Going through the door Jaden walked into a nice peaceful workshop looking room. In the background a forge sat on low heat and the rancid smell of brine curing leather was in the air.

Looking around he was startled to come face to face with a short but fierce-looking man.

The man looked at him from head to toe before speaking in a broken accent.

“Don’ know how ya ended up here. But I reckon ya my responsibility now.” he said with a disgruntled look on his face while placing down a rather large blacksmiths hammer he was holding.

“Ya can open your status by thinkin’ ‘status’, reckon ya got some config to go through before your booted out of here to the surface world.” he continued.

Slightly confused and startled by what he could only assume to be an extremely lifelike NPC Jaden decided to power through and think ‘status.’

STATUS

Name: Tap to Set

Race: Tap to Set

Level: 0

Pool: 0

Unused Skill Points: 10

Unused Stat Points: 100

Titles:

The Advance Wave - One of the first into the game.

Randomize Free Stat Point Distribution? 10% increase to points if used!

(+) Attack: 0

-Attack: A measure of how much damage you do, this affects both mystical and physical combat

(+) Defense: 0

-Defense: A measure of how much of a beating you can take, while there is no HP pool the higher this number is the longer you will survive in a fight

(+) Speed: 0

-Speed: Affects how quickly you travel both in and out of combat.

(+) Dexterity: 0

-Dexterity: Generally Impacts control, higher dexterity means better aim, short term swiftness, and better hand movement.

(+) Source: 0

-Source: Impacts the size of your Pool

Skills:

Spells/Abilities:

Core Skill/Abilities:

1 Random, Tap to acquire (unavailable must select a race first)

Looking over his stats Jaden made a few decisions, first of all, he was definitely going to use the random stat distribution. Based on what Steven had said he would be stupid not too.

The second thing he decided was rather important. In past games, Jaden had often used ‘Joke’ names mostly because popular names were snatched up rather quickly. In this game however it was said that there would be no name limit, anyone could choose any name. With this in mind, Jaden decided he should pick a real-sounding name, judging by the complexity of the NPC, that by now was hammering away in the background, a name like ‘BigDickNick6969’ probably wouldn’t go over well.

Before he chose his name however, he figured he should choose his race.

Hitting the ‘Tap to Set’ on race Jaden was suddenly viewing his character from a third-person perspective. In his field of view was a big selector dial with a bunch of races on it. Mentally scrolling through them he was surprised as his avatar started to change into the different races.

Above his avatar were a few lines of text for each race, looking closely they denoted skills or increases that each race received, his mouth started watering when he saw the 10% increase in all crafting skills of the dwarven race. Looking closer Jaden noticed that the dwarf race looked very similar to the NPC he had just encountered. He figured that it made sense as it was clear that that same NPC was a craftsperson of some sort.

Scrolling through each of the races Jaden considered his options. The Dwarf race was the obvious option for his playstyle, but just to be sure he continued to go through the races. At the end of the list lots of the selections were combinations of different races mostly halflings and different lineage combinations but one weird selection stood out and made Jaden consider what he had been told. It was a random selection, the attached text piece stated “You will be assigned a random race, however, your race may have external modifiers or you may receive a rare or unlisted race”

Going off the idea that ‘random’ would pretty much always be positive Jaden started to consider which race he should select, on the one hand the dwarf race would be an ensured crafting boost. But a random race seemed to have the potential to become very powerful.

After a few seconds of contemplation, Jaden decided to go with the YOLO approach. without even blinking he hit random for both race, stat points, and the random skill.

Opening his status screen Jaden was very happy with the results.

STATUS

Name: Tap to Set

Race: Living Steel Dwarf (L)

Level: 0

Pool: 300

Unused Skill Points: 10

Unused Stat Points: 0

Titles:

The Advance Wave (L) - One of the first into the game.

The Last Of Us (U) - Play a forgotten race.

Stats:

(+) Attack: 20

(+) Defense: 10

(+) Speed: 10

(+) Dexterity: 40

(+) Source: 30

Skills:

Spells/Abilities:

Metal Magics (Race), Fire Magics (Race), Life Magics (Race), Perfect Percentage (Race)

Core Skill/Abilities:

Dwarf Hands (Race) - 10% increase to the growth of crafting skills.

Quintessential Cog (L) - At the cost of a variable amount of Pool summon a single part to be added to a creation. The creation will be changed by the part in ways determined by the caster, but will now cost a base amount of Pool to use. if the creation already cost pool it will now require more Pool than before.

Looking at his Spells/Abilities it appeared that his race would be a big part of his character development. The magics it added were pretty self-explanatory but the last ability 'perfect percentage' he would have to figure out in-game.

looking at his titles Jaden was a bit surprised to learn that his race the 'Living Steel Dwarf' was a 'forgotten' race. although it did sort of make sense given that his race was labeled as legendary.

The random, or not so random if Steven was to be believed, Core Ability he received was also a really cool looking ability and Jaden was excited to see how far he might be able to push it.

looking over his stat sheet once more Jaden knew there was only one last thing to do, clicking on the name 'Tap to Set' he started contemplating what he would like to be called in this world.

After a few moments, he began to type on the small keyboard that appeared when he clicked then hit enter.

Are you sure you would like to be named:

Alder Starstrider ?

[Yes] - [No]

Warning: This name will be visible to other players and NPC's in-game.