"Here goes nothing..."
Spike tapped one claw-tip hard against the spot, piercing directly into the stone like it was butter. A moment later, it split jagged across three different faults, all centered on the tiny piece of impure dirt at the center. A trio of windows popped up, and he had to restrain himself from cheering.
By using [Craft] without the skill, your Mastery increases by 10%
A skill has been created through a special action! Through fastidious shaping of stone, a skill to carve the world, [Earthshaper] has been created!
A skill has been created through a special action! Through discovery of your own finesse, a skill to sharpen your heritage, [Dragon's Claws] has been created!
> Figure out more skills
'Heritage', was it? That... There was a faint pain in his heart as he looked at the final window. It had been a long time since he really thought about what it meant to be a dragon, his 'heritage'. Most of those thoughts had been about how decidedly un-dragon-like he was. Maybe this was a sign that he'd be changing that? Maybe he'd become a proper dragon without having to abandon his friends... Or he already was one. He'd have to discuss it with Twilight, but for now, skills!
[Earthshaper] (Active and Passive) Lv 1 EXP: 0.0%
A skill given to those for whom working with dirt, rock, gems and all the other products of the earth comes naturally.
Passively improves the quality of your work with all earthen materials by 10%
Passively reduces the difficulty of working all earthen materials.
When used as an Active skill, you may consume Stamina to double the passive benefits of this skill and increase the speed at which you work. Stamina costs and speed increases vary.
Stamina? He had Stamina? I mean, obviously he did, he got tired... He got tired more often than he'd like, frankly. But the game hadn't said anything about it... Maybe it was a hidden stat, derived from one or more of the others? That would make it like his Defense Total in O+O, or the sprint meter in King Blaster... That made a lot of sense, since Stamina was normally something you only think about when it's gone. And maybe his new nature would make it easier for him to stay awake! Wishful thinking, but hey: This was already like a wish come true. And part of it...
Well, part of it was this.
[Dragon's Claws] (Active and Passive) Lv 1 EXP: 0.00% MP: Varies
To a dragon, their claws are proof of their dexterity and skill. They hit harder than the hooves of a pony, have more control than the hands of a minotaur, and show the claws of a griffon to be the mockeries they are. None shall face the claws of a dragon unscathed, and this skill is that fact given form.
Allows for precise control of your claws, as well as the ability to retract the tips and edges safely.
Passively increases all other effects that benefit your claws by 10%
When used as an Active skill, your claws are enhanced to strike vicious blows or work even the most durable materials, dealing increasingly more damage based on the MP spent.
This skill will grow with DEX and skill levels, gaining new features over time.
He whistled softly as he read over the details, and then flipped back to Earthshaper's description. Nothing about it had changed, but... He had a feeling that as long as he worked with his claws, these two would combine awesomely. Right now it would just be another single percent, in total, but... Shining Armor had taught him the importance of force multipliers and stacking numbers, especially when it came to building game characters. Even a simple base like 10% of 10% could quickly grow, especially if he found a way to work on increasing both skills together.
Maybe he could go out with Rarity, hit the quarries, and dig for the gems the long way around, through the stone instead of the relatively-soft dirt she usually directed him to. While he was at it, he could incorporate gemstones into his Cooking (which he was already thinking of as capital-C "Cooking") more often. And by Observing every gem for the weak spots, value, and other details (he was hoping for flavor), he could 'optimize' his training, as Rainbow Dash would put it. There weren't a lot of things she would get nerdy about, but training and exercise topped the list (with Daring Do as a close third).
This felt like good progress: It left him with a long-term plan and the means to accomplish it.
Careful planning caused your WIS to increase by 1!
He stared. He blinked. Blink. Stare. Blink. Smile.
"...Oh, so it works like that, huh?"
Even more big news: Normally in games, especially in more 'crunchy' ones like O+O or Unicorn Alley, stats were fairly fixed unless you got more for levelling or used some super-major artifact. But if he could just get stats by exercising them... Well hey, that was how it worked normally, right? So now he could think of all that work in his original skill plan as being stat improvement too. The plan he had already made would cover Dexterity, for sure, and maybe Strength. Vitality, if he worked himself hard enough.
Speaking of Vitality, he totally had a way to drain his own Stamina at will now, so that might be, in the words of Button Mash, "bah-roken". Wisdom from making plans and strategies, probably Intelligence from... studying? He'd have to ask Pinkie how you improved Luck, though: Even if she didn't know what was going on when he asked, she'd almost certainly have an answer. So the good news so far was that he had learned a ton in just an hour or so, but he had a feeling that was only because he knew so little to begin with: Large gains relative to a small base.
Yeah, the quest had even said this was a little boost-along to smooth out the early game, like the scaling experience in a lot of games. Any time now this parade of sweet discoveries would fade into the longer slog of working up individual skills or desperately studying his own menus for hints and clues... Weirdly, that had its own kind of appeal to it. The last time he made a character (for a superhero game that Shining brought as a breather between campaigns), he spent nearly two days poring through different 'splatbooks' to find the right mix of fun and useful for the sake of the group. This was even better, because he'd be improving himself, for real.
Checking his Time... There was a good twenty minutes left before the souffle finished, so he could spend the rest of this time messing with menus. At the very least, he wanted to get drawings of them all down, or at least written lists, so he could talk about it with others more easily. Starting from the top, then...
OPTIONS
> GAME
> DIFFICULTY AND MODES
> HUD MANAGEMENT
> DUNGEON OPTIONS
> CONTROLS / INTERFACE
> AUDIO
> SFX VOLUME > BGM VOLUME > DIALOGUE VOLUME
> LANGUAGE (DISABLED)
> SUBTITLES
> VIDEO
> COLOR BALANCE
> ASPECT RATIO
> VISION TYPES (DISABLED)
> SOCIAL
> PARTY OPTIONS
> COMMUNICATION OPTIONS
> FRIENDS LIST
Yeah, that looked like everything. Another disabled menu, too: But hitting this one told him he needed INT 101 or any of... a bunch of unknown alternate requirements. What caught his interest the most, in the end, were the Game and Social options. Experimenting with Audio had been fun, but while he was in that menu, Spike turned off the subtitles and music he had left on earlier. And Video didn't have many options to begin with, plus neither of them were things he wanted to mess with. But the Social options implied he could make a party, just like in a tabletop game, or that one fancy multiplayer game he saw in Canterlot last year... Plane of Battleforge or something like that.
Now that had been a cool idea for a game: There were a dozen cabinets all placed together, and anypony could sidle up to an empty one and pick up their character from the last time they played, dropping into a connected game with everypony else at the same arcade. Allegiances formed and broke in mere minutes, but the progress made was stored forever in the magically-infused crystal nodes that made it all work. Spike hadn't gotten a chance to play, but he had seen a lot of things similar to what his ability was showing him: Menus, parties forming, inventory that didn't care about size or shape or weight, skills being levelled with use.... It was enough to make him wonder.
Well, maybe he could look into that game and its makers next time he was in Canterlot. For now, he would make do with what he could learn by himself, from himself, of himself.
"Game, Difficulty and Modes."
Another one of the small pale-yellow alert boxes.
NOTE: All contents of this menu are for reference only. There is no user-controlled ability to change the difficulty or mode of a particular scene. Instead, they change contextually.
And then it listed a lot of things he couldn't see, obscured under a strange haze and a wall of ???. That was... Less useful than he had hoped. So apparently his game did have difficulty, but not in the "Are you playing on Hard Mode" sense, instead more like "Stage 7-2 of this game is harder than Stage 8-3 even though it's earlier, because 7-2 is an underwater level". It would change on its own, and he had no clue what that change even did. So one mystery down, another up, no net gain of information: This really was like one of the arcade's nastier puzzle games.
The next piece of the puzzle was "HUD Management"... Ooh, he could make his HP and MP visible in the corner of his eye, that was kind of nice. It would also make his... Stamina...
"Really? It's not even on my character sheet but I can make it visible here? Gah, I hate when menus hide stuff like that! Step up from not being able to see it period, I guess."
"Dungeon Options" was all ??? again, probably because he'd never so much as seen a dungeon, unless the one under Canterlot counted (he was pretty sure it didn't). Games tended to use dungeon less to mean "deep underground multi-purpose prison" and more to mean "contained adventure space", which Spike preferred. Seemed like his menus agreed, but he wouldn't be able to see how or why anytime soon. It's not like he'd stumble into a dungeon on the way across town... Right?
The Game category ended with what Spike guessed might be the biggest, most important section of them all... And he was right. Just looking over the "Controls / Interface" section (although it took him a moment to realize he was not supposed to say "slash") revealed such fantastic concepts as "Subvocal Command" and "Focus-Based Buttons", not to mention controls for changing his handedness, tail prehensility, and tongue articulation. The good news? The first two worked, and turning them both to 'ON' allowed him to control his menus and use his skills without anypony else being any the wiser. The bad news? All of the others were locked behind assorted levels of DEX, INT, VIT, and unknown ???-coated prerequisites.
And so all that was left of his menu adventure was the Social options. He wasn't surprised when the Friends List ended up being empty: Which is not to say that he had no friends, but rather, this interface probably had some special way of declaring a person a "friend" officially, in the system. Communication Options had a lot of submenus that were locked down behind more stat and (he assumed) skill requirements. And Party Options... Brought up a message telling him to form a Party first. To make up for that small setback, however, it told him how. The error message spelled it out right there:
To access Party Options, first form a party with others using the command "Invite NAME". Note that some features are only available if members are within certain level ranges.
I am not sure how you manage to do it, but you even manage to make the long passages of just thinking and inspection interesting. This may be a personal preference, but wouldn't it be better to keep 'the game' a secret/not say everything he has found out until now to his friends, and rather wait he until he found out more or has gotten further into it. I am just asking because the end made it seem like he would go around and ask people like buttom mash to join his party. Still, great chapter, like those before.
Dude, I'm loving this and you getting me so excited, that along with the fact that I am around the chapter 50 of the manhwa :D
[Earthshaper] and [Dragon's Claws] sound useful.
Ooo, nice. Twilight still doesn't know, but I'm sure she approves.
Lots of interesting capabilities in this game, though it seems like it will be a long slog figuring them all out.
More, more, more, MOAR!!!..... But seriously its very good so far!
Ahh, he used the KohINor trick, though I wonder if the Game only uses Ponyville bit to purchase real items, even though he can Inventory them, or if there is a Game mechanism to sell, donate etc various resources and the use them to purchase Game stats directly, or would that come under, finding the Olde Curiosity Shoppe that has been there for ages but wasnt there for ages yesterday, which would come under planning, mapping, exploring, communicating, listening, intelligence gathering etc?
Something about being a dragon as well, At this time, what Cant Spike eat, and if he gains stats by draining his Stamina, wouldnt he gain stats by working through Everything to give the data for Recovering Stamina, especially the ultra rare items that give small percentage recovery rate increases? How would that work with Pinkie Cooking, Baking.. and Zecoras Brewing? BonBons Candies? Berry Punches Craft Drinks?
What would Baked Bads be classified as, Poison, Toxin training?
Fire Breath training, message handling, Inventory, parameter sdelection in targeting? range, duration, given the laughter stuff, types of fire?
So first the Soufle, with firebreath browning? then the rest of list round town, to give a whole stack of XP ready to unlock when he completes the final subquest and suddently finds out what 50k XP means when Level 1 is 1k?
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Thank you! That means a lot, especially since part of the focus for this is going to be on the introspection and internal reasoning behind his actions, as opposed to having Spike just do things and justify them later.
As for the keeping it a secret part... For the most part, it definitely is. He doesn't have any intention of being loose with this information. But at the same time, he has just learned he has a Party system, so eventually he might involve others. Probably his friends first, however.
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Glad to be of service! And keep pushing on the original: It's such a treat, up into the 200-somethings now and it *goes places*.
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Yeah we're gonna be here for a while. :V
9884123
I can't answer all of these individually, but you're on some number of right tracks... If only via the shotgun method. :P
this is totally gonna result in Pinkie joining the party, isn't it.
9884331
'I'm not calling you a liar...'
This has been a pretty good tutorial so far, I'm looking forward to seeing what you have happen next!
9884331
I'm pretty sure that joke is why she joined the LARPing in the O&O episode. Yes, even in-universe, I don't remember whether the "search party" joke was canon or fanfic but it sounds like something she would do.
That cover art looks better suited to a clopfic. It's got the same kind of "sort of suggestive but not explicit" vibe to it (hehe, vibe. lol).
I haven't read this but that Spike Cover Art makes me uncomfortable every time I see it
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Yeah, after debating various options I decided it'd be better-suited to a closer crop of the image. It feels a little more claustrophobic like this, but I'd rather that than have people keep dismissing it or getting weirded out.
Edit attack!
poring
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Double ew: That's apparently an error one of my editors introduced at some point, because my old offline copy has that spelled correctly. No wonder I didn't catch it in my upload pass. :V
Also gave me a chance to figure out how to fix the awful way FIMFic mangled the options menu, so thanks for that.
Mind if I use some of this for my gamer fic?
Pinkie being Pinkie will already be aware of Spike’s Gamer powers in her own brand of mind-bending insanity.
I hate it when my games remind me I'm a friendless loser...
Very neat. The basics are there, now its time to expand from them and develop basics to Specials.
I guess LvL 1 Spike cant add max LvL Celestia for a littel adventure... LvL 27 Twilight is probably out of the question to... Or comes with penaltys. Over 20 LvL difference is quite hardcore...
10078809
Depending on game a 5 LvL difference can be extrem, but in general one can only benefit from within 20 level difference.
I hope he finds some nice exploits. Because life is kicking ass on it's on so every advantage is something that should be used.
Especially with Archivment hunters and completion hardcore players.
Some things can only be archived with time, others with working hard, while some have to work smarter not harder...
Outside the box thinking can make a lot of difference...