Resurgence: The Rise of Resurgence Book 1 (4 page)

“Please, don’t call me Jayman, or Jay, or Jayorama, or any other silliness that you have in store. Just Jason.”

“No sweat brosefski.”

Jason turned to me with pleading in his eyes. “You’re right. I just heard one die.”

* * *

After we figured out that the inside was entirely different, and with Dan’s photographic memory, we finished quickly. Very quickly. Record time even. Since there was so much time left over we all decided to go and get something to drink in the cafeteria. On the way I ran into Dylan who was making his way towards our group.

“Ah gentlemen, I was just coming to see you. Was the session postponed for this morning?”

“Nah. We just finished.” Wayne answered.

“Ahh, then you started early I take it?” Dylan queried?

“Nope, don’t think so. We started at 1000.” Jason replied. We were all smirking internally but all four of us kept our poker faces on.

“But that was just 10 minutes ago? You can’t already be done. I think the quickest amount of time that session has been completed is 34 minutes!” Dylan exclaimed.

“Guess we just got lucky. Had good management and a good team.” I said. “Look we are headed to the cafeteria to get something to drink. Want to join us for some coffee?”

Since that first day I had taken every opportunity to ask Dylan to have some coffee with me. By now he probably realized that I knew he wasn’t a coffee drinker, but his professional nature wouldn’t allow him to fall out of character. “You know Alex, I just finished a cup and if I double caffeinate I will have the jitters all day. Raincheck?”

“Sure Dylan, add that to the other 17 rain checks though and you are going to really have the jitters when I cash in those chits.” I said while laughing.

“You said you were coming to observate us dude?” Dan asked.

“Well, I’m not sure. I don’t really know what that means. But I did want to tell you all that your final clearances have all come in and you are 100% approved to begin Beta testing when we commence.”

Everyone gave high fives. This was terribly exciting. We were all ready to begin the Beta and spend some serious time in the RACs. I wasn’t the only one with a big smile on my face, and Wayne’s mad twinkle had returned to his eyes.

“Best. News. Ever. When do we commence, as you said?” Wayne asked. If he had started rubbing his hands together at this moment and blurted out an “excellent” I would not have been surprised. Evil villain Wayne was my favorite of his personalities.

“One week gentlemen. One week.”

CHAPTER 5

August 6th, 2043

One of the most important decisions had snuck up on us without any of us realizing it. The decisions we made today would by and large decide how the rest of our time in the Beta would play out. Today, yes today, we picked our races and classes.

“Alright guys, if the last six months is any indication we are going to be spending a lot of time together in the Beta. Likely we will be grouped up constantly either by personal choice or by order from AltCon to complete some task,” I told them. AltCon reps had told us that the reasons for the sub teams was for this very reason. When we joined the other sub team it was to be a mini-raid. The problem, as I saw it, is that most groups consist of six people, or five at the least. Four was going to be difficult and meant there could be no room for error.

“We are only going to have room for the essentials here, no separate support classes,” Jason said.

“Agreed yo, and we gotta be spot on with this because this will be our persona for the next year,” Dan agreed.

“I’m the tank,” Wayne stated in a very matter of fact manner. Looking at my other two team mates, I didn’t think anyone was going to argue with Wayne. I don’t think anyone else wanted to be the tank anyhow. The tank was the individual that would engage the target, called a mob (Moving Object), and make certain all of the damage came only to them. This let your healer focus their efforts on only one player and not have to switch between everyone on the team. As time went on tanks would likely acquire gear in the game that would make the mob more aggressive to them, also called taking aggro. But in those early days of low levels, a tank would often have to engage the mob for a bit before the other members joined in to establish the aggro. This could make grinding through the mobs take longer, but was safer overall.

Jason and Dan nodded in my direction. “No arguments from us Wayne. You have that tank mentality for sure. I don’t think any of us would be able to do a better job than you.”

Wayne let out a breath I don’t think he realized he had been holding. My guess is he was gearing up for a fight about who would be the tank. He now looked more relaxed and ready to engage with the group and their decision making.

“So we have tank figured out. We still need healer, DPS (Damage Per Second), and CC (Crowd Control). Does anyone WANT to be the healer?” I asked. I had my suspicions that Jason would be willing because I would likely veto Dan. And while I could do it, I didn’t really want to. Thankfully my suspicions were right.

“If it’s ok with both of you, I would like to be the healer. I have dabbled with it before and I really liked it. The only thing I ask is as we go through the game we find areas where I can do some damage too, undead and the like.”

I myself let out a sigh of relief. If Jason wanted to be able to do undead damage, this meant he wanted to not only be a healer, but be a cleric who was a full time healer and buffer. Buffs are augmentation to your character that provide bonuses for a set period of time. In the case of clerics, they could give you more life and armor to your character. They also could do serious damage against the undead as clerics were considered a holy class.

That only left DPS and CC. Again, both classes I could play fine. But I wanted to be a rogue, and the rogue was a damage dealer. Dan thought about this for a while before saying, “I think I want to be the CC guys, if it’s ok with Alex.”

“That’s great!” I said a little to enthusiastically. “You know bards are absolutely great at being CC and they also…”

“Bro, please don’t take this the wrong way and all, but I kinda want to shank you right now.”

“Wait, what?” I questioned. “What is wrong with a bard? They are one of the most versatile classes in the game.”

“And they are bards dude. Look at me. Do I look like a guy running around in tights playing with my lute? Or plucking my harp?” Dan asked.

I didn’t mean to, but I started giggling uncontrollably with that image. “See man! That is exactly what I am saying! Nope, not going to be a bard.”

“Ok, there are a few different classes that can do CC, so which one were you thinking?” Jason asked.

“Ranger dude. I will be able to snare and kite the mobs and Wayne will just pick ‘em off one by one if we pull too many.” Dan replied.

Kiting was an art form. But it appeared Dan had some experience with it. Kiting involved grabbing several mobs and then casting a spell on them that slowed their movement speed; in this case “snare.” Then the one who cast the slow spell would run around and have the mobs chase them, slowed from the spell, they never reached their target. After a group dispatched one mob, the tank would attack another until he/she gained aggro, and then the fight would begin again.

“Sounds like a plan and I like that you can add a lot of extra damage if we only get one mob at a time.” Other CC classes, like an enchanter type, who could charm a mob and make it just stand there, didn’t always offer up large DPS. But the Ranger could. “Also, you know a ranger is kind of like Robin Hood right? So good chance you will still be wearing tights.”

Ok, that just left me.

“So, with me being DPS, I was thinking rogue.” Rogues were arguably the best for DPS. Their problem in most games though was they could not fight alone, known as soloing a mob, and always had to have a group. I wasn’t worried about this because most of the time I would be online with my teammates who rounded out our team perfectly. Those other times when they were not around the rogue was also ideal.

See the rogue had a unique talent to move while almost entirely invisible without having a spell or a potion cast on them. At the lower levels the rogue moved very slowly. But at the higher levels there was no penalty for movement speed. This would allow me to map out areas that would not be accessible normally and give me an advantage on finding places for my team to fight. Where I could learn about the items that were dropped by the mobs, called loot. With all of this I would begin setting the stage for my eventual business on Resurgence as a merchant selling for real currency.

“Wayne, what were you thinking for a tank? Paladin? Warrior? Dark Paladin?” Jason asked.

“Warrior. Pure and simple. I don’t want to have to deal with casting and mana and all of that. In a fight I want to be able to just engage and swing my weapon. So I’m going to go with Barbarian Warrior.” Wayne explained. Also, Wayne just said more words in a single sentence then he had spoken in the entire day. I now saw how to get Wayne more engaged.

“I like it Wayne, and we will definitely be talking Warrior strategies soon. I want to hear your thoughts.” Wayne’s twinkle, the mad crazy eye, had returned. For some reason this gave me a warm spot in my heart.

“Wayne has also addressed another important topic we need to discuss. Race. Obviously Wayne wants to be a barbarian. Just remember the eyesight penalty at night for Human like characters Wayne. You won’t be able to see anything until we get you a magic item with a light source or lots of potions.” Wayne nodded his head but didn’t show any sign of changing his mind. I didn’t think he would.

“So for my rogue I am going to go with half-elf. I will be able to move around easily in most areas with that, plus be able to see at night. And if we need to go somewhere that has dark or evil alignment, I can always go invisible to check it out.” I offered.

All three heads nodded in agreement.

Dan would have to be either a half-elf or wood elf, as these were the only two races that could be rangers in the game. Dan went with wood elf as they got innate bonus to ranger statistics through their affinity with nature.

Lastly was Jason. There were numerous races he could choose. Dwarf, human, high elf…the list went on. In the end, I thought Jason made a smart decision and went with high elf, as they had a natural bonus to their intellect, which would be helpful with a caster. Traditionally, intellect was tied to mana. Mana was the ingredient needed to cast spells. If you didn’t have mana you couldn’t cast. Period. With a higher intellect your “Mana pool” grows larger. Once you use mana you must wait for it to regenerate. This takes time.

CHAPTER 6

August 7th, 2043

Tomorrow we would start. All of the buildup had led to a sense of excitement that could be felt in the small room the four of us were currently occupying. There was only one thing left to do.

AltCon didn’t want us wasting time with the initial character create screens when we first logged in. So they planned to have our characters ready to go, pre-loaded into the RAC before we ever stepped into the full immersion pods. They wanted all of us to experience the game for the first time at nearly the same time. This way other characters wouldn’t arrive first and influence other players about what they were seeing and feeling. This was all a part of the Beta they said.

Creating characters in a Beta is far more different than in a game where tutorials have been written and information about the game is readily available. As well as friends who may be higher levels and can help you with progressing through the game. But since we didn’t know what we would find when we logged in that first time, we had to prepare for our Character Stats to play a vital role in the game.

So here we found ourselves again, sitting around the table and deciding what stats we would add to our characters. Stats were the different levels each of our characters would start with in seven different statistics. Resurgence followed a very simple platform that had worked in several other games, and I believe they saw no reason to reinvent the wheel in this case. AltCon provided a brief explanation of each of the seven different base skills.

Strength
–
Strength is the heart of the Warrior, Paladin, and Dark Paladin class.
Strength has a direct correlation to damage done by all hand held weapons. Additional restrictions on larger type weapons, used only by Warriors, Paladins, and Dark Paladins, will be determined by the character class and level of Strength.
However, all characters will find strength a valuable skill to increase over time.
The reason for this falls to the weight a character can carry as worn items or in their inventory.
Pure Casters will find the weight restrictions of their items to be minimal, but their ability to carry items from gameplay could impede their movement speed should they be over loaded with weight.
Over loaded characters will also lose vitality faster, drawing them closer to fatigued status where all types of damage will be reduced.

Constitution
–
The constitution skill is a direct correlation to the number of Hit Points (hps) a character has.
All races will receive 100 hps for each point put into the constitution skill.
Constitution also has a direct correlation to each character
’
s vitality.
Characters will lose vitality while fighting or while moving while overloaded.
Caster classes will lose minimal vitality for casting spells.
The larger your weapon, in relation to your strength skill, the quicker your vitality will decrease during combat.
Characters who become fatigued due to a loss of vitality will deal only 25% damage during battles and will have a movement speed of only 25%.

Agility
–
Agility is the main skill for classes that utilize a ranged attack.
Rangers will find the agility skill their mainstay in Resurgence.
Increased agility will have a direct correlation to the ability to hit a target with a ranged attack while also increasing the range which an attack has the ability to be successful.
Each weapon in Resurgence with a
“
ranged
”
classification will have a base range that will be augmented by the agility statistic.
Additionally, agility has a direct correlation to the ability of each character to avoid incoming melee attacks.
Increased agility gives a greater chance of dodging an attack or using your weapon to parry an incoming attack.
It has no correlation to avoiding magical attacks.
Fatigued status reduces your agility to 25%