Zhong Yi's Palworld.
The Desert outpost.
An enormous metal contraption worked away atop a patch of black oil deposits, creaking and groaning.
The Pals assigned to hauling carried Spirit Oil from the oil extractors to the sect's storage chests, one canister at a time.
Players accustomed to having Pals handle all their resources automatically were destined to hit a bottleneck at level 50: a material called "plasteel."
Plasteel was made using Spirit Oil, which was crude oil in the original game.
There were very few ways to obtain crude oil. Fully automated mass production required oil extractors placed over oil deposits.
They consumed loads of electricity and extracted oil slowly, but most importantly, they depended heavily on the locations of the deposits.
Zhong Yi and the others had never discovered the two isolated islands east of the starting area, each with three natural oil deposits. They could only make do with an outpost at a spot in the Desert wilderness with two deposits.
The output of two deposits was nowhere near enough to supply a four-person team's Spirit Oil needs.
With plasteel in short supply, the four had only upgraded their essential helmets and shields.
After all, they just needed to stay alive. Most of the fighting was left to their Pals.
As for the [Ultimate Pal Sphere] newly unlocked at level 51, they each carried ten in case they encountered a rare, high-level Pal. For everyday use, they still scrimped and saved by using the previous generation's Legendary Pal Spheres.
The four had agreed early on to wait until they had stockpiled some Spirit Oil before deciding their next move.
"Don't we still have over a hundred canisters of Spirit Oil? How is that not enough?"
Zhong Yi glanced at the guild chest and asked curiously.
Over a hundred