Natural Skills

System prompt: You have successfully passed Hell Level of the Trial of Natural Skill! Please choose two of the following five Natural Skills for your reward!

– Trap Mastery: +1 active trap to the limit on all trap skills. Trap skill cooldown time reduced by 10%, power +10%. Secondary weapon slot unlocked.

– Bow Mastery: Bow-drawing speed +20%. All bow-related skills cooldown reduced by 10%. Attack power +10%. Special tool slot unlocked, secondary weapon slot unlocked.

– Taming Mastery: Pet slots increased by two. Simultaneous pet appearance +1. Pet healing effects +20%. Intelligence attribute increases pet's attributes, making it more effective in battle. Spirit attribute increase pet's combat initiative. When the pet dies, the player can revive it automatically every 12 hours. Secondary weapon slot unlocked.

– Concealment: Speed penalty while using Camouflage reduced by 30%. Camouflage effects increased. Attack power while Camouflaged +20%. When attacked at night while Camouflaged, Camouflage effect will continue for 10 seconds before wearing off.

– Plunder: Small chance of gaining coins or items and equipment directly after killing a monster. Very small chance of gaining items and equipment which would not normally drop.

Five Natural Skills! And he can choose two!

Chen Mo knew that there would be a good reward but he was stunned when he saw that he could choose two from five.

The forums had a fair share of players who had already passed Nightmare Trials and the reward was one Natural Skill and one Class Skill. The player can also choose to be sent to a smaller city under the jurisdiction of the three main cities.

Chen Mo expected the Hell Trial to give better Natural Skills and Class Skills but did not expect the reward to be so much better than what he'd imagined.

Natural Skills cannot be compared to normal Class Skills. There was a huge difference between learning one more Natural Skill and one more Class Skill.

Players who did not participate in the Trial of Natural Skill need to go to the Profession Union in one of the three main cities and complete an Advancement Quest to get a Natural Skill.

In other words, everyone could only learn one Natural Skill now and you would need to get to the second Class Advancement to learn a second.

Nobody could say for sure what level the second Class Advancement was at but the word on the forums was Level 40.

Level 20 players had yet to appear so Level 40 was a long way off.

Chen Mo getting two Natural Skills in one go was like a second Class Advancement.

Of course, the Natural Skill was definitely different from those at the second Class Advancement.

Trap Mastery, Bow Mastery and Taming Mastery were basic skills for the three main hunter builds - trap build, poison arrow build and pet build. If you get one of these three Natural Skills, you could learn a more advanced Natural Skill at your second Class Advancement. Chen Mo could learn two Natural Skills now but he couldn't learn an advanced Natural Skill yet.

It was different from the Class Advancement but it was still advantageous to learn an additional Natural Skill. If Chen Mo wanted, he could do the trap build and pet build at the same time. With these two builds combined, his individual attack power wouldn't be as simple as one plus one!

Which two should he choose?

Chen Mo was no stranger to Trap Mastery, Bow Mastery and Taming Mastery. The forums had many posts discussing and analysing these three skills.

The description of Trap Mastery clearly stated that trap power would increase and hunter players can finally equip a secondary weapon and secondary weapons were special equipment. For example, if Chen Mo learnt Trap Mastery, his main weapon would be a crossbow and secondary weapon a glove. When he used a crossbow to attack, the attack power would be calculated from the crossbow attributes. If Chen Mo placed traps, the attack power would be calculated from the attributes of the glove.

Bow Mastery was like Trap Mastery - it also increased the power and unlocked a secondary weapon slot. However, the secondary weapon that the hunter can equip is a little special – daggers and bolts can be equipped. If dagger and crossbow are equipped, the main weapon would be the crossbow when it's used to attack. The dagger would be the main weapon when it's used. Both weapons were automatically interchangeable without having to un-equip and equip. This Natural Skill was quite popular among the hunter players.

However, for those aiming for a poison arrow build, the thing of most interest to them was the unlocking of the special tool slot.

This special tool slot was special indeed. Players could put an arrow in the slot and refine it, making every arrow carry some poison damage. Other than arrows, players could also put special powders that affect monsters in the slot like Mercury Powder, which could be used against Vampires that appear around Shadow City.

Taming Mastery was a Natural Skill for players aiming for a pet build. Those who learn this can summon two pets at once. Intelligence and Spirit attributes of the hunter affect the pets, so if a hunter did not learn Taming Mastery, his or her Intelligence and Spirit points were not of much use.

Hunters who go for the pet build can also equip a secondary weapon, which was a special magic staff. Their Intelligence and magic power were much higher than crossbows.

However, the magic staff that hunters can equip was different from the magic staff mages and priests use. It was a magic staff too but it had to have a special secondary weapon slot or it couldn't be used.

Someone on the forums had demonstrated the use of this secondary magic staff. Compared to the mage and priest weapons, its magic attack attributes were much lower but still more powerful than crossbow and dagger weapons.

These were the three main builds for hunters - all distinctly different, with different specialities.

Furthermore, though the descriptions of the three hunter-oriented Natural Skills did not mention it, higher-level skills for hunters require a related Natural Skill for the player to learn them. Chen Mo had five to choose from but there were two rare ones that other players had never seen before. He had to learn one of the three hunter skills though, or he would not be able to learn higher-level hunter skills.

If there weren't a Free-Skill System, Chen Mo would have taken time to consider his options before choosing, but he knew about it and had long decided upon the trap build.

Using the Free-Skill System, the failure of setting traps was significantly reduced. There were also many varieties of traps, which suited a Lone Ranger like Chen Mo.

Chen Mo could choose the other two Natural Skills too but after thinking about it for a short while, he shook his head.

The three Natural Skills allowed him to unlock a secondary weapon slot but it was just one. Even if he learnt two Natural Skills, he wouldn't unlock two slots and use two secondary weapons at once. The value of learning two Natural Skills halved.

Chen Mo looked at the other two skills - Concealment and Plunder.

These two were rare Natural Skills. Nobody on the forums had mentioned them.

Chen Mo wasn't sure about Concealment, but he had a good feeling about Plunder. This Natural Skill could be the ticket to becoming a 'Fortune Hunter"!

Chen Mo was good at analysing. Honestly speaking, Plunder would not bring him many benefits in the near future since low-level beginner monsters wouldn't drop any fantastic items. Choosing Plunder would not give him as much of a benefit as Taming Mastery, since that allowed him to summon two pets at once and increase his damage output significantly.

However, Plunder would be more useful the higher he progressed through levels and it will never have an expiration date.

Gaining this special Natural Skill may even unlock special quests or events in the future.

This was not just Chen Mo's speculation. Though GENESIS had been launched not long ago, the players on the forums had already found that the quests they receive and events they encounter varied greatly due to their Natural Skill.

Anyway, if he chose Taming Mastery and did not choose an advanced pet-build Natural Skill at his second Class Advancement, his Taming Mastery would become weaker and weaker and gradually become insignificant.

On the other hand, Plunder was a Natural Skill one could get only after passing the Hell Trial - its rarity needed no elaboration.

Values goes up with rarity - since Plunder was so rare, it must have a reason why.

"Trap Mastery! Plunder!"

Chen Mo quickly made his decision.

System prompt: You will learn the skill "Trap Mastery". Do you want to use 'Skill Mutation Scroll'?

Haha! It really worked!

Chen Mo saw the system prompt and he was jubilant!

He was not hoping for much when he brought the Skill Mutation Scrolls with him but they unexpectedly worked on Natural Skills too!

Who else can have Mutated Natural Skills in this game other than himself?

"Yes!"

System prompt: You have learnt the Natural Skill "Trap Mastery (Mutated)"!

Trap Mastery (Mutated): +2 active traps to the limit on all trap skills. Trap skill cooldown time reduced by 15%, power +15%. Secondary weapon slot unlocked.

System prompt: You will learn the skill "Plunder". Do you want to use 'Skill Mutation Scroll'?

It worked on Plunder too!

It's a good thing he came prepared! He knew Nightmare Level gave an additional skill as a reward, so he had brought more than one Skill Mutation Scroll.

"Yes!"

System prompt: You have learnt the skill "Plunder (Mutated)"!

Plunder (Mutated): Chance of gaining coins or items and equipment directly after killing an enemy. Small chance of gaining items and equipment which would not normally drop.