“Wait... You don’t mean...”
“It’s like we don’t know the first thing about this game! Forts, I tell you! You saw her set up those turrets! And we were just sitting there, twiddling our thumbs, waiting for something to start!”
“Ah... Sure enough.”
“So that’s why the game has so many production skills. It was foreshadowing this.”
“For real...?”
“So the devs’ intended strategy was for us to use the waiting time to set up defenses?”
“Waaaah... Now everyone knows we’re complete idiots!”
“And the fact they were only setting up after the battle began means even the Island Lord Party didn’t know. That was our chance to get ahead of them!”
And thus, the chat was filled with cries of frustration.
So, basically...in the game’s defensive battles, preparing for the wave also included decorating the battlefield with gimmicks and objects created by carpenters and other specialized crafters.
You could essentially put up a fort to make it easier for everyone else to fight.
Now that he’s brought it up, that definitely sounds like something the devs had in mind.
“It’s...true. You can actually use construction skills on a wave field. They’re restricted on normal fields, so it never crossed my mind!”
With all the crab traps I’d placed along the water’s edge, I knew that placement restrictions were a thing. Some areas just wouldn’t allow it. And, apparently, you couldn’t construct structures on normal hunting grounds.
“So basically, they’re leaving every little thing up to the players? Them letting a player develop Cal Mira should’ve clued us in to the importance of construction. It’s our fault for missing it.”
“Meaning if we’d just known the rules, this wave’s difficulty would’ve been a joke?”
“Here I was thinking the enemies were too strong despite all the level grinding. Turns out we were the ones who needed to think up the gimmicks.”
“So we’re gonna have to start taking in crafters from now on.”
“Urp!”
The field chat was devolving into chaos.
So you can even build forts... If there’s as much freedom as there is in ship modification, we’ll have a lot of room for creative strategies going forward.
“Looks like it’s time to drag Romina onto the battlefield.”
“Right, well, let’s shift gears and check the update.”
I fiddled with the menu and pulled up the update notes.
Oh? Added abilities for Spirits... Looks like you can unlock new capabilities by doing certain actions. I’ll have to remember to investigate and gather intel on that. Even the last update had a few parts we never figured out. I mean, gaining power from defeating monsters probably had to do with raising the Energy cap, but still.
The update mentioned new skills being unlocked, but considering we still didn’t know all the skills from the last update, there was really no way to know what was new and what wasn’t.
Items had apparently been added too, but...how many of them?
Overall, there seemed to be less content than last time. Then again, the second wave we’d been exempted from was something similar. Maybe this was the norm.
Or so I thought until I stumbled across the words “Unique Skills Added” in big, bold letters.
So now we’ve got Unique Skills on top of Secret ones. Speaking of which, I think Fever Lure was a Secret Skill.
“Twelve Unique Skills, each obtainable by only one player in the game?” Shouko read it aloud.
“Wow, that sounds kinda exciting,” Tsumugi cried out.
“In any normal MMO,” said Kanade, “throwing in a feature like that would cause a riot.”
“But since this is a Second Life Project where logging out isn’t an option, I daresay they can put in whatever they please,” Yamikage offered.
“The jealousy’s still gonna be off the charts,” I concluded with a sigh.
Everyone quietly read over the Unique Skill section.
“The problem is that there are plenty of Secret Skills too, so it’ll be hard to say who has a unique one,” said Kanade.
“And there’s no way they’ll let one person get all of them,” I added.
“It’s clear we still don’t fully understand everything about this world,” Shouko mused.
“But isn’t that what makes it fun?” said Tsumugi. “I mean, sis will rise to the top the moment we learn everything, and bro will mop the floor with her the moment she gets bored of it.”
That was the usual pattern in our family. For someone as easily bored as Tsumugi, new elements and hidden skills were what kept her engaged.
“Kizuna’s persistence is something we should learn from.”
“That kid is an extreme case. There was this farming-heavy game we played before, and of course Tsumugi gave up on it right away. But even I quit because of how unnecessarily tedious the systems were...and yet Kizuna just kept going and going.”
“He basically ignored all the combat and reached the level cap through farming alone.”
“I remember back when the game was still popular. When we showed our friends the results screen for Kizuna’s crops, they were stunned... They said it was completely maxed out, that whoever did it had a few screws loose. Even players from actual farming families were shocked.”
Shouko stared at me blankly. “Kizuna, you can farm too?”
“That was another game. Right now my soul life is all about fishing.”
Even if I played that game to the point that it started to slow down from process overload, it didn’t matter now. These days, I was in it for the fishing.
Just then, a chat request came in from L’Arc and Therese.
“Nice work, little ladies.”
“I knew it would’ve been more interesting on your side, Kizzy.”
“Well... It was unexpected for me too.”
“Yeah, I figured it was Sheryl. All that prep work must have been for this event.”
“Looks like it. While Sheryl was busting her butt, the rest of us were out having fun.”
“Ha ha, same as us, then.”
“Come to think of it, L’Arc. That NPC you told us about gave us some new dialogue, and we stumbled into a Secret Quest too.”
“You serious...? Ah, man. What I’d give to play with you guys.”
L’Arc let out a deep sigh.
“Is your boss being too hard on you?”
“Nah, he’s not even here. I’m just working with some folks I don’t know, searching for someone. I can’t have all my fun with your gang, y’know.”
He’s not here? Well, I mean...meeting new people is its own brand of fun, I guess.