Marissa

  Marissa was up early as usual on Wednesday. After all the excitement with launch day, she had managed to sleep like a baby for the handful of hours she had to sleep before work. But she was so used to getting up at 3 a.m. that it really didn’t bother her much - she operated fine on 6 hours of sleep.

  Once she was up though, it was a different story. The pull of her PC was strong and difficult to ignore. With her apartment being so small, walking between her bedroom with the closet and the bathroom throughout her morning routine brought her past her study every time. The desire to just leave the bakery to her workers for a second day was real.

  She managed to eventually get down the stairs and crossed into the bakery’s kitchen. Things were nice and clean, the way they had left it the previous day when they cleaned up. Marissa threw some coffee in the communal pot and got started.

  The first few hours of work everyday was her favorite part. She got to be herself and just get her work done. If she wanted silence to think or let her mind wander, that was an option. If she felt like dancing around while getting the doughs mixed, she could do that too.

  As it turned out, Wednesday was not a quiet morning. She tried that first, but her mind kept wandering to Mag Mell. And while that wasn’t so bad at first, thinking more about the game made the desire to play it spike. And keep spiking. By the time she was twenty minutes into her prep work she gave up on her quiet morning.

  She had a cup of coffee with some half-and-half and sugar, and hooked up her phone to the bluetooth speakers she had in the kitchen to listen to music while she worked. And that worked wonders as she was able to focus on singing along and jamming out with the music which kept her occupied.

  All in all, it was a great morning. Because she had called Sarah and Julie in on Tuesday to cover her supposed day off, she told Sarah to get a late start today and come in for opening at 6a.m. That left her three hours of just prep work and alone time.

  Once Sarah arrived and the day proper got going, Marissa no longer had the time to think about Mag Mell. Wednesdays were far from their busiest days of the week, but even on a slow day the bakery did good business. Sarah and Marissa took turns handling the front of the store, given they both preferred to be baking. They decided the best way to handle it was to trade off every hour or so.

  It worked for them and got them through the day without any real hiccups. Lots of the store’s customers were regulars that came in on their way to work or on a lunch break, so it was rare that they got any really belligerent customers walking in, and Marissa loved the place for that.

  When noon came and went, Marissa was still going strong. The Flour Basket was busy enough through most of the lunch rush that she simply didn’t have a chance to really do anything else. But by the time 1p.m. rolled around, she was flagging. Which, she had to remind herself, wasn’t unusual.

  Even if she wasn't absolutely getting impatient to go play more, it was around this time that she needed to wrap up her day. She’d been working for just about ten hours with minimal breaks. And Sarah loved to remind her how much trouble she could get in if she worked any of her workers for ten hours with a single fifteen minute break to get a bite to eat.

  It was around 1:30 when she made it back up into her apartment, having been all but kicked out by her employee. Sarah promised to close up as always, but they both knew that Marissa would be back down at three to check on things. She trusted Sarah to close up and probably wouldn’t actually need to do anything, but she needed to check the locks and things just for her own peace of mind if nothing else. Not that anything bad ever happened, but she’d be antsy if she didn’t run down her checklist herself.

  After a shower and an actual meal, Marissa got her PC up and running. Firo was online, but was the only one so far. She logged in, said hello to him in the Clan chat in game, then went about doing some of her daily maintenance work. She checked her auction house sales, the Clan’s contracts, and her in-game garden. It took all of ten minutes as she [Fae Circled] from place to place to get it all done quickly.

  Then she took a little bit of extra time to just go over her gear and consider if she needed any changes. She had seen the group chat already, and was considering Nyx’s proposal favorably. It wasn’t a bad idea to try, at least. And now that she wasn’t in a rush, she had the chance to go back and check her stash for some more niche gear that might help.

  She was still going through stuff when she had to take a quick hop down to the bakery to close up and say goodbye to Sarah for the day, but while she was checking all the locks and going down her list of items, she was still thinking about the game. It occurred to her that she actually should have a piece of gear from a while ago with a useful [Invested Skill].

  Realizing how little attention she was paying to what she was doing, she made a note of her idea on her clipboard, and then restarted her checklist from the beginning. She’d be damned if she was going to miss something on this list because she was distracted; her livelihood was more important than the game. Couldn’t have without the other, after all.

  When she went back up to her PC, feeling confident in her work, she looked through her stuff for the item. It was a little older, so it was buried back a few pages in her stash, but it was still there.

  [Long Shot Ring]

  [Ring]

  [Defense : -1]

  [Resistance : 1]

  Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

  [Slash : -1]

  [Blunt : -1]

  [Invested Effect : Ranged Attacks and Skills gain increased reach.]

  Marissa stared at the ring for a while. It was a level 86 ring, which would cause some problems. No one really knew the hidden calculations that Mag Mell used to handle a character’s actual stats. The character sheet itself, and the stats gained from gear and the like all functioned as percentages that were added to some hidden numbers whenever you took actions and the like.

  The issue was that the hidden values were unknown, and no one really knew how to calculate everything perfectly. Somehow, the values hadn’t even leaked. But there was enough known about the systems involved that people were able to get a good enough grasp on what affected a character’s base stats.

  First and foremost was a character’s level - or more likely the difference in level between the two acting parties. If an attacker was a higher level than the defender, they would do a significant bit more damage, and vise-versa. It was also the easiest thing to test, by far.

  Second was gear score. Again, the exact math of it hadn’t been figured out, but there were a few accepted ideas on how it functioned. The most common theory was also the simplest; each piece of gear had a designated level of 0 to 90. The common idea was to take the average level of each gear piece you had equipped and that was then used as some kind of multiplier for the rest of your stats. If you were wearing a full set of appropriate level gear, the effect was basically null - in contrast, wearing pieces of lower level gear negatively affected everything you did.

  Beyond that, there were even rumors floating around that the game used several situational modifiers as well. Players, NPCs, and mobs alike took negatives if they were in water or in the rain. A series of battles without stopping to [Rest] would eventually leave the character with a negative status. Someone had even reported there likely being a ‘scared’ status that resulted from them spending over an hour grinding in a spider-ridden cave.

  All-in-all, the consensus online was that Mag Mell was basically built around a strange sort of balancing act. It seemed as though, all other things equal, if a level 90 player character fought a level 90 enemy designed to be fought solo, the stats and balance would be basically even. The addition of gear boosts and other status effects like [Rested], [Honed], or [Polished] gave the player an edge over most enemies.

  Marissa wasn’t really sure, therefore, how strong the negative effect from a level 82 ring would be. Mag Mell had ten total equipment slots per character - a weapon, five slots for armor, and four accessory slots. With everything else being level 90 gear, the actual average wouldn’t really go down, so it should be fine, in theory.

  With a shrug, Marissa threw the ring in her inventory and then started moving Hibiscus back toward the staging ground for the raid. Thankfully, the war camp inside [Gorias] was a main [Fae Portal] point, so she could teleport there even while an [Arrow].

  She hopped into the voice chat channel while waiting for everyone else to show up. Firo, who had been online for a while already, joined her in chat almost immediately after she joined. They both said hello, then went about doing their own prep quietly for a bit.

  Marissa was still mentally going over which [Invested Skills] she should use - or more specifically, which one to maybe drop for the [Long Shot Ring’s] effect - when Jasmine and Ashton entered chat. From there, small talk meandered through everyone’s work day and Firo’s college work until everyone else started filtering in.

  The whole group was together ten minutes before their actual start time, but with everyone excited to get back into the raid they collectively decided to start discussing the new strategy early.

  “I do think Nyx’s idea is solid.” Firo said. “If our first few attempts at this raid taught us anything, I think it’s that the raids themselves are very adaptable. We’ve seen a different outcome every time we’ve attempted defending this wall - I think changing up to a more unique strategy might be the winning move.”

  “I don’t disagree.” Ash said. “We knew before we started that picking specific Paths for each fight might be the right move, so we’re fully prepared for it. We should at least give it a try.”

  Jazz groaned. “Y’all have no idea how badly I wanted to look up information about it online. See what other people did to pass it.”

  Laughter bounced around the chat. “Girl, I’ve been doing nothing but thinking about the game all day.” Nyx said, “I totally understand.”

  “We had lunch together today, and spent the entire hour talking about the game and new strategies.” Evie added. “Mind you, we didn’t come up with anything better than the full ranged outfit, but still. It was the only topic at lunch. I forgot to even mention that someone spilled coffee on me this morning.”

  “Wait, really? Oh, that would explain why you wore your coat all through lunch.” Nyx said.

  “Yeah.”

  “So, back on topic,” Marissa said, “I tracked down an old ring that gives me an extended range on all my attacks. It’s level 82, but the range extension was something like 30 or 35%.”

  “Use it.” Kieran said immediately. “Knowing what we currently know, even if your damage ends up a little lower because of i-level, the range will be worth it.”

  “I’m in agreement.” Evan said. “We know the enemies on the ground, generally speaking, are crazy weak. That range extension allows you to pick off enemies well in advance, and -”

  “- and you might be able to hit that rat bastard when it shows up.” Jazz said, excitedly cutting Evan off.

  “Allie.” Evan said, in the same warning tone a parent would use when their child was right on the cusp of misbehaving.

  “What?” Jazz said dramatically, trying to sound innocent. “I didn’t do anything wrong, daddy.”

  “Nope.” Evan and Ash said in unison, immediately. “Nope. Nope.” Evan repeated, “Shut it down.”

  “Aleister, no.” Evie squeaked, trying not to laugh.

  “Never say that again, hun. Ever.” Ash said, also holding back a laugh. “Please.”

  “But daddy,” Jazz whined, doubling down. “I didn’t do anything wrong.”

  “Stop. Just. Stop.” Kieran said through his teeth.

  “Okay!” Marissa said, trying to reign everyone in before Jazz made anything worse - she often ran bad jokes into the ground. “I’m gonna wear the ring. Anyone else have other strategy ideas or changes they want to make?”

  “Allie’s gonna go back to Ebon, okay, daddy?”

  “Stop!”

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