“Blueprint research, like so many things in NEMO, requires building a foundation. Many guilds trip themselves up when racing ahead and ignoring the work needed to open future doors. Instead of leading, they are soon playing catch up.”

  From “A Guide to Future Proofing Your Guild”

  Year 1, Month 1, Day 26, 22:30

  Dusty intercepted Torgon before he made it to the crafting hall and she dragged him over to the research lab. “Torg! I need to fill you in on how the research works. It will open up so many possibilities for making sure new guildies don’t fall too far behind.”

  Torgon, resigned to his fate, said, “Lead on Dusty.”

  The interior of the building glowed softly under magelights along the walls. Desks separated by partitions lined the walls. Torgon noted twenty stations filled with players scribbling plans and referencing books. A large wooden door connected the room to the library beside it. The researchers were a mixed group of children and adults all engrossed in their work and ignoring everything going on around them.

  Dusty waved her hand across the room and spoke, “There are twenty stations here where research can be conducted. Each station is independent and they can all work on a single project or twenty different projects with no loss of efficiency.”

  Torgon nodded, “How does it work though?”

  Dusty beamed, “Each blueprint has an hourly research cost associated with it. The formula seems to be 2 hours of research required for every second of build time. So, a basic sword blueprint at level 0 which takes 600 seconds to craft is 1,200 hours of research.”

  Torgon winced, “That’s a lot of hours for a basic blueprint that’s easy to find in drops or on the auction house.”

  Dusty bobbed her head up and down before forging ahead in her fast-paced speech, “It is, but it’s mitigated. You get 1 hour of research credit for every level of crafting skills and research skills. If you’ve learned the blueprint related to the project at hand it doubles your contribution. So, if you have crafting 1, craft weapons 3, craft swords 2 and that same basic blueprint at level 1, you would get 12 hours of progress for every hour you spent.”

  Torgon cocked his head to the side considering, “That does make it easier, but it’s still a massive time investment. Why bother with the basics and just start with what’s more in demand?”

  “Well…” Dusty drew the word out before diving back in, “You have to start at the bottom and work your way up. You can’t research a higher-level blueprint unless you’ve unlocked the ones below it. It works the same way for rarity, so you can’t research a common blueprint unless you’ve unlocked the basic one at the same level and below. We can’t research common blueprints at all yet though since that doesn’t unlock until the research lab is tier 2.”

  Torgon looked around the room again, taking in all the workers. “What do you have everyone working on right now?”

  “The basics, well, duh they’re basic, but the foundational blueprints for the lines we’re going to invest in.” Dusty waved her hands again, “With the lab we need to unlock the level 0 basic, then level 5, 10 and 15. Higher levels or rarities will take a lab upgrade and will give us more researcher slots to work with. When we finish a blueprint anybody in the guild can buy a copy using their contribution points.”

  Dusty took a short breath before continuing her rapid-fire speech. “You earn 10 experience points for every hour of research progress you contribute. It’s the standard distribution of 90% towards regular skills and 10% towards master skills. If you have the blueprint, it’s 50% towards the blueprint, 40% towards the regular skills and 10% towards the master skill. It’s a little bit of a cheat to get more master skill experience with the blueprint. The experience adds up and lets the crafters make progress without burning materials too.”

  Torgon lifted his hand to his chin and gazed into the distance. “Can you unlock enchanted versions of the base blueprints?”

  Dusty hopped excitedly, “Yes! We can! Again, we need to research the plain jane basic versions first, but the option is there. What do you think Torg? We use most of the slots to build the back catalog of blueprints and have a few of our more skilled crafters push the research in needed areas.”

  “This could work,” Torgon muttered while rubbing his hands together. “It’s another effort sink, but we have the players and I’m betting you haven’t had any trouble finding people interested in the projects.”

  Dusty shook her head, “Not at all. It’s kinda fun.”

  Torgon ran his hands through his hair and nodded again, “Alright, push forward however you want Dusty. You manage the research and the rest of us will post requests with you. Thanks for the update. I really need to go make more weapons.” Torgon left the research lab and engaged stealth to make it into the crafting hall without any more interruptions.

  Torgon settled into his crafting station and began meticulously arranging the needed materials. He took the ingots of metal and sorted them in order of when they would be needed in each crafting step. He prepared his hammer and tongs and was about to shift an ingot into the magical furnace when he felt a tapping on his shoulder. He closed his eyes and exhaled a deep breath before slowly turning around. “What?” he grumped.

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  Hyperia stood there, her eyes sparking with mischief. “Did you forget Torg? I am supposed to brief you on what our spies and scouts have uncovered in the other starting zones.”

  Torgon sighed with the weariness of an ancient oak in a cold winter breeze and spoke, “Did you have to wait until I was ready to start crafting Hype?”

  Her lips moved into a smirk, “Yes. Yes, I did.”

  Torgan ran his hand over his face and settled back into a seat, “Fine. Fill me in on everything I need to know.”

  She mentally sent Torgon the notes she had compiled on the Young Master’s Alliance. “They have number but they’re short on talent. It’s led by a group of trust fund gamers who convinced their daddies to back a stronger foray into the virtual worlds. They run a loose council with the backing of a solid behind the scenes administrator. You know them.

  Torgon’s eyes lit up and he started paying more attention the conversation, “Who is it? Was it someone that I clashed with?”

  Hyperia eyed him closely and replied, “It’s the Midnight Maiden.”

  Torgon leaned over and propped his elbows on the desk, closed his eyes and rubbed his temples. “Great. That’s fantastic.”

  Hyperia tilted her head in mild confusion. “She’s good, but don’t you think you’re being a little dramatic? She’s probably just stuck herding cats with guild “leaders” that don’t listen to her at all.” Hyperia paused, her eyes narrowing. “Wait. Did you two date at some point?”

  Torgon clasped his hands in front of him before acknowledging Hyperia again, “We were both officers in the old Starlight Ascension guild. We didn’t date per se.”

  Hyperia’s mouth opened wide and she seemed frozen for a moment. “Oh no. Torg, no. Tell me you didn’t.”

  He slapped his hands on his head and breathed out loudly, “It was one time at a guild meet up. She tried to talk me into bailing on the guild to go corporate and I declined. I think I cost her a large recruitment bonus.”

  It took a couple of minutes for Hyperia to stop giggling and get back to the conversation topic. “Well, Torg, maybe you two can catch up. She’s heard your name involved with the guild, but intel suggests she believes it’s a copycat. You’re too old and busted to run a guild these days according to my notes. Just promise me that if you go meet her face to face for some reason that you bring me along.”

  Torgon shook his head before agreeing, “Alright Hype, I’ll make sure you’re there. I’ll tab you as lead negotiator.”

  She grinned, “I can’t wait. Moving on, outside of her they have zero known quantities in leadership positions, well known competent quantities. Ron Don Morgan is on the periphery and fighting to get a place at the table. The leaders they do have are arrogant and completely unused to being told no, and they have no experience with adversity. The smaller groups working with them are much the same, just hangers-on. They have total of seven combatants ranked inside the top 10,000 on the NorAm circuits with the highest being Jay Lin, currently ranked number 2,382.”

  Torgon breathed a sight of relief, “If we’re going to be outnumbered 50 to 1, at least we should be much better on average. Where do you think I would rank right now on the circuit?”

  Hyperia considered the question for a moment then spoke, “You, me and Dusty could crack the top 500 easily. Ovarrix probably top 25 and Allestor top 5. That’s with everything being equal. I’d put several more of our people in contention for the top 1,000 including Kate. She’ll be a monster when she has more experience. Even better, things aren’t equal. Our people are mostly higher level, our permanent residents have double the experience per level, we’re more disciplined and we’re better geared except at the top levels.”

  Torgon looked over the notes she sent to him. “Go ahead and bring in Allestor and Ovarrix. We might as well put our plans into action starting tomorrow. I’m not a fan of ceding the initiative.”

  They waited a few minutes, idly talking about potential targets before the other two arrived. Allestor spoke first, “What’s up boss?”

  Torgon steepled his fingers and replied, “It’s time to let slip the hounds of war. We’re going to start a limited offensive to contain the Young Master’s Alliance.”

  Allestor punched the air, grinning broadly. “About friggin’ time.”

  Torgon turned to Ovarrix, “I need you to handle the PVE end. Our primary focus is still the broken hills and pushing forward. I want three teams of 100 players each farming the undead. I need Dirk leading one, Hyperia leading another and you’ll take the third Ovarrix. You’ll also have our scoutier scouts. Allestor and I will be needing the murder scouts.”

  Ovarrix nodded, thinking the deployment over. “Give Dusty to Dirk and Physical Ed to Hyperia. I can take aspiring tanks, and we’ll work on training them to a solid dungeon standard. We’ll mix PVE and PVP formation training while we’re farming. Do we need to stay close for rapid reaction?”

  Torgon shook his head, “No, I think we’ll commit 50 players tops to the offensive roles. It won’t be limited to experienced players either. It’s an excellent chance to blood new recruits who want to be player killers. We’ll drag Mark and Ashford out of their crafting hall so they can get some field work in.”

  Hyperia placed a rough map of Miller’s Crossing and the Broken Hills on the table. “Dusty thinks that there’s at least one dungeon in these hills to the east of the center. It’s far but there are references to burial mounds. We’ll have scouts checking those out and if we find lairs or a dungeon the groups can monopolize it for now. If we can get a first clear that might give us enough to raise the tier of the library depending on the dungeon’s level. Buying commons skills with our contribution points would give us a lot of flexibility. I know I’d love it if Torg could double cast his healing spells and our offensive players had more area of effect attacks.”

  Ovarrix committed the locations to memory and added, “I’ll focus on the training plans, and you and Dusty can get the scouting settled to your liking.”

  Allestor narrowed his eyes, examining the map of Miller’s Crossing and border with Carter’s Bluff. “Torg, we’ll need ten man teams. They’ll be small enough to move stealthily and large enough to overwhelm regular five man parties. Do you want the experienced players evenly distributed or would you rather have mostly training groups and a group of death?”

  Torg rocked his head back and forth while looking up before responding, “Group of Death with the training groups. Mark can lead a group, Ashford can lead a group and so can Frare. He has enough minions at the auction house now so he can take a break. One of Dirk’s team, Electric Knight is promising. He can take the fourth training group if we have enough volunteers. I’ll go with you and we’ll snag Steve and Kate for our team. Now shoo everyone. We’ll deploy after dawn. It’s time for me to craft.”

  They left Torgon, returning to their own plans while he began arranging his space for a long night of crafting. He organized the metal bars and supplies of wood. He inhaled deeply, letting his worries drift away as he prepared for a relaxing stretch of crafting. He reached out to begin when he was rudely interrupted by a strident system alarm. He gritted his teeth and yelled, “Motherf..”