It took Daisy over ninety hours to level up.
Fortunately, Morris Chow had managed to farm a good number of Bind-on-Equip blue items while grinding dungeons.
Since the server hadn’t been open long, there were still plenty of alt characters around.
These blue pieces sold for anywhere from fifteen to twenty gold on the low end to one or two hundred gold on the high end, earning Morris a tidy sum.
At the moment, game time card prices were quite reasonable.
Gold prices remained high, so an hour of game time averaged less than three gold.
In this virtual reality game, time cards could be traded online.
The lowest tier was forty-eight hours, averaging around 151 gold on the forum trading board.
Morris didn’t buy the lowest tier.
Longer duration cards offered a lower average cost per hour.
Instead, he bought a 300-hour card.
Late at night, he had managed to snag a super cheap one for just 808 gold.
Three hundred hours would be more than enough time for Daisy to learn how to make her own gold and buy her own cards.
Right now, that card still had nearly 260 hours remaining.
So while Morris was still hovering around level 40, Daisy had already begun her gold-farming journey.
Daily quests became her mandatory routine, and in her remaining time, she started learning how to coordinate with groups in five-player Heroic dungeons.
As for raids, Morris helped her join a GDKP guild.
Daisy had good gaming instincts and adapted quickly to raid mechanics.
In a single day, she ran Karazhan once, Zul’Aman once, and cleared four or five Heroic five-player dungeons.
Her haul was impressive.
She gained several purple gear pieces from small dungeons and brought her total gold up to 300.
Her only regret was that she was still far from her dream of buying a level 70 flying mount.
Still, once she grew familiar with World of Warcraft’s mechanics, making money wasn’t difficult, and Daisy had plenty of confidence in herself.
Sure enough, by the second day, she had already finished her dailies and was waiting for her first 25-player raid: Serpentshrine Cavern.
This game was divided into three content phases.
Phase 1 and Phase 2 raids from his previous world were opened almost simultaneously.
Phase 3 raids like Mount Hyjal and Black Temple were lumped into Phase 2 here, while Phase 3 was reserved for Sunwell Plateau.
To be honest, gear from this current phase was inferior to some of the late-game Badge of Justice gear.
Because of that, Daisy didn’t have high demand for gear and focused almost all her efforts on earning gold.
By contrast, Morris felt rather frustrated.
He was still grinding away in the level 50 Maraudon dungeon.
Fortunately, he had reached level 51, bringing him one step closer to Outland. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
He was currently trying out the Mage single-pull dungeon strategy.
Previously, he had leveled using a Hunter, so this was his first real attempt at leveling with a different class’s style.
Thanks to his powerful base attributes, the single-pull method went smoothly despite a few minor stumbles, without a single wipe.
After three or four runs, Morris was back into high-speed dungeon grinding mode.
Another day and two nights passed, and Morris finally reached level 58.
He didn’t even wait for level 60 before heading straight for Outland.
Once in Outland, Morris swapped out his gear at a blistering pace.
The stat gap across two expansion generations was simply too massive.
After a day, Morris noticed that after level 60, the attribute gains per level increased significantly.
With every level, every class gave a plus-three boost to all attributes, and free attribute points increased to ten.
In other words, every time he leveled up, Morris gained a twelve-point boost to all attributes across his classes, along with additional bonuses to Agility, Intellect, and Spirit.
On top of that, he received forty free attribute points per level.
Every level up brought him well over a hundred total attribute points.
He was starting to regret not playing retail WoW before his transmigration.
Unfortunately, he had never played retail, and there were no regret pills to take.
Fortunately, the game forums mentioned that future updates would introduce higher-level maps, harder difficulties, and higher-level dungeons based on the current talent system.
Morris was quite satisfied with that.
As long as he could keep leveling up in the future, it was fine.
Although level 70 was capped at Phase 1 for now, given the current timeline in the Marvel universe, he wasn’t in any rush.
With the attributes and skills of a level 70 character, unless Thanos showed up, the Ancient One, the Sorcerer Supreme, was the only person on Earth he wouldn’t be able to handle.
Anyone else, hero or villain alike, was just small fry.
Leveling was tedious, so time naturally flew by.
The final day of his and Daisy’s “vacation plan” arrived before they knew it.
Morris had finally reached level 70.
The only issue was that he hadn’t learned many of the skills between levels 60 and 70.
After learning a few essential everyday abilities, he had temporarily skipped the non-essential ones because they took up too much time.
Now, unable to level up further, Morris had no choice but to consider maxing out all his skill levels.
That process was bound to take another significant chunk of time.
As for Daisy, she had successfully completed two raid runs with her group and was thoroughly familiar with the various smaller dungeons. This story is hosted at novelping.com.
Prompted by their parents, they dragged their feet for a day and a half before finally returning home on July 16th, having been away for over two weeks.
Daisy immediately announced her new relationship with Morris to her mother and began “moving” right away.
With their parents’ help, the two moved in together that very evening.
Morris’s parents wore expressions of pure relief, looking as if their son had finally learned how to win a girl over.
Morris, naturally, went with the flow.
His only problem was that, despite hitting level 70, he still hadn’t learned all his class skills.
A few talent-based skills still required him to grind inside the game.
That night, Daisy excitedly worked out with him until midnight before stopping.
Fortunately, once they entered the game, their physical bodies entered a state similar to a Warlock’s “Banish,” allowing them to get full rest.
When they entered the game again, Morris looked at the World of Warcraft system mail sent by his Golden Finger, feeling completely speechlessness.
Couldn’t this Golden Finger come with a chime or voice alert feature?
network mail explained how to invite other people into the game.
It turned out to be nothing groundbreaking: he simply needed to reach an “Intimate” relationship with them, just like with Daisy.
However, the mail noted that until intimacy reached the level of “Unwavering Loyalty,” Morris could revoke a player’s status at any time, or selectively revoke their acquired abilities.
In other words, he could recruit girls as pure tool-users to help him raid and level up without actually letting them keep their game abilities in the real world.
The Golden Finger had broken down affection levels into eleven tiers, from lowest to highest:
Mortal Enemy, Archenemy, Hostile, Disgusted, Cold, Neutral, Acquaintance, Familiar, Intimate, Enamored, and Unwavering Loyalty.
“Neutral” sat right in the middle, with five tiers above and below it.
Morris could bring anyone he had been intimate with into the game regardless of their exact affection level, but only “players” with positive affection would gain real-world game abilities.
This gave Morris a clear perspective on his social options.
Daisy had grown up with him since childhood to reach her current intimacy level.
Most other people would likely remain tool-users.
Of course, if anyone reached max intimacy down the line, Morris wouldn’t mind unlocking their abilities.
Tool-users were easy enough to find, and he could unlock attributes for them in stages to keep their motivation high.
As for game time cards, Morris wasn’t worried.
His main account was stacked with playtime, with hundreds of hours remaining.
With his current capabilities, making gold in the game was simple.
At level 70, let alone five-player Heroic dungeons, he could handle most bosses in ten-player raids like Karazhan and Zul’Aman even with his current mix of blue and green gear.
Except for bosses with specific mechanics requiring special strategies, of course.