Chapter 61: The Formal Stage, New Species, New Difficulty

However, looking at it now, the basement can only stay like this for the time being. If it continues to expand, it might cause structural issues under the weight of the snow, which would be troublesome.

The plants are not growing very well. Without direct sunlight, crops grow extremely slowly in the bitter winter weather.

Not to mention trees like apples and pears, which are plants that desperately need sunlight. To get delicious fruit, they must receive sunlight exposure.

Still, Chen凡 isn't too worried. For now, he can plant them in the basement. Once the bitter winter passes, cutting down the trees might yield saplings, and he can simply replant them outside then.

Just as Chen Fan was deep in thought, a mechanical voice echoed in the minds of all survivors, and the operation panel automatically appeared before his eyes.

At the same time, his body became completely immobilized, frozen in place.

[1. As of today, the initial beginner phase has passed, and the formal phase begins.
The gold coin drop rate for ordinary monsters is increased to 50%, and four new species appear: Phantoms, Mist Walkers, Senior Sister in Red, and Skeleton Wraiths.]

[Phantom: If deep sleep is less than 10 hours within a 2-day period, 1 to 4 Phantoms will spawn within a 15-meter radius around the survivor.]

The moment this first piece of information appeared, it left everyone dumbfounded.

What kind of monsters were these? Just hearing their names sounded terrifying.

This was pushing people onto a dead-end road. A lone survivor had to search for resources, dared not enter a deep sleep at night, and constantly had to watch out for movements outside. How many people could possibly manage more than 10 hours of deep sleep?

Chen Fan was also startled when he saw this information. He knew a lot about Phantoms.

Phantoms resembled manta rays in overall shape, with black bodies, white eyes, and trailing a wisp of gray smoke as they flew.

Furthermore, their attack speed was fast, and their attack power was extremely high, capable of draining 9 health points in a single hit.

Once targeted, sleeping became impossible unless either you died or it died—they were exceptionally stubborn and troublesome.

Not to mention the other three monsters. Fortunately, according to the descriptions, the spawn rates of the latter three monsters were very low, or else survival would truly be out of the question.

This also conveyed a new hint: survivors could no longer fight alone; they had to unite and develop together.

[2. The trading platform will cancel barter systems. The universal trading currency will be "Gold Coins," and a 1% transaction fee will be charged upon completing a trade.
Friend trading and public store functions have been added.]

The appearance of the second piece of information once again brought expressions of agony and joy to everyone.

With the introduction of universal "Gold Coins," players had to kill monsters to acquire them, undoubtedly increasing the difficulty of survival.

Below this message was a very long, detailed explanation that took Chen Fan several minutes to read through.

Simply put, it detailed how to obtain and use the currency.

There were three ways to acquire gold coins. The first was through supply crates.

The quantity obtained from supply crates was not large. Starting from wooden crates, it ranged from 1 to 5 pieces.

After that came bronze, silver, gold, and so on, each increasing by increments of 5 pieces.

This made Chen Fan find it increasingly interesting. Would looting gold coins be even faster in the future?

The second method was killing monsters or bosses.

Bosses were harder to defeat, but they yielded the most. Ordinary boss: 10 gold coins; Elite: 500; Legendary: 5,000; King: 10,000 gold coins.

The third method was exchanging items at the [Public Store].

Of course, there were no restrictions on this feature between friends; they could still barter or give things away for free, depending on how they wished to trade.

This was still relatively humane.

[3. Regional channels are canceled, and the message limit for the world chat channel is removed. A forum function has been added, allowing each survivor to post one message per week.]

This was not a big deal. Regional channels were basically useless, and some regions only had a few dozen people left.

The world chat channel refreshed far too quickly, leaving survivors with no way to find lost relatives or friends.

Having a forum function would make things much more convenient.

However, being limited to one post per week meant survivors had to think carefully before posting—this was no longer the casual world chat channel.

[4. Nerf the impact on resource gathering; reduce the quantity of minerals.]

When this message appeared, wails echoed everywhere. Minerals were already scarce; what was the meaning of slashing them further?

Did it mean survivors were supposed to use stone swords to hack at bosses?

However, after reading the specifics, Chen Fan could only laugh through his tears; the difficulty had skyrocketed linearly.

The so-called nerfed impact on resource gathering meant that in the future, when chopping down trees, logs wouldn't drop as individual blocks, but as entire tree trunks.

Of course, this rule had no impact on Chen Fan; chopping trees would still be neatly handled thanks to the [Chain Mining] module.

When hunting animals or beasts, they would no longer transform into steaks and other items, but remain as entire carcasses.

Skinning, butchering, and all such processes had to be done entirely by the survivors themselves, exactly like in real life.

Fortunately, monsters, stone, and minerals were unaffected.

Chen Fan understood that the world's rules were reducing assistance to survivors, which was why auxiliary functions were gradually disappearing.

Until one day, there would be no rules left to help at all.

[5. New additions: Foggy weather, underground world, ancient ruins, nine-story demon tower... pale garden.]

[6. Adjusted supply crate spawn rates: Wooden supply crate: 0.6%, Bronze: 0.1%, Silver: 0.05%.]

[7. Daytime is fixed at 12 hours.]

When the mechanical voice vanished, the survivors regained their mobility.

Yet these seven pieces of information hammered into every survivor's head with a buzzing roar, leaving them momentarily stunned and unable to react.

Survival was already difficult, and now it had become even more complicated and arduous.

Many survivors who had developed rapidly and possessed a certain understanding of Minecraft thought they could rely on their experience to handle various situations.

However, the sudden appearance of these new rules caught them completely off guard, and Chen Fan was among them.

Chen Fan had already planned to go out adventuring more, collect more gold coins, expand his business, and conquer this world,

when suddenly, this curveball was thrown at him.

Well, now chopping a tree would take the better part of a day, killing a pig required multiple people cooperating, and society had thoroughly regressed back to the primitive era.

However, the only benefit was that daytime was fixed at 12 hours, which at least didn't completely block off the survivors' paths to survival.

The most serious issue was the fourth rule; the rest didn't have an overwhelming impact.

Looking at the flora and fauna in his basement, Chen Fan inexplicably felt a sense of disorientation and dread.

Perhaps many people hadn't realized that the main reason they had lasted so long in this world was because they survived relying on these Minecraft-like rules.

Minecraft carried a huge portion of their sense of security, handing everyone a cheat code to get through the most difficult early stages.

And now—*pop!*—the plug-in was gone.

Everyone was returned to primitive living.

Chen Fan let out a long sigh, feeling as though nothing had changed, yet everything had changed.

It seemed that building an iron farm and a mob grinder needed to be put on the agenda immediately.

Looking at the operation panel before him, the regional channel was gone, replaced by the newly added forum function and public store.

Opening the public store, gold coins no longer appeared in the inventory slot; instead, the balance was displayed in the bottom right corner of the store.

At this moment, Chen Fan's [Gold Balance: 7,819]. Looking at the items listed above, he couldn't help but twitch the corner of his mouth.

There were cobblestones, logs, mineral water, bread, and clothes—merely a few items.

The cheapest price was at least 2 gold coins, which seemed quite affordable.

However, the weapons were truly a scam: a stone sword cost 50 gold coins, and an iron sword cost 400 gold coins.