New Character, New Beginning
This death had also taught Xiao Yu a lot. There were reasons he had been taken down, and the key lay with his three subordinates. Because he had no money, Xiao Yu hadn't deliberately sought out powerful bosses to defend the dungeon with him. He had casually recruited the three gatekeeper bosses from the fire elemental plane. To be fair, their strength had barely been adequate, but their fighting styles were extremely limited. The three-headed hellhound, the lava giant, the flame controller, and Lagrios the Balrog Lord himself all relied primarily on fire damage. Each one hit harder than the last, and parties without much preparation were naturally wiped out over and over. But a lineup like that was far too easy to counter. If they ran into a prepared professional party that drank fire resistance potions throughout the fight and had a tank decked out in fire resistance gear, all they could do was suffer.
He still hadn't been professional enough. If the bosses under him had possessed a variety of abilities and been strong enough, their opponents would have had to prepare all sorts of countermeasures. Then he wouldn't have been countered so badly. The three bosses ahead of him had practically been freebies, so it was no wonder the party had steamrolled its way through. Still, as the saying went, you learned from your mistakes. Xiao Yu was confident he definitely wouldn't repeat them this time. If he became a dungeon's final boss again, he would recruit a few decent subordinates.
"Oh yeah! I knew you wouldn't stay down forever, boss! So, are you planning to play a fire elemental again? Want me to help you level?"
"No need. Playing a fire elemental once was enough. This time I'm going to try something new."
"All right, then. Just call me if you need anything." Liu Fei seemed a little disappointed that he couldn't help his former boss level. With that, he took off.
Though Xiao Yu had sounded confident, he really wasn't sure which template to play. When he had first started out, he had no money, so he had played nothing but free templates. He had tried monster, guard, and mercenary templates, and the hardships he had gone through didn't bear mentioning. Free templates didn't cost money to buy, but resurrection did, and the higher a character's level, the more it cost to resurrect them. To save money, Xiao Yu had started a new character every time he died. Low-level characters died particularly easily, though, so he had died again and again. The corpses he had left behind after adventurers killed him as a newbie could probably have been laid end to end all the way around the Earth.
After repeated research, he had finally chosen the fire elemental branch of the summoned creature template and stuck with it to the end.
But now he had a little money. Should he get a more advanced template to play? He could top up his account and try an adventurer template. Although adventurer templates lost experience and equipment when they died and the death penalty was steep, they could be resurrected for free. That was their biggest advantage.
After thinking it over, though, Xiao Yu abandoned the idea. Adventurer templates were easy to play, but their level cap was too low. No matter how well he played, he couldn't reach the boss level of a Balrog Lord. At most, he could reach the level cap of 60, get a full set of top-tier gear, and then work for a gold run. He would probably earn only ten or twenty thousand yuan a month.
Secondly, he had never played an adventurer template before, so it felt unfamiliar. If things didn't go smoothly, he might not even earn ten thousand yuan. He was much more familiar with free templates. Though they died easily, Xiao Yu felt that with his skill, as long as he played properly, he would definitely have a chance to return to the top.
With that thought, Xiao Yu clicked to enter Sky World and selected create new character.
As soon as he entered the character creation screen, a scantily clad beauty appeared before him. "Hello, esteemed player. Welcome to Sky World's character creation screen. Please select the character template you wish to use.
"There are three types of templates: free templates, paid templates, and VIP templates."
Xiao Yu selected the free template, and a long list of options appeared: monster template, civilian template, guard template, summoned creature template, mercenary template, and so on.
Xiao Yu recalled his past experiences with these templates. Of them all, the civilian template was the weakest. It had no combat skills and only a few hundred health points. It could only level up by exploring the map and could only learn noncombat skills. It simply wasn't made for fighting and was entirely a choice for players who enjoyed traveling and sightseeing. Pass.
The guard template was relatively strong, even stronger than the average adventurer in the early stages, and it leveled quickly. Later on, it could advance to elite guard or royal guard, and taking on three to five adventurers of the same level alone was no problem. At its highest level, it could even advance to a lord template. The only problem was that playing it offered very little freedom. You could only serve as a guard in a fixed area or patrol a fixed route. Unless monsters attacked a city or the Alliance and the Horde slaughtered each other's cities, there was basically no chance to take part in a battle. Pass again.
The mercenary template was somewhat similar and also counted among the stronger free templates. Its starting attributes were comparable to those of an ordinary adventurer. It could wear equipment like an adventurer, though it had fewer equipment slots, and learn skills like an adventurer, though it could only use five skills on each outing. It was a bit like a knockoff adventurer. Its potential for advancement later on wasn't low either; it could even advance to a hero template. The only problem was that mercenaries couldn't go adventuring on their own like adventurers. They could only wait in taverns to be hired, serving as other people's underlings. They went in first when danger appeared and got no share of any treasure, earning only a pitiful commission. And whenever they encountered a boss they couldn't beat, the mercenary was always left behind as cannon fodder. Pass again.
That left the summoned creature and monster templates. The two were actually quite similar, and both could eventually advance to boss templates. The difference was that monster templates were born on the main material plane-Sky World, where adventurers lived. From the moment they were born, they had to fight other wild monsters for territory and were chopped up by adventurers for experience. It was a miserable life.
Summoned creatures, on the other hand, were born on various otherworldly planes. Elemental creatures lived on elemental planes, celestial creatures lived on the heavenly plane, demons lived in the Twisting Nether and the abyss of hell, and undead such as skeletons and zombies lived in the underworld and the necromantic realm. The environments on these planes were relatively monotonous, and the gameplay was very limited, nowhere near as exciting as the main material plane. Playing a summoned creature template was therefore rather monotonous. Only when summoned could they go to the main material plane and have a little fun. Of course, leveling was comparatively safer.
I'll just play around for now and see how it goes, Xiao Yu thought. He still remembered a few tricks and hidden secrets from the wild monsters he had played before. After some thought, he first created a wild monster template.
The wild monster template offered the most choices. From humanoids such as bandits, robbers, rebels, and cultists, to undead creatures such as skeletons, zombies, and ghosts, all kinds of beasts and animals, young dragons of every color, special races such as gnolls, kobolds, and centaurs—it included almost every kind of strange creature imaginable.