Back in the game, Xiao Hua checked his backpack. He still had fifteen sets of magic bombs. After spending over three hours bombing White Apes in the coniferous forest, he ran out of magic bombs completely. In the end, he was short of just a little HP to finish off the last batch of White Apes with his remaining bombs. Xiao Hua bravely charged in with his dagger, only to realize that he was in a tough spot. The White Apes didn’t have high defense, and he could barely break through, but each slash only dealt a pitiful thirty to forty HP of damage. If the monsters hadn’t been nearly dead, it would have taken him at least ten to eight minutes to kill one.
Xiao Hua regretted not borrowing a million or so coins from Piaoling in the morning. With his current attack power, he couldn’t join a party without feeling embarrassed, even if others didn’t mind having him along.
He had a little over a hundred gold coins left. What could he do with a hundred gold? Xiao Hua thought about it and realized that aside from buying lots of buns to replenish his stamina, there wasn’t much else he could do.
However, upon returning to Snowdrift City, Xiao Hua found something to do. If he couldn’t level up, he could train his skills. Some life skills would eventually need to be upgraded, allowing him to use the attribute points awarded by the system. Mining was the easiest skill to practice, didn’t require money, and wasn’t too mentally taxing.
Having made up his mind, after lunch, Xiao Hua learned the mining skill at the Miner’s Hall in Snowdrift City and spent all his savings on two high-quality mining picks, each costing fifty gold.
High-Quality Mining Pick: Mining can help you rise from poverty to wealth. This is a high-quality mining pick that only successful miners can afford. It’s a symbol of status! Effect: Increases the chance of finding high-quality ores. When successfully mining an ore, there is a 10% chance of gaining double the usual skill experience!
An ordinary mining pick cost only one gold and had a durability of fifty, lasting fifty hours. In contrast, the fifty-gold high-quality mining pick had a durability of only twenty and would break after twenty hours of use and couldn’t be repaired. It truly lived up to its “high-quality” name.
The Miner’s Hall was located south of Snowdrift City. Leaving the hall, walking southward from the southern gate of Snowdrift City for over an hour led to a low-level mine.
During the beta, in the last two days after obtaining the dark gold dagger, Xiao Hua had wanted to enhance it. To do so, he mined for two days. Thus, he had some experience with mines. According to his knowledge, low-level mines usually had three levels. The first level produced poor quality iron ores and regular iron ores. Each deeper level added another higher-grade ore. However, to mine higher-grade ores, one needed a corresponding mining skill level. For example, with his current novice mining skill, he could only extract poor quality iron ores and regular iron ores. Even if he went down to the third or fourth level, he couldn’t obtain black iron ores.
Ore Grades: Poor Quality Iron Ore, Iron Ore, Fine Iron Ore, Black Iron Ore, Cold Iron Ore, Mystic Iron Ore, Crystal Ore, Rainbow Crystal Ore
Ores served two purposes: crafting armor and weapons, and enhancing weapons. Enhancing weapons required large quantities of ores, ranging from lower to higher grades. The more basic the ore, the greater the quantity needed!
Weapons in Second World could be enhanced seven times. The first three enhancements each added 1% to the weapon’s attack power, the next two added 2%, the sixth added 3%, and the seventh added 5%. Enhancing a weapon seven times increased its attack power by 15%!
What does a 15% attack boost mean? Simply put, a purple-grade weapon enhanced to +7 is almost as good as an unenhanced dark gold weapon!
For the first enhancement, success was almost guaranteed, requiring a thousand pieces of iron ore of grade five or higher. The cost was less than ten thousand gold. Players with decent weapons would enhance them without hesitation, as even a slight increase in attack power was beneficial. Starting from the second and third enhancements, failure rates became more common, but failures weren’t too concerning, as only the ores and enhancement fees were lost, and the enhancement bonus didn’t decrease. However, from the fourth to fifth enhancements, a failed enhancement would reset the bonus back to zero, although the weapon wouldn’t be damaged. Many players struggled between the fourth and fifth enhancements, willing to spend significant resources for a few percentage points of attack power!
A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
The sixth and seventh enhancements were daring feats pursued by those seeking the ultimate power and those with money to burn! Failure meant not only a reset of the enhancement bonus but also a high chance of weapon damage!
Players would inevitably replace their weapons when they acquired better ones or leveled up. Whenever they switched weapons, they would need to enhance them, ensuring a constant demand for ores, especially lower-grade ores.
Many large guilds organized miners to monopolize mines. Starting from the second level, monsters would spawn in the mines and attack miners. Although miners could still mine while under attack, these monsters inflicted debuffs, such as halving reaction speed and poisoning, making mining as slow as a snail climbing a tree. Therefore, guilds typically assigned specific members to clear monsters, allowing miners to work safely and efficiently. Outside the mine entrances, several merchants always bought ores. These merchants generally purchased ores of grade five and above, as ores below grade four couldn’t be used to enhance weapons. They were only useful for training the blacksmithing skill or selling to shops, offering minimal profit.
The low-level mine south of Snowdrift City had only three levels, with the deepest yielding black iron ores. Normally, only one or two merchants bought ores at the entrance. Xiao Hua entered the first level, where the dim and narrow mine tunnels were empty except for him. Only players who had just learned the mining skill would stay at the first level, as novice mining skills made it difficult to extract any ores from deeper levels. The first level was known for producing poor quality iron ores, which were only useful for increasing mining skill experience and sold for a single copper coin at stores. Players could discard them on the ground to be refreshed.
The absence of other players suited Xiao Hua. After passing through several small tunnels, he reached a distant, dark corner and summoned a phantom.
Since phantoms could do many things, Xiao Hua wondered if they could mine.
He controlled the phantom to another corner and ordered it to mine. After a while, Xiao Hua noticed several poor quality iron ores appearing in his backpack, causing him to chuckle.
One day, if he really hit rock bottom, mining might actually lead to wealth!
Except for poor quality ores, all other ores were graded from one to nine, with one being the lowest and nine the highest. Ores of grade five and above could be used to enhance weapons, while those below grade four had limited uses, primarily for increasing blacksmithing skill experience. They were worth little.
A backpack had only sixty slots, and traveling so far, one wouldn’t return with just dozens of ores. Weapons required thousands of ores for enhancement, so ores could be stacked like magic bombs. One slot could hold up to one hundred ores of the same grade and type, forming a stack.
Xiao Hua spent an hour mining. With the phantom’s help, his backpack soon contained over one stack of poor quality iron ores, and various grades of iron ores, each numbering only a few. Xiao Hua didn’t mind, as he only cared about gaining skill experience. The type of ore didn’t matter as long as he could mine and gain experience.
After mining for a while longer, Xiao Hua noticed that after only one and a half hours, the durability of his high-quality mining pick had decreased by three points. Clearly, the phantom’s mining also consumed the pick’s durability, similar to using magic bombs.
This outcome was expected by Xiao Hua when he realized the phantom could mine. However, he persisted in letting the phantom mine, not for the extra ores, but to determine whether the phantom’s mining could increase his own skill experience!
If it could, using phantoms to train skills would significantly reduce the time needed to level up!
However, the experience required to level up skills wasn’t a specific value but a progress bar. There were no notifications about how much experience was gained. Therefore, Xiao Hua couldn’t judge the effect after one and a half hours. During the beta, he had only mined to enhance weapons and hadn’t specifically observed the amount of experience gained while mining.
Still, if he persisted, comparing the time it took him to level up his skills with others would yield an answer!
Continuing to focus on mining, two more hours passed. Xiao Hua’s backpack now held several stacks of poor quality iron ores. The entire first level of the mine echoed with the sounds of his and the phantom’s mining. Suddenly, a loud commotion came from deep within the mine.