I'm very surprised at how little known this litrpg is. It is quite easily my favorite litrpg book in history and I'm beyond in love with it.

It is a pretty slow-paced book, and I can see how that isn't everyones cup of tea. The entire first book covers the span of a month. (in the book you can be submerged in VR for a month, and then need 1 week break. Thus it being called the "first dive"). And in that month the main character enters a lowbie zone. Level 1-5. And he stays there, the entire month. Talking to NPCs, meeting players, making friends, discovering quests.

The game itself is ridiculously detailed, there must be hundreds, if not thousands, of different skills. And skills have sub-skills that can be discovered. The main character picks up a skill, and after picking up several others they merge into one entirely new skill where these are sub-skills. They go from level 1 to 100, at which point the skill evolves to a tier 2 skill making the skill grind seem neverending.
But the book is also written very detailed, the main character visits a trainer in town. And each day for two hours he will train and be given one skill a day for his efforts. And the book takes us on this trip, each and every day. Talking through how the player trains, how he figures things out, and all of that.

And I simply loved it. I loved every second of it. The book didn't skip any of it, not the training, not talking to useless npcs, or finding hidden quests, or exploring or simply running out of time.

I also greatly enjoyed the main character meeting other players in game and starting friendships. It felt natural, it wasn't instant-like, it wasn't instant-together-forever. It was "wanna do this together?" "huh maybe we make a good team" and so on and on. They slowly became friends, there were banter, and bickering, and generally reminded me a great deal of my earlier mmorpg experiences.

I could probably talk for hours about the many things I liked about this book, and series as I'm in the middle of the third and my love for this universe just seems to grow. From the mythology, to the gods, to the blend of both low stake and high stake story.

If you have the patience for a slower story, pick this book up! It's probably the most detailed and interesting gaming universes out there.

I absolutely loved this book. I loved the universe it set in. Here, you have a futuristic world where the real world went to shit and the air is no longer breathable and everyone spends an insane amount of time within VR. But it isn't the typical "latest VR technology" or "latest mmorpg out there". No. Pangea comes off as being the ONLY VR option, and instead of having one world with one game, with one type of lore. You have portals to different type of worlds. You have educational portals, and portals to mythological world and pirate worlds and fps worlds so you can go anywhere and be whoever you want. The only limiting thing is: Everyone is locked to experience gains and stats. Everyone levels up.

There are things I'd complain about. The MC is lucky, very very lucky. And he's nice, too nice. And that's it. There is no grand outsmarting anything, or grand new tactics. It's just an average joe who got lucky and seem a little more stubborn than most.

Nobody is as nice as this guy, is my thought. But it was an enjoyable adventure. One who saw multiple worlds, cleared quests way outside his level, stumbled into lucky finds and maybe made some friends and enemies along the way.

Loved the story. Horrible cover.

Loved the snarky AI that seemed personally offended that the character re-rolled their character.

I loved the slow-burn of leveling it, it made me invested in the world, in npcs, and characters. I can't wait for the next one!