On the day of Christmas Eve, Jin finally revealed what he had been doing. Those around him had been worried, but at the same time, they already suspected that he had to be preparing some grand Christmas event for his customers.
The thing was that he was not doing much for the customers at all. Oh okay, actually he did make a ‘small’ minor event for them. On Christmas Eve, he had released a special dungeon instance that cost 5 Yuan to enter, and it would only be available on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.
It was a group dungeon instance fighting against Evil Santa. There was no story theme dungeon to it but just one major Boss battle. (With a few minions to kill as a warmup fight.)
It was the first of its kind Boss Raid type of instance with Evil Santa using such game like mechanics. His attacks had various but specific patterns which the cultivators would have to figure out. There were even different stages to this fight with him naturally changing forms once hitting a certain threshold.
Not only that, but it was also the first time that the Improved Half Mask would be officially introduced for that particular Boss Raid Instance. Jin needed more mass collection of data after tweaking it based on the individual data collected from the cultivators involved in the Plushie Special Challenge.
So, when they were fighting the Evil Santa, there was a visible HP bar for them to gauge its health, allowing the cultivators to play more aggressive. Not to mention, the System included health bars on each of the cultivators too, and that surprisingly increased the usage of chi regeneration potion more than usual.
Perhaps, with the aid of a meter, the cultivators were more worried about them dying. They could possibly be more conscious about their own well being, and whatever the case it might have been, Jin found this kind of feedback very interesting. “Perhaps, I can manipulate that reliance on health bars in future dungeon instances as well….and the sales of those potions too.”
The Evil Santa Instance was just one of the many Boss Raid instances which Jin planned to create for the future. But right now, he needed to find out how much strain the dimensional instances could take in a small area as compared to a wide area raid instance.
Tentatively, it was designed as an eight cultivator raid, but in the future, he planned to increase the number of raid participants against a boss if he wished included more Dungeon and Boss mechanics.
As for the Evil Santa, his mechanics were not too complicated for the first form. Still, it was just an illusion, baiting the cultivators to use their most potent attacks, only for the Boss to ramp up its stats and attack patterns on the second form.
There was something distinctly different at the start of the second form. The Evil Santa would begin to use specific AOE attacks without any visual gaming cues for the cultivators to warn them. Instead, they had to rely on real visual cues in the surroundings or judge from his expressions etc.
It was way harder at first, but once a group finally figured that it was the visual cues from its expressions, they immediately posted their findings to the Pandamonium forum.
And it was a major hit.
For some reason, Mr Know-It-All hadn’t been around ever since the inception of the Tree Mall, but that did not stop fellow cultivators (his disciples?) from creating a topic on it. Some even suggested that they should create something similar to a Wiki page to facilitate all their findings and Jin agreed to this.
He informed the masses that it would be on his to-do list for January which led to a plethora of likes on his message.
Other than that, the special instance was not without rewards. By defeating the Evil Santa (which no one had managed yet since most were stuck on the hardest second form) Jin would be releasing a cosmetic inscription not just for attire but for their weapons too!
Evil Santa Candy Swords or Candy Axes were the few examples and Jin informed them that those inscriptions would only be possible within his dimensional instances. Although the cultivators could try it in other dungeon supplier’s instances, Jin could not guarantee a proper activation due to the state of his own special technology being used.
Other than that, the cultivators who participated in the Evil Santa Boss Raid would be rewarded a certain amount of Evil Santa Raid Points depending on the stage they were able to clear. For example, if a raid team were massacred by Evil Santa’s second form, they would at least receive 10 Raid Points for defeating the first form.
Aside from that, Jin also purposely introduced specific achievements for that particular Boss Raid instance. For example, the most amount of damage would receive the Best Attacker Achievement for that particular instance run which would allow him to gain 2 extra Raid points. That way, everyone would be able to earn extra points while excelling in what they did best.
Because of the limited availability of the Evil Santa Instances, the diehard fans of the shop did not hesitate to stop by despite the busyness of the Christmas festival. Some praised Jin for keeping his shop open 24 hours even during the holidays, allowing them to enter anytime they desired for a dungeon.
In addition, the low price made it accessible for Students and Elderlies to try, and it was to the point that the Elders and students even manage to discover some Boss mechanics that most adult cultivators would not be able to find. Thus, Jin also made sure that the sharing of information on an open platform would be rewarded accordingly too.
At the same time, the dungeon supplier ensured that the rewards were not so huge that people purposely withheld such information. While understandably, some wished to withhold information in order to aim for the first clear, The System noted that that did not hinder the overall progress of cultivators at all.
And yes, those Raid Points could be redeemed at the Redemption counter store (Baby Pandas had Santa Hats now), and this time Jin intentionally made the rewards more multi purpose. Prizes included vouchers for various sorts such as food, weapons, armour and batches of chi regenerating potions waiting to be redeemed.
That was not all! Especially when special limited mini game parts that were listed too as part of the rewards in order to incite the collector spirit in the cultivators.
There was a limited edition Christmas booster card pack for redemption which had the chance of dropping a rare holographic card that could be used for collection purposes or for battle. Jin purposely put two versions in the same booster pack so that the cultivators could frame it up if they wanted. (Assuming they managed to get it.)
The collector version would not have any battle abilities stored within the card since there was no Pico-chip in it. (A Pico-chip was 100x smaller than a nanochip, and it could not be detected with the mere eye.)
At the same time this lead to him being notified about single incidents with people selling their card for real cash, which made Jin unsure if he should be proud that his products finally had enough popularity for scalpers to exist.
In any case, he was looking forward to his Pandawans or perhaps a new batch of cultivators to clear the Evil Santa Boss Raid Instance.
But if one believed that he had used up all the time holed up to prepare for that event for the cultivators, they were dead wrong. This was because there was an event that was way more important than earning money.
It was none other than a Grand Christmas Feast for all of his minions. (and of course, his bellators too.)
