Chapter 0023

“What do you mean by how I am?” Leviene asked Sylphie, affronted by her comment and her brother’s perfect understanding of the situation.

“You told me you relax by farming right?” The silly Perrian Let nodded. Leviene did start playing MMORPG to give Sylphie female company and to get her out of her depression. Then she started to like the game as a relaxing pastime. There something soothing when monotonously killing mobs without requiring massive brain power. “Well, when you farm, you’re so focus on farming you seem to zone out and ignore everything else.”

“Yeah. So?”

“That’s it.”

“That’s it?”

“Yeah.”

“Okaaayy.” Leviene didn’t believe her, but she was not going to pursue the issue. She has better things to do than arguing with the beneficiary of all her zoned out zombie farming. Going to train in her chosen class.

The class trainers were all in one area of the map called the Temple of the Chosen, at the north east portion of the city.

Like all buildings in Evanstrail, the Temple of the Chosen was more like an open aired pavillion rather than a temple, similar to the Pantheon in Rome. Unlike the ancient building monument, the Temple of the Chosen is a three storied building with wide doorways and ledges without balconies. This place was made to accommodate fliers.

Upon entering the Temple of the Chosen, Leviene’s group immediate went their separate ways, Leviene to the Priest trainer, Sylphie to the Druid trainer and Erica to the Sword Dancer trainer. Becoming a Priest was easy. Leviene walked up to the NPC, asked to be trained as a Priest and viola, she was done.

Then Leviene went to the Assassin trainer. There was a little hiccup there. The trainer said, “You already have chosen your class. Please come back when you purchase another name.”

“But, I have another name.” Leviene argued with the NPC.

“Please change into your alternative persona then you can train as an Assassin.” The trainer replied in a bored tone.

“How?” The little Perrian Let didn’t see a method of changing into a new character. It was obvious she was blind and fishing for answers. Leviene has her good points. Playing Finding Waldo, not one of them.

When confronted with her inadequacy, Leviene will point out that men get lost and stay lost longer than her because they never stop and ask for directions. Then GPS was invented and Leviene’s excuse didn’t work anymore.

“On the first page of your spellbook, you should have a list of all the names you have purchased. Click on the name you wish and your name tag would change. Once you change your name, you can train as a Assassin.” the Assassin trainer replied in bored monotonous tone.

Leviene guess the administrator realize people would eventually buy name for alts, so they programmed in the response right in. Nice forward thinking. However, couldn’t they program the NPC to have a better personality than this robot?

The experience player did what the trainer suggest, open her spellbook to the main page. There were four icons in with the names she has chosen. Let’s see. Hmmm. Assigning classes to name. Leviene will be her Priest. The first name is designated the main character and the second third and fourth names the alt.

The process of assigning names to alts is not problematic in MMO. It is expected for players to have more than one characters on their accounts.

Arashia embraced the premises as well. The caveat with Arashia is the 50% experience penalty on alts. Therefore it is not recommended for healers and tanks to be alts. With their slow kill rate combined with the experience penalty, it will twice or three times as long to level the healer or tanks compared to dps.

“Altreyes would be my Assassin. Rayael would be my Guardian and Arganox, I’ll leave it be. Even with my intensive grinding method, I don’t think I can grind out a fourth character. Well, I could, but not with trying to keep up with Erica’s one character and Sylphie’s two.”

Leviene clicked on Altreyes. Changing from one character to another took one second. OOOOOHHHHHHH. Nice. The experience player can already imagine the mobs she can take on. “I’ll start with my dps, switch to my healing character then maybe my Guardian if I need to tank the mob.” The little Perrian Let rubbed her hand gleefully.

Suddenly, Leviene thought of a problem. “Please don’t let there be an ‘cant change in combat’ constraint. First thing I’ll test out. Test out. Hmmm.. nah I don’t need to do that.”

[Leviene whisper to Kaleseze]: John you there?

[Kaleseze whisper to Leviene]: What do you want? Thought you were going to choose your class?

[Leviene whisper to Kaleseze]: Yea I am. But I need to know if you can change your character in combat?

[Kaleseze whisper to Leviene]: Yeah you can change your character in combat.

Leviene didn’t question the validity of Kalseze answer even though she wonder how he could have tested the class change mechanics when they can’t fight mobs yet. She wanted to ask her brother, but he’d get off track lecturing her about optimization and what not that she forgot what the question was about.

In this case, the answer wasn’t hard. Kaleseze dueled other players.

Playing against the computer all the time is boring. Even though a players interact with other players to down a boss, after a while, even the hardest boss gets boring. There is an interactive elements which constantly challenge players regardless of the state of the game and that is fighting with other players.

In Dark Drake Kingdoms, there are several types of pvp elements created. Dueling is the most basic and easiest type. A players goes up to another player and ask for a duel. If the other player agree, then they fight until one player has 1 HP left.

Tournament type fighting is when the player or a party of players queue up to battle other players. When an opponent is found, they are teleported to the arena to fight.

War Zones are similar to Tournaments except with objective such as capture the flag, invade the enemy's stronghold or hold the nodes.

Then there the fighting Leviene hates the most, Environmental Killing. Simply put, Environmental Killing occurs when a player exploring the world chance upon another player. Depending on the situation, the player can ignore the other player or they can fight. No questions asked, no warning given. Leviene gets jumped all the time when she in the world searching for materials. Damn evil thieves!

Leviene generally takes the first option and ignore the other players. Most of the time the other players will ignore her back and they go on their separate ways. Once in a while the other player will attack her, especially when she fighting against a mob. Then she dies and complains to her guildies. They come and kill the offender(s) and Leviene goes back to farming.

[Leviene whisper to Kaleseze]: You know what this means right?

[Kaleseze whisper to Leviene]: Peoples with alt have a major advantage. Yea I know. But it won’t help you until later on.

[Leviene whisper to Kaleseze]: What do you mean?

[Kaleseze whisper to Leviene]: Your class can change in combat, but your gear doesn’t. If you change from a plate wearing class to a leather wearing class, all your plate gear will be unequipped and goes into your inventory.

[Leviene whisper to Kaleseze]: That sucks! What happens if your inventory is full?

[Kaleseze whisper to Leviene]: I don’t know, but I think it will drop to the ground.

[Leviene whisper to Kaleseze]: Ugh

[Kaleseze whisper to Leviene]: Hey cheer up! The wardrobe mod cost only one crystal. The mod will let you keep the gear you are wearing with the current character.

[Leviene whisper to Kaleseze]: A crystal!

The money grubbing side of Leviene expose its ugly head. A crystal might not sound like much right now, but it might means months of farming and grinding.

[Kaleseze whisper to Leviene]: It’s expensive now, but alts were made for characters at higher level. We’re lucky we’re starting off with it right now.

[Leviene whisper to Kaleseze]: Ugh, a crystal

[Kaleseze whisper to Leviene]: Hey cheer up. Weapon swapping is free.

[Leviene whisper to Kaleseze]: Quit with fake cheer, bro, it’s not working but thx anyways. Talk to you later.

[Kaleseze whisper to Leviene]: Cya farmbot.

First order of business, grind gold to buy a wardrobe mod!