System Jazz

[You can't use the Crafting Table without a Premium subscription.]

You have to be fucking kidding!

[You can order Premium for 9.99 on a beginner discount in your first three days. Otherwise, 30 days of Premium subscription costs 24.99]

The avatar punched trees for the last hour until its fists wanted to fall off.

It hurts even with the pain setting way down, and it was for nothing?

Imagine a crafting title where the main attraction is behind a paywall.

Greedy bastards.

And it says this after turning them into neat little logs; all that research and effort wasted.

The subwroddit even claimed that everyone could do this from day one.

What better way to take the edge off this rage, than punching them until the pain and exhaustion kicks in?

There's a system warning about it as the character runs out of steam, and tiredness takes over.

The arms are sore and shaking, and with the low Exp gain, reaching the tenth level might take until Christmas.

Fuck the pain, what to do with the logs?

[If you struggle with the controls, try our tutorial.]

"I refuse."

There must be something you can do without Premium.

Wrodditors wrote about NPCs giving tasks and trading.

While the progress on the main one looks terrible, these might help, and icons show them on the minimap. Let's check them out.

[Government Issued Quest: Reach Level 10 within 3 days. Importance: Utmost. Difficulty: Average. Progress: 1/10, Exp to next level: 13/100. (63/72 hours left).]

Nine hours elapsed. How much of that was in the game?

The thought summons two clocks below the minimap, one ticking too fast to be real, so it has to be the system's own.

It's past midnight on the other. It's surprising, how long frustration can propel you forward.

Stupid UI only shows stuff when you think about it.

These should have been there all along, as the usual reminders are the cravings, and they're gone.

When did the Kid drop by? The last cigarette break was after he ran away.

"Okay. Dump these on an NPC and call it a day."

An arrow points towards the center of the village where the marketplace is.

The actor slows to a crawl with the load, it's a strange approach to simulate the weight while it's invisible.

Sure, people wouldn't run around with trees in real life either.

This isn't a typical forager game with unlimited inventory.

And considering you lose everything when you die, you have to plan what to take and what to leave behind.

Plus, hide a stash in case shit goes wrong.

A base. There must be a way to keep things outside the inventory, without other players finding them.

If the Crafting Table is off-limits, the houses the Wredditors mentioned will be out of reach too

It sounds fun to build one, or delve into real estate though.

The most important is to level up, and fast.

Money might help, so let's aim for the first gray dot, who happens to be a blonde girl.

She's at the edge of the market and looks familiar, even her name rings a distant bell. Large letters above her head introduce her as Annelise.

How does one interact with the NPCs? In other RPGs, pre-written options make talking easier for us introverts.

Or they start with the greeting, which is also how it happens in the real world.

Since half the Container Park had Dad fix their stuff the Boss approached me.

I took over after he disappeared.

While the Boss isn't the brightest, he realized that people who fixed stuff could break them too.

That got me hired to disable cameras once they ran out of the easy warehouses to plunder.

And here we have Annelise staring with blank eyes.

This is where the system fails hard. Apart from their expressions, the characters, monsters, buildings, and everything look real.

Except they feel dead inside like those zombies. The avatars of real people are the exception, the players look full of life.

The blank stare's like straight out of a horror movie, no matter how pretty this girl looks.

Of course, she refuses to talk first. It's a reminder of that thread about lazy programming; the prices depend on who starts the convo.

Well, there's no way around it.

"Hey um, hello. Do you want wood?"

Greeting a stranger is so much effort.

The character comes to life, if you can call her blank stare shifting that.

This is super uncomfortable, and even if it's an NPC, talking to girls is extra difficult.

Back in school, we agreed to stay away from each other with them, and with most of the boys too.

While bugging Mom for a sibling, it felt better to keep to myself in public.

The police Aspirant was an exception and the first thing was fondling her by accident.

"Welcome, Noob, what do you need today?"

Her greeting pisses me off until the realization hits.

She's not trying to hurl insult, that's the name of this stupid avatar.

Thinking about that cop, she's almost like Boobie Girl, even the names sound similar. What would her character be like?

"Um, uh, do you have any jobs that involve cutting trees?"

Why is it so difficult to hold a conversation? And straight-up impossible to look into her eyes.

"Or any idea what to do with these thirteen logs? They are dead weight."

"Welcome, I'm a merchant, my name is Annalise." The game's AI has to be terrible if this is her response.

The way she acts, she's no more than a reskinned zombie that might attack soon.

"Trading is an option, but there are no quests available."

"That's fine, how much can you pay for these?"

Rushing the NPC doesn't do much, and thanks to a glitch, she starts to turn away to the left.

At least she no longer stares into my eyes. This looks so eerie, forget all the earlier praise for CineMraft.

"This looks like fine wood, only the processing is rather crude." She disparages all that hard work, standing perpendicular.

The turn finally stops and it's like a jumpscare when she spins back to the original position in a split second.

"How does eight copper for the full load sound?"

"Oh God, phrasing, lady!" The glitchiness is laughable.

This is the first interaction with anyone in this world, whether a player or an NPC and it's disappointing.

How does even trade work? And where does the money go?

"Can you show what you have to sell?"

"Of course, Noob, here, take a look."

If she keeps calling my name, this head will explode.

A window like the inventory opens with way more slots full of the wares she offers.

On the side is the meager little stock too, and the prices appear under every item. And this is where all the hope's gone.

She offers wood that looks the same as she'd buy for less than one copper each and sells it for ten.

Yeah, that article warned about the modifier, but seeing it is disheartening.

Simple logs won't make anyone rich.

[If you struggle with the controls, try our tutorial.]