Frontiers ~Chronicles of Bucket-san’s Detailed Pioneering~ - Chapter 125 – Trick or treat

It’s been a few days in Real Time since I finished Raksha’s NPC quest.

When I made the items from the new recipes and put them up for sale on the store, the reaction was pretty close to my expectations.

Although the armor was inferior to steel in terms of defensive power, its unique performance bonuses make it very worthwhile on the right occasions.

For example, attribute-aligned armors are great for protecting you in areas where a large amount of mobs use the attribute that the armor protects you against.

Or armors that boost one specific stat by large amounts, such as speed enhancement or critical enhancement. If all your armor pieces boost a single stat, you can end up getting some ridiculous results that greatly increase your effectiveness in combat.

Mika is a great example of that. After equipping a full set of armor pieces that enhance speed, she now moves so quickly through the battlefield that she even leaves afterimages behind her.

Of course, there are some disadvantages to those items too.

Attribute-aligned armors give you less defense than steel against anything other than enemies who attack with said attribute.

Similarly, if you use a full set of stat-focused armor, then your overall defenses will drop considerably, and you may even be one-shotted if you take a direct hit.

Of course, that depends on the difficulty of the place you’re hunting at though.

Still, a fair bit of people seemed to have come to the conclusion that easy-to-handle bonuses like Critical Enhancement aren’t worth the risk of being one-shotted.

As for things like Speed Enhancement, which is what Mika is using, it is pretty hard to properly handle one’s own speed with this kind of gear, so it becomes hard to fight while using it.

Like, some people will stumble when trying to dodging mob attacks due to the high speed, which ended up leading to a fairly high mortality rate while wearing those items.

Basically, just like the Magical Gloves, it’s a hard-to-handle type of item.

Nonetheless, enhanced armor still got fairly popular overall, but most people are using only a few pieces with stat enhancement, so as to let stuff like the speed boost be easier to manage.

Of course, the overall defensive power is still lowered when compared to a full steel set, so the healers seem to be needing to work extra hard to compensate for that.

Still, due to those reasons, the demand for those stat-focused armors is actually growing, which is quite different from my initial expectations of them only selling at the start due to the novelty factor.

Their demand is still considerably smaller than the demand for steel though. Still, those items are selling out with some ease, so I guess I’ll keep on making them for the time being.

Also, stat-focused armors can also be used on the Spider Doll, so the doll ended up being strengthened again.

And since I still had a fair amount of leftover Skill Points due to the recent quests, I decided to evolve Improved Doll Making into Doll Artisan.

On another note, after I submitted a bug report related to moving the doll weapons around even after they were attached, this function has since been removed. You may now only remove weapons from a doll if it has the Marionette Customization ability.

Due to that, people can’t upgrade their existing dolls as easily as before, so the demand for new dolls has rose.

That has also led to people making more varied dolls with different types of equipment attached to them, so as to cover the different needs of each user.

In any case, the only doll with Marionette Customization that we found so far has been the Magic Doll – Insect Type – Spider. And as it takes a lot of time and many materials to be made, I haven’t tried making a new one since.

******

While unlocking Liber has given plenty of benefits for crafters, the benefits have been even higher for combat-focused Pioneers.

That’s because the majority of the unique skills that could be acquired in Liber were combat-focused.

Some of them were simply skills related to using guns, but there were also some skills specifically related to the stat-focused items, which increased their overall efficiency as you leveled those skills.

And on the topic of nice stuff that Liber gave us, we ended up getting not only new equipment and skills, but we also got new consumables.

In particular, recovery items, which had potions as the best ones so far, have now been replaced by their modern equivalents, like pills.

Of course, high-ranked potions are still being used, but pills have a higher base recovery value, so the pills win out when comparing them to a potion of equal rank.

The change brought about by Liber is a very big one for sure.

And partially due to its influence, the number of player Pioneers who are enthusiastic about unlocking new areas has been rapidly increasing.

Especially because the Zabrina Kingdom actually gave a pretty nice reward to the player Pioneers who unlocked Liber, so as to acknowledge their contribution on unlocking such a great city.

Of course, not all unlocked areas are that great. Sometimes one can end up unlocking a low-rank field area without anything particularly worthwhile in it… But even then, those areas can be useful for the weaker Pioneers, so it’s not like they’re completely worthless.

Especially if the area can drop some unique materials, because even a low-rank area ends up being very worthwhile if it has good drops.

In any case, as a result of all that, people are working hard in cutting down Demon Trees near Dotril, and at its current rhythm, it shouldn’t take long for Dotril to have as many unlocked areas near it as Capital Sabrina has.

Dotril is no longer a desolated city with nothing remarkable about it for sure.

It’s also worth note that it is generally more convenient to go to Dotril than to Liber.

Dotril is closer to more areas than Liber is, and Liber is a steampunk city that has its lands already filled up since the time it was unlocked.

It’s basically impossible to open a store in Liber, and the city doesn’t have many inns or anything like it either.

Though well, it’s not like inns are very meaningful for player Pioneers in general. Combat-focused player Pioneers are usually content for as long as they can purchase consumables and repair their equipment somewhere.

And well, even if it’s basically impossible to open a store in Liber, one can still trade there by opening up a stall, so the purchase and sale of materials there is quite active.

In any case, the city is still near the rapidly developing Dotril, and it’s certainly helping Dotril’s quick growth.

It was certainly the right choice to open a store specialized in purchasing within Dotril as soon as the city started developing.

At first I was only looking forward to the materials in Dotril Silver Mine, but as the mine didn’t give much that was worthwhile, I almost considered closing the store up… But instead, I have now increased the number of clerks and they are being kept busy 24h a day!

Thanks to this, I’m able to collect materials from various places without needing to set up any stalls.

I’m glad I decided to open the branch store when I did.

On another note, even if new field areas are being unlocked, we have yet to find any other city.

Liber was a bit of a special case as it was able to counter the invasion of the Demon Trees on its own, but it’s not impossible for us find other cities that are somehow self-sufficient.

And well, after a steampunk city, I’d really like to find a fairy-tale city. A city that countered the invasion of the Demon Trees with magical power would be great!

Ah, and on the matter of Fairy-tales, people were a bit disappointed that the Halloween event had only done an appearance change on things, but things have now finally started changing.

… Probably because the devs must have wanted to do something to address the many complaints about it.

In any case, the changes should only last for a short period of time. From now, which is around the half of the month, until the end of October.

Still, it is an event that both fighters and crafters can participate, so it’s exciting.

Pumpkin-like objects have been placed in various places on the city, and they issue a variety of repeatable quests of various ranks. If you complete them, you get some sweets with bonus effects on them.

The bonus received seems to be random, but the higher the rank, the higher the effect.

Also, it seems like there is a higher change of getting certain types of sweets if you complete certain types of quests.

As for the quests themselves, there are two types. You can either defeat Halloween-themed monsters or deliver specific types of processed materials.

And since the quests have a variety of ranks, even beginner fighters can participate on them.

As for the delivery quests, they’re also rank-based, but they work a bit differently.

As in, there is a point system to the materials you can deliver, and the quest won’t be cleared unless the materials brought exceed the point-value of the quest.

There are quite a few materials that can be brought there, but the ones with the highest point values are the ones that came from recipes in Liber.

Due to that, I decided to put some of them for sale on the store, and they sold out in the blink of an eye, so I guess this can be fairly profitable.

It still gives less money than making steel gear, but the overall profit is still large enough to make this worthwhile.

Also, there are some balance-shaped objects installed in each city, and they start gradually tilting to one side depending on which types of event quests are cleared more.

If the battle quests are cleared, then the balance tilts towards the red plate. If delivery quests are cleared, then the balance tilts towards the blue plate.

And of course, higher ranked quests make the balance tilt more than the lower ranked ones.

However, there is no information about what’s the point of the balance in the official website of Frontiers, so various discussions over it are being held on the forums.

Some people seem to think that you’ll win if your side ends up getting more weight, while others are thinking that a prank of sorts may happen if you don’t keep both sides evenly weighted.

Everyone is accustomed to Frontiers giving us limited information by now, so the discussions will probably keep on going until the final day of the event.

As for my opinion on it? I think we’ll get pranked if we don’t keep things even.

I mean, it’s Halloween, so we have to have some form of trick-or-treat, right?

******

“That scared me. The highest-ranked mobs were too strong.” Mika commented.

“Quite surprising.” Hime nodded.

“Was it that tough?” I asked.

“I had seen information on the forums about how the highest ranked stuff was pretty tough already, but like, I was really surprised when I tried it out.

“I mean, this enemy was way too strong! It’s probably a raid-class mob!” Mika explained.

“Wow… That seems hard.

“Did you beat it though?” I asked.

“Of course! As if I’d lose to raid-class mobs with gear as good as this one!” Mika replied.

“Seems like only Mika and a few other people can use those gear pieces properly though.” I commented.

“Traffic accidents.” Hime said.

Mika started laughing, “Yeah! Lots of traffic accidents are happening! Too many people end up crashing on trees or on other people!”

This isn’t our regular girls-only-gathering. It’s more of a sudden reunion with Mika and Hime that ended up happening just because they both happened to have some free time.

Seems like they’re enjoying this event quite a bit.

Though to think the event mob surprised even then, who are two of the strongest combat-focused Pioneers… This monster must have definitely been really tough.

… This makes me wonder if there are some hidden ranks to the delivery quests. Something that would be as tough for a crafter as a raid boss is for a fighter…

I didn’t find anything about it on the forums yet though.

“So, this the candy I got from that battle.” Mika told me.

“Looks delicious.” Hime commented.

“It even sparkles a bit, so it must be good.” I also said.

“Yeah, and its rank is pretty high too.

“Unfortunately, its bonus is for crafting.” Mika groaned.

“I’ll gladly have it.” I told her.

“For Bucket.” Hime nodded.

“Effects aside, I can’t deny that it looks delicious, so you should taste it!” Mika exclaimed.

“Ooh!” Me and Hime said together.

It’s a special kind of sweet that can only be gotten when clearing the event quests.

Battle quests have a higher chance of giving battle-related sweets, but you’re not guaranteed to get them.

Still, they all seem to be delicious, so everyone seems to be happy about them regardless.

However, the candy that Mika got this time was so special that it even shone, so it was certainly extra special.

And of course, the taste was as amazing as expected!

Thank you, Mika! I really appreciate it!