At ten in the morning, the small apartment was finally silent with just one person's heavy sigh as they heard the elevator door chime in the hallway.
He had finally ushered the eldest Shin sibling out of his apartment, telling him to go shopping for some essentials since Xu Wei didn't keep extras of things, and the brothers would be moving into the apartment tonight, officially. Though he had to be back by three in the afternoon in case the delivery men came earlier than expected. Shin Bao had already left to go to his morning class and had promised to stop to do some shopping when he got out of his afternoon class.
Xu Wei grabbed a can of soda and went back to his bedroom, where he'd gotten Shin Bao and his brother to move his desk to give them more room.
Since they were moving in, they needed to do some free labor.
If he were being honest with himself, he was already regretting his decision to let them both move in. It wasn't for a selfish reason, but he had finally gotten a place to call his own. He was just getting into the habit of walking around shirtless after a shower without shame, now he felt like he'd need to bring his clothes with him to the washroom!
He clicked his tongue and sat down at his desk.
Before he had the grand idea to move his desk, he had played LOX for a few hours, with an audience of mainly Shin Han as Shin Bao busied himself with homework on his laptop. Shin Han had played the game before, but he was pretty much carried through the game by Shin Bao and his ex, so he actually asked a surprising number of questions.
"Why did you choose this gear?"
"Isn't damage better for armor stats?"
"You could skip through NPCs' talking???"
"I don't think I did this main quest, is it unique to the class?"
Otherwise, he was a silent audience member.
After they moved the desk to his room, he sat on the edge of Xu Wei's bed and just observed until he needed to leave. By the time he left, though, Fearless had already hit level 48, and, even with the dungeon run he'd done with Shin Bao, he found himself with no main quest in the middle of Hanyi, the first town in the second continent, Quanyi.
He almost threw his keyboard across the room.
He had misjudged the exp he needed. Perhaps they'd adjusted the difficulty since he'd last played. When he leveled his streaming character, he didn't need as many dungeon runs as he had already done.
It was even more annoying because in just a few quests, he'd be back on a boat to the first continent, Chanyi, to start that main line.
Shin Han was right about one thing: because the Night Elf class started on the second continent, they had an adjusted main quest. Their main quest line would get them to level 40, the required level for Hanyi, and at level 50, the Night Elf would go back to the first continent and do an expedited version of the normal main quest throughout the entire continent.
By the time they came back to Hanyi, they would be level 60 and would have caught up to the players who started on the first continent.
The other class's main line had a different quest until the second town of Quanyi, and then they would overlap.
This was perhaps the most annoying part of playing the Night Elf class. That, and the fact that it was harder to source weapons and armor due to the lack of interest in the class.
After waiting for a few minutes and not finding anyone doing Crypt of a Thousand Soldiers, Xu Wei decided to find something productive to do until Shin Bao came home.
Professions and life skills.
Professions, such as gathering, fishing, and mining, had a leveling system to level 100. Each level would give one of three things: stats, profession store discounts, or increased item rate/efficiency. They were all account-based, so players wouldn't need to level the professions for a second time unless they decided to choose to partake in the quest lines which would then reset all levels to 0, and increase the cap level to 500.
There were very few people who chose to do this.
Xu Wei was one of the people who stopped at level 100. Hell, his second account didn't even have level 50 since his viewers didn't like watching profession content.
Life skills were similar, but there were many avenues to take, and once you choose to level 3, you would either need to max level each before learning another, or abandon all your progress to start another life skill. These were essential to the player economy: carpenters/construction, alchemists, blacksmiths, armor makers, chefs, refining, leather makers, seamstresses, and masters of the sea (ship crew and captains).
Many players solely focused on life skills and didn't bother to level their characters, which is why you can find such bustling cities in low-level continents even without new content.
However, players who didn't level were at a disadvantage.
Xu Wei clicked 'G' on his keyboard. [Guild Recruitment]
Guilds were not a requirement. Of course, every time you go to a new city, you'll be pummeled with guild recruitment requests, especially as you level up. But, you can always turn off the option to be invited to join a guild if you want to play the game completely solo to the end, if you don't mind missing out on the buffs that a guild would bring.
A level 10 guild would get you 10% bonus to all exp, including profession and life skills, which was imperative for the later levels, access to special events, a shared guild warehouse, guild house with a garden that any member could use, alchemy room, smithery, kitchen, pond, workshop… Some guilds also bought out whole neighborhoods through the housing system so their guild members could live next to each other.
It was quite advanced.
He tabbed over to his other screen and opened up the forum while scrolling through the list of guild recruitments. He would click on a guild to see their recruitment message, then search for the guild's name on the forums.
If the guild had any inkling of having a streamer, professional player, or one of the members from his list in them, he would directly veto it. He also ignored any guilds that had over 50 members, or ones that specialized in just PVE or PVP.
Finally, after what felt like half an hour of repetitive motion, he found a good choice.
[White Cloud, level 10, 13/200 members]
After clicking for more information, he felt happy about his choice.
[Recruitment closes at 15 members.
Level requirement: 45.
PVX, PVP, PVE.
No drama, no solicitation, no begging, no dating members.]
Xu Wei raised his eyebrow at that last point and wondered if there were so few members because there was an issue with dating within the guild. Either way, he didn't care about petty drama like this. There were only 13 members, which meant that it was probably quite dead, which was the ideal situation for him to enter and leave as he pleased.
[Would you like to send an application in to be reviewed?]
[Yes]
He closed the interface and was about to pick out the professions he wanted to start with when he was actually accepted within just a few seconds of sending in the application.
"…"
Was it not a dead guild? Usually, even the high-member guilds would take at least a few minutes to accept or reject applications, which was why players could apply to multiple guilds at once without hearing an answer from any. Even when he was a guild leader, he could take half a day to just open the interface to notice that blinking red 'new recruits' icon.
When his screen was filled with golden guild chatter not even a moment later, Xu Wei almost coughed out the beer he was casually drinking.
[Fearless has joined the guild!]
[Guild] Odin: Welcomeeeee
[Guild] Don't Hit Me: Hi
[Guild] Autumn Moon: o
[Guild] Son of Peace: 233
[Guild] Spring Is Here: It's a new player
[Guild] Winter Flower: Welcome
[Guild] Illusion: Hi Hi
[Guild] Carefree Guy Next Door: Welcome--
[Guild] Building the Crematorium: /////
[Guild] Giant Fish: I'm alive
[Guild] Asking For Forgiveness: Hi noob.
He quickly opened the guild interface. 11 of the 13 members were online, practically the entire guild, aside from two players, Father of Odin and I Like Ramen.
He had not joined an inactive or even a semi-active guild. On top of that, all of the members were either at max level or nearly at max level with a lot of guild contribution, meaning that this wasn't a new guild, either.
Xu Wei's fingers danced across the keyboard. He needed to be polite, even if he didn't plan on staying indefinitely.
[Guild] Fearless: Thanks
[Guild] Autumn Moon: Did you just join??
[Guild] Giant Fish: Did you look at their character before you asked that?
[Guild] Odin: !!!
[Guild] Odin: A whale noob?
[Guild] Odin: He fits right in 666
[Guild] Autumn Moon: T_T
[Guild] Giant Fish: Rich!
[Guild] Autumn Moon: -_-#
[Autumn Moon has upgraded Fearless to Little Demon rank, congratulations!]
He looked at the ranks of the members. Autumn Moon was the founder, Odin, Giant Fish, Son of Peace, and Carefree Guy Next Door were vice leaders, and the rest were the third highest rank - "Demons".
Since they had looked at his character, he only thought it was right to look at theirs, yet it only drove home the point that he definitely did not join a guild of new players. All of them were whales of their own right, and many of them had nontransferable items from events from years ago, not to mention their gear… It even made him a bit jealous.
Each of their gear sets was perfect for the classes they had chosen, with a lot of thought put into strengthening specific stats.
[Guild] Son of Peace: Teach me the ways
[Guild] Fearless: I seem like just a baby whale in this ocean of whales.
[Guild] Giant Fish: He has a point
[Guild] Winter Flower: Hahahaha, he noticed
[Guild] Spring Is Here: Have you looked inside yourself SOB??
[Guild] Spring Is Here: Ahem… SOP.
[Guild] Son of Peace: Hey, I'm really fucking poor compared to you bastards! Fund me when? Carry me when? Why do I get treated so poorly?
Xu Wei decided to go look at the other benefit exclusive to guild members - the housing system. He clicked on the house icon on the guild interface.
[Do you want to visit your guild's neighborhood?]
[Yes]
[White Cloud 1 - 13/20]
While the guild interface may unlock at level 15, the housing system only unlocks at level 40, which caused many players to rush to grab the best plots of land when the game had originally unlocked.
Players could also buy courtyards or even apartments in the later continents, but the spots were limited, unlike the islands that just continued to multiply as the last island got filled up.
But players could also buy whole islands. This was a popular choice for guilds, since their guild members could all live close to one another and they wouldn't have to worry about strange neighbors, random raids from players or NPCs, PVP-camping…
Fearless found himself surrounded by large mansions.
"…"
These were not normal people!
Even his old house was not as large as this one, and he spent a lot of money on his mansion.
These people had not just maxed out the space of their individual plots, but they even went as far as to pave driveways, grow flowers for beautification, raise the level of their homes to add more floors or rooms… Even their gardens were better than the ones he'd made.
He wasn't poor, but these guys were truly making him feel like he was.
His finger twitched before he typed.
[Guild] Fearless: Look at my location - do you dare call yourself poor?
[Guild] Autumn Mood: I'm a bit ashamed
[Guild] Don't Hit Me: !!!
[Guild] Building the Crematorium: If you haven't noticed, he's in our neighborhood….
[Guild] Giant Fish: Hahahahaha
[Guild] Odin: Don't lump me in with them, look at my house.
[Guild] Heavenly God Slayer: It's so small, why are you my neighbor? You're bringing down my selling price.
[Guild] Odin: Who the fuck are you going to sell to?
[Guild] Heavenly God Slayer: …
[Guild] Heavenly God Slayer: Fearless, looking to buy?
[Guild] Odin: HAH?
[Guild] Spring Is Here: Let's talk about it
[Guild] Son of Peace: (¬‿¬) Be my neighbor, Fearless