Chapter 477 - 305: Zog, a Dragon Detached from High-Level Tastes

Chapter 477: Chapter 305: Zog, a Dragon Detached from High-Level Tastes

’Wait, what? Why? This doesn’t make sense! How did she do that?!’

Seeing the luxuriously abundant supply of resources in Toto’s inventory, she could survive for four hundred days, let alone forty.

Uffie’s large eyes were filled with immense confusion.

’Are there really this many resources in the game?’

She didn’t understand.

She’d had her four characters risk starvation just to scrape by for forty days.

’Could it be that Toto was actually playing on a hacked version?’

Games that didn’t require an internet connection had no anti-cheat systems. Changing the data was easy; anyone with a little knowledge of Magic could do it. For a professional Mage, there was practically no barrier to entry.

Zog believed that players modifying the game themselves was part of the experience.

Not only could they change all sorts of data, but once a player bought a game, they were the ones who decided what their characters wore.

All sorts of wild mods, even player-created gameplay and storylines, were all part of the game experience.

Zog supported and encouraged this kind of spontaneous player creation, as it could greatly extend a game’s lifespan.

Although, single-player games didn’t really need their lifespans extended—you bought it, and it was up to you whether you played it or not.

But this attitude greatly strengthened the players’ sense of connection to the game, increasing the likelihood they’d buy sequels. Some would throw money at him without a second thought.

Games on Zog’s platform even had an optional update feature, allowing players to download patches only if they wanted to.

This was to prevent a forced update from causing all the mods in a player’s carefully curated, conflict-free setup to break overnight.

Thoughtful Zog.

’But doesn’t Toto have her pride as a pro gamer?’

Even if she used mods, she’d only use meme mods for fun, not ones that made the game easier.

’Besides, the game hasn’t even been officially released yet. Where would player mods even come from?!’

While Uffie was still puzzled, night fell in Toto’s game, and she began to show off her skills.

Uffie watched as she took control of Romance—the single best fighter in the game, bar none—and, armed with a small knife, entered the Army Camp map.

With practiced ease, she took out the sentry post, seized a weapon, and fought her way inside.

The camp’s defenses, which had seemed impenetrable to Uffie, offered almost no resistance to Toto. It was as if every move the soldiers made was within her calculations.

’Top-tier pattern memorization!’

She continued until she had wiped out all armed forces in the camp. Finally, she beat the army’s trader half to death, making him beg for his life but stopping just short of killing him.

Toto had just robbed the biggest "bandit" in the game!

Uffie watched as she took all the trader’s goods and then left the map.

’Why leave the trader alive?’

’Is it to avoid losing morale?’ Uffie wondered. ’But she already wiped out an entire camp. Then again, they were soldiers, so it probably didn’t hit morale that hard.’

Then, she witnessed Toto’s next incredible move.

After clearing the Army Camp, she went to other maps that had traders.

The traders in these places had clearly been "educated," as they immediately went into a begging state upon seeing Toto’s character.

Toto, meanwhile, went straight to the resource stash and took the entire lot.

There was so much she couldn’t carry it all, so she found a cabinet near the map’s entrance to store the excess.

’Wait, why did the trader have more resources? Didn’t she take them the first time?’

Uffie couldn’t figure it out.

Wait a minute.

It all clicked.

Uffie’s eyes widened, stunned by Toto’s playstyle.

She was exploiting a game mechanic. The trader’s inventory would refresh after a certain period. By clearing out the armed forces on the map and beating the trader into submission, she could just come back to collect the resources every time they respawned. ℴ

That’s why she had more supplies than she could ever use.

She had turned a war survival game into a Landlady Rent Collection Simulator!

’What kind of devious thinking is that? She completely broke the game.’

"But, after killing so many people, won’t the characters’ morale collapse?" Uffie couldn’t help but ask.

"Collapse?" Toto chuckled. "As long as you have enough cigarettes, alcohol, coffee, and food, they’ll never break!"

All the characters she controlled were in the same state.

By night, they were murderers and thieves; by day, they lived in a drunken stupor.

’War survivors?’

’More like the Grim Reapers of the Siege!’

Eventually, this strategy developed by Toto caught Zog’s attention.

He hadn’t expected someone to discover such an unorthodox exploit before the game was even in internal testing.

It seemed the original game had always had this kind of exploit, but he had never tried it himself, so he wasn’t too familiar with it.

One of the downsides of being a game designer was that, aside from deep-diving into genres related to his work, he rarely played other games too thoroughly. He’d only scratch the surface, as breadth of experience was more important.

Spending too much time on one game meant you couldn’t play a wide variety of them.

After observing Toto’s ruthless tactics a few times, Zog decided to classify this method as a bug, not a new feature.

It wasn’t uncommon for bugs in games to evolve into features.

Take the classic rocket jump, for example—a common technique in shooting games where you fire a rocket behind you as you jump to go higher and farther.

Originally, this was actually a bug; the mid-air recoil shouldn’t have been that powerful.

But because it became widely popular among players, the developers kept it, and it became a movement technique.

Over time, it gradually evolved into an almost essential mobility skill in shooting games.

It was a benign bug that improved playability by a happy accident.

Toto’s strategy, however, was a bit too exploitative. It severely undermined the game’s core design.

It was supposed to be a survival game, but there was no survival aspect left. It had just become a power trip.