Chương 66: Settlement Tasks

Mark got up and went to breakfast. Conversation was excited. Tom was talking about the Burrow Cluster being a goldmine and said it should be the priority for the camp. Elias and his family were insisting that the southern zone was most important, as the wheat was a literal goldmine. Ava cut in and said that it was more important to explore and find new places or animals. Most everyone else disagreed with her. Dale jumped in, letting everyone know that food and a variety of it were needed.

Bread was great, but if that was all they ate, they would not last long. Mark found the conversation entertaining. He also had many things on his mind. He now had to figure out how to manage the growing amount of things he needed to accomplish. He needed labor to build and gather items. He needed more space for people in the cave. He needed an organized plan before everything went out of control because he could not keep track of everything.

He decided today was the day he needed to get into the village system and figure out what the benefits were. He upgraded from levels 1-3 without really figuring out what it gave him. So he opened his interface and started to look through it. He found in the level 2 village benefits an item listed as "Settlement Task Tracking." Which sounded like what he needed. He had tasks and needed some way to manage and track them. He ended up with a screen listing options.

[TASK TRACKING INTERFACE] Active Tasks • Available Labor • Settlement Supply Pool • Contribution Rewards • Infrastructure Priorities • Contribution Ledger Mark picked the first option of active tasks. No active tasks detected. Would you like to create one?" He clicked yes and was prompted with fields to fill out. He needed a task name and things that would contribute toward its goals. He created a task named "Expand Southern Trail" and listed what his desires were.

[Task Created] Expand Southern Trail Requirements: • Clear obstacles • Widen path for hauling • Mark safe route Estimated Contribution Reward: 12–20 Contribution or Equivalent XP [Warning] No active Settlement Supply Pool detected. Task rewards unavailable until supply reserves are established. Okay, no supply pool, so he then selected that option.

[Settlement Supply Pool] Registered settlement goods may be allocated toward: • task rewards • contribution exchanges • experience conversion If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation. • emergency reserves That was interesting; he clicked on experience conversion. [Experience Conversion Notice] Experience rewards require equivalent settlement value allocation. Settlement reserves will be consumed during reward distribution.

Oh, that is why it offered contributions or XP for tasks completed. It was not creating XP out of thin air but was converting the Settlement Supply Pool into XP. He found the option to either donate an item from his personal storage to the Settlement Supply Pool or transfer items from general settlement supplies. He could then either click a button to search for supplies or deposit a new item into a storage bin to calculate its value. He found an extra shovel in inventory and added it.

[Experience Conversion In Process] 5 contribution points added to your Contribution Ledger. Mark opened the ledger option, and it showed his name with 5 contribution points. He continued to add random items until he passed 50 contribution points. Mark said.

"That is so cool." The background conversation around him suddenly stopped, and all eyes looked at him. Then the others started asking what's cool. Mark then explained to them what he found on the settlement tasks that led him to the contribution rewards and task earning contribution points or XP from the settlement. The next thing he noticed is others names starting to show up on the contribution ledger. It was like a race to see how much people could add. Mark just laughed and then switched to the settlement.

So far it looked like Dale was in the lead; flipping over to the pool, he could see lunch packs and dinner packs being added. They seemed to already be in love with it after only knowing about it for 10 minutes. Mark then went back to the active task list and started to add items. He did trail maintenance. New trail construction to various POIs in the zone, including the rock pit, the marsh, and the Burrow Cluster. He added wood collection for firewood.

Logs for construction and trail runners to run supplies to both Cave Camp and Lakeside. He was impressed by the ability of the system to gauge value for tasks. The farther a task was away, the more it seemed to give. Same thing with difficulty, like taking goods from his camp to cave camp was a small amount, whereas Lakeside was like 20 times the value on account of its distance. The system even listed expected times for tasks that involved travel.

He also found that tasks could be open to anyone, or they could be limited to affiliated people or members of the settlement only. He spent more than the next hour creating tasks for everything he could think of that would be useful to the camp. He then went into the settlement inventory and found that he could organize the items by suggested supply amounts and excess items, which he could transfer to the contribution pool. He ended up transferring almost half the items to the pool.

He then went into the control interface and gave Dale, Tom, Elias, and Mara access to add tasks and explained to them the limits of what he wanted for tasks. He then switched over to the Cave camp settlement and found that he could manage most settings from anywhere, but that because of the level, he could not set up the settlement task as they needed to be level 2 and he could not upgrade from there; he had to be in the outpost. Well, going there was now on the list, but he had to tell the others his plans first.

At that point, he closed his menus and turned to the group.

"We need to talk about our future. I overheard the conversations earlier today about needing goods and even more space or settlements down south." At that point they all started talking at once. Everyone sharing their ideas. Everyone wanting to get the final word. Mark let it go on for a while, and when they were done arguing, he finally said it.

"I think my long-term plans are to move south. You have convinced me that we need room and that the wheat fields would be a huge boost to long-term survival and growth." Mark continued.

"But we need a plan. We need more people specifically to do it right; we need people that can do the construction of real cabins and buildings. And this will not happen overnight. In a few days I would like to go to Lakeside with a load of wheat and see if we can trade it for temporary workers to build roads and construct cabins; we will need crafting buildings. Wheat processing facilities and just general infrastructure.

We will also need to put a call out for tradespeople that want to try and help us make something of that area. And we are not abandoning this area. We are going to use it and build it up as well. But the system has put a limit; this area can't support more than 12 people full-time without cutting back the forest a few hundred feet, which I don't feel is the right thing to do." When he got done speaking, everyone was just looking at him. And then the conversation really started.