MC: “Alright WiseMaster667, I accept your proposal! Shall we add each other as friends?”

WiseMaster667: “Amulet Pond, it’ll be a pleasure to adventure with you in the future! Perhaps sooner than I or you might expect?”

May: “Hey, I won’t mind if y’all add me as well?”

Krafty: “I wouldn’t mind that either…but everyone should be active and respond…I hate it when you add a friend but they’re never active!”

MC: “Wonderful, I’ll gladly add everyone. I plan on playing this game a lot. So, won’t have to worry in not seeing Amulet Pond online!”

May: “We’ll also get to see each other experience this game changing over time.”

Krafty: “And hopefully have fun…”

May: “Don’t be stupid Krafty, of course everyone’s gonna have fun, why else would you play a game?”

WiseMaster667: “Indeed-but, erm…does anyone know where the button is to add friends located at?”

I started to laugh out loud quietly because I was surprised that WiseMaster667 unexpectedly doesn’t know where the button for Friends List is? May is laughing too and Krafty started giggling.

Krafty: “May, do you know?”

May: “Ahaha no I don’t.”

So, you two didn’t know either?!

Well… Hehe, I guess I can get my personal “one up” against WiseMaster667! Actually…you’d think the friends list button would be obvious? Wait, how did Krafty and May party up even. Maybe they’re not using the official party feature but are instead just simply travelling together. Maybe that’s why Krafty was unsure whether he should follow Visiwend or Graypine because it could’ve separated him from May?

Oh, they’re now looking at me now.

MC: “Does everyone see the small cartoony looking guy at the bottom left? If you hover over them, they should start moving around a little bit playing a cute animation. Like a GIF.”

May, WiseMaster667: “Yes, I can see it.”

Krafty: “It’s cute!”

MC: “So, you just tap them that like everything else, and it should open up the friends list for you. I’ve also already sent everyone a friend request.”

May, Krafty, WiseMaster667: “I received it!”

I guess the Friend’s List option isn’t obvious for everyone else. If it weren’t for Fate-Fan I probably wouldn’t have known now either. Looks like she’s offline currently.

Krafty: “I didn’t realize that this was a button I could press.”

May: “Wise, you’ve never pressed on that either?”

WiseMaster667: “Ah no, I did not require it for the activities I’ve been performing.”

Hehe, maybe WiseMaster667 doesn’t have any friends to play this game with?... Well, I don’t have any friends interested in this game either… so this was pretty petty of me. Anyways! I should stop seeing him as my “rival”, it’s similar to a one-sided love relationship but probably worse, because I doubt, he ever tried to compete with me the moment he saw me, like how I did to him. Agh I feel so embarrassed now!

Everyone agreed to be friends, we agreed to meet up sometime later in the game. Tomorrow or next week. May and Krafty left together, and soon after, me and WiseMaster667 parted ways and went to continue playing the game on our own accords.

Even though I just finished talking to them, I can’t help but think about those interesting people again. Sure, they are just people I met online, but seeing them through a VR lens is jarring. This experience was somewhere in the middle between meeting someone in an online game while seeing them through a computer monitor and meeting them in real life. It’s both a little insane and awesome in the way this game is so immersive.

Krafty is a Sunmel, one of the available playable beastfolk races in this game. Both of those beastfolk races are actually basically cat people. His fur is light brown with little black and orange spots all over. My impression of him is that he isn’t much of a hardcore player. He seems to be more interested in the economy and aesthetic parts of this game.

May definitely seems like a person that Krafty can rely on. She’s an elf, a race which I’ve not had a pleasant opportunity seeing because their height is constantly blocking my view! Anyways, May has almond or beige colored skin and striking red hair. I can’t tell what type of content she enjoys in games like this, but it looks like May has the persona of either an older sister or an older colleague when I see placed next to Krafty.

Finally, there is my “former rival”, WiseMaster667. I don’t want to think too much more about him. And there is also not much to contemplate on his looks. His character looks like a human with average height, brown curly hair, light skin color, but somehow, he has round glasses on! I’m certain I didn’t see any possible option in the character creation to add accessory items like those, so somehow this guy acquired those glasses. I didn’t think much of it earlier…but there seems to be physics for glasses in this game?! I definitely saw him press them up earlier, has any other game added this option before? Was it even worth spending time to add physics to eyeglasses?

The thing about the character customization in Divine Mortality, is that none of the MANY selectable options ever provided any mention to whether it would affect gameplay or not. But I am willing to bet that the height difference of each individual’s character certainly does play a difference in the combat. No way a little guy like me swinging an axe would have same reach distance with our attacks than a player with a larger body. Also, WiseMaster667’s character obviously looks like a human to me. But now that I think back to the race selection in the character creation, and from what previously I read on the internet about this world, there isn’t a specific human race in Divine Mortality.

There are instead 7 races in this game. But out of those 7, there are 3 pairs:

Himen and Lumen Snowmel and Sunmel Dwarves and Elves (the 7th race being the Dwelf)

Many things about this game are odd and interesting. Maybe that’s a bad thing. But this is one of them, and I think I really like it. Vague and ambiguous differences between races and how they can be similar to each other but also strikingly unique at times. Perhaps it’s the result of the developer’s pursuing ultimate balance? I don’t know. But I do have a rough idea of what each race is like, based on what I've read before on the internet and from checking out their descriptions in the character creation.

According to WiseMaster667 earlier, he mentioned that Dwarves and Elves are practically a kin race. It’s pretty strange at first since these two races are often the opposites in many fantasy settings. Dwarves are usually small and slow, but willful and full of strength. While Elves are usually tall and agile, but maybe a bit weird or too proud of themselves for some reason. Anyways, the general stereotypes of these two do exists a little, but they are not in their extreme versions. Upon a closer look, the physical features in the faces of both races are actually fairly similar. Dwarves in this game do not have as pointy ears as the elves, but its shape is close to that. If you add a beard to an elf and shrink them down, then they would immediately look like a dwarf. So, in fact in this world, Elves and Dwarves are of a similar lineage and that is why a race such as Dwelfs exist. Dwelfs aren’t as tall as Elves, but they aren’t as short as Dwarves. I would say that the average Dwelf would be around the height of a short human. But perhaps the most important things I do not understand about the races in this game…is whether there are certain advantages or disadvantages for each race in gameplay? There must be, but the question now is, what are they?

I guess the easiest case to observe, is in the case of the only two playable beastfolk races in the game. The Snowmel and Sunmel. These are perhaps the most distinct races from each other in the three pair groups. I read online that the Snowmel’s homeland is, just like their name suggests, in northern or highly elevated places where snowfall is common. On the other hand, the Sunmel aren’t necessary a desert people, but they are more like the cat race which lives in temperate areas. As far as I know, there is no hot desert location in this world. But while browsing online there were already theories that an expansion will include more of the southern parts of this world. There will probably be more arid environments there, like a warm desert. Anyways, there are more differences between the Snowmel and Sunmel besides where they live. It is actually similar to the differences between the Himen and Lumen. The Sunmel are generally considered to be a more civilized version of their kin, while the Snowmel are wilder ones. In the character creation, I noticed that the Snowmel are also generally shorter than the Sunmel, perhaps it’s because of the type of environment they live in? Based on these factors, maybe for an example, a Snowmel character is more resistant to cold weather than a Sunmel character would be? Again, it’s all up for speculation right now, but there could already be players testing experiments to see the differences right now.

The final pair, and probably the most common pair group chosen by players, is the “human” pair races. I mean, it’s pretty obvious that they are the most human looking races out of all the others. The interesting thing about the Himen and Lumen, is while there are also actual racial differences, it seems like many of their differences in lore come from cultural aspects rather than biological ones. Like the Snowmel, the Lumen are considered to be wilder compared to the more civilized Himen. Another similarity which the Lumens have with the Snowmel, is that they are generally slightly shorter than the average Himen. But this difference is not as drastic as between the Snowmel and Sunmel. The skin colors of the Lumen tend to have a wider range of complexions (darkest to lightest), while most of the Himen tend to remain closer to around a golden or olive skin complexion.

But I shouldn’t forget that many Lumens and Himens aren’t bound to one side or the other. An example of this, is a recent memory of the argument between those two NPCs who were trying to recruit Krafty. Both of them are likely Himens because their skin colors were both light brownish and they were both pretty tall, even though they represented two very different countries. I now assume that WiseMaster667 picked the Lumen race instead of the Himen because his skin color is light and he’s what I consider is the average human height. I wonder if he knows if there are certain racial benefits that the Lumen have in gameplay?

I picked the Dwelf because I just liked the way they look, especially if I want to appear as proper wizard. But perhaps the Dwelf are not suited for magic? Anyways, a Dwelf with a fluffy beard and slightly pointy ears was a great choice to complete my wizardy look! And yes, it’s possible for both Dwelfs and Dwarves to not have beards, but I assume it’s more common for a Dwelf to not have a beard. I don’t know want to know what might happen to a Dwarf without one. Would the AI react differently?

Okay that’s it! I organized all this information in my mind, and now I’m ready to continue on my journey!

*Yawn*

Hold on…what time is it?

3:20 AM!?!

Where did all the time go! I know I spent a while creating my character… talking to Fate-Fan… then I walked around a little bit at the spawn temple… then I quickly went outside to the town…practiced combat for a little bit of time…then I crossed the bridge not too far away from me now…I listened to a Monk NPC explain some story…then I saw the event that Krafty triggered…and I talked to those friends for not too long, right? Okay, yeah maybe I did spend a lot of time ingame already.

When did I even start playing this game? Sometime at Friday night, well it’s now early Saturday morning. And I’m so sleepy!

Ugh. I don’t want to stop playing now. But I shouldn’t mess up my sleep schedule. It could decrease my chances of having time to play this game later on. Whatever, fine! I’ll log off now.

I’ve pressed the logout button and now a 10 second countdown started…

10

9

8

7

6

5

Please tell me I can’t log out! And now I am stuck in this game-no, instead I got transported into that world…right?

4

3

2

1…

*Shutting Off*

Nope! Well, this is probably for the best. Those “another-world” stories realistically would be super terrifying when you think about it.

Headset off and controllers away…turning off this console...heading to bed,

Hey, at least my eyes don’t hurt at all!