Published at 25th of March 2019 9:37 pm

Chapter 665: Insufficient Equipment

They finally arrived in Darkness City. The news that they had received on the way there had made them feel gratified. Deception hadn’t gone directly to the teleport formation. Instead, he headed towards the marketplace in Darkness City. If he had ran straight for the teleport formation, Loulan Slash and the others would have been in big trouble. The Heavenly Domain had numerous cities. Having people stationed in every city just wasn’t possible.

The good news didn’t last long. The strong teams had an astonishing amount of fans and support. It was a world war right now. The marketplace was cold and empty. Deception walked around for only a short while before he quickly departed.

Fortunately, when they received this information, they had just arrived at Darkness City. Along the way there, they saw battles taking place everywhere, so their group hid their guild tags. Ever since Heavenly Justice made the announcement that they were forming a pro team, they had been looked down upon by the other teams. Now that everyone was in a state of aggression, who knew if their violence would fall upon Heavenly Justice. Loulan Slash didn’t want Heavenly Justice to be dragged into the war. Even though this war was a result of a dispute between who was the best team, Loulan Slash didn’t want to look for trouble.

Without a guild tag next to them, they appeared inconspicuous. Since everyone was busy fighting, they didn’t have time to pay close attention to whether or not that passerby really was Lord Grim.

When they arrived at Darkness City’s entrance, there were people waiting there to bring them the equipment that Loulan Slash had asked them to find for him.

Ye Xiu picked which pieces of equipment he wanted. If Loulan Slash had any, he would give it to them. Otherwise, he would spend money to buy it. Just a few sets of in-game equipment for a few characters wasn’t worth much in Loulan Slash’s eyes. Ye Xiu’s group had helped him a lot. He was perfectly happy with spending this bit of money for them.

Ye Xiu’s group wasn’t polite. After taking their new equipment, the three characters switched them out. Their models and stats immediately transformed. Soft Mist and Steamed Bun Invasion finally had a full set of class-specific gear. Their equipment only fell short of equipment that could only be dropped from the seven hundred-player dungeons. In the game, their equipment would already be considered outstanding.

As for Lord Grim… His stats had changed, but his model… His new and improved equipment still looked like garbage on him. He still looked like a rainbow. Mixing and matching equipment from different classes almost never looked good together. Each class had equipment that they were proficient in. If you mixed and matched equipment, you would lose stats from your class’ proficiencies. The better the equipment, the greater the losses.

However, Lord Grim’s unspecialized didn’t have any proficiencies, so he didn’t care much about any of that. As a result, he wore a cloth belt, leather boots, a leather cap, heavy armor, and cloth pants. It gave others a disgusting top-heavy feeling.

However, Ye Xiu didn’t care about his appearance. He opened up his character’s profile and appreciated his stats. Because unspecialized characters didn’t change classes, their stat growth was completely balanced. Their strength, vitality, intelligence, and spirit all had a growth of 3. When unspecialized characters reached Level 70, their base stats would each be at 210. The stat point rewards from each quests was also evenly distributed for a total of 90 points per stat. For any class, there were no worthless stats. All of them had their uses, just some less than others. Thus, all players would complete these quests regardless. At Level 70, Lord Grim’s base stats were all at 300.

All characters had a total of 1200 points at Level 70, unless they missed a quest. The only difference between them was how those 1200 points were distributed.

Unspecialized characters had a balanced growth, so their 840 points from leveling up were evenly distributed between each stat. However, every other class was different.

For example, Battle Mages had a 3.5 growth in strength and intelligence and a 2.5 growth in vitality and spirit.

Thus, when they reached level 70. Their total base stats would add up to 840, but their strength and intelligence would both be at 245, while their vitality and spirit would each be at 175.

These stat growths couldn’t be changed by players. The players needed to match equipment based on their needs. Apart from equipment, players could also freely distribute the 160 points they got from the guild buffs.

As for how these points were distributed, it was up to the players to decide. Especially for classes like Battle Mages, which dealt both physical and magical damage they had to think about whether they should stack strength, intelligence, equal strength and intelligence, or a proportion of each? This was a question that was still debated to this day. In particular, when a player got new equipment, they often had to consider this issue.

The top-tier Battle Mage, One Autumn Leaf, had chosen to lean slightly more towards strength and lean slightly less towards intelligence. As one of the most popular characters in Glory, many players naturally copied this choice. However, reality proved that blindly following a pro player’s choice was not always a smart decision.

Because normal players didn’t have the resources to accomplish proper stat distribution. First of all, their skill level wasn’t as high. Second of all, their equipment was far from pro level. A lot of stat distributions required a certain level of equipment to display their utmost potential. If they didn’t meet those requirements, even if their skills were at the pro level, they still wouldn’t be able to utilize it properly.

Tang Rou and Steamed Bun were at the pro level in terms of mechanics, but their game sense wasn’t there yet. Having them choose their own equipment would certainly end poorly. As a result, Ye Xiu helped them choose their equipment.

Tang Rou’s Soft Mist went with a strength-oriented stat distribution. After switching equipment, her strength reached 870, while her intelligence was only at 540.

These stats were already quite impressive in game, but it was still far from the pro level.

One Autumn Leaf had 1220 strength and 1140 intelligence. These two main stats were 1.67 times greater than Soft Mist’s. This didn’t even include the disparity in vitality and spirit. In terms of overall stats, these in-game impressive stats were not worth anything in pro gameplay.

Soft Mist’s equipment definitely couldn’t be regarded as bad in the game. All of them were second only to those that could be found from the seven hundred-player dungeons and those from Level 70 wild bosses. Even those higher grade pieces of equipment couldn’t compare to Silver equipment.

In truth, the reason Silver equipment was superior compared to Orange and Purple equipment wasn’t because they had much better stats, but rather because they were customized specifically for the player. It was for this reason that Silver equipment allowed pro characters to have such terrifying stats. This sort of disparity in stats was difficult to make up for with skill alone. It was the reason why Wei Chen was so uneasy about meeting a team like Excellent Era in the Challenger League.

If Soft Mist, with her 870 strength and 540 intelligence, faced off against One Autumn Leaf, with his 1220 strength and 1140 intelligence, wasn’t the difference as obvious as night and day?

This didn’t even factor in the difference in attack power between Soft Mist’s Level 70 Purple weapon, Extreme Light Spear, and One Autumn Leaf’s Silver weapon, Evil Annihilation.

This didn’t even considering the other additional stats apart from the four main stats provided by the other Silver equipment on One Autumn Leaf.

This sort of equipment definitely wasn’t enough.

Ye Xiu might be satisfied with his Lord Grim’s current stats, but he knew that it was still far from reaching the required level to enter the pro scenes. His Lord Grim’s stats actually weren’t even as good as Soft Mist’s. Soft Mist at least had proficiency in her armor. Those extra stats from proficiency wasn’t something that he had. In order to make up for that gap, he would need to rely on self-made equipment. Specializing the stats was an issue that Su Muqiu had been analyzing for the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella.

A weapon like the Myriad Manifestations Umbrella had never appeared before in Glory, but the concept of specializing the stats had been analyzed in the pro scene already.

Lord Grim’s strange appearance made others want to laugh, but they didn’t know that Ye Xiu had done it this way for a specific reason.

However, even though they had switched equipment and were looking over one another’s new appearances, they never stopped moving. After understanding Deception’s current path and Darkness City’s teleport location, Ye Xiu decided: “We can make it.” Then, he immediately gave the order: “Little Tang, Steamed Bun. You two head to the revival spot first. Once you get there, message me.”

“Okay.” The two listened to his order and then left.

They were clearly planning on killing Deception multiple times! Thinking about how Deception had stolen away three pieces of material, Loulan Slash felt very excited about this sort of method. The other four felt the same. There had been so many of them at Darkness Palace, yet they still failed to catch that guy. It was too shameful! They had to win back their face.

The five people were pumping themselves up when they heard Ye Xiu say: “Then I’ll see you guys later. If I need any more information, I’ll contact you Little Lan.”

See you later?

The five went into a daze. They had followed this senior all the way here. Now that they had arrived, he just said see you later?

“Hey!” Loulan Slash suddenly called out. The five continued to chase after him.

“What’s wrong?” Ye Xiu had Lord Grim ask, while running.

“What do you mean ‘see you guys later’? We’re going too!” Loulan Slash said.

“You’re going too.” Ye Xiu was puzzled, “I thought you guys felt like chasing and killing him was a waste of time?”

“I… ” Loulan Slash realized he had truly said just that. How could he suddenly change his mind? How did that happen?

“Relax! With this equipment, he won’t be able to escape. I’ll get revenge for you! If I get those three materials, I’ll definitely return them to you, but I feel like he won’t have them on him. He probably put them in his storage already, or maybe you could find some way to get a buyer to get close to him. I reckon that he’ll bring those materials out, if that happens. As long as he has it, we’ll find a way to get them back for you.” Ye Xiu said.

“Okay okay. I can’t talk anymore. I have to hurry or else I won’t be able to intercept him. Remember to update me on his whereabouts whenever you can!” Ye Xiu said and had Lord Grim speed up. He wore leather shoes, cloth legs, heavy armor, yet he easily left the five of them behind.

“This this… ” The five were tongue-tied, but they had already slowed down.

“How amazing!” In the end, Homeward Bound sighed at Ye Xiu’s decision.

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