After a difficult start (for Odilia, dying so many times at the beginning was truly a once-in-a-century occurrence), she arrived in the Ancient Forest. For a while, nothing dangerous happened, allowing her to relax. She even found herself wandering through the forest, captivated by its beautiful environment and unique ecosystem.
The Ancient Forest was vast. Odilia figured she was already lost anyway, so maybe she could just explore and find the base eventually!
It's worth mentioning that this was somewhat different from the original "Monster Hunter: World" game that Zhang Xingyu played. In the original game, the maps were not very large because the entire map could only accommodate four players at most.
Of course, Capcom was really skilled at map design. Even though the map might not look that big at first glance, there was actually a lot of explorable space if you counted the second, third, and other vertical layers. The Ancient Forest map was a prime example, especially the intricate World Tree. Without a guiding bug, most players would get hopelessly lost!
Zhang Xingyu still remembered that even after playing Monster Hunter World for over half a year, he suddenly discovered an unexplored area in the map one time!
It's clear how much care Capcom put into map design!
When it came to map complexity, Zhang Xingyu decided to learn from Capcom's "excellent tradition" and create an Ancient Forest that would leave countless players disoriented!
Yes, because the Monster Hunter Nightmare World Zhang Xingyu created was a massively multiplayer online game, the map was many times larger than the original game!
Asking Zhang Xingyu to create such a massive map would undoubtedly burn out his brain. If he had to do it all alone, it would take him who knows how many years!
Fortunately, the Nightmare Lord was there. His countless years of existence weren't wasted. He was truly knowledgeable, and as the Nightmare Lord, he had created countless nightmare realms. So, even if Zhang Xingyu wanted a map that was hundreds or even thousands of times larger than the original, it wasn't particularly difficult for the Nightmare Lord.
Not to mention, the magical world the Nightmare Lord originally belonged to had even larger and more complex forests. The ecosystems there were even more intricate. For example, there was a giant forest called the Dark Forest, containing tens of thousands of different plants and animals, including powerful magical beasts, divine beasts, and dark demonic beasts. With such a forest as a reference, creating a simple Ancient Forest was a piece of cake for the Nightmare Lord.
The biggest challenge was a lack of power. After all, the Nightmare Lord's strength was severely weakened.
To put it simply, the Nightmare Lord currently possessed all the knowledge of the process for creating bullets, but unfortunately, his surroundings were in the Stone Age!
He had all the skills, but no internal energy!
Aside from that, a minor challenge was that the game world Zhang Xingyu wanted to create was vastly different from the nightmare world the Nightmare Lord envisioned. Many things needed to be redefined.
The Ancient Forest in the Nightmare World was hundreds of times larger than the game version. The most obvious difference was undoubtedly the ancient tree, which was incomparably massive compared to the ancient tree in the original game. The ancient tree in the Nightmare World had also been expanded hundreds of times, so when Odilia first saw this massive tree, she had the "World Tree" question.
Of course, the inside of this ancient tree wasn't fully created yet...
Moreover, only a portion of the Ancient Forest had been created, mainly the area around the World Tree and the Stellar Base. There weren't many monsters there either, with only three large monsters: the Great Jaggi, the Anjanath, and the Tobi-Kadachi.
After players killed the Great Jaggi, Zhang Xingyu would gradually update other monsters.
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Since they were still in the prologue and hadn't officially entered the game yet, Odilia's explorable area was limited (if she tried to delve deeper into the Ancient Forest, the Tobi-Kadachi's ambush would teach players how to be humble). Even so, the map was quite large for players!
The Ancient Forest's beautiful environment captivated Odilia. Having not encountered any danger for some time, she had let her guard down. She brushed aside a few vines and entered a new area.
The trees here were taller than before, and there were even thick tree roots in the air. It seemed like these roots were bigger than even the largest trees here!
"This, what is this?" Odilia was undoubtedly stunned.
"This is... the World Tree's roots?"
The massive World Tree stood in the distance, but even from so far away, its enormous roots still affected this area!
"The World Tree... I really want to explore over there..."
Odilia gazed longingly towards the World Tree. It was shrouded in mist, appearing incredibly mysterious.
"It's water! Finally, I can find the coastline!" Here, Odilia found a flowing water source. She was overjoyed because, according to common sense, she should be able to reach the coastline by following the direction of the current!
However, by the water, Odilia discovered a yellow-skinned, wolf-like beast.
Great Jaggi!
It possessed exceptionally sharp teeth and claws, along with a fierce gaze. It was clearly a carnivore.
Odilia had never seen such an animal in the forest before. Her long-standing gaming habits made her charge directly in front of the Great Jaggi.
"It's just a small monster. Compared to the Anjanath I saw earlier, this Great Jaggi is like an ant to an elephant!"
The Great Jaggi naturally spotted Odilia and watched her with extreme caution.
"Humph... finally, I can start killing monsters..."
Odilia smiled slightly and touched her body. Then, she realized a serious problem.
She...
Had no weapon!
You ridiculous game developer!
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