Noob on the Loose

Goldenblade is here. This is her huge accomplishment, and it's a real one for her, she's only just now starting to get a feel for how thw game works. After a long time of scraping by in confusion and not wanting to bother anyone, she's become quite comfortable in becoming a complete nuisance. Or at least putting herself more forward than she'd been doing. It's all a bit^h^h^h wildly complicated for her, though, and she's still well out of her depth, wandering now around the Town of Beginnings looking lost.

    And then up above, someone is running along. There might not be many players hanging around in the town of beginnings after The Patch stopped everyone from logging out, but every now and then you get them coming through. And in this case-- there's a young, red-scaled and -haired salamander running from rooftop to rooftop, golden scarf trailing along behind him.
    And lo and behold, Goldenblade herself might catch brief sight of him, leaping from the edge of a roof to a lightpole with the intent for it to be used as an in-between platform on his way to the roof on the other side of the street.
    ...Except, his dragon-like foot doesn't quite catch hold of solid matter like it was supposed to. Maybe it was just a miscalculation, the thing was much more slippery or there was straight up a hitbox issue, he's sent careening down through the air with a "AAAH WHAT THE HELL?!"
    And all the way down to the street, destined to flop unceremoniously onto his belly on the curb.

Goldenblade acks! It's raining lizards! Or, wait, no, she looks up, sees a rooftop and ... can someone actually get up there? But she rushes over to Atif, and looks over, calling out, "Are you okay?" She will try and help, she's been to enough workplace accident trainings in her time. But it's always different when it happens for real. At least there's no splatter and gore.

    The red salamander is left laying there on the street for a moment. It might seem worrisome, at first, but, the instant she starts helping him up, his head suddenly snaps up, and-- "I'm okay!" He declares with a cheerful, bright grin and one thumb held up. Even if there is a bit of blood dripping down from his nostril. Thankfully being in the game world means that pain isn't quite as bad as it would be in the real world, but... he's probably still hiding it for the most part to try to avoid people (Goldenblade in this case) being too worried.

Goldenblade looks up at the place Atif must have fallen from, and back at the okay-claiming lizard, and looks skeptical. "Well, if you're sure... I could ... they don't have ambulances here, but I met a fellow who said he was a doctor. I'm not sure where to find him, but there are probably others." She looks around, not that she knows what a doctor here might look like. Stethoscope and white clothes? No? "What were you doing, anyhow?" she wonders curiously.

    "It's fine, really!" The Salamander continues to assure, and when the hand makign the thumb-up gesture recedes itself, it quickly sweeps some of his ruffled-up red hair out of the way of his face, while turning over to settle sitting on the curb for the moment. Well, he might claim to be fine but he's not in a hurry to go anywhere, clearly. "What I was doing?" He repeats the question with a curious tilt of his head. "I was just running. It's faster to go on rooftops than keep to the street, usually." His smile returns again right after that, bright and cheerful. "But, I'm being rude. Hi! I'm Atif!" A scale-covered hand lifts up towards her, in offer. "It's nice to meet you!"

Goldenblade nods slowly. If he says he's fine twice, he'll be able to walk it off, she supposes. She'll help him to his feet anyway, and she looks up to the rooftops at the take of running across them. "Faster?" She considers that. As far as introductions, she uhms, "Call me Goldenblade, I guess. I'm not sure how I got the names I got, but there are a lot of them and they don't seem to actually mean anything." And she couldn't explain about copy-paste errors if she tried. "Where were you running to?" she wonders. "Not that I know where anything is. Or I'd offer to help you get there. Walking on the ground, anyhow. It's surprisingly risk-free. Or at least you won't fall...."

    "Goldenblade," Atif repeats the name he has been given, in time with him bouncing up onto his feet with her help. "It's a good name, too." He nods his head firmly, as if considering this to be some kind of sage fact. "Huh? Where? Um... Well, nowhere in particular, I guess..." He crosses one arm over his chest, and guides his other hand up to press it's knuckles against his chin, thoughtfully. "I was just kind of keeping myself moving. But, sure, sure, being down here is safer but it's not as exciting. At least..." He takes a few steps forward, immediately spinning around over to take another step backward while facing Goldenblade. "When doing it alone, right? Are you going somewhere? I can walk with you, if you'd like."

Goldenblade ahhhhs, "Running just to run? Ah, to be young again!" She muses, "though I guess I'm young again, too, I oughgt to try more of that sort of thing. I need to get out of the habit of being old." She hrms at the spinning around, and agrees, "I've been doing not-exciting for so long, it's become a habit. I ought to break that habit here, come to think of it, but I'm not sure how. Or where," she adds, "I'm not going anyplace, just sort of wandering around and looking at things. I'm still not clear on what I'm supposed to do in this game."

    "Welllll, everyone's young around here, right?" Atif points out with a flash of a smile, still facing Goldenblade, bouncing lightly on his feet while waiting to see if she gets to walking too. "And that's... kind of the thing, right? Even before the Wave happened, it's been kind of... open-ended. You can do whatever you want, really, and now it's... even more so, I guess." His head cants sideways. "Is there anything you've ever wanted to do that you couldn't outside?"

Goldenblade will walk along, then, not going anywhere, just someplace, and she says, "Anything I wanted to do? Not really, I think. I mean, the big things, war hero, or being a superhero, those were kids' fantasies. Though I guess you could do it here, couldn't you? The game's practically built around it, even." She pats the swords on her hips. "Never really used these, but if I'm a hero in a story, then I must know how, yeah?"

    "I think you can still kind of do those, yeah," Atif points out with a low chuckle. "Well, probably not on your own, though. The world here isn't built that way. It was deliberately made to encourage people to do things with other people, right? But..." He keeps walking backwards in front of her for a moment longer before he spins around and gets to pace besides her, instead. "There's also the smaller things. You ever want to hunt a boar? Go explore an exotic land? ... Just drink with people in a fantasy-world? ... Well, the last one might be a bit hard until someone figures out how to make beer without using the menu... The menu-made stuff tastes like garbage..."

Goldenblade winces at menu beer, and agrees, "We'll have to wait til someone ferments it. The first batch won't be ready for a while, even if they started right away. You can hunt boar? Or anything? I've never done it, but I heard that you can cook the meat and it tastes like actual cooked meat. That's a big step up from menu food." She considers, "The innkeeper the other day mentioned he'd pay for actual meat brought in. I don't know about vegetables, can you actually dig and plant here? I guess someone could try an herb garden. My wife used to have one in our tiny back yard."

    "... Not that I would know what beer should taste like..." Atif murmurs quietly with a wry look off to the side. "I think you're still supposed to have the cooking skill even if you do it outside of the menu...? I am not super sure." Atif rolls his broad shoulders around with this admission of uncertainty, tilting his head curiously at asomething Goldenblade said. "Oh, there is a herbalist skill. So I am pretty sure you can do it. I bet Hifume would know..."

Goldenblade considers that, but says, "I ... actually have cooking and farming skills. Not high skills. But skills. I'm not even sure what a low or high skill is, though I'd imagine I'd feel more confident in something if I were good at it. But I know a bit about farming, and a bit about cooking, and ... well, maybe I -ought- to give it a shot. It sounds like it could be helpful, yeah?"

    "Oh!" Atif lights up immediately at this revelation. "oh, you know what we could do then! We could, we could... uh, we could go hunting boars! Yeah! I mean, I don't have the hunting skill so the drop rate on the meat is probably pretty low, but if we manage to snag one! I can make a fire and you can try to cook it and we'll have BACON!"

Goldenblade considers something, checking her sheet, and says, "Uh, I have hunting skill, too, if that helps?" She's absolutely clueless, but earnest and wants to help. "I don't know what a drop rate is or how boars would carry anything, but if we can get food out of electronic monsters ... though, we're electronic, too, or something like that? It's all confusing to me, to be honest. But I would not say 'no' to bacon."

    "That does help!!" Atif proclaims, full of excitement, hands held up in loose fists and eyes sparkling up. "The hunting skill increases the meat and skin drop rate from animals *a lot*! It's way better than killing like a hundred boars and getting one thing of meat."
    He cocks his head again slightly at her words, though, and hmms. "I guess you started just before the Wave hit? Hm, well... Okay, basically... every mob - that's npcs that exist just for the purpose of being fought by players - has different things they can drop to be picked up when they die, right? Some of them are things they are guaranteed to drop, but some have a pre-set random percentage chance to be dropped, right? That's the drop rate."
    "... And as for how boars and wolves drop gold, um... just dont worry about it, it's rpg logic..."

Goldenblade nods slowly about helping. That's good! She acks at killing a hundred boars to get one meat drop. "That doesn't sound like a good plan. That doesn't even make sense. I mean, there's meat on anything, isn't there?" She considers a bit longer, and admits, "There's two places that have numbers, so I'm not clear on whether it makes me good at hunting or not. But I guess I can give it a go? Though I don't have a gun. Or I guess we'd use bows here, though I haven't got one of those, either."

    "It's... RPG stuff," is all the explanation Atif has to provide for that, at first. "I guess it's supposed to represent not being able to remove the skin and meat properly from the dead animal...? I dunno."
    He nods his head rapidly, then. "Yeah, bows would be the choice in this kind of setting. But you know, since it's a game, I thiiiink we can probably just get away with swords. Or fists in my case."

Goldenblade draws one of her blades about six inches from the scabbard, peers at it. "Well, I guess," she says hesitantly. As far as not removing the skin and meat properly, she can only shrug. "Yeah, I've got zero idea how to do that. Fire and Physical are apparently what I'm good at. But if there's a place we can go where we won't get killed horribly and try it out, I'm game to have a go at it."

    "We-elll, if you have even a little hunting skill that'll still be a huge help," suggests Atif, now picking up his pace to go past her again, just so he can spin around and start walking backwards in front of her, hands clasped together behind his back and tail swaying from side to side. "If you want to, anyway! If you don't feel comfortable with trying it, I can probably try to figure out something else for you to try out. We have plenty of time on our hands here."

    Atif gives a little excited bounce during his backwards walk with that decision from her, nodding rapidly. "Alright! It'll be a good exercise nonethless, but... yeah, food that actually tastes like something would be great." He spins around again, tail curled up high along his back to avoid accidentally smacking her with that quick turn. "I know a couple places in the woods. We might run into other folks too since they're common grinding spots but... we'll see!"

Goldenblade chuckles as Atif see,s excited by the prospect. She, herself, admits, "I haven't done archery in -years-, so I may be a bit rusty at it. And we never shot at animals, so I've got no idea what to do with anything we do kill, other than to cut it up and put it on the fire. But I can strike a spark and make fire, so we'll see how things go."

Goldenblade chuckles as Atif seems excited by the prospect. She, herself, admits, "I haven't done archery in -years-, so I may be a bit rusty at it. And we never shot at animals, so I've got no idea what to do with anything we do kill, other than to cut it up and put it on the fire. But I can strike a spark and make fire, so we'll see how things go."

The two parted ways at that point with an agreement to meet up the next day. For her part, Goldenblade would have to see about buying a bow.