Chapter 2: Character Creation

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Eli pressed the create account button. A few more calibration messages popped up, indicating the simulation would be using extremely sensitive and accurate calibrations in a 3d environment, and needed to ensure its precision. Once it the calibration had completed, he was presented with a character creation menu.

It had options to change his race, gender, and appearance, but he was stuck with a default set of starting stats and no class. He fiddled around with a few options, noticing that changing his race was altering his starting stats slightly.

“Yo Derrick, you still on the call?” Eli spoke, looking to see in the top right corner of his vision that his call was still connected.

“Yeah, I just got the message that you’re playing. Oh man today is like a dream come true.” He sounded giddy like a schoolgirl. “Just a heads up though once you’re in-game it's gonna block calls, we can only talk through the in-game system.”

“Got it, I’m at character creation. What’s all this stuff about?”

“Uh basically it’s all appearance related stuff. The stats you get with different races change a bit but not by much. Orcs get more starting strength but less intelligence. Elves get high agility and intelligence, but lower constitution and strength. The point differences are really minor, so you should focus more on appearance. It also changes how the NPCs react to you though, so watch out for that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well if you pick dwarf then you’ll start out with a really bad reputation with elves, and vice versa. Orcs are disliked by almost all the other races so I would avoid them. Easiest is to just go human, they’re balanced in stats and only hated by a few of the other races like Dark Elves, but Dark Elves hate everyone anyway.” Derrick replied.

“Right…” Eli said with skepticism. Hearing his friend talk so seriously about all these fantasy creatures was hard for him to get used to. He selected human to see that his stats had perfectly balanced out as flat 10’s, then moved to appearance. He opted not to tweak anything as he wasn’t good with that stuff, and kept it as default, his gender as male. He pressed accept and another menu popped up. This one asked him to select his name and his starting island, there was a list of 6 starting islands to choose from.

“Which island do I pick to start in?” Eli asked as he read over them.

“I’m picking Kalmoore. You’re done customizing already?”

“Yep.” Eli said has he selected the Kalmoore region. For his character name he wasn’t feeling particularly creative and just took the s off his last name, leaving him as Winter. Once he hit accept, he was prompted with one last message letting him know he’d be unable to change his character once the account was created without a re-registration fee being paid, and phone calls were disabled inside the game world. After that, a final warning popped up.

This game uses Sim Box technology to simulate damage to your body in order to increase immersion. You are allowed to set the level of pain you would like to experience in this simulation. Higher settings will increase the experience gained for defensive skills. To avoid exploitation, this setting can only be changed once per week. If you are concerned or unsure of what setting is right for you, please set this setting to 0 and consult your doctor before increasing it. If your mental stress levels go beyond the safety threshold at any point while playing The Shattered World Online, you will be ejected from the simulation and emergency services will be contacted.

Pain Level: 3 (Default)

Level 3: The sensation of damage and attacks you receive will be simulated to you at 30% of their actual strength.

Experience Bonus: Defensive skills will gain 30% more experience.

Eli looked through the options. The pain levels went from 0 to 10, 10 being 100% and 0 being a 0%. He figured he might as well see all that the game had to offer and selected 100%. He confirmed his selection and got a final confirmation to enter the game world.

“I’m making my character now, so I’ll see you in the game.” Eli said calmly.

“Alright, let’s do this!” Derrick cheered.

Character Creation Complete!

Welcome to the Shattered World Online,

Logging in as player [Winter]...

His vision went blank for a moment, then suddenly extremely bright. It took him a moment for his eyes to adjust to the bright sunlight and the noise flooding into his ears. He could hear hammers clanging, people chatting, wheels turning, and the sounds of the beasts of burden that pulled the carts along.

The first thing he saw was the bright sun shining down from a clear blue sky above. Looking around, he was standing in the middle of a fantasy village square. In the middle was a large simple white fountain spouting water out the top, and around the outskirts of the square were several merchant stands selling various fruits, vegetables, weapons and tools, all on display for potential customers to see. Everything from apples, to fine linens, to swords. The merchants were shouting out their prices at the people passing by, attempting to draw in customers.

“Selling cotton in bulk!”

“Cheap copper swords for beginners, lowest prices in Orm Village, become a swordsman today!”

“Fresh apples, restore 20 hunger for cheap!” All of the sounds flooded in at once. It took Winter a moment to adjust. He had been in many simulations before, but none of this scale that seemed so lively and realistic. He looked down to see his own hands and body - he looked exactly as he did in the real world, but he was wearing a white cloth shirt and brown leather pants with leather shoes.

He waved his hand into the air to make his main menu appear in front of him. Like other simulations, the menu was tied into his peripheral vision, so it stayed in his view no matter which direction he looked at. His menu had settings, character menu, inventory, quest log, skills, friends list, and a few others, but some were greyed out like the guild menu. He clicked to check his inventory and saw that he had 1 gold, and 0 silver for his currency, and one inventory slot contained a stack of 5 Kalmoore Buns. He checked to see they were valued at 1 copper each and restored 10 hunger.

In the top left corner of his vision he saw several status bars displaying his health, mana and stamina that coincided with his character stat menu which he opened up next.

Name: Winter

Race: Human

Gender: Male

Level: 1

Class: None

Health: 100/100

Mana: 50/50

Stamina: 50/50

Hunger: 100/100

Strength: 10

Agility: 10

Constitution: 10

Intelligence: 10

Spirit: 10

Charisma: 10

Equipment

Chest: Beginner’s Shirt - Clothing

Legs: Beginner’s Pants - Clothing

Feet: Beginner’s Shoes - Clothing

He didn’t have time to read into it much before he felt a hand on his shoulder, turning to see an unbelievably handsome man standing beside him. Sparkling deep brown eyes with beautifully styled black hair, and the name above his head reading [Davoth - Level 1].

“Hey, you were easy to find.” The voice spoke in a deep, manly tone.

“Derrick, that’s you?” Winter’s eyes widened.

“Yeah man. How do I look?” He smiled while taking a step back to show off his face.

“Way over the top. You shoulda just kept the same appearance.”

“Yeah easy for you to say mr. pretty boy.” Davoth teased. “So how is it, pretty awesome right?”

“This is… well it’s a lot more realistic than I was expecting, I’ll give it that.” Winter said as he looked around once more.

“So I read about tips for new players starting out that you should try different weapons and spells before you decide on your class. You can get some basic copper and wooden weapons from the armor shops, or maybe get a deal if another player is selling them cheap. Then we can kill some basic monsters in the fields outside the village. I picked Kalmoore because it's not that popular, not a lot of big guilds around here so it's easier to get good farming spots without worrying too much about PvP. The downside is that it's pretty far away from the other kingdoms.” Davoth explained.

“Just how big this game…” Winter asked.

“Huge, not even 25% of it has been explored yet and its been out for 6 months.” Davoth replied with glee. “So what kind of weapons do you want to try? Should we check out the bowyer for bows? The magic shop for a staff? The blacksmith has all sorts of weapon. It’s important we spend our first gold wisely.”

“I’m not sure… you said people pay real money for stuff in here, right? How much is gold worth?”

“Hmm, I guess if you look at the auction sales, 1 gold is probably worth about 1 cent when exchanged. You’d get more money if you tried selling rare items for real money instead of raw gold. The Market Exchange has an auto converter between real money and gold, it’s how so many people have been making a living in this world. You can find one in the capital cities of each island. The exchange rate has stabilized now so it’s pretty reliable…”

“What’s the best way to make money starting out? You want to buy yourself a Sim Box and I want to start saving up for tuition, right?” Winter asked.

“Y-yeah, but, well at our level it’s gonna be tough. I guess the best would be to just mine for copper ore all day until we get high enough to mine higher materials. Hunting monsters at this level isn’t worth much... But mining is gonna be pretty boring, it’s way more fun to hunt monsters.” Davoth replied.

“Okay, how do I start mining?” Winter asked.

“Seriously? Look around you.” Davoth turned and waved his hands at the fantastical scene surrounding them. “Quests galore, beautiful maidens waiting to be saved. Evil monsters to be slain! Lands to explore! Adventure and mystery awaits us! Mining is but a peasants task!” Davoth shouted out with enthusiasm, so that all around him could hear. He got no response from Winter, and when he turned back around he saw Winter standing in front of a merchant stand holding a pickaxe.

“He sold me a copper pickaxe for 5 silver.” Winter replied nonchalantly. Davoth let out an elongated sigh.

“You’re hopeless. You really don’t care about this game at all.” He shook his head. “Fine, I promised you I’d show you how to make money.” Davoth grumbled, quickly buying a pickaxe from the same merchant.