While others were busy preparing for the incoming assault of the Demon Army, Jin and Kiyu had been producing promotional materials for the cultivators to join in. Jin usually didn’t disturb the creative process of Kiyu, but this time he had been forced to step in because she had asked him to help out… as a Panda Mascot.
The Vixen of Seductive Advertising stood behind the camera to take pictures and videos of the new Dungeon Fortress City. She had cunningly decided for Jin to act as the ‘hero’ of their advertisement. Obviously, not as himself but as a PandaMan wearing army slacks and holding a gun while randomly shooting at Moloch’s minotaurs who acted as the baddies for the videos.
It was a fun shoot for Kiyu, but a damningly stressful activity for Jin. He had never expected Kiyu to be so strict. At the slightest extra movement or slip of the tongue, she had yelled ‘CUT’ and forced a reshoot.
The cosplaying minotaurs were already used to her demands and told Jin to buckle up. It took no more than two hours before it could go to editing, but it felt like 2 draining days of retakes until Director Kiyu was satisfied with her final product. However, to be fair, she was not just stern to them but held herself to the same standard, and the results spoke for themselves.
When Jin had watched her previous videos, he had seen how cheerful and happy she had been acting during the whole advertisement. It had looked so easy and natural… until he realised how much practice shots she must have diligently taken to reach that sort of ‘fake’ natural happiness.
To get perfect shots did not just require talent but also effort and a little bit of luck. At that point, Jin had considered if he should perhaps take a few shots or even clips of Kiyu hard at work as part of a ‘behind the scenes’ kind of video he hoped to make in the future.
After his work was done, Jin decided to post some snippets of the advertising video in a new forum post. Being an ‘admin’ on the Pandamonium forum as well as the ‘developer’ of the Dungeons and Panda, Jin’s posts always caught much attention in a short amount of time.
The post informed the masses that a one-time special raid would be running on Saturday and there would be no repeats for that particular raid. Thus those who participated would be earning the rewards Qiu Yue had painstakingly prepared as well as a few unique stuff from Jin’s creation.
Since the squad function was not fully ready, Jin had to create a few special items such as limited cosmetic inscriptions and even a set of promotional cosmetic weapons. (Let’s not forget about the plushies. Those plushies sell so well, Jin would not be letting go of them easily.)
He told everyone that a sign-up application form would be placed in the forum post as well as in Pandamonium’s app main page’s noticeboard. (Which was later linked to the forum post.)
Jin described the raid as realistic as he could and revealed the true hard facts about why the raid would happen. Those people who were reading it naturally assumed that all of it was just the raid’s lore and some even complained that Jin used such a cliché.
However, most were not really concerned with the lore. The famed gameplay of Dungeon and Pandas with its realism and the fighting scale has always been the real reason cultivators loved the shop and repeatedly visited for the experience.
Jin promised that this would just be the first of many massive defence raids he planned to conduct. He even stated that the attendance of the cultivators would be used to judge how the dungeon supplier would proceed for these events in the future.
Some thought that it was nothing new until they read that cultivators would be assigned into teams such as frontline fighters or backend support when they were filling up the registration form. And the readers viewed that this might be more than just a simple raid story since Jin had prepared to separate the cultivators into different roles.
Jin clarified in further posts that though the Pandamonium App had data on each of the cultivator’s way of playing the dungeons and recommended certain positions to the cultivators, they did not have to stick to such recommendation strictly. His customers could choose what kind of gameplay they would serve to play in for the subsequent raid.
What’s more, there might be a mock raid that would simulate the actual raid’s plan if garnered enough attention or participants, but Jin heavily emphasised that the computer’s algorithm was very likely to change in the real scenario and things might not go have to deviate from the plan. While losing was not an option, heavy losses are expected on their side.
Unlike previous raids, this particular Demon Army Defence Raid had a rather expensive price tag pegged to it. It was set at 50 Yuan, 80 Yuan and 150 Yuan respectively.
50 Yuan was the most basic tier which gave the cultivators 3 chances of reviving. What this meant was that even if they were killed in the raid, they would be teleported to an express clinic where top Panda Nurses would examine if the user had any major complications.
If there were none, they could be teleported back into the raid at a ‘relatively’ safe location to continue the battle. However, the rewards they could choose would be capped to the bronze tier which Qiu Yue had introduced.
For 80 Yuan or the Silver Tier, the customer would be able to access a price from either bronze or silver tier. Six revival chances as well as a T-Shirt to commemorate the first-ever Demon Army Defence Raid. (Subsequent tickets would not reward the shirt again.) As for the highest tier, the gold tier price ticket allowed them to redeem any possible price, the t-shirt as well as a permanent limited cosmetic item for their pet.
Under the explanation, Jin wrote a big disclaimer that the ticket tier decided the rewards for that particular run. So, for example, if one bought the gold tier ticket first, all points would be tallied until the cultivator ran out of revivals and they would have to redeem a price from any tier with that amount of points.
But should they wish to continue and buy only a bronze tier ticket on their next try, the silver and gold tiers would be locked out. Needless to say, those bronze, silver and gold reward tier had a ladder of rewards to them, and until they reached the top of every tier, there should be no qualms to the type of rewards being given out.
A few customers scrutinised the reward tier lists hard and indicated that there was a big discrepancy for certain levels of rewards. Still, Jin iterated that due to the new technology he used for this special raid dungeon, the ticket prices were rather fair.
The reward list itself was enough to make everyone talk for hours. This wasn’t limited to the Pandamonium App as people started talking about it on their socials and #DemonArmyDefenceRaid became one of the most trending hashtags of the day.
