Chapter 117-1: The Final Long-cherished Wish (1) |
Primordial Altar.
Qi Sheng was browsing the latest refreshed strategy posts on the forum.
After the Kindergarten players successfully contained the Scatter Arrows inherited soul, the forum launched simulated tests and reviews of the new inherited soul.
As the twenty-fifth Primordial Monster contained by players, Scatter Arrows seemed like an unremarkable First-Generation Primordial at first glance.
But the appearance of the Scatter Arrows bow filled a blank spot in the Monster World’s class taxonomy.
That was the long range physical damage build.
According to tests by the forum’s strategy-focused players, the Scatter Arrows inherited soul is very powerful. Its Primordial trait can slice any attack and turn it into multiple simultaneous offensives.
It can even produce wondrous results when embedded by spellcasting players.
For example, the Inkflame fireball of the Bonefire inherited soul, after embedding Scatter Arrows, can be split into multiple fireballs to perform area attacks.
In terms of power, the rule-like trait of Scatter Arrows allows each sliced ability to retain 20 percent of its effect. No matter how many parts it is split into, each retains 20 percent, while the exact number of splits is affected by the level of the Scatter Arrows inherited soul.
Or take the Bind inherited soul. With Scatter Arrows added, a single-target immobilization becomes a group immobilization.
The only thing that vexes spellcasting players is that when the Scatter Arrows inherited soul levels up, the main attribute it increases is not mental strength, but physical aptitude.
In the strategy players’ evaluations, when using Scatter Arrows as the main weapon, each draw of the bow does not require loading arrows.
It automatically extracts the player’s vitality, condensing it into vitality arrows to fire.
Whether in the main attribute’s bonus ratio or the Scatter Arrows bow’s consumption on use, it is more compatible with physical builds.
This made many spellcasting players wail.
An inherited soul whose trait effects fit spellcasting so well turns out to be incompatible with spellcasting classes in both attribute bonuses and trait consumption.
After half a day of testing, the three Star Vein combinations with the highest forum upvotes emerged.
The first combination, proposed by Darkness Approaches: Spirit Weapon Burst Build.
The inherited souls paired are: Scatter Arrows + Force Savage axe + Shatter saber + Soul Sever spear + Extreme Speed.
This Star Vein build focuses on explosive damage. The Scatter Arrows bow provides long range single-target or area damage output, Force Savage increases physical damage values, Shatter boosts numerical damage, and Soul Sever creates spiritual shock.
It delivers extremely high damage output and also inflicts spiritual damage. Test performance was excellent, with damage output efficiency in no way inferior to mainstream spellcasting strength.
Finally, matched with Extreme Speed, at critical moments you can shoot a dozen or more arrows in a second, with explosive damage.
The second combination, proposed by the forum strategy player ‘Super Little Chick’: Functional God-Arrow.
The inherited soul pairing is: Scatter Arrows + Bind + Black-Scaled Serpent (Venomous) + Blade Seal.
Although this build ranked second in likes, its overall strength is even higher than the Burst Build proposed by Darkness Approaches.
It is especially suited for team battles.
Its effect is to use Scatter Arrows to deliver group special-effects.
In the demo clip, Super Little Chick drew the bow and fired ten vitality arrows, each striking one of the ten targets ahead.
The targets hit were simultaneously restricted by Bind and subjected to stacked damage effects from Venomous and Blade Seal. Its test performance was eye-catching, with sustained damage output and utility far stronger than the Spirit Weapon Burst Build.
The third build, proposed by the forum strategy player ‘Reading to Support the Family’: Extreme Speed Ranger.
The Star Vein pairing is: Scatter Arrows + Extreme Speed + Duskhaze + Qi Eater.
This combo’s damage output is not as high as the two above, but it is superior in mobility.
Its hallmark is using the Duskhaze inherited soul to roam quickly, revealing oneself and unleashing a high-frequency burst via Extreme Speed, then switching back to Duskhaze to slip away. Qi Eater is used to recover the lost vitality, waiting for the right opportunity to strike again.
This build is like a long range version of an assassin, very suitable for players who lack mechanics yet want to move as gracefully as assassins.
All three builds have their pros and cons, but their test performances surpassed other combinations.
This also attracted many players to change their Star Vein pairings.
Among them were plenty like Cute Baby, who had always longed for a long range physical build and finally welcomed the chance to change class.
The only drawback of the Scatter Arrows bow is one thing, hit rate.
For players who had experienced bow users and other long range physical DPS classes in other virtual games, only brief training was needed to use the Scatter Arrows bow proficiently as a weapon.
But for players who had never touched it, accurately hitting targets still required some practice time.
The appearance of the Scatter Arrows bow also gave the player legion a new direction of growth in combat classes.
As more Primordial Monsters are contained, the options in growth builds are showing a trend of diversification.
Beyond the major systems of offense, defense, and utility, each system has spawned different playstyle builds, each with its strengths.
And this is precisely the development trend Qi Sheng wanted to see.
The challenges players will face in the future are extremely daunting.
The terrifying Black Tide, the Swarm, the Mechanical Legion, the Ancient God race, and perhaps many more forces yet to debut are emerging in the Monster World. Only a diversified development of combat-power systems can counter strong enemies of different styles and characteristics and adapt to combat in complex environments.
Although it has been more than two months since launch,
in Qi Sheng’s eyes, the development of the player legion is still in its initial stage, with far more combat-power construction that needs to be expanded.
For example, the ‘Armed Vehicles’ function already being interfaced with the Challenger System.
Others still in planning include the all-purpose automatic cultivation system, the skill guidance system, the pet system, and so on.
But building these functions consumes an enormous amount of sacrificial power and requires a certain level of technical support. Parts of the content have to rely on players to explore and collect.
For instance, the all-purpose automatic cultivation system requires a special organ that can perfectly adapt to all cultivation techniques.
It is also necessary to add an automatic operation program on the basis of this organ, allowing players to drive the ‘All-Purpose Organ’ by burning sacrificial power, keeping it constantly in a state of absorbing the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, and bringing players a continuous boost to body tempering experience.
This setting can significantly accelerate the improvement of players’ body tempering level, thereby speeding up player growth.
In the future, improving body tempering levels will become very difficult, with every 10 levels being a bottleneck, and the sacrificial power required thereafter will increase severalfold.
Without a fully automatic cultivation method to speed up growth, players who want to pair dozens of inherited souls in their Star Vein combinations will be severely limited by the pace of body tempering level improvement.
But for now, this function is beyond Qi Sheng’s ability.
After consulting Nine Yin, who controls purification power, he learned that without a reference template, creating a fully automatic cultivation system would consume an astronomical amount of sacrificial power.
With the current sacrificial power damage output produced by players, it is simply insufficient to support it.
Therefore, many conceptual settings are still at the idea stage.
At the current stage, the consumption of sacrificial power must also be prioritized for player recruitment, territory partitioning, special events, and the like.
The creation of all new functions must be based on whether they match the players’ current sacrificial power damage output.