Chapter 69 Intermission 16

After the four weirdos left, Feng Bujue continued to stroll through the market. The items in the official shops were similar to what he had expected; they were mainly featuring various consumables and apparel.

Speaking of apparel, there was some good stuff. Other than providing a personalized appearance to the players and not taking up inventory spot, they also came with additional attributes. Due to Thriller Paradise's less than transparent treatment of character ability data, without the support of actual numeral data, most of the explanations for these additional attributes could be boiled down to 'slightly increase overall Life Points', 'slightly increase the accuracy of guns', 'slightly increase the height of jumping', and so on.

The type of apparel could be mainly separated into upper body, pants, costume, hats, shoes, and accessories. The game did not allow the use of dresses due to obvious reason, but players could purchase socks under the accessories category, and there were some girly and lacy ones. If a female player seriously intended to show their legs, they could wear the socks with shorts.

Every apparel on the player's body could 'slightly' increase a certain character attribute. If one had a whole set of apparel, it would naturally contribute to a bigger increase than isolated pieces of apparel. To prevent dissatisfaction where players had to settle with apparel that they did not like but came with an attribute that they needed, all the additional attributes was selectable. For example, if a player bought a beret, but when he made the purchase, the apparel itself would not come with any attribute bonus, once the item entered the player's inventory, the player would be given the chance to pick between three randomly-generated attribute bonuses.

Apparel was something that could not be traded. If the player was insistent on one particular attribute, the only method was to purchase the apparel again and again. Of course, the chance of that happening was low because most of the bonuses would be useful, and there were three options each time.

In conclusion, Thriller Paradise encouraged the players to select their apparel based on their own preferences.

The choice of randomized selection was a step in this direction. Under this premise, the chance of players wearing the same apparel would be generally low. Even if two players had the same taste and wore the same apparel, they might have different bonus attributes.

As for consumables, the most commonly-needed was the Life Points Recovery Potion, Stamina Points Recovery Potion, Bandages to stop bleeding, All-Purpose Antidote, and an Ointment to neutralize paralysis, burning, diseased, and frostbite statuses. Other than that, there were items like ammo, ropes, arrows, batteries, and explosives. There were many types of consumables. For health potions alone, there were large, medium, and small. They recovered a different percentage of Life Points and thus were priced differently. Based on their amount of stock, other items had specific price tags as well, and they were so specific that there was a price for one inch of bandage and a single bullet.

Finally, the official shops also sold equipment, but since this was not the Thriller Box, the equipment sold was normal quality or worse. It was equipment without special effects. Even a player who had just completed the tutorial, even if they were level one, with just general ability mastery level F and no other mastery unlocked, they could have found usable equipment at the official shop. Yes, it was weak, but it was better than going bare handed.

Therefore, players who could not find any equipment in-game could solve that problem with money. No matter their character level and mastery level, they could always find a set of normal quality equipment at the official shop.

Feng Bujue skimmed through the content of the shops and did not pay much attention to the consumables. After all, he did not need to know too much about the many types of potions and bullets, just the ones that he might have use for.

He did consider purchasing apparel, but their asking price was quite high, and the price of the apparel seemed to be decided depending on their rarity. For example, a Panda Costume was sold for 300,000 Game Coins. The fact that this costume had the same randomized bonus attributes as common apparel that would cost 30,000 Game Coins aside, could you imagine how restrictive one's mobility would be wearing such an unwieldy costume? Or did Dream Inc. think that entering a scenario in the appearance of a mascot would help lower the terrifying atmosphere and thus decided to hike up the costume's price?

At this point, it is pertinent to talk about the economy. When the open beta started, Dream Inc. suddenly announced that the game would not be a second currency. Other than the fact that the two items sold at the Thriller Box, namely Special Equipment and Game Coins, could be purchased with Skill Points, everything else could only be purchased with Game Coins, and Dream Inc. would provide services to exchange RMB for Game Coins.

This was common practice, but Dream Inc. also came out with a very surprising policy. The exchange rate for Thriller Paradise's Game Coins and RMB would often change. The exchange rate would move according to the market situation. Therefore, the trader market aimed by the gold farmers was thus destroyed in one move by the game company.

The exchange rate would be updated at 8 am every Monday. For example, one RMB might be able to purchase one hundred Game Coins one week, but the next week, the same amount of RMB might be able to purchase one hundred and twenty or only eighty-five Game Coins.

For a higher income, naturally, the higher the exchange rate, the bigger the profit margin for Dream Inc. The best would be if one hundred RMB could only buy one Game Coin, but that was impossible because it would crash the market. Therefore, the system would be completely computerized. The system would come up with the exchange rate based on the number of players, the Game Coins flowing through the market, and so on.

Even though this kind of method might lead to a 'Coin Hyping' phenomenon offline, that had nothing to do with Dream Inc. After all, the service they provided was unilateral; the company only accepted RMB in exchange for Game Coins based on the current exchange rate. What the players decided to do with their Game Coins was their own prerogative. If the players were able to buy the Game Coins when the exchange rate was 1:10,000 and sell them when the rate was 1:100, then that was their skill as well.

In any case, reality proved that it was very hard to do so. This was because the exchange rate monitored by the system would not have a big difference over the years. They were mostly within the range of 1:2,000 and 1: 3,000. With the exchange rate made public weekly, the whales were too lazy to deal with gold sellers, and clever players would take more into consideration. Whether to buy from these people who provided a slightly better exchange rate than the official party or wait a few days to see if the official company would undersell the gold seller.

Of course, for the current Feng Bujue, since this involved RMB, it was something that he had heard about but would not get himself involved in.

If he wanted to make a purchase, it would have to come from his own hard work. For a level thirteen player, Feng Bujue had accumulated quite a lot of assets. He had 164,300 Game Coins and 843 Skill Points.

At that point, he was suddenly reminded of the bag of garlic that he had just destroyed. It might have been able to fetch some coins on the market, so he was feeling the sting of regret. But upon closer reflection, that kind of item could be found anywhere inside a scenario, and it was not even equipment, so it probably would not be worth much on the market. After all, if those kinds of things were valuable, then most players would not focus on solving the puzzle in-game but turn into hoarders, collecting trash from the scenarios to be sold on the market.

"Hmm… I should go take a look at the Auction House; the outfits sold here are too expensive," Feng Bujue murmured to himself as he turned around and walked toward the information tower.

When he got closer, he realized that, on the four panels, other than the items on sale at the Auction House, there was a specific screen that listed the in-game player ranking.

The four panels respectively had the four cardinal directions printed at the top, probably to help the players tell their direction inside this space.

Feng Bujue came to the eastern side and lifted his head to look. The ranking there was for the player level. Of the first twenty players, two of the players' names were hidden, while the remaining eighteen were openly listed. Each name had a bracket behind their IGN, and inside the bracket was the name of their guild. For most, it was the name of their gaming studio. The moment that the system pushed out the guild system, the studios had jumped on it.

Feng Bujue temporarily had no idea what the benefits and the conditions for forming a guild were. He decided to find out more once he returned to his log-in lobby. Then, he only glanced through the rankings to familiarize himself with the famous players and studios.

Then, Feng Bujue walked over to the southern panel. The ranking there was for 'Combat Ability', and to his surprise, of the eighteen named players that topped the player level ranking, only five were on this ranking.

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