Volume 2 - Ch 3.05
After that, I tried experimenting with various settings and combinations of Jobs and Skills to see which one will allow me to kill the enemies in the least amount of time. First I tried to set my Job to Swordsman, which has the effect of slightly increasing STR, and checked if there were any changes to the amount of Bonus Points I still needed to add to the total STR in order to defeat a single Needlewood. If the total amount of Bonus Points required to do so, then it means that the added Job was a valid one. I am still not absolutely sure about it though, because there are the cases where I could defeat them easily, but sometimes I was unable to do so even when my Bonus Points remained distributed in the same way, but overall that little experiment ended in success.
Once that was done, I tried adding more Jobs at once to check if their effects will overlap, or is it going to be that the better effects with higher increase values are going to be prioritized over the ones with lower increase values. The result was that Jobs stats and effects do stack with one another, meaning that setting four or five Jobs at once is will be more effective than just having the regular two or three.
I think its high time for us to be making our way towards the exit.
We were inside the Labyrinth for quite some time now, so I concluded that maybe we should call it a day for today, considering the fact that the progress weve made today was substantial.
I opened the Item Box and placed all of our current equipment: Leather Helmet, Shield, Mittens and Gloves inside. Taking it off of us while we were still inside the Labyrinth might have been a little careless, but at our current level we should be alright even if we were to happen upon another enemy, and it is certainly a better alternative to doing so while being outside where someone could very well see us and could start asking uncomfortable questions like Why are you able to summon the Item box without chanting its spell at all?. If I am able to avoid annoyances like that, you can be damn sure I am going to avoid them at all costs.
Right!
How is your Magic Crystal doing, Roxanne?
She showed me that hers was still black in color.
No change from Black, huh?
Yes, unfortunately. Its because I wasnt able to defeat enough enemies. Im sorry for not being more useful.
Dont say that. It doesnt matter if you defeat monsters or not. Your presence alone is a huge help to me.
Thank you master. Even though you are so amazing, youre still praising someone like me, who couldnt even defeat enough monsters to change the color of the Magic crystal.
Assuring her once again, I placed both of our Magic Crystals, Black and Purple, into the Item Box as well. Right then, a question randomly popped into my head.
Say, what if one person held two Magic Crystals at once?
I dont know. I have never heard of something like that happening.
Well then, thats all the more reason to check this out. If I were to hold both of our Magic Crystals in my backpack, I wonder what would happen? Will the energy obtained from defeated monsters be stored in only one of them, or is it going to be split equally among the two? Then again, tha would mean the amount going into each one would actually get halved, making the farming process unnecessarily longer. And finally, How would Crystal Acceleration affect both of them?
If possible, thats one last thing I would like to try before wrapping things up for today.
I see. You want to make an experiment with the Crystals to see what will happen if you have two at once, right? As expected of you.
I dont think its anything like that, but okay, Ill just let her think it is like that. But I guess that somewhere deep inside, a part of me was really eager to find out the answer to that question.
Before we conducted the experiment we made a quick trip to the Adventurers Guild to sell the items weve obtained from all the Needlewoods we have slain, and then returned to the Labyrinth. Initially I wanted Roxanne to stay int the Labyrints entrance room since selling the going back to the town, selling the items and doing a trip back would take me ten minutes at best, but she insisted that since we are a Party we should always go everywhere together, so we did.
The experiment itself was actually extremely short. All I did was Reseting my character so that I would have Crystal Acceleartion x16, and then I just offed one, single monster with the two Magic Crystals in my backpack. Nothing fancy or complicated, just a trip from point A to point B without taking any unnecessary detours throughout the rest of the alphabet.
Results of this particular experiment: Black Magic Crystal remained black, and the Purple Magic Crystal remained purple. With the x16 multiplier, the black one should have turned red from all the accumulated energy, but it looks like it does not accumulate the way I assumed it would. If that test was successful, I was going to invest in Crystal Acceleration x64 and use it to gain magic energy for both of our Crystal at once, but thinking about it now, if something like that was possible, it would be nothing less of a game-breaking cheat, so of course it was a no-go.
Okay, the next experiment will really be the last one. I know its a bother, but please, just bear with me for a little while longer, alright?
I said to Roxanne while giving her the Black Magic Crystal back.
How was the experiment, master? You defeated only one enemy, so?
So it means that I would rather not talk about it. Or to put it simply: it was a failure.
I see. That is a shame.
Yes, but not quite. Such tests are also needed, because failure is the mother of success. That is why tests like that are also important.
So, will you cooperate with me on this last one?
O-Okay, of course!
I opened the Party Job Settings and changed Roxannes Job to Monk Lv.1, and then I did the same for myself. Now, the experiment we are going to try is related to how the EXP points are divided between multiple Jobs. With both of us having the same Job at the same Level, we will see how fast the EXP for it is going to accumulate.
Normally I should be the one to Level Up faster because of my EXP Boost Skill, but if I set it up so that we the both of us would use it, then we should be getting EXP at the same rate, but because Roxanne has only one Job while I have multiple ones set up, she would be the one to Level Up faster, so I can judge the results by how many time her Monk Job levels up.
I went through a Character Reset where I only took the ability to gain x10 more EXP. Im going to use Durandal for this, I wont have enough Bonus Points for anything more than that. Technically I could use Fragarach to achieve x20 EXP Boost, but I cannot do that, since I need Durandals raw power to kill the enemies with a single blow.
x20 EXP Boost costs 63 Bonus Points, Fragarach costs 31 Points, 3rdJob is 3 Points, and then I also need Identify to check our statuses and Character Reset to make adjustments, which means that would have left me with an insufficient amount of Bonus Points to increase my STR enough to one-shot everything with Fragarach. I could try switching my Job to Warrior and fight by using Rush, but Fragarach does not have MP Absorption, and I absolutely dont want to risk running out of MP.
Even though Fragarach is supposed to be only one level below Durandal, Bonus Weapon Lv.5 instead of Lv.6, it feels like it is so vastly inferior to it as if there was an insurmountable rift between those two weapons. But whether I like it or not, in the Labyrinth, mine and Roxannes safety is my number one priority, and both stat and Skill-wise, the one that is better suited for this job is Durandal, hands down.