The task assignment had gone rather bumpily too—the newly opened server was packed with people. Glory's history once saw, when Server 2 opened, so many players that the starting villages overflowed, leaving online players unable to move and offline players unable to log in. So from then on, whenever Glory opened a new server, it would temporarily add several extra starting villages to divert the crowds, and the tragedy of Server 2's opening never happened again.
The preparations for Server 10 this time were also quite thorough, and the players flooding in were evenly distributed among each starting village. Looking around, there were plenty of people, but nowhere near overcrowded. But around the quest-giving NPCs, it was a completely different scene. Everyone needed to find the same NPC for quests, and with everyone charging in at once, they immediately packed into a tight knot. In Glory, there was no such thing as bodies overlapping or clipping through one another, so people formed circle after circle—those inside couldn't get out, those outside couldn't get in. Many players hopped about, trying to leap over other people's heads. But these were Level 0 alts fresh into the game, with terrible jumping ability; their height simply wasn't enough. The sight couldn't help but bring to mind that beautiful verse about how hopping about is so adorably cute.
Even the strongest expert would be helpless in such a situation, while Chen Guo beside him watched with great amusement, her face full of "I knew this would happen." In the end, she glanced at Ye Xiu's character and, on a whim, committed his name to memory first: Lord Grim.
Amid the endless screen-spamming shouts of countless players, the situation gradually improved. How was it resolved? By opening up an exit so that players who had finished taking their quests could get out—then things could keep flowing.
Ye Xiu steered Lord Grim with great difficulty through taking all the quests, then began completing them one by one. It was a starting village, after all—the quests mainly existed to let players get familiar with the game environment and controls, all tutorial in nature. Ye Xiu obviously didn't need hand-holding instruction. After going through more experience with mob-stealing, queuing, shoving, and every other problem caused by sheer crowds, the first batch of completable quests was finally all done. Chen Guo observed the process from time to time, offering commentary along the way. In the end, these爆-simple quests took a full two hours to finish, making Ye Xiu sigh with emotion: what's an expert worth? In an ocean of people, an expert is nothing but a passing cloud.
"Finally cleared them all—Level 7." Ye Xiu turned in the last quest and leveled up again, turning his head to tell Chen Guo—only to find that the young miss had already slumped back against her chair, asleep, her head tilted toward her own screen, no less!
And this was supposed to be her testing his all-nighter capabilities? Ye Xiu shot her a look of disdain, took off his jacket and tossed it casually over Chen Guo, then turned back to his pioneering journey.
Opening his panel for a look: after this wave of quests, Lord Grim had amassed 340 skill points.
In Glory, learning and upgrading skills both required skill points. Different skills required different amounts, anywhere from 10 to 50. A current max-Level 70 character, after completing all the regular quests, could possess 4,000 skill points. But that was not the cap—the cap was 5,000. The remaining thousand, however, required a certain measure of luck and skill to obtain.
In Glory's ten years, no account had yet possessed 5,000 skill points. Even One Autumn Leaf, that top-tier account known as the Battle God, had only reached 4,840 skill points—still 160 short. Was 160 a lot? Not really. Was it little? Not exactly. Used entirely on ultimate skills that required 50 points each, it could fund three more ultimates, or raise one ultimate by three tiers. For a top expert, that was a considerable advantage.
So during the starter quests, those rewarding experience and equipment could be ignored, but the skill points could not be passed up. Beyond that, there were the quests rewarding attribute points. Glory characters had four basic attributes: Strength, Intelligence, Vitality, and Spirit.
Strength affected physical attack, defense, carrying capacity, and the like.
Intelligence affected magic attack, magic defense, and the size of one's mana pool.
Vitality naturally affected health and the character's endurance.
Spirit boosted the effects of certain status skills and resistance to abnormal statuses.
The four attributes grew naturally as the character leveled, and only after changing class at Level 20 would each class have its different growth rates. As for attribute rewards from quests, those were given impartially. Strength rewards were Strength, Intelligence rewards were Intelligence. A Strength-based class could choose to do only the quests that gave Strength, but the quests that also gave Intelligence welcomed you just the same.
In other words, without the post-class-change growth modifiers, a max-level account that completed every quest would have all four basic attributes completely identical, without the slightest difference. So the quests that needed doing had to be done in full, with equipment used later to boost whichever attributes you wanted.
So there was nothing worth paying attention to regarding attributes right now. After reviewing his panel, Ye Xiu immediately had Lord Grim pocket his skill points and go learn skills.
In Glory, class change happened at Level 20. Before Level 20, a character had no class—or one might say, every class. All classes' skills could be learned, so long as you had enough skill points. This was to let players experience everything comprehensively, so that at Level 20 they could find the class that interested them; at the Level 20 class change, the system would refund the skill points for re-learning. But after changing class, one could only learn one's own class's skills—no more jack-of-all-trades.
Ye Xiu didn't remember how to do the starter quests or how to clear the starter dungeons, but the starter skills he hadn't forgotten. Glory's skill balance was superb—even the lowest-level skills had their uses, and everyone could assemble their own skill combination according to preference. After all, skill points were limited. Under normal circumstances, 4,000 points at max level was nowhere near enough to max out every skill, and neither were 5,000, so choices had to be made.
When it came to choosing skills, a top expert like Ye Xiu naturally had his own system. Though his One Autumn Leaf was merely a Battle Mage, he himself was hailed as textbook-level—how could someone like that master only a single class? Only a mastery of every class would qualify.
Without giving it much thought at all, Ye Xiu first ran to the General Skills Trainer and learned the two general skills available at Level 5: Sprint and Roll.
General skills were skills that all classes could learn. The two Ye Xiu learned were both cheap—10 skill points each—and gave the character two more movement options.
Sprint increased running speed. The skill had no cooldown, but consumed endurance. When endurance ran out, the character automatically reverted to normal running speed. Recovering endurance required walking or standing still—walking recovered it slowly, standing still faster.
As for Roll, it was exactly what it sounded like: allowing the character to move by rolling—forward roll, back roll, left roll, right roll, diagonal roll, rolling while walking, rolling at a normal run, rolling at a sprint, whatever the player pleased. Likewise no cooldown, but it required consuming endurance to perform.
The class skills he went to learn afterward, Ye Xiu had also long since decided on, knowing perfectly well which skills would be most useful to him at this stage.
First was Sky Strike, a Battle Mage skill. Every class line had a launcher-type skill like this, all with the same nature: attacking to send the target airborne. The higher the skill's tier, the higher the launch and the greater the damage—it was the most basic and most commonly used skill. Ye Xiu's original character was a Battle Mage, after all, so among launcher-type skills he chose the Battle Mage's Sky Strike.
Then came Dragon Tooth, also a Battle Mage skill—a direct thrust attack that could put an enemy into a brief stagger state. Again because of his original class, Ye Xiu picked it up without a second thought.
After that, he learned the Gunner's Floating Bullet, the Mechanic's Mechanical Tracking, the Darkened Swordmaster's Earth Crack Wave Sword, the Grappler's Back Toss, the Ninja's Shuriken, the Blade Master's Parry, the Elemental Mage's Light-D Electricity Ring, and the Exorcist's Healing Spell.
These low-tier skills didn't cost many skill points—all under 20—and with Lord Grim only at Level 7, how high he could raise skill tiers was limited too, so of the 340 skill points, some remained. Ye Xiu didn't go learn any more skills; in his view, these were already enough to handle any current situation.
But if ordinary players ever saw this skill combination assembled by a top-tier expert, they would surely laugh.
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After careful research, I discovered that the public version has an auto-update little assistant too. Fine then... let me give it a try. Is it twelve o'clock now? If so, pick up your rice bowls and cast your votes!