Chapter 15: Three Criteria

Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

With these permits, Guo Li would be able to expand his home and construct new buildings.

At the same time, Li Ke also started his first inspection of the novice players’ islands. After that, he announced the results to the novice group.

1. The number of novice players that entered the game was 100 million. Currently, over 80% of these players could not even make their first loan installment payment. As such, they would face the risk of being blacklisted. If they did not manage to catch up to their loan repayment schedules after three months, they would be expelled from the game world.

2. Among the novice players, the owner of Fishing Island, [Heavenly Fishing], performed particularly well. This player was ranked first among the novice players and had also increased his loan amount beyond 10 million coins, while also being the first player to pay off the 3 million loan. His small store’s turnover had surpassed two million coins within a single day… and many other records.

Next, Li Ke also announced that, this year, the Happy Family Association would start its assessment ahead of schedule.

At the same time Li Ke announced the Happy Family Association assessment, Guo Li also opened a private chat group.

The members of this chat group were all customers who had bought golden carps from Guo Li before. They were all experienced players, and Guo Li would be able to learn a lot of valuable information about this game world from them.

The main characters in the chat group were [Human Resources Bureau], [Golden Blacksmith Shop], [Old Book Administrator] and [Shennong Herb Connoisseur].

Guo Li pulled all these people into the group chat. After a simple exchange of pleasantries, Guo Li asked the question he wanted to know the answer to the most.

[Heavenly Fishing]: “Everyone, can I ask for more information about the fox merchant’s message about the [Happy Family Association]’s assessment?”

Old Book Administrator was the first to respond to Guo Li’s question. “The Happy Family Association grades your island according to different criteria.”

Shennong Herb Connoisseur continued the explanation, “To be specific, the grades are divided into ten levels, ranging from SSS to F, with the worst rating being unrated.”

Human Resources Bureau followed up, “There will be different rewards based on the grades achieved. The Happy Family Association will send a professional assessment observer to survey your island. It’s done pretty professionally.”

When Guo Li saw their replies, he understood the importance of the Happy Family Association assessment. He had more questions, so he continued to ask, “Got it. In that case, what are the main criteria assessed? How does the reward and punishment system work? Are there any protection measures for novice players?”

The response he received was, “The Happy Family Association assessment only focuses on the island itself. They don’t care if the island owner is a novice player or an experienced player. As such, there are no protection measures for novice players in this assessment.”

“As for the criteria you mentioned, let’s put it this way. The assessment criteria has never been made public, but since we have experienced it more than once, we’ve figured some things out. You can use your experiences as a reference.”

A few of the experienced players shared the key points of their experience with the Happy Family Association assessment in the group chat.

[Golden Blacksmith Shop]: “First of all, the civilization level of your island will definitely be an important criteria. Did you discover any new species, did you artificially cultivate new plants? Did you domesticate new animals? These are all very important.”

[Shennong Herb Connoisseur]: “No, no, no, it might not be the case. When the people from the Happy Family Association first came to my island, in order to get a good score, I filled my island with all kinds of crops, and even the side of my house was filled with vegetables. In the end, the observer actually said that this was not my home at all, but a farm, and only gave me a C grade. In other words, the island’s suitability for residence is also a very important measure.”

[Old Book Administrator]: “Shennong is right. In my opinion, there are still a few other key points, which are the population and functional buildings. This can showcase the development progress of the island. In short, brother Heavenly Fishing, although you possess endless potential among the newbies, there is still a lot of room for improvement in terms of the development of the island.”

Thanks to their advice, Guo Li roughly understood what he needed to do. After all, once he figured this out, he would be able to develop a proper plan to develop the island and ace the assessment.

After that, the few of them continued chatting for a while. Most of it revolved around the admiration of these experienced players for Guo Li. As a novice player, he was able to pay off the three million loan in just half a month. Furthermore, he even applied for a 15 million loan. It was unprecedented.

Shennong Herb Connoisseur was especially lavish with his praise, calling Guo Li not only the number one newbie, but also a god-like existence among the experienced players.

Human Resources Bureau said self-deprecatingly, “Compared to Heavenly Fishing, I’m a piece of trash. I’m still 200,000 coins short of paying off the loan. I’m dragging down the reputation of the experienced players here.”

Golden Blacksmith Shop comforted him, “Brother, don’t be discouraged. I haven’t paid it off yet either. Among the experienced players, I’m considered above average, but seeing what brother Heavenly Fishing has accomplished today, I am ashamed!”

Old Book Administrator sent an emoji of someone beating his chest and stamping his feet. “[Heavenly Fishing] earns more money in a day than I do in a few months. It seems that we can’t compare to the newbies nowadays.”

Guo Li smiled humbly, “Brothers, there’s no need for such praise. I just happened to be lucky enough to have some golden carps on my island, otherwise there would have been no way for me to make that much money so quickly. It’s also thanks to all these brothers here that I managed to accomplish this.”

Guo Li reviewed the contents of the group chat as he made his plans.

Based on the experiences that his brothers had gathered from their Happy Family Association assessments, a high-scoring island had to satisfy the following three criteria.

First off, sufficient resources. This did not only include the island’s starting resources, such as vegetation and wildlife, but also the various resources obtained through trading. Simply put, in terms of ecology, the island needed to be self-sufficient and had to have a sustainable ecosystem.

Secondly, the development of civilization, including the growth of the island’s population, the advancement of technology, and the upgrading of buildings. These relevant factors were probably included in the assessment. Simply put, the island needed to have traces of human development.

Third, he also needed to build his home. The island was not only an island but also a home. He needed to make changes in order to improve his quality of life. Simply put, as the owner of the island, work was not the only priority; he had to have a life.

Based on the above conditions, Guo Li spent some time thinking about the current shortcomings of his island and came up with some key areas of improvement.

Guo Li did not need to put in much work in terms of resources. All he needed to do was to continue to increase the variety of crops, fruits and vegetables on the island, and perhaps even buy some livestock to raise. There were still many places on his island that had yet to be explored, so there was plenty of space for all this.

In terms of the development of civilization, he indeed had a long way to go. In order to do this, he needed access to more labor and more resources, specifically of the mineral variant. Currently, there were relatively few accessible minerals on the island, so he either needed to continue exploring and surveying the island, or try to solve the mineral resource shortage through external transactions.

As for his home, he had now obtained a permit to upgrade his place of residence; even some of the experienced players did not have this permit. Guo Li was not too worried about this criteria. After all, he was not the type of person who would mistreat himself; since he had been reborn into this world, he naturally intended to live a leisurely life.

After summarizing the general direction of his island’s development, Guo Li looked at the group chat once again.

A few of the experienced players were still sighing endlessly. They had been struggling in the game world for so many years, so seeing Guo Li’s rapid progress was both exciting and infuriating at the same time.

They felt that all their years of gaming experience had been fed to the dogs. They did not believe that Guo Li’s quick progress had been due to luck. From their perspective, his own ability had to have played a vital role!