Finally! I’ve completed all the things I needed to do today.

Stretching my body while logging back into the game feels so great.

Today’s my second day playing Divine Mortality, but I’m even more excited to play it now more so than yesterday. And that’s saying something, because I was super hyper to play it yesterday, like a kid with a lot of sugary energy.

My character, Amulet Pond, has at last left the beginning town and the spawn temple next to it. Basically, the starting area. I didn’t bother siding with any of the recruiters or whatever faction there is available to join at the beginning of the game. Instead, I want to follow some of the helpful tips that WiseMaster667 had told me and our two other new friends, Krafty and May. But, unlike those two. I’m not planning to go to the Free Counties after I’m done here in the Holy Lands, instead I’ll head to the Orchard Hills to hopefully learn some magic.

I’ve noticed there are still a lot of players at the beginning area of the game, if not more than yesterday. WiseMaster677 is probably correct in predicting that half of the playerbase on the server will stay in the Holy Lands region for at least a week. I now actually think that’s a generous estimation. After seeing all of the many NPCs around the starter town and all the possible activities which a player can do in game (professions, crafting, training, minigames, etc.), then I wouldn’t be surprised if in the future some players might actually never leave the Holy Lands, since they wouldn’t want to. Afterall, the starting area of this game is merely one portion of the whole region called the Holy Lands. I can imagine a person such as Krafty wouldn’t leave the Holy Lands anytime soon, because he might already have all the content he could wish for in this game. This region is simply so large, even as the smallest region in the game, that it can probably satisfy many, if not a majority, of players on its own.

This isn’t an exaggeration, before playing today, I read website article about this game’s size. And it turns out to be just as huge as I imagined, if not larger. In the article it shows examples of some players who ran across the Holy Lands region, from one end to the farthest other end of the region, and it took all took them around 3 hours! That’s like the entire size of most maps in other open world RPGs, both for multiplayer and singleplayer games. Sure, with a rideable mount it would definitely be a lot faster to move across the map, but in Divine Mortality, the act of your character running isn’t indefinite. A player’s character, depending on what they wear and what attributes they have, generally can run about several minutes max before needing to rest their body or slowly regain their stamina back. So, not only is this game’s world super large, but a player’s character is also “balanced” to fit sensible(?) levels of mobility.

Not to mention that this game’s world is dynamic, literally. This includes the AI, both friendlies and enemies. They have their own individual needs, wants, abilities, and reactions. A perfect example of this is something which I just experienced recently. I left the starting town and headed west where there are many farmland villages. While travelling, I saw a random middle-aged Dwarf man (NPC) walking on a road which I happened to also be passing the opposite way. He was carrying several boxes of vegetables. But another player had accidentally nudged him while they were running past him. Lo and behold, he had dropped all his boxes. I walked over to see if the AI would react to my presence, and they did! I got the option to enter into a dialogue window conversation with him. I then ended up spending 5-10 minutes helping him carry two of those boxes while walking next to him all the way back towards the starting town. He thanked me and all the sudden I heard a cheerful tune play. That tune was obviously a “quest complete!” sound, which made me feel a little fuzzy inside. And right then, I also noticed numbers pop up at the bottom of my viewpoint. With that the experience bar finally appeared up to my user interface at the bottom side of my viewpoint!

So, that’s what has happened to me since I started playing this game again…

Walking on a countryside road for what feels like 30 minutes now! This is making me feel slightly annoyed. Meanwhile I’m also just idly thinking about this game’s ridiculous map size and that Dwarf. God damnit, if it wasn’t for that Dwarf NPC, I would’ve reached my destination by now! From now on, I will carefully consider whether I should accept requests from NPCs or not. Maybe this is a sign. Yes! A sign… a sign telling me that in the future my trust will be betrayed by a dwarf, or just any AI character. I shouldn’t trust any of them! Or maybe that won’t happen.

I’ve also been checking my friends list. Krafty or May haven’t been online since last time, but WiseMaster667 is online. It shows me that he’s at an area called “The Strawberry Fields”. Is that in the Holy Lands or another region? Doesn’t say.

This game has plenty of quirks, which I like, but I can see those quirks being unnecessarily inconvenient for a lot of other people. I might have also disliked some of this stuff in the past when I was younger. For instance, when you tap on another player, it won’t tell you, their name. Now, I like that, it adds mystery to the multiplayer. Forcing people to ask for each other’s names. Meanwhile, this friends list, it’ll gladly tell you the last time someone was online, what area they’re at, and it of course offers the ability to voice chat instantly/directly to your friend despite not being at the same location. I mean, stuff like that is expected to be available in a Friends List feature for an online game. But the developers chose to opt out of certain specific features that would either make the game harder or make it easier, or if it would add quality of life or remove quality of life features for the sake of something else. So far, these quirks haven’t bothered me yet. I like this kind of stuff because it brings immersion to the game by asking the player to interact more with the world directly instead of offering a cheap button which can automatically solve or do things easily for a player. But then again, it all depends on the situation, right?

Again, just another sign of the developers trying to pursue ultimate game balance for their game! Oh, and I just realized, WiseMaster667 contrarily instead in the pursuit of unlocking ways to alter the balance of the game. Like two opposite sides colliding… Kinda like that damn Dwarf and me on the road! I bet the EXP points I gained weren’t worth the time I wasted.

Another subject that I have been thinking about while on this somewhat tedious walk, well I guess I’m thinking about it right now too, is the day and night cycle in this game. As soon as I logged into Divine Mortality today, I quickly noticed the lighting, angle of the sunlight in the world, is pretty different to how it was yesterday.

When I started playing today it was sometime at 6 PM. But in this game’s world, it was apparently 6 AM. However, it was unusually bright out, as if it were noon. I think remember learning that this is common in some northern places in the real world, but for me it’s strange to experience. I could also tell it was 6 AM in-game thanks to the game’s internal clock. After calculating some stuff in my mind, I’ve realized that the daytime in this world is around 18 hours long. While nighttime lasts only for around 6 hours. It’s basically a real-world time zone, I don’t know where exactly in the real world it based off on, but the difference between my real-world time zone and this game’s time zone is about 12 hours. Before I went to sleep yesterday, it was sometime at 3 AM but in the game world it seems to have been sometime at 3 pm. Anyways, that explains why I’ve seen so much daytime in this world and barely any darkness. I would look at the sun in the sky to check exactly where it’s at, but I’d rather not hurt my eyes again. It’s unnecessarily bright! I could turn down the brightness in the settings, but then it’ll be difficult for me to see things in the shade. A game like this being so life-like is both a curse and a blessing.

Speaking of shade…I see a village! Now Amulet Pond’s sun scorched back can cool off. There should be some easy quests here and maybe even if I am lucky, I’ll find something magical. Worst case scenario, the only way for me to gain experience here is to probably grind stuff like chopping wood or help gather the grain.

Come to think of it, I’m not sure what happens after you level up. Normally in an RPG you can select a certain skill or place attribute points into certain attributes. But I see nothing in the user interface about gaining skills or increasing my character’s attributes. Dammit, why didn’t the developers include this into the tutorial? Maybe because I skipped some activities at the temple and the starting town? Or I should’ve asked about this to WiseMaster667, he definitely knows. Oh right! I can send him a text message via the Friends List…

*Half a minute later*

WiseMaster667: [“Don’t message me right now, I’m busy performing something important!”]

Ah…of course he is. And I was even about to praise him for being “wise”, suit yourself!

Whatever, I’ll just continue heading straight into the Village. I’ll narrate what I’m seeing in the meantime:

The village is surrounded by short dense shrubbery made out of vibrant green bushes and small trees. The route which Amulet Pond took was one of the several paths heading west and south from the Holy Temple. This route is neatly established by a medium wide stone road, which is often being used by travelling carriages or rural folk walking from their village to a town and back again. The road is able to remain fairly neat because the terrain which this road is established on is fairly flat. Even a non-mason can tell this stone’s quality is above average. During Amulet Ponds’ journey to reach this common village, he steadily walked past many tall shooting trees with fury leaves covering their bark. They have also been neatly organized as they were planted in pairs on both sides of the road. It was a nice travelling experience for him, but it had started to deteriorate into a bit of a stale experience after 30 minutes of walking. As if he were walking in a real countryside for hours on end. Amulet could also spot not too far in the distance, little huts regularly standing in the center of the fields of this farmland. The fields appear to be growing a variety of crops, but most of all, including the famous and staple crop in almost every medieval-like RPG…wheat! And then Amulet Pond-

MC: “Has finally reached the village!”

Hooray! My first ever journey in this adventure game has finally come to an end! Who says the destination can’t be better than the journey?

I’m glad this game has beautiful stylistic graphics and it’s built for Virtual Reality users, because otherwise it would have been a really boring journey due to having manually walked (and ran a little) all the way here, a simple village. This place better have some quests and rewards prepared for me!