Some Re-Tooling

John sat alone at the kitchen table as he used Bask, restoring some of the mana he spent to summon Senka. The spirit had taken up Aoelia’s offer, though the somewhat smug smile she wore caused him to wonder if his shadowy spirit and girlfriend were up to something.

Shaking off an odd sense of foreboding, John regarded his mana. He’d spent all but one point of mana to give Senka as much time as he could. Which meant even after using his restorative skill, he only had twenty-four mana, leaving him at a crossroad.

“Do I tap one of my mana reserves?” he asked no one in particular. Senka and Aeolia had gone to what was slowly becoming the Barrier’s multipurpose room and Vivian had retreated to her own small office room to work on the arrays for her beacon. “Or do I just see what I can do using Craftsmanship’s slow crafting option?”

He weighed the choice as he looked over the various items he wanted to work with. The spare whip sat coiled on the table and a number of the various metal and wood crafting materials rested in its center, the main focus of the day. His Hide Glove of Fire lay next to the flexible weapon though he wasn’t confident on being able to repair it.

“Note to self: go back and fight some of those tavaren for their hides,” he said to himself as he pulled up the glove’s Observe to see how worn down it was.

“Only about a third left,” he remarked, chewing the inside of his cheek. “Not a lot of uses left. And I really don’t want to know if hitting zero will just cause it to go poof.”

John returned the glove to his inventory and turned his attention to the whip.

“So what can I do with you?” John muttered as he looked at the raw materials he could use. “Don’t think anything besides the zilhavram and steelwood is going to be worth anything if I decide to upgrade the whip that way. But I should look at what I can do with the base attributes before I start going all Frankenstein.”

Select a crafting option:

Craft
Improve
Repair
Enchant
Breakdown

“Enchant or Improve?” John mused as he recalled each’s effect. “Enchant uses my skills or another item’s effect to add attributes and Improve uses some of my experience to change the current attributes or add materials. Let’s see what the bog standard kit can be amped up to.”

Living Core
Current Effect: The center of this wood lies dormant, but alive. A supply of mana can enable restorative growth, at a rate of 10% durability per 15 mana.
Available Upgrades:

• Increase the regeneration rate to 11% (Cost 25 EXP)

Controlled Path
Current Effect: With an application of mana (.25MP/sec), you can take control of the whip, performing small adjustments to its movement.
Available Upgrades:

• Increase the range of movement control (Cost 50 EXP)
• Add Effect: For 4MP/Min you can lock the whip around a target (Cost 50 EXP)

Growth Spike
Current Effect: For 15MP you can extend the length of the whip by a meter for 30 seconds. This does not stack.
Available Upgrades:

• Increase the number of times this effect can be used by 1 (Cost 50 EXP)
• Increase the length of the extension by 1 meter and increase the cost by 1MP (Cost 50 EXP)

Evocation: Lash Storm
Current Effect: Cost 26MP, 15 Durability. Extends Thornbite an additional 4 meters and causes it to strike out on its own, attacking anything in the direction its handle is pointed for (Wis) seconds.
Available Upgrades:

• Increase extension length by 2 meters (Cost 80 EXP)
• Convert Lash Storm into a standard effect, reducing the costs, range and duration to half (Cost 1000 EXP, the deletion of an existing attribute). This will remove it as an Evocation and prevent this item from regaining an Evocation.

John blinked as he reread the Evocation’s info. It was pricey and would drain him to a third of his current amount, but letting him create a weakened version of the Evocation, even one as chaotic as Lash Storm read, was way too good to pass out of hand.

“Beth did think it was a cool attack,” John recalled the dark haired girl’s excitement over the effect. “And with her mobility, she’d be able to really make it work.”

He mulled over what pros and cons he could come up with, putting an imaginary Beth against some of the monsters he’d encountered in the last few days.

“The range of the whip should let her beat the tavarens,” he reasoned. “But I’m not sure how a match up against the golems or constructs would go. She could hit them, but I don’t think the steelwood barbs will be enough to really hurt them. But that could be fixed by using the zilhavrum to enhance the thorns. And that’d make it hit harder against less armored enemies.”

John was tempted to just use the magic cutting metal and retool the Evocation and call that the play, but the completionist in him wouldn’t let him set things up without checking the ‘Enchant’ part of his skill.

“Plus, every minute I spend figuring out what the best options are means I get back more mana,” John mused as he called up the information.

Enchant: Add Attributes or Effects to items derived from current Skills or from using another item as a focus.
Applicable Enchantments for selected item:
Channeling: 1% casting cost reduction
Dispelling: Drain 1 Mana on hit
Bolstered: +1% Effect Range
Homing: Attacks will lock onto targets within .5 meters
Or use a focus

“Oh yeah, not all that great,” John bemoaned. “That homing one could be interesting. Sounds like it could let Lash Storm more or less target something instead of swinging wide.”

John leaned back in his chair as his eyes lingered on the final bit of ‘Enchant’s’ options, using another item to add something.

“Something tells me the item used will get destroyed,” John said, thinking back to all the things he had at hand. “And I don’t think there’s anything that could really add anything major from them. Wait, maybe using the Weathered Wood to see if that Resilient attribute will translate over.”

John reached into the pile of crafting materials and pulled out a twisted branch, the dried bark rough between his fingers.

Resilient: This material has stood the test of time, reducing durability loss.

“Yeah, that’s how I remember it,” John muttered. “Now let's see if this works the way I think it does.”

Enchant (Focus): Selected donor: Weathered Wood.
Available Enchantments:
Channeling: 1% casting cost reduction
Resilient: Reduce durability loss

“Looks like a one for one,” John said with a satisfied grin, selecting the intended effect.

Add Resilient to Thornbite?
Cost: 50MP, consumes Weathered Wood
YES / NO
Note: You will be unable to use Craftsmanship on this item for 48 hours, except to use ‘Repair’.

“Fifty mana is a bit steep and that’s a restriction I didn’t get when I did the binding with Senka,” John muttered as he hit the ‘No’ in front of him, clearing the screen. “Guess that’s a way to keep me from just stacking effects onto an item. Wonder if that’s going to happen if I try to use ‘Improve’ too.”

Unwilling to leave his assumption unexplored, John circled back to the ‘Improve’ options and chose Lash Storm.

Improve the effect of Lash Storm?
YES / NO
Note: You will be unable to use Craftsmanship on this item for 48 hours, except to use ‘Repair’.

“Yep, upgrade blocked,” John lamented, clearing all the screens. “Maybe as I level up Craftsmanship, it’ll let me do consecutive upgrades. Might as well see what can happen if I try to reinforce the spikes with zilhavrum. Guess that’ll be just under the normal ‘Craft’ option.”

Picking up the two pieces of zilhavrum, John once again cast Craftsmanship on the whip and selected the first option.

Do you wish to combine Thornbite with Zilhavrum?
Cost: 55MP
Note:There is a chance this will fail, which may result in loss of material.
YES/NO

“Steep cost and a risk of loss,” John grimaced, “and being low leveled probably means that risk is high. Maybe if I had a whip schematic, but I’d have to break down the spare Thornbite for just a chance at it. Not worth it.”

John cleared the screens from his vision and let out a sigh.

“So the whip angle is kind of a dead end,” he bemoaned. “Is there anything else I can work with that I don’t care about losing if things fail?”

Running through the past few days, John found himself thinking of the Reinforced Limb, more specifically, the restorative Evocation it had.

‘We’ve gotten lucky so far as to not get that hurt,’ he thought, a small part of him afraid that speaking aloud would invoke some disaster in the near future. ‘But if I could make that into some real healing item, that would be nice. And maybe the sap could work with that.’

John was about to summon the limb when a thought crossed his mind and he smacked himself for being an idiot.

“There should be schematics for this kind of stuff on the Auction, right? I do have over 10k now,” he wondered, pulling out his phone to search, grimacing at the low amount of power it had left. His hopes were dashed as the first items displayed would eat all his money just for one.

“Do I really want to burn nearly all my money for schematics I might not even need?” he asked himself as he scrolled through the available options. The most expensive he could find, well over twice his funds, was advertised as a detailed folio of various weapons and armor from various time periods and cultures.

“Maybe if I look for something more along the lines of an instructional book,” John muttered as he refined his search. “Maybe something like a staff. Feel like that’d be the best fit for this.”

This search proved less painful for his wallet, and John gravitated to the cheapest item displayed.

“‘An Idiot’s Guide to Staff Carving’,” he read out. “Only three grand. What a steal.”

Despite his sarcastic tone, it was the best option given the inflated prices of everything in the Abyss. The blurb describing the book detailed that it would contain vital information regarding the crafting and care of staves and other wooden arcane foci. After a moment of further debate, John bought the book and headed outside to pick it up. He had scarcely made it around the corner into the alleyway when the delivery drone dropped from above, a plainly wrapped package held beneath it.

John took his order and watched the drone fly away before slipping back into Vivian’s Barrier, pulling off the brown paper as he went. The book looked as it did on the Auction, a plain, faded yellow cover with a pair of simple, stereotypical staves crossed at the center, the title above them in black blocky lettering.

After quickly retrieving a phone charger from his bag and plugging his phone in, John flipped through the pages, finding sections on wood selection, necessary tools, carving techniques, and proper care procedure. He sat back down at the kitchen table, placing the book down and summoned the limb, setting it down as well, right next to one of the sap orbs. After a bit of thought, he placed the Weathered Wood atop the limb, figuring that both of its Attributes could be useful in a healing item.

“OK, let’s see if this’ll work, or if I just wasted three grand,” John said, throwing an Observe at his purchase.

Spend 2 Learning Points to add ‘Staff Crafting’ to Craftsmanship?
YES / NO

“Same cost as learning Craftsmanship,” John noted, accepting the cost and hitting the affirmative. “Now, let’s see what I can do with this stuff.”

Select the item you wish to create:
Staff of Invigoration (Reinforced Limb, Verdant Sap, Weathered Wood)

“Not as clear a name as I would have liked,” John groused, biting his lip. “Sounds like it’s drawing from the Evocation. What was it again, a boost to Endurance and a little bit of healing over time?”

Despite the sign that the resulting staff might be more aligned with stat boosting rather than healing, John went ahead and selected it, moving onto the next choice.

Select Crafting Method:
Instant Craft: Create selected item instantly for 48 mana.

Slow Craft: Create selected item over time. Spend 1 mana every 5 minutes for 4 hours. Total Cost 48 mana.

“Going to be a bit for this one,” John lamented as he selected the ‘Slow Craft’ option, causing the three pieces of gear to disappear. Leaning back in his chair, John let out a breath.

“Wonder how the girls are doing?” he mused as he rocked back slightly. “Don’t want to bother them, so I should kill some time. Maybe something in the staff book will give me an idea for future work. Might as well get my money’s worth out of it.”

He picked the book up and began to thumb through its pages, looking for anything that could be used for inspiration.

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