Chapter 02 Learning to farm

The next year would be truly hell. I hadn’t saved up much money, so moving to a new town on the border of the untamed lands was quite costly. Buying seeds in the overpopulated city I grew up in was the only reason I had variety instead of needing to grow one of the five crops the general store owner had in the village.

I had moved here for many reasons, but the main one was safety. While I might lose all of my crops to a monster attack, I wouldn’t lose my life to bandits. It also meant that my crops were far more welcomed and I had less competition. I worked my ass off the first week and managed to claw my way up to level 10. That allowed me to look at the skills I could buy.

The way you acquired new skills, added modifiers, bought a subclass, or finally leveled was by spending class levels. Level ten was the first time you could buy skills, then twenty-five, fifty, and even one hundred, you could purchase skills. Each rank had its own nickname. Small, medium, large, and game-changer skills. I looked through my choices.

Quantity over quality- Increases yield by 200% while decreasing produce rank by 100%.

Quality over quantity- Increases crop rating by 1 while decreasing crop yield by 50%.

Gather master- Increases the drop chance of higher quality items and experience gained via gathering jobs by 25%.

Harder and Faster- Reduces fatigue and time for plants to grow by an additional 10%.

Sweet Spot (tool)- Hitting a gathering node in the perfect spot reduces fatigue while dealing bonus damage and a higher chance to crit.

Magic specialization (utility)- Choose a specialization. Abjuration, Animation, Conjuration, Divination, Enchantment, Evocation, Illusion, Necromancy, Transmutation.

Jack of Jacks- Increases the bonus to everything by 10%.

STD Immunity- Gain immunity to sexually transmitted diseases.

Pleasure bonus- Increases the pleasure your partners feel.

Daily bonus- Increases the stats given by bond 1% every day in a row you have sex with that person. 50% cap.

The skills weren’t that great, unfortunately. They were suited for farming but not great for anything else. The first three choices would disappear after I selected one. The magic specialization had different colors tied to how useful they’d be. Any spells related to damage, like conjuration, were yellow, and specializations focusing around combat were red, meaning I wouldn’t get much use from them. I would rather select a green specialization than.

That left Abjuration, Animation, Divination, and Illusion. I wonder why animation was green but conjuration was yellow. Maybe it counted the more dangerous summons as threats, but I knew for sure I could make a golem to fight for me. Actually, some of the strongest creations alive were masterwork golems. The dwarves still held their land because of their ancestral golems that could destroy castles.

It was narrowed down to animation and divination, each was a choice that would determine the rest of my life. Animation could be a huge gold sink before I even knew how to make a half-decent golem, while divination would allow me to join weaker parties as a healer. Animation just sang to me, I needed some type of method to defend myself and my farm when I wasn’t there.

It was the hardest to learn because it wasn’t just casting spells. It was making the vessels to animate with spells. I knew of golem crafting, ink beast summoning, and temporary object animating. It had a very small range of spells, and I hadn’t done much research on that particular school beforehand. Most mages would rather go with any of the other schools for fighting. Golem-making was a practically dead school because it wasn’t worth the effort for most.

That’s for later, though. I needed something to increase how much money I could make. Out of everything… I wanted to eat better food. Poor, low, common, uncommon, rare, epic, legendary, and mythic. As a farmer, my goal had shifted slightly. I couldn’t do dungeons yet… My low stats and useless combat skills didn’t suit fighting. I needed to bide my time, put my nose down, and grind away experience and levels until I eventually got a few good skills.

Anyone who grew crops would get low-quality products with a chance of being poor and common. As a farmer who is bumped up to common, and now that I bought the quality over quantity skill, most of my crops would come out uncommon with a chance at rare. The taste difference was intense, but also each level increased what was possible with the food.

A rare ingredient might be necessary for certain dishes, some might even have a minuscule chance of improving a stat temporarily. If you were insanely lucky, that bonus would be permanent, but with each increase in rank, it would go up until it was guaranteed to give permanent stats at mythic quality. The chances of getting a mythic right now were zero percent, but… If I kept working on it, it might become possible.

I wasn’t sure because it was so rare that only the nobility would know, but I do remember reading that the bonus was only applied once per food item as well. So that meant I needed to avoid monocrops and focus on multicropping. Tomatoes, corn, carrots, wheat, potatoes, and radishes. Those were what I was growing. Just creating the field had taken most of the week, and it was going to be difficult to expand more than the single plot I had made.

It was the best area to grow, but it was still too close to the forest. Every spot I claimed would take tremendous work, just removing the roots, rocks, and other debris. I looked at my jobs now that I had gained the farmer class.

Gathering

Herbalist- Beginner 21%

Miner- Beginner 11%

Lumberjack- Beginner 03%

Fisher- Beginner 54%

Animal Harvesting- Beginner 01%

Farming- Beginner 01%

Item Creation

Alchemist- Beginner 33%

Blacksmith- Beginner 57%

Crafter- Beginner 70%

Painter- Beginner 04%

Baker- Beginner 11%

Chef- Beginner 75%

Town Service

Worker- Apprentice 54%

Guard- Beginner 14%

It was possible to have both the farmer class and the farmer job. One gave skills that would make farming easier. The other tracked progress through the actual profession, and as you increased in rank, you would gain more bonuses. At beginner, I didn’t get shit. Ranks went beginner, apprentice, journeyman, expert, artisan, and master.

It had taken me a bit over two years to get my worker job as an apprentice. The bonuses I gained were decreased fatigue while working and a slight boost to stats while working. The worker job was a catch-all like the crafter. It would help with other jobs now, but I needed to increase its level by actively working under someone. The next rank would allow me to work as a foreman for anyone lower rank than me for them to gain experience.

Because of worker, I was able to finish clearing the first field in a week instead of eight days. That’s about the difference having a job makes. If I were a master worker, I could have cut the eight days it would take down to four, most likely. It still meant I needed to work my ass off because I had gotten unlucky with my class being a job I hadn’t ever worked with.