amounts of damage. It did not matter that the boss was highly resistant to the Wood damage of the bomb, the power came from all the damage ticks from Dark Infusion!

From the time the party entered the room to the time the first set of bomb hit Oliver was 2 seconds. The second set of bombs hit 1 second later. Since the bombs dealt damage every fourth of a second, and Light Escapes Gravity was active, this was a total of 200 damage instances before the Dark Weaver buffs ran out, for the purpose of applying Dark Infusion!

Oliver was defeated before he got to cast his third AoE debuff, less than 5 seconds after he had entered combat!

A level 30 Rare old man, who died like old men were born to do.

Chan Si did not have the fastest completion time on the dungeon, but that was only because it was possible to run the dungeon while very overleveled. At least there were no rewards for having the fastest completion time, except bragging rights. What kind of game would do something so unfun as to tie tremendous rewards to something so arbitrary?

As Chan Si hoped, Oliver dropped his staff as an item, the level 28 rare weapon [Penicillium]. There was an entire phase of the boss Chan Si had skipped where he would summon adds and heal himself, and this weapon's [Skill] would have helped him.

Simply put, whenever the wielder used a healing [Skill], it would heal an additional 5% of the amount every second for 10 seconds afterwards. This was an overall healing efficiency boost of 50%!

The downside of the weapon was the additional heal was only from the base heal amount, before any Force multiplier. This meant while it was a great addition early game to any healer, as Force values ramped on items, a weapon which offered a good Force bonus would overshadow the [Skill].

Since Chan Si would not be able to have bone weapons for her team until level 200, she would keep relevant weapons for use on characters other than Gearme, so long as the amount she could gain from selling it was not significant.

Thus, Penicillium went to Sunshine. Once she could equip it, it would vastly increase the suvivablility and sustainability of Chan Si's party!