With this, I'm likely one of the wealthiest players in the game right now, only rivalled by nascent guilds.

And soon, I'm going to be one of the poorest again. After all, hoarding money isn't the objective right now; I need to invest in some crafting grist to get me up to a 2-Star Novice Blacksmith, which will let me forge my first set of combat gear. Or at the very least, it will let me forge some combat gear that's actually better than the basic garbage you get as part of the starting gear selection.

Besides just having better stats, player crafted gear is usually better than whatever you can buy from a merchant. For example, one of the weaponsmithing schematics you start out with, the Sharp Bronze Dagger, in addition to giving +2 Dexterity, also has a passive effect of causing the Seeping Wounds status effect, dealing 1 HP in bleed damage over 5 seconds. If you were to go to, say, a vendor and look at their selection of bronze daggers, the base damage would be lower, they'd only give +1 Dexterity, and there wouldn't be any passive abilities attached.

Whenever possible, it's simply more worthwhile to invest the money you would have spent on a weapon in a shop into making one of your own or buying off of a craftsman player. There are exceptions to this, but it's more of a guideline than a rule. Unless you go to a specialist shop, random junk bought off of travelling merchants is almost guaranteed to be of inferior quality - and also cheaper. You get what you pay for.

On my way back through the merchant district, I sell the remaining charms for 31 Stone Coppers each to a random 1-Star travelling merchant, and observe a few more players milling around the area, dressed in an eclectic mix of starter equipment, all ooh-ing and ahh-ing at the range of items available for purchase not-unlike tourists.

If I had any confidence in the depths of their coinpurses, I might have been tempted to hawk a few of the charms off to them instead, but I don't believe that it's an efficient use of my time. I doubt many of the local players have made any serious effort to make money, and those that are, are likely either independent crafters and merchants just starting to learn the ropes, or people who decided to volunteer themselves to feed the local dire wolf population.

As it stands, selling to 1-Star merchants at a 7% penalty is still more profitable.

Following the acrid stench of smoke and the sound of metal on metal, I find my way over to Stone Arsenal, the smithy belonging to a 4-Star Basic Blacksmith called Henna. She's actually a more important NPC than Austal is, despite them both being Mentors and her being comparatively less-skilled at her craft, a whole Tier beneath him.

Reason being, she's one of the primary points of contact in the local Main Storyline quest chain involving the local item appraiser. Once you gain enough affinity with her, through whatever means you see fit to use, she'll trust you enough to ask you a few favours. If you complete these favours - and I won't lie, they are a pain in the ass to get done - you'll randomly be accosted by a pair of corrupt City Guards when you're wandering the streets, who dislike how helpful you're being to her, which is one of the triggers for the quest chain.

Main Storyline quests can only be completed once, and the effects they have on the affected regions and NPCs can be drastic. I'm not clear on what exactly the rewards for completing this one are since I only got as far as the Corrupt Guards before someone else finished it, but the freeing of the appraiser is something I'd like to delay as much as possible, so I don't think I'll go after it until I get enough money from the Monocle to call the scheme done.

Henna is a grimy Firm woman in her early to mid-thirties, with arms that could choke a bear and a glare that damn near quenches blades on its own. Sufficed to say, she's a pretty popular NPC amongst a certain demographic of players.

After waiting politely for her to finish hammering out and quench an iron nail, I clear my throat, "Excuse me, Miss Henna. Could I have a moment of your time?"

The smith blows off some of the excess steam, twisting the nail back and forth as she inspects it for cracks and fractures, before throwing the still-hot nail into a metal tray full of it's fellows and nodding at me, "Sure thing. You looking for work? You look like someone who knows his way 'round a tool."

Mentors like Henna can more or less tell how skilled a player is with related subclasses. Thanks to attaining a 2-Star Novice rating in Carpentry, a related skillset, I can skip some of the tedious bits and start on the new skill faster. It's a nice quality of life thing, considering that past a certain point on a single trade, you're more or less obligated to acquire materials from other subclasses.

I mumble in the affirmative, "I'd like to learn the smithing trade. Could I trouble you for a glance at your Beginner's Smithing Manual before I begin?"

Henna pauses to consider it for a moment, then nods, my Charisma and Carpentry skill winning out, "Sure. Don't see why not, give me a moment. Don't touch nowt."

She tosses her pliers on the stone floor with a clatter, then ducks into her shop for a few minutes, emerging with a familiar-looking twine-bound bundle of parchment, which I once again scan through.

 

 

Handing the Manual back to her, I await her orders.

"Right, I've gotten an order for some nails. D'you think you can put together 50 of 'em out of copper?"

"Alright," I agree easily to her request.

 

 

After rummaging through a crate, Henna lugs out five copper ingots and hands them to me one by one, "This'll getcha started. You need more, you'll need to pay, I'm running a business, not a charity."

For a smith like her, Copper Nails probably have a 100% success rate, so with each ingot equating ten nails, it would certainly be enough. But it's fine, I have money to spare and there'll be enough left over when I'm done, since Copper Ingots are only 80 Stone Copper each. It's not until you get to Bronze Ingots that there's a price hike up to 2 Stone Silver and 5 Stone Coppers per ingot. Largely because tin is a slightly less common resource than copper and it being an alloy adds a premium on processing.

Or so goes the reasoning. It's one of those things players are expected to make themselves if they don't want to pay through the nose to NPCs. Getting as much Stone Silver as I did in one go is, while possible wherever there's a Donation NPC, not the norm after all.

I glance around the forge, "Do you have a spare anvil I can use?"

Henna blinks, as if remembering that her forge is only equipped to accommodate a single smith, "My old anvil is in storage, but it should be able to withstand a few whacks from a Novice. Come on, I'll need a hand bringing it out."

A quest screen pops up in response - as if this really needs it - but I shake it off and follow my new-old Mentor into the shop, sparing a look at the displays she's got up with examples of her work. A few suits of steel platemail, some throwing knives...Even a Tower Shield made out of mythrite. Expensive metal, but it's one of her deceased Uncle's works, if memory serves. More of a showpiece for backstory fluff than a good shield.

It eventually got stolen during the occupation of the city by Hammer Holdin, and was never seen again. Likely serving as a trophy in some asshole's Guild Hall.

Between the two of us, moving the heavy anvil out of storage is no trouble, though I'll freely admit Henna did most of the heavy lifting with consideration to my paltry 10 Strength. My job was to make sure she could actually carry the thing without it spilling out of her hands. After that I place the last of my logs on the ground in a neat stack,  then we haul the anvil atop its new seat and I can get to work on these nails without disturbing Henna's own work.

---

 

While I don't manage a 100% success rate, by the time I'm done I only needed one additional ingot from Henna to complete the job, and the follow-up quest to make 10 Bronze Plates isn't much worse, only needing another two Bronze Ingots to make up for the failures. Taking a chug from a pitcher of water she offers me to replenish a small fraction of my, by now, greatly depleted Stamina, I take stock of my gains from the experience.

 

 

With both Quests done, I've been promoted to 2-Star Novice, which gives me two chances of receiving a puzzle from the random pool that I can complete when I attempt The Failed Mage's Regret, and the minimum skill requirements for the armour I want to make.

Clearing my throat, I place the pitcher down on my borrowed anvil, "I'd like to exchange coin for some schematics: Novice's Bronze Hauberk, Chausses, Boots, Gloves, Facemask and Zweihander."

Henna runs the math in her head, "Ordinarily it'd be 65 Stone Silvers and 30 Stone copper, but for you, I'm willing to drop it to 30 Stone Silvers if you do me a small favour."

I blink rapidly, not expecting her to be so stingy and generous at the same time. I thought I had enough affinity with her to cash in for the discount down to 36 Stone Silvers, going off the guide I used to get started way back when, but I guess this falls under the umbrella of 'things I don't know about'.

Frowning, I cock my head, silently praying it's not the Main Storyline, "Sure. What do you need done?"

Henna smiles slyly, "You've been a great help getting this order together, so I'd appreciate it if you could take everything over to Geronil at the Pioneer's Alliance. When you do, make sure you bring back the rest of my pay - we'll call it the rest of the money you'd owe me for the schematics."

 

Well now. That's interesting.

Setting aside the Title, since I have a feeling the moment I change mine off Beloved Blade, a spear is going to materialise out of thin air and impale me, I'm very interested in the discount. Being awarded a permanent discount by an NPC requires extremely high affinity before they'll offer it, and is one - let's call it Tier for consistency's sake - below the Loyalty stat opens up and you can work on Sponsoring them to work for you.

It's interesting because I haven't done nearly enough to get her affinity so high. I only have a measly 10 Charisma, and some minor, extremely low-level busywork is only going to generate enough affinity to cash in for a one-off discount at the expense of all that affinity.

Pausing my thoughts, I return my thoughts to my current Title, Beloved Blade.

Other than a bug, or a benefit for being the first to interact with Henna (Unlikely, even if I'm the only person here right now, since a few players have stopped by while I worked), Beloved Blade is the only anomaly in this whole situation.

I still have no idea what the hell it does, but I can only point my finger at it as the culprit. When I get the chance, I need to twist Jannis' arm into telling me what the actual hell she did, because this is ridiculous.

Tabling that for now, I can't help but grimace when I look at the quest again, a pit forming in my stomach.

Geronil is one of the other points of contact for the Main Storyline quest - the final boss to be specific - and catching his attention is another of the triggers for the chain, since he is, to put it mildly, a corrupt bastard more concerned with lining his own pockets than doing his job, even and especially at the expense of everyone else. All you need to catch his eye is not be a Firm, or be seen helping one of his enemies. Both conditions I meet. Go me.

As the head of the local Pioneer's Alliance and by extension, all the Pioneers in the area, Geronil has the final say on what quests get posted, and thus, what jobs the Pioneers get allocated. And since most of the work that gets brought to the Alliance is high-risk, high pay commissions that City Hall can't or won't deal with, that means that not only does Geronil get a meaty cut of the commission, he also has City Hall over a barrel; As without his say-so, things like Dire Wolf attacks, urgent medicinal herb foraging...none of that gets taken care of.

He has an ego the size of a mountain and styles himself as the uncrowned king of Meteo City. The item appraiser was jailed by bribed guards on his orders to prevent him from handing evidence of his misdeeds over to the parent branch in Stone Heart City.

To deal with him, you need to go through a tedious investigation, dodge flunkies of increasing challenge he sends after you in the otherwise safe city, free the appraiser, get the evidence to Stone Heart City, and then kill him in a climactic city-wide event because he refuses to admit when he's beaten.

The Guild that completed it, Rambling Rose, recorded the whole thing, edited it together into a movie, then uploaded it. It was an interesting watch and did a lot to boost the game's growing popularity. They never publicised the rewards, but If I had to guess, there was at the very least a hefty amount of reputation and possibly a Title.

Storing away the crate of metal Henna proffers and resigned to my fate, I shuffle past a fresh group of Newborn players come to hassle Henna for repairs, strolling vaguely northwest to the bottom of Truth District.