The livestream was gathering more people just because the influencer said he would unbox various kinds of gift crates.
"First off, we have here the basic crate. As I said before, this game loves money and says it upfront. This crate costs five thousand credits. Yes, folks, you heard it right. It costs five thousand credits and it's still a basic crate. But is it worth the price? Let's check it out."
The audience fired away multiple messages.
"This is a scam."
"No game is worth nearly half of my salary."
"Previous poster, if you are so poor, don't play the game."
"Is it great spending your parents' money?"
"It looks costly because there is no official credit to coin conversion or vice-versa."
The livestreamer who was getting worried that he would be bogged down by my money vs parents' money, happily latched to this message.
"What ILuvAnime said is true. In other games, there is a fixed credit to coin conversion ratio. No such thing is mentioned in this game, yet. The rumour is that, there will be conversion centre within the game soon. So developers want that to be the mainstay, so no conversion of any parts is introduced yet.
But we know people can preload the coins at the time of their character creation. The conversion then was set at 200 credits per coin. A huge rip off. I said that myself. I was even happy that their pay to win players will have to pay through the nose for the previlege.
So if we consider that as the base, five thousand credits will be just 25 coins. Is 25 coins too much?"
The replies literally flew.
"Twenty five coins are not much."
"Indeed, that's very cheap."
"A repair can cost ten to fifteen coins. A purchase at potions store will be fifty coins a or more. Compared to that, those crates are dirt cheap."
The influencer then showed the crate. A small wooden box with lid closed. He then opened it. No drama required from the livestreamer part. And, they found potions.
"Folks! We can see potions in this crate. It looks so similar to the gift crates we got during character creation. That one had basic clothes, a weapon and potions. But this one is wee bit smaller. Has only few potions. Let's see what they are.
So a basic crate can get you around 7 HP potiona and 5 MP potions. If converted to coins, they will be worth a lot more than twenty five coins. No wonder they are called gift crates. The price of the items inside is worth more than what we pay for.
Now I'm excited about higher price crates."
And the livestreamer got gifts after opening the gift crate. Audience kept on egging him to open next one and even sent few gifts to hurry him up.
Various trending topics had already started. Do's and Don'ts while purchasing gift crates, What to expect from your gift crate, Why spending more means earning more when it comes to gift crates....Even more bizzare and click bait titles adorned the net. Many had already sold the vids of unboxing the crates to news channels.
The common people who just followed the game but not play, had c
licked their tongues at the whooping 200 credits a day as daily rent to pay the game were left gobsmacked. The green leaf company which adjusted the price for credit to game coins to facilitate transactions within the game, outside the purview of the game developers had closed the shop temporarily. They would resume only after all of the gift crates had been integrated and swallowed completely.
The bias was very much evident. The gaming company wanted people to spend money. Spend more to get more. Because basic crate had just potions, basic ones at that. As the price of gift crates increase, different potions were included. The expensive gift crates had uncommon grade weapons or some rare materials or in some case, a recipe.
The guilds were giddy. They could upgrade their players. They got many single use scrolls, some very good items. Recipes were best addition. They could churn out potions or armour or weapons as long as the lifestyle member had profiency and raw materials.
The black heart of people reared it's ugly head too. There were lots of player killings. In many villages, some bought the gift crates at ridiculously low price from the fellow players.
Artha's village was not one of those. There was no single tyrant in the village. Instead it was like crabs in the basket. If one crab wants to climb up, others would pull it down to their level. Player killings did happen. Bad eggs everywhere, can't be helped. But, mostly the peace was maintained and adhered.
Three to five players of different guilds sat in the stall near the village centre. The banner said it all - single window purchase of all sorts of crates. The credits paid to player, based on crate type, was reasonable. The amount of work, fights to get higher level resources, done previous evening evidently was worthwhile. The major honchos got first dibs on most expensive gift crates. The middle grade ones would get the middle ranged ones, only till certain number. Then it was anybody's game. Who knows which type of gift crate will the fellow players buy?
The guilds and workshops had to utilise massive human resource to purchase, unbox and store items. The usable ones were sent out to their main and reserve players, pronto.
This day, the monsters in the field would feel lonely. Because the majority of interest of players was on crates or clearing the dungeons. Even if the dungeons were open for less than a week, the amount of dungeons cleared was more. They were somewhere in the middle of the villages which had cleared a part of dungeons. This sort of progress is indeed very fast when compared to other villages that had their dungeons open for over a week or ten days. The players felt extra strong, they had many items under the arsenal, so they would definitely try to clear the dungeon as much as possible. The experts, elites and reserves all descended to dungeons today.
Including Sela's team. Curiously, none of them opened up about purchasing the gift crates. Sela got the updated map and planned the path. As a tank, she had certain guess on which paths can be traversed and which would be more difficult. Artha became designated poop scooper, oh sorry, team item collector and elite monster loots collector.
They were able to clear 15%of the dungeon. It seems a lot but that covered all the sections till only one Elite monster was present. Today no one cried and said they wanted to clear this early. The situation outside was very dangerous. Especially for hot headed team members. If need be, Sela has declared, they would spend all the time till log off within this dungeon.
So all turned their hot headed temper into competitive spirit to finish the dungeons as much as possible. This meant backtracking a lot but they had time. No worries.