Chapter 304.1: We Can Only Come Online When We're Full

[Frost Snow, the Traveling Merchants Association's Front Desk:

Recently, the trading price of copper ore in Red River Town has fluctuated sharply. Affected by the increase in supply, the reserves of copper and sulfur in the New Alliance are close to the upper limit of the reserve. Its benchmark purchase price is now lowered by 10%, and its benchmark sale price is also reduced by 6%. For traveling merchant players, please note the risks involved.

]

[Charlie, President of the Traveling Merchants Association:

Warm reminder, the Traveling Merchants Association provides hireable NPCs with trading level 3 or higher, which can help you get better prices in deals. If you do not have enough confidence in your negotiation and language skills, it is recommended that players hire 1 to 2 NPC followers.

]

[

The NPC followers with VM will be your good helpers during the journey. Some of them are good at fighting, some are good at hunting or medical treatment, and their abilities can grow together with you during the journey. However, serious injury or death will cause them to leave the team permanently, so please make sure to protect their safety!

]

The official forum was still as lively as ever.

The first batch of caravans to Red River Town has returned one after another. Thanks to the strategy written by Escaping Mole, the players who dared to trade with Red River Town made a lot of money.

Due to the early completion of the trade, they only found out about the price fluctuations of the ores after they turned the returned goods into silver coins.

Tail: Huh? The price of copper ores has increased?

Sisi: Emmm... It seems that it has nothing to do with us. When you guys were discussing the price increase, we were already on our way back.

In fact, she had more or less expected that this might happen, so she kept urging Tail to hit the road quickly; although in the end she was still delayed for some time because of the team name.

Fortunately, they arrived at the right time and completed the shipping just before the price of copper rose. The price only rose when they woke up the next day.

Thinking about it now, Sisi couldn't help but feel happy.

Luckily, she insisted on spot settlement at that time. If she had been given tickets back then, or had waited until the next day for settlement, it would've caused the profit for the trip to Red River Town this time to drop at least 10 to 20%

Makka Pakka: Come clean now! How much did you earn!

Tail: It's not too much, it's only a couple hundred thousand. Mhm, it's a big step forward to the dream of setting up a mercenary guild! (Satisfied)

As soon as this reply came out, the post was flooded with comments instantly.

Silver's Father: Holy smoke...

Quit Smoking: A couple hundred thousand?! Are you talking about real money or silver coins?!

Sisi: Ahem... Tail is talking nonsense, please don't believe it.

Sideline Slacking: I actually find it hard to tell which one is lying.

Escaping Mole: Wait, where did Tail get so many silver coins!?

Tail: Ehe, this is a girl's secret! (ゝω·)☆

Escaping Mole: Ehe my ass! Just tell me already! (Crazy)

Eye Owe Money: I'm afraid there must be some kind of shady deal behind this!

Quit Bullshit: Shady deal?! How shady?

Makka Pakka: Tell everyone! Tail is no longer pure!

Lost Newbie: Wuwuwu, sugar mummy, I'm hungry, I don't mind it!

Tail: ?!Σ(ﾟДﾟ;)

In the end, still, no one was able to figure out where Tail got so many silver coins.

After all, no matter how they look at it, the woman was just an ordinary netizen, and she didn't look like someone who was rich in real life.

Sisi, Sesame Paste, and Roshan knew the truth, but they didn't disclose it. And Tail herself slipped away from the post quietly after being educated by her bestie through private chat.

Compared to the first group of traveling merchant players, the second group of players was not so lucky.

When many people came to Red River Town, the price of copper had already started to go on a roller coaster. It was just a one-day difference, but some people spent more than 1,000 blue tickets for a ton of copper.

But there were also people who were very lucky to arrive just in time for the crazy dumping of copper ores by major mining areas.

As of a few hours before the announcement on the official website, except for the trading post in Horseshoe Town, players could almost buy copper ores from all trading posts at a price that was almost the same as the price of cabbages.

Investment needed to be cautious, many fledgling rookies had been taught a valuable lesson by NPC.

Wasteland Online's economic system was not just about buying low and selling high. Especially when the copper price suddenly fell later, many people felt that there was an invisible hand behind all of this.

Escaping Mole: Actually, I have always suspected that someone had already started hoarding before the expansion was launched. I knew that if there was a war, the price of copper ore and sulfur would definitely increase.

Lightning Professor: Then why didn't you buy some, buddy? (Grin)

Escaping Mole: Sigh, I would like to. But this kind of business can't be done without tens of millions.

The price of copper was almost 10 times that of iron, and this thing was more suitable for processing into bullets than steel, so it was rather difficult to find in the wasteland.

The market price for making a set of 100 kilograms pure steel breastplate was 100 silver coins, but if it was pure copper, it would cost 1,000 silver coins... Although no one would use copper to make armor.

Based on that, 1 ton of copper would cost 10,000 silver coins.

And the NPC warehouse reserves would always start from 100 tons; it was even said that it had already reached thousands of tons.

If this was true, it would mean that there were at least 10,000,000 silver coins worth of goods in the NPC warehouse!

Even the sum of silver coins in the pockets of all players on the server was less than that!

This game had a loan function, but players could only apply for a loan for production and business purposes in the name of a business. Once it was determined that the use of funds violated regulations, or there was a suspected transfer of interests in the accounts, the player and their business would be punished to bankruptcy in minutes.

Unprofessional Retort: Oh damn. So you think the price of copper was raised by NPCs?

Irene: The NPCs in this game are really incredible. They even know how to scam players. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Although the fluctuation of the trading price of copper ore was only a small episode on the eve of the expansion, stories of players making a big fortune really made many people envious.

Especially since there was an official silver coin consignment platform, in which not only players could participate in the transaction, but even cloud gamers could participate as well.

Ye Wei, who was sitting in the classroom playing with his mobile phone, had a helpless expression on his face as he watched the posts in the general chat section predicting whether the silver price of the new expansion would rise or fall.

The main reason was that the topics these people were talking about were getting more and more complicated, and he couldn't understand them a bit.

Aren't you tired of discussing this on the forum every day?

Lightning Professor: You don't understand! This is also a kind of fun! (Proud)

Ye Wei: ...

This guy.

He's completely unaware that he is being played by Light.

Ye Wei even heard that there was a cloud gamer named Warrior Worker who had 10,000 silver coins in their account before they even entered the game.

However, what made this guy smarter than other cloud gamers was that he had completely utilized the rule that any form of virtual assets can participate in transactions.

He contacted players qualified for testing through the trading platform to register a company for him in the game. Then he paid for the technology himself, asked players qualified for testing to help hold shares, and produced inverters that converted direct current to alternating current in the game, completely treating Wasteland Online as a business simulation game.

𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

Although it was not something with high technical content, it sold surprisingly well and had received quite many orders from many downstream manufacturers.

The official website recognized the right to freely dispose of unbound assets in the game. Although most people couldn't enter the game, their legitimate rights and interests in the game could be guaranteed.

As long as one didn't take advantage of the loopholes in the rules to maliciously farm silver coins, everything would be alright.

Ye Wei had thought about it carefully. Although Light often made empty promises to them, he actually treated the players very well.

Other game companies treated players as cash cows, but only their brother Light treated players as brothers. Not only had he never exploited them, but he even developed a function to help them make money.

When he thought about it, Ye Wei was almost moved to tears.

Such a game company was simply too kind!

...

"Ah Choo!" Chu Guang sneezed all of a sudden.

"Caught a cold?" Xia Yan, who was standing aside, glanced at him.

"No. Maybe someone secretly praised me for being handsome." Chu Guang rubbed his nose and muttered.

It's probably pollen.

Xia Yan rolled her eyes at him. Realizing that it was not a cold, she no longer cared about it.

Today was the first weekend of April and her first day off for the month.

As the number of players gradually increased, the work of the weapon shop became more and more busy. A certain black-hearted boss finally succumbed to his conscience and arranged for a few more people to help, and she finally got a day off every week.

There was no need for her to go to work, and she could be very openly lazy.

In this rare leisure day, Xia Yan originally planned to spend the day reading novels on the sofa in the reading room. However, the ultimate scammer managed to lure her out with a single sentence. “Follow me, there’s a treasure I want to show you.”

To her surprise, Chu Guang was very low-key this time. He actually went out without wearing his iconic blue exoframe, not even his blue coat.

Xia Yan was quite embarrassed at first, thinking about what kind of treasure he was planning to show her in the wilderness without wearing his iconic clothes. When she arrived at the destination, she was stupified.

Next to the refugee village stood a tall red brick mill, and behind the muddy ridge not far away, there were endless emerald green crops swaying in the wind.

The nearby residents were busy working in the fields. Beside them were two-headed oxen with sturdy limbs and round waists, and several chugging tractors that were running on the road, pulling the cargo boxes full of bulging sacks.

That was north of Dawn City, the west side of Longevity Town.

The scenery was not bad, but...

This was the treasure he wanted to show her?

Xia Yan blinked, her expression a bit confused.

All right.

She admitted that this endless farmland was indeed quite spectacular to look at. However, it was just a bit different from the tryst she imagined.

She had thought that this guy would take her for a walk by the lake, or go hunting for bird eggs in the woods.