Chapter 70

After the four peculiar individuals from the Ice Emperor left, Feng Buju began to continue browsing the mall. The items in the system store were consistent with what he had expected, mainly consisting of various clothing and consumables.

Speaking of clothing, it was indeed a good thing. Besides providing players with personalized appearances and not occupying equipment slots, it also came with attribute bonuses. However, due to the vague handling of character abilities in the Thrilling Park, without any numerical basis, the attribute descriptions were generally along the lines of "slightly increase total survival value," "increase the accuracy of firearm use to some extent," "increase jumping height slightly," and so on...

The types of clothing were mainly divided into tops, pants, sets, hats, shoes, and accessories. This game did not provide skirts, for obvious reasons. However, in the accessory category, socks, including stockings, could be found. Female players who strongly wished to show their legs could buy shorts or mid-length pants to match.

Each piece of clothing on a player could slightly boost a certain attribute. Equipping a full set would naturally be much stronger than not wearing any at all. To avoid players having to compromise on appearance when selecting desired attributes, all clothing attribute bonuses were set as options. For example, if a player bought a beret, the item would have no attribute bonus when purchased, but once it entered the player's inventory, it would randomly generate three attribute bonuses. The player could choose one and then equip it.

Clothing was non-tradable. If a player wanted to brush out a specific attribute, they would have to repeatedly purchase the item, as trading was not possible. Of course, such a situation was rare because most attribute bonuses were useful, and players could choose from three options.

In short, the Thrilling Park clearly encouraged players to prioritize their preferred appearance when selecting clothing. The current random selection system was specifically designed for this purpose. Under this premise, the chances of players wearing the same outfit were low, even if they had similar tastes, the attribute bonuses on their clothing would vary.

Moving on to consumables, the most commonly used items were survival value supplements, stamina value supplements, bandages for stopping bleeding, universal antitoxins, and mixtures for removing abnormal statuses such as electric paralysis, burns, diseases, and freezing. There were also various types of bullets, ropes, arrows, batteries, and explosives.

There were many types of consumables. Supplements came in large, medium, and small sizes, each restoring different percentages and priced differently. Other items had very precise prices based on their model and quantity, down to every inch of bandage and every bullet.

Lastly, the system store also sold equipment, but this was not the "Scare Box," so it only sold regular equipment of ordinary level or below, with no special effects. Even players who had just completed the tutorial, were only level one, and had not opened any specializations, could still find usable equipment in the system store, though it was inferior, it was better than nothing...

Therefore, players who could not obtain equipment in the script could use money to stack up. Regardless of their level or specialization status, they could always find a set of usable ordinary equipment in the system store.

Feng Buju quickly browsed through the content of the system store, skimming over the consumables. After all, items like bullets and health potions didn't need to be examined in detail; he just needed to pay attention to what he might use.

For clothing, he considered buying, but the prices were indeed high. Moreover, the prices of these clothes seemed to be determined by their appearance's peculiarity. For example, a "panda suit" cost 300,000 game coins. Not only did this 300,000 coin outfit have the same random attribute generation as a 30,000 coin outfit, but wearing it would also be very inconvenient, almost like tying one's own hands. Did Dream Company think that dressing like a mascot in a script would help alleviate the horror atmosphere, so they priced such peculiar outfits higher?

By the way, regarding the issue of money, when the beta test began, Dream Company suddenly announced that the game had no "points." Except for the two items in the Scare Box (special equipment and game coins) which required skill points to purchase, everything else had to be bought with game coins. Dream Company officially provided the exchange service between RMB and game coins.

This was not unusual, but Dream Company had a very sharp policy—the exchange rate between game coins and real currency was not fixed. The game's currency exchange rate would fluctuate based on market conditions.

Thus, the in-game currency market, which should have been determined by "gold farming" companies, was now directly controlled by the official.

The exchange rate update time was every Monday at 8:00 AM, at which point Dream Company would announce the exchange rate for the week. For example, if 1 RMB could buy 100 game coins last week, it might buy 120 this week, or only 85.

From a profit perspective, the game company naturally hoped for the highest possible exchange rate, ideally 100 RMB for 1 game coin, but that was impossible, as no one would buy at that rate.

Therefore, the system decided the exchange rate based on factors such as the number of players, the amount of currency rewards given, and the total amount of currency recovered by the system store, and adjusted the next week's exchange rate accordingly.

Although this constantly changing exchange rate might lead to "currency speculation" in the real world, that was not Dream Company's concern. They only provided a one-way exchange, accepting RMB and selling game coins at the current exchange rate. What players did with the game coins they bought was up to them... If they had the ability to buy game coins at a 1:10,000 rate and then cash out at a 1:100 rate, that was their skill.

Later, it was proven that currency speculation was difficult. The system-controlled exchange rate did not fluctuate much over a year, staying within the range of 1:2000 to 1:3000. With weekly updates, wealthy players were too lazy to deal with speculators, while frugal players would consider whether to buy slightly cheaper game coins from speculators or wait a few days to see if the next week's exchange rate would be lower than the speculators' prices.

Of course, regarding the issue of buying game coins with RMB, Feng Buju, even if he wanted to, could not afford it...

For now, he had to rely on the rewards he had earned. As a level 13 player, Feng Buju's assets were not insignificant, with 164,300 game coins and 843 skill points.

At this moment, he suddenly remembered that the bag of garlic he had destroyed might have been worth a few coins. It seemed he had overlooked that. However, upon further thought, items that could be obtained easily in the script, which were not equipment, probably weren't worth much. If such items could be sold for thousands of points, he might as well become a professional battery thief in the virtual world, unloading one and bringing it back in his inventory, which might sell for tens of thousands.

"Hmm... I should check the auction house first; the clothing is really expensive," Feng Buju mused, turning to walk toward the information tower in the center of the mall.

As he approached, he noticed that the four fan-shaped structures around the information tower, besides the screens displaying the constantly updating auction items, each had a dedicated screen showing the game's rankings.

The highest points of these four structures were marked with "East," "South," "West," and "North," clearly to help players navigate the bowl-shaped space.

Feng Buju came to the eastern fan column and looked up. The ranking here was for levels. Among the top twenty, two names were marked as "anonymous." The other eighteen names were followed by a system-added parenthesis, indicating the guilds they belonged to. It seemed that as soon as the guild system was introduced in the beta test, all the guilds had been established.

Feng Buju did not yet know the advantages and conditions for forming a guild, so he decided to return to the login space to learn more. For now, he quickly scanned the level ranking, memorizing the nicknames and guild names of the players.

Next, he moved to the southern fan column, where the ranking was titled "Combat Power Ranking." Surprisingly, among the eighteen named IDs from the level ranking, only five made it into the top twenty of the combat power ranking.

{Piao Tian Literature