The Great Thief

Lu Li was a bit annoyed about the low-valued equipment, but he couldn’t do anything about it.

In the same way that an Instance Dungeon designer’s sense of accomplishment came from making the players risk their lives, a commander’s sense of accomplishment probably came from keeping his team member’s guild points as low as possible.

However, this thought disappeared as quickly as it arose.

Lu Li was most concerned about whether the left face would drop. Garr had dropped the right face, so why should the Baron do something else?

Baron Geddon indeed had a chance of dropping the left face.

If you wanted to craft Thunderfury, the most important items to have were the left and right faces. Lu Li hoped to complete the Thunderfury with just one cooldown of the Instance Dungeon. The item would give Ruling Sword a new phase of publicity. They would reach a new stage of fame based on these two new developments.

The first was the Stronghold and the second was Thunderfury.

If they dragged onto the next Instance Dungeon refresh, Lu Li couldn’t guarantee that they wouldn’t be surpassed by someone else.

It wasn’t impossible to acquire the Thunderfury in one refresh either.

In his previous life, there were many lucky players who were able to accomplish this. Moreover, they were playing the Instance Dungeon on Nightmare difficulty and had the luckiest girl in the game, Remnant Dream, looting for them. If they couldn’t acquire the left face after First Clearing the Boss in these conditions, then no one else could!

“That’s it,” Remnant Dream sighed as she shook her head.

“That’s it?” Lu Li couldn’t believe it.

“That’s it!” the little girl cried out. She was a little angry because Lu Li was questioning her integrity.

Lu Li felt deflated. He really couldn’t understand how this item wouldn’t drop in Nightmare Difficulty. Didn’t they get the First Clear? Didn’t they have the lucky girl loot it? Was it even true that they could get both items from one refresh? Perhaps it was all nonsense.

In any case, it didn’t drop and there was nothing he could do about it.

If they couldn’t get it in one refresh, they might not get it in ten refreshes, or maybe even in a few years of refreshes. This was actually the normal experience.

“Let’s get ready; we’re going to do the Stronghold next.”

The others didn’t know what they had missed and were still buzzing from defeating two Bosses in one day. Lu Li wasn’t going to say anything to deflate their moral, so he just accepted it and instructed them to move onto the Stronghold.

The Stronghold system was quite complicated, and would change a few times.

For now, the most important thing was to capture the land from the System. The so-called Stronghold was just a plot of land apportioned by the System. The players could spend some money to apply, and the eight groups that paid the most money were eligible to attack it. Those that were able to defeat it would be eligible for the next round.

Of course, not all of their strength could go into the attack.

The scale of such a battle would be too big. If everyone was just constantly involved in these wars once a week, then there would be no more development.

What Lu Li needed to do now was a pick out 80 players. This was the standard number of players in these Stronghold offensive and defensive battles.

If it was a guild attacking another territory, then the situation was different.

Those situations could be divided into at least three categories.

The first category was where you were attacking stronghold and had no territories near that stronghold. In this case, you could select 50 players and 30 players were randomly chosen to make up the 80 players.

The second category was where you had a territory near the stronghold. In this case, you could select 60 players and 20 players were randomly chosen to make up the 80 players.

The third case was where you were attacking a stronghold that you once occupied. To recapture the Stronghold, you could select 70 players and 10 players were randomly chosen to make up the 80 players.

The random players were generally selected with a ratio of 1:1:3 for Healers, Tanks and Damage output players. Players could also choose a ratio of 1:2:2. There were other situations that could arise, but these were the most common.

Obviously, the random players introduced some uncertainty. The fewer the random players, the stronger the team.

Fortunately, it was just a random selection from a pool of 200 players that they could elect. Otherwise, the major guilds would be in an uproar.

The major guilds were strong, and they had a very strong pool of 200 players, which naturally meant that their 80 players were also quite strong. They obviously never wanted to give up the land that they had worked so hard to acquire.

Of course, the 80-player size was for the basic Stronghold. After the Stronghold was upgraded, the number of players participating in the battle would increase. However, Lu Li only needed to consider this basic Stronghold for now.

In a basic Stronghold fight, they had a timer of 2 hours. If they didn’t complete it within this time, they would have also failed.

If they failed, Sakura Memories’ reward would be lost. The land would enter the auction as an unowned piece of land and all other guilds and Mercenary Groups could compete to take it.

Drizzle Court couldn’t participate in Ruling Sword’s Stronghold war, so they just returned to their base.

“There are still 40 minutes until the Stronghold battle. Have we picked everyone?” Lu Li asked Square Root 3 as soon as he got out of the Instance Dungeon. Lu Li didn’t need to personally choose the players, and he didn’t know everyone in the Elite Group anyway. They just needed to pick the best players in the Elite Group.

“As per your request, we’ve almost filled all the slots. There are lots of people signing up,” Square Root 3 replied.

“We have to pick quite a lot of players. They just need to be strong.”

Lu Li wasn’t actually that stressed because the monster level in the Stronghold was just the average level of the participating players. Since only Ruling Sword was involved, they could work out what that would be.

Fighting the Stronghold was a bit easier than the Molten Core, as long as they listened to his commands.

“Boss, are you coming? I’ve been waiting for ages!” Fat Monkey yelled into the chat room. You couldn’t blame him for being impatient. As a Fire Mage, Fat Monkey didn’t even get to be a bench player for the Molten Core.

“Why are you in such a hurry? There are still 30 minutes to go.”

Lu Li was still casually putting together a group of players.

Eighty players meant that there was a total of 16 teams that each needed a leader. They all had to listen to Lu Li when they got together. After they dispersed, they needed to follow Lu Li’s instructions unhesitatingly.

At this point, Square Root 3 came over and gave Lu Li a few potions and items.

The first was the War Chariot, which was one of the most expensive things when participating in a Stronghold battle.

It was mainly used to deal with the defensive towers. There were two kinds of towers in the Stronghold map. One was a binding tower, which had the main function of slowing the players down. The other was a burst tower, which dealt damage to groups of players. Without the chariot, these two towers would slowly grind the players down.

Each chariot was 50 gold, and Lu Li felt his tears welling up as he spent this money.

However, this had to be bought, or else they would have to pay for it in lives. The defensive towers had a longer range than the players, so the process of approaching them would already cause significant casualties. Players who participated in Stronghold battles often lost EXP and equipment.