Chapter 1 Li Yada’s Surprise

Li Yada had originally thought that President Pei would use his amazing skills to toy with the monsters, but the scene she imagined never happened.

All she saw was President Pei confidently increasing the monsters' attack power! President Pei confidently grabbing a weapon! President Pei confidently charging forward! President Pei falling...

It seemed as if everything was prearranged. The monster's pitchfork just happened to coincide with the dodge cooldown, stabbing Pei Qian the instant his dodge ended.

All that fancy footwork, and he got killed by the first little monster?

A smile appeared on Pei Qian's face.

Not bad, didn't disappoint me!

This was exactly the feeling he wanted!

The so-called "do everything possible to dissuade players" naturally meant achieving this effect!

Li Yada looked at the smile on President Pei's face, a little surprised.

President Pei's mental fortitude was indeed beyond ordinary!

If it were a normal player, after being taken out by a small monster's two-hit combo, they would either be dumbfounded or furious. But President Pei was actually happy?

Was this because President Pei was finally going to get serious and bring out 100% of his strength?

Soon, Pei Qian respawned.

He raised his wood-chopping knife high and charged at the pitchfork-wielding villager again.

Five seconds later, the screen went black again.

"Hehehe..."

The pitchfork villager's gloomy laughter was as mocking as ever.

Pei Qian thought for a moment, then opened the editor backend and asked, "Which one is the small monster attack power value?"

Li Yada quickly pointed it out on the screen: "This column of values is it. If you want to adjust the value of a specific small monster, you can directly enter the number. If you want to uniformly adjust all the values in this column according to a certain formula, you need to click here..."

Following Li Yada's instructions, Pei Qian clicked on the formula for adjusting the attack power of all monsters.

"As I thought, President Pei should be about to lower the attack, right?" Li Yada secretly breathed a sigh of relief.

She almost really thought that President Pei was a gaming expert.

However, Pei Qian clicked on this column of values and multiplied all the values by a factor of 1.3.

After adjusting, Pei Qian nodded.

"Well, that's about right!"

Originally, each hit would take away about 60% of the health, but after the modification, each hit would take away 80%.

Anyway, it was still two hits to die, so there was no difference.

Li Yada was a little dizzy. Even with her thick glasses, she still couldn't understand President Pei's operation.

"Alright, I'm going to experience it seriously now. You can go out first," Pei Qian said.

Li Yada nodded: "Okay, President Pei. Feel free to ask me if you have any questions."

After Li Yada left, Pei Qian entered the game again.

"Alright, let's take on the challenge with this level of difficulty!"

It wasn't that Pei Qian thought too highly of himself.

The key was, how could he dissuade players if he wasn't harsh on himself?

So, Pei Qian began his journey of suffering.

After dying more than a dozen times in the village, Pei Qian felt that he had roughly adapted to the rhythm.

Although Pei Qian's requirement was to dissuade players as much as possible, he eventually found that similar high-difficulty games actually all led to the same destination.

The foundation left by Lü Mingliang and Bao Xu, and Li Yada's improvements on that foundation, well, it really had a bit of a Dark Souls vibe!

This wasn't intentional, but rather a natural outcome.

The so-called high-difficulty game, the specific criteria for judging whether it is "difficult" or "not difficult", can actually be broken down into the following dimensions:

First, numerical values.

It's easy to increase the difficulty by using numerical values. Just infinitely increase the monsters' attack power so that players die with one touch.

However, if the numerical difficulty is too high, it will directly lead to Pei Qian's own inability to pass the game. This game would become a dead end and couldn't even be called a complete game. Everyone would just think that it was a bug, that the game was a half-finished product.

Therefore, there is a limit to the numerical difficulty, and it cannot be messed with.

Second, operation.

For example, players must perform a series of specific operations and use skills in a certain order and rhythm to defeat a specific enemy.

Third, reaction speed.

The monster will release a particularly fast skill. If the player can react, they can dodge it. If they can't react, they will be slapped to death.

Fourth, targeting.

For example, using specific attribute counters in the game can defeat the corresponding enemies.

Fifth, unexpected events.

For example, a player is walking on the edge of a cliff, and suddenly a monster jumps out and pushes them off.

Most games' difficulty is considered from these five dimensions.

However, Pei Qian had to ensure that he could pass the game as well. Therefore, the three dimensions of numerical values, operation, and reaction speed could only be maintained within a level acceptable to normal people.

If he simply increased the numerical values, such as the boss having a million health and the player only dealing 1 point of damage with each hit, this would indeed dissuade most players, but Pei Qian himself couldn't persevere.

Similarly, overly difficult operations and overly short reaction times, although these dissuasion effects were good, Pei Qian himself couldn't handle them.

Therefore, the difficulty in terms of numerical values, operation, and reaction speed could only be increased to Pei Qian's limit, which was the limit of an ordinary person.

If he wanted to increase the difficulty further, he could only put effort into the two aspects of targeting and unexpected events.

For example, a certain monster is only more efficient to defeat with a specific weapon; a certain place has small monsters that ambush people, and special props must be used in advance to deal with it, or lure it out with ranged weapons.

Pei Qian could completely rely on his understanding of the game (peeking at the design plan) to solve these aspects.

As for the numerical values, operation, and reaction speed, they could only be maintained at a level acceptable to normal people.

So, after changing things back and forth, it still returned to the feel of a Souls-like game.

Pei Qian wasn't a hardcore Souls-like game fan. He would basically drop the game after beating three or four bosses.

However, beating the first few small monsters was still no problem.

Therefore, after being abused by this pitchfork villager a few times, Pei Qian quickly regained his initial feeling and was able to defeat these small monsters without taking damage.

Then, the next more important thing was:

Secretly adding a custom weapon for himself.

Pei Qian had access to the editor backend, so what he had to do was very simple:

Randomly pick a weapon model from the art assets and add it to the item table;

Copy the data of a similar weapon, modify a few attributes, such as the weapon's attack power and attack speed;

Edit a special quest for this weapon and set a special acquisition condition.

In short, hide it as much as possible in a place that no one would think of.

Pei Qian opened the weapon list in the game and took a look. The weapons inside were diverse and varied, and the data was also very complex.

But which weapon to modify specifically still needed careful consideration.

If he chose a ranged weapon, it would definitely greatly reduce the difficulty of the game.

But the problem was that this was an action game, so there weren't many ranged weapons in the game. There were bows and crossbows, etc., but like in Dark Souls, these couldn't be used as the main weapon, only as support.

This was a matter of balancing melee and ranged weapons. In this type of action game, if there was a ranged weapon with a long range, high damage, and low consumption, it would obviously crush all other melee weapons in terms of cost-effectiveness, thereby ruining the fun of the game.

Therefore, according to the original design of Lü Mingliang and Bao Xu, both bows and crossbows had very low damage and a long attack interval, mainly for players to pull monsters.

If it really became one-hit kills or a machine gun, directly killing all the monsters from a numerical standpoint, the system would definitely not pass that.

Therefore, even if Pei Qian secretly stuffed a weapon in for himself, he couldn't let it be too overpowered.