Part 16: Six days later, grinding... done?

Six days later, grinding... done?

Actually it's even less, considering the time spent collecting votes.



We meet our first Gray IC, this spider-looking Killer IC. It doesn't just damage you, but can crash programs you have running when it hits. I would have shown it off, but we hardly ever get hit.



I pick up a double speed chip burner, for if and when we get more chip firmware.



We try out our first rating 10 target server. This is above the rating of all our hardware and software, and all of our skills aside Attack and Defense. Fortunately, we still carry the day because this is a straight Sabotage mission. I think we also got a crazy number of skill points for succeeding, 14 or 15.



Hacker Extraordinaire is, indeed, the max reputation for living in a studio apartment. So we're stuck with a max rating of 9 in stores, and 8 in special orders. So we're going to get rating 9 hardware across the board, and as many skill points as we can muster!

Also note our skills of 16. Some grinding later...



...and we got all the way to 20. Not to mention lots of nuyen. By now the only mission we ever fail are (N) or (T) missions. In addition, that fancy Wrench.exe program? Not good enough with our horrible skill. We actually have better luck with our Area Attack program killing tapeworms in one shot.



Yamatetsu is another one of the Big Ten megacorps in the 3rd edition timeline, with another relatively poor rating of just 10.




So here we are at the end of the grind. Our hardware is maxed, with pretty much all of the add-ons, our skills are at 22, and it's a rare contract that gives us any skill points at all.

We've moved up in the world to a two-bedroom apartment (the box gets its own room!), one with an actual kitchen (featuring a current model SoyChef able to form patties with a variety of shapes and colors, and up to six flavor options!) and decently sized living area. We're almost to our (practical) max of 25 in Attack and Defense, too. It won't be long now until it's time to vote on what we should pour skill points into next!