By the time John had returned to the square, Frank was already ready and waiting. After a brief exchange they settled on a price of a copper per bale and John loaded up all twenty bales of straw. He headed for the tavern.

The tavern, or rather Inn with attached tavern, was a large building on the north side of the square. It was, like most all the other buildings, made of stone, and only differed in that it was two stories instead of one. He pulled open the door and stepped inside to find a large room full of tables, chairs, and people. It was obvious from a glance that most of the people were players, given how engrossed they were in various tasks of the crafting variety. From his position at the door he could see people etching, chiseling, cutting, and drawing on a variety of substances. Interestingly enough, the bartender didn’t seem to mind, it probably had to do with the fact that there was at least one mug within easy reach of each of the ‘customers’.

Finding BambooRooster turned out to be quite easy. He was, after all, the only person under four feet tall and had bright pink hair that stuck up in spikes, like some anime protagonist; he even had an equally bright and bristly mustache. As John drew nearer, he could see the entire table was taken up with drawings and notes piled around a thin sheet of metal about the size of a serving tray. BR was carefully making small etchings on the sheet with a metal stylus.

Not wanting to interrupt, John sat at the table quietly, preparing to wait. He was, however, swiftly interrupted by a light touch on his shoulder. Looking over he found a young man with a tray looking at him expectantly. For a moment John wasn’t sure what the man wanted, then the server gestured to the (clearly untouched) mug that was already on the table.

Ah, I’ve got to buy something. I guess that’s why they don’t look to upset about people squatting at the tables to craft, John mused even as he murmured “Juice?”

The server gave a polite nod and then headed off. A few moments later he returned with a mug that he slid onto the table, he then looked at John expectantly once more while holding up three fingers. John produced five coppers and handed them over, receiving a flash of a grin before the server hurried off to bug others.

John had to wait for about fifteen minutes before BR finished his etching and put the stylus aside. The first thing the gnome did was grab the nearby mug and drain its contents. Then, finished with that, he pulled out another large sheet of metal that he placed in the center of the table. After a moment of concentration the etchings on this new device glowed, and a familiar bubble of distorted air surrounded the table.

“Huh, privacy barrier, nice,” John commented aloud, no longer worried about his voice carrying and disturbing other people at work.

“I certainly find it convenient,” BR responded. “Now what can I do for you mister…?”

“John,” John supplied.

“Ah, the farmer guy. Need some enchanting work done for the farm?” The pink haired gnome looked hopeful.

“Yes, actually, I need all sorts of enchantments done, and I’m going to need a mana well to support them,” John replied.

“Bah, can’t even follow the basic mana well designs until Journeyman rank,” BR said dismissively.

“So I’ve been told, though I don’t understand why, if you have a blueprint can’t you just follow that?” John asked.

“Nope, basic enchanting involves just carving or etching whatever but it’s going to lead to a poorer product with low efficiency for anything that’s not super simple,” BR explained. “True enchanting requires that you saturate the lines with mana as you go along. The thing is, you don’t just lay it down and forget about it, you’ve got an awareness of the mana the entire time, and there’s only so much you can concentrate on at once. This concentration improves with each rank in Enchanting, making it easier to hold a complex mana pattern in your mind all at once.”

John thought about that for a moment. “That sounds a lot like Mana Manipulation,” he said finally.

“Mana Manipulation is considered a foundational skill for Enchanting. In fact, if you’re doing enchanting right, you’ll be training your Mana Manipulation at the same time. Mana Imprinting too at later levels, since using the correct aspect in the construction can improve the quality of the finished product.” BR said.

“Huh, why do you have to saturate it that way? What does it do?” John asked.

“It lets you see how mana will flow through the channels and compensate for or correct any deviancy. No material is perfectly uniform, nor is every movement of the chisel or stylus perfect, the imperfections can add up over time to warp the mana flow and cause efficiency loss, or outright failure of the device. The more complex the enchantment, the more likely that is to happen,” the gnome elaborated as he started picking up papers and adding notes to them.

“Well, I guess that explains why you need Journeyman rank. Anyway, I understand you’ve not got the best working conditions at the moment, so I was thinking I could make you an offer?” John said hesitantly, this idea had sounded a lot better in his head, and now he was worried it’d sound lame out loud.

“What kind of offer? I’m already willing to tromp out to your farm and enchant stuff for money, what more do you think you need to sweeten the pot with?” BR asked as he marked several things down.

“Well, what I really want is for you to push for Journeyman as soon as possible, and I’m willing to provide a private workspace for you to do so in,” John explained.

BR’s charcoal stick stopped moving briefly, then continued. “What kind of space are we looking at?” he asked.

“Honestly? It’s just a big room, about ten feet by thirty, with a bunch of granite surfaces at the moment, most of which I’ll have to move closer to the ground for your comfort. But you’d certainly be welcome to customize it as you desired,” John replied.

The gnome paused as he considered. “You’re not going to charge me rent, are you?” he asked eventually.

“I won’t charge rent so long as you’re working on reaching Journeyman, and I’ll pay you for whatever enchantments you make for me as well. But what I’m looking for is commitment to reaching that point as swiftly as you can. I’m not expecting you to pull sixteen-hour days, but I would be expecting most of your time in game to be working on enchanting.” John explained, and as he did so he realized how stupid that sounded, no one was going to just give up all their play time to work with such single-minded devotion on a project for so little return.

BR shook his head. “I’d want at least several months of rent-free work space,” he said firmly.

John perked up. “How many months is ‘several’?”

“At least three,” the gnome replied.

“I could do three, I don’t see myself needing the workshop any time soon anyway,” John offered.

“Alright then,” BR said as he started picking up notes and shoving them in a folder. “Let’s get out of here before they want us to buy another drink.”

John nodded and then waited patiently as BR picked up all his stuff. The gnome put everything away then let the privacy plate run itself out of mana before disappearing that too. With that, the small man jumped off his chair and made a gesture for John to lead the way.

The two exited the tavern and were soon on their way. Not wanting to walk entirely in silence John decided to try learning more about his new tenant.

“So, what made you choose gnome?” John began.

“It’s the race with the best crafting abilities. They get a large negative to strength and moderate one to constitution, and only one racial trait, Master Crafter. The trait is perfect for anyone who wants to play a crafter, it acts as a prerequisite for all the master feats that have to do with magical crafts.” BR explained.

John thought about that for a moment before replying. “But you only have so many leveling points, best you could do is, what? Three or four feats if you’ve been saving all your points and got a few nice quests?”

“Two feats, I wasn’t lucky enough to get a quest, but I have been leveling my skills the hard way. Unfortunately I’ve only been playing this character for about six weeks. I had to scrap the first one because I didn’t know better than to purchase skill ranks; the woes of being one of the frontrunners I suppose,” BambooRooster explained.

“What feats did you pick up? If you don’t mind me asking,” John inquired.

“Enchanting Master and Ritual Master,” BR rattled off. “I was tempted by the Alchemic Master feat too, but alchemy requires a lot of specialized equipment and currently there’s nowhere to set that stuff up. Most of the alchemists in town are making do with mortar, pestle, and a magical hot plate.”

“Any thought to Megalith Master?” John prodded.

“Megalith Master? I don’t think I saw that on the list, it doesn’t sound like a magical craft, so my racial trait probably doesn’t grant access to it,” the gnome explained.

“Ah, right, magical crafts only. It’s too bad, I think it’d compound with any other magical crafting feat you applied. I know the megalithic rituals I made benefited from my racial bonus,” John told him.

“Huh, that’s pretty cool. Sounds like it might be hard to get that racial trait and a magical crafting trait though. From what the forums say, most races have between one and three set traits, with the only exception being humans and half humans. Humans get to choose one to two traits from a pool, how many you get depends on if you take a stat boost or not. Half-humans gain one of the traits of their non-human parentage and then get to pick a trait if they don’t take a stat boost. Humans and half humans don’t take a negative though, so there’s that,” BR said.

“So you’d basically have to be half-human and half-basajaun, and hope you got Megalith Mastery instead of Disaster Prognosticator or Plant Tender. I guess you could always re-make and hope for a different combo. It’s weird that stat boosts are worth as much as a racial trait though,” John mused.

“Not really, while it doesn’t cost any more than normal to increase the stat, you actually gain a buff or debuff to the stat based on the size of the increase. Wisdom and intelligence are actually the stats that let people figure it out. Each point of bonus stat means that you gain a ten percent increase to the effectiveness of that stat, so a plus two intelligence actually makes your mana pool twenty percent bigger, while a minus two would make it twenty percent smaller,” BR expounded. “Do you… not read the forums regularly?”

“Not a lot, no. I’ve mostly been focused on getting my farm together,” John admitted. “But in fairness, this does explain why I seem to take less damage than other people, basajaun get a bonus to con.”

“Less damage? What’s your con at?”

“Uh… let me check,” John said, even as he pulled up his status.

[Name: John]

[Race: Basajaun]

[Level: 7]

[Mana: 530]

[MRegen: 26.5/minute]

[Leveling Points: 1,670]

[Attributes]

Strength: 37 Constitution: 39 Dexterity 10 Intelligence: 53 Wisdom: 53

[Skills]

Alchemy – Novice Animal Husbandry – Apprentice Enchanting – Novice Engineering – Novice Farming – Apprentice Inspect – Novice Light Armor – Novice Mana Drawing – Journeyman Mana Imprinting – Journeyman Mana Manipulation – Journeyman Mana Sight – Journeyman Mathematics – Apprentice Measuring – Apprentice Meditation – Apprentice Ritual Magic – Apprentice Swordplay – Novice

[Spells]

Create Earth – Apprentice Create Water – Novice Create Mana Stone – Apprentice Control Flame – Novice Control Water – Apprentice Earth To Stone – Novice Evoke Flame – Apprentice Hasten Decay – Apprentice Hasten Growth – Novice Move Earth – Journeyman

[Racial Perks]

Disaster Prognosticator Megalith Mastery Plant Tender

[Feats]

Domain I Green Thumb I Magriculture Mana Stone Maker

“Thirty-nine,” he said after a moment.

“That’s an effective constitution of almost 47, that’s pretty high from what I hear. Apparently training it requires constant exposure to elemental effects, damage, and pushing through weariness,” BR said.

“Most of that came from working sixteen-hour days clearing land in full sunlight. It was also good for my strength stat,” John explained.

“Yardwork as a form of strength and constitution training huh? I bet we can sell that to someone,” BR replied with a grin.

“It certainly sounds more pleasant then getting hit over and over again,” John agreed.

“So you’re farming for money right? And on some kind of time limit?” BR asked.

“Yeah, my dad wants me to go to college, which I’d be happy to do if it guaranteed a job, but all it guarantees is debt at this point. So, I told him I’d like to try making money another way, and this seemed like a good idea. Honestly I thought there’d be lots of farming practices from the modern era I could apply to the game world, but that doesn’t really seem to be the case.” John said.

“What do you mean? I’m pretty sure we could whip up a magical combine harvester,” BR replied.

“Well, that’s just it. We could, but that’s designed for harvesting quantity, but what I’m seeing here in game is that it’s all about quality. The higher the quality of the crops, the better they are, the more they’re worth. The big problem is that in order to get a higher quality product you have to pay more and better attention to the crop. For instance, I have the Plant Tender racial, and the Green Thumb feat, combined they give a fifty percent chance at a quality increase for any crop I personally tend. But the key there is that I have to tend to it. I can’t just throw down the seeds and then let impersonal machines or even other people take over. If I’m not actively involved then my bonuses mean nothing,” John explained.

BR nodded as he listened. “So basically, you need to keep your crop setup small enough that you can personally spend time with each batch of plants, otherwise you won’t get higher quality, which means it’ll sell for less.”

“Exactly. If this were the real world I’d want to grab as much land as I could, and then have someone build me magical devices that would let me till, seed, and harvest large swaths of land, because quantity would be king. Here, it’s only seven days per quality ranking for a basic crop, so wheat, for instance. A Good quality wheat crop will be fully grown in just under a month, that’s one fourth the time it takes to grow wheat in reality, so you can get four harvests in in the same time, meaning you only need one fourth the land. Further, I suspect that my trait and feat only come into play after the crop is grown, that means that a Good quality crop has a fifty percent chance to become Great quality crop, without the extra seven days of growth time,” John expounded.

“And if the feat goes all the way up to rank twenty, and assuming a twenty-five percent boost per rank, then at level one hundred you’d have a five hundred and twenty-five percent chance of a quality increase, which means your good quality crop could jump all the way to Artifact quality for just twenty-eight days of growth,” the gnome said with a nod. “In other words, the higher your level the less sense it makes for you to stretch yourself over a large area.”

“Right,” John said. “The only reason I might want more land at this point is for cattle, but even then I probably can’t personally handle too many of those on top of crops.”

“You know, you might want to consider seeing if someone wants to join you in this endeavor, I’m sure there’s probably a race that gets bonuses to animal-based products, like milk, wool, and meat,” BR said speculatively.

John considered that in silence for a moment. “Maybe, but what’s the draw to work with me when they could just establish a ranch of their own somewhere? They’d have to build their character specifically to get those bonuses, which would mean it’s not great for other activities like dungeon diving or adventuring, and as far as I’m aware you can only have one character at a time.”

“That’s… a good point. I mean I suppose the biggest draw would be that you’ve got a location set up already, but that be more of a renting space kind of scenario than a partnering scenario,” BR admitted, he then got a thoughtful look. “What about one of the natives?”

“Huh?” John asked, unsure what he meant.

“The NPCs, people on the forums are calling them natives, it seems more appropriate since they’re so lifelike. The thing is that they don’t get a choice in what they’re born with, so it’s possible there’s someone with an animal husbandry trait who might be looking for a job,” BambooRooster explained.

“Well, we’d need to know what race even gets an animal husbandry trait, and then we’d have to search specifically for someone of that race, who’s low enough level that they haven’t made decisions about their feats yet. Not only does that seem really racist, I’m not even sure I’ll be around for more than another four months,” John replied.

BR bobbed his head. “Still might want to think on it.”

“I will,” John said.

The conversation died soon after that, however the remaining walk wasn’t that long and soon they found themselves at John’s farm. It didn’t take long to acquaint BR with the buildings or to get him settled into the workshop. Although John did indeed need to lower the surfaces to a more manageable level for the gnome.

“You don’t have any chairs,” BR pointed out.

“Ugh, I knew there was something I wanted while I was in town,” John mutterd.

The gnome just smiled and pulled a stool out of his inventory. “I’ll make do for now, I suppose. Do you have any projects you want me to work on right now?”

“Not really, though I do have a book you might be interested in,” John said as he took out The Enchanter’s Handbook (Farming Edition) and placed it on the workbench. “Got this from a quest a while back, it’s got some ideas and patterns for enchantments that are useful on a farm in it.”

“That certainly sounds useful. My own books cover the basics and some advanced stuff, but they’re not big enough to cover everything. I’ll give it a look and see if there’s anything I can’t already do in there. For now, I think I could do with some heating in this room, and maybe something to keep the damp out,” the gnome said as he looked around.

“Alright, I’ll leave you to it then,” John replied, then left after BR gave him a parting nod.