Spending a day away from a game looking at the webpage for the game still counts as taking a break right? After logging in Isaiah winced after he checked this exp and noticed the 10% missing. At higher levels death just keeps getting worse. If someone was a real asshole they could multi-kill someone back into newbiehood. In another way losing gear and expensive components could be much worse and harder to earn back. Isaiah headed back to the dock of deku intending to take the ferry back to shadow.

After a while the ferry arrived at the rotting deku dock. Isaiah went to board the ferry and the sailor stopped him saying he needed to pay the 5 gold fee. After typing the sailor refused him saying that he didn’t have enough money. Crap. Isaiah was stuck here. Isaiah was stuck in this place where the only thing he knew was how to get from the dock to the small city of Verbobone. This is exactly how he died last time. No, not last time, that was Harmony but the time before that. Exploring new places and risking death was something that came along with being an adventurer. Heroes are supposed to face death and break their limits when defeat seems inevitable, not die so many times that they get offered a frequent dying program from the gods.

His path was clear; he needed to at least kill something however there was something else he overlooked.

HP:1/60

60 is a lot of hit points to regain using the painfully slow heal command. The fact that praying at the church returns the ghost from the dead with 1 hit point is always a nice insult to injury.

You begin tending to your wounds.

Your attempt falters.

(grumble)

You begin tending to your wounds.

You wrap a bandage around your arms and your injuries lessen.

HP: 3/60

This continues for 1 to 4 hit points of possible healing at a couple minute intervals. Maybe one day Isaiah would be rich enough to have a bunch of healing potions at all times.

HP: 60/60

A frustratingly long time later Isaiah was back at full hit points. Isaiah left the dock and went back to the small town on this island of deku. There were a few places to explore. First west and north of town there seemed to be a keep in the forest. East and north of town there was a tower. And it looked north of the main part of town there was a haunted house. The forest area to the east ended in a river. There were no room exits going east across the river like a bridge or rocks so it seemed impassable.

Hmm what new place should he decide to go to?

It didn’t take much thought. The haunted house seemed to be the safest choice. Why was it the safest choice? It was the closest to the nearest church. The thought of planning for an imminent death seemed grim. Isaiah wandered around on the first floor a bit. The rooms were described as what would stereotypically expect for a haunted house. Everything was in disrepair. Walls were rotten and falling apart. The funrature’s upholstery was in tatters. He fought several transparent ghosts which he was able to dispatch without much trouble. Sadly these ghosts didn’t drop any gold. On the second floor he ran across something that seemed like it might be really scary. The death knight’s description was that it was a fallen paladin created by a lich.

Death knight attacks you!

Death knight misses you.

You hit death knight.

You miss death knight.

Death Knight hits you.

HP: 51/60

You hit death knight.

You hit death knight.

The sword tells you: “I shall now summon the demon prince!”

Rabbit appears before you.

Rabbit misses death knight.

You hit death knight.

You hit death knight.

Death knight tries to chill you with his fingers but you resist his touch.

You hit death knight.

You hit death knight.

Rabbit misses death knight.

You miss death knight.

You miss death knight.

Death knight chills rabbit with his fingers.

Rabbit drops dead before you.

You hit death knight.

You hit death knight.

Death knight drops dead before you.

Isaiah offered the corpse of the death knight. The death knight had 49 silver and 4 gold. For being a knight he was surprisingly poor. The undead creature also drops some gear. It was a simple leather armor, a belt pouch, and a non-magical two handed sword. Isaiah took it all. He was right next to town and sold the two handed sword and leather armor for a bit of gold and decided to keep the belt pouch. It looked like it was something that could be used to store some things in. He was hopeful that it would be big enough to keep a components bag in to protect from thieves but considering how things have been created to be as painful as possible this far he didn’t think he would be so lucky. As far as he could tell there was no wizard tower on deku where he could buy another component bag. There is also the problem even if he did go back he

did go back he wouldn’t still have money problems. Hand in hand with his goal to become more powerful was also the search for more coins.

Now Isaiah had a bit of a problem. While his first instinct was to run back to areas he knew he could handle he also had originally planned to explore deku. Silvanus’s temple was on deku anyway and Schatten treated it like it was her home. If he could find it and she was online then maybe the two of them could have tea together. If he was feeling especially brave maybe he could even ask her out for a date. A date with a cute elven priestess sounds exciting.

Schatten wasn’t online right now though so he didn’t think he’d see her in her temple. Or was it Silvanus’s temple? There were an awful lot of deities for a player base that tended to not have more than 30 people online at any given time. Well, the wizards didn’t show up on the who list so there could be more. It seemed like they either wanted to be left alone to code stuff or just give the impression that they were always watching and no one would know. He’d never seen any of the immortals in their visible form. Maybe Tristan was lurking around invisible when he was doing that avatar project presentation and controlling Fulgar but as far as he could tell he would never know. Did detect invisibility show if a staff member was in the room? He doubted it. If he asked over the lines to see if an immortal would come to him to test it out it’d likely be viewed as being disrespectful. Isaiah’s player decided thinking about the topics of immortals was jumbling his thoughts too much. Meeting Schatten again would be a nice goal. Hopefully he could figure out where her temple was and meet up with her again when she was online again.

Focus! Focus!!!

Isaiah headed to the west of town and through the forest to the keep that was there. It was called blacktongue keep. It was a tower with stairs and smelled musty and of ale. There were a pair of keep guards in the first room. The keep guards were creatively named ‘keep guard’. The guards were orcs. They had unkempt matted hair and were very stinky. They didn’t look like guards who did their job very well. The one was wielding a bastard sword and some silver chain mail.

Isaiah was at full HP so he decided to give it ago. Upon entering the room with the orc gate guards they auto attacked him.

Keep Guard attacks you!

You miss keep guard.

You miss keep guard.

Keep guard misses you.

Keep guard hits you.

HP: 55/60

You hit keep guard.

You miss keep guard.

Keep guard hits you.

HP: 50/60

Keep guard misses you.

(at this point Isaiah switched to cheese tactics)

You unwield sword of insanity.

You unwield bone dagger.

You remove chain.

You begin casting a spell.

You leave south.

A swarm of magic missiles shoot out from your hands blasting into keep guard.

You begin memorizing a spell.

You waver.

You have memorized magic missile.

You leave north.

Keep guard attacks you!

You begin casting a spell.

You leave south.

A swarm of magic missiles shoot out from your hands blasting into keep guard.

(this cheeky pattern continued a little bit until he the keep guard dropped dead)

Isaiah offered the corpse and checked out what the keep guard’s drops. It had left a normal looking bastard sword and a silver chain mail. After looking at the chain mail Isaiah noted it wasn’t the same description as the chainmail he wore which he guessed was the default sold at the armor shop. This orc’s armor had a symbol of a wolf emblazoned on it. Isaiah was a little miffed that the orc didn’t drop any coins. Even rats dropped coins!

Isaiah took a moment to memorize and then cast detect magic. He may not have any spell components but he had his spellbook and there were still spells that didn’t need components to cast. Detect magic was one of these. None of the items on the ground had that suffix (A blue glow) so it all of it was mundane. But the experience was good. He could get 50 gold or so from the chainmail he thought so he grabbed it up. The bastard sword was maybe half that so he just left it. However, unlike the areas where he was killing before the experience point gain here was fairly decent. If nothing else he could safely grind these orcs to regain some of his lost experience from his recent death. After around the third set of armor Isaiah picked up he noticed that one of them had that blue glow. It was (a blue glow) not (a faint blue glow) he had found either a +2 chainmail or a -2 chainmail. He’d memorized an identify spell to cast identify only to be rudely reminded that he didn’t have the components.

Isaiah went up and down the tower killing and looting everything he could see until he’d filled up all of his carrying capacity. After that he went back to town and sold all of the non-enchanted armors for a few hundred gold. Detect magic had expired by then so he had to memorize and then recast the spell so as to not accidentally sell the wrong armor. RNG for the drop was not great. Of the armors she got, only one of them was enchanted. While he didn’t have components for the identify spell the church could check for a curse. Isaiah took the armor and headed back to the church and paid for the church’s curse check service. Feeling excited, Isaiah went to remove his old armor and equip his new +2 silver chainmail. However, what he got was disappointment.

You are not high enough level to equip this item.

(Darn it!)

Isaiah (OOC) I got a +2 item and it won’t let me use it says I’m too low level.

Vethor (OOC) I’m guessing at your question here but it is +1 for each 5 levels. So for +2 item you’ll need to be posing as a class that is level 10 at least. Is that what you wanted to know?

Isaiah (OOC) Yes, thank you Vethor