Mass Production without much Mass

Step One: Acquire workstations to make the crafting cheaper.

That step was pretty easy thanks to the additional Mana he had gotten. He could easily pay for the remaining Crafting Bench, putting it into the same room as the Essence Fluctuator and the Replicator. Sadly, there was no Bench to decrease the cost of his Extract skills, but his Extract Material was cheap enough anyway, and if he went with the right things, he would get a lot of stuff from the Extract Essence.

Step Two: Decide on what to craft

To properly get the best result out of his Essence and Extract abilities, he would need to create the same thing as often as possible, since these skills were repeatable for free. He had to do something that he could mass produce. His inventory told him that he currently had:

62x Scrap Metal
24x Scrap Electronic
16x Meager Essence of the Machine
11x Leather
6x Enhanced Metal
4x Superior Electronics
4x Flawed Essence of Blood
…

So those were the things he had most of. Looking through his Inventory also revealed that he still had the Essence Chest from the day before when they defeated the post-apocalyptic vampires. He also still had the Random Gear Chest from his return with Aloy.

Quickly pulling both of them out, he once again held a small velvet bag in his hand and a bigger cardboard box, just like the last chests. He decided to start with the Essence Chest

Essence Chest: Rare++ Edition
Open to get 10 Random Essence with varying qualities.
Chance to get:
30% Flawed
50% Normal
12% Pristine
8% Perfect

Proceed? (Y/N)

Quickly hitting Yes, the pouch in his hand opened itself up and spilled its contents on the floor.

1x Pristine Essence of Spirit
1x Essence of ****
1x Essence of Flight
1x Perfect Essence of Blood
1x Perfect Essence of Magic
1x Flawed Essence of the Machine
1x Essence of Magic
1x Pristine Essence of Chaos
1x Essence of Spirit
1x Flawed Essence of Element (Light)

Most of those were pretty neat, but the Essences of Magic were really helpful! John was debating with himself if he should actually use the Perfect Essence… He would Craft a potion with the normal one for sure, but how many chances would he get to get a perfect Essence? Would he keep getting these chests as Barrier rewards?

Before thinking about that, he took the Gear Chest into his hands, checking to see what would be in there.

Gear Chest: Uncommon Edition
Receive one piece of gear according to the rarity of the chest and according to your level. Slots that you don’t have equipment for yet will be prioritized.

Chance to get:
Head: 10%
Cloak: 10%
Torso: 10%
Hands: 10%
Belt: 10%
Legs: 10%
Shoes: 30%
Weapon: 5%
Accessory: 5%

Proceed? (Y/N)

Well, that would get him closer to his second optional quest, that was nice. On the other hand, he could probably craft cheap equipment to fill those slots and then use the chest when he was a higher level?

Both chests had put him in front of the same conundrum now: should he use ressources now as they are available to get closer to his goal or should he use them when it was more important? It’s the same question he had with consumables when he played games. He hoarded the most important stuff in his bag, always prepared to use it if the situation were ever to get serious. At the same time, he was also grinding way beyond the level of the enemies though, never reaching a point where the fights were actually dangerous enough to use the items…

Deciding to break this old habit that had haunted him for so long, he decided to open the Gear Chest right now!

The chest popped open, throwing out a pair of boots, barely missing John’s feet and the new shoes Brun had gotten him. These boots were shin high, black, and they had buckles on the side of them around the ankles. If John were to categorize these boots, he would say that they looked like they were boots from motorcycling gear.

Funnily enough, they apparently were:

Quick Biker Boots of the Hellrider
Medium Armor
+3 DEF
+2 STR
+2 END
+1 AGI
+1 Temporary Skill Level in Driving
Set: Hellrider Set (1/6)
(2) ???
(4) ???
(6) ???
Requirement: Lv.9, AGI > 25

Well, those were certainly helpful boots. He didn’t think that the temporary skill level would help him much, but one would never know. He was also interested to see what those set bonuses would be, but for that he would have to find (or possibly craft?) the other set pieces.

Now that he had finished with those chests, he realized that he still had to decide on what to actually craft…

Well, the first thing was obvious by now:

Essential Alchemy
Inventory:
1x Perfect Essence of Blood
1x Pristine Essence of Blood
4x Flawed Essences of Blood
1x Pristine Essence of Chaos
1x Flawed Essence of Courage
1x Flawed Essence of ****
1x Essence of ****
1x Flawed Essence of Element (Shadow)
1x Flawed Essence of Element (Air)
2x Flawed Essence of Element (Light)
1x Meager Essence of Element (Ice)
1x Essence of Energy
2x Essence of Flight
2x Flawed Essence of Life
1x Meager Essence of Life
3x Essence of the Machine
2x Flawed Essence of Machine
16x Meager Essence of Machine
1x Perfect Essence of Magic
1x Essence of Magic
1x Essence of Memory
1x Essence of Nature
1x Perfect Essence of Rage
1x Pristine Essence of Rage
2x Flawed Essences of Rage
1x Pristine Essence of Spirit
1x Essence of Spirit

Please select at least two Essences to start creation:
Essence 1: Essence of Magic
Essence 2: Essence of Spirit

Select Result:
Potion
Poison
Essence
Grenade

Potion Selected!

Result: Potion of the Pure Mind, Lv.4, Qty.:6
Regenerate 150 MP, Increase MP regeneration for 2 Minutes by 50%

Amazing! Those potions alone would be enough for his plan. Hell, if it actually went according to plan, he possibly only needed one potion of that. The most expensive step would be the crafting.

Looking at the clock, this whole planning up until now had taken about five minutes.
Now that he had the potential Mana to basically do anything, he should start generating the important resources.

Extract Essence: Current Level: 2

Selected Material: Scrap Electronics
Type of Essence
40% Essence of the Machine
40% Essence of Energy
20% Essence of the Element (Lightning)

Quality of Essence:
60% Meager
19% Flawed
13% Normal
5% Pristine
2% Perfect
1% Corrupted

Select Quantity to Extract: 10/24

Proceed? (Y/N)

He needed to produce some more essences that he could work with, so he quickly hit Yes.

Extraction Successful! 4x Crit
Results:
3x Essence of Energy
2x Essence of the Machine
6x Meager Essence of Energy
1x Meager Essence of the Machine
2x Meager Essence of Element (Lightning)**

Extract Essence,Lv. 2 -> Lv. 4

’Almost! Well, it was an improvement.’

Next, he went back to creating stuff with Essential Alchemy, deciding to craft a poison with the Meager Essences of the Machine and the Meager Essences of Energy.

Weak Poison of Mechanized Menace, Lv.4, Qty.: 18
Apply to weapon to deal additional damage for the next 5 hits
+15% DMG against mechanized opponents
+3 DMG (Magic)

Essential Alchemy, Lv. 3 -> Lv. 5

Quest Progress: Work in Progress
Reach Level 5:
Extract Essence (4/5)
Essential Alchemy (5/5) Complete!*
+250 XP
+600$
+1 Potion of Rejuvenation, Lv.2
+2 Non-Combat Skill Points*

Wait a second… Now that he had finished part of the quest, he had received some skill points that he could use… Essential Alchemy was the only thing that was listed as a combat skill… And he still had a skill level from when he was fighting the Sawtooths...

Could he actually…?

Extract Essence, Lv. 4 -> Lv. 5

Quest Progress: Work in Progress
Reach Level 5:
Extract Essence (5/5) Complete!
+250 XP
+600$
+1 Essence of Flight
+2 Non-Combat Skill points

That actually worked… wow… this was kind of bad game design…

But now that he knew that he could exploit it that way, it was actually kind of boring… Sure, it was time-efficient to do it that way, but he could use those points way better in other skills…

So in the end, he decided to do it the old fashioned way. Now that he only had to level Craft and Extract Materials, it wasn’t that bad anyway.

Deciding to get at least some progress in those skills, he used Craft once to try and get some accessory to fill his slots with. His magical materials were starting to grow slim, so maybe he would have to farm something soon? So far, the Elemental Fangs had yielded the most useful results, so maybe he should drop by the school earlier, taking advantage of his Barrier there...

So many opportunities, so little time… Anyway, back to crafting for now.

Craft, Current Level: 4

Desired Item: Accessory

Possible Objects:

Metal Bracelet
Accessory
+1 DEF
Requires: 1x Scrap Metal

Leather Band
Accessory
Requires: 1x Leather

Metal Earring
Accessory
Requires: 1x Scrap Metal

Possible Enhancements:
Valkyrie’s Tear: +1 AGI, +1 STR
Infected Blood: +2 Lifesteal
Elemental Fang: +2 DMG (Random Element)

Well, those were certainly underwhelming… In the end John decided to go with two bland Metal Bracelets, just to fill the slots and to get his Mana nice and low at 3 MP. Pulling out one of the potions, which was a clear, yellow color, and gulping it down in one go, he barely noticed the taste of lemon before his body was immediately filled with magic once again.

From outside the room, someone knocked onto the window, making John look up. Brun was tapping on the window, gesturing for John to come out here with a smile. She shouted through the glass, “Don’t be such a nerd, nerd, and come out here and play with these three hotties!”

John had to keep it together not to burst out laughing, but he had to agree that he should better use the time he had with his guests. He should still have enough time to finish the quests later before he had to meet up with Kaen and Kim at the school.