Chapter 929: This Really Is a Grass-Cutting Game
"Wow, I'm so strong!"
Lin Xue hadn't expected that this seemingly large herbivorous dinosaur would go down so easily, and she was a bit surprised.
It seemed that the longsword in her hand was even more powerful than she had imagined!
Every time Lin Xue swung the blade, she could feel a different vibration. When the longsword cut into softer parts, the tremor in her hands was relatively light; but when it struck hard areas, not only did the blade bounce, but a more intense vibration traveled through her hands.
Combined with the excellent animations, sound effects, and physics engine, every slash's damage was reflected on the monster's body, making the whole process feel like real hunting.
Of course, considering the overall gore level and the special physiological structure of monsters in Monster Hunter, the amount of blood wasn't particularly large—it was just enough to clearly judge the depth of the wounds on the monster. Even when Lin Xue directly severed the herbivorous dinosaur's neck, the blood that flowed out only formed a small puddle on the ground.
In the system settings, the VR version of Monster Hunter had damage numbers turned off by default, because the VR version and Chen Mo's previous life's Monster Hunter: World used different methods for calculating damage.
In traditional games, monsters had a fixed health pool, and the damage per player slash was calculated based on factors like the weapon's damage value and the defense coefficients of different monster parts. When a specific part took enough damage, special effects like tail severing, horn breaking, or part destruction would trigger. When the monster's health dropped to a certain level, it would trigger fleeing, enraging, or death effects.
However, due to technical reasons, the VR version of Monster Hunter could achieve a higher degree of realism. For example, just attacking the legs would only make the monster limp and bleed, but it didn't mean the monster would die once enough numerical damage was dealt.
Moreover, damage was no longer entirely digitized. The same slash, if it hit the tail, might sever it; if it hit the body, it might create a wound that bled more; if it hit a head with already broken bones, it might kill instantly... In other words, the entire damage mechanism was more complex and closer to real-world conditions.
In this case, displaying damage numbers wasn't particularly scientific and could even mislead players.
For instance, if players saw high damage numbers when attacking the hind legs, they might all happily focus on the hind legs. But in reality, if they kept hitting the head, even with low damage, once the monster's skull was broken, they could kill it in one blow. Situations like this couldn't be reflected through damage numbers.
If players truly wanted to understand the damage they were dealing to a monster, the best approach was to carefully observe the wounds on the monster's body and its reactions to hits, then guess based on multiple factors.
Just like in real hunting, you wouldn't get a number floating up after a single shot.
However, considering that newcomers were completely unaware of monster weak points, players could choose to turn on damage numbers as a basic damage guide. When this option was enabled, players would see an official explanation, and once they gradually got used to it, they could turn the damage numbers off.
Lin Xue crouched down beside the herbivorous dinosaur, pulled out her dagger, and began carving.
The entire carving process was automatic. Lin Xue's character used the dagger to gut the herbivorous dinosaur, then skillfully stripped useful parts from its body.
This was slightly different from the original game. In the original, although it was called "carving materials," the mechanism was actually based on "drops." Sometimes, after working hard to kill a large monster, you could only carve three or four materials, and the corpse would disappear afterward—which was completely unscientific.
In the VR version of Monster Hunter, each monster had a corresponding carving process. For example, with a Rathalos, players would first peel off scales, then shells, wing membranes, tails, and other external parts, then gut it to carve internal high-level materials like Flame Sacs, Marrow, and Rubies.
What players could carve wasn't random either; it was set when the monster was born. For the same Rathalos, different ages and sizes meant different amounts of carveable materials. Additionally, during the fight, players might destroy some materials.
For example, if players kept attacking the Rathalos's wings and damaged the wing membranes, they wouldn't be able to carve wing membranes later, or would only get very few.
Certain rare items weren't guaranteed drops, like the Rathalos Ruby. This could be seen as a stone formed inside the dragon's body. Some dragons had it, some didn't. So it was perfectly reasonable to hunt a hundred Rathalos without seeing a single Ruby—after all, Rathalos weren't herbivores, so getting stones wasn't a given.
But for things like wing membranes and scales, not dropping them was hard to justify. After all, with such a huge corpse lying there, you could see the dragon's scales with your own eyes, yet you couldn't carve them?
So, changes were made to the material carving system to make it closer to reality.
Of course, this meant that various aspects involving materials needed numerical adjustments, such as requiring more materials to craft weapons, material distribution in multiplayer teams, and so on. But these were relatively minor issues and not hard to fix.
The herbivorous dinosaur didn't have many usable materials. Lin Xue only dug out two pieces of raw meat, and there was nothing else to carve. The corpse didn't vanish into thin air either; it just lay there, attracting a flock of birds to peck at it.
At that moment, a prompt appeared in Lin Xue's field of vision, indicating she could capture them with a capture net. Lin Xue tried it, and to her surprise, she succeeded. The bird's name was "Hateful Dolly Bird," and it even added 12 research points to Lin Xue's total.
"Wow, this is so fun!"
Lin Xue, like a curious child, wandered around the Ancient Forest, where materials were everywhere—herbs, honey, special fruits, bugs, and so on. As she made her way toward the mission target location, she followed the guidance of the Scoutflies to collect various materials, running around happily.
Soon, Lin Xue reached the mission location. The moment she showed herself, a group of small Jagras surrounded her.
"Hey! Watch this!"
Lin Xue swung her longsword and charged in. She had been a bit worried at first, but once the fight started, she realized her concerns were completely unnecessary!
The longsword's damage was very high. These small Jagras were nothing more than oversized monitor lizards. Every slash cut deep into their flesh. One of Lin Xue's Spirit Blade slashes even cleaved straight into a small Jagras's head, killing it instantly.
Moreover, the leather armor she wore was quite reliable. The bites from these small Jagras barely stung, and her health bar barely dropped, not to mention she had plenty of healing potions.
"Wow, this game really is a grass-cutting game!" Lin Xue said happily.