Attribute Damage Increase

Most players cut corners on skills through the low-level stretch, and even so, a few spells exist that you absolutely have to secure.

At level 1, the basic elemental attacks—Fireball, Ice Arrow, Lightning Bolt. No argument there. A level 1 mage with no attack magic is no better than a fish-shaped bun with the filling left out. You're frail enough already; who is going to drag along a mage who can't even hit anything? So whenever one shows up without an attack spell, everyone gives the same advice. Hurry up and reroll until you pull one. The first skill slot at level 1 is attack magic. Iron rule.

Reach level 11, and the next skill is already decided. Unlike level 1, there is no choice.

Open any mage skill guide and they all recommend the same thing with one voice.

Attribute Damage Increase.

The name says it all: a passive that raises elemental damage. You took an attack spell at level 1, so at level 11, instead of another attack spell, you take the passive that powers it up. The natural next step.

The image that comes to mind with a mage is pure dealer. People bring one along for that and that alone, and if the so-called pure dealer puts out mediocre damage, there is no point in them standing there. A class that has to raise its damage even if the body turns to glass. That is a mage. Which is why, at level 11, Attribute Damage Increase is locked in as mandatory.

Of course, every recommended tree tells you to rush the low levels—through the thirties, while you're still burning low-grade essences—so they count skill slots on a one-slot baseline. People willing to invest a little more sometimes suggest learning a light shield skill at 11 as well. Not that it means much.

Thanks to all of that, I could spin the skill gacha without a second thought.

"So I just shut up and pull Attribute Damage Increase, right?"

Everyone said so. No reason not to follow the meta, not when it raised my damage. If I differed from other players at all, it was only this: I had no intention whatsoever of just moving on. I was pulling SS, no matter what.

"All right. Attribute Damage Increase, SS. Let's run it. Roll about a hundred thousand times and it ought to show up once, yeah?"

To begin with, the SS rate itself is 0.01 percent. Once in ten thousand. And among those rolls I had to hit Attribute Damage Increase, which drops even less often than the other spells—so maybe even a hundred thousand wouldn't be enough.

I didn't care.

"I just keep pulling until it shows."

I'd see how one session went today, then decide whether to sweep the market clean of lowest-grade essences. If a single skill ate this much, level 20 would cost even more. And if paying players started copying me after watching, the listings piled up on the auction house wouldn't last long.

The rolls kept churning. And when the hundred thousand lowest-grade essences had dwindled to about thirty thousand—

"Oh. It dropped."

It had taken a while. Eight hours, maybe. It popped right around the time my head was going fuzzy, so the reaction came out lukewarm.

"No—it's not that it's bad. I'm just a little tired. Whew. Maybe I've been rolling too much again lately."

It might have landed flatter because I'd just blown off stress test-driving a four-star SS special option. The afterglow was still hanging around, you could say. Even so, I'd spun on nothing but that one fixation. Pull Attribute Damage Increase, and I'd get stronger. That was the thought.

"Whoa. This is a seriously good skill."

The effect looked familiar—options in the same family as the Amplification Necklace. But these favored the user. Where the necklace jacked mana cost far higher and only nudged the damage up a little, Attribute Damage Increase raised elemental damage by much more than it raised the mana it cost. Pay 50 percent more mana and receive 100 percent more damage, and that is pure profit.

Of course, if mana cost climbed any higher than this, even I would feel the weight. Which is exactly why the effect stuck on the one-star special option tasted even sweeter.

Add the special options and it became a 40 percent increase in mana cost for a 110 percent increase in elemental damage. And since I was going to leave it on anyway, the three-star and four-star options were pretty sweet too. With this, max mana was up 70 percent, and max mana recovery per minute sat at 20 percent—full mana in five minutes.

There was a downside, of course. Mana consumption +220 percent. Cast a spell that costs 40 mana and it takes 128. Penta Casting means 640 gone in a single cycle.

"If this weren't five-star, I couldn't even bring myself to roll it."

Only after the unique option's 78 percent mana reduction kicked in could I cut one cycle down to a mere 140 mana. Thought of that way, it wasn't so bad. Dump it all at once and I could fire four or five cycles in a single burst. If anything, increased mana cost and increased damage looked like options that favored me.

Even S-rank Attribute Damage Increase is only a 10 percent increase in mana cost and a 20 percent increase in elemental damage. There is exactly one publicly known SS-rank version: 15 percent mana cost, 35 percent elemental damage. And then SSS leaps to 50 and 100.

I agreed.

"SSS really is too strong. I guess it's because that grade is only possible if you roll a +1 grade option on top of SS, the highest grade you're actually allowed to pull?"

Once I laid it all out, I could feel how much stronger I'd gotten.

Those were the item effects, class unique options, and skill effects currently applied to me. Strip away the small stuff and look only at the damage-related options, and it was still outrageous. Several times over, at a minimum. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠Multiply the values that stack multiplicatively and you land near a fifteenfold damage inflation.

Haven only gets harder to kill monsters as you go. Dungeon difficulty and monster quality climb in steps, and the later steps stretch until you have to jump them. That is also why growth for the current top rankers slows around the sixty-to-seventy line. To match those rising monster specs, content that lets you raise all kinds of damage opens by level, and only if you collect it properly can you cleanly hunt monsters in your proper range. You could fairly say I'd already secured, in advance, the specs you were supposed to earn by collecting all of that.

I asked the users who were busy being impressed.

"So what do I pull ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠now?"

One skill slot left, and the question of what to fill it with. All sorts of spells got tossed up, but if I could, I wanted to pull toward passives.

Next spell. You're it.