Stock up

You need to do something, you figure. So, with no real plan, you square your shoulders, tighten the sash around your shitty cloth robe, and march determinedly out of your cave and into the muck.

It's cool, humid, and still mostly dark, as the morning sun has trouble filtering in through the thick canopy of trees, but you're familiar enough with the area that you can still find your way through the undergrowth and brackish mud. The Swamp of Gnym isn't much special-- just a few beginner's quests and gathering spots near one of the newer starting cities, to warm adventurers up for some new storyline you don't give a shit about and to show off some of the once-new features from a couple updates ago. Mostly notably, that farming mobs here could summon stronger mobs, some of which were disproportionately strong-- you seem to recall there was a world boss of some kind that could be summoned if they killed enough of the Bog Beasts around here, but you don't recall its name, and it's never really helped your situation much. After all, since it had to be summoned, they'd only bother if they knew that had overwhelming enough firepower to slay it. Sometimes, you wish you could be one... getting to hang out in some kind of inaccessible lair for most of your life and have at least a marginal chance against adventurers would be nice, especially once most of them have the loot and achievements they need from you and gradually stop bothering you entirely.

As you wander the bog, for lack of any better ideas, you start harvesting everything you can reach, be it brush, twigs, stones, or small animals. Food isn't hard to find here, after all; maybe you can stock up, barricade the entrance to your shitty little cave, and hope people just ignore you? Alternately, you could try to trade with the local goblins and make allies, or tribute anything valuable you find to a stronger monster for protection. ...Being honest, even the Bog Beasts are only about level 10 or so, and they're some of the strongest monsters around, but it's better to have a bad plan than no plan, you figure.

You ruminate on your options for a while-- by the time an hour had passed, you'd made two trips back to your cave to drop off the miscellaneous debris you've been collecting and drink, and you have a third large bundle of plant material slung over your back. You should probably sort through your pickings soon, just to see if there's anything particularly valuable or useful... You know, at least, you have enough material to make yourself a new bed and a door so you can at least die comfortably.

As you approach a clearing in the bog, though, hovering to keep your feet clean, you hear a noise that sets you on edge-- a sharp impact, followed by several more in an even rhythm. The sounds of combat, perhaps? There shouldn't be players out here at the moment, but if it's monsters fighting each other, perhaps you could take advantage. Alternatively, it could be the local goblins; it had taken you a couple trips to notice, but the update had wiped out your previous furnishings (such as they were), so the hammering could be them trying to rebuild their squalid little huts. Slowly and silently, you creep to the edge of the clearing, peering around a tree to see...