Treabar

Tag: Survival

  • Golden Fleece can be purchased in the pharmacy, but it is limited to 15 copies per week;

    Between the wind and the ruins, I prepare materials for a whole city for a virtual person
    It was an unreal afternoon.
    You sit in front of the computer, and the screen is the login page of “Mingchao”. The city is still flowing, and people are shuttling back and forth.
    You suddenly remember the name “Xiakong”.
    It’s very light. Like a rain that has just begun, and like a farewell that has not yet happened in the future.
    She doesn’t know you.
    You don’t really know her either.
    You can’t even be sure whether she exists in time or only in a certain emotion of yours.
    But you decide to prepare everything for her.
    You start collecting materials for a virtual character. How absurd it sounds
    But how reasonable it is.
    We have all done similar things.
    Leave a light on for an ex who will never come back;
    Write a poem for someone you have never hugged;
    Spend millions of shells in the game for a name that does not belong to reality.
    You pave the way for Xiakong’s existence in the world of “Mingchao”. She won’t tell you what she wants. You can only guess what she needs based on experience, like guessing the reason why a person cries late at night.

    You checked the complete information. You know that if you want to upgrade her from the initial state to level 90, she will need the following:

    Low-frequency eclipse sail core × 29

    Medium-frequency eclipse sail core × 40

    High-frequency eclipse sail core × 52

    Full-frequency eclipse sail core × 61

    Burning phosphorus evil bone × 46

    Iris blooming day × 26

    Golden fleece × 60

    Contains impure crystallized phlogiston × 25

    Roughly extracted crystallized phlogiston × 28

    Distilled crystallized phlogiston × 55

    High-purity crystallized phlogiston × 67

    Special resonance accelerator × 122

    Shell coins: 3,053,300 pieces

    The names of these materials are very strange, sounding like poems written by someone who has lost his memory.

    “Golden fleece”, “Iris blooming day”, “Burning phosphorus evil bone”… Every word is like a part of her body.

    You wonder if you can define a person by these quantitative things in reality, wouldn’t it be so easy to lose them?

    You even prepared a sacrifice for her weapon

    You know she doesn’t belong to this world.

    But you still want her to have the ability to defend herself. Even if she is just a lone traveler like you who travels through the virtual world.

    Her weapon also needs to grow. She can’t just rely on the protection of others. You prepare the following items for her:

    Simple shackles × 6

    Base shackles × 6

    Transformed shackles × 10

    Special shackles × 12

    **Crystallized phlogiston (four categories)** 40 copies in total

    Shell money: 330,000

    You don’t want to admit that this is more like arming yourself.

    There is a kind of growing up, you build a future for a fictional character
    In reality, you no longer go all out for anyone.

    You know too well that people will leave, relationships will collapse, and enthusiasm will ebb.

    But in the game – or in this game character, you allow yourself to regain the hard-working self. The self who is willing to save materials, brush dungeons, and fight bosses bit by bit.

    Xia Kong’s growth is not just about breakthroughs. There are also her skills and her circuits. You carefully read the items required for each level, like reading a suicide note.

    Her resonance circuit requires the following:

    Low-frequency eclipse sail core × 25

    Medium-frequency eclipse sail core × 28

    High-frequency eclipse sail core × 40

    Full-frequency eclipse sail core × 57

    Iris Blooming Day × 26

    Crystallized phlogiston at all levels: 175 copies

    Shell coins: 2,030,000 pieces

    You begin to get familiar with the names of these items, and even their origins.
    You know that “Burning Phosphorus Bone” is dropped from the Sighing Ancient Dragon;

    “Iris Blooming Day” requires completing the main quest before challenging the Fate Fragment Wheel.

    You planned a whole city of materials for her:
    Dungeons, shops, map points, enemy routes, drop probability…
    You no longer play games, but become the designer, guardian, and even fate maker of this world.

    You have never really seen her, but you know she is worth it
    You may not draw her.
    You may never control her to fight.
    You may also give up this game completely before a full star guarantee.
    But everything you prepared for her will not be blank.
    Those efforts, those 1 a.m. brushing books,
    Those nights of calculating materials with exhaustion,
    are telling you: You are not dead in life yet.
    You are still willing to believe that “growth” is meaningful for a projection, a name, and a faint hope.
    At the end, you turned off the screen.
    The city is still noisy, and the rain outside has stopped.
    You wrote in the memo of your mobile phone:
    “Xia Kong: Preparation is complete.”
    Actually, you are saying:
    “I still believe it.”

  • From the complexity of the materials for the cultivation of Xiakong in Mingchao, we can see the lack of rationality and absurd dilemma in modern society

    The game “Mingchao” has been very popular recently, especially the list of materials for the cultivation of Xiakong, the five-star resonator, which is so complicated that it makes people doubt their lives. Looking at the series of “low-frequency tide erosion sail core”, “burning phosphorus bone”, “crystallized phlogiston”… and “golden fleece” and “iris blooming day”, it is really varied and dazzling. This can’t help but remind me of contemporary society, where there are not a bunch of inexplicable rules and regulations that tie people up tightly?

    First of all, we have to admit that the design of this cultivation material system is really “clever”. It allows players to constantly swipe monsters, collect, and upgrade, forming an endless cycle. At first glance, it seems to provide people with challenges and goals, but in fact it is more like using complex tasks to trap players in a cage, making people unable to stop at all. Some people say that games are escaping from reality, but such a design is like recreating a small cage in reality. Wang Xiaobo once said: “People live to change the world, or at least change themselves”, but such a cultivation process only changes the number of materials, and they still repeat boring actions like machines.

    If you think about it carefully, the names of these materials are also full of metaphors of modern society. What “impurity crystallized phlogiston”, “rough extraction crystallized phlogiston”, “rectified crystallized phlogiston”, “high purity crystallized phlogiston” sound like different levels of social classes. Most people can only barely get “impurity” or even “rough extraction”, and only a few people can touch “high purity”. In social reality, the unfair distribution of resources and the solidification of classes are not another reflection of this cultivation system? This makes people have to ask calmly, are we playing games, or are games playing us?

    Let’s talk about the “Golden Fleece”, which is limited to 15 pieces, and each player can buy a maximum of so many per week. Think about real life, key resources are always limited, and you have to rely on queuing and buying, and everyone is working hard for profit. Game designers bring this sense of scarcity and competition into the game, as if to tell us: social resources are originally a zero-sum game, and only those who grab them can make progress. Isn’t it absurd? We are clearly playing a game, but we feel the competitive pressure that is more cruel than reality.

    Even better, there is a dish called “Stuffed Meat and Tofu” in the game. After eating it, the material drop efficiency is increased by 50% and lasts for 30 minutes. How ironic! Isn’t this just giving players a stimulant? In reality, we often rely on various “shortcuts” and “skills” to make life look more efficient, but the essence is running around, always chasing a vain goal. As Wang Xiaobo said: “Absurdity is the essence of life.” This pot of “Stuffed Meat and Tofu” is just a small condiment of absurd life.

    Of course, this complex development system also reveals another side of modern society: lack of rationality. It stands to reason that life and games should be designed to make people happy and fulfilled, but we invest our time and energy in meaningless “brushing materials” and forget why we are here. Just like the “rational romanticism” advocated by Wang Xiaobo, we must face reality rationally and retain our passion and curiosity for life. But reality tells us that rationality is often suffocated by commercial design and social pressure.

    The name of the material “Iris Blooms Day” reminds me of the romance and humor in Wang Xiaobo’s writing. What a beautiful name, like a blooming flower, but it takes a lot of complicated materials to “collect”. In life, our dreams and beauty are always disrupted by tedious reality. We struggle hard, but forget to enjoy the fragrance of the “iris”. Isn’t it a bit like each of us?

    In summary, the complexity of the list of materials for Xiakong’s cultivation is not just the ingenuity of game design, but more like a mirror, reflecting the absurdity, class differentiation, resource scarcity and lack of rationality in modern society. We all repeatedly swipe monsters in this system, repeat meaningless labor, and desire a little progress, but often lose our way.

    Finally, I would like to borrow Wang Xiaobo’s words: The greatest happiness of life is “thinking”. Perhaps we don’t have to be completely trapped in this endless accumulation of materials, but should stop and think about what we really want? How to live a real and interesting life in this absurd world? Only in this way can we get out of the virtual world like “Mingchao” and face a more complex but more real life.