Why the bug I wrote became a core gameplay mechanic?!
Chapter 485 - 468 This Shooting Technique is Really Good!

Chapter 485: Chapter 468 This Shooting Technique is Really Good!

Zhuge Jun controlled his game character to leave the boss room and continued toward the next area.

However, at that moment, he glanced at his dynamic difficulty display and couldn’t help but feel a bit tense.

Because at that time, his dynamic difficulty was: Level 1 (0 points).

"When did it change???"

Zhuge Jun was shocked because he distinctly remembered that before entering the boss room, his difficulty level was Level 6 (3999.34 points), a nearly maximum difficulty.

And now, the Level 1 (0 points) corresponded more to his experience fighting the boss earlier.

Normally, in the game mechanics, dropping from Level 6 to Level 1 would be a very lengthy process.

Players had to remain unharmed for a long period and deal massive amounts of damage and kills to monsters, as well as gather lots of resources from the map to achieve this.

Considering the situation of those speedrunners, even when everything went smoothly, it would still take at least an hour.

An hour was quite long in the game, and any minor mistakes could significantly extend this duration.

But now, the game’s difficulty had directly dropped from the highest to the lowest?

Zhuge Jun immediately realized excitedly: if this operation could be replicated, achieving "70% game time at the lowest difficulty" would be much easier!

Quickly, he reached the entrance to the next boss room and tried to replicate it.

Although at first glance the influencing factors seemed numerous, Zhuge Jun deduced based on his gaming experience that only two factors needed priority testing: one was dynamic difficulty level 6, and the other was the specific dynamic difficulty value.

Because whether it was a bug or a hidden mechanic, there had to be some trace. If a bug appeared in the dynamic difficulty, it was very likely due to some specific values of dynamic difficulty itself.

First, Zhuge Jun went through some trouble to get his dynamic difficulty level back to 6.

Consciously doing this wasn’t easy, as dying and returning to the gaslight would reset the dynamic difficulty level to 3.

Thus, Zhuge Jun had to ensure he didn’t die, while getting beat up by monsters, using specific skills, or intentionally keeping his inventory within certain limits, even if the monsters dropped items, he couldn’t pick them up.

After much struggle, he barely managed to level up to 6, then went in to try fighting a boss.

As expected, he died horribly.

The boss was like a hyperactive mad dog, a smoothly linked combo almost shattered Zhuge Jun’s skull.

"So it’s not a problem with the dynamic level, but the value?

"Indeed, if it were a simple bug like ’dynamic level 6 meets boss turns to dynamic level 1,’ incompetent players would have discovered it early, and there would have been noise on the internet by now.

"So it’s a value issue?

"It should involve controlling the value within a very specific range to trigger this bug."

Unknowingly, Zhuge Jun started to think that this seemed more like a bug than a mechanism.

After all, "sticking to specific values" doesn’t sound like a mechanism at all, and no designer would deliberately design such a strange mechanism.

His judgment was based on the fact that "Blood of Lies" had been out for so long now, and players had almost turned the game upside down.

If "broad changes in values" could directly trigger a dynamic difficulty bug, someone would have discovered it by now.

Zhuge Jun triggered this bug purely by a very rare chance, and it was just his good luck.

Thus, replicating this bug would likely also require stringent conditions.

Considering this, Zhuge Jun simply tested several values, such as different integers, decimals, or the original value of 3999.34.

After some testing, Zhuge Jun finally found the pattern.

Simply put, the value had to be in the format X999.XX to trigger this special bug!

The hundreds, tens, and units must all be 9, the thousands digit could be any number from 1 to 4, and there must be decimals.

If it’s 1999.12, it can trigger the bug; if it’s 1999.00, it cannot trigger it.

Moreover, as long as it matched this pattern, no matter the original difficulty level, it would automatically be judged as Level 1 (0 points) after entering the boss fight.

And this bug only applied when entering a boss fight.

Assuming a player’s dynamic difficulty value during the process of running and fighting monsters changed to Level 6 (4999.12 points), the game’s difficulty would still be at the highest level.

Subsequent increases or decreases in difficulty would still change based on this value.

Only one situation could trigger the bug: maintaining this difficulty level upon entering the boss fight, then the difficulty would switch to Level 1 (0 points).

Zhuge Jun believed that this might be because entering the boss fight scene actually refreshed the game, thus the system mechanism re-judged the difficulty score, leading to this bug.

Then, could traveling between gaslights or rebirth trigger it?

After a simple attempt, he found it unfeasible because whether it was through teleportation or Rebirth, all the minor monsters would be revived, and the Dynamic Difficulty would reset to the initial level 3.

Overall, the conditions for this bug to appear were quite strict, and the likelihood of encountering it during normal gameplay was very low.

Zhuge Jun could only attribute his encounter with it to pure luck.

However, this was not too surprising since with more players anything unusual could be encountered, and Zhuge Jun just happened to be the lucky one.

The only problem was... even though he had discovered this bug, how should he exploit it?

Zhuge Jun’s first reaction was to manipulate some operations at the beginning to set the difficulty to a specific number, X999, and then seek out the first boss to activate level 1. After that, his aim would be to maintain a no-damage run throughout and achieve all endings.

But upon further thought, this method saved some trouble, though not much.

This was because the early content of the game was relatively simple, and it was not too difficult to lower the difficulty level. Wasn’t that how those players who achieved the Divine Ending did it?

The hard part was not reducing the difficulty once, but how to quickly reduce it again if something went wrong mid-way.

The bug Zhuge Jun discovered could only be achieved by deliberately arranging the process to reach a precise number, and this process itself would take time.

"Is there any way to consistently adjust this number to 999 with decimals at any time?"

Zhuge Jun tried hard to recall the monsters he had encountered during the game and the influence their attack modes had on the dynamic difficulty points.

Suddenly, an idea struck Zhuge Jun.

He thought of a more dynamic adjustment method, which was the special throw technique in the game!

Other attacks usually had a fixed change in dynamic difficulty points.

For example, a touch from a minor monster would increase the dynamic difficulty points by about 20 to 50, varying with the type of the minor monster.

But for the same type and Chapter, the increase in points from a touch was always fixed.

Since these values always involved whole numbers and zeros, it was difficult to adjust the dynamic difficulty points to exactly 999 with decimals as intended.

Even after meticulous calculations and a detailed arrangement, any single error, such as being touched one extra time, would spell complete disaster.

But soon, Zhuge Jun excitedly discovered that one specific attack was different—the throw technique.

In "Blood of Lies," being caught by a throw technique didn’t mean you couldn’t do anything or just wait for the game to end. Players could "break free," similar to QTEs in some games, although it involved repeatedly pressing a particular button at a high frequency, which indeed allowed the character to escape faster.

During the throw technique, the dynamic difficulty points would continuously increase.

However, this continuous increase would not exceed the upper limit of the current difficulty level, meaning it would reach at most 4999.99, without breaking through to 5000 and entering the next difficulty level.

"Could it be that..."

Unable to suppress his excitement, Zhuge Jun hurriedly found a minor monster with a throw technique and carefully managed the distance to bait it into using the throw.

This minor monster wore church attire and had a swollen head.

Its official name was "Fanatic," but because of its appearance and mechanics, players affectionately called it "Bubblehead Doll" or "Zealous Fan."

This type of minor monster appeared in virtually every Chapter, and its attack mode was rather simple. If the player maintained the right distance, it would likely engage in a hug-type throw; only in a few instances, when the player was too close, would it perform a non-damaging regular attack.

Once it hugged the player, its head would spray a large amount of an unidentified liquid, causing corrosion damage to the player.

Although the rate of health loss was not particularly rapid, it would quickly accumulate negative status bars, continuing to affect the player with corrosion and frenzy effects.

The crucial point was the throw technique; it covered a long distance, had a wide range, and had confusing hitboxes, which often caught players trying to dodge.

Once hugged, both the character and the player would suffer severe mental damage.

Key was the duration of the hug, requiring the player to frantically press QTE to break free, which was quite an irritating task for the players.

But at this moment, why did this minor monster seem so endearing and likable to Zhuge Jun?

Without a second thought, he rushed over and allowed it to embrace him!

Watching the Fanatic’s large head approach, continually spewing acid, Zhuge Jun remained unfazed, focusing intently on the dynamic difficulty points displayed on his plugin.

Indeed, the points rose rapidly, stopping at 4999.99.

At that point, Zhuge Jun quickly pressed the button to break free and dashed toward the boss room.

There were still some other minor monsters along the way, and a single touch from them would undo all his efforts; fortunately, the map design in "Blood of Lies" was quite favorable, and parkour along the way wasn’t too difficult. With some attention paid to those sneaky minor monsters, one could safely reach the goal.

Pushing open the door to the boss room, Zhuge Jun immediately looked at the current dynamic difficulty level.

Indeed, after refreshing, it had changed to level 1 (0 points)!

"Damn, it worked!

"This really is a ridiculous bug! Why would this game even have such a bug?"

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