Chapter 69

After the ‘four exotic flowers’ left, Feng Bujue continued to walk around the mall . Just as he had thought, the shops only had costumes and other consumable goods as the main items .

Besides the function of customizing player’s appearance, costumes didn’t occupy space in their bags . Moreover, they could enhance players with added attributes . Anyway, since Thriller Paradise had made coming to terms of the characters’ attributes unclear, under the circumstance of having no data for reference, the description of those attributes boost was just ‘Enhance the total Survival Value a little bit’, ‘Improve the accuracy of Shooting to a certain level’, ‘Could jump higher’, etc . Costumes were categorized into shirts, pants, armors, hats, footwear, and accessories . This game didn’t offer dress or skirt, needless to ask why . Anyway, the accessories included stockings with various types . If female players had a strong desire to expose their legs, they could use shorts or mid-length pants and combine them with socks .

Each piece of garments could boost their attributes by ‘a little bit’ . If they could equip themselves with costumes, of course, they would be much stronger than wearing nothing . In order to prevent players from choosing the attributes with the appearance they wanted, all clothing with added attributes were set to optional . For example, if a player wanted a beret, once he bought it, there was absolutely no attribute boost . However, when this beret is added into the player’s item storage, it would randomly generate three more attribute boosts . Then, this player could select one of them and equip it themselves .

Costumes are items that can’t be exchanged . If a player were lucky enough to have a special boost, it would be impossible for them to buy another one and exchange the items . Of course, this situation was rare since the attribute boosts were all useful . Moreover, they could select only one among three options .

In short, apparently, Thriller Paradise was trying to encourage players to use their favorite appearance to try on these costumes .

This optional selection feature was to serve players purposely . In this context, the chance that players would have the same shirt wouldn’t be high . Even if they wore the same items, the added attribute boosts would be different .

And, talking about the consumable goods, the most needed regular items were the Survival Value supplement, the Stamina Value supplement, bandage, multifunctional detoxification serum, and some other medicines to treat the abnormal statuses like paralyzing from electric shock, burns, sick, or frozen . Besides, there are other popular items such as bullets, ropes, arrows, batteries, and explosives .

The consumable goods were categorized into different classes . The supplement medicines included large, medium, and small types with different recovery percentage and prices . The other items that came in bulk all had a precise price up to each bullet and each centimeter of bandage .

Last but not the least, the shops here also sold equipment . However, since it wasn’t the Box of Fear, the quality of the items here was all under normal grade without any effects . Even a newbie, who had just completed the Newbie Tutorial at level 1 with only Common Specialty Grade F unlocked, could still find some items that he would be able to use in those shops . Although there would be a certain difference, still, it was better than having nothing .

It meant that if players couldn’t find any equipment in the scenarios, they could use their money to make up for it . Regardless of the players’ level and actual situation of their Specialties, they could always find a suitable set of equipment in the shops .

Feng Bujue quickly read through the description of the shops managed by the system as he just had skimmed over the consumable goods . It wasn’t necessary to read about bullets, Survival Value supplement, or the other stuff attentively as he just needed to pay attention to the items he could use .

Regarding the costumes, he had considered buying one, but the price was such a rip-off . Moreover, the prices of these kinds of costumes were somehow based on their special appearances . For example, the ‘Panda Armor’ was priced at 300,000 game coins . Let alone this 300,000 game coins costume had the same random attribute boosts with the other costumes, it wasn’t much convenient to walk in this sort of clothing . Isn’t it tying your hands by yourself? Perhaps Dream Inc . thought that wearing something like a mascot and entering the scenario would reduce the intimidating atmosphere there . Perhaps that is why this fancy costume had such an expensive price!

Oh yeah, we need to talk about money too . When the Open Beta was released, Dream Inc . had announced that there was no other currency in this game besides two kinds of stuff that could be bought in the Box of Fear with Skill Value, which were [Special Items] and [Game Currency] . As for the other items, they all required spending game coins to be purchased . And, Dream Inc . now officially provided the exchange service between game coins and RMB .

Originally, this should be fine . However, Dream Inc . had a sharp strategy saying that the exchange rate between Thriller Paradise’s coins and real money wasn’t fixed . This exchange rate would be changed accordingly to the actual situation of the market .

Usually, the exchange rates of game currency would be determined by the ‘gold speculation’ company, but from now on, it would be controlled .

The exchange rate would be updated at 8:00 AM every Monday; it was also when Dream Inc . gave the exchange rate for the week . Assuming that you could buy 100 coins last week with 1 RMB, in the following week, however, you might be able to buy up to 120 coins or only 85 coins with the same amount of RMB .

From the profit point of view, of course, the game producers would expect a higher exchange rate . It would be better if 100 RMB could only buy 1 game coin, but it was impossible since no one would buy it anyway .

Thus, the system would decide this change entirely . It would be based on the total number of players, the total amount of coins rewarded, and the income of the system shops—all of them would be calculated with a special formula, and the result would be the basis to adjust and control the exchange rate for the next week .

Although this constantly changing exchange rate would create the phenomenon of ‘money speculation’ in reality, it wasn’t related to Dream Inc . since the company just provided a one-way currency exchange, in which they only took RMB and sold the game coins . It didn’t matter to them whatever the players bought game coins for . If you have the ability, you can buy more coins when the rate is 1:10000, then wait until it is 1:100, so you can earn more profits then . It’s a sort of special ability though .

Later on, it has been proven that ‘money speculation’ was something hard to do since the system had controlled the exchange rate without any significant difference for a year round . The rate was kept around 1:2000 to 1:3000 . With a weekly updated exchange rate, the rich and powerful players wouldn’t bother to deal with the ‘money speculation’ guys, while the players who had to be precise on every cent would be worried . It was unsure whether there would be more profit in buying the coins now with a slightly lower price, or wait for a few more days to see if the updated rate would be lower than the price offered by the money speculation company .

Of course, talking about using RMB to buy game coins, currently to Feng Bujue, it was like he had the heart but no strength to do .

Now, if he wanted to buy anything, he had to rely on the rewarded coins . To a level 13 player, Feng Bujue’s properties weren’t bad at all as he got more than 164300 coins and 843 points of Skill Value .

Suddenly, he remembered the bag of garlic, which he had destroyed previously . If he hadn’t deleted it, perhaps he could have sold it with a price of two apples or three melons and earn some coins . That was surely a mistake! Anyway, thinking a little bit deeper, as this sort of items could be seen in any scenario and it wasn’t a valuable equipment, then its price might be just as high as the price of dust . If that one would have been sold with thousands of coins, from now on, he didn’t need to write more novels as he just needed to steal batteries, put them in his bag, and later he could sell them at good prices .

“Oh, I should check the Auction House first, the costumes are really expensive . ” Feng Bujue mused before turning around, then he headed towards the information tower in the middle of the Mall .

Coming closer, he found out that each of the four fan-shaped objects arrayed around the information tower had a special screen, which displayed the ranking lists besides the other virtual normal screens .

Above those fan-shaped objects, there were four letters which were ‘East, West, South, and North’ . Apparently, its purpose was to help players to distinguish directions in this bowl-like space .

Feng Bujue walked to the East and looked up to check the ranking list there, which was the level ranking list . Among the first 20 names, there were two players marked with ‘Anonymous’ . As for the other 18 players, laid next to their names was a pair of brackets () stating the name of their guilds and also their studios . It seemed that when the Open Beta Version was launched, those studios had already been set up .

Regarding the guild’s advantages or the conditions of establishment, Feng Bujue didn’t know . He decided to check it out when he got back to his login space . Now, he was quickly scanning over the list and memorizing the names and the studios of the top players .

Next, Feng Bujue walked to the South and saw another list . This list was named ‘Fighting Specialty Ranking’ . Surprisingly, among the 18 IDs that were listed on the previous list, only 5 were also listed in the top 20 of this ranking list .