Homesteading in a fantasy world

Rich, “See, I told you that you were going to enjoy jumping into the river after the sauna.”

George, “You were right it’s an excellent feeling. This place is truly wonderful. If I can I want something close to this in the future then I will be a happy man.”

Rich, “I am glad that you think that and if you truly wanted this all you need to do is put the time in to learn and it will be within your reach. I have talked about what a homesteader must know but I have not told you what it will give.

Arthur, “Dude we are not that stupid. It gives us the opportunity to gain a lot of skills easily and get a lot of abilities. I am really close with my basic farming so I will soon be able to pick the ability faster plant growth. But what are the other recommendations, I do not remember the other ones we must pick? Does anyone remember those exactly?”

Emma, “Well for leatherworking it was fast leather curing but.”

Rich, “Whoa! Stop right there. Why would you pick the ones that are recommended, those don't sound like the best choices for you.”

Emma, “The best choice is chosen by the Kingdom, but I did hear that there are some differences depending on the county you're living in so perhaps it's the best choice for where we lived.”

Rich, “Well that’s bad since you will become homesteaders and will own your land which means you must make the best choices for yourself.”

George, “And leave it up to random chance. What if you get bad choices you could screw up your entire future like that.”

Rich, “Why would you leave it random, it works on intent so you can guide what abilities you get. It also depends on what you do. It’s important to have a clear vision about what you want to accomplish before you get an ability.”

There was a bit of silence after that statement, and I could see their minds trying to understand something that has been taught wrong by the people who ruled them.

Arthur, “Wait, so we do not have to take faster plant growth and we get to make our own choice and what we want will affect the choice we get? That changes so much.

Emma, “Hey, Arthur don’t even think about it. It took us three years to convince you not to become an adventurer. Don’t you think about doing the same again. It's expensive to sign up and even with the extra training, so many still die.”

Arthur, “No I wasn’t thinking about becoming an adventurer.”

“Well fine, yes, I was. I’m sorry I just want to become one and fight monsters. You saw me kill some of the goblins during the raid on our village and you know my basic sword is about to tier up, getting me the ability.”

Rich, “Emma calm down. Let’s talk this through. Arthur, you want to be able to fight and it looks like you enjoy that more than your siblings. Nothing wrong with that but for your first step I recommend you become the best homesteader that you can be or at least try to tier up as many skills as you can.”

Arthur, “What, why, wouldn’t that be just wasting my time?”

Rich, “Well yes and no. The skills you get from crafting can also be used in battle if it’s the correct ability. That can give you a huge advantage over others just by the sheer number of different abilities you could use. You should think about that. George, Emma, what do you want to do in the future? What are your dreams?”

George, “I wanted to be a farmer but now looking at your farm and your life I now want to be a homesteader, and create a home for me and my children to have a good life.”

Rich, “I can help you with that. So first I will tell you all that talking about your achievement page and the way it interacts with us should be always talked about and discussed with people you trust. So, I will ask you George do you have any open class slots and what choices you have.”

George, “No, I do not have another class choice as I only had one. This has bothered me for as long as I have had it, but it doesn’t anymore. Now I can do all the things I wanted easily so there’s no need for another class.”

Emma, “I have one open.”

Arthur, “I have one open as well. Still George I think that you should get the adventurer class as well. It will help you with more stats and perhaps some of the abilities could be useful for farming. Although I would need to see what paths can be useful.”

Rich, “Wait a minute if his class slots are full how can you choose a class?”

Arthur, “You can pick the adventurer class in the adventurer's guild. The adventurer class that you can get doesn’t need an open class slot, you can get it past the restriction. Although it is quite expensive and then, of course, you need to choose what kind of adventuring class you will get.”

“If you choose adventurer(ranger) that will unlock certain skills and from those skills, you can get abilities but there aren’t three choices of abilities, only the one that is already determined. To level up and take the abilities you need to visit an adventuring guild location that has an adventuring orb.”

Rich, “Interesting, and you might be quite correct about it helping with farming or any other job if you find the correct path. What other paths do you know of?”

Arthur, “Let's see, there’s a lot but some are a lot more expensive than others. Like you can even become a mage or healer. For some of the classes you also need to be compatible so unfortunately, not everyone can choose to be a healer or a mage. But there are a lot of other ones and sometimes you will have access to special classes thanks to your achievement page. That’s all that I know.”

Rich, “Well that’s really interesting. To get it you need an adventuring orb so do you think the village will have one? Because I will absolutely get an adventurer’s class. At minimum extra stats are always useful.”

Arthur, “If there’s a dungeon nearby then most likely. Our village didn’t have one so no adventuring orb in our village guild building.”

Rich, “Yep there’s a dungeon nearby but we will have to wait until winter. Then I can perhaps be able to clear out the village so we might be able to get our hands on it. Then we can become stronger and hopefully find some class paths that will help with our chosen paths. Arthur, what class options do you have?”

Arthur, “There aren’t any good options.”

Rich, “Still, why wait and have an empty class slot?”

Arthur, “Well I don’t want to be stuck with an uncommon combat class. If I get my adventurer class high enough, I would be able to pick a rare one.”

Rich, “Why would you be stuck when you can evolve your classes? The beginning classes are meant as a starting point to build yourself up.”

Arthur, “No wait, we were told if you reach the max level, you should choose your speciality because it’s the best choice?”

Rich, “Oh well, that’s just wrong, no way is that true. Still an excellent way to control the max level of your population, they did limit a lot didn’t they.”

George, “This is the first time I’m happy that the Kingdom fell. How could they do this to us? Limit our advancement so much. I need to rethink everything. It feels like my life has been a lie.”

Rich, “Always try to question if something is right or wrong and try to understand things, not just believe them. It's important to question everything in life.

Emma, “I did pick the tailoring because I truly like it, but I can’t figure out how it would fit in with homesteading. It's a manufacturing class and meant for villages and cities, not to own land and grow my own food.”

Rich, “If it’s truly what you want then you can build your homestead around it. Like with this sauna you could make buildings that help tailor the way you want. You would have to grow some food, but you can focus on growing plants that you can use in tailoring. Maybe even hunt for leather. Build your homestead around what you enjoy the most.

Emma, “Oh, I didn’t think about it like that. That sounds lovely being able to make everything from the start, but I don’t know about the hunting part. What do you enjoy doing the most?

Rich, “I do enjoy most that includes living on a farm like this but making bows is one of my passions and I guess fighting as well. As for hunting, well you will have to at least learn the basics. I will be teaching you a lot of the skills but that will come in time. Now let's do our final visit to the heating room and then we will go to bed, we have a lot to do tomorrow.”

The next day I had to wake them up and Arthur was the hardest to wake up, but a little bit of cold water did the job. Then I showed them my morning chores, and after that we went back to digging.

Rich, “Now yesterday I just had you dig but today I don’t want you to just dig I want you to think about what you do and if it’s the best way to do it. If you think you found a better way. Test it out and see if that movement was better or worse and just keep doing it like that.”

“I don’t want you to do it like that with just digging, I want you to do it like that with everything you do. Try to be better, experiment and if it’s a failure it’s a failure. It will still help you get better. Learning the best way, you can accomplish something is important.”

You have gained a new skill digging level 1

Well shit, I guess I should take my own advice. I have never thought about how I dig or never tried to get better at it because I already know how to do it but the system needs intent behind something to gain a skill.

Arthur, “WOW I just got the beginner digging skill, it was so fast.”

He looked at me with a little too much worship but no worries, I will train that out of him. It didn't take long for the others to gain the skill as well. When the sun had dried the grass enough, I put them all into cutting it to make some hay.

I would have joined in as well, but we only had three scythes and they already know how to do it.

There was still a lot of digging to do. Soon I will have a better visual of how big it was going to be and then I could go and start cutting some stone and leave the digging to them. When we don’t have a time crunch I can start teaching them other skills as well.