The game forum was boiling. The social networking platforms crashed. The reason - dungeons.
Few brave souls had found some dungeons in the game. As the maps of each village was entirely different, those who thought of correlating with maps where dungeons were found, to search for new dungeons, were tired and suffered in vain. Would the game be so easily conquered?
Dungeons hold a special sway in these sort of games. Though there were variety of dungeons, one thing was common in all. Loots and massive XP. That's why the guilds and groups tried to monopolise them. That's why the guilds went to war. Dungeons were perpetual money minting machine.
They also had another name among players - curve wrecker. The leveling up curve of players who entered dungeons would be skewed a lot. The probability of death was very high initially. But, once you taste the success there, the leveling speed would be rocket like. So inspite of high chance of losing few levels, players would try their level best to enter the dungeons.
The gaming site announced the opening of dungeons the moment they were found, with a great fanfare. And they, helpfully, left few notes concerning the dungeons.
'....To be noted by all the players that in order to facilitate smooth transition in the game, initial dungeons would be similar to other games. But, the next level dungeons would start showcasing the true depth of the game. The monsters are waiting for you....'
Basically, this was easy type dungeons, with death penalty halved. Minimum number of players was 2, maximum 10. There would be level caping. Higher level players can't even enter the dungeon. Only the first dungeon discovered in the village would not have limited entry access. If all the players die, they will be sent out. If players give up, they will be sent out.
The guilds, workshops doubled down and made plans, backup plans, back up to backup plans. Workshops used their players as vanguards or canon fodders to map the dungeons and sold the info to the guilds or any entity paying money. This is business making season, honey. Especially when the guilds would probably not have full teams.
Dungeons were also fun way to play. It showed comradeship, leadership, expanding friend circle.
Basically, whole world was happy and rejoicing. Barring Atharva that is. Though he would have loved entering the dungeons, the chances were in negative. He was more interested in monster drops than anything else, but no one would be ready to play with him. The dungeons could not be found so easily, inspite of thousand of players searching. Out of millions of villages, less than 10 had dungeons discovered in them. The sheer probability of it....
It was inevitable that few players died. Sometimes, more than once. The progress they had made for past few days was gone just like that. But it did not stop others from searching. The bounty was already set. Many guilds, workshops, scions and uber rich had spread the word. Find the dungeon, sell the location details and earn loads of credits. The middlemen, manning few stalls in the village practically pestered the players even walking near their stalls. This is a major moment. A time to reap the investment. Oh, how they wished there was village chat box. They would have spammed and given away their contact details. Just as a facilitator for such deal, they could get thousands of credits as commission.
So, there was a peculiar post in the forum- requesting chat box option. Other VR games had chat option, why not here?
Would the game company lose out a way to maximize the publicity? The moderator had answer typed and ready, but was ordered not to post it till the matter turned into epic proportions.( Rising topic, trending topic! What are those? Those are mere baby steps. When the topic turns red hot even in other social network platforms, then it's epic proportion topic.)
Inside the game, few villages decided to profiteer from reckless heaven blessed (players). Few stocked death aura scrolls and death aura potions. These could be used to counter the debuff due to death. The NPCs had no idea that players could remove that debuff with coins paid to the system/ game AI.
The people in this world could not use it. So how come they had it? This was merely watered version of Miasma blocker, which was used when traversing through deadly and ghostly environment. The question is would the these heaven blessed buy it? It turned out that few players indeed had more coins than brains, because they purchased them, stocked them, boarded them. You can't say they had water in the brain, because there might be situation where removing death aura via coins option may not be available. Any thing can happen within the game.
It took nearly a day before few finally found some clues about opening of the dungeons.
Who said there were conspiracy theories only in real life? Obviously, all came with big font disclaimers that these were merely their thoughts and they could be incorrect. Who would want to be ligitated by a mere post, even if the said post brought lots of goodies. Each writer talked about different point. One claimed it was due to village getting high points by the players in the village and as reciprocity, the dungeons were opened earlier. Another said it was due to high levels of players. What's the use of dungeons opening if the players haven't reached the level to enter it. Another one said, it's not just the high level but proportion of players with high level. After all, a single high level player can't enter the dungeon and complete it, right?
Every post had a solid point, so people didn't know which one was right. Maybe it was one of those, maybe none. But they could try to replicate few to increase the chances. No harm in trying.
Soon the reckless fool of players started playing safe. Few leaders cropped up in some villages where they united many players to have a harmonious environment for playing.
Artha didn't realise the cause and effect as he still hadn't found the way to read posts in VR lobby while playing the game. But he saw the effect. Boy did he see it.
It was a good thing that he didn't have any opinion regarding guilds. If he had, this would have ripped it off and opened his eyes completely.