Skipping Stages and Ordinary Players' Thoughts

Is this the random redirection mechanism?

If you keep skipping levels like this, completing 99 levels doesn't seem that difficult.

Theoretically, with a bit of luck, you can jump to level 99 on your first try.

However, skipping a level will reduce your star rating, which should affect the final reward.

Ultimately, the choice depends on individual circumstances.

"Master, would you like to skip to the next level or continue to the next one?"

Our guild recommends that players who fail no more than twice participate in every stage, as this will allow them to gather more information on how to clear the stage more quickly.

"So I'm going to move on to the second level."

"Then I'll move on to the next level." Zhang Mingzhen nodded.

"If the later levels become too difficult, I'll consider skipping them."

Before long, Zhang Mingzhen successfully passed the second test.

He mentally calculated that due to a lack of strategy and the time spent observing others' challenges, the entire process took nearly ten minutes.

At this rate, it will probably take a lot of time to collect all ninety-nine stars.

Moreover, this game may not offer very good rewards.

At this moment, good news came through the world channel: a player had reached the finish line, and the reward information was made public.

It's called a "basic reward" because the player only accumulated twenty-three stars—clearly, he completed the game quickly by randomly skipping levels.

He was lucky.

On the world chat, the player announced loudly, "The first person to complete the Amusement Park has been born! Time: 1 hour and 22 minutes! Everyone is welcome to try and break the record!"

Gao Linzhi smiled when he saw this.

This time-related joke, you can even use it here?

Others, however, were uninterested in the praise, "Stop with the fluff, what's the reward? If it's too meager, I'm not going to bother—I've already died twice already."

The other party was quite agreeable and immediately posted what they had received.

"23-Star Reward Chest: 10 Level 1 Random Gems, 50,000 Gold Coins."

"That's it? It's a bit of a letdown. Fifty thousand Gold Coins isn't a lot, but considering it only took a little over an hour, it seems alright?"

"Don't talk nonsense if you don't understand."

"Once you're familiar with the levels, the time can be significantly reduced."

"The key point isn't the Gold Coins, it's the random gems! And they're not bound!"

"Indeed, gems are now Hard Currency; not only are casual players in high demand, but major guilds are also scrambling to acquire them."

"Moreover, the key is the essential need of the big shots. They definitely have a lot of the highest-level equipment, so their demand increases exponentially!"

It seems that Amusement Parks will become the core battleground for all Gold Farming Teams in the future.

Even if not for the Gold Coins, he should save up more stars for the higher-star rewards—he only has 23 stars. If he clears the level with 99 stars, the items in the treasure chest will definitely be much more valuable.

Seeing that the gems were classified as "non-binding and tradable," Zhang Mingzhen became even less willing to waste time on each level.

Why bother earning something yourself when you can buy it with Gold Coins?

Weren't those overflowing Gold Coins in his bag meant for this very purpose?

Although we don't yet know what the 99-star treasure chest contains, since the Amusement Park's main gameplay revolves around gems, the rewards are likely nothing more than more and rarer gems.

At this moment, some guilds have already publicly announced their intention to buy gems in the world chat.

As the market is still in its early stages and prices are uncertain, quotes from different vendors vary.

This situation is similar to the saying "buy early and enjoy early, buy late and enjoy discounts"—players who are willing to spend money are more willing to collect gems, socket them into equipment, and increase their combat power as soon as possible.

For most Ordinary Players, or those who prioritize cost-effectiveness, many will choose to wait and see.

They will wait until the high-level players in the game have completed their gem accumulation, at which point the market price will naturally drop, possibly even to half of its current price, thus saving a significant amount of Gold Coin expenses.

In addition, another group of players—those who specialize in commercial transactions—aim to earn Gold Coin coins through buying and selling.

It's now a real game.

Even in previous virtual games, the value of Gold Coins was often closely linked to real-world benefits.

Without enough Gold Coins, it is difficult to purchase high-level materials and equipment; many top players and large guilds also often use Gold Coins as payment to hire others to assist in tasks or battles.

This is why "gold farming guilds" that focus on acquiring Gold Coins remain active and highly sought after.

With the emerging potential of the gemstone market, several gold-farming guilds have set their sights on Amusement Park events, planning to send some members to participate weekly in order to steadily acquire gemstone resources.

Zhang Mingzhen quickly checked the acquisition offers from the major guilds.

Because gemstones are a relatively new type of traded item, their prices are generally high, with a single level-one gemstone costing roughly between five and eight thousand Gold Coins.

The rules for combining gems are as follows: three level 1 gems can be combined into one level 2 gem, three level 2 gems can be combined into a level 3 gem, and so on.

To synthesize a level 4 gem, you need to consume 27 level 1 gems, which is the level that most players currently prefer.

To synthesize a level 5 gem, you need 81 level 1 gems, and each piece of equipment can be inlaid with a maximum of three gems.

The number of level 5 gems required to equip a full set of gear would be extremely large.

That's a expenditure of several million Gold Coins.

Even for those wealthy high-end players, raising such a huge amount of Gold Coins at once is no easy task, not to mention that there is not a sufficient supply of gems in circulation on the market.

If you try to buy it quickly, the price will only get higher and higher.

Currently, there are about twenty large guilds that openly purchase gems, including Legion Guild, Dragon Map, War Alliance, Unparalleled, Contending for the World, Death God, Imperial Pavilion, Century Imperial City, etc.

These large guilds primarily acquire assets from their internal members. As a guild member, one naturally needs to prioritize supporting one's own guild in public. Therefore, acquisition prices are usually kept within a certain range to avoid unnecessary waste of resources due to malicious price gouging.

This is actually a form of covert exploitation of its members by the guild.

Since it is exploitation, there will naturally be resistance.

Some people are clearly not happy to be bound by this constraint.

Zhang Mingzhen aware of this.

And at this time...

On the world channel, a message then popped up prominently:

"Chongxing: Buying gems, no attribute requirements, price 10,000 Gold Coins per gem."

"Unlimited purchases, please send directly via email."

"If you have a large inventory, please contact me privately; I'll buy it at a high price."

"Finally! The big boss's Gold Coin offensive! I've already mailed it to you, please check!"

"I've lost out! I just sold a batch for 7,000 Gold Coins, thinking I made a profit, but I ended up losing tens of thousands!"

"Wait a minute, master! I'll clear the Amusement Park level right away, and this time I absolutely have to get fifty stars!"

"Fifty stars? What's so special about that? Today I'll show you what a ninety-nine-star reward looks like!"

If someone else were to set such a high price to buy it, it would inevitably provoke a united attack from various forces.

But when the target was Chongxing, who was Chongxing, everyone could only watch him acquire the property silently, and no one dared to openly bid against him.

Actually, it's not that no one has thought about getting rid of Chongxing, but in several events, many guilds with thousands or even tens of thousands of members were no match for him. And since no one has been corrupted by the Lord Heaven's Will, they naturally couldn't do that.

"Let's wait a little longer; he can't keep collecting indefinitely by himself."

"According to statistics, there are currently about 300 million players on the entire server, and the total amount of gems produced each week cannot be consumed by him alone."

After discussions with other guilds, the Legion Guild decided to start by collecting gems from within the guilds themselves. If this was combined with some guild-exclusive benefits, many members would still choose to trade with the guild administrators.

Of course, it's inevitable that some members will secretly sell the gems to Chongxing, something they can't completely stop.

Most small guilds or gold farming groups will naturally tend to choose the one that offers the higher price.

Therefore, after Zhang Mingzhen sent the message on the world channel, he received a massive amount of emails in a short period of time, quickly accumulating hundreds of thousands of level-one gems.

This is just the beginning; many players have yet to complete this week's Amusement Park challenges.

He had to pause his progress and set up automatic replies and Gold Coin payments to avoid spending the entire day manually processing emails.

He then began experimenting with gem synthesis to determine if there was an upper limit to the synthesis level.

He first selected constitution-type gems for synthesis, and found that the highest level he could synthesize was a level seven gem, which required 729 level one Constitution Gems.

Based on this calculation, even if he has two equipment slots with a total of 24 pieces of equipment, each piece of equipment inlaid with three gems, totaling 60,000 gems, it would be enough to meet his needs.

If a single gem costs 10,000, then 600 million Gold Coins would be needed.

This is based on the premise that the price of gemstones does not increase.

600 million Gold Coins is an astronomical figure for many players.

This is as outrageous as someone spending hundreds of millions of yuan on in-game purchases in a regular online game before the catastrophe.

It seems that other players who spend money on in-game purchases won't have to wait too long to accumulate enough gems to socket.

He didn't give much thought to whether others had enough Gold Coins; after all, by the later stages, most people would have finished setting their gems, and the market price would inevitably decline.

Then, he started rummaging through his backpack, trying to find any more auxiliary equipment.

As a result, they discovered a support item they had never paid attention to before – the "Divine Array Disk".

I don't know when it was typed, but the description is very suitable for current use. "After use, it can integrate all the gems equipped by the player into the formation, forming additional attribute bonuses."

Now that he has more money, he naturally wants to acquire all the gems needed for the Divine Array Disk.

After the gem is embedded in the Divine Array Disk, it does not appear in the regular equipment slot, but instead appears separately at the bottom of the character attribute interface.

The edge of the disc has twelve neatly arranged grooves, which are clearly the positions for setting gemstones.

So, by that calculation, he could actually carry an extra twelve level-seven gems?

Examine the previously synthesized level 7 Constitution Gems; the constitution bonuses provided from level 1 to level 7 are 20, 60, 180, 360, 540, 720, and up to 1080.

In terms of cost-effectiveness, level 3 to 5 gems are clearly more worthwhile.

Starting from level four, the increase rate decreases progressively, which becomes the dividing line between Ordinary Players and high-end players—the latter often only pursue maximum attributes and never care about the ratio of consumption to benefit.

If all twelve slots on the Divine Array Disk are filled with Constitution Gems, the cumulative bonus will reach an astonishing number.

This number is indeed considerable, but it's unclear whether such a configuration is permitted.

Just like there are limitations to equipment socketing, different equipment slots can only accommodate specific types of gems.

For example, attack-attribute gems such as Intelligence and Strength cannot be socketed into defensive equipment such as belts.

Otherwise, Shield Guard classes could invest all their resources in constitution, while damage-dealing classes only need to focus on stacking strength or critical strike chance.

Zhang Mingzhen then briefly outlined the types of gems. "Besides the five basic attributes—Constitution, Strength, Intelligence, Spirit, and Agility—whose numerical tiers are exactly the same as those of Constitution Gems —there are also several special attribute gems."

These special gems have stat values slightly lower than base attributes, covering five types: critical hit, evasion, accuracy, critical hit resistance, and armor penetration.

The numerical values corresponding to levels one through seven are 10, 30, 90, 180, 270, 360, and 540.

He never understood why unpopular attributes like accuracy and evasion were categorized as special gems, as their effectiveness in actual combat was quite limited.

Because this is a real-world game, hitting and dodging depend on the player's own skill.

If you shoot into the sky, even if the accuracy is tens of thousands, you won't hit the target in front of you if there's no auto-aiming.

Similarly, no matter how high your evasion is, if you're clumsy, others can still easily hit you.

This is different from ordinary online video games.

Dodging reality involves looking at the brain and eyes, and muscle reflexes...

Nowadays, only a few players still stick to the extreme routes of hit rate or evasion builds.

After a moment's thought, he decided to proceed with the acquisition.

Since we have plenty of Gold Coins in reserve, it won't matter if we lose some money when we resell them later.

If we gather a total of 100,000 gems, that should be enough.

This expense amounts to approximately one billion Gold Coins, comparable to the entire working capital of some guilds.

He could freely use the Gold Coins he earned, and even if there was a temporary shortage, selling a few pieces of inventory would be enough to keep him afloat.

For now, let's focus on completing the current amusement park challenges.

He plans to synthesize all the gems after leaving the park, and then consider the setting plan.

Now that it's confirmed that gems can be obtained directly with Gold Coins, there's no need to spend too much time in the park; the priority is to reach the finish line.

Therefore, he used the jump mechanism in the subsequent levels to quickly advance to the ninety-ninth level.

The Ordinary Players I encountered along the way were noticeably more cautious, presumably all trying to progress steadily to reduce their deaths and accumulate stars to improve the quality of the Final Treasure Chest.

According to his observation, most of the park's levels are exploration and puzzle-solving-based, with combat-based and other types being rare.

The only challenging level he encountered was a two-player team battle where players transformed into monsters and attacked each other.

After transforming, both sides are evenly matched in combat strength; the key to victory lies in mastering attack techniques.

As long as you seize the opportunity, victory is not difficult.

The opponent I was matched with in that game was from a gold farming guild.

The other party originally intended to quickly pass through the level to reach the finish line, open the box, and then find an opportunity to trade with the legendary master. Unexpectedly, they encountered the real master halfway through and were even assigned to the same group for a duel.

This situation left him in a dilemma. "What if I win, but the other party refuses to buy my gems? Or even blacklists me?"

After weighing the pros and cons, I felt that the losses outweighed the gains.

Besides, he hasn't used up all his resurrection attempts yet. If he can use this opportunity to do someone a favor, he might leave a good impression.

"Master, I'm ready! Please make your move!"

This is the first time I've seen someone so delighted to have found defeat.

"Just play normally; this is my first time trying this level too."

"No need, no need! I just want to move on to the next level quickly, please don't be shy!"

Since that was the case, Zhang Mingzhen said no more.

Many players have this mentality: when they see a top player, they simply give up, saving themselves the trouble and effort, and avoiding making enemies.

The monster form has only three skills: normal attack, side dodge, and dash, which is obviously designed to train combat rhythm.

Seeing that the opponent made no move, Zhang Mingzhen ended the battle directly with an attack skill.