When she put on the head set, Sandrine saw options appear in front of her eyes.
"Difficulty ? I'll take it easy at first… Wait, there isn't an easy option ? What are those ?"
The list didn't show difficulty levels, but time periods : Newbie protection period, first season, second season… There were more but the rest was hidden.
"Okay, then, let's start with the newbie protection period… Wait, there's another choice of difficulty ?"
This time, she had to choose between danger, roadside, field boss, night and player. If she wasn't wrong, this would change the type of monsters. The 'dangers' were the animals in the chests on the side of the road, dangerous but not overly so, often alone, they were made to be deadly if someone wasn't careful, but didn't take much time to deal with, since the players had to continue driving afterwards. 'Roadside' were the monsters that you could find during the offroad events. They were clearly more dangerous, not because they were stronger, but because they had adapted to their own environment and were adept in sneak attacks. 'Field boss' were the strong monsters contaminated by the black fog that guarded the golden chests, Sandrine was almost killed by one of them, and 'night' probably referred to the night monsters that would crowd around the players' vehicles during night time. As for 'player', it was obvious. It was to fight another human.
"This would have sufficed for a difficulty selection, why also chose the time period ? Or… Does it mean the monsters change depending on the season ?"
This was new information that Sandrine needed to explore. Anyway, right now she didn't have the time to test everything. Tomorrow would be the last day before the season change, she couldn't afford to be complacent, she needed some real improvement in her strength right now.
Sandrine was pondering what to choose when she noticed a small button on the side of her vision named 'auto'. It would assess her strength with a few tests, and then offer opponents adapted to her level.
"Great, let's do this !"
She mentally pressed the button and immediately a decor appeared on the black screen. It looked like a simple wide field with solid ground. Looking around, there seemed to be some fence at several places, forbidding her from going further.
"If I remember correctly, that's where my bed is and that's Paquerette and her feeders… Did this VR fight set adapt to the space I currently have ? Great, that'll prevent me from breaking everything or ending up among the night monsters. That would be embarrassing."
She didn't have a lot of space, after all the safe zone was only 10 meters in diameter, 5m around Paquerette, and she had set up a whole camp.
"It would be better to train during the day so that I can move around more, but I have too many things to do everyday, I can't fit several hours of training !"
It was a bit annoying, but it was better than nothing.
"Anyway… Start !"
With her command, the tests to determine her fighting level started. At first it was fairly easy, some sidesteps, running in place, some boxing, but then it started to grow increasingly harder. She had to avoid arrows, grab fast rabbits darting around, and hit the same dummy but with a wide range of weapons. Finally, after around an hour, she faced her first enemy, a rat. Then, immediately after that, a fox. Then a boar. And then the tests were over. Sandrine was very tired. The tests were intense, but it had helped her learn her weak points, and she had a few ideas about how to improve herself.
As the test concluded, a screen appeared in front of her eyes detailing her session and showing an accurate assessment of her strength.
"Let's see… High flexibility, focus on agility and dexterity but no fundamentals at all in strength or hand-to-hand combat. That's not wrong ! If I lose my pitchfork, I'm essentially useless. I also have a very high strength stat so I'm stronger than other people, but since I never do strength training, I have no specialisations in this aspect. What does it say here ? Not enough battle experience and emotions lead to poor judgment… I guess I should work on my state of mind for a bit."
The overall evaluation was very comprehensive and Sandrine now knew what she had to do. This was a great gain ! Unfortunately, tonight she didn't really fight a lot and didn't gain a lot of battle experience, but she was too tired to start a real fight.
She took out the VR fight set and stretched her tired muscles.
"Now let's start the exciting part !"
She still had today's rewards that she needed to open.
The wooden chests from the side of the road once again didn't have anything interesting. It was almost the same for the ones from the offroad, except for a happy surprise.
"An incubator ? Great ! I'll be able to hatch more chicks !"
With this, she would have no more egg problems. Well, it would be the case if she had electricity to make the incubator work, and more space to raise chicks. Unfortunately, she had neither. Garou et Céline still had to be locked in a cage on Paquerette's side during the day, not the best conditions to add babies to the group.
Still, this was good news, she could start to plan the future.
The last one was the golden chest. Sandrine opened it with a big smile.
[Solar panel blueprint, autocraft device]
After seeing the content, Sandrine frowned. The solar panel blueprint was incredible, she would have jumped in joy if she had a car, this would allow her to have free electricity, her comfort levels would finally go up !
Unfortunately, she had a horse. She didn't have a roof to put the solar panels on. To produce electricity, the panels needed to be exposed to the sun for several hours, but she was always on the road during the day, where could she put them ?
So, solar panels were useless for her. At least for now. Who was to say what would happen when she would have the barn ? Would the cycle day-night also happen in the pocket dimension ? Could she produce electricity by putting the solar panels on the barn ?
Anyway, this wasn't for today.
The other thing, Sandrine didn't pay attention to at first, because there was 'device' in the name, and all the devices she had found so far were things that needed to be put on a car. Still, since it had appeared in a golden chest, she examined it. Then she froze.
"Wait… This thing can use the crafting table and automatically craft things for me ?"
As long as she told it what blueprints to use and put enough materials on the crafting table, it would craft for her. This meant that she could craft as many umbrellas and water purificators as she wanted, without doing anything ! She just had to tell it to craft, select both blueprints, put the required materials for several items on the crafting table, and then she could go and do her own thing ! How great was it ?
Sandrine executed a little happy dance. With this, her wealth was guaranteed !
"Let's see… I can sell umbrellas and water purifiers en masse. Those aren't rare blueprints, someone else probably has them, so I need to make a quick buck as soon as I can. Everyone will want several of them anyway. As for chicken coops and solar panels, those are rarer and only high level players will want them right now, so I can sell them on demand. I remember there is an option on the trade tab to pre-order. The seller has a deadline by which he has to provide the item, otherwise random objects in their inventory will be used to compensate the buyer. I'll use this to offer the chicken coops and solar panels."
With her sale strategy done, Sandrine beamed. She was tired but ready to welcome the new season.
But first, the storybook before going to bed.
Tonight, the story was about Lili the marmoset, a little monkey who liked to do silly things, monkeying around and never listening to her parents. It continued until the day she didn't listen when her mother told her not to cross the road, and almost got hit by a car. That day, she understood that sometimes there were rules for a reason, and that listening to your parents was for your own good.
Sandrine was very satisfied with those children's stories, each of them were beautifully illustrated, and the lessons were also very good ! If a kid listened seriously, they would have everything needed to become a good adult.
She wished every pet good night, tucked Gribouille in his little dog bed with his worm plushy, and started the automatic crafting. The water purifiers and umbrellas would be more valuable when the rain starts to fall, so she would make a stock for now and sell them later, but she directly proposed the pre-orders for the chicken coops and solar panels on the trade tab before going to sleep.
Waking up, all the materials she had put on the crafting table were gone, and there were water purifiers and umbrellas everywhere on the ground !
Sandrine put everything in her inventory and checked on the trade tab. She already had some orders.
"Jackalope65 and AnaïsDu33 ? I should have known. Such big shots surely are wealthy enough to order such things."
The chicken coops and solar panels weren't very expensive compared to what they could do. Sandrine asked for all the materials consumed to craft the items and either two blueprints, or 400 upgrade materials including 100 woods. It looked expensive for a normal player, but for rankers who had access to rewards everytime they were in the rankings, that was nothing. They probably had thousands of materials on them, so using a few hundreds for such useful items was nothing.
Among the customers, she also found other rankers, like Croissaaant who only wanted solar panels, and BigBelly123 who only wanted a chicken coop. Curiously, even her two friends had also ordered ! Instead of accepting their pre-order, she initiated personal trades with them, for a lesser price of only 1 blueprint or 300 materials. The guys already sent her wood everyday, they didn't need to pay so much.
However, only Jackalope65 and AnaïsDu33, the top 2 players of the server, ordered several at once, each wanting 3 solar panels and 2 chicken coops.
"They must both have very big vehicles. Or maybe they found a lot of vehicle expansion cards and tailored their vehicles how they wanted ? Anyway, I'm jealous…"
Selling things she couldn't even use was painful.
Sandrine set up the autocraft to run while she was doing her morning routine and prepared everyone's breakfast.
One eye on Gribouille's dog food, the other was quickly reading through the server chat to avoid another bad surprise like last night. Thankfully, people are fickle, and the subject had already changed. They were still talking about her, but under her 84jojo84 identity this time, marveling at her ability to produce such rare items like chicken coops and solar panels, and saying that indeed a big shot that is first in the welfare rankings surely is different.
"That's good. I'll have to pray for people to forget about the picture. But there is still a big chance that their memory will be jolted up if they see me on a double road, and they might still use a duel card. What a headache…"
She sighed. She couldn't do anything about it anyway.
Once everyone was ready and the camp was clean, the familiar buzzing sound filled Sandrine's head at 6am.
[Players who didn't reach the required mileage will disappear]
[4,186 players enter the 14th day]
[Congratulations on entering the 14th day]
[The Roadside opening event has concluded ! Rankings will be determined based on your exploration progress]
[Rankings :
1st : 84jojo84 - 21 chests - 3 golden chests
2nd : AnaïsDu33 - 19 chests - 3 golden chests
3rd : Croissaaant - 17 chests - 3 golden chests
4th : AlphaWolf - 17 chests - 3 golden chests
5th : LeCanard - 13 chests - 3 golden chests
6th : BigBelly123 - 19 chests - 2 golden chest
7th : RollingRolling - 18 chests - 2 golden chest
8th : Gargantua - 16 chests - 2 golden chest
9th : BratataCanon - 14 chests - 2 golden chest
10th : ILoveSocks - 18 chests - 1 golden chest
[...]]
[You have ranked 1st in the Roadside opening event, congratulations ! Rewards have been sent to your inbox]
[Required mileage for today : 100km]
[Time left for the newbie protection period : 1 day]
The rankings weren't anything surprising. Just like she had guessed, now that players knew that there were rewards for the rankings, there were a lot more people with golden chests. The top players were all known rankers, except for BratataCanon who had never been on any ranking before. He had spoken a bit before on the server chat though, a bit aggressive and foul mouthed, but with a big heart and zero resistance to bullshit and false kindness.
It looked like the season rankings would change in the future, and new names would appear.
Just as Sandrine was squinting her eyes and trying to get used to the light of the sudden day, new messages appeared.
[Today is an event day !]
[Event : Obstacle course]
[Obstacles will appear on the road]
[Cover as much distance as possible today !]
[To encourage mileage, chests on the road will appear 50% more often, and will contain 50% more supplies]
[This event will last 1 day. Enjoy !]
Looking forward, Sandrine smiled. Once again, the road was covered in obstacles. This was her favorite event, the one she had an overwhelming advantage in.
She quickly studied the road ahead and gradually her brows furrowed. This time, the mileage that was asked of the players was quite high. 100km was nothing usually, when you drive a car that can do it in an hour, but during a race event it is difficult to do even 1km, since the road is blocked and the players have to go out and clear it. However, today was especially difficult.
The road was covered in holes and bumps, tree roots lifting the asphalt and half destroyed buildings directly sitting in the middle of the road. None of the obstacles could be moved. The players would have a hard time today. That was a very inconsiderate gift for the last day of the newbie protection period !
Sandrine wasn't in a very good mood, watching people panic in the chat.
"I just want to survive, I don't really care about other people, but also I don't want thousands of people to die…"
This event was clearly dangerous. They had to do 100km in a day on such a road ? It was impossible. But even if she wanted to help, what could she do ?
Sandrine shook her head. They would all find their own technique, either using wood planks to make ramps, or winching their cars to buildings and trees to pull them across the road. They were almost veterans in the death game now, they shouldn't panic so easily.
"Anyway, today's first place is ours again !"
With a big smile, she leaned forward and Paquerette obeyed, galloping towards the first obstacle, darting on the chaotic road, not even slowing down as Sandrine was leaning on the sides to put chests in her inventory.
The last day of the newbie protection period would be an easy one for them.