Itzal 0 Posted April 4, 2021 #1 Report Share Posted April 4, 2021 Spoiler General Level: 31 Paragon Lv: 51 Tier: 4 HP: 820. Energy: 82 DMG: Stealth Rating: SP Available: 3 Total SP: 205 <<Combat Set>> ---------------------------------------------- Slot 1: Tier 1: Evasion / Evasion / Evasion Slot 2: Tier 4: Bleed / Bleed / Paralysis Slot 3: Tier 2: Accuracy / Accuracy / Accuracy ---------------------------------------------- <<Scout Set>> <<Incomplete>> ---------------------------------------------- Slot 1: Tier 1: Accuracy / Accuracy / Accuracy Slot 2: Tier ?: ??? / ??? / ??? Slot 3: Tier 2: Prosperity / Prosperity / Prosperity ---------------------------------------------- Skills: Rank 5 1H Weapon Skill - One handed Straight Sword - 5 DMG 30 SP Rank 2 MA Skill - Martial Arts - 2 DMG. Unlock Sword arts 8 SP Rank 5 Cloth Armor - Gain Mitigation based on your rank in Cloth armor. You can only benefit from one armor skill at a time (the respective armor type must be equipped). Your mitigation is capped at 1 equipment slots. - 20 MIT 30 SP Rank 5 Search - Increases your perception, making it easier to find treasure, detect hidden creatures, and increases your chance of obtaining better loot from monsters. - +5 LD, +5 Stealth Detection 30 SP Extended Mod Limit - Your focused interest on modifying your skills has granted you access to further customization. - +2 Mod Slots 10 SP Combat Mastery: Damage - You’ve chosen to specialize in the art of combat, bolstering your strength beyond its usual parameters. - 3*Tier DMG 13 SP Rank 1 Battle Healing - Passively recover health in battle. - +1% HP per In combat turn (10 HP) 4 SP Mods: 5 Mod Slots + 2 Ferocity - +2 base damage when using Sword Arts of the specified weapon type. Players cannot use both Precision and Ferocity. Become more vicious and ferocious with your weapon of choice. - +2 DMG. One Handed Straight Sword 6 SP Athletics - You have become adept at lightweight weapons, able to move quickly with them and make more deadly blows. - +1 DMG. Cloth Armor 4 SP [ADD-ON] Nimble - You are more quick and nimble, with a sharper eye. Able to evade detection and hits easier, find items and people quicker. - +1 EVA. +1 LD. Cloth Armor 6 SP Night Vision - Allows the user to see normally in dim or dark areas. - Searching 3 SP Detect - Your perception is increased further, allowing you to find dungeons and hidden creatures more easily. - +2 Stealth Detection. +1 LD (sub-dungeons & labyrinths) 4 SP Tracking - Allows the user to track a monster, NPC, or other player that they have encountered or know the name of. Negates all bonuses to the target’s Stealth Rating. After tracking, your first attack against the tracked creature cannot miss. Cannot be used in combat. - Searching 4 SP [ADD-ON] Reveal - +2 LD when searching for dungeons and labyrinths. You may also search for a sub-dungeon or labyrinth once every 10 posts (instead of 15). Reduces the personal post cooldown when searching for a labyrinth to 3 posts (instead of 5). - Searching 6 SP Untraceable - Negates the effect of the Tracking skill against the user. You learn how to move perfectly, and can move without leaving so much as a trace. - Hiding 4 SP Vanish - Allows the use of a post action to re-enter stealth while in combat. Should the player with this mod get a killing blow on an enemy, Vanish may be activated on their next turn as a free action if it is off cooldown. Cooldown starts upon exiting stealth. After having used stealth skills for some time, you have become silent, and now can move so silently that enemies can lose perception of you. - Hiding 6 SP Surprise Attack: Assassin - Attacks made from stealth cannot miss. Attacking from stealth grants +1 * player’s tier DMG. Stuns and other status effects (Bleed, Paralysis, Burn, etc) cannot trigger. Cannot possess both Surprise Attack (Assassin) and Surprise Attack (Trickster). You have mastered hiding, and now can move so silently that the target has no time to react, guaranteeing a hit. You focus on hitting critical zones and exploiting your target's weak points, allowing for bonus damage. - +1*tier dmg from Stealth. Hiding 6 SP Extra/locked Skills: 4 Extra Skill Slots Hiding - Blend into your surroundings, making it harder for monsters and other players to sense your presence and detect you. +5 Stealth Rating 30 SP Disguise - As a free action, increase Evasion by 1 and lesser criticals [BD8 w/ focus/BD9] are not autohits. Effect lasts until the start of next turn. You’ve become fleet of foot, capable of unleashing bursts of speed when the need arises. Cooldown: Survival - Increases Healing effects received from all sources by 10%. Grants immunity to all damage dealing environmental attacks/effects. Your skin has grown hard and weathered, allowing you to brave even the harshest of storms with relative ease. Meditation - Revitalize yourself by stilling your mind. - +4*tier energy on use Forgotten King's Authority - Through sheer force of will you can exhibit extraordinary command over your body. - Nullify all disabling effects. Cooldown: 7 Rounds - EN Cost: 5 EN Brawler - You might not float like a butterfly but your face breaks fists. - +10*tier MIT until next turn Cooldown: 5 Turns - EN Cost: 5 EN Mega Slime Farm Used in this thread: +10% Experience Bonus Clash! Clang! BOOM! The noises of warfare and battle rang clearly and loudly across the darkened chamber. Slash! Smash! CRASH! A small army of warriors of various skill and power. A monstrous beast who serves his floor. A dark entity with too much ambition. Hack! Stab! WOOSH! Darkness envelopes the warriors, but not a single one is discouraged. Taunts and jeers from evil whispers falling apart as light breaks through. A false strength stripped away. And when all seemed to be at an end with victory at hand. rumble rumble rumble rumble BOOM! Itzal practically leaped up from his bed from the nightmare with a cry of shock. He sat there breathing heavily, limbs shaking as he put his right hand on his face. "Had that really happened? But.. What had happened?" The most he could remember was that nightmare. With his last thoughts before being struck by the wave being one of terror. Against bosses and monsters, he had no fear. He could calculate chances, decipher an option... But that... There was nothing natural about it. Well, as natural as you could get in this digital world. In his split moment to think, all he could process was terror. Terrified that they were suddenly going to be erased from this world, and the real one. It was the most negative outcome possible, but it's all he could process before being washed away. After that, he just... Itzal's breathing began to slow down as he took longer breaths. He took one hand and touched the other. He could still feel. That meant he had a physical body, or digital at least... Which meant he was still alive. Breathing a heavy sigh of relief, he could feel his heartbeat return to normal. That was, of course, until... His eyes shot wide open. "ZANDRA!" He immediately opened up his menu to reach the message section, but was interrupted by the cardinal system: Itzal smashed accept, curious but to the smallest degree. His wife came first. He opened his messenger and sent her a message: Quote To: Zandra From: Itzal Zandra are you ok?! I just came to after the boss raid, please message me back if you're alive! Every second felt like a minute. And every minute like an hour. His heart pounded faster and faster as he grew worried, memories of reading Kasier's name on the monument flashing across his vision. He begged, he prayed to God that she was ok. And just as he was about to start crying: Quote To: Itzal From: Zandra Itzal? Was just gonna contact you. Im fine, how are you? Itzal let go of his breath and felt his body slump down in relief as he learned to breath again. "Thank you Lord.. Thank you." After a moment or two he started giving his reply. Quote To: Zandra From: Itzal I'm alive. I'll meet up with you in a bit, just gotta get my bearings first. With that sent, he finally took his first look at his surroundings since his awakening. To his complete and utter shock and surprise, Itzal was in the bed of his house. The one he and Kasier designed. It was quiet other than the forest ambience coming from outside. He could even smell the trees from here. Swinging his legs over the edge of the bed, he sat at it's edge and took a moment to process. "...What on earth happened?" That's when the update message came back to the front of his mind now that he wasn't in a panic. There was an update. Did it have something to do with the shadow? Or that wave of darkness? Gingerly, he opened his menu. Words: 553 Total: 553 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 4, 2021 Author #2 Report Share Posted April 4, 2021 "Caw!" Itzal looked up to see Aldion sitting in the familiar house he and Kasier built originally for Velnia. It took the raven some time to get adjusted to the home originally, but he now waddled out of it onto the rod that stuck out for flying creatures to stand or sit. Shaking his feathers he cawed again at Itzal, and the player chuckled. There was a sense of ease knowing that his familiar had survived. He reached up and rubbed against the back of the raven's head, the creature's eyelids falling slightly as it enjoyed the attention. Especially after... Whatever it was they had witnessed. When the raven had enough it gave a friendly peck to inform him and Itzal withdrew his hand. "Aldion. Zandra.. I'm so glad you two are ok." He thought aloud. "If they both survived, it's a safe assumption to say that everyone else did too. That's a relief... I wonder if Orgoth survived it too." Aldion started grooming his feathers, so Itzal turned his attention to the menu again. Before he started navigating it however, he noticed... Rather late, that his armor was missing. Looking at himself he had been put in his vanity clothes. His every day clothes so to speak. Consisting of a cotton short-sleeved red shirt, navy blue pants, black boots with silver accents, and a black trench coat with purple accents, it was far more comfortable than his armor actually was... Did Kayaba set up the system to give them the most comforting return? Or was this some type of glitch? He wasn't sure which it was, but he had a feeling he'd be aching a little if he woke up in his armor. Aldion glided over from his perch and landed on Itzal's shoulder. "Caw!" Itzal chuckled. "Alright, you're right. It's time to see what this update's all about." This was the first time Itzal had ever seen an update with a summary, before the actual details. In fact, the actual details were placed within sub-tabs in the menu. Very curious, and a bit uncertain, he went over the summaries: Leveling System has been dramatically altered EXP System added. SP Reward System added. Player required to reallocate their skill points. Combat System has been dramatically altered. Sword Arts Updated Skill System has been dramatically altered. Skills Changed Skills Moved Skills Added Extra Skills Added Extra Skill Slots Added Player Stats have been Dramatically Reduced New Functions have been Added to Certain Professions Merchants Changed to Appraisers NPC Merchant Added Tiered Materials Condensed to Materials New Items Added He didn't move for a long while. He was still trying to process the magnitude of how much SAO had just changed. He looked at the name of the update: Three Point O So this wasn't some patch update. Some upgrade or anything. He looked at these changes, and realized that the game had just changed in it's entirety. Nothing would be the same moving forward. For one, players couldn't level up by collecting skill points anymore. It was only by experience. He checked his level and his eyes widened with horror as he saw his level had dropped to thirty one. He quickly opened the experience section of the sub-tabs and began to look over it all, trading his panic with confusion when he saw 'paragon levels'. As he read through the detailed changes in levels, the soft level cap, and the paragon level systems, as well as the rewards for paragon levels, he became more and more quiet and invested. Occasionally muttering something to himself. "Ok... Ok... So this removes the infinite levels problem, but it also doesn't stop players from- Ow!" He turned to look at Aldion who pecked the side of his head. "Oh right. Well basically instead of players leveling up via skill points, they level up via experience points. Every level you get five skill points. Every five paragon levels you get five skill points. Originally players could level up to infinity, but then cardinal put a level cap... At level eighty eight. A weird spot. But, now you reach the soft level cap, which according to this is five levels higher than the highest floor, you can earn paragon levels to infinity. While you can grind these, it takes longer to earn anything, though there are milestones." Actually. He double checked his stats and, sure enough. Given his level, he was declared a tier four level player. But since they didn't have any tier four level floors, he would likely have to rely on events and raids in the hopes that tier four drops would occur. He'd have to look at those later though. Right now he was focused on the actual leveling update. According to the system, his health was reduced down to eight hundred and twenty, and his energy likewise down to eighty two. "Player stats reduced dramatically huh? That's no understatement." From One thousand seven hundred to eight hundred twenty. That was over half of his health stripped away. More interestingly, if players gained another level, they would lose paragon levels with that total experience. This made sense to Itzal, it meant they didn't have to wait or anything. And items or bonuses gained through milestones were not stripped away either. Words: 802 Total: 1,355 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 5, 2021 Author #3 Report Share Posted April 5, 2021 The sound of his finger tapping against the bed-boards disturbed the ambience of the forest as Itzal processed this information in deep thought. Aldion shifted from foot to foot, beginning to get bored with staring at the screen this whole time. It wouldn't be long before he got bored enough to start flying off looking for something to do around the house. "Caw.." Itzal looked at Aldion and scratched the crown of his head. "You're fine Aldion. I just have... A lot to look through." Aldion nodded but didn't leave yet. He was indeed a very loyal familiar... But that could only beat boredom for so long he thought with a strained chuckle. He was nervous with the sudden drop in health points. He was nervous with how combat will have changed. He was nervous with how far his levels fell, and how difficult it would be to grind all of those back. From his calculations he lost a lot of skill points, and he wasn't sure if the skill change involved skill costs. The cardinal system told him to reallocate his skill points, but it may be a difficult decision if they're becoming far more limited than they were before. He was also worried about monsters. Did they get stronger? Were they the same? Or did they grow weaker than before? So many unanswered questions laying on top of this massive level system change. He didn't hate it, if anything it was a perfect revamp for a game. But given this was a death world, this made him very concerned regarding their enemies. CREEAAAK. Itzal jumped to his feet with his hands moving to grab his blade which wasn't even there. His searching skill had activated almost by instinct, but it was all glitchy and hurt his eyes with the broken visual. "Argh!... Wha- huh?" He turned it off and looked around the room. The window was open, and he almost panicked again until he saw a black feather at the base of it. Turning to see Aldion, the black raven wasn't there. "Guess he got bored..." Letting himself fall sitting down onto his bed again he exhaled a long sigh. He needed to get back to reading this update. All these unanswered questions would be answered if he just finished. Moving on to paragon level milestones, he read about a laurel wreath. At paragon level ten the player received a three percent bonus to all experience gained which was very helpful. At paragon level twenty five one received an equipment change ticket, which he could only assume changed the type of an item, though he wasn't entirely sure. Maybe it would be described somewhere else in the update list. They also received the ability to change all their skills for free, and three items called gleaming scales, though he had no idea what those were as of yet. At paragon level fifty the player unlocked the ability to design their very own custom skill, or a custom sword art of their choosing.. Within parameters, which made sense. At paragon level sixty they received three paragon tier up tickets for equipment, non-stackable, and three demonic shards. At level seventy five players received a fifth extra skill slot, which made Itzal even more confused than before. At paragon level one hundred the player's stats for paragon levels double, and they received three rainbow scales and three demonic shards. And those were the paragon level rewards. Tapping his foot and tapping his fingers, he processed the potential of paragon levels for anyone who had the time to actually grind all of these out. If someone could reach the highest level of paragon, they would quickly be able to dominate other players, and hold an edge over bosses and dungeons and the like. Just by glancing at this, he'd guess that there were things players could do with demonic equipment, as well as something else looking at the rainbow scale but he wasn't sure. Extra skills seemed to have a limiter, so he'd need to look into that one as well. It was difficult though. Just to get anything from paragon levels you needed to at least grind five levels. And to reach them you needed to get experience points equivalent to a supremely high level. As he thought of this, he figured out why he'd lost levels so quickly. When skill points translated to experience, there were some digits lost. The remaining experience points were converted to levels, and the remainder experience points became his paragon levels. That would mean that when the next floor was eventually reached, they'd lose one paragon level, but gain an actual level. Losing nothing in stats, even potentially gaining more on top of the paragon ones, but also making it harder to increase paragon levels by a full level's worth of experience. It was a double edged sword, but it was worth it in the long run. Itzal lowered his chin onto his enclosed hands supported by his elbows as he went over simulations in his mind. "Kayaba.. You really thought long and hard about this didn't you? This isn't just a whim is it? Is it possible that you actually..." He shook his head. No. This was NOT the time to think about this. He was sitting on a delicate matter which required much, much deep thought. This one change alone would change his entire build. Not just his but everyone's build. This was a day to restrategize, not pondering on what their captor is or isn't. First he needed to survive this. Only after they reached the end, could they take a moment and question him for real. If he ever gave them the chance that is... 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Itzal 0 Posted April 5, 2021 Author #4 Report Share Posted April 5, 2021 Only after he had read over the entire paragon level system three times over did he finally take a break from it and rub his eyes. There was so much data and information to process, and despite not being able to feel pain, he could feel the phantom pain of that ache you get when you stare at a computer screen for far, far too long. Giving a hefty sigh he fell back on his bed, letting the nonexistent aches in his shoulders fall away for a moment. That was an experience he missed too. He could feel and see and taste and smell and hear... But that wonderful sensation of feeling your muscles unwind after a long, hard day's work were no longer available for him to experience. If you wanted amazing experiences, well bad memories make the good ones all the more better... That being said... Given there were players who literally loved torturing others was a perfectly good reason for Kayaba to remove the pain filter. In fact, Itzal was pretty sure they were the primary reason he did so. Speaking of pain, Itzal began wondering how Domarus was doing. He had chosen to stay in isolation and keep care for Keres. She was a masochist after all, and with that option removed from her grasp, as well as him no longer being abusive, she was going through some serious rehab. It didn't matter too much at any rate. Both of their beds and homes were established as his shop, so when they woke up she'd still be locked inside. He felt bad for both of them though. Rehab wasn't easy, and Domarus had to live with her every way without anyone else for company. It must have been awful up to this point... He lay there for ten minutes thinking about those two, and whispering a quiet prayer for them to make it through this. Once finished he gave his worries up to the Lord and sat up again. Determination on his face once more as he delved back into the enormous sea that was the update. Closing this sub-tab he moved his hand down slightly and selected the second one. Skills. According to the order of what was presented first, combat was supposedly next. However Itzal knew how intensely tied to skills combat was, and it made perfect sense that they would be directly tied to this. You couldn't get into the sword arts until you went over the sword skills themselves. Upon entering the sub tab for skills, he saw all the sub tabs for skill types as he would if he went to the actual skill section. To his surprise, there were far more types than before. Originally they were categorized into utility skills, combat skills, weapon skills, armor skills, and extra skills. But now there were three new types of skill branches. There were combat masteries, familiar skills, and what really took him by surprise, unique skills. He'd heard of unique skills, and he heard that Calrex had one, and also knew that Hikoru owned one. He even knew of the dual wielding skill that Death Adder, the one who killed Beatbox, owned which was said to be immensely powerful. However, he had never known the full on description and capabilities of one, let alone known the rest. Was this tab going to reveal to him all of the unique skills? Or just the ones already owned or made available to them? His hand hovered over that tantalizing tab for a moment or two, but he withdrew all the same. He would go in the order provided by the cardinal system. It had organized this very well, and knew which topics were vital, and important, and which ones were less so, or less confusing if read in the proper order it had written out for the players. As such he would heed the cardinal's decision in which order he should read it. With that decided, he opened up the utility section first. From what he could observe, the gathering skill, the fishing skill, and the hiding skill were all removed. Or at the very least, they were removed from this list in particular. The skills for quick change, extended mod limit, extended weight limit, lock picking, searching and all their mods were still there. From what Itzal could see as he observed the list of skills, the overall costs of skill ranks had dropped from a maximum of fifty, to a maximum of thirty, which gave him a bit of relief. He'd have enough to work with at least. Not optimal, but enough. The first and second ranks cost four skill points. The third rank cost six skill points. And the fourth and fifth ranks cost eight skill points. There were still the rankless skills, which from utility alone appeared to range from eight skill points to ten. He was curious if the three skills were removed permanently or just plain old moved. He doubted that Kayaba would remove the hiding skill forever though, so they were probably moved elsewhere. Moving on to the next list of skills was the combat skills. To his utter shock, both block and first aid skills were nowhere to be seen. Beyond this everything looked the same, but there wasn't anything on support or shield usage. Itzal, finding no other changes, hurried over to the next list which was weapons. Another surprise waiting for him there were the claw and whip skills. It would appear that the two had made a resurface. He remembered a player who preferred claw skills, but he hadn't seen her in ages. Luckily she didn't really get into much danger or trouble, so he doubted she was dead. Still, it was interesting to see the skill return after such a long time. In armors, he noted that there were three types this time, the new one being cloth. All he had to do was glance at the three skills to know that the heavy was mitigation focus, cloth was evasion focus, while light was the in between. He was even more delighted to see that cloth came with an LD bonus too! That would make his evasive dps, scout and rogue build far, far more efficient than before. Of course in the end it was mainly just an evasive rogue build with scouting skills, but it all ended up the same... Now then... The new ones included combat masteries, familiar skills, and unique skills. Did one of these new branches possess the hiding, block and first aid skills? Itzal would find out momentarily... Post: 1,102 Total: 3,411 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 5, 2021 Author #5 Report Share Posted April 5, 2021 The next on the list of skills he was about to go over were the combat masteries skills. This one puzzled him as it sounded similar to familiar mastery, but then what were the familiar skills? Were those possibly altered to unlock familiar types? They added in a cloth armor skill among the light and heavy armors, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to suspect familiar types as well. Perhaps they were types of familiars in the sense of them being avian, mammal, reptile or marine? That would be an interesting skill, that would likely have sub-abilities. Regardless of what it might be though, he needed to find out what they were. So, he opened the combat masteries skill tab. What he saw threw him off at first: Each of them were what a familiar provided you, except there was no familiar involved. They were literally damage mastery, accuracy mastery, evasion mastery, and mitigation mastery. It was so simple and straightforward, that Itzal was kind of taken by surprise based on everything else he had seen in this update so far... Though to be fair there was a lot. Even still, this meant that Familiars would be used for something else entirely from now on. What they were to be used for was still a very big mystery to him, but it did make him a little excited. It also explained why his familiar didn't seem to have any of the skillsets Itzal taught him... Looks like he'd need to take the training quest again for Aldion. That was fine, but he needed to plan out his skill points carefully. He lost most of them, and he doubted he could obtain as much as he had before this update, so he may not be able to provide Aldion with a skill for some time. That was fine though he thought as he smiled, seeing the raven fly across the window for a split second. He enjoyed the avian's company, and he was good friends with Zita, Zandra's own familiar. He wasn't about to steal that away from them. While Aldion was much more focused, collected, and serious than Velnia, he still reminded the black haired rogue of the amethyst dragon in a few ways. Not many, but a few. He was friendly with other familiars most of the time for one. However the two were mostly opposites. While Velnia would fly all over creation in a hyper state of activity and energy, Aldion would prefer staying in one area and observing others, maybe getting scratched once or twice. In a sense, Velnia was like a puppy and kitten, while Aldion was more like a mature and trained cat or dog. He smiled as he compared the two, but his curiosity grew again as he wanted to know what his familiar could now potentially do... So he opened the next tab: Familiar skills. The first skill on the list was enough to get the gears in Itzal's mind turning fiercely. Thinking of how he could utilize it. Thinking of how others could use it against him, and the precautions he could take against them. Thinking about how they'd fair in a boss raid. The first skill was "grapple familiar", which allowed the familiar to essentially 'stun' the target for a limited amount of time before the grapple was broken. What made it more interesting, was that the cooldown for stun was different between a player's and a familiar's. Meaning if a boss wasn't immune to stun, they could send a familiar on him and stun him, then the next turn stun him with a sword art, hope for paralysis to land the third round, and then keep on going from there. However, Itzal had a sinking suspicion that Kayaba had planned for this loophole, and provided additional protection for his bosses going forward.. That being said, it could still be used against minions and minibosses most likely. If anything it would be useful against dungeon bosses, event bosses and quest bosses. And especially against players. If Itzal had a grapple familiar, he could pin two enemies down at once, which would double the speed in which he threw them into prison... But he wasn't sure if it was worth it to choose this type of familiar skill. He'd rather have something more rounded. And all this thinking was on grappling alone as a familiar skill. The hunting familiar was of course suitable for collecting monster drops without actually fighting monsters. This was extremely useful to most players, but if you were on the frontlines, this would be known as a waste of skill points. And Itzal would have to agree with it as there were far more important matters. The healing familiar was recognizable to Itzal, as it existed prior to this three point oh update, as were the protector familiar which reduced final damage against it's owner, and the profession familiar which helped the player to craft items. The others however either changed or were new, such as the rending familiar which landed it's own, weaker hit against a target. It didn't deal straight damage to the target, but instead applied the rending DoT which dealt seven times tier in damage to the target for two turns. It wasn't bad he admitted. Though the cooldown was slightly long. The scouting familiar no longer provided a bonus to any and all searching methods, and instead provided a buff exclusively to locating dungeons and labyrinths. Because Itzal was trying to boost his damage, it meant he would have to suffer some scouting methods like this one. Overall Itzal felt that his best choice in a familiar skill was going to be either grapple, or rending. Which of the two he hadn't decided just yet however, and would need to think long and hard about it. Rending would be easy for Aldion, he'd just rake enemies with his claws. For grapple however, well... Maybe some cool cosmetic ability would spark up? He wasn't entirely sure to be honest. Grappling would be better for hunting down player killers, and capturing them. Rending would be better for quests, dungeons, events and raids. He'd need to talk with Zandra about this one, and carefully... Post: 1,041 Total: 4,452 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 5, 2021 Author #6 Report Share Posted April 5, 2021 While processing, considering, and mulling over all of the potential familiar skills he could give to Aldion, primarily grappling for his day job of player killer capturing, and rending for combat against anything and anyone, primarily monsters and bosses, this wasn't getting him any closer to doing something productive he thought with a sigh. Rubbing his temples in mild frustration, he acknowledged that his habit of overthinking situations was proving to be an incredibly huge hassle with this particular update. There was just so much to go over, he wondered if he'd actually have enough time to go see Zandra today. He backed out of the update real quick and checked the time. Blinking with surprise and leaning backwards, using his arms to support him over the bed, he relaxed a little. "Huh... It hasn't been an hour yet... Weird." Not that he was complaining in the slightest. It meant more time to process things, go over them in his mind, and run simulations... No, no he didn't have the time to go over every little detail like this. He'd need to go over the majority of it, then meet up with Zandra and discuss the finer details with her. That's what he needed to do. Reaching for his shelf, he played one of the soothing songs he used to help calm his mind when he needed to focus on something, hoping that it would help with this rather big situation. He would not overanalyze this. Not yet anyways. And of course overanalyze is what he did immediately after. For the most part, just about every extra skill he was aware existed was still in the extra skill section. Except of course the familiar skills which had apparently become their own separate system and list. There was concentration and disguise, the latter of which Itzal noticed he still owned as it stated beside the name which he was grateful for. Survival was still there, only it was altered slightly. Instead of boosting outside health regen by a slight amount, it changed to increasing all sources of healing by a grand ten percent. Surprised to see this, but not upset, he gladly accepted this change. Especially since his partner in most things involving conflict, namely the more dangerous ones, was his wife who doubled as a healer- Oh... She might not be a healer anymore. Itzal took a pause to consider this possibility. If she went full on dps, then they would lose a healer on the frontlines. He didn't see the first aid skill among the combat skill lists... Did the cardinal system remove it in it's entirety? If it did then he would change his mind on Kayaba really quickly. Maybe they made it a unique skill? No that was just as bad. What about- Itzal's train of thought, while winding and long and often times jumping directions, finally returned to the topic that started him off: Extra skills. He quickly looked through it. Meditation was still unchanged. Shatter was- "Wait, shatter?" Apparently they added in a few new extra skills to the list. Was this why they added slots for extra skills? To keep players from owning too much? Or did they work like the mod cap in that you had to equip certain skills that you wanted to use? He had absolutely no idea. Unfortunately there wasn't any information on the skill other than just it's name. Now that he thought about it, the same could be said for the concentration skill. He knew that came from the Gemini quest but why wasn't it showing the information? Was it because he hadn't cleared the quest yet? So he needed to go back and discover which quests unlocked which extra skills... He'd probably wait for the info brokers to get information on that. He was going to need to grind quests and dungeons again anyways since he needed to level up desperately. Knowing that, he went over all the skills, both unknown, known and owned. Restorative strike he hadn't recognized. Neither did the Forgotten King's Authority look familiar, though he apparently unlocked it. To his utter joy it's ability nullified immobilizing statuses on the player when activated, which was something he despised. Dragons ascent was also hidden. Maybe the dragon hunter anthology? He never did finish that one... He'd hate to go back to killing infants again though. Lady luck was hidden. Photosynthesize was hidden. Brawler gave him a boost of mitigation which he probably wouldn't be using. Assault mode was hidden. Frozen hide was hidden, but that was likely tied to a floor four quest. Blazing bite was hidden. Parry was- "......Huh?......." Parry, Hiding, First Aid, Block and a new skill called Leadership were all moved into the extra skills section. Parry he could kind of understand, but block, hiding and first aid were all fundamental elements to specific builds, namely rogue, tank and support. And what was more shocking was that first aid took up two extra slots... Or, additional extra skill slots. Meaning that players had to truly be dedicated to playing the support role if they wanted to be one, as they'd be giving up two entirely separate extra skills. From what he could tell, neither First Aid nor Hiding had been altered, and the same could go for the parry skill. Unlike all of the other extra skills they still retained a skill point cost to unlock, unchanged from what he could tell. So for the most part all that had really changed in reality was that they would take up an extra skill slot, and that was it. As for this leadership skill... It was certainly a supporter skill. Even the additional extra slot cost was there by it's name. Overall it could boost certain stats while reducing your own, move any status effect applied to other players onto the skill user instead, or reset a.... Itzal fell silent as his eyes sat wide with a multitude of emotions. Cooldowns... Not for skills, but for sword arts. Sword arts. Had cooldowns now. 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Itzal 0 Posted April 6, 2021 Author #7 Report Share Posted April 6, 2021 Jumping to his feet, to the point of shaking his own bed as he did so, he withdrew from the skills tab, maneuvered to the sword arts tab and opened up one handed straight sword. Every one of the sword arts now had a range of cooldowns, save for the lowest of times two multiplier. These cooldowns all ranged between one and three in terms of length comparison. He checked the other sword arts from other weapon skills as well. Dagger had the same, despite it being a fast weapon. Same with the hammer skill as well. In fact all of the sword arts across each and every weapon skill had around the same range of time regarding their cooldown rate... Save for the two handed weapons which seemed to up to four in terms of general comparison of length. After observing these, he stood up and opened his menu, navigated it to his list of equipment, and grabbed his sword before he went and tried to activate one of his sword arts. However, it glitched out and didn't work. Confused, with eyebrows furrowed, he tried again. Again the sword glitched in and out of reality and did nothing. There was no way that he suffered an entire boss raid, got terrified as a wave of physical darkness crashed over everyone, and woke up to the biggest update he had ever seen, just to run into a game breaking glitch... He'd try one last time, using a basic sword art that didn't even require a cooldown. Once again it glitched, but this time that wasn't the only thing. This time a message appeared in front of him from the cardinal system: <<Please Reallocate Your Skill Points>> Itzal stared at this for a moment before facepalming. "Right, I forgot. It's so obvious." With the entire skill system being revamped, changed, and moved around, as well as extra slots becoming a thing, and on top of that experience taking the place of skill points, with skill points instead being the rewards handed out by earning levels and/or five paragon levels, the cardinal system wasn't going to just let him use all of his old skills. Checking his list of skills, he could see each and every one of them highlighted in red to show which had yet to be corrected, with the skill points assigned to them glitching out. Sighing, he sheathed his sword and put it back in his inventory, resigning to try this out later on. Maybe as he went on a walk. For now, he should continue reading all of these skills... Overall those were all of the extra skills. Now all that was left were the unique skills... Wondering what he would discover upon opening the tab, he moved his finger over and tapped the words: Unique Skill. The tab shook and buzzed while flashing red. Puzzled, Itzal tried again but the same results. Another tiny message popped up stating that he did not have permission to view this list of skills. Realizing that Kayaba wanted to keep unique skills a secret to everyone else, he was going to keep the tab locked from everyone. This was just an official recognition that yes, the players knew of unique skills existence... Or, perhaps it was more? No one really knew how many unique skills existed. Perhaps he was hinting that there were more skills than any of the players had thought to consider? There were three of them currently known to Itzal, though he didn't know too much about any of them. It was always possible there were more. Maybe five? Or ten? Maybe even twenty? If so though he figured someone would have obtained them by now... He thought for a moment and wondered how powerful each of these unique skills were. His thoughts went to Death Adder who he read up on as being a cold hearted killer who was incredibly self centered. That one boss raid he showed up in made him despised by every other player. He was shallow. Itzal didn't want that for players like him. They shouldn't have such a powerful skill... If Itzal could obtain one, if only to keep it out of the hands of someone who would misuse it. That would be enough for him... Then something else occurred to him. What if Kayaba was trying to say that he changed some of the unique skills even further? What would happen in that case? He could try and contact Calrex to see if he wouldn't mind telling him if there were any changes to his own unique skill, but that was private information and he didn't know Calrex as well as he wanted to. The only way he'd be able to know anything was if he got his hands on a unique skill. But he somehow doubt that would ever happen... If he did though, he wouldn't want to broadcast it to others if possible. He wouldn't use it against player killers unless he had no choice. He wouldn't use it in quests or dungeons, unless perhaps it was alongside Zandra and no one else. He felt obliged to use it in the frontlines of course, anything to push the cause forward faster was a necessity. However regarding the general use of it, he didn't want most players to discover it's existence. That would likely draw the attention of those who would want the skill for themselves, and make him an even bigger target than he was before. In addition to this, he didn't want other players to come to him, work with him, or try to butter him up only because he happened to obtain a unique skill. He wanted to befriend people and be casual around them. He couldn't stand people who went to others for their abilities, equipment and gifts. They were nothing but leeches, and while he felt pity for them, he had no intention of attracting any. Especially for something as corrupt as gaining more and more power for whatever selfish ends they have in mind. With that said, there was nothing else he could look into regarding the skills. With unique skills having been locked and access prevented, he had no choice but to move on to the next tab: Enhancements. Post: 1,048 Total: 6,510 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 6, 2021 Author #8 Report Share Posted April 6, 2021 The enhancements section seemed to be relatively the same, just with a few tweaks and one or two new enhancements... Which he probably would never be using. Overall the alchemist enhancements seemed relatively the same. That was good as it meant all of Zandra's consumables were still intact and untouched. However what he did notice was that the health points recovery for the healing potion didn't recover a set number multiplied by tier anymore. Instead it recovered about five percent of the player's maximum health. The exact same as a rank five battle healing skill. That meant that healing benefits had just received a huge reduction in their potential. In gaming terms, they got nerfed. Hard. However it made sense he thought. Players rarely needed healing as it was before this update. Most of the frontliners had huge numbers of health after all. This made things more challenging. And players could get their hands on skills to increase their healing abilities, like survival which increased any incoming healing abilities by a flat ten percent now. In addition to battle healing, the player would be receiving a total of ten percent, of ten percent of their maximum health if they used a potion alongside the skill. His health had dropped down to eight hundred and twenty now, so that would be forty one points of health from both battle healing and the potion, which made up a total of eighty two points of health regained without the survival skill. Adding that helpful ability into the mix, and you gained yet another four points of health from each source. Changing eighty two to eighty eight. It wasn't much, but that was the point. It was an extra skill that made you immune to damage and effects from the environment, while also providing a small bonus to healing effects from battle healing, potions or songs, the first aid skill, and any other healing applied to your person. What made it even stronger was if the healer had an item with an enhancement that made their first aid abilities even stronger... That is if it still existed. He was entirely unsure if it was removed or not. Moving on to the artisan enhancements, he couldn't see much of a difference here either. Taunt was still pretty much useless unless you were a dps or supporter playing tank for lower leveled players against a low leveled monster or something of the like. He and Chase had discussed this at some length before they joined the floor boss raid that changed everything. The boss they were fighting he'd never forget, as it was nothing but annoying to fight. No fun at all, and it didn't even have any backstory to it or lore that made any sense. If anything Itzal felt like Kayaba just ran out of ideas he could use for this random guy and was just trying to come up with sh*t for the players to fight so they didn't get bored... Which was likely the case now that he thought about it. Itzal audibly groaned at the thought of fighting that stupid boss a second time, and really didn't want to check to see if his quest had changed in any regard. In any case, both Itzal and Chase agreed that players with howl could attain far more hate than they even needed half of the time. This resulted in taunt being useless as it just added additional, unneeded hate for the player. Perhaps if a player wanted to help play the roll of a tank in the floor boss but had yet to obtain the skill points to unlock and master howl, but they'd be suffering from other more useful enhancements... Though there was thorns that only had two enhancements on it, so it could technically work in theory. A dps player with a weapon, shield, and armor would be cool. He skipped to blacksmith real quick to double check and sure enough taunt could be put on shields. Awesome. When he looked back to finish artisan, he noticed that Quality had been added to the list. This saddened Itzal to some degree, mainly due to the fact that it meant the performer had that much less to offer players, but it wouldn't always be the case. Some players had to have lots of gear on them, so they might want to use the consumable instead of an equipped item. Now on the subject of blacksmithing enhancements, not much seemed to have been changed there either. At most the regen enhancement had been altered, but that was a health recharging item so it was to be expected. It now regenerated two percent of a player's health, which was significantly less, but when stacked with every other healing item, skill and ability it made a significant difference. Cook enhancements also seemed to not change save for overhealth, which appeared to increase a player's maximum health by five percent, ten percent or fifteen percent, which actually wasn't that bad really. For Itzal that would be about one hundred and twenty three points of health gained. It was still nerfed, but since everything else had been nerfed, in comparison it wasn't that bad. Tailor enhancements were altered similarly, however there was one new enhancement he spotted, though it's name made him doubt he'd ever actually use the thing. The name of the enhancement was risky, which increased a player's overall base damage by an additional one per slot times the player's tier (up to two slots), but only when they received damage themselves. Itzal preferred to avoid incoming hits by stacking up his evasion as the system would allow, thus this was very very clearly not the enhancement for him to use on any occasion. Performer was up next, and while he was sad to see no significant changes other than health recovery adjustment to the HP Recovery enhancement, he didn't really expect anything different. The performer was a player's primary source of debuffs after all, and there were only so many debuffs you could use before it became game breaking. Though the fact that not a single debuff worked against the d**n shadow still threw him off and annoyed him significantly. If every boss became immune to all debuffs he was going to send Kayaba a personal message on how this world sucked even as a video game with no death as a consequence. That wasn't to say this world didn't have some good things about it. There was a lot within the world of Aincrad that Itzal very much enjoyed. The scenery was incredible, and always breathtaking. The npc interaction could vary between basic and almost human-like. The quests... Left, much to be desired, but the good ones felt like a legitimate adventure the player could embark on! He still felt like pking should have been turned off with this being a death game, but he probably wanted it to be as life like as possible unfortunately. Players who were powerless in the real world like he was had a chance to stand up and make a name for themselves here. Total lack of pain was a bonus as well, though there were some subtle consequences as a result of it. Players who'd never had real friends made many. This didn't discount all of the terrible and horrifying things that this game has done to people of course, but in order to move forward one had to look at the bright side, and stand tall in the light. Not sulk in the darkness. Once again he caught himself losing his train of thought and gave a groan of frustration as he ran his fingers through his hair. He took in a deep breath and breathed out slowly, trying to slow down his mind so that he could refocus. Once he'd done so, he opened the last tab in the enhancement section: Unique enhancements. Post: 1,319 Total: 7,829 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 6, 2021 Author #9 Report Share Posted April 6, 2021 Before he got a good look at the list of enhancements within the unique tab, he noticed the room getting rather warm. This was a very new experience to him due to the fact that he always had the survival skill, and therefore nullified any uncomfortable temperatures or weather. However, since all of his skills were glitching out until corrected that wasn't the case anymore. Turning to see the source of it, the sunlight was pouring in strong and bright from the east window. The day was beginning to warm up, which made sense as they were steadily moving through spring now. Standing up and walking over to the windows, he began to open them all up to halfway. Upon opening the first he felt a single strong breeze that felt incredibly refreshing. The crisp morning air filled the room with a new sort of life. The other window had been opened by Aldion for certain, but the wind was not blowing in that direction, so the circulation wouldn't proceed. Now that two windows were opened, hot and cold air could blow through the room from one to the next with ease. With the second window open and the breeze circulating through his room, he sat down again at his bed with his menu still open, thankful that he couldn't have any allergies in this submersive virtual reality video game called Sword Art Online. The very first enhancement he spotted was absolute accuracy. Originally that wasn't at the top of the list, it was somewhere in the middle. He wondered at first if all of the enhancements had been reorganized to fit an alphabetical order, but it wasn't the case. How did he know this? The second enhancement was holy, with the next after it being fallen. He wasn't sure what the order was supposed to be for the unique enhancements, but it certainly wasn't in alphabetical order. Absolute accuracy didn't seem to have changed at all, and neither had the fallen enhancement. Phase likewise hadn't changed at all, but honestly these four enhancements were very powerful on their own, so it didn't exactly surprise him all that much. Vampiric offensive had been converted from health times tier to straight percentages like everything else within this world, which made perfect sense after seeing the levels and skill changes. Once again, Cardinal and Kayaba knew what they were doing when they chose the order of reveal they did. If the cardinal had revealed the contents of the update in any other order, Itzal would likely still be panicked and confused as hell. Paralytic venom hadn't changed at all since the update either, and still could replace two slots of paralyze with a single slot. Very potent indeed, and very useful if obtained. Freeze was changed however. It no longer removed all evasion properties like paralyze did, and instead reduced the victim's evasion stat by only a single point.. Which didn't matter too much when your target had five or six evasion slots with consumables, enhancements and mods. However he could identify the reason behind this was due to the fact that the enhancement's damage had shifted from twelve times tier to sixteen times tier, making it stronger damage wise. Itzal still probably wouldn't get this enhancement for himself, but it was a nice upgrade to it. Envenom also got a damage boost from four times tier to eight times tier, which was always nice to have. It still lasted four rounds so that was perfect as well. Paired up with a single debuff and you could turn it's duration from four into eight, then another debuff to double it's damage to sixteen times tier, and you had a deadly DoT indeed. Burn's damage increased but not by much. It was simply boosted from twelve points to fourteen points of damage per round... Comparing Burn to Envenom, the burn enhancement kind of sucked. At most the burn enhancement dealt twenty four points of damage per round, while envenom dealt thirty two. That was more damage. It was longer sure, but that was part of the point. You had to get lucky to land a DoT enhancement, so the longer the better. Then he reached a new enhancement he had yet to see during his time in sword art online: Frostbite. Curious as to what this could do, he read over it. From what he could identify, it was basically a bridge between bleed and paralyze. Not dealing the full damage, which was twelve times tier, and instead dealing a maximum of ten times tier, but also not paralyzing the enemy or reducing their evasion. Instead it reduced their accuracy by one point alone. If Itzal had a weapon with both freeze and frostbite on it, and paired the blade with two debuffs to reduce accuracy and evasion by two, he could easily nullify those advantages off of a player so long as he kept activating the sword's ability... But that wasn't his style. He'd still use debuffs, but he preferred to deal as much damage as he could or immobilize his target so that he could send them through a corridor crystal's gateway into the prison. He wondered if that had any changes occur to it with this update... Blight had changed significantly unlike the others which had tweaks to their damage or abilities. It dealt only eight times tier like the envenom, but it also reduced the target's mitigation by five times tier for the duration. That was certainly an interesting ability it had, but again it did not fit with Itzal's overall goal. If he could obtain the fallen enhancement, he could deal more damage than this took mitigation off of. Blight just was not the enhancement for him. So far in terms of DoTs, it was Envenom and Paralytic venom that were looking like his favorite picks. The next enhancement was entirely new too, and took him by surprise: Static. From what he could tell, it dealt less than the bleed enhancement, ten times tier, but also dealt six times tier damage to any enemy within the immediate area around the victim of the enhancement. Itzal couldn't really tell if this meant damage upon activation, or damage for each round it lasted, which was the typical two rounds. It would be amazing if it worked for the duration, as that meant twelve times tier points of damage to the surrounding enemies, or half of a bleed's total damage in it's duration. That might actually be an enhancement he'd want for when he took on multiple enemies on grinding missions... Then he came upon the enhancement known as holy blessing. It too had been converted into percentages, but somehow he felt this was stronger now with all of the other skills being percentage based. Regen was two percent as well as Holy Blessing, which made four percent. Battle healing went up to twenty percent, as did first aid as well. Potions could revive five percent as well, and survival increased the maximum healing everything did by another ten percent. The combination of these could keep a player very healthy for a long while. Vampiric defensive was basically the same as offensive but upon being hit instead of landing a hit, with of course it's healing properties converted to percentages now. Life mending was actually not changed whatsoever within this update, but it's ten percent healing bonus seemed to have far more strength and meaning behind it now. After all, any outside healing done through first aid, aka the twenty percent of the target's maximum health restored, would be increased by ten percent of that. And on top of this, if the target has survival, ten percent of that total healed would also be added to the equation, making it incredibly effective. If used on Itzal, twenty percent would be one hundred and sixty four. Ten percent of that would be sixteen points of health, making it one hundred and eighty points of health restored instead. And ten percent of that was eighteen, making it not one hundred and sixty four health restored, but one hundred and ninety eight points of health, almost two hundred. That was pathetic before the update, but only because their health wasn't reduced yet. Now it was powerful healing being done. Post: 1,385 Total: 9,214 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 6, 2021 Author #10 Report Share Posted April 6, 2021 Reading over the healing enhancements, and thinking carefully about the revamped healing mechanics, brought his thoughts over to Zandra and her healing build. She really wanted to be able to support the players and ensure that no one would ever die. Especially him. With these new mechanics and systems, Itzal wondered if she was going to have to sacrifice her dps skills just so that she could keep up the healing properly. While the percentage was indeed strong, the fact remained that player's health had dropped by half as a default. The risks were greater now, and they always would be. Players had to choose their builds far more cautiously from now on... He just hoped that they could continue on from here. That this update was not as dangerous as he was worried it would be. That they would indeed come out on top, and succeed in defeating the next floor boss. And the next. And so on until they reached the final floor, defeated the final boss... And went home... Home.. It had been five years since Itzal had seen his family. He couldn't imagine how terrified they must be right now. He wondered if they could even feel anything after five years of him being trapped in this death game. In this state. His hands tightened into balled up fists as he thought of his sister crying. "I will come home to you Aimi.... I swear it." With a long and shaky breath, he pulled his train of thought back to the unique skill list. He couldn't get home if he couldn't beat this game. And to do that he needed to research everything in this update, and master it to the best of his ability. He wouldn't let an update, nor any monster or boss, get in his way to the final floor. While healing had changed greatly, he knew that Zandra would find a way to meet her own goals. She would decide what she wanted, what she needed, and how she would get there. The flame thorns enhancement was next on the list of changed enhancements. Well there was envenom defensive, but it was as straightforward as it's offensive other. Not worth mentioning here. The flames thorn originally dealt seven times tier in thorns damage, which was weaker than the normal thorns which dealt nine times tier damage. While the thorns damage had not changed in the three point oh update, the flames thorns was definitely nerfed in terms of raw thorns damage. They now only dealt a maximum of two times tier per slot of damage as raw thorns damage, although their bonus damage (which came via being struck with a critical hit) dealt increased damage. While the original flame thorns dealt seven times tier in normal thorns, and two times tier in critical thorns, the update increased the burn damage to four times tier. It was still weaker in general unless your opponent landed a solid critical hit on you, so Itzal wasn't sure if this was a better enhancement or worse. Definitely better if a tank took thorns and flame thorns on the same piece of equipment, but worse in other situations in his mind. Flame aura, which was next, was likewise nerfed. It had less mitigation than it's previous version, dropping by two points in fact, and it's return damage was also greatly reduced. Sensing a pattern, Itzal wondered if the cardinal system nerfed these effects to make them a "jack of all trades, yet master of none" type of deal. Like you could have two enhancements in one, but at the cost of their efficiency. Again, they would still be useful to a tank if stacked with other enhancements, but he didn't see that much use for a dps. Frost thorns and frost aura had been nerfed in exactly the same way, though this didn't surprise Itzal all that much. They were pretty much identical save for the type of damage each of them inflicted. One being burn damage, and the other being frost damage. After that the rest of the enhancements were pretty much the same as they had been before. Bloodclot was still one slot and made the player immune to bleed enhancements. Paralytic immunity in much the same way regarding paralysis but not stun. Antifreeze and Fireproof granted immunity to freeze and burn effects respectively. And then cursed matched the item's tier to the player's own, but kept the item from being traded to another player so long as it existed on said item. To Itzal's surprise, these changes weren't really going to be affecting his build in any real way. He might use the static enhancement when fighting in an AoE battle, but overall he'd rather get his hands on fallen if possible, with holy as a secondary. If he could get a fallen and holy enhancement sword, that would be truly ideal. Phase would be perfect if it could activate with Fallen, but because that wasn't the case, he'd rather just boost his damage overall across the board. So a demonic weapon with two fallen and two holy would be the most ideal weapon for him. With that being said of course, he knew that the chances of him obtaining an item like this were next to impossible.. So he would just focus for now on getting stronger and grinding mobs until he came across something useful to him or Zandra. And she in turn could keep an eye out for something that he could use. For his armor, he doubted there was any enhancement he would prefer using save for one. He would really love to have a demonic armor with three evasion, and paralytic immunity. He hated the status effect, and wanted to be rid of it for good. If he could somehow acquire that ability, that immunity to such a horrible feeling of helplessness. He'd take it gladly in a heartbeat. Then there was the trinkets, though that was an incredibly easy solution to figure out. He'd prefer obtaining the absolute accuracy enhancement on a demonic item with three accuracy on it. That would give him plus four accuracy, and remove the chances of automatically missing, which he had noticed was indeed a mechanic and factor the longer he fought in this world. In total, his ideal build would be three evasion and one paralytic immunity cloth armor. Three accuracy and one absolute accuracy trinket. And finally a two fallen and two holy damage weapon. As well as a weapon with two paralytic venom and two frostbite if he could help it for when fighting player killers. Post: 1,106 Total: 10,320 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 7, 2021 Author #11 Report Share Posted April 7, 2021 Itzal pulled back from the menu without closing it, and folded his hands together in thought. While he may not need most of the enhancements on the list, there were a myriad of potentially useful combinations if utilized with the right items, enhancements and skills. A player who relied on critical hits and luck could greatly benefit from holy, phase, and all manner of DoTs, unique thorns and the aura enhancements. While they didn't work for Itzal, they were perfect for another. However... He pulled out of the update and went to the skill point section where he dumped thirty into the sword skill: One handed straight sword. The skill flashed from red to white again, and the skill point count reset to thirty, ceasing it's glitching. With that done, he pulled his black sword out of his inventory and watched as it materialized, sheathed, on it's belt around his waist. It was a bit uncomfortable, but that was due to this being his casual clothing, not his armor. It wasn't meant to hang from here. However every second counted he thought, as he walked over towards the door and opened it, stepping out into the hallway. Passing the doorways that lead into the attic storage, which housed multiple chests, cabinets, crates and barrels. The familiar chamber which was designed to be a bedroom for avian, land, and marine forms of familiars, comfortable with obstacle courses, playgrounds and toys to keep them occupied. And the guest chamber which was as cozy and nice as the master bedroom, as Itzal didn't like the idea of supremacy, he reached the stairs and leaped over every step, landing safely on the bottom. He was in a rush after all. Moving through the living room where the base of the stairs were built, he took three long strides to the door and opened it up. The cool and refreshing breeze that hit him was even better than the one he received when he opened the bedroom window. He took a moment there to take a deep breath and close his eyes as a renewed life filled his lungs. He waited but a moment however, before he resumed his movement, heading straight for the backyard where the slime farm was. Seeing it still intact was an incredible relief. For a moment he had worried that the system also took away the slime farm, but he was less concerned about it given that there was nothing in the summary that stated any changes to the housing system. Itzal's mega slime farm was designed with great detail and specialty. It was a very large area, split into different kinds of terrain. One being grassland and forest, one being full of sand as a desert, one filled with fake snow (the floor was too warm to contain actual snow), and the fourth area was a rocky and gravel covered area with small cliffs. This was for Itzal to practice fighting in any terrain he required. He had even considered a combat tactic where he set corridor crystals in very specific locations across the castle's floors, so that if he needed a home advantage he could just pick and choose, open the doorway, and either lead or force the battle into a location that better suited him. Along the edges of this area were simple fences, but whenever the farm was active the cardinal system set up an invisible barrier which could not be penetrated by player or monster. Beside the gate that opened into the yard, which Itzal now opened up as he entered, was a little pedestal with a single sphere shaped stone resting on it. By grasping the stone he could open up the farm's menu and set the details of how he wanted the slimes to generate. Besides choosing how many would spawn, he could alter their intelligence, their stats and strength, and even alter their physical form to be bigger, shaped differently, or even mimic the appearance and/or personality and fighting style of players or npcs which he programmed in. Normally they couldn't be pushed this far, but the yard was customizable so long as they remained slimes. For Itzal who was a pro at programming, while this took some time it was so very worth it. For now, he just set the slimes to a cylinder shape and adjusted their size to be around six feet tall. The slime menu pulled up the option of starting but he turned his attention to his own menu first as he opened it, then navigated over to the sword art update. He could look at all of the sword arts at a later date, but for the time being he needed to know everything about his own sword arts. None of the names had changed for the most part. However there was one significant difference: He no longer had any area of effect sword arts. Which meant that the straight sword was to primarily be a one on one weapon. That was a little but saddening, but he completely understood the reasoning for this. The major plus was that his damage had skyrocketed as well. Jumping from a measly eleven points of damage to sixteen! Double checking by glancing at the other sword arts in other weapon skills, and he confirmed it. A multiplier of sixteen was the strongest a player could get from the one handed weapon skills. This made it all the more reasonable to reduce it down to a one on one weapon skill as opposed to take on one or many. Beyond that it had a lot of stun skills as well, which made it very useful against player killers. Even if one was on cooldown, he could use another stun art immediately and take out another player not long after the first one. Against bosses, well. He wasn't too sure. Most bosses didn't seem to be affected by stun ever, let alone paralysis. It was only on the rare occasion. Thus he felt like the damage output was a far better option to have than the stun, though it was useful outside of boss raids too. They still required the martial arts skill for some of the sword arts though. From what he could see the requirement dropped from a rank four in the skill, to a rank two. That was not only appreciated, but it made sense. The players had to prove they wanted it, but weren't subjected to a huge mass of skill point loss either. Once he'd gone over everything he needed to, he closed the menu and drew his sword... Then he pressed the button that read: "Start session." Post: 1,113 Total: 11,433 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 7, 2021 Author #12 Report Share Posted April 7, 2021 Their intelligence was set to low. Itzal didn't want to be overwhelmed. He just needed to get a good feel for these new sword arts. Set to the normal setting he usually had them at, he charged forward and- didn't move anywhere as the menu flashed it's reminder for skill point allocation once again. Right. He was so used to activating the actual charge skill that he completely forgot he was doing so. By now the monsters were already almost on him, so he couldn't run forward anyways. He'd lost the advantage but that was ok. He was here to practice his sword arts and double check to make sure there weren't any unfriendly changes to them. Starting small, he activated snake bite and launched the attack against the monster in front of him. While he could have tested to see what would happen if he used a single target sword art on two enemies directly beside each other, he'd already done that and the sword art canceled itself out about halfway through it. While this test was made years ago, Itzal was over ninety percent positive that it would not be any different, or if it was then it wouldn't be changed in any significant way which would aid nor hinder him beyond the skill shutting down and just not being used. While it's possible that the skill may or may not prevent the cooldown from starting if used halfway, therefore not applying damage or status effects, it would be hard to weaponize such a change. It would take too much effort and time, and every second in a fight counted. Not to mention that the enemy could adapt just in time to avoid him, which would not only mean a failed attempt to force a cooldown on that particular sword art, but also putting him into a far more vulnerable position than he had been in previously. Overall it was not a very good scenario for him to put himself in. While other players who loved gambling, players who would no doubt love the risky enhancement, would take this chance without hesitation, Itzal preferred higher chance of success options, and preferred to use logic, reasoning and strategy to get through a fight. As it was, the sword art activated without any flaws whatsoever. His damage was the same as it would have been prior to the three point oh update, but that was only due to the fact that most of his sword arts had barely changed save for the higher half, where the multipliers got stronger faster in order to keep up with the highest one. With snake bite tested and successful, he focused on dodging the slimes that attacked him, which wasn't difficult at all. They had absolutely no accuracy stats applied to them, and even without his evasion armor he was still very good at dodging. He didn't need the help of the cardinal system to avoid hits from weak monsters like this. There was no cooldown on snake bite so he could use it again immediately of course... But he needed to test everything. And snake bite was stupid to use against monsters, even his slime farm monsters. So with that in mind he decided to try out one of the cooldown sword arts: Star Quint Prominence. This one had the stun effect applied with it, so he could watch and see if there was anything new with it. Additionally it had a cooldown rating of one, so he shouldn't be able to activate it immediately afterwards like he normally did. It was time to test this out and see. Preparing the motion, his sword began to glow once more. As he landed the blow he could see the status beside the slime's health switched to 'stun', and the creature froze in place. At the same time, he also saw a new symbol in the corner of his vision with a tiny [r2] sitting over it, and a bar which quickly went from full to empty. While the cooldown was active, as he assumed this new bar was the cooldown, Itzal tried to activate Star Quint Prominence a second time, but he heard a buzz in his head and the symbol and cooldown flashed red for a second. His sword still made the swinging motion, so he wasn't physically restrained from using it. At least that was the case. He could fake attacks if he wanted. With that test out of the way... Itzal avoided another hit and took his stance. With the way the cooldowns worked, he should design a pattern for himself. He targeted the first slime and activated Shadow Explosion. He knew that he could not afford to use this as his opening attack against a floor boss, as he needed all the damage output he could muster for those, but for this instance he would go with a sword art with a cooldown rating of three, then a sword art with a cooldown rating of two, and finish it off with one. That way he could continuously strike between the three of them without having to wait. Landing the first hit, the weak stats of the monster were cleaved through entirely with the strength of his attack. The symbol appeared again with the [r5] by it with the much longer duration of the cooldown. Not stopping for a moment he immediately turned on his heel and activated Meteor Break on the one he had yet to attack, dealing his full damage against it and shattering it into the crystals which deteriorated in the air. Finally he attacked the slime he stunned earlier with Nova Ascension, and finished it off. He heard the ding of his sword art cooldown finishing off and activated Shadow Explosion yet again, finishing off the final slime. One after another the cooldowns refreshed and everything was as it was originally. Taking a deep breath he smiled. "Alright... I can work with this... Hey Aldion! You out here?" "Caw!" The black raven glided through the trees and landed on the fence. "Caw!" Chuckling Itzal nodded. "I've got a little bit more reading to do, but afterwards how about we go for a walk?" "Caw! Caw!" Aldion answered while flapping his wings. That was a yes. Post: 1,048 Total: 12,481 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 8, 2021 Author #13 Report Share Posted April 8, 2021 Not physically stressed, tired or exhausted, Itzal sheathed his blade with a flourish of the wrist, sliding the blade in with a satisfying 'click' at the end of it. With his test on the sword arts over with, as there really wasn't too much he could do in that area other than strategize he decided to sit down on a bench and open up his menu, navigating to the three point oh update once again. Yes, strategizing how he should utilize these sword arts, in what order, and against which types of enemies, was a very important factor he needed to process and think about. However, that process would be completely useless as of right now, as there could easily be more to the update which alters how the combat system would work. He knew that there was a support mod within the leadership skill that could reset a single sword art's cooldown to zero, so it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that something else could affect it either. Sure the last item on the list was appraisers and professions in general, but there could easily be a misc. section for out of place concepts and changes. Therefore it would be very premature to go processing and strategizing how he should use his sword arts and in what order when he might have to rethink it all should anything else be added in which affects them... He thought back to the unique skills for a moment and wondered if there were any skills in there that allowed a user to bypass or at least speed up the cooldown process. It was an interesting concept for sure, if not a tiny bit broken. However... Itzal wondered what kind of unique skill would fit him the best, if it ever did actually exist. He wouldn't mind one that made him harder to hit, like a reverse absolute accuracy. He also wouldn't mind something that helped improve his luck a little bit, like something which increased the chances of applying status effects and damage over time effects by one hundred percent. In the end though, as Itzal looked at his black sword and saw his reflection... He thought of the technique that Ulises had come up with. Soul Barrage. It gave off the illusion of using two swords if used with enough speed, as the user swung their blade, but then immediately let go and grabbed with their opposite hand and struck with that, cutting the time of wait in half and effectively doubling his attack speed, or at least nearly. If he could attain any skill, it would probably be one that he already was aware of. It would be Dual wielding. Such a powerful weapon shouldn't be in the hands of someone like Death Adder. No. It should be used for the benefit of everyone by pushing the front lines forward. Protecting the innocent, and never used to take another person's life. Taking a deep breath to focus himself again, and pull his thoughts from that dark train of thought which he plunged into, he opened the tab for professions. Wondering what he'd be discovering. To his honest and great shock, there was a new mechanic added into them all. This new system allowed the players, with plenty of materials, to take any quality item such as uncommon and rare, and fuse them together in order to make them the next highest quality. To transform a uncommon into a rare, one needed two uncommon items, probably of the same type and tier, and fuse them together with the use of a single material. In order to transform two rares into a perfect, they needed to take two rare items, two materials, and fuse those together. What really got his mind racing was what you could do after that: By taking a perfect item and a demonic item, one could fuse them into a perfect with three materials. What did that mean though?! Surely they wouldn't make such a horrible de- wait... No, if the players used this method, could they potentially fuse unique enhancements that were on a demonic item into the perfect item?! If that were the case, then players could potentially make their own powerful weapons. They wouldn't be dependent on the boss drop anymore... This was astounding news to him, but the second was even more so: players could fuse a perfect and a demonic into a fused demonic with three materials, and one demonic shard. Which meant that since Itzal had one such shard, he could potentially save it for an incredibly powerful weapon... If he could... Possibly... Obtain different uncommons, rares, and perfects which each had at the very least one fallen or holy... Itzal could potentially fuse together the sword he'd already decided would be ideal for him to obtain. This information had caught him so off guard he took a moment to process but... He smiled. "Kayaba. I don't know if you can hear me but. Whether it was out of pity, or understanding, or even if the thought never even crossed your mind... Thanks... Thank you so very much, for letting me be something other than weak and useless in this game..." For once he didn't have to struggle, and fight, and overwork himself to near death just to provide something for the others. In Boss raids he wasn't even useful with debuffs. Other players had brought them. His luck was horrific, and as such his damage over times would either never trigger against them, or when they did it was at the absolute worst moment possible. Not only that but paralysis had the same bad luck too. His damage multiplier had always been worse than any other sword art other players had. But now... His damage was the highest of the one handed weapons. He had no idea if his luck changed or not, but perhaps the conditions and chances did. With the quality enhancement and his looting buffs, he should be capable of grinding lots of monsters, though it would go far much faster with Zandra's assistance. And now, he could forge his own sword which could help not only himself, but everyone else around him. A massive weight lifted off of his shoulders as a silent tear fell down his face. Zandra had helped him through his depression, self doubt, and his constant berating himself for not being able to do anything useful whatsoever. But now, she didn't have to. Or at least, she didn't need to worry about his sanity in that regard anymore. He could stand on his own two feet, and walk beside her in confidence in himself as much as her. Itzal wiped the tears that came down from his eyes with a smile. "Thank you..." Post: 1,133 Total: 13,614 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 8, 2021 Author #14 Report Share Posted April 8, 2021 Aldion tilted his head as he watched Itzal cry before flapping up and landing on the player's shoulder, rubbing his feathery head against him. "Caw! Caw!" Itzal turned to look at his familiar and gave a slight chuckle as he wiped the remaining moisture from his face before scratching his raven's head. "Thanks buddy..." Everything was changing in this update. And not just the things the cardinal system was changing up. Because of it his outlook was a little better yes... But he had a new resolve as well. He needed to mend bridges he'd burned, and it wouldn't be an easy path to take. Yet despite the tense moments and painful tears he would very likely have in the coming moments, he would persevere in the end and make things right. With Hestia. With Mina. With Jonathan. When he left the frontlines and returned as Are, he had left things on bad terms with Hestia due to their very bad argument. She would likely be the hardest to speak with because of those conditions. For Mina, it would be hard because, in a way he betrayed her. He kept a secret from her despite being great friends, and he had struck her. While it was true she had attacked first, he knew who she was when she took off that mask, but played it off as if they didn't know one another to keep his identity secret. He owed her a severe apology... For Jonathan... Well he wasn't entirely sure. His friend just dropped off of the radar for a while there, but he hoped everything was ok. Whatever the case, he needed to speak to all three of them, so that there were no more secrets between him and his friends... That time however would arrive within the days to come. Not this moment. Not today. Thus he brought his train of thought, once again, hopefully for the last time, back to three point oh, so that he might finish reading up on it and all it contained, before finding Zandra once again. Besides the drastic change in the system which allowed players to fuse items to improve their quality, he wasn't seeing any other changes in the professions. He knew that the appraisal profession, or as it once was known before this new update, the merchant profession, was altered. However nothing else was on the summary list cardinal provided him. So he arrived at the conclusion that nothing else had changed, and as such skipped ahead to the appraisal profession to see how exactly it was altered. From what he could tell....... It was nerfed. They could no longer sell items like the tents, the glowing crystal, the toxin, or anything else like that. Instead they were limited to identifying items players gained from monsters they had slain or chests they had looted, capable of detecting normal and unique enhancements. Something Itzal had not seen before however, was this reroll ability, which Itzal realized could make grinding for unique enhancements all that more easier. Realizing how special this profession really was now, he knew he'd be visiting them very frequently. Moving on from them, there were the gathering professions below. The gatherer skill, which increased the amount of materials players could attain, which made Itzal's material harvesting abilities so insanely prosperous, had been merged with the mechanic that allowed players to harvest materials, into a single profession. What was interesting about this one, was that players had to use it over and over again in order to gain experience points in the skill, and that they had to earn it in the "earning a living" quest. That was tedious, but at least it gave him something to do. The fishing skill had likewise been made a profession for harvesting materials and chests, but the threat of pulling mobs up from the waters was no longer a danger the player needed to consider with this update. From what he could read, they were considered a sub profession, or secondary profession. Much like most MMO's which had crafting system, SAO now allowed players a skill to gather materials from certain sources, and a way to use those materials for something meaningful. Smiling to that, he checked to see if there were any other changes to note but... He, could not see anything else. Three point oh's update had ended promptly there. That being said, now came the next part of the equation. Itzal had to convert all of his skill points and skills to the updated requirements. He had a lot less to work with, and would likely lose a few skills, but he could manage. There were a few skills he'd need above the others and- wait... As he thought of his level and the skill points they awarded him, he realized something vital: He was a tier four player... But, they hadn't reached the fourth tier floors just yet. What did that mean for him? Did he get any tier four gear when he beat the floor boss? No, that was impossible. He hadn't landed the final hit on the floor boss... Had he? He quickly opened his inventory and saw one item that was labeled as new. He opened it's information and... Sure enough. A tier four shield with four unique enhancements on it. A powerful demonic shield with one frost thorns, one flame thorns, one frost aura, and one flame aura. He recalled himself thinking about how strong they could be in the hands of a tank, and they ended up in the hands of a dps player... Well, at least he could get this powerful tool into the hands of someone who could actually use the thing. Though it didn't provide him anything he could use he thought bittersweetly. This did not tell him however if he received the final hit bonus by killing the boss, or if this was just some glitch. Maybe the cardinal system gave them all a little 'gift' as celebration for the update that just came out? He'd need to speak with other players to see what their thoughts on the matter were, but for now he'd have to make do with this. 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Itzal 0 Posted April 8, 2021 Author #15 Report Share Posted April 8, 2021 Now then... For the next part... Itzal opened up his skill menu and looked at all of the broken skills he currently owned. He started by automatically going through each and every one of them and removing them from his list. Every skill, extra skill, mod, and so forth until it was left blank and empty save for the one handed straight sword skill which he needed above all else. If he was going to go for a dps he couldn't fight without a weapon. The only players who could even consider going weaponless were tanks or support players, typically a hybrid of both tank and healer. And with the new increase in strength for the straight sword's damage and abilities in general, he was going to need it. Beyond that there was also the matter of his defenses. He needed evasion as much as he possibly could attain, and now not only did the cloth skill, which had been added in addition to the light armor and heavy armor skills, provide a single bonus to evasion, which brought his total evasion slot up to four instead of three by default, which was his normal before the update, but it also provided him with an additional bonus to his searching, harvesting- well no longer harvesting, but looting chances as well. This was the perfect gear for a dps, rogue and scout built player as himself. He was always an evasion player, so the second he saw the cloth armor he knew it was the one for him. With one handed straight sword and cloth armor as his chosen weapon type and armor type, that was the basics he needed. Alongside those, he'd also need their mods. Ferocity, which provided an additional one point of damage for the straight sword, athletics which provided him another plus one damage to his base for any weapon, and nimble which was a new mod that provided the evasion bonus and search bonus to his person. Those were the only buffs they could provide, but that was perfectly fine by him. He selected these skills and mods and they were added to his list. Thirty skill points for each skill he maxed out were deducted, as well as the sixteen skill points spent for the three mods he purchased. In total he had spent around seventy six skill points thus far, but he wasn't done. Not until every last one of them was spent. While things became more difficult to decide on now that the basics and necessities were out of the way, he still had yet to reach the actual hard part. After all, he still needed to continue his player hunting job. He wasn't about to just abandon all the players out there who couldn't defend themselves or were being hunted like animals waiting for the slaughter. The searching skill would allow him to spot player killers attempting to hide from him, while the hide skill allowed him to get the jump on said player killers. He doubted most of his targets would have those two same skills as he did, and just opt for the hiding skill, so he should be safe from their detection for the most part. Whereas he would have the skills and mods required to nullify their stealth bonuses. Not to mention he needed the untraceable mod so that players in the same party as him did not detect his identity as Itzal. Even if he was planning to speak with Hestia, Mina and Jonathan about the truth, his identity needed to remain a secret from the public. For their safety. Beyond the untraceable mod and surprising his opponents, Itzal also needed the mod available at rank five: Surprise attack assassin. He had considered the trickster mod for some time, but there were problems with that. For one, it really didn't do much to benefit him. His damage was weak, but he could still apply more through constant attacks than he could with damage over time effects, so if he could just boost his damage on the hit instead of applying those, he'd be all set. It was made even more meaningless to him when this update came out and updated the sword arts for his chosen weapon. The only reason he considered trickster was because his damage output was crappy at best. Now he didn't need to be concerned about that. And if he could get the fallen and holy enhancements... That would increase his damage output to such an incredible degree he didn't even want to think about how his opponents would feel being struck by such a mighty blow. Running the calculations in his head, if he was hit by something like this, he'd be lower than half his health on the first strike. He'd just gone from desperately trying to paralyze and stun to dangerously powerful. And this was without the charge skill too. With that in mind, he went ahead and purchased the full five ranks of both the searching skill and the hiding skill, as well as every one of their mods, which lead up to a total of sixty three or so skill points. When he purchased the reveal mod in particular however, he blinked in curiosity at something: The reveal mod had an additional tag on it that he hadn't spotted before: Addon. Curious, he clicked this tag and an information tab popped up: [Add on mods once purchased do not take up a mod slot to use] "Well that's incredibly useful." He thought to himself. Now that he was looking, Nimble was also an add on mod too. So nimble and reveal both could be used without taking up a mod slot. That was significantly better than before the update and made things much, much easier for him. With this ability he could use even more mods than the five max like he had prior to the update.... However, there were a lot of mods that could prove very useful to him. Thinking about it, he believed getting the extended mod skill would be important, and thus spent points in it to unlock it. Now he was able to use a total of nine mods thanks to the two add on mods, and four extra skills at a time. Right now he had disguise, meditation, survival, forgotten king's authority, and brawler as extra skills from quests, with hiding making the latest... Martial arts! He quickly unlocked that one real quick. From what he could tell, the glitchy skill had only allowed Meteor break because it was malfunctioning, but that likely wouldn't be the case for long. The cardinal was handling a huge update and was likely to correct it the second after it allowed such a thing. At any rate, he was well on his way. Post: 1,137 Total: 15,785 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 8, 2021 Author #16 Report Share Posted April 8, 2021 "Ok. So I have the one handed straight sword skill, with it's sword arts and ferocity mod, along with the martial arts skill up to rank two in order to unlock the meteor break skill. As well as the cloth armor skill and it's two mods athletics and nimble. With those I'll have the evasion needed for defense, and searching bonuses needed for scouting and looting. For the next two I have the searching skill with all of it's mods: Night vision, tracking, detect and reveal, with reveal being an add on mod alongside the reveal mod, making them active at all times." He leaned in toward the screen as he continued to read and process his skills aloud, placing his partially closed hand against his lower face in thought. "I also have the hiding skill along with its own series of mods: Untraceable, vanish, surprise attack assassin, but not the blindside mod. I don't need that much stealth just yet, and I need the skill points for other things... Which brings me to..." The rest of the skills he needs to file his remaining points into. He didn't have all that much remaining, so he would need to choose very carefully. None of the other extra skills required any skill points be put into them in order to actually activate them, so that at least was a breath of relief. He'd already placed points in the extended mod limit, which was important and a good slot to fill. However for the rest of them, that was a hard decision. It wasn't until he reviewed all of the skills again when he ran across the combat masteries which he had completely forgotten existed. He didn't even hesitate to put his points into the damage mastery, as that was vitally needed for his damage output since Aldion couldn't really do much right now. Later, but not now. After that however, he only had seven skill points remaining. So the question was where to put them... While he certainly wanted access to some of the skills like the familiar mastery, or the extended weight limit, parry, or even another weapon skill that had AoE attacks like the curved sword, and especially the charge skill which increased his damage on the first attack immensely, his thoughts kept flipping back to his health... Survival was vital. If he wanted to move forward, he had to be breathing and standing upright in order to do so. Thus: Itzal selected the first rank of battle healing and unlocked it. With that unlocked, he ran out of skill points to use, and was forced to accept his new build... Though he wasn't really upset with it. Now that he had done all of this his conversion was now officially o- A message popped up from the cardinal system: [Please convert items to tier four before time elapses] "...I'm sorry, what?" Quickly going to his equipment, he selected his sword and saw that there was the option to upgrade it to a tier four item, and in the process even convert it's type from one to another if he really wanted to. Completely shocked he sat there in disbelief as he knew this wasn't going to really work out well. The only weapon he had that could be tiered was his sword, and it was a bleed weapon. If he had managed to get some unique weapons from before, he could have possibly converted those and obtained a powerful tier four unique sword. As it was, he only had the sword he could use... Well, he could pull one of Zandra's equipment out since they were under the shared inventory system the wedding status provided. However he wasn't going to do that. There wasn't enough time to talk with her about it, and he knew she used all of her weapons. He couldn't take that from her under any circumstances. Thus, he simply hit convert for his primary sword which had two bleed and one paralysis, turning the meager weapon into a tier four. This would have to do until he managed to get himself an upgrade he thought to himself. With that being decided, he stood up, Aldion noticing this and fluffing his feathers. Switching his equipment out from his casual clothing to his black hooded armor, he was glad to see that the leather chest piece and pauldrons didn't turn the item into a light armor piece of gear... Though it was glitching out a little bit until he officially made it cloth armor in the menu. After that he equipped Beauty Incarnate under his right glove, and his wedding ring under his left glove. And finally the skills and mods.. Itzal went ahead and selected ferocity, athletics, nimble, night vision, detect, reveal, untraceable, vanish, and surprise attack assassin as his active mods. With no need to track players right now he didn't need to worry about that, and if he did he could just switch it out really quick. As for extra skills, he selected hiding, survival, disguise and forgotten king's authority. With his entire setup finally laid to rest, he turned over to Aldion who sat there staring at him expecting a command any moment. "Well? Let's see if the floor itself has made any changes as well. Could be fun." Itzal commented, with a finger gesture for the black raven to join him. "Caw! Caw!" The familiar flapped it's feathers before leaping into the air and getting a head start in front of Itzal. Chuckling, he raced after his friend. He no longer had the charge skill, which was a bummer, but he would grind enough experience points to max out battle healing and get the charge skill afterwards. He just needed to earn four more paragon levels and he'd get another five skill points. That only unlocked one additional rank, but it was a start at least. And who knows? There might be lots of dungeons and quests, events and raids for him to take on which would serve to boost his experience off the charts! It was only a matter of time before he got the skills he needed to help skyrocket the frontlines into the next tiered floors. And with Zandra's help... Yes, especially with Zandra's help. He would get there. Not alone anymore. He would reach that goal side by side his loving wife. She as the AoE and tank. He as the scout and DPS. There to support one another through everything and everything. Through thick and thin... They would escape this world together, and meet in the real world. Post: 1,102 Total: 16,887 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 8, 2021 Author #17 Report Share Posted April 8, 2021 Rushing across the mega slime farm he owned he jumped as he reached the fencing, placing his hand on it's board and swinging his legs overhead smoothly and flawlessly, before planting them onto the ground once again, running towards the forest. Once he was close enough he switched from a run to a sprint towards a large tree and scaled it very quickly with three dexterous steps before grabbing it's lowest branch and hoisting himself up with the momentum. After that it was a simple matter of climbing the rest of the branches up to the highest point, which he'd done so many times he'd pretty much call this kind of thing easy. Not even inside the game either, as he did practice parkour out in the real world for a while to escape bullies and other daily frustrations. Once he had reached the top of the tree he found Aldion waiting for him, fixing up the feathers on his wing before fluffing them into place, folding his wings, and sitting there with a look that seemed to say: "Oh you're finally here now." "Caw!" "Hey you, I don't have wings. I'm fast but I can't literally fly through the air and land wherever I want to. Gravity is my enemy here." "Caw! Caw!" "Just wait until we end up going through another cave.." Itzal muttered before taking a look at his surroundings. It... Wasn't at all, like before. From what he could tell, he was in one of the very few forested areas on the entire floor. Not only that but the forested area he was in wasn't even all that big. It was secluded on a flat area a little ways from a cliffside, so at least it was still isolated, maybe even more so. He could even see the waters flowing from the lake nearby his house like a steady stream towards the cliff before turning into a miniature waterfall. It was beautiful... The rest of the floor had taken him off guard. The entire place looked like a series of canyons, mountains and cliffs, each of them layered with greenery on the surface of them, making the rough land still seem like a friendly terrain despite it's foundations and jaggedness. In the distance Itzal could see giant mountains where a massive waterfall fell down and continued as a river through most of the floor in it's largest canyon, thought it would be more accurate to call it a valley. "...Well. This place certainly has changed a lot since the update..." "Caw." While Aldion was in agreement with him, Itzal felt that he didn't care all that much in reality. The primary thing that would change for Aldion was that there were less places to hide with the forest gone, though they had practiced stealth in the past... Although. Since familiars no longer possessed any sort of skill designed to hide from other players, did that mean they could no longer attempt to go into stealth alongside the player? If that were the case, it would spell disaster for any player attempting to use the hiding skill so long as they owned a familiar. Either that or perhaps the familiar could only go into stealth based on what type of animal it was. For example a pink and purple bear would be harder to hide than a small black raven. Or maybe it was something else entirely? Wanting to test this out right now rather than later, Itzal activated his stealth skill as he normally did, and blended in with the branches. He watched as Aldion readjusted his position to keep himself hidden from view, blending in with the branch's shadows. As he did this, not only did Itzal's username, health bar and energy bar become partially translucent, but so did Aldion's name and health. Taking a small sigh of relief he let go of his now pointless fears. From what this test had revealed to him, not only could they hide alongside the player, the familiar likely utilized the stealth points the player was currently generating as their own. Thus if one got caught, so did the other. That was a well thought out mechanic he thought to himself. It was definitely useful if he located a player killer with a familiar. It would allow him and Aldion to keep the familiar from sending a message to one of his or her "friends". With this new rule established, Itzal scanned the area for somewhere to head to, just to try and get a feel for this new floor. There was someplace on this floor that Itzal had found a long while back. Someplace he actually took Kasier to for a special date of theirs. He wanted to see if it was removed or changed, and from what he could remember it should be relatively nearby. Though that nearby had become a part of the mountains, that just made it more of an adventure. Smiling with anticipation he began to climb down the tree, and once at the lowest branch dropped down and landed on the ground with ease and no loss in health. He made a dash for the other side of the clearing as the path he had laid out for the caves was along the backside of his house. The road was gone now, but the area was still a little bit similar, so he could still locate the cave even without it. Running along the path the forest began to start thinning out until it was nothing more than several sparse trees here and there. It was now more so like a mountain layered with vegetation than it was a forest, though from what he had seen earlier that was the point of it. The forested lands he had built his house in were no longer to be seen. They were gone forever. Replaced now with the mountainous ranges before him. The land wasn't too dangerous to cross though. The mountains were relatively flat, and while rough it wasn't loose or sharp. If this were in the real world running around here would give someone a cramp, aching legs and hips, maybe a bad back. But that didn't really exist in sword art online really. In the end while they were indeed trapped here, it did have one or two perks up it's sleeves. That's when he heard the buzzing. Pausing for a moment and drawing his sword, he looked ahead with the help of reveal and detect, and located what appeared to be two wasps. Both of them were about two feet in length, and the two were buzzing around the area as if they were wandering around aimlessly. Their cursor colors were pink, meaning they were severely under-leveled against him. That was a good thing at least. Looking at his sword really quick... "Hey Aldion." he whispered to his familiar. The black raven turned it's head to him. "How about we try out my new combat skills on something real?" With that Itzal exited stealth, gaining the attention of the two wasps, and rushed forward. Post: 1,184 Total: 18,071 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 8, 2021 Author #18 Report Share Posted April 8, 2021 Even without the charging skill at his disposal, he had closed the distance very swiftly, his black blade reaching for the wasp. The creatures that noticed him moved in to attack as well, and the wasp he had targeted moved with decent speed. In fact, the monster seemed more focused and quicker than it had been the last time he'd fought mobs on this floor. Well he rarely ever saw wasps here outside of the wasp queen quest, but in general most of the monsters on this floor were generally weaker than this, or slower at least. As the creature came in for a strike he recognized that it wasn't playing around, and was trying to sting his neck with it's large piercing blade on the back end of it's abdomen. If Itzal had allowed such a thing, then maybe it would have been a threat but he wasn't going to just sit there and let himself get pierced in the neck by a giant stinger on this overgrown hornet. Activating his strongest sword art just for the sake of practice, his blade glowed with energy as he cleaved the creature in half, severing it's front from it's abdomen in one single, clean strike. What shocked him, was how quickly his energy had dropped from that one hit. And then of course it hit him, not like a truck but like a train. With his sword arts made stronger, so were his energy costs. However on top of this, he also had to worry about the fact that his energy had been cut in half. Thus he would never again have more than enough energy for a long and stretched out battle... He actually had to concern himself about energy from this point forward. And that was going to be a very big issue that was now pinned to the forefront of his mind. For one, he had to calculate how many hits he could land on his opponent before he ran out of energy entirely. Secondly he had to figure out methods of increasing his maximum energy. And the only way he could think of doing that was both leveling up his paragon levels, or getting the energist skill... And he really didn't want to have to spend his skill points into that of all things... But, what else could he do?? If he skipped the four ranks in battle healing for now, he'd at least have one percent of his health per round. It wasn't much at all, but it was something at least. In raids the supporters would likely be working overtime for not just him but the entire group to keep everyone's health up to maximum. There was also the vitality consumable which allowed players to recover a little bit of their energy. However in order to truly utilize that he needed to consume it at least twice, and he also needed the storage capacity for it. In theory it was useful outside of combat, but in a raid... Was it really? There were too many variables he needed to process, and and he was in the middle of a battle. A non-threatening battle, but a battle nonetheless. Itzal watched as the second wasp dived at him with the strong intent of landing at least some kind of blow. However the nimble rogue backflipped out of the way and swung his sword to parry it's stinger. The result sent the wasp flying through the air spinning until it crashed into the cliffside. That gave him a little bit more time to think at least... In a raid, if his energy reached minimum, then he needed to get the energy back somehow. There were four methods he could use to try and make that happen. The first was consuming the food enhancement vitality, which could provide him... sixteen points of energy for each he consumed. Looking at his sword, he knew that was only enough for one more attack with his maximum damage sword art. It wasn't really good enough in reality. He could try making it work by using the consumable between the vanish mod and surprise attack. However there was yet another problem with that. Both vanish and surprise attack used up a collective total of thirteen points of energy. Which meant that even if he didn't use any sword arts between his surprise attacks, he would still not have enough for his strongest sword art, only his weakest ones. There was the meditation skill, but it too only recovered about sixteen points of energy and that still wasn't enough. If he used both meditation and the consumable together then he could, but at that point he would be spending two to three rounds doing absolutely nothing before launching a surprise attack against his target. If he was doing that, then he would need to focus everything he could into burst damage, and not constant attacks. But in the end it may just be the only way he'd deal any real damage in the long run. For short battles he could give it his all, but it was still risky in case the fight ended up dragging on a bit. And burst damage was predictable when fighting against player killers... While he appreciated the additional strategy, he was beginning to feel as if he had been backed into a corner... However there was one additional variable he needed to take into account: Zandra's first aid skill. It was possible to give him the energy needed to keep fighting if she chose too, which would be vital for dungeons and events. She may not like the idea of doing so, but that's what the two of them needed to figure out together. They needed to sit down and strategize about how they wished to proceed with combat going forward...... Of course right about now he still had one last wasp he needed to shred before moving on at long last to see the crystal cave and make sure everything was still there. ID# 187782 BD: 8+3=11 22*16=352 dmg! -16 EN Wind Wasp 1 Slain ID# 187784 MD: 9 30-20=10 dmg! ID# 187785 MD: 8-4=4 Miss! Wind Wasp 1 || 0/100 HP || 30 DMG Wind Wasp 2 || 100/100 HP || 30 DMG +1 EN Itzal: [0/0 H] || 820/820 HP || 67/82 EN || 22-26 DMG || 4 EVA || 2 BLD T4 || 3 ACC || 1 PLZ || 9 BH+S || Vanish: 0 CD || Surprise Attack: 0 CD || Disguise: 0 CD || Meditation: 0 CD || FKA: 0 CD || SA CD: Meteor Break: 3/3 CD || Post: 1,006 Total: 19,077 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 8, 2021 Author #19 Report Share Posted April 8, 2021 While the wind wasp pulled itself back together and refocused on Itzal yet again, the player was going over every possible option in his head as to what he could use to make his energy loss less of an issue... It finally hit him: He'd forgotten about a singular mod which was provided under the weapons skill list. A mod which he had forgotten about because there was absolutely no need for such a thing due to it's low benefits and the overall size of their energy pools: The stamina mod. The mod worked by reducing the energy costs of every sword art by a total of two points. Thus his strongest sword art in his arsenal now, the one that cost sixteen points of energy, would instead cost fourteen points of energy. While it wasn't much, it was definitely something he'd want and need if energy was going to be a big issue. From what he remembered the mod wasn't an add on, so unfortunately he would have to use up a mod slot, but that was fine. When he was in a raid, he likely wouldn't be using some of his scout mods, and depending on how he decided to set his strategy, probably not even the vanish mod. He'd only use that mod for other instances in the future. No, when on the battlefield alongside other players, his only stealth attempt would be when using his surprise attack mod. That was it. He wasn't going to waste energy on burst attacks when he could deal more through constant means. His meditation skill had a cooldown rank of three, so he would likely need to rely on other items after that. If he could make his armor and trinket a demonic, it was possible to apply the recovery enhancement to them and give himself a stronger energy regeneration without losing his evasion or accuracy.... He smiled now that he had a plan set in motion. That was how he'd do it. With meditation, energist, stamina and some recovery enhancements. He could actually do this. The recovery enhancement increased one's passive energy regeneration by one times tier for each slot applied. That meant that Itzal's passive energy regeneration would skyrocket from one energy per round to nine points per round. It wasn't as much as meditation or vitality provided, but it was still far greater than his original plan. Instead of having to wait constantly for his energy to finally grow over a long period of time, the combination of these things would speed his recovery up very quickly. He might even be able to use the vanish and surprise attack mods with this plan. He wasn't sure of course, he hand to run practice courses. Maybe try the technique out while grinding mobs or something. Although it might be a bit dangerous to attempt monster grinding while he was still getting a good grip of his abilities and trying out new plans of attack... Perhaps later on when he was with someone else like Zandra, just in case something went south. Without using the meditation skill, his passive energy regeneration would be around nine points per round, which was incredibly useful. Instead of his maximum energy cost being sixteen, it would be fourteen with the stamina mod, though he still needed one more skill point to purchase it. If he possessed energist, then his maximum pool of energy would raise from eighty two points to one one hundred and two instead. That wasn't just a great bonus, that was a necessary one. That allowed him six attacks with his strongest sword art without stamina, and seven with it. Of course that still didn't take into account the cost for vanish and surprise attack together. If Itzal used those, then it would be an additional thirteen points of energy spent every three rounds or so. If he used the technique he'd practiced earlier where he used one sword art after the other with the stamina mod, then he'd be spending about thirty six points of energy every three rounds. If he didn't use vanish and surprise attack, he'd be spending thirty six every three rounds. If he did use them, he'd be spending about forty nine every four rounds. However if he obtained the recovery enhancements, then he'd shave that cost down greatly. Of course... That assumed that it would trigger. The recovery enhancement had about a fifty percent chance of triggering, so it either did or didn't. That being said, it was better than nothing, and it would save him a whole lot of trouble if it did trigger. With that planning over with, at least for this moment, Itzal refocused on his enemy who was charging at him with a passion. Simply side stepping his foe was plenty. While monsters seemed to have become stronger on some level, these monsters were still from the second floor, and thus far more inferior to him to the point where they didn't really do anything to him. However his own thought process, as very much needed and deep as it was, had gotten him too distracted from the fight he was in. As a result when he tried to use the sword art as the monster passed by, it barely managed to avoid the tip of his blade. Well that was annoying. He didn't want this fight to drag on as some had in the past. He needed to focus on cleaving this monster and seeing the crystal caves. Once he did that and confirmed that his source of materials still existed, he could message Zandra and schedule a place to meet up with her. He didn't have this kind of time to waste after all, and he needed to go ahead and discuss his plans with her. If he could just squash this one last wasp and be done with it... Alas, with it being a wasp and very agile, he was in fact having difficulty hitting it. Or maybe it was him. It could just be that he was out of practice or something, though that didn't make sense. Was he shaken up by the raid boss event still? Or maybe it was readjusting to the new system and it's cloth armor, or the new sword arts... Or something. He wasn't entirely sure to be honest. ID# 187786 BD: 2+3=5 Miss -1 EN ID# 187787 MD: 8-4=4 Miss Wind Wasp 1 || 0/100 HP || 30 DMG Wind Wasp 2 || 100/100 HP || 30 DMG +1 EN Itzal: [0/0 H] || 820/820 HP || 67/82 EN || 22-26 DMG || 4 EVA || 2 BLD T4 || 3 ACC || 1 PLZ || 9 BH+S || Vanish: 0 CD || Surprise Attack: 0 CD || Disguise: 0 CD || Meditation: 0 CD || FKA: 0 CD || SA CD: || Vertical Square: 1/1 || Meteor Break: 2/3 CD || Post: 1,058 Total: 20,135 Link to post Share on other sites
Itzal 0 Posted April 8, 2021 Author #20 Report Share Posted April 8, 2021 The wasp had run into the opposite cliffside when Itzal side stepped the monster, and was now disorientated again. However the program chose to attack him despite this fact, resulting in it's attack being way, way off. He didn't even need to dodge this time, it just missed on it's own. Watching this unfold, he couldn't help but wonder how stronger the monsters on the floors above would be. Most monsters would be unable to land a hit on Itzal unless they were able to land a critical hit... But most monsters tended to have a decent chance of landing such a thing against him half of the time. So it came down to how much damage they dealt, and if he could take it for very long. If the monsters had grown far stronger than they normally would be, then he may not be able to risk going on any grinds by himself anymore. Zandra was often busy with her own grinds, so he may need to find a partner to grind alongside with. Either a tank, an AoE player, or a support player preferably. Jonathan was a tank, but Itzal wasn't sure how warm a welcome that conversation was going to be turning out. Hestia had some healing skills if he recalled... Although she wanted to be a jack of all trades build, so with the limitations put on players she may end up deciding to do something a little bit differently. He didn't know who he should approach about this.. But, that was something to worry over another time. Itzal took his sword, gripped it tightly, turned on his heel and thrust the blade into the back of the wasp, piercing through to the other side of it's body. With a small shriek, the creature shattered and fell to nothing. The experience points they provided were hardly anything, but that was perfectly fine with him. He wasn't grinding just yet... Soon, but not yet. He certainly did need to grind for experience points, preferably soon, but overall he wanted to do it with someone else. If he had no choice but to solo he would, but he'd rather avoid working alone anymore... With this fight having ended, Itzal made his way through the valley but did not see any additional monsters out. Curious, he activated his search skill, detect skill, and reveal skill. Sure enough, he found multiple holes in the cliffsides hidden by bushes and shrub, and inside past the greenery, hidden by darkness which his eyes penetrated thanks to the night vision skill, were a collection of wind wasps. The same as he'd just fought. They all had the pink cursor of course, and each appeared to be eyeing him warily. Perhaps the monsters sometimes had different personalities written into them then... If that were the case then the two wasps he fought would likely be regarded as brash, arrogant, or possibly just wild and uncontrollable. Unafraid. Whereas the rest of the wasps could detect the strength difference between one another, and made the distinct choice to avoid fighting him. Or maybe he was just overthinking it. He had run into plenty of intelligent non player characters and monsters in the past, so he was used to overthinking their overall intelligence and behavior patterns. For all he knew they could just be programmed this way. A few monsters sent to test the player while the others waited for easy prey. A good ambush spot for low leveled players. He might want to re scout all of the floors and identify where all of the ambush sites were. If he did, he could actually sell copies of his map to other players. Locations of interest, dungeon entrances, ambush sites, with notes on everything. Smiling, he figured he'd get to it at some point soon. Once he'd gotten his energy problem fixed. Finally coming across the opening of a cave, Itzal walked inside fearlessly, hope that his gathering area of crystals and cave full of so many memories was truly still here and intact. He heard scuttling as he moved through the darkness, watching as a few goblins scurried away, scared of the player who walked into their domain. The goblins brought back memories of his adventures with Jonathan as they searched for rumors and the like of dwarven civilization. Unfortunately they still hadn't found one, but there were plenty of floors to go. Eventually he reached deep enough and took a sharp breath of air. Not only had the crystal cave remained, but it was more magnificent than beforehand... Along with giant clusters of glowing crystals of various sizes, shapes and color schemes, there were HUGE crystals that grew like giant pillars from the floor to the ceiling. Many of them were slanted, creating majestic archways for players to walk underneath. Fond memories flooded back to the front of his mind and he smiled. "Aldion? I'm ready to go meet up with Zandra now... Come on, let's go." "Caw!" As their voices echoed throughout the crystal cave, Itzal turned and walked back towards the entrance. He knew everything he had now. He knew all of the update, it's changes, and it's additions. He knew what it removed. He knew about his new drawbacks. And he had a plan to beat them. He wasn't going to be stopped now. He and Zandra would take down Aincrad with the rest of the players. One way or another. In the end, they would win. ID# 187788 BD: 5+3=8 22*7 = 154 DMG -6 EN ID# 187789 MD: 5-4=1 Miss Wind Wasp 1 || 0/100 HP || 30 DMG Wind Wasp 2 || 0/100 HP || 30 DMG +1 EN Itzal: [0/0 H] || 820/820 HP || 62/82 EN || 22-26 DMG || 4 EVA || 2 BLD T4 || 3 ACC || 1 PLZ || 9 BH+S || Vanish: 0 CD || Surprise Attack: 0 CD || Disguise: 0 CD || Meditation: 0 CD || FKA: 0 CD || SA CD: || Vertical Square: 1/1 || Meteor Break: 2/3 CD || Post: 915 Total: 21,050 Thread Completed! Total Word Count: 21,050 (counted via wordcounter.net) Total Pages: 1 EXP Option: 3*tier per 50 words EXP Sub-Total: 8,420 Paragon Bonus: +3% (252) Mega Slime Farm Bonus: +10% (842) Total EXP: 5,052 EXP! Col Reward: 400 Col Other Rewards: None US ROLL ID: 188065 BD: 1 <<Holy Blade>> CD: 6 LD: 20 MD: 5 <<Darkness Blade>> Reroll chosen. ID: 188066 BD: 3 <<Achilles>> ERROR//: ACHILLES UNAVAILABLE; ROTATE FORWARD <<Dual Blades>> CD: 1 LD: 10 MD: 7 <<Infinite Spear>> <<Dual Blades>> selected! Congratulations! Link to post Share on other sites
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