Chapter 4: Opening Skill and Talent Trees
The skills and talents trees presented themselves in front of him, as he looked at both, recalling the info he knew about both of them.
Unlike any other VR game, this Eternal Glory game followed other unique rules of skills and talents. Each class had a certain set of talents, which helped the player a lot in fighting using his main weapon.
For a swordsman, there were talents like Sword mastery, single handed sword talent, double handed sword talent, flying swords talent, and shadow sword talent.
Each talent required certain talent points to be unlocked, and a certain amount of Tp to be upgraded to higher levels. Each increase in talent level will reflect upon the player's final strength.
As for skills, there were no such restrictions over any class on using any skill of another class, but there were many complicated rules regulating this. The simplest of them was related to the number of Sp needed to learn each skill.
As he was a swordsman, and being at the beginner stage of the game, he was granted one Sp and one Tp. As he managed to gain three more Sp and one more Tp, his choices now were drastically different from any other player in his class.
Bloom opened the two trees and started contemplating about them. The first thing he focused upon was the talent tree. He had only two Tp now, and so his options here were limited in these three options:
"Single handed sword talent: increases Str by ten percent. Requires one Tp to be activated."
"Sword mastery talent: increases Str by twenty percent. Requires one Tp to be activated."
"Double handed sword talent: enables the player to carry two swords at the same time. it increases Str by twenty five percent. Requires two Tp to be activated."
For him, the most powerful was the double handed sword talent, but he didn't have two swords now. He knew he would gain one sword at level three, but even if he had it, he wouldn't be able to fully utilize the talent advantage.
"It's worth going for, as having one sword is much slower than two swords, plus my DPS will be diminished a lot," he muttered, solving this dilemma.
"I choose to learn the double handed sword talent."
"Double handed sword talent is activated. Player has the right to acquire another sword now."
The system gave him a surprise, as another sword appeared inside his inventory. The talent was always activated, like a passive skill being running all over the time, so he just had to take out the sword, to find its scabbard hanging on the side of his belt.
Two swords were now in his hand, and by this he had consumed all his Tp. When he rapidly checked the talent tree before waving his hand to close it, he was surprised to see the values of the Tp needed to unlock each talent got increased by three folds now.
Each talent of the two who needed one Tp now needed three Tp. Other talents needed even more. It was an endless pit, but he had to accept the game rules.
"At least I got something good this time," he muttered as he waved the two swords at once, feeling the fluent moves in them.
"Time to select skills," he muttered, as he now had all the skill tree of his class freely exposed to him. He knew this opportunity would only be present each twenty levels. If he wanted to learn a skill later on, he needed either to wait to reach level twenty, which was impractical, or be lucky enough and gain skill tokens from treasure boxes.
The skills available to him were numerous, but he knew having more skills at the beginning was a good start, better than having one supreme skill that would go on cooldown after each use.
So, after scanning the list, he had chosen three skills to satisfy his needs.
"Stab skill: hit the target with one hundred and fifty percent Atp. Cooldown: one second. It needs one Sp to be learnt."
"Slice skill: Chain skill. it hits the target horizontally while the player moves from side to side. It causes two hundred percent Atp. Cooldown: three seconds. It needs one Sp to be learnt."
"Ground breaker skill: Chain skill. it allows the sword to be moved to the back, defending any incoming strike, or attacking any enemy, then the player will turn to face the enemy. It causes two hundred percent Atp, and parry with two hundred percent Def. Cooldown: three seconds. It needs two Sp to be learnt."
Learning these skills consumed all the Sp he had, but he was satisfied with the result. Stab skill was a must to have skill, the base skill for any swordsman in any fight.
As for slice and ground breaker skill, both were chain skills, which meant he could link them while using any other skill, without waiting for the skill to end.
That would allow him great flexibility in any fight, especially when both were considered movable skills, allowing him to change his position while attacking.
The ground breaker skill was worth every Sp he paid for. It was an offensive skill and also a defensive one, allowing him to be always secured from any backstabbers, without the need to waste time changing his body posture first.
Having this skill, alongside his double sword talent was a blessing. He could attack using one sword, link another attack with the other, or even defend with his sword.
Now he was ready, so he waved his hand to close the interface, as he was now well prepared to go on monster hunt.
Reaching this step made him so excited, as this game, despite hating it to the bones, was very unique in the monsters they had.
Unlike any other VR games, monsters here were available for any player in many ways. There were wilderness monsters, where players could kill to level up, dungeon monsters, where players could clear the dungeon and claimed good rewards, and even boss monsters. All were available to him without any restraints, but he knew dungeon and boss monsters were now harder for him to kill.
So, he went straight, seeking for free monsters to kill. Just as he moved a couple hundreds of meters to the front, the stamina value started to show some fluctuations.
"Damn, this stamina limitation is really a pain," he complained, cursing the developers of the game inwardly, as this was one of the worst things about this game.
Here, players couldn't venture forever in any map, couldn't fight to their heart content with monsters, as the stamina liter would be emptied, and then the player would be in fatigue state, making him unable to fight or even move properly.
This feature wasn't known beforehand, and that made many players lose their lives in vain for the first fights here.
As he knew that, he decreased his marching speed, to be like walking in a park. When he did that, that stamina meter showed stability, and started to rise up again.
He sighed, his stamina wasn't that much after all. "I need to put some points there," he muttered, as this would enable him to last longer in fights.
In a few minutes, he managed to find his first group of monsters. There were three types of monsters actually, horned tigers, double headed bulls, and two tailed snakes.
Monsters here had such unique rules, as all the monsters had levels from level one to level ten, and so players had a very wide range of monsters to select from.
He didn't have yet an investigation skill, so he had to improvise these monster data, based on his past knowledge about them.
"The bull is known for its great offense plus moderate defense, that tiger is known for its moderate offense, and thick defense. That snake is a pain, as its mobility is very high, and it can use poisons too," he muttered, while standing on the side, watching the three groups of monsters standing calmly there.
Monsters at this early stage of the game were considered to be docile, as they wouldn't attack the player unless he started to fight them. Although it was an advantage in early stages, the other feature of the monsters was really a huge headache, even for him.
"If the monster lost more than half of its Hp, it would try to escape, running away from this area, making the fight change to a chase fight!"
This was really a headache, so fighting alone wasn't recommended, especially when players didn't have any stun or trap skills yet. However Bloom decided to give it a try, as he wasn't just a newbie, he was a great swordsman with rich experience as a swordsman.
"Let's aim for these tigers first," he muttered, choosing the distant group of tigers to attack. Tigers would run fast, but they couldn't pause great threat to his defenses, not like the bull for example.
As for dealing with snakes, this was out of question, as he couldn't overrun their high speed, and that would make any fight end without any gains for him.