Counter-Productive

>Put them in your endless abyss of a hat.

What are they? Ingredients for potions? If there's not enough room for them, you best get craftin'.

>Toss a few of the items off the side of the building at some passerbys below. What fun!

OK, OK. Breathe. First we need to look at these jars and see if we can sort them, or at least find out what's in them afore we start panicking.

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Spoiler

>go back and get another fork, you need some emotional support

Funny you should say that...

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SpoilerI like this adventure

Thank you! :D

> You should probably take care of all those cobwebs, too. Make the place look presentable for customers, yeah?

Tidy up the place to make some room



You go through every room clearing cobwebs and organizing shelves, even clearing the dead plants out of the planter box. This place has to look presentable by tomorrow!

There was a book on the bookcase in the back room. Go read it.

Go read those books in the back room



These? Nah.

The black one is a catalog. You order things for the store with it. You don't need anything right now.

The green one is The Power of the Mind by those monks in the Rose Temple. You've heard that some monks take a vow of silence. Not these ones. The Rose Temple monks never shut up, and it's reflected in the book. It's a painfully long and somewhat smug-sounding textbook on MP, or Mind Points, and how they're used in crafting.

It's probably useful for someone who doesn't know anything about the subject, or someone who's going to be doing a lot of crafting in the future. You, however, already know all about MP and crafting. Your Grandma taught you everything you know.

> See about unpacking those boxes on the balcony, or at least getting them inside. That's all stuff your grandma left you, right? Wouldn't want those getting stolen.

Stuff your inventory full of merch, have insufficient inventory, make twenty trips up and down the ladder

Get the merch inside!



As expected, you have to make several trips to get everything downstairs. There isn't enough room on the shelf to hold everything, also as expected, so you end up having to leave stuff on the floor or in your inventory. You probably won't need to order anything for a week or so.

You quickly take stock of what you have now:
5 short swords
8 daggers
24 runes
5 Point Allocation Coupons
16 scrolls
6 blank books
6 rings
4 seed packets


>_

Alright. What can you do with those runes? How about those coupons?

Craft fancier seeds by using a seed packet and rune as ingredients, then plant your rad magic beans in the planter upstairs

>fill up one of the empty potions with water and put a rune in it. Maybe if you let it soak the water will become magical?

wear all the bling rings, spend all those coupons like a high roller

>Consider your situation. Are you ready to open shop yet? If not, should you anyway?

> Practice your secret weapon techniques.

> If you can't fit all your supplies in the back room, prepare some for the storefront shelves. Anything you can finish crafting by the day's end, you might as well, right?

> Oh, and don't forget about the safe! Get the combo from the lockbox and take stock of what sweet loot your gram-gram left you.

Call your friends, tell them to check out your sweet new shop!

Get the safe combo from the lockbox



Oh right! You almost forgot.

You grab your keys again and open the lockbox. Inside is 50 Jewels, a coral ring, and a scrap of paper with the safe combination written on it.


Take stock of what sweet loot your gram-gram left you



You unlock the safe. Inside is...

Oh.

Oh no.


->



It's a Luck Pastry.


->



Luck Points, or LP, is a powerful stat. Most people only have two or three LP, but at high levels you can use your LP to make actual miracles happen. Luck Pastries are the quickest way to level up LP.

It's said that the Luckiest being in existence is the King of your beloved land. Unfortunately for everyone living in it, he's a tyrant. He's outlawed anything that could be a threat to his rule, including traveling through the passes without a permit, all forms of electronic communication, and of course, Luck Pastries.

Having pretty much anything to do with a Luck Pastry is illegal. Owning one will land you in jail. Selling one will get you executed. And you're not sure what happens to the people who eat one, but you don't want to find out.

Why the hell does Grandma have something like this?!

> Practice your secret weapon techniques.

Practice your secret weapon techniques



Thinking about it is starting to give you a headache so you lock the pastry back in the safe.

If you're going to keep contraband in the store, you'd better be ready to protect it. You head up to the balcony and equip your Grandma's ring. Coral is a mid-level material for rings that channels magic well. It looks like this one has already been crafted into a Magic Projectile ring, which is exactly what it sounds like.

You place the cracked bottle on the lip of the planter box.


->




->



Nailed it.

Alright. What can you do with those runes? How about those coupons?

What can you do with the runes and coupons?



You scoop the glass shards up into your inventory so you don't step on them later.

The Point Allocation Coupons are like the Luck Pastry; they raise the level of one of your stats. However, they can be used on any of your stats rather than just LP. The only reason they're not illegal is because they only level them one point at a time. They're also very rare.

Selling these would make you a small fortune. However, Grandma did say you could use them for yourself...

The runes, on the other hand, are made specifically for crafting. Each type of rune has a different effect. A "Reverse" rune, for instance, reverses the properties of any item you combine it with. If you were to combine a Reverse rune with an HP potion, you'd get a potion that damages you when you drink it.

Craft fancier seeds by using a seed packet and rune as ingredients, then plant your rad magic beans in the planter upstairs

Craft fancier seeds by using a seed packet and rune as ingredients, then plant your rad magic beans in the planter upstairs



Now just hold your horses! You may have an unusually high MP stat, but it's not infinite. You'd better stop and think about what you're crafting before you go spending MP willy-nilly.

Combining a seed with a rune would be easy enough, but you've got to consider the effects that would have on the plant it grows into. Take the pumpkin seeds, for example. If you were to craft them with a Reverse rune, instead of a tasty, nutritious pumpkin, you'd likely get a poisonous one. If you crafted them with a Break rune, you'd just break the seeds and render them useless. And if you crafted them with a Grow rune, the pumpkin might grow so big it damages the planter box.

All three of these would cost 3 MP, and then you'd need to spend another 3 MP to craft the result with a Clear rune in order to fix it. You've only got 30 MP.

You're not opposed to doing some crafting, though. Crafted goods sell for more than standard scrolls and daggers, after all.


>_

>Craft as much as you can. You can never have to much of anything. ANYTHING.

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SpoilerThis adventure is so cute/charming; I am following closely

Would combining a break rune with a sword/dagger give you a broken weapon or a blade that shatters other weapons on hit?

>Craft a dagger with sentience that can experience the horror of death!

> Exposit on what you know about runes. Presumably there are other types of runes, either in your stock or in the world at large?

Would combining a break rune with a sword/dagger give you a broken weapon or a blade that shatters other weapons on hit?

Exposit on what you know about runes. Presumably there are other types of runes, either in your stock or in the world at large?



Of course. There are seven types of runes, including the three you just explained.

An Accelerate rune exaggerates an item's characteristics. Continuing to use the pumpkin seeds as an example, combining them with an Accelerate rune would make a super-pumpkin. It would taste like heaven and be extremely nutritious.

A Fuse rune fuses two items together without combining them as you would if you just crafted them. Fusing two pumpkin seeds together would grow some sort of mutant pumpkin which, while still edible, would not be very attractive.

A Shrink rune makes items smaller. Shrinking the pumpkin seeds would make tiny pumpkins.

There is also the Clear rune. Unlike other items, runes cannot be "uncrafted" from the items they're combined with. If you combined two items together, crafted that item with a rune, then uncrafted that item, rather than getting the rune back, you'd have the two original items which both have the rune's effects. That's why the Clear runes exist. They remove all rune effects from an item, essentially "clearing" the runes from within them.

The reason for this is that runes, as you said before, are made specifically for crafting. They don't work so well in reverse.

Runes also can't be combined with other runes directly. If you wanted to make an incredibly strong broken sword, you'd need at least a Break rune and an Accelerate rune. This is possible, but you can only combine them each with the sword one at a time.

There is a legend that tells of an eighth rune. However, this has never been confirmed. As far as you know, it's just a legend.

Can you combine a Point Allocation Coupon with a grow rune to grow your stats by an amount more than 1?

What are your other stats?

HP, JP?, MP., a yellow point, and IP?

Can you combine a Point Allocation Coupon with a grow rune to grow your stats by an amount more than 1?



Nope. There are certain things that just can't be combined. Anything that can't fit in your inventory, living creatures, and Point Allocation Coupons are all off limits.

That's probably the other reason PACs aren't illegal. There's no way to cheat the system.


What are your other stats?



The pink bar is your HP, or Hit Points. Or Health Points, depending on your region. If you've ever played a video game in your life, you know what these are. You have 20 HP.

The blue bar is your JP, or Joy Points. It's something about your mood, you guess. Honestly, you're not so good with this stuff. All you know is that it has something to do with that little smiley face in the corner, and hitting zero makes your other stats stop regenerating. You have 10 max JP and your current JP is a comfortable 6. Your current mood is Feelin' Alright, a neutral mood.

The green bar is your MP, or Mind Points. Now this is your area of expertise. MP is the stat used in crafting. You know the rules, you're good at figuring out what combinations are the strongest/most efficient. You have 30 MP, an unusually high number.

The yellow bar is your LP, or Luck Points. The exact mechanics of LP are hard to describe, but it can basically be summarized as this: If there's something that can happen, LP can make it happen. You have 2 LP, a fairly average amount. That's enough to knock a precariously-balanced lamp off a rickety shelf.

The last bar is your IP, or Illness Points. This is the one bar you never want to have any points in. You kind of doubt it'll come up though. You have a max IP of 7, and thankfully, it's empty.

Craft accelerate runes with some daggers. One for self-defense and the rest for shop stock.

Also shrink rune+pumpkin seeds for portable pumpkins

NEW FRIEND

> GREET KITTY

>Unless there happens to be a way to tell how much LP someone has, maybe use that luck pastry. Otherwise burn/destroy it. Having it sit around the place unused is trouble waiting to happen.

Code:

I took a few days off to work on some other stuff, like my sweet new avatar. Totally worth it.

OMG! A cat has arrived!

Take it under your wing as your pet and official shop mascot.

NEW FRIEND

> GREET KITTY

Make friends with the cat!



You hear little paws on the balcony. Could it be...?


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No wait, come back!


->



You scared it off.

Maybe next time.

Also, if you want to get rid of the luck pastry, feed it to the cat. Subconscious side-goal. Make a cat lucky enough to overthrow the king.

> Do all living creatures have those 5 stats? Or would an animal only have, say, HP, JP, and IP?

> In short, *do* cats have LP? If yes: definitely make a cat into a living maneki-neko.

Feed the Luck Pastry to the cat, make living maneki-neko



While that would get rid of the Luck Pastry for you, you're not sure it would do anything for the cat. For one thing, you don't even know if animals have LP. Plus, it's a cat. Even if it did have LP, would it be smart enough to use it? And if it was, what would it use it for?

Seems like a waste.

> Oh, and how about combining your seeds with both an accelerate rune, and a grow rune? You'll still have to make sure your gourds don't break the planter, but giant extra-tasty pumpkins gotta reel in the dough!

Craft accelerate runes with some daggers. One for self-defense and the rest for shop stock.

Craft Accelerate runes and daggers and make giant super pumpkins



You only have three of each rune (aside from Clear, of which you have 6), so you can only craft two daggers in addition to the pumpkins.

You grab everything you need from the shelf.


->



The crafting process takes a chunk out of your MP. You now have two sharp daggers and one packet of giant accelerated pumpkin seeds.

->



You go ahead and plant the seeds. The planter can only hold 6 normal seeds, so you plant 3 of the giant ones. You have 3 pumpkin seeds left.

no i don't think your planter can handle three MEGA pumpkins. two is enough

> What's the story with the scrolls? How do those work, and what kinds do you have?

> What's that note say near, presumably, the potion making supplies? Anything important, or just stuff you already know?

> Hell, while we're at it, what *do* you know about potions?

Explain scrolls and potions



Scrolls contain one single-use spell each. If you have the money and inventory space, you could carry a bunch of scrolls around to cast at any moment. However, scrolls are written on a magic paper similar to the boxes your store's deliveries come in; once it's fulfilled its purpose, it vanishes.

Combining a scroll with something more solid like, say, a ring makes the ring able to cast the spell multiple times--with a cooldown. Your Grandmother's ring is a coral band crafted with a Magic Projectile scroll. This works for other objects as well. You can also craft spellbooks that can cast one spell per page by combining a scroll with a blank book. The blank books on your shelf have 30 pages each.

Your current scrolls are:

2 Fireball
2 Ice Spike
2 Shock Lance
2 Magic Projectile
2 Poison
2 Parasitic Plant
2 Blind
2 HP Steal


->



Potions can have a number of different effects. Theoretically, you can make a potion for any of your stats, though for most people an LP potion would be useless and no one would want an IP potion. There are other potions whose effects range from the mundane to the bizarre to the oddly specific.

Next to the potion-making set on the wall is a list of recipes for potions. HP, JP...no MP sadly, but there are two potions you've never heard of. You're not sure what they do.

Does your shop have any competitors? Are you on a busy street? What's nearby in town?

Does your shop have any competitors? Are you on a busy street? What's nearby in town?



The town you're in is small but it gets a fair amount of through traffic. You don't really have any competitors here. There's a grocery store, a post office, a hospital, and a large building that you think is hosting some sort of event. You're probably the only weapons and magic shop for miles.


>_

Can we check out the event later?!

i think we should check it out immediately