Frontiers ~Chronicles of Bucket-san’s Detailed Pioneering~

Chapter 34 – I’ll spend my whole allowance on this!

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It’s been 10 days since Frontiers was released, and the update is now live.
The in-game time is still stuck at the 27th, as the servers were down during maintenance, so no time passed.

When I logged in, I was inside my store.
The maintenance ended at 10am in ‘Real Time’, but in-game it is 6am.

There’s some time before the store opens, but the clerks should be coming soon… Before things start getting busy, I’d like to get as much information as possible on the update, so I decided to use the in-game menu to check the official website first and foremost.

Though there probably won’t be much information there.
I’ll have to check the forums later to see what information the players were able to gather, but let’s see what the website says first.

‘Start of the official event: Strengthened Demon Trees Woodcutting.

‘Drought and Hunger were implemented.

‘Renting was implemented.

‘Personal Web Space within Frontiers was implemented.

‘Personal Room was implemented.

‘Premium Items were implemented.

‘Some bugs were fixed.
Some skills were adjusted.’

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And that was all there was to it.
About as succinct as expected.

The event seems to be going to give special rewards depending on how many Demon Trees are cut, but I’m not participating on that.

Drought and Hunger were a bit self-explanatory, and I could see them now being parts of the menu.
I guess this was made in order to add a purpose to food and drinks.

Renting seems to allow you to lend items to others.
You can be very detailed on the conditions of the renting itself, and the item still takes a slot on the inventory of its owner… This might be a pretty useful function.

Personal Web Space seem to be a browser extension that works within the game itself.
Just like how we are able to access the forums and the official website from the game, we are now able to open our own personal websites and blogs.
This is pretty useful as I wanted to make a blog of the store to put a list of items I regularly put up for sale and things like it.
I’ll probably use this function.

Also, Clan owners seem to automatically get a special web space for free.
Must be good to make recruiting people more easily.

As for Rooms, it seems to be a premium feature that you may purchase in order to give you access to a special private space that exists outside of the world.
It’s mostly meant to be a private space just for yourself though, as you cannot set up a store within Rooms.
I guess it may have its uses, but I think my store is plenty, so I don’t see myself using that.

And Premium Items are essentially microtransactions.
The game is Free to Play, so it’s a given that they would be implemented.

That said, they took care to not affect the game’s balance with those.
There are no items that can help you in-battles nor during crafting in the microtransactions… They’re instead, mostly cosmetic things and quality of life things.

The Room is an obvious example, but premium luxurious web spaces are another.

And then there are like, clothes that are worn below the armor, but that you can choose to display them while hiding your armor… There are things that go from swimsuits to super hero costumes, so they certainly don’t lack in variety.

But most importantly, the quality of life features are very appealing.

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The first one that caught my eye was the ‘Additional Active Skill Slot’ one.
There’s a cap of 10 skills that you can tag as active, and you can’t gain skill levels of any other skill except those.
Of course, you can change which skills are active as you see fit, but not only is it bothersome, but being capped to 10 skills is a real hindrance when you’re trying to level as many skills at the same time as possible like I am.

I really want this item… It’s troublesome that the 11th slot isn’t permanent, but I still want it anyways.

And the price… Is not that expensive, though not cheap either.
They sure know how to properly draw their customers alright.

Other attractive features were Bag Expansion Packs and Warehouse Expansion Packs.

Also, there seems to be an option to buy a pack of Premium features at once and get a discount… Perhaps I should spend my allowance on that?

******

After I finished checking the official website, I went to the forums.
Unsurprisingly, there was already some information there, though of course not that much since the update just went live.

There are new enemies on the hunting grounds, and they drop new materials.
Let’s add those to the list of materials I’m purchasing.
There were also new materials on gathering spots, so I added those too.

I’m looking forward to seeing what I can do with those new materials.

Sadly, that was all that was relevant to me.
It couldn’t be helped since people didn’t have much time to find things out though.
Or rather, it’s impressive that people already went out, started killing monsters, and posted about the new materials in this short timeframe.

With this out of the way though, let’s message Mika and Hime.
I’m curious to see if they’ll purchase any Premium Items.

Well, I’m pretty sure Mika will spend her entire allowance on this.
It’s not much since she’s still in High School, but I doubt that she’ll hold back.

I don’t know about Hime’s spending habits though, I’ll have to wait for her answer.

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… I did get my allowance too, so I suppose I could spend the money that I usually spend on other games on the extra active skill slot…

Just as I was wondering this, Mika replied to my message, “Hey, Yuri! Did you see the update? I’m gonna blow my whole allowance on this!” She said.

“Morning, Mika.
You really don’t hold back with those things, do you?” I told her.

“But of course! I’m currently going to the highway that was blocked by a large number of Demon Trees by the way.
Their number has clearly grown since the last time I checked.” She said.

“Must be because of the event… To think that even more trees would appear even before people finished opening the way through, they really aren’t making things easy for us, are they?” I replied.

“Yeah, though I’m sure Hime will shine during this event.
Nobody can really compare with her in woodcutting.” Mika told me.
She obviously knew about the video of Hime wielding ten axes at once, “Oh, and on that note, I just got some information that Hime was sighted with her ten axes and she seems to be as effective as ever.
I was worried that the update might have nerfed her ability, but it seems like this was not the case.”

To be honest, I was worried about the same thing, so I’m glad to hear it.

“As expected of Hime, she immediately went out to test her post-update effectiveness.” I said.

“Well, she’s really fond of testing things after all… Oh, I just found a new mob, so I’ll have to cut things short.
Talk to you later, Yuri!” Mika hurriedly told me this.

“See you later.” I replied, though she’ll probably only see this message in a few hours.

Mika really is going to spend all her money on the game… She really doesn’t change.

A shame that Hime hasn’t even answered my messages yet though.
I guess she really does love testing things out.
She’s a really caring person who is fantastic at multi-tasking, but she can also hyperfocus when something matters a lot to her, so I guess it can’t be helped that I’ll have to wait a while longer to talk to her.

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And as I thought of that, the clerks came to work.
We ended up talking a bit about the update, and I told them about the new materials that we’ll now be purchasing.

By talking to them, I also found out that NPCs seem to receive the news about the update from a direct message from this world’s goddess.
And like this they ended up finding out that these new enemies are part of the monsters trying to extinguish humanity or something.

******

After I left the shop, I went to the Guild to get the Personal Web Space.
However, it seemed to be extremely crowded right now, probably by people who also wanted it, and by people who just wanted to take quests and the like.

I suppose it can’t be helped that there would be a lot of people there right after an update.
It would take too long to go there now, and I’m not really in a hurry to get the Web Space, so let’s leave this for later and go craft for now.
I’m almost at the level where I should be able to reliably craft Iron after all, so there are plenty of things that are more important than a Web Space!

… The slowdown on the growth speed of Blacksmithing after the evolution is really noticeable though.
I understand that it can’t be helped as online games need to lower our pace as we progress so that they can make enough content in time, but it’s still frustrating.

Nonetheless, I’m almost there, so I’ll keep on working hard!

Before going to the Rental Production Facility though, I stopped by some stalls and bought some food and drinks, since I’ll need those now that Hunger and Drought were implemented.

With this out of the way, I went to the usual Rental Production Facility on the South Gate.
It was quite empty right now, probably because of the update just going live… Well, it’s not like it’s ever been extremely crowded though.

Either way, I rented a private room and… Ah! I forgot to use Summoning this whole time! I could be grinding my skills, but I was so excited by the update that I forgot!

“Come, Homun!” I exclaimed, and Homun was summoned after three minutes.

With or without an update, my routine won’t change in the end… Let’s do our best!