While the popularity and revenue of Frost Snow Project were soaring, some rather ominous things were also happening.
The players had logged into the game, and of course it was impossible for them to log off right after draining their stamina on gacha pulls.
After getting a new character, they always liked to run around the open world and test out the weapons.
However, with a player base vastly exceeding anything from the past, playing like this caused a lot of issues that internal testing missed to suddenly start popping up in clusters—
Heroic Sniper was currently running around the map with various recently reworked characters, looking for different kinds of monsters to attack him in order to make a "Clothing Destruction Guide".
He tested as he took notes in a small notebook kept close at hand.
At first, everything went smoothly.
Until he switched to He Yin and began testing beast-type mechanical monsters.
He Yin was knocked flying by a monster, crying out in pain as she crashed to the ground, but she quickly flipped back to her feet with her clothes completely undamaged.
"Looks like mechanical types don't work," Heroic Sniper muttered, operating He Yin to cast her ultimate skill directly with the intention of instantly deleting these two small mobs and quickly moving on to test the next monster type.
He Yin's ultimate skill was as gorgeous as ever, both sensual and cool.
Yet just as the ultimate skill animation ended and Sniper jumped into the air after obtaining the Wind Riding buff, another monster rammed into him! Caught completely off guard, Sniper could only watch helplessly as the monster slammed right into He Yin's waist.
Then—
He Yin flew away.
Not the kind of flying from earlier where she "flew a dozen meters away and could stand back up with a single flip."
Instead, it was—
As if she had broken free of planetary gravity and was no longer bound by it at all, flying straight up toward the sky! Heroic Sniper was dumbfounded.
The livestream viewers froze as well, but a clever soul among them quickly reacted:
"Crow takes off!"
"The He Yin carrier rocket has successfully launched! Jiuquan, copy! Beijing, copy! Investigator, copy!"
"Turns out He Yin's ultimate skill really can defy gravity, huh?"
"We have the most realistic physics engine!"
"Wait! This is a bug, right? Good opportunity! Quick, check if He Yin is even wearing anything underneath!"
"?" Sniper paused for a moment. "She's already up in the sky, and you're still thinking about her underwear? You're a bit perverted, bro!"
Soon, however, he also came to his senses—under normal conditions, Dream Builder certainly wouldn't let characters expose things they shouldn't.
But this wasn't normal conditions! This was a bug happening right now! There might actually be hope?
So he changed his tune and said, "Well, now that you mention it... since you all asked so sincerely, I'll show mercy and satisfy you."
"Hold on first, though. I'll adjust the stream delay to one minute, otherwise things might go poorly."
Heroic Sniper quickly settled the livestream settings, then began frantically dragging his mouse up, down, left, and right, scrolling his mouse wheel until it rattled loudly and slapping the spacebar with loud smacks.
Unfortunately, no matter how he operated, that damn hemline always managed to block his line of sight.
The livestream viewers were deeply disappointed.
Heroic Sniper was also deeply disappointed, so he could only find some amusement by looking at the increasingly distant ground.
He also knew there were many new players in the Livestream Room, so he took the opportunity to introduce things to them:
"This is Silver City. It really looks tiny from this perspective."
"This is Void Abyss, a high-level area. The monsters are ridiculously fierce, and it's best to bypass it during initial progression."
"Over here is Tree Sea, the place with the most plants in Frost Snow Project. The scenery is nice, but playing on a phone makes it prone to frame drops and overheating."
"This is—"
"?"
"Wait! What the heck is this? When did an extra island pop up over here??"
Heroic Sniper was bewildered. "Did any of you notice?"
An old player immediately replied, "Notice my ass! It's so far away you can't even see it from the coast; being able to see it at all is purely because your perspective is too high."
Sniper's perspective was indeed high, and at this moment, as he looked down from above, the large map was even beginning to display a distinct curved shape.
--Dream Builder hadn't actually made a planet; this visual effect was purely a camera issue.
Heroic Sniper pondered after reading the viewer's reply.
Patiently waiting for He Yin to fly all the way out of the atmosphere until the game world had turned into a blue-and-white glass marble, he stopped admiring the spectacle and instead force-quit the game to log back in.
However, he didn't continue making the clothing destruction guide next; instead, he temporarily adjusted his plan.
"Brothers, the clothing destruction guide can wait. I have a feeling that island might be new upcoming content!"
"I'll go scout the path for everyone first!"
He charged He Yin's ultimate skill once more, ran to the coast to find a monster capable of knocking characters flying, and attempted to use this flying bug to soar directly above that island for high-altitude close reconnaissance.
However, this kind of maneuver severely tested skill and luck, and wasn't something that could be managed in a short time.
He began repeating the cycle of getting knocked flying and exiting to log back in over and over.--As luck would have it, an ordinary player with the ID Bitter Moon had also encountered a bug.
Bitter Moon was playing the game on his phone while on the train. He had a 5-hour train ride today and had even brought a power bank to pass the time, leaving him under zero pressure while gaming.
Restrained by the fact that the train was a public space with far too many people around, he felt a little embarrassed to lick his phone screen, let alone openly go crazy over the characters.
So after secretly admiring them for a bit like a thief, he operated the new characters to do the limited-time event.
The vast majority of the rework workload for Frost Snow Project was concentrated on the characters, so the game events were actually designed earlier on.
The event storyline wasn't complicated:
A scientist in Silver City was conducting a dangerous experiment—taming corrupted creatures.
Such a dangerous task naturally required our Legendary Investigator to step up.
Thus, the player obtained a quest item from him—a lasso—and went into the wild to try taming corrupted creatures.
Each lasso could only be used once, and a tamed corrupted creature could exist for 15 minutes.
During this period, it would follow by the player's side and help the player fight monsters.
Once the time was up, the corrupted creature would regain its senses, break free of its restraints, and return to the wild.
It was just such a simple, lightweight little activity.
Aside from raising the event rewards a bit, Xu Meng hadn't made any changes.
It was simply a massive coincidence—the very instant Bitter Moon threw the lasso, the speeding train instantly plunged into a deep mountain tunnel.
The mobile signal dropped.
Completely oblivious, Bitter Moon intently stared at the corrupted machine soldier—meaning the corrupted robot—that he had just captured on his phone.
Yet when the capture succeeded and he intended to clear out the remaining wild mobs, he found that the mobs were beaten back step-by-step, but completely no damage numbers popped up.
Only then did he raise his head and realize the network had disconnected.
A dozen seconds later, the train rushed out of the tunnel.
Sunlight shone back into the carriage, and the network quickly returned to normal.
Bitter Moon looked at his phone again, only to find that over the health bar of the wild mob he hadn't finished off, a semi-transparent lasso icon symbolizing [Capturable] had popped up once more.
"Didn't I already use up the lasso?"
Bitter Moon opened his inventory and stared in bewilderment as the lasso was still resting safely in the first row.
A question mark slowly surfaced.
He habitually opened P Station to search and found that this lasso was indeed a consumable item—
For everyone else, it would disappear upon use. Correspondingly, an hourglass would appear behind the health bar of a captured monster.
Once the hourglass vanished, the monster would run away, and only then could players go ask the NPC for a second lasso.
Yet...
Bitter Moon looked at his own game screen.
The lasso was still lying there soundly without having vanished.
And the corrupted machine soldier following along to help him fight monsters had no hourglass behind its health bar either.
"Ran into a bug?"
Bitter Moon wasn't playing an ACG Game for the first time. Connecting it to the signal interruption when driving through the mountain cave earlier, he quickly thought of a possibility: the network drop caused the game to bug out! Furthermore, a bold thought rapidly formed in his mind:
"Does this mean that by utilizing this bug, I can infinitely capture monsters, and the captured monsters won't leave either?"
Already feeling bored sitting on the train, Bitter Moon instantly grew interested.
Considering he only had one phone and his efficiency might be relatively low, he opened a screen recording software, recorded a short video of successfully triggering the bug, and neatly shared it in the gaming group—
"@all, look what fun thing I found?!"
Monthly pass requested, reads requested, recommendations requested.
Before you continue