FB: Chapter 70 – Extreme Luck

“Welcome customer, how can Gerald and Daughter Crafters help you today?” a young female NPC asked me. She was probably the daughter.

“I need the absolute best pair of luck rings that can be made. If you need more items, skill shards, or something else, let me know,” I replied. I then set two bags on the counter that contained 1,171 Bunny Paws between them.

The girl took a look in one bag. “Father, important customer,” she shouted.

“Coming, coming,” an older man came out of a back room and went right for the bags. “Luck?” he asked.

“Highest quality pair of Luck rings we can make,” the daughter said.

“We don’t work much with Luck,” he said.

“But you are the best. Not many have a shop in the Imperial Capital that has made an item for the Human Emperor himself,” I replied.

“Bah, he just wanted some stone carving tools that were unbreakable for his hobby. The quality of his materials were unmatched. These Bunny Paws are mid rank at best. But you do have a lot of them. A Reverse Scale, Four Leaf Clover, and Dice of the High Roller would all be better items,” Gerald said.

“What can I expect from all of these?” I asked.

“You wanted a pair of rings, what do you think daughter?” he asked.

“Each Bunny Paw gives one to three Luck by itself. We take the Bunny Paws that give three Luck, band them together. Eight per ring, then use the rest of them to infuse the ring band itself with as much Luck as possible. With so many, we could do three rounds of refinement,” she said.

“Hmm, that is a good idea, but you need to think a bit beyond the materials in front of you,” Gerald said.

“A Luck Stone? Those are not cheap, around 10 platinum each,” she said.

“Ah, but we have a wealthy customer, who wants the best. Always upsell to make a better product. Let us push these materials to the max with an item similar in value. We can use a Luck Stone as the ring’s focus. That should double the Luck each ring provides. I would say 48 Luck per ring,” he replied.

“What about a percentage increase?” I asked.

“You would only be looking at 3% per ring at best. And the base metal will need to be a much higher quality. Since you are providing the Bunny Paws, that means we need to supply the metal and the Luck Crystals for both rings, along with the craftsmanship. Fifty platinum each, so a hundred platinum,” Gerlad said.

“I would prefer the percentage increase. How long?” I asked. He looked at his daughter as I put my hand on a runic plate to pay.

“Not long at all. Four days,” she said, and her father nodded.

“Four days, since you are paying up front, we can start immediately,” Gerald said.

“I was also hoping to ask you a question, if you can spare a few moments,” I said, and he nodded.

“Of course. I am guessing you are interested in something else?” he asked.

“I need an armor set, that focuses on poison, Luck stat, and weight reduction. Preferably robe type armor or armor that is very easy to move about in. Possibly an innate skill if it can be managed,” I said.

“You don’t ask for anything simple, do you. You are asking for a legendary unique item to be made. With the requirements you listed, you would need at least five high ranked materials. The base material would be the most important. What do you think daughter?”

“Feathers of the Rainbow Whisper. At least five, but preferably twenty,” she said.

“If you get those, then we could consider the rest of the materials needed to make your armor,” he replied.

“And what would the weight reduction look like if similar high quality materials were used?” I asked.

“Ten percent at most. And that is with the best of the best. Weight reduction is hard to imbue into equipment. Best to stick to skill shards for stuff like that, but I can make it work,” he said.

“Thank you. I will look into getting those feathers and will be back to pick up the rings,” I said. Gerald gave me a nod and I left their shop.

Crafting in Exponential came down to item preparation and design. It was just as much as an art as it was a science. It was also a massive money pit for materials, since it was really easy to ruin them. The high prices the father daughter NPC pair charged were worth it to get high quality items without issues, even if it was incredibly expensive.

One real world day later, I returned to pick up my rings. The daughter pulled out a small wood box from behind the counter. “Two rings of the Lucky Bunny. Each ring boosts the Luck stat by 3%,” she said. The rings were made of a white metal shaped into eight tiny bunny paws in a circle with a small white crystal set into each of them.

Lucky Bunny Ring
A beautifully crafted ring that focuses on increasing Luck.
+Durable
+3% Luck

I put one ring on each ring finger on both my hands. The durable modifier meant that it would take a lot of effort to damage or destroy the rings. Both of the rings increased my Luck stat by around 70 stat points in total, up to 1,441. While that was less than having each ring give me an extra 48 Luck each, the percentage increase would pay off more over time, since I was investing all my extra stat points into Luck.

My base stat in Luck before any modifiers was 995, which was frankly obscene since I was only level 103. With all the stat boosts it went up even more. With the extra skill slots unlocked, I was able to equip 5 epic rank Sample Poison skill shards, which combined with my increased Luck made my poison crit chance around 41.6%.

Once the absolute level difference came into play, it would be a massacre in the arena. While I had some back up with my legendary poisons, I was hoping not to have to use them due to how expensive they were. I needed to keep my costs under control wherever possible.

If I used all five of those skill slots for Reduce Weight, I would get up to around 39% of weight reduction. The last two skill slots would bring that up to around 50% and the title would then take it all the way to 75%. I spent time moving things around to test how well 75% weight reduction would let me move a mega sword. The answer was very poorly.

I could be a percentage point or two off, possibly as low as 85%, but anything less than that made the oversized sword too hard to wield. I had tested with a spare mega sword the guild had in storage along with the massive armor I had used to get the title.

Well, I could work on getting some more experience after the tournament and increasing the rank of the Reduce Weight skill shards. After Legendary it went Artifact, Heirloom, and then Divine. To go from Epic to Legendary took 1.25 million experience for an individual skill shard that wasn’t unique. Then Legendary to Artifact 6.25 million experience. Then Artifact to Heirloom 31.25 million experience. And then to the final rank of divine took 156.25 million experience.

That was why it was standard to stop at the Epic rank for most skill shards, and then change them into special Legendary skills. While those took even more experience and special items, it was seen as a better track to take with skill shards rather than investing into something basic.

With the experience limitations of 250 experience per monster at most, getting all that experience to get high ranking skills was a long term investment. It would be better to focus on my special Legendary skills instead. But those had specific requirements to go up in rank.

To go from Legendary to Artifact, two special Legendary skills of the same type were needed with maxed out experience. So, all the items that I had to collect to get my special Legendary skills, I would need to find something similar or get those items once more. Then a lot more experience to increase the rank of the skill shards.

Finally, to go from Heirloom to Divine, it was rumored one needed a Divinity Skill Shard and to complete a special quest related to that skill. That was on top of the experience required. The total experience for a special Legendary skill was around 233 million compared to the 208 million a regular skill required. But then there were all the extra item requirements and a quest at the end. I wasn’t entirely sure about the higher ranks of skill shards either. A lot of this was guess work or rumors.

There was a reason people purchased skills shards that already had experience to use that experience to boost their skill shard. But once they did that, they would lose out on the percentage bonus that was given per rank of the skill shard the moment they used experience they hadn’t collected themselves. That bonus was incredibly useful at the higher levels, since it was percentage based.

Leveling up quickly like I had just done with the Lucky Bunnies was a bad idea for getting personal experience for one’s skills due to the cost involved. But I had spent a year grinding out skill experience and had a massive stash of skill shards in the Epic rank.

The problem was getting all those items for a second time. Many of them were one off items like the Tome of the Arch-Mage Blight, or impossible to get again like Dice of the High Roller. The only good thing was that I could pay others to get those items unlike the experience, and I wouldn’t be penalized for that. There were other options of course, but the price wasn’t cheap.