I take a quick toilet break before going back into my bedroom. There I turn the air conditioner on as the temperature is slowly getting higher from the early summer sun.

  "Ok let’s continue from where I left off before lunch. SLOF here I come!"

  When I log in I can already see a few other players running around in the village.

  "Guess I should make hast, or else all the good farming spots will be occupied." I don’t want to know what kind of hell the big cities must be right now. Probably being completely flooded by players now, if even this little village in the middle of nowhere sees foot traffic.

  Ah by the way, while gathering nodes aren’t shared, meaning multiple people can gather from the same place without impeding others, monster are not.

  I take a small beaten path from the outskirts of the village to go inside the forest. Grass and little shrubs are stroking against my shinbones. After only a few meters of walking I notice a little plant, that looks exactly like the drawing from the quest description to collect common healing herbs.

  "It seems they really do grow everywhere, if I already found one so close to the village."

  "Harvesting Knife" The common harvesting knife materializes itself into my open palm and I carefully cut the herb at the base of the root.

  New item acquired: Common Healing Herb 1x

  "Only 9 more to go." As I let go of the harvesting knife it automatically stores itself in my inventory again. Pretty convenient right?

  As I follow the track further into the forest, while collecting all the healing herbs I can find on the way, I reach a small clearing.

  "This seems like a good place to start practicing my wood cutting skills, as I have enough space to fight any monster that might show up."

  "Woodcutting Axe"

  I have seen how woodcutters would fell a tree in real life with an axe, though I wonder how much of a difference the felling technique used in game really matters.

  "First let’s just chop it as I would do in previous VR games, without much thought to the technique used."

  After the 10th stroke the small tree topples over.

  New item acquired: Common Wood 1x

  "Ok no let’s try again while imitating a woodcutters’ technique."

  This time it only takes eight strokes for the tree to topple over.

  Item acquired: Common Wood 1x

  So the technique does matter, as I’m around 20% faster. Though there are not more drops unfortunately. Oh and it looks like the system differentiates between getting an item for the first time or not.

  I decide to continue with my tree cutting for some time. After the 7th tree I hear some weird noises coming from behind me as well as the rustling of leaves and turn around. An ugly small green creature is running towards me.

  "My first fight, but yuck!" Goblins are smelling quite bad already. I really have to adjust the smell for stinking creatures and objects later, as I definitely don’t won’t to meet a zombie before I adjust the settings.

  I wait until the goblin reaches my attack range.

  "Swing" "Swing" "Swing"…

  "Wtf my attacks are barely hitting the goblin and even if they hit they do next to no damage."

  "Grrkh!" The goblin grunts while fighting back.

  "Swing" "Swing" "Swing"… After I hit the goblin for the 10th time I get a system notification from Nel.

  New skill acquired: Slash

  Slash: Slashes at an enemy, +10 base weapon damage.

  After hitting an enemy ten times with the skill >>Swing<< while using a bladed weapon you’ll automatically learn >>Slash<<

  "Nice! Let’s try it out right away."

  "Slash" "Slash" "Slash" Each hit shaves roughly 10-13% hp off of the goblin.

  "Finally some decent damage baby!"

  Five more attacks and the creature collapses into a pool of rainbow juice.

  "Haha, I completely forgot to deactivate the save for all ages setting."

  I changed the gore setting to fully uncensored and then harvest the goblin. The goblins aren’t great for loot I must say though. It only gave me Dirty Rags 1x and 15 G. So I continue my wood cutting and after the 10th tree toppled over I hear Nels voice again.

  Proficiency increased: Wood Cutting +1.

  After chopping some more trees I noticed that while the speed of cutting trees didn’t increase I would sometimes get two wood per tree instead of only one. So I decided to stay here a little while longer felling trees and harvesting the odd herb here and there.

  You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

  My results of 1 hour farming was:

  Common Wood 47x, Common Healing Herb 28x, Dirty Rags 9x, Broken Tooth 5x, 253 G, Gathering +1

  What I noticed is that the respawn timer for wood seems to be ~1 hour, as the first trees I felled are already back standing.

  Also killing 11 Forest Goblins in total gave me 1 level up and proficiency +1 in sword:

  Status Screen:

  Name: Eisteufel / Race: Skeleton / Level: 2

  Health Points (HP): 15/15 / Mana Points (MP): 8/8

  Stamina (STM): 7 / Strength (STR): 6 / Agility (AGI): 4 / Intelligence (INT): 4 / Willpower (MND): 3

  Proficiency: Sword +1, Gathering +1, Wood Cutting +1

  Equipment: Wooden Sword / Common Harvesting Knife / Common Woodcutter Axe / Common Shorts / Common Shirt

  Guild Membership: Adventures Guild, Trade Guild

  Ok let’s be real, the level up barely made a difference in stats… But how does the saying go. "Many a little makes a mickle." And to be honest it is quite nice to have a game where you don’t level up to max level in barely a day of playing. Kind of reminds me of the good old classic MMOs where you would farm for weeks or even months to reach max level.

  I decided that I’ve been felling trees long enough for now and started sneaking through the woods to find a few more goblins to kill. And lo and behold in front of me was a goblin carrying a wooden stick, which was something new as all goblins so far all attacked me barehanded.

  I crouched closer to it while trying to be as silent as possible and right before it spun its head around I delivered it a full blown Slash attack to the back of its head.

  "WOW!"

  The attack took 50% of the goblins health, so it also matters where and how you attack a monster for maximizing damage output.

  Unfortunately the critical attack I delivered made me sloppy in my response to the enraged goblins counter attack, tacking a full blow from its wooden stick to my shoulder.

  "Ouch!"

  That took 1/3 of my health! The goblin feels more like a mini boss than a trash mob.

  "Grrrkh!""Raaagh!"

  "Ha!"

  I deflected the next goblin attack perfectly taking zero damage.

  New skill acquired: Parry

  Parry: Parries the next incoming physical attack. Chance to make the enemy vulnerable for a short amount of time.

  After parring ten enemy attacks successfully you’ll gain the skill >>Parry<<. No more gambling if you can or cannot parry an attack!

  "My time for revenge has come!"

  I slash at the goblin and then parring his next attack, giving me a short time window where I can deliver two more slashes on the defenseless goblin, bringing its health to zero.

  Now that the goblin is dead I take a closer look to it.

  "Seems like this goblin was only 1 level higher than the ones before." As for the loot.

  Geld acquired: 57 G

  Items acquired: Dirty Rags 1x, Broken Tooth 1x, Wooden Stick 1x

  Wooden Stick: 1-2 Damage / +1 Strength

  Uh, looks like I’ll can equip the Wooden Stick as a weapon in my off-hand.

  "Time for dual wielding!" Though it seems I won’t be able to use my Slash skill with it as it isn’t a bladed weapon, sad.

  During the testing of my new off-hand weapon in the fight with the next goblin I can confirm that the only skill I’m able to use with the Wooden Stick is Swing. So back to the roots I guess, ugh…

  After fighting two more goblins, Nel is back with two new announcements.

  New skill acquired: Strike

  Strike: Strikes an enemy, +10 base weapon damage.

  After hitting an enemy ten times with the skill >>Swing<< while using a blunt weapon you’ll automatically learn >>Strike<<

  Proficiency increased: Dual Wielding +1.

  "I wonder how the system decides what counts as a skill and what counts as a proficiency?"

  :P

  Nel sticks out her tongue.

  "What the–?!"

  "If you really want to know, you should hit the books boy" ;)

  "Nah, I’m good. Revealing the reason behind it, isn’t important enough for me, to wasting my precious game time in the library."

  Back to farming goblins.

  Now being able to dual-wield efficiently I can cut down goblins even faster, to the point where it takes me a lot longer searching for them than slaying them.

  Though after only a couple more goblins I have to drink the health potion as the damage slowly piles up in addition to the heavy blow I received from the higher level goblin earlier.

  After continuing my bloody hunt for goblins I suddenly spot one with a different color some distance away from me.

  "Is this my first rare mob?!" I silently whisper and make a fist bump.

  As I slowly make my way towards it I notice that the goblin carries a proper wooden club in one hand and wears shorts plus a shirt instead of the dirty rags they usually are dressed in.

  I’m right behind it, luckily it hasn’t noticed me yet. I draw my weapons slowly and then swing them decisively at the unaware goblin while targeting its unprotected backside of its head.

  Just for my weapons to swing through the goblin, crashing with full force into the dirt below it.

  "Yo bro! Watch out! What the heck are doing???" The goblin turns around and shouts at me.

  "Wha-Whaaaaaaat? The goblin can speak?"

  "… Says the skeleton."

  "So… You’re a player?"

  "Bingo, 100 points. Name is Julius the LXIX. Also you should check out the forums, pvp and player collision is currently turned off for everyone. Devs didn’t say anything else though."

  "Nice to meet you, I’m Eisteufel, btw when did the devs tell us? I checked all available medias before launch day."

  "Ah, they wrote an update with this information and some other to the games homepage just before the server opened."

  "Thanks for telling me mate."

  "No problem, also you’re not the first one to try to attack me today lol. Some human tried to behead me in Immerwald when I just logged in…"

  "Sorry to hear that, though I’m curious. Why choose Goblin as your starter race? Aren’t goblins usually one of the typical trash mobs in every RPG?"

  "Haha, thanks for asking. I’ll conquer this world and make it into a goblin paradise! All those lowly humans, who’ve been looking down on us goblins, will quack in their boots and begging on their knees for forgiveness!"

  Ah… so a hard core role player.

  "Then good luck on your world conquest."

  "Thank you and good luck to you too! May the inquisition never finds you."

  … I’ve been to the church already though.

  Shortly after leaving Julius and his role playing behind I hear a scream from where we just talked. As I turn around I barely make out a black shadow rushing towards me."

  "Parry!"

  "Clang!" In the last second I manage to use parry and get sent flying.

  "Thud!" With a dull sound I hit the ground a couple of meters away from where I was standing. I try to get up quickly, though I slip and fall backwards, into a hole.

  "Agh! That hurts!" The corners of my field of view started to blink red as I fell down, indicating that I have barely any HP left.

  "What the hell hit me?" I couldn’t make out a clear form of the thing that send me flying.

  It doesn’t seem to follow me down here into the hole though. Let’s take a quick look around and hope that the thing is gone by the time I’ve explored everything here. Also I need to get some health back , unfortunately my natural recover rate isn’t very high…

  Inside the hole is a narrow corridor and at the end of it is a wooden door where some light is shining through the gap underneath the door.

  "Eh?" Is this some secret hideout of bandits, or a crazy doctor doing hideous experiments on the local people?

  With an imaginary grin on my face I make my way to the door.

  "I can’t see a lock, how kind of the resident."

  I draw my weapons and kick in the door.

  "BAM!"

  There is not a single soul inside, but a mysterious round object is floating in the middle of the room, glowing with an opalescent sheen to it.

  "Oooh! So pretty!" Some inexplicit feeling draws me closer to the sphere.

  I reach out with my hand to touch it.

  Congratulations! You’ve found a new Dungeon. The Adventurers’ Guild has been notified. At the guild you’ll now be able to get new quests related to this dungeon.

  This Dungeon doesn’t have a Dungeon Master at this moment. Do you want to become its Dungeon Master?

  "Yes / NO"

  "Yes!"

  New Title acquired: Dungeon Master

  Dungeon Master: Keeper of life, keeper of treasure, the one who must not be named… You know as other players will get jealous.