Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 460 - 443: A Different Way of Adding Points

Chapter 460: Chapter 443: A Different Way of Adding Points

The gaming content that followed was not much different from what Zhuge Jun had anticipated.

The clinic was empty, and it was only after he stepped out of the clinic that he realized the outside world was also in disarray and deserted.

The city was called Charlton City, which, according to the game’s setting, was supposed to be one of the most developed cities in the world.

Therefore, in the city, there were not only common residences but also bustling commercial streets, magnificent churches, and technologically advanced Puppet Workshops, among other things.

However, the clinic Zhuge Jun was in was considered part of the residential area, but it was not an affluent district. To get to other areas of Charlton City from the residential area, he would need to undergo various trials and tribulations.

Although this was not a commercial street, there were still shops along the street.

For example, diagonally across from the clinic, there was a clothing store.

Only now, the condition of the store also looked quite bad. In order to better attract customers, part of its exterior had huge glass windows, which were now completely shattered, and the inside was a total mess.

Mannequins lay on the ground, and he could see the twisted bodies of human corpses as well as various items scattered everywhere.

There were also elements that suggested a terrible earthquake had just occurred; many shop signs were crooked, and even fell directly onto the street. The ribbons that the shop owners had specially hung between buildings were also mostly lying on the ground.

Furthermore, he could faintly hear broadcast messages advising that, after the earthquake, an emergency had occurred and all citizens should stay at home and not go out to avoid danger.

Zhuge Jun found that he could knock on the doors of the neighboring houses, but the people inside were not very friendly to him and seemed to have no intention of opening the doors.

Then, he saw some notices on the street saying that if anyone needed help, they could go to the Claridge Hotel.

Continuing down the road, Zhuge Jun began to encounter some enemies.

However, these enemies were not difficult to deal with. Some of them were lunatics with bloodshot eyes and growing black hair, while others were sluggish dolls who would attack humans.

But both types of monsters were essentially incomplete, with some missing arms or legs, either having low attack power or only being able to crawl on the ground, posing no threat to Zhuge Jun at all.

Zhuge Jun found a long candlestick through a broken window of a nearby shop, which he could use as a weapon, allowing him to easily dispose of these enemies from a distance.

However, the candlestick was clearly not a true Hunter weapon in the game, so it lacked the Transform Slash capability and was only slightly better than being unarmed.

In addition, Zhuge Jun could also attack these enemies using the special function of the Puppet Prosthesis.

By pressing the LT key, his character would perform a special left arm punching motion, which was quite powerful.

The LT key was the function key for the puppet arm, and it was obvious that after upgrading the puppet arm, players could use it to unleash various skills. But since there were no special skills at the time, it was just an ordinary punch.

"I’m familiar with the next part of the plot. It definitely involves going to the Claridge Hotel and meeting a bunch of NPCs, and then continuously exploring, unlocking more NPCs, coming here for supplies, doing tasks, and so on..."

"But it seems to be missing an early game deterrent boss? That Lie Hunter from before doesn’t really count as a deterrent boss."

Zhuge Jun was all too familiar with these basic routines.

However, this didn’t mean that Nitiandang was being lazy, because this approach could be considered the optimal solution for this type of game at present. Forcibly breaking away from this template to create something new would lead to huge changes in game development costs and player experience, and the results might not even be good, so it wouldn’t be cost-effective.

Clearly, Nitiandang intended to reserve most of its innovative content for other parts of the game.

Finally, after walking some distance, he arrived at the Claridge Hotel. But just as Zhuge Jun was about to push the door and enter, there was a "crackle" sound around him, and the screen started to shake violently.

The surroundings plunged into darkness as the gas lamps that provided illumination went out.

Upon entering the Claridge Hotel, Zhuge Jun saw the three NPCs he was expecting:

One was a beautiful Doll Sister, who could perform upgrades;

Another was the cheerful and optimistic middle-aged owner of the inn, who briefly introduced the current problems to Zhuge Jun and directed him to go out and explore, look for survivors, and incidentally relight the gas lamps on the streets.

Besides them, there was a third person in the inn, an excellent Puppet Craftsman, who could make weapons, strengthen weapons, install Puppet Prostheses, and even further modify the player’s other body parts into Puppet Prostheses.

During this process, however, Zhuge Jun also encountered some situations that were different from what he had expected.

That was the game’s upgrade system.

After defeating enemies and obtaining crystals of Unclean Blood, Zhuge Jun could choose to give them to either the Doll Sister or the Craftsman.

Both of them could provide upgrade services, and although the names of the attributes they upgraded seemed different, they were actually the same thing.

For instance, at the Doll Sister’s, the upgradable attributes were Vitality, Spiritual Power, Endurance, Strength, Finesse, Knowledge, Faith, and Mystery.

The names of these attributes seemed quite normal, and one could mostly guess their corresponding enhancement effects correctly.

For instance, hit points increase health, spiritual power boosts mana, endurance increases the length of the endurance bar and carrying capacity, strength and dexterity correspond to the damage output of strength-based and agility-based weapons respectively, while knowledge and faith correspond to different spells, with mystery typically enhancing certain probability-related negative effects.

But at the Puppet Craftsman’s, you can also enhance attributes, except now they’re named differently: Durability, Computational Power, Stamina, Kinetic Energy, Skill, Knowledge, Faith, and Mystery.

The last three are the same, but the first five have some differences.

But if you look closely, aren’t these just corresponding to the previous attributes?

Could it be just a change of names?

Zhuge Jun felt that things couldn’t be that simple, and after carefully reviewing, he discovered that when these two NPCs were used to allocate points, the effects produced were indeed slightly different.

For example, adding to health, 1 point of Life Force and 1 point of Durability both increase the blood by 10 points, but at Doll Sister’s place, adding 1 point of Life Force is just that, whereas at the Craftsman’s, 1 point of Durability also grants an additional 0.2 in bonus attributes, meaning you actually get 1.2 durability.

Conversely, if you want to add to knowledge, then at Doll Sister’s it’s 1.3, and at the Puppet Craftsman’s it becomes 1.

All attributes come with a decimal point, and only when this number becomes a whole number does it enact a specific change in the character’s attributes.

For determining which side is higher, some tips are considerately provided, with a special background frame added to the attribute that has an advantage.

"Why do I have to run back and forth just to add a point!"

Zhuge Jun was somewhat speechless. Although Doll Sister was not far from the Craftsman’s door, making the run not too troublesome, the act of splitting the leveling data between two NPCs still irked him somewhat.

However, upon further thought, the bonus rewards for allocating points was also quite a nice touch, so he had to adapt.

Zhuge Jun unhesitatingly invested all his points into Durability, that is, health.

In such games, newbies mindlessly pumping their Blood Bar and Endurance Points is definitely the way to go. Generally, aim for at least 30 Life Points and 15 or 20 Endurance Points as the minimum requirement, or it would significantly reduce the margin for error in gameplay.

At the Puppet Craftsman’s, Zhuge Jun also obtained a weapon.

The weapon for new players was a choice among three, and Zhuge Jun almost instantly made his decision.

Sword and Shield!

To hesitate even a second would be to disrespect the shield.

Zhuge Jun had already decided to use this weapon during his fight with the Lie Hunter and was worried it could only be obtained in the latter part of the game. Now that it was being offered right at the start, there was even less of a reason to refuse.

Anyone who wouldn’t choose it is a fool!

As for the other two weapons, they were the Sword Spear and Dual Swords respectively—the former Zhuge Jun had just used in the prologue, and the latter had appeared in the official gameplay demonstration video.

Moreover, players could later on spend money to buy them from the Puppet Craftsman; although a bit pricey, they were purchasable, so there was no worry about missing out.

Now he could finally embark on his journey proper.

"Ah, before I knew it, it’s already past 11 a.m., and I’ve just gotten through the prologue. If I had known, I wouldn’t have spent so much time on character creation!"

Zhuge Jun suddenly felt his stomach growling. The experience store opened at 9:30 a.m., and "Blood of Lies" was officially available from 10 a.m. In that hour and a half, he had died several times at the hands of the Lie Hunter and spent a lot of time on character customization, so time flew by until lunch without him realizing it.

He hurriedly ordered some takeout.

The experience store was in a rather prosperous area, with a shopping mall nearby, where a variety of takeout options were available.

Zhuge Jun casually ordered a fast food meal, and perhaps because the fast food restaurant was just around the corner, the delivery was quick; the food had arrived after only about 15 minutes of gameplay on his part.

There was nothing special in that segment of gameplay, just advancing the map, lighting lamps, and clearing minor mobs.

So far, he had not encountered any particularly challenging bosses.

"I might as well eat then and check out how the streamers are doing."

Zhuge Jun temporarily exited the game, eating while opening up the streaming platform, ready to casually pick a streamer to watch.

He originally wanted to watch Instructor Ding, but then thought better of it because Instructor Ding was a former professional player with great skills, likely progressing faster than himself, so watching him could easily spoil the plot.

Why not watch a less skilled streamer?

He randomly clicked into Wang Dawei’s stream.

As a top student, Wang Dawei’s gameplay was pretty lax, which helped Zhuge Jun build confidence, and there was no worry about having too much of the subsequent content spoiled.

But just as he entered the stream, he saw Wang Dawei appreciating a character with an Ancient God Face, and Zhuge Jun nearly spat out the burger he had in his mouth.

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