บท 31: Chapter 31 Instance Construction
บรรณาธิการ: EndlessFantasy Translation
The Fairy Merchant NPC had finally been edited by Jiang Qiao, his purpose being to allow players to use magic stones to exchange for fashion items.
This merchant and his siblings would be accompanying the players for a long time, as every time an Otherworld instance appeared, he would show up to let players use the items they obtained from the Otherworld to exchange for fashion or mounts.
After placing a disassembly machine next to the Enforcement Master, Jiang Qiao made some minor tweaks to the player system, such as displaying not only the records on the stone tablet but also on the player's system interface.
These tweaks were all made to optimize the player's instance experience. After making all these minor and major adjustments, Jiang Qiao opened the portal and returned to the Astrology Tower, ready to officially announce the existence of this new instance to the players.
"Where should the instance entrance go?" Jiang Qiao opened the game's large map of Holy Spirit.
Currently, Holy Spirit only had one continent with four cities, surrounded by the endless sea that players could never reach the end of.
The four cities centered around Lionheart City, with monsters ranging from level 1 to 20 surrounding it, and a level 20 instance. Higher up was Eagle Claw City, where the monsters ranged from level 20 to 30 and there were four instances. Further down from Eagle Claw City were Wolf Heart City and Frost Deer City, with a total of eight instances.
Following the same level pattern, Frost Deer City's frost-themed map was the endpoint for players in this version, with level 50 monsters and four level 50 instances.
There were also dozens of small villages and towns scattered around the map, which Jiang Qiao did not list out.
There was plenty to explore in Holy Spirit, with just the job change system and various hidden quests enough to keep players busy for half a year. But Jiang Qiao still needed to continually update the versions.
This update was for the new instance, the Tower of Trial.
"The entrance should be at the Lionheart City harbor." Jiang Qiao swiped the large map of the game, settling on the harbor area of Lionheart City, which was a leveling area for levels 15 to 20, while the Tower of Trial was an instance challengeable from levels 25 to 50.
Jiang Qiao decided to place the entrance of the Plane Fragment at the harbor. As he said this, a miniature tower appeared in his hand. He placed the miniature tower, like playing chess, on the coast near the Lionheart City harbor.
After placing it, he obsessively adjusted its position, even taking out a ruler to ensure the Tower of Trial was perfectly aligned with the lighthouse of Lionheart City, before finally touching the tower with his fingertip.
The gray-white statue of the tower quickly gained color under Jiang Qiao's touch, and at the same time, Jiang Qiao felt a slight tremor across the Astrology Platform.
Jiang Qiao quickly walked out of the Astrology Platform, looking toward the harbor. In the distant harbor's horizon, a towering pure white tower emerged above the sea level, accompanied by the waves and ground tremors.
"All set. There's no limit on the number of attempts for this instance. The first floor's challenge level is 25 to 35, the second floor is 35 to 40, and so on. Now it's up to the players to test it out."
The first person Jiang Qiao thought of was Zhao Mingwei. It was the afternoon, and Zhao Mingwei and the others only logged in at night. So Jiang Qiao decided to send a private message to Zhao Mingwei.
Originally, Jiang Qiao planned to ask, 'Do you want to run the instance tonight?' but after thinking it over, he changed it to, 'I'm planning to start a guild. Want to join?'
There were already three guilds in Holy Spirit, but none were large. Jiang Qiao had always wanted to try starting a guild, not for dominating the leaderboards, but simply to gather friends to play together.
In a previous game, Jiang Qiao did establish a guild, but not many people joined. After Jiang Qiao played less often, the few contacts in the guild slowly went AFK.
Jiang Qiao was not a lone player and understood well that online games were truly fun when played with friends.
'Sure, I'll join when I log in.' Zhao Mingwei quickly replied to Jiang Qiao.
This reply came through the Holy Spirit app, which allowed direct responses to friend messages.
Seeing the reply, Jiang Qiao walked to the edge of the Astrology Tower, looking toward the harbor. Some players had already noticed the new instance portal that appeared at the harbor.
The Tower of Trial instance was designed as a guild team instance because most of the gear drops are guild and manor relics.
Solo players who didn't want to join a guild could still place the relics in their manor, achieving the same effect.
To quickly increase the server capacity, Jiang Qiao decided not to limit the number of attempts for the Tower of Trial, unlike regular instances, which were limited to five runs per day. Regular instances offered gear and experience bonuses, while the Tower of Trial did not. It was essentially similar to grinding monsters in the wilderness.
However, the Tower of Trial had a mechanism for clearing record rewards, making it a place where players could showcase their skills and strength.
Taking advantage of this time, Jiang Qiao monitored the players' gameplay in the Tower of Trial while in a hidden GM state.
Within the first hour, not many players entered the Tower of Trial. Most Holy Spirit players were stuck at the level 25 threshold, with the highest player on the leaderboard already reaching level 32.
There were three instances for levels 25 to 30, each taking about half an hour to an hour to complete. Most players were busy grinding these world instances, while the ones who noticed the new tower were mostly newcomers in the main city of Lionheart.
But the first batch of players to challenge the Tower of Trial had already appeared, led by the streamer, Stranger Swordmaster, with whom Jiang Qiao had previously interacted.
He seemed to have no real-life friends in Holy Spirit, spending over ten minutes at the Tower of Trial entrance trying to form a reluctant four-member team before entering the first floor.
The challenge of the first floor of the Tower of Trial turned out to be harder than Jiang Qiao expected. Only Stranger Swordmaster had passable skills among the four, evident by his deactivating Holy Spirit's combat assistance and genuinely using his sword movements to cast skills, while the other five players simply spammed hotkeys.
Manual skill execution and quick casting each had their advantages. They struggled, stopping frequently, and finally cleared the first floor in an hour and twenty-four minutes.
After they cleared it, Jiang Qiao saw an increase of about thirteen players over the server capacity.
As soon as Stranger Swordmaster exited the Tower of Trial, he received a system prompt.
'Your clearing record ranks 43rd among all challengers.'
"We did that poorly and still made the leaderboard?"
Stranger Swordmaster was shocked by the prompt. His randomly assembled team was quite unreliable, lacking a healer, and they barely defeated the final boss.
Regular instances also had leaderboard settings, but only the top ten player teams were displayed.
"The instance records are here. Wait, they're all NPC records?"
The Elemental Mage in the team, following the system prompt, arrived at the first stone tablet, and it displayed only a bunch of western-style names.
Such proper names didn't seem like ones players would choose.
"We broke a system preset record and ranked last? That feels embarrassing," said a Gun Knight in the team.
The reason they felt embarrassed was that system preset records in the game were usually very easy to break, akin to beginner-level challenges.
"This instance has a maximum of six players. There are rewards for refreshing instance records. Does anyone have any friends who are level 25 and online? Quickly invite them, or should I form another group?"
Stranger Swordmaster noticed another team entering the Tower of Trial, knowing that to claim the instance record rewards, they had to be quick. Once players shattered all the NPC records, a bunch of speedrunners would enter the tower, making the record rewards much harder to obtain.
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