I spend a half second sighing to myself for incurring such a stupid death. I watch the Mountain Troll passively stand on top my corpse for a moment before slowly returning to its preset patrol route. I should have figured a mid-level zone like this would have roaming aggressive mobs. I check the timer that has appeared at the side of my interface which is now counting down from 58 minutes 32 seconds. At zero I will automatically respawn at my home point. The only other thing I can do is hit the respawn button early.

I can also just wait and look around the immediate area by panning my vision. The hope is that a healer will come along and be kind enough to give me a raise. Then I’ll only lose a little bit of experience. But when you respawn, you lose not only a big chunk of experience, but you then have to make your way back to your corpse to get all your items back.

My chances of a random healing mage running by, however, is slim to none.

I’m just about to hit the respawn button when a message comes through from Gilly.

Gilly: Hey I’m at the mine entrance. Where are you??? D:

I at least can chat back, but I decide to not waste time telling her all the details.

She’ll know soon enough anyway.

Me: I’ll be right there.

I hit the respawn button and my vision fades to black. And then it’s like I’m logging in again. Except this time I’m buck naked expect for my avatar’s standard issue boxers. I check my exp bar and am chagrinned to see that I lost almost half of what I had just earned. Another automatic message then pops up.

You have respawned.

You have 24 game hours to retrieve your corpse before your items become lootable to other players. Untradeable items will be lost!

A game hour is about fifteen minutes in the real world. So that gives me eight hours before I basically lose everything. Good thing I set my respawn point to the Steppes of Andor, right outside the Silvertooth mines. I sprint back to the mine entrance and see Gilly waiting there, peeking into the darkness of the opening, perhaps expecting to see me come running out.

Gilly’s avatar is as cute as her name.

She’s a half-elf, which makes her about as tall as a human. About five foot four compared to my six foot two. She wears her raven hair short, which matches nicely with her olive complexion and shows off the slight point of her ears. Her wiry body has a wee bit of tone to it too, like a fitness model, but I rarely see her like that though. Most times her figure is hidden beneath a set of miner’s coveralls similar to my own. I notice she already has her miner’s helm on too.

I give her character a quick examine.

Name: Gilly

Sex: Female

Race: Half-elf

Class: Miner

Level: 8

Guild: Nasgar Labor Union

Level 8? She must have leveled up before I logged in this morning.

As I approach her from behind I call out to her. “Yo.”

Gilly turns and her deep green eyes go wide with surprise as she stares at my mostly naked body. She then burst out laughing, which is what I figured Gilly would do when she saw me. She has a great laugh too, deep and throaty and hearing it is almost worth me taking the death.

She bends over at the waist still laughing. “What the heck happened to you? Did you die?”

I sigh for dramatic effect. “Yup.”

She places her hands on her hips and stares at me some more. “Oh well. At least I get to take in that hot bod of yours.”

I blush a little, despite the fact that it’s Gilly talking here.

“What killed you?”

“A Level 40 mountain troll.”

She jerks a thumb toward the mine. “You went in already?”

I nod.

“So the potions don’t work?”

“I dunno. I wasn’t smart enough to use one.”

She laughs again.

“And they’re stuck on my corpse now, of course.”

Gilly hefts her Pickaxe on her shoulder and grins. “Looks like we’ll have to sneak in the old fashioned way then. Let’s get you un-naked, partner.”

Gilly takes the lead as we enter the mine. We form a party and I get to see her stats in the corner of my HUD, underneath my own.

Gilly Level 8 Miner

HP 92/92

STAM: 130/130

TP: 80/80

It’s the sort of bare minimum information you need when you’re in a party fighting tough monsters. For us though, it’s mainly a convenient chat tool, since we’re both not planning to get into any combat here.

As Gilly ventures ahead I get a close up look at her pickaxe resting atop her well defined deltoid. At the same time I can’t help ignore the sway of her hips even in the baggy miner’s gear.

HQ Steel Pickaxe +3: +15 Mining +15 Vitality +25 TP

Only the finest steel was used to forge this crème de la crème of mining tools.

It’s a darn good pickaxe and I have to admit I’m a little jealous of the stats. I know it’s also one of Gilly’s most prized possessions. It’s a quest item she got by trading a hundred iron ore and a hundred chunks of coal to an NPC back at the miner’s guild. I helped her with the quest. But I couldn’t afford to do the quest myself, since I still need to sell most of my ore to pay for rent and stuff. I’ll get to doing it one day though.

As we get close to where I had died, I touch Gilly on the shoulder. “Hold up. The troll roams past this part.”

“Okay,” she says and we wait for the monster to show up.

It doesn’t take too long. Within a couple of minutes the lumbering giant appears, dragging its club behind itself on the ground. It makes a lot of noise and I marvel at how I could have been so distracted not to have heard the clearly obvious warning mechanism the devs had programmed into the mob. As it gets closer we back down the tunnel the way we came, making sure to keep out of its agro range. You could never tell exactly how far that range actually was, but more than thirty feet was usually a good rule of thumb.

We keep backing away until finally the troll stops. It looks around for a while and then it turns and continues back the way it came. Gilly and I immediately begin to follow it, again at a safe distance.

“How much damage did it do?” Gilly asks.

“Enough to kill me in one hit.”

“Check and see. It’d be nice to know how much hitpoints we’d need to survive a hit or two in this area. They look pretty slow. And if we could survive an initial hit we could probably run away from them.”

I pull up my detailed combat log. There are only two entries.

The Mountain Troll hits you for 237 damage.

You are defeated.

I tell Gilly the outcome.

She winces. “Eesh, these things hit mega hard. Guess we won’t be coming back here till we’re like level twenty or something.”

I nod in agreement and keep a close eye on our distance to the troll. Finally I see it lumber past a small glowing tombstone with my character name hovering above it.

“There you are, Reece!” Gilly announces pointing ahead. And then she turns back around to give me a sly grin. “Although I am going to miss my eye candy.”

“Wait till it’s your turn,” I retort, but I still managed to blush a little under her lingering gaze.

We wait for the troll to be well and out of sight before I rush forward and collect the gear from my tombstone. The contents come zipping up my HUD in a big wall of spam.

You collect a pair of Initiate Miner’s overalls from your corpse.

You collect an Initiate Miner’s helm from your corpse.

You collect a Rusted iron ring from your corpse.

You collect an Iron mining pick from your corpse.

You collect a stack of Sneaking Potion(10) from your corpse.

You collect a stack of Sneaking Potion(10) from your corpse.

You collect a chunk of silver ore from your corpse.

You collect a chunk of silver ore from your corpse.

You collect a chunk of silver ore from your corpse.

You collect a chunk of HQ silver ore from your corpse.

You collect a Scroll of Shadow Copy from your corpse.

You collect a copper coin from your corpse.

I immediately equip everything and feel far less vulnerable, the equipment appearing like magic over my torso and legs as I put them on.

I initiate a trade with Gilly to give her a stack of the sneaking potions.

She then put up 500 credits in exchange for the trade.

I’m about to tell her it’s too much, considering what I paid for the potions, but the thought of the rent being due next week keeps my mouth shut; although I do feel like a bit of a heel as I hit the trade confirmation button.

“Cool,” she says with her gorgeous smile. “Let’s take one of these so we don’t have to make two corpse retrievals.”

We do so and a small buff icon appears on my HUD indicating I’m under the effect of the potion. I’m in no hurry to run up to a troll to test it out though.

“Where to now, Reece?” Gilly asks.

It’s always a little weird to hear someone call me by my character name out loud. Although in truth I respond to it as easily as my real name. Sometimes, I have to admit that I wish it was my real name. “Definitely not around here with that troll roaming the tunnel. And the buff will wear off as soon as we start mining. We should try and find someplace that has some nodes that’s relatively far away from these things.”

“Okay give me a sec.” Gilly’s eyes then glaze over and I know she’s now multitasking on her rig, bringing up another window to do some research.

That’s another great thing about Gilly. She loves learning about the game and knows just where to find the info for it. I, on the other hand, have no stomach for weeding through the millions of online posts and vids about almost any game aspect you can think of.

A couple minutes later Gilly unfreezes.

“Okay, I got us a map,” she says as she suddenly reanimates. “There is a big chamber at the bottom of the mines that has a bunch of these trolls that all hang around in the center. But there are like twenty nodes all around the edge of the chamber that we can mine without aggroing them.”

Good ‘ole Gilly, the best girl scout ever.

“Sweet!” I say as I feel that familiar thrill of anticipation rising. “Let’s get to it!”

Gilly grins at me with that killer smile again and gives me a wink. “After you, partner.”