This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 240: The Third Expansion Pack Goes Live! A Visit from an Old Friend

Chapter 240: Chapter 240: The Third Expansion Pack Goes Live! A Visit from an Old Friend

"New Expansion: ’To Forge Swords into Ploughshares’"

"Overview: The depths of winter are drawing to a close, and the season of revival is upon us. Now is the key time for spring farming and preparing the fields. Only by ensuring next year’s food supply can we awaken more of our compatriots to go to the surface and begin the next phase of work."

"Details: Starting today, ’Wasteland OL’ will launch a series of quests involving farming and management elements. Players can receive these quests either through VM or by finding NPCs like Luka, Guo Niu, and Guo Ma. Completing tasks with the expansion tag will grant Activity Points. After the expansion ends, these points can be used for raffles, exchange for expansion-limited titles, special rewards, and agricultural land!"

Happiness came so unexpectedly.

Without the slightest sign, not even a promotional PV, the Alpha1.0 version and the new expansion suddenly appeared in the ’Wasteland OL’ official website’s announcement column.

Almost at the same time as the announcement was made, the little gamers who were squatting on the official website sharing their daily gaming experiences and the everyday sand sculpture netizens instantly boiled over!

In less than a minute, several hundred comments sprouted up beneath the announcement.

Tail: "!!!"

Quit smoking: "New expansion?! Awesome!"

Makabazi: "To Forge Swords into Ploughshares?! Activity Points can be exchanged for land?! Holy sh*t, my DNA is stirring!!"

Spare people under the knife: "Players with life skills careers are ecstatic!"

Teng Teng: "Wuwuwu, I’ve finally waited for an expansion for us life-skilled players, I’m utterly useless in combat. QAQ"

Crow: "No worries! Crow will handle the fighting, Teng Teng just make the pretty clothes! (@≥︶≤@)"

Night Ten: "Just asking innocently, Boss Crow, ever been to the front line? (teasing)"

Crow: "??? Are you being polite?"

Debt Giant Eye: "Hold on, of the first two expansions, ’Winter is Coming’ and ’Land Ho’, wasn’t every expansion answer tailor-made for life-skilled players!?"

I Max Black: "Exactly! Don’t even think about rewriting history! Combat professional players need expansions too! (furious)"

Battlefield Atmosphere Group: "I beg the developers, bring back the Looters please! I just saved up and bought an exoskeleton, even made it bulletproof, and now you’re telling me those Looters have run away! T.T"

Spring Water Commander: "I should’ve just bought a tractor with that money, right? Good that I saved some money. (smirk)"

Night Ten: "I suggest the next expansion should be ’Burning Expedition’. I think we can totally take down West State City and open up the northern market for Miss Teng Teng. (teasing)"

Elena: "Hey there, free trade? But I feel that the Looters there probably can’t afford clothes. (teasing)"

Thunder Mage Professor Yang: "Tsk, you guys, still too young. Is one poor because they’re without surplus value? Can’t afford it? Easy, just build several plantations and send them to grow cotton. Once they have jobs, they should be able to afford it right? (bared teeth)"

Night Ten: "Holy sh*t, my understanding of the version is actually inferior to that of a Backseat Driver?!"

Old White: "Come work at our brick factory, we’ll hire you as the Manager. (smirk)"

Thunder Mage Professor Yang: "Sigh, too many tears have been shed. T.T"

Chu Guang briefly glanced at the comments section under the announcement and noticed the players’ enthusiastic discussions about the new version and expansion. They were sky-high.

Many players had already started sharing their vegetable gardening experiences on the forum, and hardcore gamers even posted designs for agricultural machinery.

Although most of these threads eventually went off-topic, resulting in Versailles-style bragging about how much land they had at home, many valuable experiences were still retained.

Surely, they would come in handy in the upcoming spring farming.

If it weren’t for the fact that characters in the game need to sleep and real life involves going to work, many players would already be wearing their helmets and getting online to work.

And those small rookies who got their Closed Beta qualifications were overjoyed and quickly shared their award-acceptance speeches.

As for the Backseat Drivers who didn’t get the Closed Beta qualifications...

Although Chu Guang was anxious for them, there was nothing to be done in a hurry.

He was a true game planner.

But unfortunately, the game wasn’t a real game. Even a wish machine like a "Black Box" needed to consume electricity and materials to produce Sleep Cabins, and the maximum daily output was only 24 units.

One can’t materialize things out of thin air that don’t exist.

With nearly a hundred thousand pre-registered players, there were only about three hundred Cultivation Chambers left. Even if Chu Guang cracked all of these open, the chance for players to win those would only be 0.3%.

It was impossible to get everyone into the game.

Moreover, when the number of incoming transfers exceeds the limits that society can bear, it might not be a good thing.

Like the refugees on the wasteland, if they can’t be integrated quickly enough, they might become destroyers of the existing rules, hindering development.

This is also one of the reasons why most multiplayer games on Steam become unplayable during the discount season and free-to-play weeks.

After reviewing the hot threads on the forum, Chu Guang updated the "Developer’s Blog" as usual after a little thought.

Although the players are very diligent, to allow them to better enjoy the game and to appease combat professional players who feel left out by the expansion, Chu Guang felt it was necessary to talk to the players about this brand-new version as a developer.

Light: "Hello everyone, I’m your dearest planner, Ah Guang. The planning department was quite peaceful last month, no one was sacrificed, but that’s not important. The important thing is, after adding an entire winter of overtime, we’ve finally got the Alpha1.0 version!"

"Thanks to our Closed Beta players for their consistent hard work and support, and to the balding code monkeys, as well as NPCs risking their lives on the assembly line, without your tireless contributions, we wouldn’t be where we are now."

"Developing a game is not easy, especially one as epoch-making as this. We are currently in, and will be for a long time, the primary stage of game development."

"Building a utopian virtual community isn’t a simple task; it requires our collaborative effort. This might take a long time, maybe three years, maybe five, but we assure you that it won’t take longer than the neighbors’ ’Pie in the Sky Citizen’, ’Elder Scrolls 6’, or Heaven’s ’Give Him Love 6’, and we guarantee not to sell half-finished products as cash grabs and disappear."

"I believe many players have already noticed that the content of the new expansion is mostly focused on the word ’management’."

"We hope that through this method, we can establish an economy system that is close to reality. Every player and NPC will be able to play different roles in this simulation of reality, undertake different social divisions of labor, and become builders of this virtual community."

"This may sound a bit idealistic, but we believe it’s worth a try."

...

The next day.

Before dawn, a large group of players excitedly surged toward Changjiu Farm, forming a dense crowd at the warehouse entrance.

Seeing the residents of the refuge gathered in front of the warehouse, Luka who had just woken up thought something had happened and was completely stupefied.

"Is there anything I can help with?"

"Let’s cut to the chase, I’m here to do a quest!"

"Where are the fields?"

"My hoe is eager for action!"

Although Luka couldn’t understand what the players were saying, he quickly realized that this might be the arrangement of the Manager.

So he immediately checked his VM.

As expected!

All these refuge residents had come to help!

After reading the orders from the Manager, Old Luka was touched and couldn’t help but look admiringly at the players crowding the warehouse entrance.

Their willingness to contribute and hard-working spirit were truly admirable.

With a solemn and serious voice, Old Luka said,

"We need to plant the seeds in spring, and before that, we must clear the weeds from the fields, level the land, drive out the Variants active in this area, and destroy their nests."

"Thank you. We are short-handed right now, and your arrival couldn’t be more timely!"

"Please come with your tools and follow me!"

With that, Old Luka led the way to the open space on the west side of Changjiu Farm.

The terrain here was relatively flat and close to the warehouse, making it a comparatively easy area to cultivate.

Under the Manager’s plan, this land belonged collectively to the refuge, and it would later be farmed by hired farmers. The harvested grain would go into the granary as a strategic reserve to stabilize market prices.

Further to the west was land planned for private lease, and farther still was an area to be cultivated by prisoners of war.

Upon reaching the destination, players’ VMs quickly refreshed with detailed pioneering tasks, and the map even marked out the area each player or team was responsible for.

For every acre of cultivatable land they cleared, they could earn 100 Activity Points.

When the expansion ended, players could exchange a minimum of 300 Activity Points for an acre of their own land on which they could plant anything, as long as the purpose of the land did not change.

If they spent more points, they could even buy fertile land near Rhombus Lake.

With the lure of land, the players’ enthusiasm for clearing was unprecedentedly high.

Especially as they watched their Farming Skill Proficiency Level rise rapidly, many worked with even greater zeal.

Using Awakeners to till the land.

Such extravagance was unique in the area around Qingquan City.

Even so, clearing the land was still not an easy task.

First was the removal of weeds.

Ordinary grass was manageable, but if they encountered shrub roots or old tree roots, they had to saw and smash, and even dig out the roots.

And merely weeding was not enough; they also had to level the land.

This included digging up soil from higher areas, using shoulder poles to carry it to lower spots to fill in, then piling up ridges and bringing in fertilizer or manure to stack in the fields.

When true spring arrived, they had to plow the land deeply again, break up the large clods of soil, pick out the concrete debris and non-decomposed trash from the soil, and then plant fences around to prevent small animals from running in and gobbling up the seeds in the wheat fields.

In the plains around Qingquan City, a typical survivor’s family working together could manage to clear two or three acres by autumn, which was considered quite good.

However, this was autumn.

If they were unlucky to encounter the cold winter and snow fell just after the harvest was done, it was torture.

Forget about the snow not melting; even after it did, the soil was frozen hard as rock.

A hoe would strike without leaving anything but a white mark, as if hitting a wall, causing nothing but soreness in the hands without any effect.

So, to clear land in winter, a mere hoe was not enough; they also had to switch to hard picks used for breaking stones.

It was quite realistic, to say the least.

...

In the evening.

Sitting by the ridge, Night Ten, who was carrying a pickaxe and hoe, said panting,

"Damn it, I who have to rely on my roommate to bring me meals and wait for someone to go my way to take out the trash, ended up doing a full day’s farmwork!"

Perception System users typically start with a strength of 5, and after awakening, they could reach 7, which equals 140% of the average strength of a normal adult male—slightly stronger than those in the Intelligence System.

However, it still exhausted him terribly.

A fatigue debuff had already appeared on the VM, and his arms and legs felt like they were weighed down with lead.

If this were reality, it would be more than just fatigue—his muscles would most likely have started to ache by now!

On the other hand, the day wasn’t without its rewards.

He had worked an entire mu of land by himself, and his Farming skill proficiency level had jumped two levels; he was just one level short of unlocking the first achievement under the Farming skill.

Carrying the hoe on his shoulder, Old White, who was just as exhausted, took a breath and said,

"I’ve done this kind of work before, but I’ve never used such primitive tools."

He was probably the hardest worker in the Guo Ma Squad, having single-handedly worked three mu of land.

That was essentially five times the efficiency of the average refugee’s work!

Night Ten curiously glanced at him and asked,

"What did you actually do in reality, Old White? How come you know how to make bricks, char coal, and farm too?"

Old White smiled and replied,

"Didn’t I tell you? My family is from the countryside. When I was young, I helped out with farm work occasionally. It’s not really relevant now; there aren’t many people farming back home anymore, and I’ve nearly forgotten it all, but I do feel nostalgic working the land every once in a while."

Night Ten uttered a couple of oh’s and nodded, not fully understanding.

He had grown up in the city and didn’t really know much about these things.

Wild Wind, who sat down next to him and wiped off his sweat, looked at the fruits of their labor and squinted his eyes,

"This won’t do, if we keep going like this, even until monkey’s year and horse’s month, we may never finish... We must improve the tools."

Fang Chang nodded in agreement,

"That’s true; sharpening the ax won’t delay the work of chopping wood. If we keep gnawing at it like this, we might not even make 10 mu by the end of the month."

Night Ten looked at the two of them and asked,

"Do you guys have any good ideas?"

Fang Chang and Wild Wind looked at each other, and the latter nodded before speaking,

"Wait for another three days. A friend of mine just got the closed beta access; he should be able to help us out."

Night Ten asked curiously,

"Who is it? Male or female? What kind of friend?"

Wild Wind didn’t have the patience for this guy.

After a pause, he continued,

"Professor Wang from the neighboring Engineering Institute, he specializes in mechanical engineering and automation."

"He knows more about the application aspects than I do."

...

Two days have passed since the new expansion was released.

Of the 800 players across the server, at least two-thirds were involved in pioneering work.

The remaining third of players, even if they had little interest in "100% realistic farming" or didn’t want to grind Farming skill proficiency, were still indirectly supporting the pioneering work in other ways.

Take Factory No.81 for example.

In just two days, using mold casting methods, they produced 500 sets of steel structural parts for agricultural tools.

After rushed production in the workshops of the industrial zone, wooden handles were fitted onto hoes and pickaxes, and the first batch of tools was quickly delivered to the front lines, replacing the inefficient and low-quality wooden and stone tools.

Then there was WC Mosquito Brother.

Mosquito Brother made himself useful again.

He made some modifications to Hell Breath, increasing the output power of the pot-camel machine, and cobbled together a simple tractor.

Not only was it able to haul goods, but he also mounted a harrow at the rear of the tractor for plowing.

This thing was a huge help.

However, Mosquito was a bit cheeky, seeing that no one was buying at the price of 2000 silver coins per unit; he set up a rental business immediately.

Renting it cost 10 silver coins per hour, or 50 silver coins for an entire day.

Players cried foul over the prices but still forked over the money to improve their efficiency.

Seeing how profitable this was, Factory No.81 jumped on the bandwagon and made a clone too, rolling out a prototype, advertising a rental for only 40 silver coins a day.

Chu Guang placed an order with both companies for 10 units each, at a price of 2000 silver coins per unit, to be delivered by the end of the month.

After completing the order, they would also receive 5000 points of regional reputation for Changjiu Farm, as well as 500 contribution points.

Faced with an order worth 20,000 silver coins, Mosquito and the managers of Factory No.81 immediately assured Chu Guang they would work overtime to produce and deliver the equipment in the order as quickly as possible.

Apart from tasks for life-occupation players, there were also some tasks for combat-occupation players.

For example, hunting mutant wild boars, destroying hyena lairs, building fences, etc.

On the evening of the second day since the expansion pack launched,

Outside the Changjiu Farm warehouse,

Facing the inspection from Chu Guang, Luka excitedly reported the progress of the reclamation work.

"Sir, in the past 48 hours, your residents have reclaimed 1000 acres of wasteland!"

"At this rate, we might not even need until the end of the month, at most 15 days and we could finish the target of 10,000 acres!"

While speaking, Luka’s face was filled with unbelievable joy.

Initially, he thought that the residents of the refuge wouldn’t adapt to such high-intensity labor, but to his surprise, they were far more capable than he had imagined, completing a tenth of the expected target in just two days.

According to the Manager’s plan, the first batch of planned arable land amounts to 30,000 acres.

Of which, 10,000 acres would be completed by the residents of the refuge, the remaining 20,000 acres would be halved: one part managed by prisoners of war, the other by refugees.

Perhaps, the reclamation work this year could even be completed beyond expectations!

Even though the seeds hadn’t been sown yet, he could as though already see the golden fields of thousands of acres and the granaries filled to the brim!

Chu Guang wasn’t surprised by Luka’s report.

Mainly because he hadn’t done any fieldwork himself, and wasn’t too clear on how difficult reclamation really was.

"1000 acres... based on 600 people, that’s an average of 0.8 acres per person per day?"

Chu Guang stroked his chin and pondered for a moment.

"Is this considered fast or slow?"

"Sir, this speed is already very fast!"

Hearing the Manager’s Versailles-like statement, Old Luka couldn’t help but sweat and explained,

"Clearing wasteland is different from farming, it involves a lot of work, especially now that the snow hasn’t fully melted, we have to turn the snow out of the ground first."

"By mid-month or even the end of the month, our progress will be even faster!"

Chu Guang nodded, expressing his satisfaction.

"You’ve all worked hard!"

Hearing the Manager’s praise, a proud blush appeared on Old Luka’s face as he respectfully said,

"I didn’t work hard, but those residents of yours, they are really capable."

"Right, now that the blizzard has stopped, those refugees who were placed in the abandoned department store building can gradually be moved back to the farm as well, we can’t always keep them without work."

Chu Guang nodded in agreement,

"Indeed, after having a whole winter to recover, it’s time to find some work for them."

After inspecting the spring farming work, Chu Guang took a turn around the warehouse, preparing to check out the training situation of the new soldiers in the guard troop.

However, at that moment, he suddenly received a communication request from Outpost Base.

The communication connected.

Before Chu Guang could ask what was the matter, Liuding’s voice immediately came through the earpiece.

"Sir, a Commercial Team has arrived at the south side of Wetland Park, they are currently at the southern entrance of Wetland Park!"

"A Commercial Team from the south?" A hint of surprise appeared on Chu Guang’s face, and he immediately continued to ask, "Are they from Giant Stone City?"

"Yes..." Liuding cautiously said, "The owner of this Commercial Team calls himself List, he claims to have met you once and wishes to see you."

List?

Upon hearing this familiar name, Chu Guang was initially startled and then an interested expression surfaced on his face.

Well, well.

I finally have you here!

Chu Guang still hadn’t forgotten the vow he had made in the past.

The next time this guy comes here,

I must fleece him thoroughly!

A pleasant smile on his face, Chu Guang pleasantly continued,

"List, that’s an old friend of mine."

"Please invite him to the reception room for hospitality, and prepare the teas and such."

"Tell him I’ll be there shortly!"

——

(Bad news is today there’s only one Chapter, but the good news is I’ve adjusted my schedule, so from tomorrow on I’m back to writing 10,000 words a day! I’ll set a flag here for now...)