Ch.209209. SSS+ Grade Tough Skin

I pulled out the SSS+ ability selection ticket I had been saving.

I hadn’t been saving it to hoard it, but rather because I was planning to choose a tank-type ability. Since I hadn’t given much thought to tank abilities until now, I wanted to take my time to consider my options when I had some leisure.

Originally, I planned to think about it while lounging in the living room back on Earth, eating pizza and watching TV, but I was busier than expected. Now I’m finally getting around to it after arranging my mom’s immigration and before heading back. Honestly, there’s not much to deliberate over.

Tank-type abilities are broadly divided into two categories:

One is equipment-based tanking, like Team Leader Kim Jin-hyeop, who tanks using weapons.

The other is body-based tanking, like Ogres, who tank with their physical bodies.

In Farming World, body tanking was generally preferred over equipment tanking.

Since players usually hunted alone rather than in expeditions, it was much more convenient to tank with your body while fighting.

If you wanted to use other attack abilities, having a body tanking ability that could withstand a hit or two in unexpected situations was far more practical than lugging around a shield.

On the other hand, players who took on tank roles in parties of four or more preferred equipment tanking.

The difference between the two wasn’t that dramatic.

Body tankers focused on physical durability and were somewhat sturdier, while equipment tankers maximized their tanking abilities when holding gear but had slightly inferior physical tanking compared to body tankers.

But the two abilities weren’t complete opposites.

In Farming World, solo players would just body tank without carrying shields, but in reality, if you have tank-related abilities, it’s better to carry tanking weapons since you’ll likely be performing the tank role.

Shields are good for tanking, but body tankers tend to prefer close-quarters combat using physical abilities while drawing aggro, rather than extreme tanking with greatswords or bare hands. Equipment tankers, true to their name, prefer dungeon play styles that involve extreme tanking with gear.

So ultimately, for someone in my position, choosing a body tanking ability is the more conventional choice.

From there, the question becomes which specific ability to select.

After browsing through the options, I picked one.

“I’ll go with this.”

The defensive ability I need most right now is body tanking.

A shield would be useless to me.

I have no intention of carrying a shield, and even carrying one sword is burdensome enough—when would I have time to pull out a shield in the middle of combat?

For attacks I can see and react to, dodging is far more efficient than blocking.

What I need now is defense that won’t crumble against attacks that come too fast to react to or area attacks, like when I faced the Big Guava Snake.

[Upgrading Tough Skin to SSS+ grade.]

Tough Skin can be considered somewhat of a passive ability.

Looking at the learnable skills, most are passive, and even the active ones mostly just require mana to activate rather than any special conditions.

[Tough Skin]

– Grade: SSS+

– Passive Skill (Tough Skin)

– Your skin becomes tougher in proportion to your health, reducing all damage taken. (Current: SS+, All damage reduction 40%[+16%])

– The amount of life force you recover increases in proportion to your health. (Current: SS+, Natural life force recovery +150%[+60%])

The skill itself is quite simple.

Just two skill options.

But those options are the essence of Tough Skin.

The damage reduction effect is also present on my Ogre Leather armor set.

With about 30% from the armor plus Tough Skin, I’ll have around 70-80% damage reduction.

That’s an absurd number.

But damage reduction effects are as hard to obtain as they are powerful.

Even 30% on armor sells for an enormous price, and it’s difficult to get damage reduction effects elsewhere.

Accessories almost never come with damage reduction naturally, and those that do often sell for more than accessories with damage-related options like Glass Stone.

For tanks, damage reduction is as valuable as damage is for attackers.

The effectiveness of defense diminishes rapidly as it increases.

Plus, there are attacks that ignore defense, and most defense is split between physical and magical, making calculations complicated.

But damage reduction affects all damage, so its effectiveness doesn’t decrease as you level up.

Of course, there are distinctions like “all damage reduction” versus “magic damage reduction”… there’s a lot to know about these options, but both the damage reduction on my Ogre armor set and the Tough Skin effect reduce all damage, so I don’t need to overthink it.

“Hmm. A bit disappointing.”

With this, I’ve at least secured a countermeasure against one-shot kills.

I felt it was time to choose a defensive ability since I couldn’t keep giving enemies opportunities to exploit my low defense, which contrasted sharply with my brute attack power.

But as someone seriously addicted to attack power dopamine, I couldn’t help but wonder what SSS+ attack ability I might have chosen instead.

“Next time for sure…”

What ability should I choose next?

I placed my last remaining SSS+ lifestyle ability selection ticket on the table of consideration.

I need to use it somewhere.

The problem is there are too many lifestyle abilities I want.

Eventually, I’ll need to choose all abilities at SSS+ grade, whether combat or lifestyle.

If I could just fill everything with SS+ grade abilities like in Farming World, I could simply pick the major abilities one by one without much thought.

But I don’t know how long I’ll be able to acquire these SSS+ abilities through main quests.

Right now, they’re giving them out routinely with each main quest completion, but that could stop as early as the Level 3 biome with a “tutorial complete” message. The SSS+ lifestyle ability I got from the main quest related to the Dense Chaos Energy might be particularly rare.

So ironically, I’m more conflicted about this than the SSS+ combat ability.

“I should do some shopping.”

When playing Farming World, I just used whatever lifestyle abilities they gave me and upgraded them, so I don’t have a clear sense of which ones are good or must-haves.

More precisely, it’s been about 3-4 years since I properly acquired abilities.

Most of what I have are things I got a long time ago, so I decided to look at the lifestyle abilities currently available at SSS+ grade before making my choice.

“Ah.”

I’ll do that while lounging in bed before sleep.

For now, I called Kim Su-jeong to test my newly acquired SSS+ ability.

“You really want me to attack you? With full power?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that okay? You won’t die, right?”

“Don’t exaggerate, just attack. I won’t die to a weakling.”

“You’re dead.”

Kim Su-jeong summoned fireballs, seizing this rare opportunity.

“My ultimate move. Fire Explosion, which I poured all my saved Farming Points into… is too much to use here, so I’ll gloriously burn you with Flame Dust that I prepared for boss fights. Are you really sure about this?”

“Just hurry up and do it.”

Kim Su-jeong’s magic power stat is currently A+.

As soon as she learned the SS+ ability, her adjusted stats became quite high, and with her staff added, the damage should be very powerful.

If her level were just a bit higher, I probably wouldn’t be doing something as foolish as taking her full-power attack.

But right now, her level is low and she hasn’t been learning magic for long, so it should be fine.

Whoosh-

Small flames fly quickly toward me.

This girl is serious—she’s triple-casting, creating flames everywhere and throwing them at me with an evil smile.

“Oppa, you have healing magic too, so you’ll be fine, right?”

The Flame Dust particles hit their target despite her insincere words.

When the flames touch my body, they burst with pop-pop-pop sounds and cling to me.

These Flame Dust particles are characterized by burning on the body for a long time after impact, dealing tick damage.

It’s not a flashy area attack that deals massive damage at once, but as Su-jeong said, it’s specialized for boss fights and PvP.

Three dust particles burn on my body.

Tick-tick-tick-

My life force rapidly decreases.

[Remaining life force: 99%]

[Remaining life force: 97%]

.

.

“Oh.”

“What? Are you okay?”

“It’s warm.”

“…”

It does decrease quickly.

After standing still for about 30 seconds, the flames went out, and my remaining life force was 89%.

“…89%? You’re lying.”

The SSS+ defensive ability was as reliable as a hearty meal, reminiscent of the Corrupted Ogre.