Chapter Twenty - Time running
A pretty lady with a hard armour was last batch of premium customer for Artha's shop. If he had played other games or saw related news, he could have identified her as one of the generals in Bloody Rose guild, Cecilia Atwater 'Chestnut Rose'. Whether she got that name due to her chestnut coloured tresses or for her penchant for owning chestnut coloured shields, many had different opinions. Bloody Rose didn't give a damn about such speculations.
Contrary to common assumptions, Bloody Rose with preference for mainly female players was not a timepass guild. The players there if turned famous had lot more options in advertising. The club backing them up was '10 Roses', a modeling agency cum advertising/marketing giant. They handled things professionally.
Why did Artha consider her, or her guild as premium customer? They didn't haggle. They had awareness of price of the potions in the market and the mark up for getting them now and in bulk. They didn't sweeten the deal with extras. They bought more without sweating about paying in credits.
While he was waiting for the customers, he got this idea 💡 of having different tiers of members. Granted that he was not offering any membership and no one in good brain would but them if offered. The basis was same. People who didn't haggle and had enough credits to purchase- they would be premium customers. He would inform them of any new deals or items he had to sell in bulk. They would buy them sooner by paying a bit extra. Next tier would be high end customers - they haggled, tried to pay differently as they didn't have enough money floating around to pay again and again. This tier included many small and upcoming guilds. These would be a good source to collect items. He had collected few items this time too. Lastly normal customers. They would buy with coins. No wholesale business with them at all. To them, there would be no preview. If the item is present in the shop, just purchase using coins. He waited for some more time to finish business as agreed before but then he had to close the stall and run towards the map. Still lots of killing to do, even more to gather. He had plenty of items in need of upgrading or multiplying. As the levels of items increased, the probability of needing even more XP for upgrading or multiplying was also high.
He decided to kill hens this time. He had to collect some monster drops from there. There were very few players harassing moles. His eyes widened as when he used 'Identify' skill in the map though. This map was a treasure trove too. Lots of items to collect. A small detour. But he had to go to his room to drop items again. He was feeling more friendly towards Vinzo, his bandaged and recuperating son and to the guards at the village entrance too. He even chatted with them before rushing out. This time he would not stop inbetween at all.
Some small announcements were the highlight during next few hours. The craze about livestreaming got down a lot too. Now there were so called pseudo - experts who were making videos of how to kill these monsters. Few seemed good. Few were technical, taking about aggro range, skills of monsters and CD( cool down) of them. Few were pure gimmick but they made hilarious mistakes.
Artha didn't waste time watching those. If possible, he tried to learn from watching some good players and use whatever methods possible to complete the tasks. Majority of the time he spent on gathering. Let's be honest. Unless he had good guidance, killing monsters single handedly was very difficult for him. Collecting and handing over tasks were faster way to earn XP.
But if the game was paused for near 14-16 hours a day and be allowed to play for 8-10 hours, would true gamers really play? Would the guilds, clubs and corporations invested in gaming accept that? A compromise was reached. Others knew only of the end result. They didn't see how much effort and planning was spent to ensure complete gaming experience to an expert to a noob.
The spawning point of players were set in the winter/ autumn period and far away from equatorial line, thus giving a explanation for longer nights. As players grew, their levels increased, this restriction could be easily relaxed by sending them to bigger towns or cities near the equatorial line or by progress of time leading to change in season. Currently, to reduce the gap between regular players and non players, the game restricted killing monsters, basically entering the map areas. The explanation this time was that predators in the map would be more active. In game terms, the monster HP and MP would increase, CD would decrease, even few skills would be added but inspite of all that , XP gained would be less than normal. These efforts would stop 99.9% players. Remaining 0.01% were daring ones, or the experts. No need to worry about either.
As time nearest to the end of the day, every NPC started reminding players aka heaven blessed about night curfew and recommended options. The rich and those coin spenders were recommended a room in the inn off the bat. No other options. Those who hemmed and hawed, those who were coming late to turn in the tasks...well, it's entirely the goodness of the villagers that they were letting you know of the sleeping bags. If you could not rent it due to shortage, hmph! Not our problem. Not at all.