Chapter 151
▪️THE DEVS RELEASED NEW EQUIPMENTS!
The temple of nature, city of the chosen ones.
The inside of the temple was as lively as ever.
Many players gathered here on a daily basis as they pray respectfully towards the statue of the goddess, with their voices chanting praises to the goddess, one after another...
Following their prayer, a bright holy light would then occasionally flash in an instant before a piece of gorgeous equipment would appear out of thin air after the light faded.
Afterwards, the player who prayed would quickly put on or pick up the gear before walking away with joyous steps.
Of course, there are also some players who don't receive any equipments after praying, but were instead surrounded by holy light, with their eyes going dazed for a brief moment before opening their status screens then leaving just as excitedly...
This is the place wherein the players can access the game's exchange system.
Whether acquiring equipment and skills or purchasing meditation manuals and training methods, they all need to come here personally.
Although the players can also see the items and skill through the game's menu, that's just for viewing purposes and they cannot acquire it unless they personally visit the temple and pray to the goddess's statue in order to receive such things.
In addition, players also need to come here in order to switch their jobclass. Only by praying to the goddess's statue can the players access the jobclass promotion interface.
Although after the return of the Rageblaze Clan, the players were given another method to change their jobclass by being accepted as an apprentice of an NPC. However most players didn't like this method solely because the apprenticeship process takes too long.
Learning skills at the exchange store and switching jobs in the temple are done almost instantaneously so the majority of the players preferred this faster and more convenient method.
Therefore, only few people chose to switch jobs and learn skills by being an apprentice of an NPC.
After all, most players are impatient.
They would likely chose the more faster, better, and convenient ways to enhance their strength rather than the slow and tedious alternatives.
As a result, except for the NPCs who can issue tasks or provide special skills, the most crowded area within the elven forest are naturally the temple.
When the jobclass switch feature and exchange feature were first implemented, the Temple in the Chosen City was almost overwhelmed by crowds of players in need of such services. Hence as a result, long crowds queued up as players stand and wait long hours in line...
Eventually, the players began complaining and it also caused the saintess Alice, quite a headache.
The temple had always been a sacred place for worship and it needs to maintain a solemn atmosphere at all times.
However with groups of unruly chosen ones making noises and causing a commotion almost on a daily basis, the saintess felt that the temple is slowly turning into a loud marketplace which annoyed Alice to no end.
In the end, Evé decided to intervene to solve this problem by issuing a task through the system, allowing the players to expand the temple and build several more dedicated side halls, with Alice also crafting more statues of the goddess to be enshrined upon these new additional spaces.
As per usual, the side hall of the temple was still frequented by many players today.
After completing the quest of subjugating the Orc Tribe, most high-leveled players who have participated in that quest had gotten quite rich. After that, most players immediately chose to replace all their equipments and upgrade into a full set of purple gear.
Especially the spellcasters!
In the current version of Elven Kingdom, spellcasters are mostly recognized as a 'pay-to-win' jobclass, solely because their equipment are very scarce and can almost only be obtained through the exchange store.
Unlike melee-based players, who can easily obtain their equipments by getting the item drops from the orcs they've fought, spellcasters on the other hand have a hard time getting their gears due to the rarity of priests amongst the orcs, and only a few lucky ones have managed to picked up the equipment of these fallen orc priests.
Although some Rageblaze clansmen can also craft some decent spellcaster equipments, their output is far from enough to adequately supply the current heavy demand for such gears.
Thus for most mages and druid players, their equipment can only be obtained by completing quests and accumulating enough contribution points to buy it at the exchange store.
Luckily some mages and druid players also obtained a large number orcs equipment at the orc subjugation quest. Thus they finally accumulated enough contribution points by offering their loots to the goddess, and exchange the CP for their desired equipment.
Of course, it is not only spellcasters who had chosen to upgrade their equipment but most melee-based players also decided to replace their old gears with those in the exchange store, even though they have already obtained a full set of orc equipments.
This is not only because the orc equipments they obtained doesn't fit well, but also due to the quality of the equipments sold in the exchange store being far more better than the dropped loots.
Additionally, the visual effects of the gears made by Evé are not only good looking, but is also the handiwork of a true god, thus the quality of the equipments sold in the store being more better to some extent.
Demacia, a player who was the first in the server to collect a full set of purple equipment and became the best tank within the current playerbase, once discussed the issue of equipment on the official forum.
He compared the quality of each type of equipments being;
Golden Legendary, Purple Epic, Blue Rare, White Common, and finally, Low Black Iron and the bonus effects after equipping such items, then evaluated the required contribution points, as well as the player's optimal advancement speed in order to upgrade into these kinds of gears.
In the early versions of the game, despite the equipment updates being slow, a full set of purple gear can be used for quite a long time, and the actual combat effectiveness is very good as well.
There is a reason for this.
Although it is only a purple equipment for the lower Iron-rank, the difference between purple equipment and lower class equipment is still quite significant.
Demacia on his post compared the looted equipments of high-ranking orcs and found that their equipment quality was actually similar to the lower black iron purple epic equipment being sold at the exchange store!
Of course, most looted orc equipments were appraised by the system as white common equipments, so the quality isn't good to begin with.
The orcs didn't have any blacksmiths, and their equipment is either looted from another race or bought from humans. Furthermore humans generally sell these orcs their defective products, so it's natural for the quality to be poor...
However the equipments acquired by Boxlunch and his team from the human caravan is not in the same league compared to the ones looted from the orcs.
After appraisal, they found that those equipment were at least blue rare, and a few new magic equipment were even rated as purple epic!
And Demacia's post ultimately became a hot trending topic within the forum.
For now, a full set of lower level purple epic equipment has become the recognized high-end standard equipment amongst the players!
At this moment, within the side hall of the Temple of Nature, several players who have accumulated enough contribution points have finally acquired their last set of purple epic equipment.
Looking at their sudden increase in combat power, these players were all very excited.
"Great, we have finally upgraded our equipments."
"Hahaha! Now we don't have to think about equipment for a long time, all we need now is to just focus on leveling up!"
"Hey guys, I heard that Rivendell exploration raids require at least level 15, and it's likely that the level requirement will be further increased later on. We need to work hard!"
"Those hardcore grinders are too scary man. I heard that the average level of Box's team is already around 17..."
"Ah, maybe in another month, the minimum level might even increase to 20..."
"God that's terrifying...just thinking of all the grinding we would have to do to reach that level makes my liver squirm in agony..."
"It's okay man, it's fine, the equipment turnaround are slower, so we can relax a bit and just focus on leveling up for now."
"According to the post of Demacia, these set of purple epic equipments should be enough for us to use until we reach level 30."
"Products from the store are always top-notch!...even if it's just a bit expensive."
"Hey you get what you pay for! I bet this equipment will last us a long time."
However, just as they were happy conversing, a new system message suddenly appeared within everyone's view.
[❗]
[Player 'Boxlunch' has reached level 21, becoming the first intermediate Iron-rank player in the game, and has been awarded '3000' contribution points]
[ Intermediate Iron-ranked items are now available, and related equipment has been added to the exchange store]
[❗]
[White common-grade intermediate iron equipment is now available]
[Blue rare-grade intermediate iron equipment is now available]
[Purple epic-grade intermediate iron equipment is now available]
...
Players: "....."
"Damn, the devs have released a new equipment!"