Chapter 3 – Character ReCreation

I ended up spending six hours researching the Thief Lord class. Six whole hours! It’s the longest amount of time I’ve spent outside of the game for three months! It’s necessary though. I needed to thoroughly analyze and develop a basic strategy moving forward. This included looking into the unique mechanics of the Thief Lord class itself, as well as its stats, growth directions, abilities, and suitable combat tactics.

That wasn’t eating up too much of my time though. What really bit into my precious game time was comparing them to every single general skill available to all classes, be it physical, magical or crafter related. That’s a really huge deal, considering there are several hundred potential skills and development paths out there. I also made a rough analysis of which race my character should be, and in what location I would have the most optimal chance of long term survival, while also providing decent ground for actually developing the character.

Seriously. I even made graphs and spreadsheets!

…

Okay, maybe I copied a bunch of them off the internet, but that’s beside the point.

It took a whole lot of creative thinking, a couple of tough calls and a few surprising discoveries to finally land on a decent character build. It’s actually kind of outrageous, if I may say so myself. The only thing left to do is actually putting this potentially disastrous class to use.

There is only one obstacle left in my path though. The one thing I have dreaded since this whole venture began. Deleting my Necromancer.

Which is why I’ve spent the last ten minutes staring intently on my gaming capsule while clutching a cheap bottle of beer that slowly turns lukewarm in my grip. This is a big deal for me. I feel like a father trying to come to terms with letting his child move away to go to college. Except in my case, I won’t ever see the kid again. I put my entire soul into that character, as I’ve spent the better part of three months developing it from scratch. A part of me still tells me to just say ‘fuck it’ and try to keep playing on it, but I know this is the correct call. If I have to choose between the character and my foolish childhood dream, then I have to give my dream a shot.

Steeling my resolve, I chug the remainder of my beer and access my gaming profile remotely on my tablet. I show no hesitation in pressing the character delete button, but my finger twitches when the game asks me to confirm my choice. My eyes close before I tap the confirm button with a little more force than necessary.

A small shiver of regret passes through my chest as my character page goes blank, ready to accept the creation of a new character.

“Oh god, what am I doing…” I sigh as I gently shake my head. I’m either the dumbest person alive or the most reckless one. I’m not sure either choice is particularly flattering. “There is no turning back now I guess.” I sigh. I have one month to do this. One month to make this work. I only hope I didn’t just shoot myself in the foot.

I discard my tablet and step into my capsule. With the helmet and cuirass safely attached to my body, I close the plastic lid and let my body sink into the soft fabrics. With the push of a button, my vision goes dark.

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The game’s soundtrack blasts into my ears, as Ascendance Unlimited’s theme intro movie starts running, showing me the grandeur of the game in all its might as it promises untold riches and adventure for anyone daring enough to grasp it.

Well, I’m not going to watch through it for the umpteenth time, so I quickly dismiss it and move on to the Character Creation page. There is no reason to burn any more precious game time than I already have after all.

I’m soon greeted by a menu I didn’t think I’d ever see again just half a day earlier.

Welcome to Ascendance Unlimited, Traveller!

Ascendance Unlimited has a lot to offer anyone bold enough to reach for the top. Will you choose the path of an Adventurer, one destined to challenge the mightiest of beasts and brave the darkest of Dungeons? Or maybe you will follow the path of a Craftsman, creating items of legendary power that will spread your name to the very edges of the world? Or perhaps you will choose the path of darkness and crime, forever an outcast? Beware, Traveller. The path of a Villain always leads to ruin.

Do you have what it takes to reach Ascendancy?

Choose your path, Traveller.

[Path of the Adventurer]

[Path of the Craftsman]

[Path of the Villain]

I snort at the dramatic sounding text. It’s a bit over the top, but I suppose it’s the standard for games these days. There are probably loads of people getting a kick out of it. I didn’t think about it last time, but the text seems to push people in the direction of playing as an adventurer. And what’s up with the grim message at the end? The path of a Villain always leads to ruin? Is that some way to say that there is no way for Villains to thrive, or does it mean that I will either ruin myself or my enemies? Regardless, I’ll make sure it’s the latter if that’s the case.

Selecting the path of the Villain, I receive a prompt asking me to confirm my choice. Or perhaps it’s a warning?

You have chosen the path of the Villain.

The path of the Villain is the hardest path to travel, and many will falter on their way to the top. Succeed, and you will have power and riches beyond your wildest imagination. Fail, and be forever hunted for your crimes.

The path of the Villain offers the following traits:

Life of Crime – Villains lose five level upon death and all accumulated gold and items in their inventory can be looted by enemies.

No Deposits – Villains can not store valuables in Banks.

Marked – Players attacking a Villain suffer no penalties from the authorities, even in safe zones.

Outcast – Villains can not use the party function or join a guild.

Entrepreneur – Villains have access to special NPCs to sell their stolen goods.

Unhelpful – Villains can not take on ordinary quests.

Deep Pockets – Inventory size for Villains is doubled.

Are you certain you want to follow this path, Traveller?

Yep, that’s a pretty clear warning if I ever saw one. Hell, just showing the path related traits should be enough to deter most players from even considering playing as a Villain. Almost every single one of them is terrible. Especially the first one: ‘Life of Crime’. Ordinary players only lose roughly twenty percent of their gold if they die, while the villains lose everything. They even lose five levels if they end up biting the apple. It’s horrifying, really, and makes the game feel like I’m playing on Iron Man mode. The only solace we have is that we have a slight edge when it comes to strength. The other traits are all equally horrible, except the ‘Entrepreneur’ trait, which can only be considered a mediocre boon, and the ‘Deep Pockets’ trait which is helpful, but not critically necessary.

It almost makes me want to reconsider playing as a Villain already. The keyword being almost.

Next up, a list of available Villain classes appears in front of me. My eyes linger for a moment on the Necromancer, a small knot tying in my stomach as I force my eyes to move past it. I make my way down the shortlist of about twenty different classes until I find what I’m looking for at the very bottom. Thief Lord. Selecting it, a new list of class-specific traits appear.

You have selected the Thief Lord class.

The Thief lord thrives in the bellies of the underworld. This is a class that operates in the shadows, commanding the dredges of society to steal from and murder anyone who stands in their way. You will find no morals walking down this path...

The Thief Lord class offers the following unique traits:

Incognito – You can conceal your class with a different chosen class.

Recruit Underlings – You can recruit Underlings.

Gold for Blood – You can resurrect Underlings for coin.

Fence – You can sell stolen items for 50% of the original item’s value. Requires you to recruit a fence.

Information Broker – You can use special NPCs to gather otherwise inaccessible information.

Jobs – Your Underlings can perform jobs like Heists, Muggings, Arson, Assassination, and Spying.

Boss Sized – Transfer 75% of your Charisma attribute into a chosen non-core attribute. Transfer 75% of your Luck attribute into a chosen non-core attribute. Choices are final.

Hideout – Can establish Hideouts for NPCs to gather, rest and be assigned jobs.

Do you have what it takes to be a Thief Lord?

Oh hell yes, this is what I’m talking about. The general Villain traits may be horrible, but the class-specific ones are what really draws me in. These are all fantastic! Or at least they would be if they weren’t coupled with the Villain traits. But, whatever. Challenges like this are what makes this path fun and what keeps my competition at bay.

On paper, the Thief Lord looks really strong. The traits are actually overall more powerful than the other Villain classes, especially the ‘Boss Sized’ trait, which effectively increases my basic stats by a whole lot. All Villain classes gain some sort of bonus, and this is among the largest. The downsides, however, is that the two core attributes for the Thief Lord are Charisma and Luck. Effectively the two most useless combat-related attributes there are. The ‘Boss Sized’ perk is just there to give me at least some semblance of a chance for survival.

The real strength of the Thief Lord class lies in its sense of subterfuge and strategy. The Thief Lord is, similar to the Necromancer, all about using minions to achieve their goals. The difference is that the Thief Lord and his underlings can blend into society, making them able to operate inside of a city. The Thief Lord’s underlings are overall stronger than the undead, but it falls short when it comes to the sheer quantity of minions.

It’s a challenging class to play, but I think it’s the best option I have to achieve my goals.

Moving on, I have to choose which race I want to play. Ascendance Unlimited, like most other fantasy games, allows you to choose which race you want to play from a wide selection of fantasy creatures. They all have unique traits, which allows them to excel in different roles. For example, I played as a Dark Elf when I was a Necromancer because it gave me a nice boost to death and dark magic, as well as the racial skill [Darkvision]. It was perfect for my needs as a Necromancer. The benefits aren’t too large, but neither are they negligible.

I spent some time choosing my race, weighing several options up against one another. In the end, it all came down to three different races.

Human:

The most common race in all of Ascendance Unlimited. Humans are an all-around adaptable race with no apparent weaknesses. They have a thirst for knowledge that only Gnomes can match and a willingness to do anything to obtain it.

5% to two chosen attributes.

-5% to two chosen attributes.

+5% to any skill gain.

Halfling:

One of the youngest of all the races. Being a social and outgoing race, You often find Halflings at the center of attention despite their short stature. Halflings are skilled entertainers and shrewd merchants, often underestimated by the other races.

10% to Charisma and Luck.

-10% to Strength and Agility.

+5% profit from any transaction.

Wood Elf:

Wood elves are an isolationist race who preside deep inside the Tul’Malar forest. While they tend to shy away from other races, they are in no way disliked. Wood elves are among the best assassins in Ascendance Unlimited, favored by the other races to solve internal disputes quickly and efficiently... if the price is right.

10% experience gain to any Agility-based skills.

-10% experience gain to any Strength-based skills.

5% increase in quest rewards.

This was a really tough choice for me. The easiest choice would be to play as a human, as I could tailor the race to suit my own playstyle. It doesn’t hurt that the five percent bonus to skill gain would be most welcome. It’s definitely a viable race to play in the long term, which is why the human race is still the most popular race to play for most players.

The halfling is also really interesting. Most players who want to play as either a bard or a merchant choose to play as these short little buggers. What really caught my eye about this race was the large bonus to Charisma and Luck. That’s huge for the Thief Lord, whose core abilities are reliant on those two attributes. The race would be perfect for the class, if not because of the penalties to Agility. Thief Lords are heavily dependant on staying out of sight of other players, and the Stealth skill requires a high level of Agility to function properly. It’s almost as if the game developers created this class just to taunt us.

The third race is the best race to stay hidden. Wood elves are naturally stealthy, and they come with a good boost to leveling Agility skills. It’s a perfect race to play for survivability, and the only downside I can see is the useless bonus to increase quest rewards and the fact that it doesn’t offer a bonus to my core attributes.

Close to eighty percent of the Thief Lords out there chose to play as one of these three races, with the majority of them opting to choose to play either as a human or a wood elf. My strategy from the start is to focus on stealth and survivability, so one would assume I’d choose to play as a wood elf. It may not be the most efficient class to choose to maximize my attribute points, but I can not deny the strength of the bonus to Agility skill gain.

Well, going against everyone's assumptions, I decided to play as a halfling. Why would I do that though? Not because I’m an idiot, far from it. I chose to play as a halfling because the game offers a little known alternative to going down the agility stealth route. What is it, you may ask? Well… Magic, baby. It may be difficult to start out as a Thief Lord initially, but I’ve decided to pursue the path of an illusionist. Yep, a mage that specializes in illusion magic. Illusion magic is probably the least chosen school of magic in the game because it offers little practical utility for the traditional mage. It would just be an unnecessary drain on their precious skill points. It’s neither a viable path that any rogue player would ever attempt doing, as they couldn’t afford to waste valuable attribute points by putting them into Intelligence. But what about a person who just wants to hide and manipulate? It’s perfect.

In my opinion, Thief Lords were never meant to just be a common assassin with a bunch of minions following him. I’m not supposed to be the one right in the thick of it, fighting off the enemies with my own two hands. My strength lies in buffing my minions and stay as far away from combat as humanly possible. The path of an illusionist offers me much more utility than an agility build ever could. I can’t believe no one ever thought of it really. Wasting the majority of my attributes into agility just because of a single beneficial skill is ludicrous.

Content with my choice of race, I grin and give myself a mental pat on the shoulder for what could potentially be the single smartest thing I’ve ever done before. Next up is choosing the appearance for my halfling. The game forces me to play as a male character, denying the players the option to choose freely after a series of very gender demeaning videos were posted online by a bunch of prepubescent teenagers who did… well, you can imagine.

In front of me, a is a nearly naked Halfling character who shares several features similar to my real-life appearance. The character is about one meter thirty tall, with short dark blonde hair, pointy ears, and bright green eyes. I’d say he looks quite handsome, but I suppose I’m rather biased. The halflings look just like a regular super short human would, except with a bit more body girth, as is customary for the race.

Well, I suppose there is no reason to not make a few adjustments. I open up a menu and makes a few alterations to my character. I shorten some of the fat off the stomach and increase my height to roughly one meter forty, the highest I can go. I also give the little guy some well-defined abs and a nice lean muscular build. There is no reason I shouldn’t look as visually pleasing as possible given the option, no?

Satisfied with my adjustments, I move on to the last stage of the character creation.

Please choose a starting location, Thief Lord.

A map of the game world takes up the majority of my vision. The world of Ascendance Unlimited is huge, spanning hundreds of kilometers in any direction. There are multiple viable starting locations spread across the world, and you can choose to play almost wherever you want. The game world is divided into three continents, each one offering a distinct variety of playable races and environments.

The western continent, which I played on earlier, is a continent consisting of mostly forests, lush green fields, and mountains. It’s sort of similar to northern Europe or Canada back in reality. The races inhabiting this continent are mostly the human-looking races, like humans, elves, dwarves, gnomes and the like. The southern continent offers vast deserts and jungles, and are inhabited by monstrous races, like orcs, goblins, cyclops, and ogres. The eastern continent is a bit more exotic, and offers vast plains, tundras and snowy mountains and is inhabited by a melting pot of different races, like beastmen, demons, the undead, and mermen.

I quickly find the human-dominated Emperia Empire in the western continent where I initially started playing as a Necromancer, allowing my eyes to find the small village I tried to annihilate a few hours ago. Culmin Village sits isolated deep in the wilderness between the forests of Tal’Shalg and Tal’Creal. The village is connected between the city of Drenerys and the town of Karlrys, who hosts a population of five thousand and three thousand NPCs respectively.

I thought about it for quite some time, but I decided to have my character start in the city of Drenerys. I mostly wanted to start in this area because I’m already familiar with the layout of the surrounding forests, but also because I have a hidden stash of gold and crafting materials stashed deep inside the Tal’Shalg forest. Since Villains are unable to store their valuables in banks, we have to hide our loot in special storage crates that we can move around wherever we want. These crates are lootable by just about anyone, so the trick is to hide them carefully, far away from any prying eyes.

With all that taken care of, I’m only left with deciding what to name my character. I really wanted to use my regular gaming tag, but since my cover was blown on my Necromancer, I don’t want to risk anyone making some sort of odd connection if they see the same marked name reappear close to the same place my Necromancer was last spotted.

So, I need to come up with a new name. Something incognito, but also something that is fitting a Thief Lord, but also vague enough to make sure no one instantly suspects me of playing as a Thief Lord. That would all be great, but I really suck at naming things. Therefore, my character shall from here on be known as Sir Rynorn Stabberton, first of his name!

…

Okay, maybe just Rynorn Stabberton. I’m not sure I could take the grief if I actually someday do become famous.

Finally wrapping up the character creation process, I confirm all of my choices. I can almost feel goosebumps form on my skin as I anticipate delving into Ascendance Unlimited for the second time. A bright flash of white light signals the confirmation of my choices, and a final notification appears in front of me.

Congratulations on creating your character, Thief Lord.

You will be transferred to your chosen starting location: Drenerys, shortly.

Good luck on your journey, Thief Lord.