Jeff arrives home after a long day at work and logs into Adventure Simulator. He selects his character, Geoffrey, and loads into the settlement that he last logged out from, Newport. From the settlement menu, he opens up the "quests" menu to pick out an adventure for the evening.

Planning

By default, it filters for quests whose party leaders are looking for members compatible with Geoffrey's build. In this case, a moderately armored, shielded, hammer-wielding man-at-arms. Party leaders can be as open or restrictive as they like with their filters, so some parties are specifically looking for hammerers, but others merely look for armored characters and aren't too picky about weapons.

He can see both the enemies that will likely be encountered in the quest as well as the rewards. One catches his eye, a quest to hunt down a pack of orcs that have been hunting in Puzzlewood, a forest under the protection of the elves. Jeff, being the kind of guy to name his character Geoffrey, has heard that elven characters are immortal and therefore better suited his playstyle. He doesn't want to have lots of mortal characters dying all the time and rolling new ones, and if he gets enough favor with the elves he'll be able to make his own. So he joins this quest.

Dylan sees that the last party member requested has joined, a hammer-wielding man-at-arms. This fills out an important gap in the party composition, as there is a chance that some of the orcs have crude heavy armor. Dylan's character, Derthert, is a huntsman whose shortbow is not well-suited to piercing armor. Likewise, the other party member, Jack, is more of an assassin. Perfectly capable of bypassing armor when catching an enemy unaware or staggered, but his dagger will have a difficult time staggering enemies on its own which leaves him vulnerable if he fails to get the drop on an armored orc.

Dylan had not quite finished planning out the journey by the time that Jeff joined. There is still the question of which path they want to take. They have three options. All begin by taking a barge up the river severn:

1. Lydney - They can get off at Lydney and trek over an open field into the forest, but a griffin has been terrorizing travelers in the area. Griffins have exceptionally good eyesight and speed, making it difficult for even a fast and stealthy party to reliably avoid it, so this area will not be safe for weaker parties until a stronger party deals with it.
2. River Wye - They can switch to a rowboat at Bulwark and row up the River Wye, but the treacherous with shallow water and steep cliffs. The entire party will have to be very mobile with light equipment and good upper body strength to navigate safely.
3. Long way - They can journey on foot from Bulwark, entering the forest immediately and staying safe from the griffin. But this will make the journey take much longer, exposing them to the risk of being attacked by random packs of goblins or critters. It will also require either camping in the forest or exhausting themselves before they return to Bulwark. The party is poorly equipped to defend itself from a griffin, which would normally be fought with polearms, heavy crossbows, or firearms. Likewise, they would rather not take the long way, as such a small party with no watchdog will have an extended rest duration due to the need to keep watch. Geoffrey's armor and weapon/shield will make the climb more hazardous than it would be otherwise, but he has enough strength to make up for it. After agreeing on option 2, the party sets out.

Travel

The barge to Bulwark is uneventful, and once there, they stay the night and rent a rowboat in the morning. They then begin up the river.

Adventure Simulator, in its MVP form, does not have any sort of actual simulated boat mechanics. The boat exists entirely in the travel menu, simply checking their upper body strength versus the difficulty of the terrain as they travel. If they were to randomly encounter any enemies during the journey, they would be automatically beached at the nearest spot of land for the battle. Luckily, the party is not ambushed and makes it all the way to the center of the forest without incident.

Navigating Difficult Terrain

From here, they have to ascend some difficult terrain to exit the riverbank and enter the forest. The game loads from the travel screen to a simulation, as this is not a trivial encounter (and unlike the rapids, we can simulate it in the MVP). Geoffrey keeps his gauntlets and pauldrons in his backpack, as they would otherwise restrict his movement, and straps his shield to his backpack. Derthert, likewise, slings his bow around his shoulder. Jack, being both lightweight and strong, quickly scampers up the cliff with a rope and lowers it. Using the rope, Derthert and Geoffrey have no trouble climbing up, the penalty of their equipment offset by the ease of using the rope. The party leaves the rope behind, as they will use it to safely descend back to their boat on the journey back.

The Camp

Continuing their journey in the map screen, they eventually arrive at their destination: the reported location of the orc camp. They load back out of the map screen into the world. But when they arrive, the orcs are not there. The party must make a decision:

1. Wait in ambush for the orcs when they return
2. Attempt to track them, using Derthert's keen senses to spot recent tracks

The party decides to go with option 1, as the quest was more on the risky side than might be ideal for a party of their strength. The reported number of orcs is 3-5, and orcs are nearly on par with trained humans, so an ambush will put the odds in their favor.

They pick locations for the three of them, placing Geoffrey furthest from the camp due to his lack of stealth and Jack the closest, as his job will be to go in first and pick off as many as he can before being detected. Once in position, the party waits for their targets to arrive. This is done by choosing how long you would like to wait, at most, but will be interrupted if any enemies arrive before then.

Stealth

After a couple hours, the orcs show up with a freshly killed elk in tow. Five of them, to be exact, one of which is in armor. They fail to detect any of the party members due to their exceptionally poor hearing and vision, plus the fact that the party is stationary and in hiding places. The orcs begin to rest, leaving one awake on night watch.

A quiet kill requires a significant surplus of accuracy, as the target must die instantaneously and preferably in melee, allowing the assassin to cover its mouth and lay the body down gently. Derthert is certainly capable of instantly killing the orc on watch with a headshot, but there is a good chance that the others will wake. Thus, it falls upon Jack to take the initiative.

The orc on watch does not have any kind of complex patrol, so sneaking up on him requires only to keep the sound of one's footsteps light. Jack's equipment has no articulated metallic bits, therefore no noise penalties, and his legs have high agility, so he is able to approach silently, though he slows down as he nears his target.

There is a short window of reaction time that an enemy has to being surprised before they can make any sound, so it is not strictly necessary for Jack to kill the orc before he is perceived. Even an orc, with dull hearing, will hear the footsteps of a mere human (as opposed to an elf) immediately behind him. But by then, it will be too late, and Jack's dagger will be lodged in his heart. Sure enough, Jack attacks, and performs a near-silent takedown. Not completely silent, but not loud enough to wake anyone. He moves on to the next.

Orcs do not bother to take their armor off to sleep. Jack would like to eliminate the armored one, but it might not be a good idea. He would likely succeed in killing it, but its high amount of armor coverage translates to a lower surplus accuracy score and therefore a louder kill. Thus, the others will likely wake. He decides to save the armored orc for last and pick off the rest, or at least however many that he can.

Assassinating a sleeping orc is easier than an awake one, all else being equal, but there is a degree of unpredictability to any skill check. In the case of an attack its how accurate he places the cursor to the center of his target's hitbox, but for avoiding noise when moving around, its just random. Unfortunately for Jack, its the randomness that gets him. We don't actually simulate this level of detail, but ostensibly Jack kicked a rock while moving that awoke the nearest orc. Jack does not manage to close the distance and kill it before it begins to lose its flat-footed penalty, and by the time he does attack, he does not have enough surplus attack to perform a silent kill.

The scuffle wakes up the rest of the camp, and Derthert whistles as he nocks his first arrow, prompting Geoffrey to make his way there.

Combat

Derthert fires on the nearest unarmored orc to Jack. The orc, though aware that the camp is under attack, does not actually see Derthert and thus cannot dodge the attack, leaving it at the mercy of Derthert's accuracy. Against a mostly still, unarmored target from close range, there is more than enough surplus accuracy to instantly incapacitate it--the arrow landing right in its neck, leaving only two orcs remaining.

Outnumbered in melee, including against an armored enemy, Jack hoofs it in Geoffrey's direction, followed by the armored orc. The other unarmored orc grabs his shield and faces Derthert.

With a shield, the only way to reliably shoot an enemy is to get lucky with a leg shot or flank them, the latter of which is not currently available to Derthert. He makes a couple attempts, but eventually has to either draw his shortsword or flee. Not being an especially trained melee combatant, but having great endurance, Derthert opts for the latter, and will attempt to juke his way toward Jack and Geoffrey.

Meanwhile, Geoffrey and Jack catch up with one another, and the two prepare to meet the armored orc in melee. Jack is little threat to the orc on his own, but if Geoffrey can manage to stagger it or knock it down with his hammer, Jack will be able to finish him off. The two surround the orc, who at first charges at Jack, managing to dodge the orc's fairly inaccurate attacks with his superior agility.

Geoffrey in turn attacks the orc, and lands a decent glancing blow on its armor. This doesn't do any damage, but does cause some amount of unbalance which will both penalize its next attack and dodge. Ignoring Geoffrey, the orc continues on Jack, being that he is unarmored and unshielded.

Dodging, blocking, and armor are not roughly interchangeable in Adventure Simulator. Dodging is a much worse way to avoid most damage, its advantage is only that it allows you to travel light and is ideal against attacks that are so devastating that armor or block would do little against them anyway, such as the club of a giant ogre. Thus, despite Jack's superior agility, even a glancing blow from the orc's axe is enough to put him out of commission. And sure enough, he presses the dodge button a tenth of a second too late, the orc carving a small chunk of flesh out of his upper right arm.

Without bandaging, the wound will continue to bleed out, and even as it is right now his right arm is practically useless. But, on account of the orc once again ignoring Geoffrey, he is free to land another hit. This time square on the back, causing enough unbalance to stagger the orc. Jack follows up with a kick to the shins, enough to completely incapacitate the orc, toppling him to the ground. A prone character has a very, very low capacity to dodge attacks, but the orc is still fully armored and Jack's dagger-arm is out of commission. Even still, Geoffrey's surplus attack is basically maxed out. His weapon isn't precise, so it can't actually bypass full armor, but he is easily able to land a direct hit on the back of the orc's head.

Orcs are thick-skulled, in both the literal and figurative sense, so this isn't quite enough to knock it out. But he is now completely stunned, which allows Geoffrey the opportunity to restrain him while Jack picks up his dagger with his left hand and slides it through the orc's visor, finishing him off.

It is at this point that Derthert arrives, shielded orc in tow. The orc, seeing its dead captain beside Jack and Geoffrey, suffers a huge morale penalty and begins to flee. Derthert turns, drawing and releasing an arrow. Though not heavily armored like his captain, this orc does still have a chain shirt and helmet, meaning that Derthert will still need some decent surplus accuracy to hit a fleshy bit. Unfortunately he whiffs it and and the arrow hits the back, its damage entirely absorbed by the chainmail and though its force causes some unbalance, the orc is too far away for Geoffrey to exploit this.

After-Battle

Orcs, having very high strength, can easily outsprint most humans. But a hunt is often a function of endurance, not speed, especially when you're already wounded. The party can take their time tracking the orc, giving them the opportunity to bandage Jack and gather their packs before setting out to finish off their quarter.

Geoffrey has a little bit of the surgery skill (as most characters do), enough to apply a bandage and tourniquet. He staunches Jack's bleeding and splashes some alcohol on the wound for good measure.

As the party leaves the area and enters the travel screen, they see a summary of all the loot. The process of actually managing your inventory is largely automated, you define only a minimum weight/value ratio and how much total weight you're willing to carry. These parameters are used for your characters to automatically decide how much loot to take, prioritizing the lightest and most valuable loot first. But you can override this, in this case Geoffrey decides to bring the orc's latest kill, the elk, even though it will significantly encumber him. He's in no rush anyway, as Derthert still needs to track down the final orc.

Tracking

From the map, the party can see the lone orc's tracks quite vividly as it flees. Every party leaves behind tracks which are visible for a duration depending on the party's size and stealth versus the tracking party's track skill and eyesight. At this point, the party splits, with Jack and Geoffrey heading back to the cliffs by their boat and Derthert following the orc.

The orc doesn't get far before becoming exhausted. He is wounded, wearing chainmail, and does not have especially high endurance to begin with. Derthert engages several times, the first couple times he is detected and unable to ambush, retreating each time. But eventually he catches his prey unaware and loads back from the map screen into the simulated world. He lets off an opening arrow on the orc's shield arm, forcing it to drop its shield, then its leg, crippling its movement, and finally square in the neck. He collects his arrows, then returns to the map screen to regroup with Geoffrey and Jack at the cliffs.

When one party is in a simulation and the others are not, they cannot advance time on the map screen due to the potential desynchronization that would occur. Essentially, both sub-parties need to declare their intentions, then when they're both ready, time jumps forward until their next encounter. This is a fairly complicated edge case, though, and we can omit the ability to split the party for the MVP. They can also disband the party, but this would make them unable to regroup without first returning to a settlement. Jack and Geoffrey chit-chat during Derthert's encounter, then continue once he returns to the map.

Descent

The party rendezvous at the cliffs and must now figure out a way to get Jack down safely, as his injury will impose a significant penalty to climbing, even with the rope and the fact that he'll be descending. They settle on having him grab onto Geoffrey with his left arm, who is still able to make the climb check despite the significantly higher weight because he is now descending and has left most of his equipment at the top of the cliff. Geoffrey then climbs back up to pick up his equipment as well as Derthert's pack, and descends once more. Derthert then unties the rope and scampers down the cliff to join them.

The three adventurers return to their rowboat, one man short for the rowing, but will now be headed downstream which is much easier. They return to Bulwark safely, then take the next barge to Newport and collect their reward by turning in five right orc ears.

Aftermath

Jack, having been wounded, is entitled to a disproportionate share of the bounty and proceeds from the loot to compensate for his injury. They otherwise typically divvy it up according to how powerful each character is according to the favor required to create them. In this case, the characters are approximately equally powerful, so Derthert and Geoffrey take equal shares. But Geoffrey specifically wants favor with the elves, while Derthert and Jack are indifferent, so he agrees to receive all of the favor and little of the money. This gives him enough favor to create a custom elf character.

Jack convalesces for a couple weeks before his arm returns to normal, and can either play as another of his characters in the meantime or skip right through it, as time between player characters is not synchronized when they aren't in a party.

Derthert, having gained an appreciation of how difficult it can be to deal with even moderately armored targets with a shortbow, uses his money to buy an elven bow, which is something like a fantastical version of a compound bow that allows him to reliably penetrate chainmail with direct hits (though not plate).