The katana's initial attack looks decent, but its attack speed and sheathing animation are ridiculously slow, making it easy for monsters to beat you so badly that you can't even land a single hit.
As the saying goes, you can't have both strength and good looks.
If you want to look cool, you have to put in more effort to make it look good!
After a while, the two took on a slightly more difficult task and went into the woods to do it.
Xia Cheng wielded his incredibly cool greatsword and defeated four small monsters;
Mingyan, wielding a simple short sword and a small round shield, fought off 16 small monsters.
The mission is complete.
Xia Cheng hesitated, then stopped himself from speaking: "..."
He comforted her, saying, "It's alright, you're just not familiar with the game yet."
At this point, half of the test time had passed, and the staff in charge of the test began to allocate tasks.
Mingyan and Xia Cheng were instantly leveled up to 60, and were even given two snow eagles as pets to test the combat stats of the four-star boss, the Volcanic Dragon, in the volcanic region.
Two giant pets descended from the sky, emitting a very cool eagle cry.
With its round, black eyes looking affectionately at its owner, the nimble little head tilted over and carefully nudged Xia Cheng, causing him to stumble.
Xia Cheng: "..." Isn't this the thing that killed me?!
218. Task Complete
The latter part of the studio's internal testing involved everyone testing a boss-level monster in a high-level map.
Of course, there is no concept of boss in Hunter World, only the concept of creature category and species - the entire Volcanic Dragon race is very strong, it is not a single individual that can be a boss, but the whole race is a boss!
To complete the four-star quest of fighting the Volcanic Dragon, you actually need to do a lot of preparation.
This entire process was basically designed with Mingyan's personal involvement.
So he listed them off like the back of his hand: "To enter the volcanic area, you first need a set of fire and high-heat protection equipment; to make this equipment, you need to get a cutting machine, as well as some silicon-containing monster drops; the cutting machine also requires electricity, which requires a generator and oil, and the generator's important circuit materials come from two-star Flash Wolves; oil is mainly obtained by completing the three-star volcanic exploration mission, which is also the first mission to enter the volcanic area, and you need to drink fire resistance potions the whole time to get close to the volcano; fire resistance potions are obtained by mixing two-star monster drops..."
"..."
Xia Cheng watched as he explained while drawing a "roadmap" on the blackboard.
Unbeknownst to many, this has formed a complex web that roughly encompasses the entire technological trajectory of the Hunter x Hunter world.
All of this was designed by humans, something that was explicitly stated to be memorized fluently.
"Clap clap clap." Xia Cheng looked up blankly and clapped his hands, saying, "The designer is awesome."
As it turns out, designers' thinking may be the opposite of players'.
Players will consider things from low to high, first clearing one-star missions, then using the resources they obtain to craft the best equipment and items, and then guessing which two-star missions they can explore.
Designers, on the other hand, consider things from top to bottom. They first see the ultimate output of a technological path, then place the technologies at each level in their proper places, and then allocate the resources needed to upgrade the technologies layer by layer to tasks of each star level—that is, the so-called "output allocation".
The word "deployment" is very descriptive.
It's like a designer sitting in a helicopter, dropping airdrops at fixed times and locations, and deciding what good stuff is in the airdrops;
Meanwhile, the players can focus entirely on chasing the airdrops, simply driving them over one by one...
Now, in the testing area, the intermediate process is skipped entirely.
Mingyan led Xia Cheng to make preliminary preparations for hunting the volcanic dragon.
Xia Cheng drooled: "Can we just get a four-star weapon right away?! Bring out all the good stuff you have!!"
Mingyan shook his head helplessly and had no choice but to take him to the weapon shop for a look around.
Xia Cheng's eyes were immediately drawn to the greatsword—there was no way around it, the greatsword was just so cool and imposing.
Lying here are basically all the greatswords that players can collect after completing three-star missions, with various attributes.
Forging is certainly not free; blueprints are obtained by completing quests, while resources require players to work hard to collect or trade.
Xia Cheng took a fancy to a greatsword called "Tsukumogami: Yuzuki," which was so dazzling in design and even had a cold light effect.
Mingyan nodded with satisfaction: "Yes, as expected of Xia Xiaocheng, he has chosen the coolest-looking (but actually the least powerful) knife."
—But since it's a fire-elemental volcanic dragon anyway, this water-elemental sword isn't unusable.
—It's better not to tell Xia Xiaocheng.
As a member of the Ōdachi series, "Tsukumogami: Yuzuki" requires roughly the same amount of resources.
Xia Cheng muttered, "160 water beast teeth, 20 sets of salt snake leather, 4 star-tailed fish spines... Hmm, doesn't seem like much."
He checked the quest list and found that the Water Beast was a monster that appeared at the two-star level and was everywhere in the three-star map; the Star-tailed Fish was a three-star boss-level monster that required a separate quest to hunt.
So it seems that this resource list is actually quite generous?
Xia Cheng said enthusiastically, "Putting everything else aside, 160 teeth from ordinary monsters is no problem at all. I think I can collect them myself; I don't need the GM to give me these materials! Look at this hunter's encyclopedia; a single water beast has at least dozens of teeth..."
At this moment, Mingyan smiled and said from the side, "Well, a water beast will only lose 1-3 teeth, dear."
"..." Xia Cheng, "Then what about the fish?"
Ming said: "The spine is a special drop, and there is a small chance that it will drop if the player breaks all the key parts of the Startail Fish."