Not as hoped

With the sun slowly setting it's getting both darker and colder, so the first order of business is getting a fire going. During a break in between all the harvesting earlier you had seen that there was no option to craft a fireplace, but, you knew it should work, after all, this wasn't your first reset. With no crafting avaiable you arrange eight stones into a circle by hand, thus "creating" (since it's apparently not crafting) a fireplace

[DEE-OOO]
System Error
You have not claimed this land and cannot build here. To claim land, find a Claimant Crystal

what the fuck? A system error? Is the game too stupid to recognise a fireplace now? But no, no, no, that's not it, the message claims you aren't allowed to build here. Are you fucking kidding me, this is YOUR cave, what is this claiming bullshit, it's yours, always has been, you shouldn't need a "claimant crystal"! But, apparently you do need one of those things you never heard of and don't have, wait a moment, actual thinking is beginning to come back through the rage, you DID hear about them ,recently even, in the update-logs this morning. But as you try to reopen the logs you find that you can't, looks like you'll have to remember what you can from your skimming of them. Something about claimant crystals had been changed, you remembered thinking how this was another instance of everything being made extra easy and fun for the players ... that's it! they get one automatically once they reach a certain level, which one though? ...You had thought how this was just right to **** those like you with an unreachable carrot dangling above their head, it was some rather low level, but still a little bit to high for you to fight. After some minutes of strained thinking you can't remember what exactly it was, but you believe it might be level 5, the whole system of counting is organised in decimalnumbers and five happens to be exactly half of that, ten would be to high already, you're pretty sure it was a one-digit number. Wait, wait, wait, since when do you know words like that, your intelligence stat hadn't changed ... it was probably down to your class change, apparently snipers had a different set of inherent knowledge and so on, huh. Anyways, back on topic, claimant crystals being with level 5 players was still a carrot above your head, but maybe, just maybe not that unreachable anymore, your new class was excellent for damage dealing, just try to calculate the damage you could cause! 18 base damage from your crossbow plus 3 damage from your iron tipped bolts; 18+3=21; headshots normally deal double damage; 21x2=42; but your Boom, headshot feat doubled that again; 42x2=84; that should be enough to one-hit-kill some enemies, it would certainly be enough for your 80 hitpoints, AND what about stealth multipliers, is there something like that and does it apply to ranged attacks? If yes, then you might just become a nightmare for any players coming near your (yes, YOUR) cave. The downside to all that is that you're not gonna be fighting other npc's, but players, those are more powerful, both in what they can do and the equipment they have, their "starting gear" already gives them fairly more protection than what you have (though it isn't hard to outstrip nothing), and, importantly, you will have to fight one at level 5, at least, thats three levels above you, actually manageable for a sniper, IF everything goes right, if not you're dead. I mean, just look at that character sheet of yours, figthing a level 5 player will be "dangerous",

Level 2 Sniper
Human, NPC, Outlaw, Explicit
Experience to level up – 188
Attributes:
Strength 18 Dexterity 20 Endurance 14
Charisma 14 Manipulation 9 Appearance 18
Perception 35 Intelligence 20 Wisdom 16
Skills:
Crossbow 40
Traps 10
Stealth 15
Climbing 10
Crafting (general)
Crafting (Woodworking)
Feats:
Boom, headshot - Your headshots deal twice as much damage as normal headshots.
Raised position -each feet you are above your target increases your hit chance and critical hit chance as though you had one more point in perception.
Eagles eyes - It's like your eyes have a built in zoom, your able to see far better in the distance then others can.

man, this day is series of up's and down's; no! a class change; maybe it's not that bad; holy shit, those eyes are amazing; fuck! bandits; uff, i could hide; oh, crafting's interesting; goblins! will they attack me or not; tree sap, that's interesting; i need to "claim" my cave, are you fucking kidding me; and now that: you somehow gained 12 xp today, does that mean you can actually level up? you always thought only heroes, sorry "heroes", could do that, those murdering and pillaging psychos. As you're staring at the unexpected 188 you slowly raise your hand to touch it, still with some disbelief inside you, which suddenly triggers a new pop-up:

Experience log:

killed one rabbit at lvl. 2 ➔ 4 xp
killed one rabbit at lvl. 2 ➔ 4 xp
killed one rabbit at lvl. 2 ➔ 4 xp

well , that tells you how you got these xp, through "combat". That opens possibilities for the future, if you can get xp you should be able to gain levels as well, until you are powerful enough to earn, steal, yourself one of those crystals.

But before you continue with that line of thought you ought to concentrate on the matter at hand, the sun continues to set and you aren't allowed a fireplace, aren't even allowed to build at all. Just a few minutes ago you were somewhat amused or at least confused as to why making a fireplace isn't consdered crafting, that might help you know, as it could mean that crafting was still allowed, you'd just have to place your campfire (you could craft that) without a real fireplace around it. You select the campfire in your crafting menu, costing 6 wood, and suddenly see a small pile of wood on the floor while you hold two sticks in your hands, an empty progress bar levitating above all of that. You experimentally tap the sticks against each other or the not yet burning fire, eliciting nothing, it is only out of accident that you rub the sticks against each other after a while, finally returning a minuscule amount of green filling the bar and a message:

general crafting skill, no penalty. mediocre dexterity no penalty. Total crafting speed: 10% per 2 seconds

it only takes you 20 seconds to generate enough heat to get the fire going, filling the cave with crackling warmth and light (you might have a high perception but the increasing absence of light was still a problem, you don't have night vision after all). Now that the fire is burning you can finally relly get down to crafting, starting with a dinner of rabbit, your menu allows you to prepare a pair of rabbit legs for one rabbit meat each, you quickly learn that the food isn't ready immediately but rather cooks on a rock in the fire, at least it doesn't require your constant attention, you just have to turn it from time to time. While your food cooks, or gets eaten by you later on, you focus on more things to craft, the pretty much only thing you can do with tall gras is useing 10 of that to craft one unit of rope, prompting the same message as the fire, only that this time you rub two fistfuls of grass together until you suddenly hold a rope, you repeat the process until you have 24 ropes instead of 240 tall halms of grass. Those ropes open up new possibilities for crafting, most interestingly simple sling traps (one rope and one stone each) and a wooden climbing hook that would be useful for climbing, and difficult to access locations that also trigger your Raised position feat should be really useful, in other words: you craft ten traps to help with the food supply and spend 9 rope and 4 wood on the hook. It's well into the evening by now, you have eaten dinner, still having two counts of rabbit legs in your inventory (luckily things stay the same while in there, raw food doesn't spoil, warm food doesn't cool etc) and are now studying your crafting menu for yet more useful things, a small supply of six torches is quickly crafted, as is a pack that consists entirely of moss, the description telling you that it can hold a small quantity of water (and you should't care too much about the taste it's not dangerous or anything). After thinking about it for a few minutes you also decide to craft yourself a small stone knife, something like that should be useful for harvesting, crafting maybe even hunting and should you be **** into melee a knife will be better than bare fists, the reason why you still debated with yourself is the cost, 1 stone; 1 wood; 1 rope and your one tree gum. But, you have decided and follow through with the plan, torturing yourself through the crafting process:

no stone crafting skill, - 50 %. low general crafting skill, -20%. stones as tools, -30%. low strength, -20%. tired, -20%
Total crafting speed: 0,0625%

that is definitely your longest project, taking almost a quarter hour at your tired pace of about 1 step per second. But that too, is finally done at some point. Which just spawns your next problem, if you really want that to be a viable weapon for you, you can't just put it in the inventory, taking it out from there would take too long in the heat of battle. But you can't really holster it either as you lack a place to do such a thing. You have nowhere to holster wepons and such? Where do you hold your crossbow and bolts then? Well, the crossbow luckily has a band of sturdy leather attached, enabling you to sling it over your shoulder when you don't need it right now, as for the bolts, their quiver inexplicably holds on to your pants on your right side, that may be useful, but it is rather unlogical, there's nothing holding it, it's just there, as far as you know such anomalies, such little bits of unrationalism, are called bug or glitch. Be that as it may, if you want to holster your knife you also have to craft yourself a belt, which is pleasantly easy, it just takes a rope and as much time as you need to tie it around your waist and the crafting is finished. You now have a belt which allows you to fast access up to two items, your bolts and your knife in this case.

Now, now that all of this is done, and you can find no more crafting recipes that seem important to you, you finally end it for today and set yourself to sleep, not without a last look at your character sheet though:

Level 2 Sniper
Human, NPC, Outlaw, Explicit
Experience to level up – 80
Attributes:
Strength 18 Dexterity 20 Endurance 14
Charisma 14 Manipulation 9 Appearance 18
Perception 35 Intelligence 20 Wisdom 16
Skills:
Crossbow 40
Traps 10
Stealth 15
Climbing 10
Crafting (general)
Crafting (Woodworking)
Feats:
Boom, headshot - Your headshots deal twice as much damage as normal headshots.
Raised position -each feet you are above your target increases your hit chance and critical hit chance as though you had one more point in perception.
Eagles eyes - It's like your eyes have a built in zoom, your able to see far better in the distance then others can.

Looks like that crafting was quite lucrative, a quick check reveals that it was mostly the knife and climbing hook that helped you so much, well, this will make the levelling you should focus on tomorrow a lot faster. With these happy thoughts you close your eyes and drift of to sleep.