Chapter 72 – Hidden Challenge Part 9, Number Crunching and the Secret Shop

The archer dashed backwards, her hand covering her bleeding breast through her leather armor. She avoided the follow up from my poleaxe combination by creating some distance between us with a quick step ability unique to the archer class.

“Shadow.”

For the first time ever, I used shadow as an instantaneous gap closer. Bursting into a shade, I reappeared less than a second later right in front of her, and smashed down with the flat of the blade of my poleaxe.

The poleaxe blade slammed into the top of her head.

162 damage, stunning blow!

The level 81 steel guild archer crumpled forwards, unconscious from a concussion. I stabbed her in the torso several times, depleting her health bar.

[You have slain Erica]

[You have gained 4 tickets.]

She must have already killed two players, so I got double the amount of tickets from her. Interestingly enough, wolves did not drop any tickets for their own body. The only tickets that they dropped were their own claims. So theoretically, a wolf that gained the status by killing a player, but then chose to throw away the two tickets that they received from the kill, would yield zero tickets if they died to another wolf.

That kind of situation was probably most likely to unfold around a player like Steel Slice, who would demand his close underlings to hand over tickets to him. So he would be worth thousands of tickets, but his underlings would have next to nothing.

Although, I guess that didn’t work because of Bubs’s culling rule. The mechanics behind a competition like this had so many permutations because of the different personalities and goals of players involved that it was interesting and almost necessary to run through scenarios in my head as I progressed through the competition. In a sense, this was almost like financial modeling. When you want to build a financial model, you generally create a spreadsheet with three categories of outcomes to base your assumptions, otherwise known as guesstimates, on. One category for disaster tier outcome, one category for divinely blessed tier outcomes, and one category for normal outcomes. It was a way to stress test a stock or company and see if they could survive the disaster tier outcome, as well as show what would happen if everything went their way, and compare both situations to a more normal or average outcome.

Although actual statistics were not that important in Eclipse Online, an event like this was not really regular Eclipse Online. This event had almost board-game like rules, and so number crunching game theory scenarios became a whole lot more valuable. A culling type round like this, where there was such an extreme difference between the positive outcome and negative outcome, only made game theory thinking even more valuable.

However, this particular board game had too many unknown variables to start with good assumptions. A forecast model was only as good as the information that it was fed. As the saying went, “shit in, shit out.”

The first and most obvious question that would benefit from a forecast calculation was this. How many tickets did I need by sundown to survive?

Having zero tickets to your name was the worst case scenario. But even in such a poor situation, it was theoretically possible to survive with zero tickets. There were two scenarios where a zero ticket player could survive the culling. If more than half the players in the competition had zero tickets, then you could just get lucky and not be randomly selected by Bubs. Alternatively, if half of the competitors were already killed during the day, Bubs would not act, and so it didn’t matter how many tickets you had, you would be safe.

Having two tickets gave you a moderate chance at survival. It gave you priority over players with zero tickets, as well as dead players. You would only be culled if there were not enough zero ticket players and dead players to make up half the competition, and you also got unlucky and were one of the randomly selected two ticket players.

Damn it, this would be so easy to calculate and the answer would definitely be “yes you are safe in all situations with two tickets” if it was purely a PvP event, but the addition of the PvE tasks as a source of ticket generation made ticket safety threshold calculations that much harder. If there was no PvE ticket generation, then having two tickets granted you complete invulnerability from the culling. Because if you thought about it, it was numerically impossible to get culled if you had two tickets in a PvP only setting. Just think about it– if half the population became wolves, and a player becomes a wolf by killing another player, then by definition the other half of the population would be dead, so Bubs would not act, and you would be safe. If less than half the population became wolves, then you would be automatically safe as one of the two-ticket holder wolves in a sea of zero ticket innocents. If more than half the population became wolves… my brain hurt to think about it, but that would be logically impossible unless wolves were killing wolves, and if that was the case then you would definitely be safe with two tickets as well. Think about it this way. Every wolf in existence necessitates at least one dead player. Therefore 60% of the original population being wolves meant that at least 60% of the original population was dead, and among the dead were wolves.

But if the innocents were collecting tons of tickets, then none of this applied with that sweet sweet hundred percent certainty that I missed oh so much.

To formulate a good strategy in a reality where innocents could collect tickets, I needed to estimate the amount of tickets innocents were generating. I could use the fog demon as an example.

It took four players roughly an hour and a half to bring down a ten ticket monster unmolested. That was roughly 2.5 tickets per person. However, since this was a battle royale and distractions were inevitable, I’d bring the average time to kill a ten ticket monster up to three and a half hours. Meaning that they would only get at most one monster before sundown.

There were so many more variables including different ticket value monster strength and et cetera, and I was venturing well into “shit in, shit out” territory when it came to the PvE ticket estimates, but I decided to press on with the example just to see what the outcome it would yield.

Four players, with 2.5 tickets each. Tickets could not be split in half, so some would have two, while others would have three. Suddenly, wolves sitting on two tickets were in danger. The more innocents that successfully completed their monster hunts, the more wolves would get culled.

But what if there was some fuckery involved during an innocent party’s ticket distribution? If the monster slayer backstabbed the group and took all the tickets, that would only benefit the two ticket wolves, since suddenly out of a group of four innocents, three would have zero tickets while one would have ten, instead of all four having 2.5 tickets.

But me? With my 13 tickets already? Would I ever be in danger from the culling?

…

The answer was definitely not. I could even give Rosalia three tickets so I’d have 10 and she’d have 9, and we would still be far from danger from the culling. Assuming my assumptions weren’t shit. But 9 tickets was so far above 2.5 tickets that I could say that we would be very safe. And just like the previous example, the monster slayer ditching his party and running off with the entire ticket stack would only benefit me.

I could form a solid conclusion off of this fact pattern– I could comfortably split my tickets with Rosalia, and didn’t have to scramble to collect tickets this afternoon to survive the culling, because even if I just sat here doing nothing, I’d still be safe.

But this situation was a bit more complex than just the ticket threshold for the rule VIII culling at sunset.

Speaking of game theory, there was a classic problem here.

If half the player base killed the other half of the player base, then Bubs would not need to do anything. His wish for half the player base to be dead would already be fulfilled, without lifting a finger or his murder mallet.

Therefore, it was in the best interest of the competitors to collectively kill off as many players as possible. With enough carnage, Bubs wouldn’t need to act.

However, it was not in the best interest of an individual competitor to risk fighting to the death. A freeloader would love to have other players kill each other off while he hid in a corner somewhere, and gained safety through the work of others.

But it didn’t just end there. The culling tonight was only a part of the first round. The real objective of the first round was to survive and collect 50 tickets.

This meant that ticket economy was important. Thank god there were non-PvP forms of ticket gaining, because I could already see that PvP was worse than a zero sum game, it was a negative sum game.

Every time an innocent killed someone and became a wolf, the net amount of tickets in the system was reduced by two. This was because wolves did not drop their original two tickets anymore, and thus the transformation from an innocent into a wolf was a net negative of two tickets to the entire ticket economy.

I had no idea if there was a limit to PvE ticket farming, but if there was, then the total number of tickets possible to be collected diminished with each passing hour. Therefore, if I wanted to pass the first round, I couldn’t just sit here waiting. I needed to be generating a combined 100 tickets for passage to the second round for both me and Rosalia. And generating excess tickets was preferred as well, so I could use them in the hidden challenge shops.

-------

The fighting near the courtyard was beginning to die down. The level 86 orc managed to kill both the warrior and the rogue he was fighting against before, and was heading towards the castle’s front door. I silently watched him from a distance, wondering if he could take on that party of four of level 70s that fought the fog demon.

Thankfully, knowing that I’d be safe from the culling with my current ticket count gave me a lot of tactical flexibility. I didn’t need to rush into every fight and try to score a hail mary, and could instead lurk in the background of the battlefield and locate weaknesses.

Looking at the mob of players fighting on the hill and all the bodies rolling down, and then at the castle, I was stuck in a bit of dilemma. Should I brave the massive battle royale, or stalk the orc and the other four in the castle?

“Hey, Meat Shield,” I said to the cat on my shoulder. “Do you still sense those four and the orc in the castle?”

“It’s faint, but they are still alive~”

Good. That meant that at the very least, the castle’s treasure was mimic free. Maybe I didn’t have to be so scared of the castle interior after all. Was my trauma from the Forgotten King’s Tomb making me a bit too anxious?

I walked towards the castle’s front door, and then into that red carpeted hall lined with suits of armor.

“Hmmm, something smells really good upstairs~” Meat Shield said happily. “Can we go up there?”

“If it’s not dangerous,” I replied. With adamantite poleaxe gripped in my hands, I cautiously walked up the grand staircase and opened the door.

Immediately upon opening the door, I was hit in the face by the sound of vuvuzelas and the sight of tons of balloons hung from a large treasure trove of items and potions and even food, completely the opposite of what I expected.

“Oh dear, another visitor already,” said a cheery old ghost wearing a rice hat, who was no more than three feet tall, with a long white moustache and a cane. He hopped over a giant stack of books with unexpected dexterity, landing right in front of me. I looked down at him.

“Welcome to my humble shop. You’ll find all the supplies you need and more, as long as you have tickets to spend.”