Passing through a vast expanse of prairie land, Nie Yan, at last, arrived at a region of barrens and stone. As far as the eye could see, lofty and oddly shaped boulders were irregularly strewn throughout the area. Within this mess of boulders were narrow cracks and passageways.
It should be right here. Nie Yan surveyed the expanse for a moment. After confirming without a doubt that these were the correct coordinates, he became especially vigilant and began slowly sneaking around. This region was where Bisons actively roamed about. The whole area permeated with a sense of dread and danger. Cautiously, he squeezed himself into one of the narrow passageways within the boulders.
Coordinates (567.528.192)
The topography of this region was strange and eccentric. The narrow passageways within these boulders only allowed enough space for a single person to pass through. As he looked out after going through the narrow passageway, a dark-coloured Bison in an area at a distance of about twenty-six meters away entered his vision. Large and robust, its entire body was densely packed with muscle. Above its head, two sharp horns resembling the tips of daggers protruded out.
Bison Chief (Leader): Level 8
Health: 300/300
Nie Yan took out his crossbow and held it with his left hand. He began calibrating it, making sure the angle was just right.
By lucky coincidence, the Bison Chief was within his attack range. Due to its body size being so massive, even if it were to discover his presence, it was still unable to traverse the narrow passageways within the mess of boulders. As a result, it was completely incapable of attacking him.
This was a typical terrain exploit!
This was an exploit his Arcane Mage friend had discovered within the game. However, at present, the only one who was aware of this terrain exploit was him!
By employing this exploit, Nie Yan could bypass the level disparity and effortlessly kill this Bison Chief!
Nie Yan began loading the crossbow with bolts. After three seconds, three crossbow bolts were completely loaded and the crossbow was cocked and ready to fire.「Wsh! Wsh! Wsh!」Three bolts were fired in rapid succession, flying in a straight line right towards the Bison Chief.
「Put! Put! Put!」The three crossbow bolts hit the Bison Chief nearly simultaneously.
Miss
−1
Miss
Three damage values floated above the Bison Chief's head. Due to the level disparity between both sides being too large, Nie Yan's attacks against the Bison Chief were weak. Most of the time it would be a miss and even if it did hit the target, it would only cause a little bit of damage.
After it had been attacked, the Bison Chief huffed out a large amount of musty air and began its mad charge towards Nie Yan's location.
「Boom!」A large crashing sound burst out. The Bison Chief had charged into the boulders and was repelled back. Its attack was unable to reach Nie Yan. It could only turn around and circle the boulders, without having any other course of action.
Nie Yan skillfully finished reloading the crossbow and like before, shot out three bolts in rapid succession towards the Bison Chief.
Although the damage was extremely low, under Nie Yan's continuous and unrelenting attacks the Bison Chief's health bar began showing signs of declining ever so slightly. However, it was awfully slow, merely falling by the smallest amount. Every now and then, it even recovered by a slight fraction.
Nie Yan's rate of fire was quite stable. After suffering his attacks, the Bison Chief bellowed out furiously, precisely because it was incapable of even nearing Nie Yan.
Everything went as smoothly as expected. Nie Yan was attacking the Bison Chief while figuring out the next step in his leveling strategy. After being reborn, if he were like others trying to find a place to level, it would truly be an asinine waste of his time.
One must know, Nie Yan's mind possessed a vast amount of game knowledge. He followed his own reasoning and designed a perfect leveling plan.
The seconds and minutes continued to pass by. After half an hour, Nie Yan had completely used up all of the crossbow bolts within one quiver—a thousand crossbow bolts! At present, the Bison Chief still had approximately two-thirds of its health remaining.
The uninterrupted process of reloading and shooting made Nie Yan feel himself about to fall asleep. However, he still spent great effort in maintaining his high frequency of firing, so as to avoid having the Bison Chief's health recover again after he ceased his attacks.
The Bison Chief began getting somewhat weary. It continually strained for breath as it anxiously rammed against the rocks and collapsed a portion of the boulders.
Nie Yan quickly retreated inward a bit and at that moment, his menu sounded out with a voice call notification.
"Expert, I went to the coordinates you gave us for farming monsters. It is indeed very fast! I've already picked up two Stealth skill books from today alone!" Flying Stone said. At the location where Nie Yan told him to train, leveling was fifty percent more efficient compared to the common training areas. This had made Flying Stone really excited. Gifting Nie Yan a single Stealth Skill book had given him such a treasure trove of a training area—it was definitely a worthwhile trade!
"That's natural of course. Fallen Shamans also drop the Owl Sight skill book. If you find any extra, don't forget to send me one." Nie Yan wasn't the least bit surprised. He had gone through numerous expert strategy guides in his previous life. Small tidbits like these—the amount he remembered was definitely not few in number. In his life, Nie Yan was the type of person who was thick-skinned and furthermore very forgetful. There was an awful amount of things he would go through life forgetting or completely neglecting. However, the only things he remembered the most distinctly were definitely these game strategy guides.
Every person had an exceptional memory when dealing with the things they were particularly interested in.
"If the skill book drops, I'll send it to you through the mail. There's something I've been wondering about, how did you find out about this training spot?" Stone asked through the chat. When he had met Nie Yan, the latter had been nothing more than a Level 0.
"I used to play on a Warrior account, however, I deleted it to create a Thief." Nie Yan casually gave out an excuse without thinking. Naturally, he didn't want anyone to know the secret was that he had been reincarnated.
"So it was like that… Your Warrior account must have been really high leveled, huh. Why'd you end up deleting it? In a few days, one of my friends wants to form a group to enter the Fallen Shaman Camp. Expert, what are your thoughts on this?" Stone asked expectantly in his message. Nie Yan certainly did appear to be a person who was very knowledgeable. Furthermore, his several friends were indeed only able to fight to the Fallen Shaman Camp's outer area and couldn't advance any farther.
The Fallen Shaman Camp is a high difficulty instance. Instances are divided into special instances and basic instances. When a special instance is cleared by players, it disappears and becomes an ordinary area. As for basic instances, if they were cleared by players, they can still be repeatedly entered afterward. However, the equipment drop rate is much lower and the profits earned weren't that high either.
The Fallen Shaman Camp is classified as a basic instance. It's divided into five difficulties: Easy, Normal, Hard, Expert, Specialist. The higher the difficulty, the better the equipment that would drop. If a party were to clear this instance, they would have to wait five days until they could enter and clear it again.
"A full walkthrough on how to clear the Fallen Shaman Camp will cost you two silvers, no bargaining," Nie Yan replied. Two silvers were the equivalent of two hundred coppers. Towards new players, this was definitely an extravagant sum of money. However, since Stone's friends were able to form a team to clear the Fallen Shaman Camp, two silvers shouldn't be regarded as much.
"I'll go back and discuss it with my friend." Stone was a little skeptical. He couldn't possibly have a complete Fallen Shaman Camp walkthrough, right?Such a thing doesn't even exist online.
On an average run, profits from clearing the easy difficulty of the Fallen Shaman Camp should be about three silvers. If their luck were good, they might be able to obtain one or two high-quality drops with decent stats. Though the drop everyone wanted the most from the Fallen Shaman Camp was still the Heal skill book. Nie Yan demanding a two-silver information fee could be regarded as beyond excessive. If no equipment dropped, then they would've paid Nie Yan for nothing.
The difficulty of the Fallen Shaman Camp was a little high. After their party gets wiped out a few times, they'll naturally realize the fee Nie Yan had commissioned wasn't the least bit expensive at all.
"Reply to me after your friend agrees. If he doesn't agree, don't bother me unless you have business." Nie Yan continued shooting at his target. Under his constant rain of fire, the Bison Chief gradually began showing indications of falling.
"Alright, I'll go and talk with our party leader." There was basically an equal sign connecting Nie Yan to the title of an expert. He wasn't slightest bit offended in regards to Nie Yan's cold attitude. Experts who have this kind of personality were also pretty common. Stone was wondering, What level did Nirvana Flame's previous warrior account reach? It ought to have been really powerful, but why did he end up deleting it? Could it have possibly been related to a matter that was difficult to discuss?
Flying Stone finished speaking.「Doot! Doot! Doot! …」A busy signal came from the voice chat.
Nie Yan hung up and accelerated the firing rate of the crossbow in his hand. One after another, bolts rapidly left the crossbow.
Firing for one and a half hours, he had consumed around thirty-six hundred crossbow bolts.「Mooo!」At long last, the Bison Chief let out a final agonizing cry before staggering to the ground. The massive body smashed heavily towards the earth, and Nie Yan could even feel the vibrations under his feet.
Nie Yan estimated a bit: if he had used the short bow, killing the Bison Chief would have taken at least five hours in addition to consuming over ten thousand arrows. Fortunately, this single-handed crossbow with its additional skill saved him quite a bit of time.
Two white lights shone upon Nie Yan's body as two clear and melodious tunes sounded out—each one represented a single level up.
「System: You've successfully slain a Bison Chief. +1800% experience for killing a monster above your level. You have received 8290 experience points.」
Nie Yan glanced at his experience bar, he had reached Level 2 with 21% of his experience bar already filled. The experience gained from killing the Bison Chief was definitely enormous.
After finally completing his task, Nie Yan put away the crossbow in his hand and walked over towards the Bison Chief's corpse. Searching under the Bison Chief's dead body, he found that it dropped five coppers. In addition, he also managed to pick up a dagger.
Nie Yan glanced at the dagger's stats.
Horn Dagger: Bronze
Properties: Unidentified
Nie Yan's eyelids jumped up in excitement. It was a Bronze-grade dagger! Equipment was divided in these grades: White, Bronze, Silver, Gold, Dark Gold, and Legendary. Occasionally there would also be green-coloured sets. Only equipment at Bronze Grade or above had additional properties.
The monsters within Conviction were classified into these classes: Leaders, Sub Elites, Elites, and Lords. These monsters were uncommon and very few in number as well as spawning infrequently. Equipment with additional properties only had a one in one thousand chance of dropping. The majority of players could only make do by wearing white-grade equipment. Due to this, equipment with additional properties were all fairly precious, and their prices would skyrocket to the extent that they were unbearable for ordinary players.
Bronze grade weapons normally had an additional 20% attack above that of ordinary weapons. Furthermore, they also came with additional properties.
The equipment that a Level 8 Bison Chief drops should be Level 5. At present, the price of a Level 5 bronze grade dagger is at least three silvers or higher. Furthermore, an average Level 3 player's total assets, for the most part, was only about twenty coppers. If one had assets valued at the level of silvers, they were definitely a very well-off person.
According to his plans, he gathered the Bison Chief's drops and stored away the bronze grade dagger into his bag space. Nie Yan retreated from the narrow passageways within the boulders and headed back towards Tellak town.
Tellak town's only appraiser was a short-statured white-bearded old man with narrow triangular eyes. He was very shrewd, making everyone who saw him feel very unnerved. However, he was the only appraiser in all of Tellak town.
Nie Yan opened the trading window.
"Youngster, do you need me to appraise any items?" the short old man asked.
"A dagger." Nie Yan put up the Horn Dagger into the appraisal window.
"The appraisal fee is ten coppers. Do you still wish for an appraisal?"
Nie Yan's heart skipped a beat. This Horn Dagger's appraisal fee was ten coppers. Typically, the appraisal fee for an item was five percent of the item's price, and this was only the NPC's price for the item. The market price was frequently more than six times higher than that. In other words, this Horn dagger had a value of at least twelve silvers!
He thought for a moment. In the next few days, I won't be needing to go anywhere that requires a lot of money. Spending ten coppers also won't be that troublesome. He pressed confirm.
The Horn Dagger blossomed with a cyan radiance; its brilliance was definitely not understated. This radiance was a distinctive characteristic of bronze grade equipment.
The Horn Dagger's handle was cambered with the texture of wood, with an awfully sharp blade in the front. It was much thicker compared to ordinary daggers and possessed the unique characteristic of being shaped like a bull's horn.
Horn Dagger (Bronze)
Requirement: Level 5
Properties: Attack 16–19, Strength +5
Attack Speed: 2.3
Weight: 1 lb
User Restriction: Thief, can be equipped by any faction.
This Horn Dagger gave a bonus to his Strength stat. These five points in Strength were equivalent to five points of attack. Then add onto the fact that the dagger's base attack was already higher than an ordinary Level 5 dagger's by three or four points, it meant this Horn Dagger was better than an ordinary dagger by nearly ten points. The influence of these ten points of attack, speaking from a new player's perspective, was indeed very large.
Looks like I've picked up a reliable Level 5 dagger, Nie Yan thought.