Endless Online: It's a noob day

Chapter Four: Finishing Creation

I was a wolf bear bipedal hybrid.

The level of customization was absolutely incredible, with a massive amount of base animals and the ability to choose a descendant of the beast tribes that was from the intermingling and political relationships between them. At least the lore said that. If it had any real in game effects, I guess I would be finding out.

My wolf half was a member of the silver wolves, a wolf beastfolk tribe located in several in game regions of tundra and snowcapped forests. The bear half a black bear from the midland regions with more temperate accommodations. The resulting fusion was a large, burly, and fearsome looking creature that had canines of a wolf, the rounded ears of a bear, and hair streaked with silver, gray, black, and white. The fur was only medium in length, attributing more to the bear half than the wolf.

I was so in love with this already. Never, ever, had another game done even this much to such a common trope of character race. At least none that I had heard of and played. The level of care and design was absurd. I couldn’t begin to imagine how hard coding this level of everything must have been. Selecting confirm brought up the next screen.

‘Congratulations on selecting your character race! Note that once the selection process is finished, you will be unable to easily change your race without deleting your avatar and starting from character creation once more. Now that you have selected your race, you may continue to select your starting skills. Skills are broken down into the categories of Magery, Psychics, Warcraft, Adventuring, Statecraft, Crafting, and Agriculture. Each of these has a number of skills to choose from. At start, you may select ten skills to receive training in. Five of these skills will start at level 10, unlocking an ability from each. The other five will begin at level 5. Bonuses and penalties from your race have no bearing on this selection, though it is recommended to select skills that receive a bonus and avoid those with penalties. The choice remains yours. After this selection, you will be able to select which abilities to unlock from your chosen five skills and make your final selection of a profession to round out your character based off of your current choices. Choose wisely!’

Following this was a page that looked to be over fifty skills at least! If I could salivate virtually, I would. Still, I already knew some skills right away that I would want. I selected Medium Armor, Hand to Hand, and Axes. Something about the idea of a bear with an axe sat right with me, glorious images of violent combat ended swiftly by a literal grizzly lumberjack enough to make me want to giggle. The last to skills were much harder. Looking over the magic section, I noticed all of them had a cycle of some kind attached. Elemental, Bio, Action, and Thought. Psychics held a different format, with each one being a typical power from popular media like telekinesis or mind reading. The ones of interest to me were, of course, the Bio cycle line of magic. Each was connected to some aspect of biological happenings. Life, Death, Purify, Preservation, Contamination, and Decomposition.

While they all sounded interesting, I knew realistically I had to pick one to focus on. After all, one of my bonuses was going to the axe. That meant I was only picking up one for the 20% bonus. Then again, the 10% boost was to all the Bio magic.

That left me in a pickle, since I wanted at least one non-combat skill to pick up with the intentions of having the option to play as a crafter after a certain point and selecting one now would save me both grinding time and give me the chance to see what non-combat abilities would offer. I suppose I could have dropped hand to hand, but a kung fu fighting bear wolf with an axe was way too interesting to give up. Screw it, I’d just have to grind later. Now to choose.

Life seemed the safest choice, most likely having the best healing options. Purify would make sense too, giving me something to counter any nasty debuff to hit me. Not having to heal was also a form of life retention too. Being stuck as a mid point healer though was a bit of a problem though. I wanted to sit frontline and handle business. Being a half healer didn't match the idea I was forming.