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

Frontiers ~Chronicles of Bucket-san’s Detailed Pioneering~ 13

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I just gotta keep working a bit harder

 

 

In addition to subjugation and delivery, Guild quests also include escorting and woodcutting jobs.

As the name suggests, escort jobs involve accompanying someone else to ensure they’re not bothered by monsters when performing gathering actions.

 

The gathering actions in “Frontiers” work like this: If you equip skills such as “gathering” and “mining”, you will be able to see “gathering spots”, allowing you to obtain multiple various items from them.

It’s difficult to gather items other than through “gathering spots”, and if you don’t have the proper expertise or know how to execute the action properly, you won’t be able to obtain any items from them.
Even when you can physically do it, it will still be far less efficient than someone with the appropriate qualifications to do so, who can obtain a large amount of items from a single action.

 

So, generally speaking, collecting items means getting items at “gathering spots”, but their disadvantage is that you can draw surrounding monsters into attacking you if you touch these “gathering spots”.

Passive monsters that wouldn’t normally attack you unless you attack them first, and even aggressive monsters that would attack you as soon as you get within a certain distance from them, will be drawn to your location when you come in contact with a “gathering spot”, so it can be quite troublesome.

 

If you are a fighter, you can first defeat the monsters and then gather the items from the “gathering spot” at your leisure, but if you are a crafter, you might not be able to handle the monsters so easily, so you’ll need an escort.

You know, a crafter like me, who can’t defeat monsters.

There seem to be only a few players like me in that regard, but there are quite a lot of NPCs like that, which all team up to post a single, joint escort quest.

Hiring an escort as a single person is quite expensive, but not so much if several people hire the same person.

Though “gathering spots” can only be interacted with by a single person, if several “gathering spots” appear in the same area, they will yield roughly the same items.

Therefore, the amount of monsters that would need to be dealt with can be considerably reduced if multiple people were to gather in relatively the same area.

 

I feel like participating in one of these joint quests.

Apparently, it costs only half of the escort fee and the quest fee itself, so at least I won’t be in the red just for hiring an escort.
Getting someone with a low Skill Lv could get a bit dicey, while getting someone with a higher Skill Lv could be an investment worth doing.

The price of the materials I could get is nothing to be sneezed at, either.

 

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Woodcutting quests are important quests that support the foundation of the “Frontiers” world.

The world of “Frontiers” is currently being eaten up by dangerous trees called “Demon Trees”.

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They come with a voracious force, and already several villages and towns have been swallowed up by them, considerably reducing the people of this world’s habitable areas.

The “Kingdom of Zabrina” where I’m now is no exception, and only a few large cities like the “Capital Sabrina” still remain.

 

Many NPCs are still chopping wood in order to protect the city from the invading “Demon Trees”.

Because of that, and the fact that the world is undergoing a great deal of changes, the setting where us pioneer players were sent to save this world that is on the verge of extinction.

 

However, if they go to the temple and their qualities are recognized, even NPCs can become pioneers, so it’s more like a strategy to stock up on capable hands.

 

Because of that, there’s a quest for chopping “Demon Tree” wood.

Many NPCs are engaged in this woodcutting job, so the amount of players recruited for it is not that great, but it is still a relatively appealing quest.

Well, avoiding impending doom is an important job, but even NPCs have a life.
If it wasn’t appealing, no one would feel like doing it.

 

By the way, this is the reason why ax weapons sell very well.

The “Demon Trees” are really dangerous, but they are trees after all, so ax-type weapons seem to work well against them.
On the flip side, it seems that other types of weapons are nearly useless against them, which is why there’s such great demand for ax weapons.

 

The places where players are hunting right now are the living areas of ​​humans who are striving to prevent the “Demon Tree” invasion.

Currently, players only see these woodcutting quests as a good way to make money, but as their skill level goes up, they’ll run out of places where hunting is profitable for them, so they will eventually have no other choice but to cut “Demon Trees” down and open new paths towards new hunting grounds.

 

Even during the beta test, the players who had peaked at the hunting grounds opened by the NPCs ended up defeating the “Demon Trees” in the area, reclaiming a Field Area to use as a new hunting ground.

The game seems to progress by accessing new Field Areas, which will appear after a certain amount of “Demon Trees” are cut down.

However, even a new Field Area is reclaimed, new “Demon Trees” can appear there to invade it once again, so there’s a certain amount of maintenance involved.

 

By the way, if you cut down a “Demon Tree”, it will become a block and then disappear  like most monsters do when defeated, after which you can obtain items from it.

That said, you can only get one type of item, but these are items that you can’t get anywhere else, which can also be used as fuel for a “Magic Tool” called “Magic Stone”.

In the world of “Frontiers”, these “Magic Tools” are used instead of home appliances, and “Magic Stones” are very important because they are a substitute for electricity.

The Magic Lights that illuminate the city at night time are also “Magic Tools”, and without them, it would be difficult to open a stall at night.

 

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I’ve already checked and registered at the Guild, and it could get really crowded soon, so I decided to resume my crafting.

It would be normal to go hunting after receiving even one of the subjugation quests here, but I’m purely a crafter.
A shut-in who has never been out of town? That’s me.

But those joint quests were rather fascinating.

I feel that I want to take part in one of them one day.

 

I rented a room at the usual “Rental Production Facility” and started my crafting work immediately, but the amount of “Copper Ore” has become quite enormous due to our recent increase in funds and the number of materials purchased.

Mika-chan said that turning all of this into ingots would be nothing short of a shame in the eyes of the average person.

Well, actually, she said that about my previous purchase, which wasn’t as nearly as big as this one, so this one is probably even worse than that.

 

She also said that this was the reason why player crafters were taken out of the beta test.
Well, there may be some truth to that.

Even if you plan to speed up the process by raising your Skill Lv and using new “Arts”, the result will be the same in the end.

 

So what’s left is players like me, who don’t want to bother with that kind of work.

Especially during the beta test, unlike the current situation, NPCs broke through the shortage of stock from an early stage, so it is no wonder that more and more people will start wondering if it wouldn’t be better to leave crafting to the NPCs.

 

Although the stock is limited even at the “rental production facility”, ★3 ingots are always on sale, so if you have trouble getting the materials yourself, you can use them as well.

However, you shouldn’t use ★3 ingots if you expect to create items of high quality, and above all, it’s expensive.
It makes no sense to reduce one’s profits like that.

 

Still, people seemed to be having trouble getting their materials, since when I took a look at the front desk, they were completely sold out of “Copper Ingots”.

Perhaps if someone were to put up more “Copper Ingots” here for sale, they would sell like hot cakes.
I can’t be bothered to do it myself, though.

 

But more than making  “Copper Ingots”, it’s about time I start making my own clothes.

I’ve had a design in mind for some time now, and even though I never had much time to put it into practice I’ve been adding more and more to it, but now that I have some spare time, it’s finally my chance.

 

Unfortunately, there were no recipes for the design idea I was thinking of, so let’s start with a paper pattern.

It’s inconvenient that you can’t use the browser at times like these.

Well, if you could use it, there would be nothing stopping players from mass-producing custom-made recipes, so it’s understandable.

After quickly cutting the fabrics, I sewed it using my “Magic Sewing Machine”.

It’s quite convenient to not have to worry about its size after all.
I can just keep working on it vigorously without having to do anything like tacking.

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As long as it’s not too elaborate, the entire process will be completed in the blink of an eye.
Could it be thanks to the versatility of “Processing Completion”?

 

Here’s the finished product…

 

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Salopette Skirt

One-piece – Top and Bottom / Light clothing / ★4 / DEF + 7

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To put it simply, it’s like a skirt version of a pair of overalls.

It’s beige in color and has several pockets, making it easy to work while wearing it.

It takes both the top and bottom slots of one’s clothing equipment, but that’s not a problem, since its defensive power is not a concern.

This is a world where one doesn’t need to get dirty in order to relieve stress, so its appearance was quite important.

People might then think that I should just wear fashionable and cute clothes, but I’m a crafter after all.

I think there’s nothing wrong with trying to make work clothes look cute.

 

By the way, even though it has a chest protector, the skirt section simply hangs from it, so if you don’t wear anything under it, it’s going to get a bit revealing.
No, it’s going to be very revealing.

Maybe too revealing for the world of “Frontiers” to even allow it.

But it’s not like I can’t wear underwear, so I just chose a T-shirt to go under the top section.
No one is going to see anything they shouldn’t see.
It’s going to be fine.

 

Incidentally, underwear cannot be crafted.
That’s why more than 20 kinds of designs are available, and you can change its color freely and add accessories as much as you want.

I think it would have been better to allow us to create them just like any other piece of clothing.

Ah, but I guess some people would try to make underwear too revealing, so it’s understandable they don’t let us make our own.

 

Either way, the cute work clothes to go along with my bucket were finished.

Yeah, wearing this in the real world would be a great problem.
But not here.

 

Now I look like an actual crafter! And to celebrate this, I’ll challenge myself to get a “Bronze Ingot” before getting a Copper one!

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For some reason, I feel like I can pull it off.
Will it be ★4, or even ★5!?

 

Bronze comes right after Copper for heavy equipment.

You can make bronze by melting the same amount of “Copper Ore” and “Tin Ore” in the “Magic Furnace” and using “Extraction” to remove any impurities from it.

I will carefully and slowly remove impurities using “Smithing Arts/Lv15/Extraction – Improved”, but it is not my fault that it is overwhelmingly more difficult than when I first made a “Copper Ingot”.

It’s bad news, though.
It’s so bad that I could easily tell that my Skill Lv is still too low for this.

I can’t remove the impurities at all.
I had to do something quick, or I would be doing nothing but wasting materials.

I did “Processing Completion” when I reached the limit, but the result was… well…  disappointing.

 

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Bronze Ingot

Material / ★2

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It wasn’t even ★3, but ★2.
And the only reason it didn’t end up being ★1 was because I used “Extraction” to remove its impurities to the utmost limits…

It seems that it’s still too early for me to be making “Bronze Ingots”.

Even though it’s a full-fledged ingot, it’s ★2, so using this to make another piece of equipment and hoping it turns out at least ★3 would be a dream within a dream.

I wonder if the people who sell ingots at the street stalls feel the same as I do right now…

 

Either way, this is the unfortunate piece of equipment that became my first Bronze gear…

 

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Bronze ring

Accessories / ★2 / DEF + 1 / Durability 10

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Performance-wise, it was about the same as a “Copper Ring”.

I now know that ★2 and ★1 items are so poor in terms of performance because of how they’re made.
Though I may not want to accept it.

Well, this is where my current ability is at.
I just gotta keep working a bit harder.