Chapter 119.1: Alpha 0.61, Major Adjustment in Play Styles

On the way back from the abandoned department store, the four members of the Bull and Horse Squad were so ecstatic that they even felt the wind blowing on their faces was sweet.

The sun was setting in the west.

When Ample Time and his party dragged a wagon full of supplies and appeared at the north gate of the outpost, almost all the players' eyes widened in shock.

"What the hell?!"

"Bro?!"

"Are you guys cheating?"

"Developers, I'm begging you! You guys really need to nerf them! If you don't nerf them, the balance of this game will be completely broken!"

A wagon full of loot!

And it was all good stuff that was visible to the naked eye!

That was too ridiculous!

The two siblings, Autumn Weed and Autumn Leaves, who were sitting behind their stall, were attracted by the noise the players were working and looked over. Especially the younger sister. She craned her neck forward curiously, trying to see what was inside the wagon.

But just as she was about to stand up, her older sister reached out and pulled her back.

Autumn Weed shook her head and stroked her younger sister's head. "Don't peek, it's not polite."

Autumn Leaves pouted in grievance and lowered her head. "Okay."

However, she was still curious.

Although she couldn't understand what those blue coats were talking about, and she couldn't see what was on the wagon, she could tell that those people were very excited.

Could it be...

Was a baby born?

...

The players were extremely envious, and kept shouting that it was unreasonable. Many people even shouted together, hoping to get the developers’ attention.

Hearing someone calling for an intervention, Night Ten couldn't stay calm anymore. With Light's character, he felt that the sneaky bastard lurker was observing them secretly! So he would definitely hear it.

Without hesitation, he immediately yelled in response, "Nerf my ass! Do you know how hard it was for me to clear the dungeon? Two Creepers! One came from the front and one behind! There were hundreds of Crunchers! Do you know how I wiped them out? I even broke two fucking blades!"

Seeing that Night Ten was bragging about his achievement again, Ample Time couldn't help covering his forehead.

Old White on the other hand didn't talk nonsense. He just directly grabbed Night Ten's collar, and took him away like he was picking up a little chick.

"What the fuck?! Put me down, I haven't finished yet!"

"Just shut up!"

"Yeah! Shut up!"

Gale and Ample Time pulled a wagon full of loot together, went through the north gate and headed towards the NPC's warehouse.

If these newbies knew that this wagon full of loot was just the tip of the iceberg in the dungeon, who knew how they would feel?

As for how much the batch of materials in the wagon would be worth...

It couldn't be summarised in just one sentence.

These materials were worth so much that the warehouse manager had to seek help from his superior. However, his superior, Luca, was equally at a loss for what to do when facing the materials in the wagon and could only report to his boss, the administrator.

"... Sir, I really don't know how to set the prices for those materials. I can only trouble you to make the decision." Standing in front of Chu Guang nervously, Luca lowered his head as if he had made a mistake.

Without answering him, Chu Guang walked straight to the wagon and glanced inside, his brows suddenly twitched.

Holy shit!

Those players hit the jackpot!

Looking back at the four excited little players, Chu Guang nodded approvingly. "Your performance exceeded my expectations... To be honest, I didn't expect you to bring back so many things."

Seeing the expression on the administrator's face, the players were even more excited.

We're getting rich! We're getting rich!

Ample Time stood upright and said respectfully, "Respected administrator, it is my honor to be able to contribute to the great cause of rebuilding civilization!"

Night Ten also echoed. "That's right, it's our honor!"

"I'm glad that you can think so, but meting out the proper reward and punishment is also an important segment for rebuilding civilization. The rewards that should be given to you will be distributed. I shall make the appropriate calculations," Chu Guang glanced at the wagon and continued, "It will take some time to count these materials. I will give you an appropriate amount, including the settlement of other resources you found in the dungeon before midnight...."

Chu Guang had used a drone to observe their gameplay before. He had also collected their chat recordings stored in their VMs, so he knew clearly what they were doing there.

The four players did not harbor the slightest suspicion about how the administrator knew about it. After all, was it strange that an NPC knew the whereabouts of the players?

It wasn’t strange at all!

After all, the administrator could even kick people out of the game.

However, when they heard the administrator refer to the shelter they found under the department store as a Dungeon, they showed excited expressions.

Dungeon!

Sure enough, they cleared a hidden dungeon!

Although the dungeon in this game could only be raided once...

"We are not in a hurry. You can take your time." Ample Time said respectfully.

After leaving the wagon beside the warehouse, Ample Time and his party carried Irene to the morgue, then took the elevator back to the shelter, ready to log out of the game.

Chu Guang left the task of counting the loot to Little Seven, and then instructed Luca to issue a mission to recruit some strength type and constitution type players to drag back the supplies under the department store.

"... The map has been updated in your VM. If you can't find the way, turn on automatic pathfinding."

"Remember, when you get to the place, take everything you can take away and bring them back to me!"

"Don’t even leave a screw behind!"

After explaining the requirement, Chu Guang stood on the elevator and returned to the shelter. He turned on the computer and started editing the Alpha 0.61 update announcement.

That's right, he didn’t update it to version 0.7. Instead, he kept it as version 0.61.

The update was only a supplement to version 0.6.

As for why the sudden update?

In fact, it was not entirely because of the dungeon reward settlement issue of the Bull and Horse Squad. A large part of the reason was that there was a problem with Mole's team.

Speaking about the Bull and Horse Squad first...

It could be said that the battle in the abandoned department store was very successful.

The players could wipe out the mutants in the underground garage and come back with a wagon full of materials without needing Chu Guang to worry about anything.

Those materials were very high-quality industrial raw materials!

Especially those high-quality metals such as chromium ingots, tungsten ingots, and the rest. There were at least hundreds of kilograms of them in the wagon. At present, if Chu Guang wanted to get these materials, he would have to import them from Red River Town, but even if he used his ass to think, he knew that it wouldn’t be cheap.

As for precious metals such as gold and silver... They were conductors with excellent performance, and they were essential for making precision instruments.

Not to mention those non-metallic consumables and chemicals, they were all valuable things.

But the crux of the question was, how was he supposed to calculate the reward?

If those materials were sold to the NPC warehouse, his players would definitely suffer a huge loss. Many of those materials had no corresponding order, and could only be recycled as garbage.

To maximize the profit, he could only drag them to the market at the north gate and sell them slowly. But that way, he may not be able to sell all of them until next month.

After all, there weren’t that many Lifestyle Profession players who could use these materials.

The most optimal solution was to directly price them and buy out all of the materials dropped by the dungeon in the form of reward settlement.

It was equivalent to bulk commodity wholesale.

That was actually not that difficult to do. Anyway, for Chu Guang, distributing money to players was just to move silver coins from one pocket to another.

Now that he had a banking system, even the step of moving money from one pocket to another was removed.

So the reward settlement was just a minor issue.

What the Alpha 0.61 version really needed to solve was the imbalance of the dungeon gameplay and the problems with the distribution mechanism!

This problem did not appear on the Bull and Horse Squad side, but it was pretty serious when it came to Escaping Mole’s team in the greenhouse ruins.

The dungeon of Wasteland Online was different from that of the traditional MMORPG, and strictly speaking, it could not even be regarded as one.

First of all, the dungeon of Wasteland Online would not refresh after it was cleared.

Secondly, the number of monsters in the dungeon and the difficulty of the dungeon would not increase with the progress of the raid, but in many cases, it would decrease with the progress of the raid.

That may be in line with the logic of reality, but not the logic of games.

After all, orthodox RPG games would give players time to level up, and put the most difficult boss at the end of the dungeon.

However, in Wasteland Online, the most difficult level was probably the first line of defense. After breaking the first line of defense, the rest would mainly be to harvest their loot.

This mechanism determined that whoever raided dungeons first would suffer the greatest losses and receive the least benefits. They might even lose their lives and all their equipment without getting anything in return.

Obviously, Ample Time knew about this in advance. So after discovering the good things in the dungeon, he didn't announce it on the forum at all. He simply didn’t want other players to take advantage of the glitch and profit off their hard work...