Farming Together Chapter 64: New Optimization

Carefree Farmstead’s famous star warrior, the player Demon Xing, caught a rare golden koi at the fishing spot at the entrance of the village on the afternoon of February 3. The news that the pattern on its back resembled the character for “rich” spread like the wind throughout the village.

Even Bai Li, who hadn’t been out of the yard for a while, heard about it. He was the designer of the game, and controlled everything in the game, but he wasn’t too concerned with the details like a koi back pattern. It was such a small thing, that he was lazy and used a random generator.

The pattern appeared as the word ‘rich.’ It was unexpected, ah.

If he knew that Demon Xing could catch golden koi, he would have arranged a pond for him.

When he saw Wen XingYao walking towards his house in distress, Bai Li didn’t ask any more questions and deftly let the man in.

“The village chief said that golden koi are indeed a rare breed, and that one can give me ten times the contribution points of a normal koi.” Wen XingYao said as he sat down under the vine shelf, and poured himself a cup of tea.

“Ehnn, and then?” Bai Li disguised himself as a qualified listener. However, the curious light that flashed in his eyes from time to time indicated the person’s strong passion for eating melon seeds.

Wen XingYao had long known the other party’s character, and that under the appearance of being serious he was, in fact, very narrow-minded.

“I didn’t agree.” Wen XingYao shook his head. “That golden koi is rare after all, if I just take it and turn it in for the mission, it won’t appear again after that, right? And it has words on its body, although this word…Well, all in all it is very rare. I would prefer to be able to leave it behind. Preferably in some kind of container for ornamental use.”

This was a good guy, this was the master of ornamental fish breeding, ah.

Bai Li understood immediately. It seemed that Demon Xing couldn’t find a suitable container, and so came to find him there. It just so happened that through his last three days of observation, he also had some new ideas about the game, so why not just passionately optimize a wave of good?

“Well, let’s find a fish tank to put it in then.” Bai Li nodded, and said to Wen XingYao, “You wait for me. I’ll go to the game store to put in the item. If someone comes, remember to call me.”

After saying that, he didn’t wait for Wen XingYao’s reply, and instead focused on work.

This fish tank was something Bai Li didn’t intend to get fancy with at the beginning, so only he filled the shelves with large, medium and small glass fish tanks. The large fish tank was about a meter long, the medium fish tank was about half a meter long, and the small one around thirty centimeters long and cube style. All the tops had black lids to prevent strange things from accidentally falling into them.

The price of the fish tanks weren’t expensive, from large to small were 100, 50, 20 star coins.

Bai Li added a lot of common decorations for inside the tanks, including 20 different kinds of sand, 30 kinds of simulated water plants, all kinds of shells, starfish, conch and other small objects. In addition to the above items, fish food was naturally not forgotten. Bai Li only added to the shelves ‘Universal Aquatic Feed’, 20 star coins for a big bag which was also inexpensive and good.

These items were added especially for Demon Xing’s needs. After that, Bai Li secretly updated the achievements and titles section. For a player’s achievement, they could get a corresponding title. If it was a common title, there was no bonus, but if the title was rare, they could get a certain character bonus in the process of wearing it.

For an ordinary title, it was something like player xx ‘harvested XXX (number) XX (crop name)’ achievement, to get XXX title. Later on, the cumulative number of harvests would be more, the title would also be upgraded. For common titles like this, there was a detailed panel for players to view, making it easy for them to brush up on their achievements with purpose.

Rare titles, on the other hand, were titles that players could get by completing hidden achievements in the game. Only when that aspect of the achievement was reached would the panel show the specifics. That was to say, players couldn’t follow the panel’s tips to get the title, it was mainly up to luck.

When he thought about how Demon Xing actually got lucky and caught a golden koi, Bai Li hedged and added a new achievement temporarily, and intended to give it as a surprise when the time came.

After he confirmed that the new item and feature gameplay were successfully online, Bai Li blinked and went back to the game. With his eyes back in focus, they locked up with the dark golden eyes of Wen XingYao who was looking over.

In confusion, Bai Li remembered that when the game was first created, he specifically set the character creation page to have a modifying appearance function. The five features of the face could be fabricated by the player’s heart, but only the color of their irises was unchangeable. Now, Demon Xing had a pair of dark gold, broken night, flowing irises, the same color of his eyes in reality.

He also remembered that when the game first came online, the other party appeared with his original face, and together with those handsome features, the eyes that seemed a bit strange were unexpectedly appropriate and round, as if such a pair of eyes were matched to his face.

This person’s looks, indeed, were one in a million, ah.

He blinked, blinked, blinked. Again and again. Bai Li finally recovered from his appreciation of Wen Xingyao’s appearance. After he regained his composure, he wondered why he suddenly became possessed, and could stay like that in front of his friends. Just now, the other party seemed stunned and didn’t reflect on it in time. He returned to the game again.

The next second, the two looked away from each other. One looked up, the other looked at the desktop.

Bai Li then saw a small glass jar had been placed by Wen XingYao’s other hand, and contained red strawberry pulp, which had to be the magical strawberry jam that caused such a stir.

Bai Li was about to say something when the world announcement came late.

[Congratulations to player Demon Xing for being the first player to catch a golden koi. Gaining the achievement “Golden Legend” and receiving the title “Lucky One”!]

Now, any more words Bai Li wanted to say, stalled because of this accident. Wen XingYao lifted his eyebrows in surprise, and used his eyes to indicate whether this was related to Bai Li. After that, he opened his character panel and looked at the new achievement and the specific content of the title. The “Golden Legend” achievement could be obtained by fishing, breeding, capturing, or otherwise obtaining animals that were gold.

The “Lucky” title increased the player’s luck value by 2% while it was worn, and was valid forever.

It wouldn’t do to underestimate that 2%. It could play a huge role at critical moments. The word “lucky” in the title alone was enough to make those players who saw the world notice so envious that their eyes could drip blood.

“How about this title, not bad?” Bai Li asked with a smile. He had no intention of hiding it at all.

He was just giving someone he knew a ‘benefit’ in a game he made with his own hands. Couldn’t he do that? Anyway, it was a fact that Wen XingYao caught a golden koi, and giving him a title after the “Achievements and Titles” feature went live wasn’t that much of a stretch, and he thought players would be able to understand.

Wen XingYao couldn’t help but laugh out loud, put the “lucky” title on his body, then seriously thanked Bai Li, “Thanks. I like it.”

After that, he remembered what Bai Li said about the fish tank. He opened the game store, searched for it, and found the new items in no time. He didn’t even blink as he bought each of them, and bought 10 packs of fish feed in one go.

After he finished, Wen XingYao asked Bai Li, “Li Bai, if you make each new item cheaper and cheaper, how can you earn money? Why don’t you quietly raise the price of them while others don’t notice?”

Anyway, he was the only one who could use the fish tank, so the players wouldn’t notice the new items for the time being.

Bai Li almost spewed out a mouthful of tea. He wanted to print out last month’s water flow, slap it on the other party’s face, and tell him that he made a lot of money. Next month he could even increase his virtual game builder’s grade!

However he resisted the impulse, as he explained with a strong smile, “This price is already very reasonable. The players can get everything and I am still making money…We have to win by volume, and sell more at a lower profit, understand?”

Although it was said to be a ‘small profit,’ strictly speaking, those things were considered to be earned for nothing.

After he listened to Bai Li’s explanation, Wen XingYao thought it was right and stopped giving bad ideas.

The topic returned to the jar of strawberry jam.

Wen XingYao raised his hand and pushed the jar in front of Bai Li, “This is the strawberry jam I made, specially for you. You can use it when you go fishing.”

Bai Li didn’t push it back, took it with a smile, and didn’t ask Wen XingYao’s opinion. He then opened the lid, came close and smelled it. The sour and sweet aroma…it was a good jar of jam. He exclaimed, “How did you do that? It’s quite impressive. I didn’t expect you to get the life skill for learning cooking. It’s quite a surprise.”

Wen XingYao was happy to have his skills recognized, but when he thought about it, he didn’t know what he was happy about. It couldn’t really be because he was praised by Bai Li, could it? Well, maybe it was the joy of sharing something good with a friend?

Wen XingYao explained, “The first batch of strawberries I planted was just harvested, and I had nothing to do with it. So I went to my room and started experimenting. I had limited ingredients, and I couldn’t use the sweet and sour taste of strawberries with soy sauce, vinegar or salt, so I picked white sugar. I didn’t expect to get the good flavor of strawberry jam, but it was also a random gain.”

It was indeed a very good status that actually allowed him to catch a golden koi that had never appeared in the game before.

“You gave me such a big jar, don’t you feel bad about yourself?” Bai Li asked with some amusement, as if to say that he was too generous a person.

Wen XingYao shook his head. “There is nothing to feel bad about. I made a big pot, got a total of three bottles, sold one bottle, gave you one bottle, and I still have one bottle left for myself. It’s enough to use. Besides, even if there was only one bottle left, I would still leave it to you because the help you’ve given me for so long is far more than the value of a jar of strawberry jam.”

What he didn’t tell Bai Li was that even when he was planning to make a food with his hands, he’d also thought of the fact that Bai Li seemed to like fruits like strawberries quite a lot, and that’s why he chose strawberries as the main ingredient.

“Thank you, I’ll take it then.” Bai Li smiled at Wen XingYao and put the re-covered strawberry jam away in his backpack.