There were two major parts to the full VR gaming rig: the neuro-virtual headset and the bio-cradle.
Technically, the virtual world could be accessed just by the NV headset. To allow the user to connect to a virtual simulation, the NV headset induced a state of trance reportedly sowhere between a ditative state and a deep sleep state.
This trance was the reason why so Halfworld players had been able to log up to 50 hours nonstop on virtual platforms, at least until recorded health risks had virtual gaming companies forced to institute hard limits on log-ti within their systems.
This was a compromise between companies and the governnt, intended to maintain the health of the user.
The bio-cradle was designed to reduce the stress the use of the virtual system placed on the body, as using the headset without the bio-cradle for more than the allotted amount of ti induced massive muscular disorientation when disconnecting plus muscle strain and stiffness.
It was a fancy recliner-type chair, with the outer appearance curving like a snail shell.
With the bio-cradle and headset together, the user was allowed 20 hours of virtual ti before the system turned unresponsive for the remaining four hours of the day.
Without the bio-cradle, the virtual hours allowed to the user of just the headset fell to 12 hours total per day.
Eli had no plans to compete for the top player listings.
After living in war-ravaged land for years he had no wish to contribute to the wars. Redlands may be a ga, but he had only played that ga for a week before the NPCs beca flesh and blood.
He was not averse to killing; it was needed to survive in Zushkenar, after all. But to cut down people just for quest rewards? He'd feel that he was nothing more than the bandits he greatly despised.
Even if the Redlands NPCs were code right now.
Unfortunately, he needed money.
And the most lucrative craft in Redlands at present was war.
The craftmasters of the previous iteration of the ga were skilled and established, but the crafting and battle systems had not been integrated.
Yet.
There was so speculation in the future over the late craft upgrade, why it ca ten months after the Masters of War expansion was introduced.
So thought the war expansion was offered uncompleted because there was a problem with the integration but the company forced the release anyway.
Others thought the expansion was released early because another popular ga was planning an upgrade at the sa ti, and RSI wanted to cut them off.
Still others thought the late update was to give the battlers a chance of a foothold in a world that crafters already dominated.
There were other rumors but he'd only skimd the forums. No one knew definitive facts anyway.
He only rembered because when he joined the ga in the last tiline, already months after the craft upgrade, the mood was still high. The craft classes and subclasses that used to be important only to role-players and adherents of Craftmasters suddenly were so imperative to the efforts of war.
But he couldn't choose crafting now, not full ti. Even if in the future crafters would be as important as battlers, he needed greater battle skills to be able to protect himself in Zushkenar.
The craft update would be in eight months.
That was too little ti to level up a crafting class to where he would be able to profit from the advantage of that knowledge. Not to ntion, the middle crafting levels were a moneysink.
And he still didn't have a gaming rig.
Eli grimaced.
The only high-level skills he had were leatherworking and forestry. A consequence of being forced into drudgery after transmigration.
He breathed deep the old rage at the thought of Findrakon, that damned guild that used their fellow transmigrators like tools until they broke.
He'd really been too trusting.
Well, if they were created in this tiline again, he'd been part of a successful slave rebellion once, hadn't he? His sharp smile grew wide enough to show teeth.
This ti, he won't be so helpless.
"Who needed a guildclan's protection anyway?"
He could do this on his own.
Eli didn't want to battle other people, didn't want those instincts ingrained into him, but he had no qualms about mass killing the fantasy beasts that road Zushkenar.
None at all.
In Redlands, the beginner quests often started at monster hunting. Becoming part of an army or a war clan was more lucrative so few remained as monster hunters after leaving the starting villages.
That ant there would be little competition for prey.
It would be difficult, even then.
There wasn't even a subclass titled 'monster hunter'.
He'd be mostly making it up as he went along.
Eli thought about it.
Why not?
It sounded fun.
It would also take best advantage of his forestry and leatherworking skills.
It sounded very fun.
He decided. "A monster hunter."
Let's do it.
After eight months, the war clans would create hunter-crafter subguilds to take advantage of the update.
Before then, he had to be established. He had to level both battle skills and craft skills to a usable level.
A challenge.
Eli had no plans to compete for the top player listings, but he needed to be a high-level player when the Quake ca. Realworld skillsets gave a player an edge in Redlands, and in-ga skills were massive advantages in Zushkenar.
Twelve hours of playti a day wasn't enough.
He needed a full rig.
He opened a tab for the RSI website.
He stared, then grumbled. "Since when did people beco so brazen, openly robbing others in broad daylight?"
Since RSI purchased Redlands, they also had released a few Redlands-thed NV headgear.
Redlands NV-headsets cost in the range of 5000 to 40,000 ecru.
Five thousand ecru was enough to buy a studio apartnt in one of the cheap areas of the city.
In Redlands, it was easier to earn money as a new player than all the other virtual gas in the world. But not enough to justify the prices of the gaming gear.
This was why leveling was so important to many players. Only top players profited from Zushkenar. A gar in the top 100,000 rankings could earn thousands of ecru a year by just playing the ga.
It was comparable to the salary of the average office worker in a large company. And that was before the money that could be earned by taking advantage of the dedicated Redlands video portal.
It was the dia portal that gained the attention of the world. RSI set up a dedicated site just for Redlands players and encouraged them to post their battles and their in-ga exploration.
It was a great idea.
If Redlands players had posted their videos on Flashbang, the most popular video portal in the world, their efforts would have been lost among the thousands of other incredible videos on the site.
On RedVisor, the RSI dia site, all the broadcasts showed off the truly extraordinary visuals of Redlands. And with the incredible fight scenes against that backdrop, which viewer couldn't be interested?
With the viewcount on the dia portal increasing exponentially with every day, businesses started circling like sharks slling blood in water.
The idea of sponsorships for the top players was already starting to circle in corporate rumors and the business pages.
Eli shook his head.
Redlands wasn't popular enough yet to gain sponsorships for the elite players, but it was only a matter of ti.
In a few more months, those headsets would be selling like hotcakes as more players started to profit from the ga.
He paused when he saw the description box for one of the headsets - it would give an additional subclass slot. The Lazybones headset looked like it was geared to appeal to the old players of craft-heavy Redlands, many who boycotted or stopped playing when the first advertisents of the Masters of War expansion appeared.
Eli might have played Redlands for just a week, but even he knew that in the face of a ga where battle was encouraged, the subclasses were mostly considered useless.
But not in Zushkenar.
All the transmigrated players had their skills transferred according to their levels and proficiency.
But the subclass levels of each player were enhanced by a magnitude, and those subclasses were the reason many of the low-level players didn't die within the first year.
Eli, as the player Scare, had only survived those first few confusing weeks in another world because of the automatic knowledge that his class skills gave him.
That ant, in this ga, he needed to gain as many subclasses as he could.
It didn't even matter if he leveled them in-ga as long as they would be useful to him after the transmigration.
The character creation page offered the player 3 subclass slots as primary, which was more than enough for most players. If a player wanted to actively level all subclasses, they'd be running around the place all day every day and wouldn't be able to keep up with leveling their battle class.
In Redlands, the most effective builds for gaining cash in the shortest amount of ti had a near-singular focus on the battle classes.
Which was why the forum recomndations gave only two choices: be a battler or a crafter. Leveling both at the sa ti was stupid. Especially when leveling them at the sa ti from the beginning.
"Ahaha…."
It looked like Eli was going to be stupid about this.
Hunting monsters in Redlands wasn't that lucrative, really. Not before the update. Also, so monster materials didn't keep long. He needed to use them to craft sothing before they degraded.
There were reasons Eli didn't want to accustom himself to killing people. When the players transmigrated, many continued the path they knew. That is, leveling and battling.
It was unknown how many transmigrators died because they continued the inter-faction wars after the Quake.
When Scare died in Zushkenar, the common consensus was that only two thirds of the transmigrators were still alive. That was only because many of the elite players sued for peace about a year after the transmigration, nearly simultaneously from every land in Zushkenar, confusing the locals greatly.
Every race and nation in Zushkenar had Earthborn players in it, and with that intangible bond between them managed to calm a good deal of the bloodlust between warring factions.
Then there was Findrakon, which exploited the low-level players and the forr NPCs, but the bastard at the head of the group was an immortal cockroach that knew how to lay low and keep away from the major conflicts. It was the reason the exploitative guild hadn't been decimated by the faction wars and the fact that players could no longer be resurrected.
If he was a full battler and t those beasts….ah, he didn't have the ti to fight against an entire guild.
Not when the Quake was a year away. A year and four months.
Eli thumped his fist on the counter rhythmically, eyes far in the distance, shaking the mories away.
It was a mont before his attention returned to the Redlands netsite.
The thought of joining a player guildclan caused sothing to twist in his gut.
No. He didn't have to think about it.
Being a monster hunter, until the craft update there'll be no one willing to party with him anyway.
He tapped the image of the Lazybones headset, opening a greater description and comnts.
>>even if you slash prices to ¼, rsi, who'll buy it?>uh, it's just the added subclass slot that's different from the base headgear? aaaand…it's nearly the sa price as a MarkIX?>Yes. The Redlands gear are all just thed rchandise. Better to buy original from the manugfacturer, sis. It's cheaper.>***k, this trash, y even still on list?>so…you're all new players huh…>[eyeroll.pix]>from the manufacturer? little noobie idiot, you don't know wat you're saying. you'll lose the redlands bonuses if you do that.>Roll. Roll into a fire and die.
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