Chapter 61 - Changes in market

Saachi's solo session began with making rounds in village - same old, same old- handover the finished quest, get rewards, get new quests. Thanks to high RPN, NPCs did not even mind his absent mindedness. They had heard from village chief that he was working hard in dungeons. Such a hard work, and he must be thinking about them.

So, quest rewards turned bountiful with all sorts of extra attributes.

And he had collected lots of things from dungeons too apart from monster loots. He got very good price for those too when he sold them to NPCs.

Then.... alchemy. He had not made new potions recently and his stock was running low. He rented intermediate room though it costed more. He would be making basic potions in bulk this time. His proficiency did not increase much. But thanks to better fire, bigger and better cauldron and better instruments in the room he made powerful potions. He whipped out potions with 60% efficacy or more for every second or third batch. And thanks to his bonus, now he was proud owner of multiple sets of higher efficacy potions.

The number of players who had joined his association was still small, thus he had few normal efficacy potions too. This was also a acceptable outcome. Thanks to dungeons, HP and MP potions usage had gone for new high and their selling rate was also increased.

Now potions were sold in coins to him and the Alchemist purchased ingredients in market. 4 sets of ingredients to 1 potion. If one wants exclusive option, throw more money. Saachi shook his head when he heard of such sales. Such transactions would not work for long. And thanks to such antics, he would get a bunch of Alchemists in later date. After all, independent players did not have time or patience to collect all the required ingredients for potions. If they gathered, they may as well go broke and try making potions themselves. Sooner or later they would make potions with more than 25% completion rate.

After using up more than half of his ingredients, he stopped. The potions he made now would suffice for next few days. In addition, he wanted to use advanced alchemy trial room later. Would efficacy increase even more? With this and that, time he had allotted for solo session ended. So he logged out to have power nap. He would complete his assignments and side jobs after waking up.

Contrary to Saachi's hopes, the party did not enter dungeons again. They raided mines again. Apparently few people were watching dungeon entrance to meet players who had cleared them.

This time mining seemed easier. Of course it would be easy. Their levels had raised and the weapons and equipments got upgraded.

If not for quests and other considerations, they might have raided dungeons few more times. Compared to dungeons, mines were boring. Royo shared a titbit. Apparently lots of weapons and armors were turning into scraps, thus to dungeon raids. So the Smithy owner has started collecting them. He would teach his apprentices about weapon making using these scraps .

Good news was even player apprentice had chance to learn more. Bad news - Smithy owner would not use his own stock to teach. The apprentices had to make arrangements to gather the ores.

This meant the apprentice NPCs would issue a lot of mining quests and players not rushing to dungeons would rush towards mines. The rate of ores would increase in market too. As it is the ores found were pitiful few thus asking price was sky high, not many had purchased them. Now ..the trend would change. First, the independent players would mob the mines. Then a strong or stronger group will lay claim on mine and collect toll.

Royo , the chatty Cathy of the team was going on and on about exploits his group had done at such times in different games.

Compared to the first mine, which was easier to discover and mined by current set of players, this one was still far away and level requirement was high enough that not many pesky players would harass the team. The only thing they had to worry would be till keepers near Village or red players. But even they should give space to higher levelled players, right?

Saachi finally found why Royo had not started any professional classes. Unlike other games, 'Escape' did not restrict professional classes, lifestyle classes. Limiting factor was just proficiency. Even Saachi had tried all the available side jobs, wishing to know if he was better in any. Royo had built suited for Smithy (high strength and high constitution), thus rising in ranks would be easy for him, yet he had not learnt that.

This old player turned out to be sly. He decided to start when he would have lots of work and even more of ingredients to work instead of toiling for hours. He applied to be apprentice now after learning some details from his friends. His first task was to collect few ores. Royo predicted after few rounds of it, he would be pushed to turn ores into metals or scraps to metals. A boring and repeative job but he would have lots of ingredients to work with.

*****--*****

Sonja was looking at the newest list of predictions made by So-phi. There were not many but the degree of prediction was becoming more and more precise.

More than 50% players not gone into dungeons.

Price of potions will double by 2-3 days and may reach all time high in 4-5days. Number of alchemists would double this week. More than half of them would stay but others would quit within 2 weeks.

Less than 20% of tanks will not pick up apprenticeship in Smithy.

Death contracts, payment for EXP or level loss will become more common. By end of the week, nearly half of players would sign such contract atleast once.