Calamity Messenger

Chapter 355 - 290: The Secret of the Foundation Establishment Pill

Because Ying Le and Shang Xinlei were always talking about Pharmacist’s Wish, coupled with the fact that in his previous life he hadn’t understood the details of Foundation Establishment, Yan Qing subconsciously assumed that acquiring a Foundation Establishment Pill had a high threshold, probably requiring a forced path through Celestial Spirits and Earthly Fiends.

It wasn’t until now that Yan Qing realized, how could acquiring a Foundation Establishment Pill be difficult?

In the game "Messenger", Foundation Establishment is merely the starting point for players to leave the novice phase; equivalent to Link in "Breath of the Wild" acquiring the glider to leave the initial plateau; equivalent to players finishing the single-player mode in "Street Fighter 6"... Only after Foundation Establishment in "Messenger" does one qualify to explore the vast game world!

Even before crossing over, Yan Qing had only seen players complaining about the high threshold of Immortal Ascension, never heard of anyone complaining about the difficulty of Foundation Establishment, which indicates that there must be many channels to acquire Foundation Establishment Pills in the game, like the "Demon Gathering Land" event, which rewards participants... So why was it so hard to acquire in reality?

This question was finally answered when Yan Qing clicked on the activity rewards and saw the detailed introduction of Foundation Establishment Pills.

Just like tokens, Foundation Establishment Pills are divided into four grades: ordinary, rare, marvelous, and legendary.

However!

Ordinary and rare Foundation Establishment Pills can only be acquired through "events" and "player production."

Marvelous Foundation Establishment Pills and legendary Foundation Establishment Pills have three channels: "events," "player production," and "secret realm rewards."

At first glance, it’s incomprehensible why secret realms wouldn’t produce lower-grade Foundation Establishment Pills but only produce high-grade ones? This is obviously intentional. Although it doesn’t say in the details, Yan Qing roughly guessed the official design logic.

Ultimately, a Foundation Establishment Pill is something a character will use only once, leading to a very minimal demand for low-grade Foundation Establishment Pills—like if students were given an option, who would choose a college over a nightclub dance?

As long as players are serious about playing, they will surely spend some time pursuing high-grade Foundation Establishment Pills, striving for an impressive first degree, and the officials couldn’t possibly hold players up at the Foundation Establishment Pill stage for too long; it’s merely a formality.

Therefore, they straightforwardly decided that secret realms will only produce high-grade Foundation Establishment Pills and low-grade ones will be coincidentally crafted by players practicing production.

No need to mention ordinary Foundation Establishment Pills — consuming them feels a bit filthy — but rare and marvelous Foundation Establishment Pills have little difference; if a player has a new account or doesn’t want to spend time grinding secret realms, they can easily obtain a rare Foundation Establishment Pill by visiting the Treasure Pavilion or participating in an event.

In the game, this setup has no issues, but in reality, there are massive discrepancies: the crucial "event" channel is essentially nonexistent for local muggles!

If Yan Qing guessed right, the previous ’Mansu Forest Land’ dungeon probably also offered Foundation Establishment Pills as rewards, but at the time Jiang Shi was still at the second turn, so the prioritization for Foundation Establishment Pills was low, hence none were obtained.

The "player production" route is even less dependable, as the first step to practicing a production profession is having enough materials to practice. Are there even a hundred Foundation Establishment phases in the Central Plains combined? How many secret realms can they conquer? Do these secret realms precisely contain the required materials for Foundation Establishment Pills?

Even if the answers to the above are "yes," do they know the pill formula for Foundation Establishment Pills? Do they know others hold materials for Foundation Establishment Pills?

Without the anonymous trading platform of the Treasure Pavilion, the information is foggy everywhere, even if the local Messengers establish caravans and trade networks, the material collection time would indeed be counted in years.

In the game, as long as one has money, they can rush to master-level production or grandmaster-level production in a day, but in reality, it might take years or even decades.

Therefore, for Central Plains Messengers, the only method of obtaining Foundation Establishment Pills is by challenging secret realms!

Thinking of this, a sense of understanding dawned on Yan Qing: it’s no wonder why Suo Long, Winter Hunt, Ying Le, Jie Huang Chao, and others have divine techniques that are extremely powerful and practical; evidently, at the very least, they’ve consumed marvelous Foundation Establishment Pills!

Whether it’s considered a blessing in disguise, due to the harsh environment preventing the acquisition of low-grade Foundation Establishment Pills, all Foundation Establishment in the Central Plains were excellent students consuming marvelous Foundation Establishment Pills; even in the game, their Foundation Establishment setup wouldn’t lose out to ordinary players’ main accounts.

Having encountered a beneficial event distributing Foundation Establishment Pills, Yan Qing wouldn’t miss out; however, once he saw the introduction of the marvelous Foundation Establishment Pills, he immediately widened his eyes.

"Demon Gathering Land," just like "Mansu Forest Land," allows players to send many alt accounts to compete in the event for rankings, but rewards can only be claimed once per account. However, the Treasure Hunting Order can be used by anyone, but there is a bizarre limitation on the Foundation Establishment Pill:

"Real-mode characters cannot consume Foundation Establishment Pills unrelated to themselves."

Perhaps the officials were worried players wouldn’t understand, they listed three situations: only when the real-mode is involved in the event can the Foundation Establishment Pill from the event be consumed; only real-mode characters participating in secret realm battles can consume Foundation Establishment Pills from secret realm rewards; Foundation Establishment Pills produced by non-real-mode players cannot be consumed at all.

The seemingly only exception is Foundation Establishment Pills produced by real-mode players, but the problem remains—who would spend the time to practice production in real-mode normally? Engaging in production takes quite an investment, and a fully developed production account is a resource treasure for any player. Heavily investing in real-mode production only to get wiped out would be a genuine loss.

The gaming market ultimately remains dominated by ordinary mode players.