CH 104

Chapter 104 More NPCs and richer interactive systems

After the order was issued, these survivors quickly demolished their shacks and headed to the brick factory in the northwest.

Although they came from there before, and now they needed to go back, no one had any complaints about the administrator's arrangement.

It was already a lucky thing to be able to come out of the marauder's underground cell alive, not to mention being able to dress and eat.

Ample Time and Old White, who were measuring the land near the brick kiln, stopped what they were doing when they saw the group of people and walked up to the administrator to ask. "Dear administrator, may I ask who these people..."

Chu Guang said without hesitation. "These people are the survivors who were saved by us. In order to repay us, they are willing to help with our construction."

The faces of Ample Time and Old White suddenly showed joy. They had just been worried about not having enough people because other players all went to do novice tasks. These labor forces could be said to solve their urgent needs.

"Then how much salary do we need to pay them?"

In fact, there was no need to pay them.

However, since the players actively requested, Chu Guang thought about it for a moment and said after considering the realism.

"One silver coin per person per day. I will deduct this expenditure directly from your account. You only need to ensure that they will not be hungry or frozen to death."

"In addition, pay attention to construction safety. I don't want to see the reduction of workers due to poor working conditions. This will not only affect our regional reputation, but also delay production."

"If there are casualties, 100 silver coins will be deducted as compensation."

This compensation would of course not be paid to the NPC. It is just a constraint on the setting level.

Moreover, these native people would not be interested in these pieces of metal. For them, they would rather receive a piece of meat than such a gadget with no recycling value.

While speaking, Chu Guang sent the pre-edited task to Old White through his VM.

Although it was a bit far from the outpost here, it would not affect the point-to-point information transmission between the two VM devices.

After triggering the task of hiring NPC workers, Bull and Horse Brick Factory would automatically spend 23 silver coins from the account every day as the "work money" of these employees.

Compared to players' wages of at least 10 silver coins a day, hiring these NPCs to do work could be said to be very cheap.

Ample Time and Old White immediately agreed happily after a simple calculation.

Of course, in order to prevent these players from abusing those natives, Chu Guang immediately added another sentence.

"The minimum food standard per person per day is 0.5 kilos of green wheat. Of course, this is only the minimum nutritional standard. If you want them to work harder, you can buy more meat and fish, or even go to the city to get some game for them."

We can feed the NPCs!

Holy shit.

This game not only has a management element, but also a growth simulation element.

Ample Time and Old White's eyes lit up, and they said confidently. "Don't worry, Administrator, we will definitely not mistreat them!"

"Yes! Even if I am hungry, I won't make them hungry!"

Emmm...

No need to be so exaggerated.

Eating too much is actually not good for work. There is such an example in the outpost.

But Chu Guang didn't say anything.

The exploration itself was also part of the fun of the game.

These players would naturally find a suitable path, and they only needed to grasp the general direction.

Manipulating everyone's life was neither realistic nor necessary.

...

23 survivors settled down in the brick factory, changing their identities from refugees to brick-makers at the outpost.

They set up the camp quickly, and it took less than an hour for them to rebuild the shacks they made in front of the south gate.

Although it looked a bit crude, there was still no problem with sheltering them from wind and rain.

For survivors on the wasteland, it was almost a must-have talent to quickly build a shelter that could withstand wind and rain.

But the players were not very good at it.

Even Mr. Garbage, who claimed to be "Garbage_pickup_level_99", has never picked up rubbish in reality. At most, he often went downstairs to dump rubbish.

Watching these survivors build shacks, Chu Guang found Zhao Rat and a survivor from outside Qingquan City, gave them a dedicated VM for NPC, and appointed them as foremen, responsible to communicate with players.

If other survivors had any opinions, they could report to the player as soon as possible. In special circumstances, they could use the "mission system" to ask the player for help.

However, the task rewards of different NPCs were restricted by different levels, and they could not freely give money to players.

This was similar to other MMORPG games.

The limit set by Chu Guang for the two foremen was up to 2 silver coins, which could only be released every 72 hours. The lowest level was 5 copper coins, and the CD time was 24 hours.

If there were any difficulties in life, such as a leak in the shed, and fuel was needed, they could issue the lowest mission to the players. If someone was sick, or someone was injured, they could use the highest level of reward to release the task.

Of course, Chu Guang did not tell these NPCs about the name of the "mission system" and its true meaning, but only abstractly told them how to use these functions cautiously and seek reasonable help from those "omnipotent" players in blue coats.

Like other NPCs, every time they posted a mission and talked to players, they would leave a record in the VM.

Chu Guang would let Luca come over at intervals, collect the data with VM, bring it back to the outpost for archiving, and review the data with the assistance of AI.

Only by using these data, Chu Guang could easily grasp the exchanges and interactions between the players and the native people, and could also easily check whether these NPCs have released some tasks "inconsistent with their own personality and identity".

If they really did something like this, Chu Guang would deal with such "Bugs" as soon as possible.

"There will definitely be loopholes in the newly implemented rules. But fortunately, there are only few people in the testing stage, so I can try to find those mistakes and correct them in time."

Looking at the backs of the people who slowly walked away, Chu Guang stroked his chin and thought.

"...When the game reaches the beta testing phase, a relatively complete NPC and player interaction system should be formed."

Mhm.

As expected of me!

With everything arranged here, Chu Guang left contentedly.

...

6 o'clock in the evening wasteland time.

After Old White went offline, he immediately went to the forum to create a new post.

"Breaking news! Breaking news! The Bull and Horse Brick Factory will officially open from tomorrow! We are now giving you a 10% discount! What are the players who want to build a house waiting for? Hurry up and place an order!"

At this moment, it was 6 o'clock in the morning in the real world.

Generally, other forums would have no users online at this time, but the official website of Wasteland Online was just the opposite. Usually, it had the most people online at this time.

Tomato_scrambled_eggs: "What is your daily production capacity?"

Old White: "Not much, not much. At present, there is no problem with a daily production of one or two thousand bricks. We will probably achieve a daily production of tens of thousands by the end of the month! (Smiley face)"

Tomato_scrambled_eggs: "Awesome!!!"

Lightning_emperor_professor_yang: "I want one ton!"

Gale: "Our bricks are not sold by ton. The specifications and sizes are fixed. They are sold by block. Each 100 standard bricks will cost 1 silver coin."

Night Ten: "Brother Gale, why are you wasting time talking to Professor Yang? He doesn't even have the qualification to enter the game yet. (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) "

This_lord_is_arrogant_what_can_you_do: "Lmao, 100 bricks cost one silver coin? Did you even do the math? Building a house will need at least hundreds of millions of bricks. Just the two-storey small house near my house cost 500 million bricks, let alone other places. It would cost one million silver coins to build a house in the game? I heard that you guys only make single-digit silver coins for a task. Haha, this game is really realistic."

Irene: "Big brother, do you live near Forbidden City? Then do you have to buy entry tickets when you go back? (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) "

Hold_the_sword_execution: "Hahaha, actually, the Forbidden City did not use that many bricks, only 80 million bricks probably. However, the size of their bricks is much larger."

Irene: "I was just joking. (͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)"

The wall area of a room with an inner area of ​​2.5*2m and 3 meters high is at most 27 square meters. If it's an 18cm thick wall, it will need 96 bricks, so 2600 bricks should be more than enough.

Even if most players chose to build a bigger house together, the average would not exceed 5,000 bricks.

100 bricks a silver coin, 50 silver coins per capita, this price was still very reasonable.

In the later stage, the demand for bricks may increase, which may increase the brick price as well, but the range of increase and decrease would be limited to within 100%. Unless the NPC warehouse in charge of prices adjusted the benchmark value, it would increase to 2 silver coins at most.

After all, if it was a little bit more expensive, it would make everyone want to build a house with wood. If that really happened, it would not be worth the effort to make any bricks.

Brother Arrogant Lord was still as arrogant as his ID. He ran away immediately after taunting everyone and no matter how people @ him, he just wouldn't show up 

Anyway, he was a well-known troll in the forum, so, no one really cared about him and went back to the original topic.

Garbage_pickup_level_99: "Boss White, I am a newbie. Can I use credit if I have no money?"

Old White: "No, brother, we are just workers. The majority of the shares belong to the shelter. But it doesn't matter if you have no money, we welcome you to visit the brick factory. We suddenly have a bunch of NPCs here, which is quite interesting."

Night Ten: "Indeed, if you get a prey for them, they will not only say thank you to you, but also immediately set up a big pot. They will stew the prey, give you the best leg meat, and the first bowl of broth. These NPCs are like real people. Hey, I have played so many games, but only in this game, the interactions between the players and the NPCs are the best I’ve ever experienced!" 

Garbage_pickup_level_99: "Seriously? Is it that detailed? Wait, are those NPCs in your brick factories the ones we rescued from marauders?"

Ample Time: "Yes."

Construction_site_boy_and_bricks: "Dayum! So it's all connected!" 

The_Escaping_Mole: "I'm so envious! We are still doing quests for NPCs, but you have started to use NPCs!"

Who_will_smell_my_athlete's_foot: "Not fair! I don’t care, we have to have NPCs in our steel plant as well! Otherwise, it's not fair! (Frustrated!)"

WC_really_has_mosquitoes: "Discrimination! Goblin Technology also needs NPC!"

Night Ten: "Get lost. Why do you need a NPC? Use them as suicide bomber? I advise you to be a kind person."

Ample Time: "Ah, in fact, it's not as exaggerated as you think. Most of these NPCs can't be interacted with. They will only say 'Thank you', 'Yes', 'Okay', and 'Brick Maker' or something like that. I took a closer look and found that only NPCs wearing VM devices can be interacted with, and the rest don't look very smart. "

The_Escaping_Mole: "Mhm, that's the same as I thought. This is more reasonable. If all NPCs can be interacted with, the server of this game would be really incredible."

Now there were only a few people, and it was just a brick factory. When the number of players increased in the later stage, even if the ratio of NPC to players was 1:10, it was enough for this server to crash.

Gale: "...I think just the virtual reality technology alone is already incredible enough."

The_Escaping_Mole: "Let's stop talking about this. Have you tried to communicate with that interactive NPC? Did you trigger any special dialogue? Or any hidden tasks?"

Ample Time: "...Hidden task?"

The_Escaping_Mole: "Yes! Normally, those NPCs with rich text content generally have hidden tasks to do. Aren't all those virtual reality online game novels written like this, haven't you tried it?"

Ample Time was silent for a long time before replying to a post.

"...Uh, of course I tried it, but it didn't seem to trigger any tasks? They just make bricks. The task the administrator gave us is to let them repair the brick kilns."

The_Escaping_Mole: "Sigh, you still lack imagination! This kind of MMORPG, let alone the role of the foreman, even an old hen at the entrance of Novice Village may be a hidden boss if the sound it made is different from others. Forget it! It’s useless to tell you so much. I’ll go online later and try it myself."

Ample Time: "... I'm warning you, don’t mess around. If it affects the production of our brick factory, it will be a big problem!"

The_Escaping_Mole "Haha, don't worry man. I'll just talk to them! I promise not to touch your NPCs!"

Tail: "Oh, that sounds interesting, bring me as well!"

Sisi: "Me too!"

......

Ever since he was thrown into the underground cell by marauders that day, Zhao Rat had never thought that one day he could come out of the underground cell alive.

To be honest, life now seemed like a dream to him.

With a comfortable bed, a warm brazier, and ample food, they only needed to work 16 hours a day, and the rest was their own free time.

Moreover, those very capable blue coated people could occasionally hit a game or two, and give them meat.

To be honest, Zhao Rat felt flattered every time he received game from those shelter residents.

They had seen how cruel these people were.

Even the marauders were as obedient as little chicks in front of them, not daring to take a breath. It was the first time Zhao Rat saw those fierce evil spirits with such a scared expression on their faces.

In his cognition, marauders were already at the top of the food chain.

"Hey, what's your name?"

Zhao Rat immediately stopped when he heard a shelter resident talking to him, glanced at the VM on his left arm expertly, and said with a non-standard pronunciation.

"Hello, my name is Zhao Rat. I am the foreman here. What can I do for you?"

These strange pinyins were taught to him by the old Luca the other day. It was not difficult to learn the pronunciation of each phonetic symbol, but it was a bit confusing to use.

Hearing his words, the surrounding shelter residents were instantly excited.

"He can talk!"

"Sure enough, we can interact with them!"

"Dude, can you say 'This is awesome!' Please?!"

"Get lost! Brother, don't listen to him. Do you have any difficulties? Tell me? We, we will help you solve it!"

Zhao Rat looked confused.

His VM did not respond. It neither told him what these people were saying, nor did it tell him how to answer.

He remained silent at the instruction of the Administrator, but these shelter residents surrounded him, babbling non-stop. Clearly, they didn't want to give up.

Zhao Rat panicked a little.

He was worried that his behavior of ignoring these people would anger them, or it would lead to his death.

After all, this was an age where life was worth less than paper.

He didn't think his life was more expensive than these people.

At this moment, Zhao Rat suddenly remembered another sentence that the administrator explained to him before he left.

If these shelter residents refused to leave him alone, he could click the gray circle button in the upper right corner of the screen and pronounce the pinyin line displayed on the screen.

Not daring to hesitate, Zhao Rat immediately complied.

After swallowing, he said stiffly. "My worker brothers are hungry, we need a fish, can you help us?"

Hearing this sentence, the players surrounding him were so excited that they almost cheered out loudly.

"Yeah! We did it!"

"Is the key word "task"? Mhm, I should try another sentence next time to see if I can trigger a similar effect."

"Does the task require a fish? Okay!"

"It's displayed on the VM! I'll accept it. What the hell! How come the reward is only 5 copper coins?"

"Maybe part of the reward is favorability? Is it a loss to sell a fish for 5 copper coins? Have any of you sold fish before?"

"Screw it. I'll accept the task. Any fish will do, right? Let's steal one from the fisherman at the lakeside!"

"Go go go!"

Zhao Rat didn't know what that sentence meant, and he didn't understand the players' answers. But it didn't take long for him to get a fish.

And this fish was not small. It was as long as his arm, and its tail kept slapping left and right vigorously, splashing the water everywhere.

Zhao Rat swallowed again.

This time it was greedy.

But having said that, he still didn't forget the administrator's instructions, and quickly clicked the green tick on the VM to read the words that were displayed on the screen.

"I thank you on behalf of the workers, and I wish you a pleasant day, kind sir. This fish has been a great help!"

"We have no more troubles that require your help. You may come back tomorrow to check again."

Hearing this sentence, the players around walked away with disappointment.

That night.

Holding the steaming fish soup in his hand, Zhao Rat, who was having the meal with the workers, thought for a long time but still couldn't figure out what he said at the time that disappointed these blue coated people.

But he didn't dare to ask more.

Those blue coated people were all big shots.

The only one who could control them was the administrator who always carried a sledgehammer on his back.

The Administrator had said repeatedly that they were forbidden to reveal any clues about the mission system, and they were also forbidden to communicate with the shelter residents about this matter.

Zhao Rat didn't dare to disobey the administrator's order at all. He swore that he would not reveal a word even if he died.

In any case, this fish stew was quite delicious, and after eating this bowl of fish soup, everyone had more energy to work!

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