“Using an emergency defence skill and subsequently an area of effect skill to scatter their group into individuals? That is actually one way of doing the side questlines, which I never considered the cultivators could think of.” Jin chuckled to himself as he knew how tough those monsters he created were.
By breaking the Sui Lions up with Panda Guardian’s Quake Technique, it gave the Pandawans a bit more breathing space, allowing them to fight one on one for each of them. This also unintentionally broke one of the hidden trait bonuses that Jin had for the pack of Lions. By splitting the pack apart, they lost a secondary trait which actually empowered their strength by 5%. The trait, Number In Packs, could not be shown on the Pandawan’s visor unless they have a Panda Explorer in their party. It was a mercenary class that focused less on combat monsters but searching for treasures.
However, the Sui Lions themselves were not something easy to be dealt on a one to one basis, but the party currently have two ranged supports that would aid them in their offence too. Archy kept shooting a variety of arrows like stun arrows, sticky arrows and even poison arrows to keep the other Sui Lions at bay while the other melee focused Pandawans fought by releasing their intermediate or advanced techniques.
Yet, the ‘proper’ way to win this particular side quest: ‘Rescue the Kidnapped Villagers of Song Chew’ was to enter the caves and fight them in their respective ‘sections’ within the cave. The first Sui Lion was meant to give a warning to the rest as all of them were sleeping after their afternoon ‘snack’.
Jin tried to create an experience that would allow for a chaotic battle or alternatively a sort of silent gameplay. If the cultivators had managed to sneak past the first Sui Lion, which was very unlikely unless they killed it in time, they would still have to find a way past the enhanced smelling senses of the lion.
And even the wording, ‘in time’ was a difficult thing to achieve as the cultivators had to utilise the environment such as ambushing it from top of the caves and support from ranged cultivators to kill it in one single stroke.
Naturally, Jin had purposely adjusted the data to the Sui Lions that they would be more prone to Beast Slaying inscribed weapons just as how Xia Mao utilised his Dragon Slaying Scimitar against the Dragon Headed Nians. (Which had been named as Sui Dragons).
That way, the cultivators would have an easier time to complete the side quests despite their styles of playing. Jin did, however, rewarded the silent gameplay a little more since it was harder to achieve, and he also knew that the cultivators had a tendency to be impatient and always rush forth. If they managed to kill approximately half of the monsters within a particular side quest line with stealth, they would earn the hidden stealth bonus added to the end of their rewards.
The Pandarens who first failed the dungeon instances noticed that their progress statistic stated the amount of stealth gameplay achieved. They were rewarded with a different sort of currency which showed a Panda with its mouth and head wrapped like a ninja.
When some of the cultivators queried via the Pandamonium support section, on where to redeem the Shadow Panda Medals, the support only stated that the redemption shop was within the Panda Street Instance. Thus, this was the way Jin chose to include the Bamboozled Bar Service Instance into the gameplay.
When found, the Bamboozled Bar Service Instance would require 1 Shadow Panda Medal to go in (or ten Bronze Panda Medals as the current exchange rate). That was also partially the reason why Jin introduced the Bar earlier to Kong Rong so he could talk about it even though it was meant to be an ‘open secret’.
Jin only asked Kong Rong that he wouldn’t talk about the Bamboozled Bar Service Instance for a day, as it would actually change its location every single day and it would not stay in the same spot unless the rotation was done. As its name had suggested, it was meant to bamboozle the cultivators from finding it.
Surely, things within the Bar Service Instance could be bought with the normal Panda Medals because Jin felt it was still too early to lock out certain features within his shop, but the Shadow Panda Medals provided a higher value compared to the normal Panda Medals.
While Jin did emphasise that he did not wish to create too many different currencies, he realised why various games had purposely made different currencies to incentivise and reward players who played differently or challenged themselves further.
For this reason, he had maintained the main currency of Panda Medals while quietly increasing the amount given to the cultivators. With a currency exchange in mind, he could slowly gear his customers towards various challenges and reward them with different types of Panda Medals so that they could still at least attain his future prizes.
In the meantime, Jin was also considering creating a sort of currency exchange with a basic stock market function by utilising said Panda Medals and real-life money. This was one of the ways Jin had thought of allowing people to use their in-game currency to exchange for real money and vice versa.
However, the dungeon supplier believed that the rates would be abysmally low because of supply and demand. The more people exchanged for real money, the more Panda Medals would be infinitely useless to exchange. Nevertheless, it would provide the cultivators with an avenue to earn some cashback, but the main purpose of the currency exchange would be for the medals. People could exchange the main Panda medals currency for other exclusive Panda medals.
Jin wanted his stock market to work to allow customers to have access to exclusive items and medals in the future even if they did not have the time to get it. As long as they had money, they could exchange for the normal Panda Medals in order to get the exclusive Panda Medals as Jin would mandate that the exclusive medals could only be exchanged via the Panda Medals.
For example, if one would like to have a Shadow Panda Medal in the future and had nothing on hand, they could either earn some Panda Medals via the Dungeon Instances to exchange them in the stock market. Else, they could directly exchange for Panda Medals with real cash money and subsequently use that amount of Panda Medals to get the Shadow Panda Medal. In return, Jin would earn more from doing this, and it would also be lowering the market rates slightly for people wanting to exchange Panda Medals into real cash for that period of time.
Yet, in some cases, Jin was also a little afraid of the backlash that could occur since history had already shown how greedy some people were in manipulating the stock market of their world. But no venture, no gain. He had no idea how this stock market feature would play out until he gave it a try. As for now, he was testing the waters by accumulating feedback on the reception of the Shadow Panda Medals first before dishing out the stock market feature.
Who knows? If the stock market works out, Jin could also subsequently introduce it to the other worlds when he provided the Virtual Reality Network. That way, he would not only provide his dungeon supplying services to his own world but to the other worlds and subtly connect different worlds and bring them together. At the very worst, Jin could intervene in the stock market with Claire’s knowledge and get it stabilised.
However, despite all the talk about stealth, Jin did not forsake the chaos and beautiful dungeon play. The System was always monitoring the fights and checked if there were any creative methods that could be utilised and taught to Jin’s monsters.
Since there were many monsters not featured in Jin’s dungeons yet, it was impertinent to keep them training for future fights. While Jin had been lucky to be involved in fights that had up to this point been medieval based, he could not say the same for fights in the Mecha World. (And who knew how often he would have to interfere with such advanced worlds?)
The dungeon supplier was glad that he had allowed Hou Fei and his Royal Snakes to have their ‘training exercise’ as the System took records of their tactics and the way they handled monsters.
This data would be used to show the monsters how modern combat worked. All these recordings had also benefited Jin in mimicking certain moves like how Tanke managed to copy Xiong Da’s Seismic Quake technique.
So for brilliant moves and certain exemplary team tactics which the System never saw before, it will give the players a high Chaos score and rewards them more Panda Medals.
Jin wanted to create one more type of medals to complement the Shadow Panda Medal, which was more in line with the Chaos portion but he guessed holding that thought could be ideal. Only when he felt that the Shadow Panda Medals had been revised and hotfixed, then he would create the next medal type if the customers didn’t mind the first one.
If the Shadow Panda Medals were well received, Jin could also create specific weapon skins that can only be bought with such medals. And if customers could not obtain such medals, that would be where the currency market is as explained.
And if anything, Claire also believed that employing this medal exchange market would be a bold move and gave him some tips on how to maintain it. (The System nearly wanted the Intern to take it over, but Jin prevented the System from doing so until she became a full official member for the team.)
Aside from that, Jin continued to watch how Bu Dong fought with each and every Sui Lions with skill. For the first time, the dungeon supplier noticed that he was not using any fanciful skills and used basic and intermediate techniques to relinquish his foes. Compared to Yue Han, who was trying his best to eliminate the Sui Lions as fast as he could, Bu Dong had been eyeing for weak points instead.
“It seems he has learned to control himself rather than brandishing his high-grade techniques all the time.” Jin thought as he previously had time to review the Pandawan’s performance during the Pandapolis Defence Raid. The records revealed how he nearly lost his life because the young Pandawan had overexerted his chi fighting minions leaving him with barely any chi to fight off the elite mobs.
“System believes that is the whole point of dungeon fighting. If one does not improve himself and learn from his mistakes, Angry Ape Cultivator Bu Dong would be forever stuck in his current grade.”
“But if they improve, doesn’t that mean I have to create even harder dungeons?” Jin moaned.
“That is your problem User.” The System replied with a ‘:p’ emoji, causing Jin to scratch his head and sigh.
