Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 (7 page)

There were other icons as well, and to be honest the interface was a jumble of information and it was all over the place. I knew I would need to set up special menus to clear up some of this mess, but was still trying to figure out how it all worked.

“Oh, very cool! You can customize the interface. They have pre-settings in place that will move all these damn icons around,” Dan said. I heard him mumbling, common in Virtual Reality when a character was interacting with their interface, and then said, “There we go, much cleaner now. Guys, go into your sub-system settings and select team mode.”

I started whispering my instructions and heard the other two doing the same. Dan was right. This was much better. My inventory, quests, and mail were all in small boxes along the right side of my interface. Across the bottom were 10 empty locations where icons could be placed. On the left was a small Icon with a “+” sign. I imagined that was to add team members to the group and I immediately tried to figure out how to make it work. I started to move my hand in front of my face to put my hand over the + sign when I heard Dan say “Woah!”

I paused mid-reach and waited. Dan had discovered something and I figured it had to do with the interfaces. And true to form, “Holy shitballs man! You just use your eyes!”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “Explain Dan.”

“First call me TheClaw.”

“Really, you are going to go that far into Character like Allister here is?”

“No dude. Not ‘First, call me TheClaw. I said you have to first call me TheClaw. As in you don’t get nada unless you say my name!”

I couldn’t help it, I started laughing. “You are a total ass clown Dan, but I love it. Fine. TheClaw, can you tell me what you found?”

“Ah yes. The sounds of sweet victory.” Dan said quite smugly. I planned on getting him back for this one. “So, as it turns out, because we are in a complete and total immersion, even our eyeballs tracking what is on the screen is being picked up by the sensors. Don’t move your hand, just focus on an icon with your eyes. And then when it is illuminated, say ‘open.’ Just like that you will see things pop up.”

Dan was totally right. Doing just as he instructed I opened my inventory. It was empty, with the exception of a dagger, some bread, and some water. I had no gear, so this was to be expected. But still this wasn’t a totally liberating experience. I still had to keep saying things to make them work. I had hoped that with the total immersion there would be freer movement. I was looking at the mail icon, which was illuminated, and closed my eyes for a second to think about what to look at next, when I opened them because I remembered I still needed to form the group. And there in front of me was my mailbox, open and ready for view. I looked at the inventory icon and did the same thing. Closed my eyes for a second and when I opened them, the inventory was gone. This was epic!

“Guys! Guys!” I exclaimed. “Just look at the icon and then close your eyes for a second!”

I could hear everyone exclaim when it worked. This was definitely an improvement. The freedom to access your inventory in the middle of doing something else and not having to move your hands led me to believe that you could possibly do the same with items. Focus on the item till it was illuminated and then click your eyes to activate it. There were still lots to be tested here, but I could see all the different possibilities opening before me.

Now to make the group. First I looked at the “+” sign again until it was illuminated and blinked my eyes quickly. Nothing happened. Good to know. It required a premeditated act, in this case closing the eyes for longer than just a blink. I still had the “+” sign illuminated so I “clicked” my eyes close on the icon and a window enlarged, empty at this time. I then looked over at Dan and focused only on Dan. This put a highlight around Dan. I was going to take it that this meant I had selected Dan. To test my theory, I ran my eyes over Wayne and Jason but did not focus on them. My target remained Dan. This was good and bad. If I needed to change mobs in the middle of a fight I would have to focus away from the one I was attacking. That could spell death in the middle of the fight. Oh well, another thing to figure out later. For now, I wanted to get this party formed.

While still illuminating Dan, I whispered “invite.”

“Cool! A box just popped up in front of me that said ‘Alex has invited you to join a group. Do you accept?’ Under that line is a smaller box with the word ‘Yes’ and ‘No.’ I’m going to do the verbal confirmation here to test that. Yes,” he said.

I now had TheClaw as one of my group members. While I couldn’t tell what level Dan was by looking at him, as there was no indicator above his name as to what his level was, I could now see as much in my group box. He was, as you can imagine, level 1. I tried to figure out some way to use just visual cues to invite Jason to the group, but in the end I still had to say the word ‘invite.” Jason accepted using only the eye clicking method. Wayne tapped accept with his finger to see if that worked, and it did.

CHAPTER 8

Now that the group was formed it was time to look at our individual stats. In the top left portion of the screen, just above the group box, was a small icon with a silhouette of an upper body. I focused on this icon and blinked. A new window was in front of me that showed my character in the middle, wearing only a tunic, and a number of open slots for gear and jewelry. On the right side was my individual statistics. Each character would be seeing the same thing. I studied my character and saw the following stats:

Racial Bonus: Half-Elf Vision: Half-Elf can see clearly in near darkness. Half-Elf cannot see in total darkness.

Class Bonus: Rogue has innate ability to perform Critical Strike from level 1.

I looked again to make sure I was seeing this right. And there it was, according to my character, my Chance was at 50 and not the 5 I thought I had started with. I didn’t understand why this was and thought it could have to do with the errors I received as I logged in. I didn’t mention this to the other team mates as I wanted to see if the next time I logged in this fixed itself. If not, I would need to report my findings to the Beta team.

Instead I focused on my other statistics. It appeared that each point of Strength gave you 10 attack. And each point of Constitution gave you 100 hps. This made sense in the overall scheme of things.

“Ok. I have 60 attack and 600 hit points and a movement speed of 10. I don’t have any mana for obvious reasons, and all of my resistances are at 0. I have a racial-bonus of Half-Elf vision which means I can see in near dark, but not absolute dark. And I get the class bonus of being able to perform Crit Strike with daggers at level 1. That’s it for me,” I said to the group.

“Weird,” Jason said. “I don’t have any mana either. Oh, wait. when I focused on the Mana portion of my character screen it said this will not unlock until I have achieved level 3. Otherwise I have 30 attack and 600 hit points as well. My resistance to Dark is at 100 and I’m immune to Holy. All the rest of my resistances are at 0. But my intelligence went up +2 as a High Elf.”

“Man I tell you, Warrior is where it is at!” Wayne exclaimed. “I’ve got 100 attack and 1300 hit points! I got a +1 to Strength and +2 to Constitution for being a Barbarian. And then I got Crit strike for all weapons as well from level 1 for being a Warrior!”

“That is wicked bro! And resistances at 0 too?” Dan asked.

“Ummm, no. Apparently Barbarians are a bit superstitious. Literally says that when I focus on the Dark and Holy resistances on my screen. So I have -15 Dark and -15 Holy. But the rest are at 0. I also have a movement speed of 11. Oh, and like Alex said before, I can’t see anything at night.”

“So that just leaves me,” Dan said. “Well I didn’t get any bonuses to Strength or Constitution so my attack and hit points are the same as Alex. As a Wood Elf I did get a +2 to Agility. My resistances are all at 0. But with Wood Elf I also got a racial hit that “dark” alignment encounters will have increased hostility toward Wood Elfs. Means I’m getting more aggro. As a Ranger I also get the ability to do Crit Strike with arrows from Level 1. “

I went back into my inventory and looked at my weapon. It was a simple “Rusted Dagger” with an attack modifier of 2. I wasn’t sure this thing could cut through fruit, let alone bunnies, but I was going to find out. “What does everyone have as weapons?”

“Rusted War Hammer,” said Wayne.

“Rusted Mace,” Jason said next.

“Recruit’s Bow and a Quiver of Recruit Arrows,” Dan said. “The Bow gives a modifier of 1 and the arrows give a modifier of 1 as well. And the bow has a range of 15 and the arrows have a range of 0.”

“My mace has a modifier of 2 as well,” Jason explained.

“Guess because I’m the tank mine has a modifier of 3. But it is also two handed so I couldn’t use a shield like Jason…sorry, Allister could,” Wayne finished.

“Alright, let’s equip these weapons and make our way over to the front gate. Before we go accept the quest there is still something I want to check out, if you guys don’t mind.”

“Nah, Alex. So far you are running this ship just fine. I bet it will be awhile before people learn the trick with the blinking. I can see over by the gate people waving their hands around,” Wayne said.

Once I equipped my dagger, my Attack went from 60 to 80. Which made sense with the modifier being a “2” for the dagger. The dagger also had a speed of 1. I figured this indicated how quickly I could swing my blade. Wayne’s hammer was at 1.3. In the future, with better weapons I expected to be swinging with much faster speeds. This is why Rogues were the damage dealers. We were almost ready to wreak havoc on this world. But there was still one more thing I wanted to test.

* * *

“You want me to attack something Alex, but you don’t want me to kill it?” Wayne asked.

“That’s right Wayne.”

“And then you want me to run away from it like a scared little girl?”

“Well I wouldn’t say run away. More like a tactical retreat for the sake of gathering intelligence,” I replied.

“It’s a bunny rabbit dude. I can kill it and bring back the intelligence!”

“Wayne, I am not questioning your abilities here. Seriously, this is just for the sake of figuring out what our regeneration is. You see,” and here I decided to play up to Wayne’s warrior mentality, “I’m worried that if you do attack it full on, you won’t even get hurt enough for us to see how long it takes to regen.”

“Alright, that makes sense. I’ll head over there now and attack one. You want me to just let it hit me for a bit and then run it past the guards and come back here?” Wayne asked.

We were back sitting just inside the gate, near the square. We would only need to do this once, and then we could head on out. I also wanted to see just how hard these wee little rabbits hit for. This was a game after all, and I think Wayne was going to be in for a bit of a surprise.

It wasn’t thirty seconds before we started seeing Wayne’s life bar start to go down. It wasn’t fast but it certainly wasn’t slow either. And then it started to speed up. Ten seconds later Wayne came running into the square heading for us.

“Son of a bitch! Those things hit like trucks man! And who the fuck ever heard of bunny venom?” Wayne yelled!

Others around the square started to laugh, and another Barbarian shouted, “Fuckin too right man! We need to make some bunny stew!”

It appeared that others had encountered the truck like hitting bunnies earlier on. But now was not the time to laugh at Wayne. That would come later. Now was the time to test regeneration.

“How fast is your life going down now?” I asked.

“This venom is taking off 10 points a tick. It’s not much but if it lasts forever it will kill me without a cure,” Wayne answered.

A tick was a length of time for either mana or hit points to regenerate or for a poison to deplete a portion of your hit points or mana. One tick in Resurgence was 5 seconds. A minute later and the poison disappeared from Wayne. He was now at 700 hps. The bunny had done a number on him.

“Ok, I want you to stay still and tell me how many hit points you regain from standing.” I said.

After 20 seconds Wayne replied, “Looks like I get three hit points for every tick while standing. Let me try sitting.” After another 20 seconds he said, “Ok, looks like I get 8 per tick while sitting. So if Wayne were to go down to nearly 0 hit points, our team would need to sit around for almost 10 minutes for him to regenerate. That would make the grinding very slow. Wayne was also able to look back through his logs and see that the poison lasted for one minute. Meaning it would take 120 hit points from Wayne no matter what.

The last order of business was for us to create an attack icon in our interfaces that would allow us to engage the mob. I asked Wayne what he had done.

“Well mostly I just ran up to it. It just attacked me. Definitely designed to aggro anyone that gets too close of a certain level. And I didn’t attack because I knew you were worried that I would crush it.” I let Wayne have this moment since we both knew he got his ass handed to him by a bunny rabbit.

We played with the interface a bit until we realized that we needed to focus on the item we wanted to select, blinked, and then focused on the icon slot we wanted it to go into at the bottom of the screen. Alternatively, we could have used our hand to move the icon by “tapping” it with our finger. But this group was trying to hone the hands off approach. I also wanted to make sure we didn’t all start targeting different mobs if more than one was engaged. At this point in our leveling we would probably just hoof it, but better to learn good practices now.