Building a Gaming Empire From Scratch

Chapter 877: Chapter 833: The Bustling Chang’an City_1 Chapter 877: Chapter 833: The Bustling Chang’an City_1 “Echo Instance” is currently the most popular playing method among heavy-duty gamers.

Using the mechanism of black-haired zombies for a fixed farming spot is certainly not the level up method prepared by the designers for the players.

In order to provide players with reasonable and rich battle scenarios, Lincoln provided the developers with the idea of “Memory Echo”.

Players, during missions and exploration, will obtain an item with the suffix “Echo” in its name.

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Using these items, they will be transported into a portion of the item owner’s memory.

In these memories, there tends to be a large amount of combat, providing players with rich battle enjoyment.

Some NPCs can even repeatedly transport players into a specific memory – this is considered a fixed instance.

And most Echo Instances have a leaderboard that records the ten fastest teams.

As everyone knows, once a leaderboard appears in a game, many people will try to get their names up on it, the higher the better, even willing to pay a cost far exceeding the rewards.

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Besides, there’s another PVP-based Echo Instance which is also very popular.

What’s Your Problem quickly found his familiar blacksmith shop and became an apprentice after the official release of the game.

– After the server was reset, the negative impression he left behind from causing trouble was gone, and the apprenticeship went very smoothly.

Source: AllNovelFull.com, updated on Ɲ0νǤօ.сο

Not only did he learn the forging of the Mother and Child Sword and the corresponding sword technique, but he also gained the little girl’s affection and a special memory echo –

“Night Rain: Swift Sword” (Echo)

Similarly, Red Dust also received a “Night Rain: Poison Doctor” (Echo) from his Poison Doctor teacher.

The same series of “Night Rain: Li Er”, “Night Rain: Stuart” were successively obtained by the players.

When these echoes were all collected, the full version of “Night Rain: Echo” became a fixed instance that can be started on the panel at any time.

This instance, with the same name as the promotional material, allows players to enter the story in the promotional material and personally experience the pursuit in the rainy night.

However, this instance is very special, with two teams of players entering at the same time.

One team helps the Rakshasa hunt down Hayden, and the other team helps Grandmaster Hayden and his wife escape from the Rakshasa’s pursuit.

There are large numbers of players strategizing and battling passionately in this instance every day.

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However, these two gameplay styles are just a corner of the current “Chang’an”.

Although they’re the most popular, they don’t have a crushing advantage over other gameplays.

The situation in Chang’an City is very complex now, or to put it in a prettier way – diverse.

It’s doesn’t resemble previous games where players had a few concentrated focal points.

In Chang’an City, players’ focal points are completely dispersed, with all kinds of pursuits.

Players who were immersed in various side jobs and handicrafts during the closed beta once again sank into these meticulous works.

This group is rapidly expanding, with more and more newcomers being attracted by these trinkets, going online every day to figure them out.

A small example: the number of players for the “Silversmith” side job has surmounted 4.8 million, among which there are 1.3 million people who spend over 4 hours every day working on a small lump of silver and making jewelry.

This data can make a standalone game for other studios, or even international game companies.

But in “Chang’an”, it’s just a small side-line gameplay.

It’s not even comparable with side jobs like “Blacksmith” or “Farmer” which are involved in the main quests.

However, for “Farmer”, most players just rent a small piece of land after the task and plant some gourds.

This can only be considered a shallow-level farmer.

When you’ve made enough money to buy a piece of farmland, then you qualify to declare yourself an eligible farmer.

Then, if you have more money to buy and merge land, to get a dozen or even several dozen acres of land, you can promote yourself to a “landlord”.

That’s what Chasing Wind did.

Then he discovered a problem: if you rent these farmlands to NPCs for cultivation, they can only grow the simplest low-level crops.

Gourds can only yield the lowest quality, grains can only be brewed into ordinary recovery alcohol that recovers 5% of blood, medicinal herbs can’t be sold for much, high-end pharmacies even unwilling to accept them.

That is to say, if you want to turn a large piece of farmland into high-value land, you must cultivate it yourself or find other players to do it.

The problem is: who would be interested in farming for others in a game?

This is not the real ancient times where ordinary people have no land to cultivate.

In “Chang’an”, buying a piece of your own land is not difficult – the price of land is much cheaper than buying a house in Chang’an City.

At least in the virtual world, simple farmland is not worth money.

It’s the laborious sweat of cultivating on it that’s valuable.

What about hiring someone to help cultivate?

It’s better to directly spend money to buy raw materials…

it’s more cost-effective and saves time.

Plus, there are very few people offering such a “grinding” service – helping people fight monsters is different from helping people farm.

Farming in a virtual world is not like farming on a game console.

It’s not about simply clicking on the screen to plant seeds.

You actually need to loosen the soil, sow seeds, water, and kill pests.

A small piece of land is quite fun to experience, but when it becomes large patches of land, it’s actual physical labor.

Chasing Wind looked at large patches of uncultivated land and was left speechless.

What landlord would personally go farming?

Although he complained about it, for a high-quality gourd, he chose to sow the seeds himself.

*

In contrast, [Forging], as a classic, traditional, and dominant part-time profession, doesn’t have this problem of farming.

Most are busy bustling about in the blacksmith’s shop.

Not to mention the big shots in the Blacksmith Guild, these people are all striving to earn money to set up their own blacksmith shop.

If you want a shop, you have to make money.

If you want to make money, you have to figure out how to forge horse armor.

This is a very popular product at the moment.

It’s easy to get orders, and it’s more lucrative than swords-

– because weapons have durability limits.

If overused, they will “break”.

Therefore, players always carry at least three swords with them.

There is a constant demand, but unless it’s a [Fine Level] weapon or above, it’s not worth too much.

A few more skilled blacksmith big shots are researching the forging of “Silver Swords”.

This stems from two unexpected discoveries:

First, there was a “ghost hunting” mission triggered by Super Tomato at Second Miss Chen’s house, and it turned out that the sword in his hand couldn’t harm the ghost at all.

Even setting the sword on fire didn’t work, so he went to ask a Daoist from the Dongming Temple for help.

The Daoist then presented three swords and asked him: do you want this Copper Coin Sword, or this Silver Sword, or perhaps this Gold Sword?

This question left Super Tomato utterly stunned.

If Cloud Dream is playing a “River God” trope, then he should choose the Copper Coin Sword-this also conforms to his perception of traditional ghost-catching culture.

So he decisively chose the [Gold Sword].

The Daoist nodded and extended his hand towards him.

“Huh?” Super Tomato was dumbstruck.

“What huh?

Pay up!”

“You want money…” Super Tomato thought it was a mission item, and planned to sneak it away to play with it, “How much?”

“10 taels of gold.”

Super Tomato frowned; he couldn’t afford it.

Moreover, this price isn’t right—if that sword is made of pure gold, it would weigh more than 10 taels, but since it’s only being sold for 10 taels, it means that it’s not pure, and it’s even possible that it’s gold-plated.

So he opted for the next best option and bought the Copper Coin Sword and the Silver Sword.

Returning to Chen Mansion, as expected, both of these swords could harm the ghostly creatures.

The second incident was due to the Fox Demon.

Players’ pursuit of the Fox Demon “Little Sister” has never ceased.

Not all of these players wanted to win over the Fox Demon, have intimate interactions with the Fox Demon “Little Sister”, or even fool around with an illusion created by Fox Demon “Little Sister”.

Some hardcore gamers wanted to hire a powerful assistant, some explorers wanted to unravel the background story, some casual players simply found it fun…

Anyway, the Music and Dance Workshop has always been very lively, with a large number of players devising ways to strike up conversations, chat, give gifts, trigger missions…

And of course, this sycophantic behavior has been rewarded in-game:

Successively, some players have received missions from her and have also obtained some rewards with special effects.

The [Silver Sword] was one of them.

Not only could it be used to combat ghostly creatures and slash various demons, but it was also more effective than ordinary steel swords!

After that, a lot of blacksmiths began studying the ancient [Fire Plating] technique and started manufacturing silver swords—this thing also had durability and was considered a high-grade consumable.

Also, in the [Echo Instance], all types of ghost monsters often appear.

The hardcore gamers have a high demand for silver swords.

*

Below instances and part-time jobs, the most popular gameplay is undoubtedly [Horse Racing].

Although it isn’t hotly discussed online, it is extremely popular in the actual game.

Many players don’t even think about leveling up their weapons or protective gear; all their money is invested in raising horses and horse racing.

Some tycoons even raise more than ten horses each, having to rent a stable to house them.

The racetrack is like a park in the metropolis.

It’s a natural public area.

As soon as you enter here, all weapons are automatically put into the Weapon Storage Box—even those players without a Weapon Storage Box are given a temporary one by Cloud Dream to store their weapons.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that the racetrack is entirely peaceful.

If the jockey performs too poorly, causing too many people to lose money, they might risk the audience rushing in to teach them a lesson with their fists!

This isn’t the fault of the players for not having gambling integrity because many times, the NPC audience even rushes in front of them.

Led by the crowd and affected by the frenzied atmosphere, combined with the fact they lost money, it’s hard for players not to get worked up…

Of course, in instances where English, German, and Russian players make up the majority, NPCs rarely outrun them.

Sometimes even before the race results are out, the English, German, and Russian players on the stands come together swinging their fists…

Horse racing in the field, fighting outside, it’s as lively as New Year’s Day.