Chương 122: Chapter 118 – A Day at the Harbor

Mark got up and decided there was nothing pressing and planned, and he wanted to take more of a look at the harbor. His last visit there was quick, and he did not have time to look around. He is not going to run an instance or fix anything; he will just see what the status is and look around the port and see how things are going. He was just leaving breakfast when Garrick ran over to him.

"I hear you're going to the harbor today; do you mind if I tag along? I want to check on the road crews and crews building harbor watch. Make sure everything is going well and then check out more of the harbor, which I did not get to do last time." Mark said, "Sure, I would love company. I am taking one of my horses; you're more than welcome to ride one of my others, which will make getting there quick, and I will be able to be back tonight." Garrick said, "Sounds great.

I need to get myself a horse now that there are a few more available." Mark hitched up the horses, and Garrick had ridden a horse before, so he only had to remind him of a couple of things before they were off. Between the horses and the finished path all the way to harbor watch it took only about 3 hours to get there, which meant he would have plenty of time to look around.

Mark left Garrick at Harbor Watch to get caught up on the construction work and make sure there were enough tasks set up to keep everyone busy and fix any issues that might have arisen. But the first thing Mark did was go over to the new instance portal and see what people were up to. As he approached the harbor operations platform, it was busy, which he expected.

When they passed through harbor watch, he had found out that they had already leveled it to a level 3 outpost and that it would be a village once they completed a few more items they needed built for the next upgrade. The population had gone from the 10 or so that started here to over 50 people now. And more people were joining every day.

There were groups that had come from the north as well as other teams that had come from the cave, so it was a good mix of people, and there were also more than a dozen fishermen that were doing the utility instance, as it was just not desired by the more fighter-minded people, and the contribution because of it was super high, so they were making out pretty well on the contribution side of things.

When he got there, though, there were many people standing around discussing "The Change" it took Mark a bit to figure out what they were referring to, as every instance run was changing the harbor in some way, but the change they were referring to was that their instance changes. So he brought up the interface for the instance to check it out.

[Mistwater Harbor Activities] Available Activities: • Combat | Contribution: Very Low • Utility | Contribution: Medium • Trade | Contribution: Very High Cooldown: 10 Hours Instances Available: 0/3 So all instances were busy right now; there were three of them, which did not surprise him after all the changes at the cave. But there was a new activity type, and it was trade. It sounded interesting but not really an issue, so he went and joined the conversation.

Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. Mark said, "I can hear you guys are discussing the newest change in the instance. You guys sound upset about it, but I am not understanding why." One of the guys waiting around said.

"Trade what does that even mean?" Mark said, "I don't know; it sounds somewhat interesting to me. So what did the first group do that tried it." Fighter said, "No one has tried it." Mark said, "Why not the contribution for it is very high; even if you can't beat it, you should walk away with a good profit." Fighter said, "But we want pirates." Fishermen said, "No," and laughed.

"We want utility instances to learn fishing things." Mark laughed.

"So no one is going to try it out?" FIghter said, "Not me." Fisherman said, "No way, that sounds boring." Then the group went back to arguing like Mark was not even there. Mark finally left their arguing and went and found Garrick, who was just finishing up his meeting with the work crews, and the two of them headed toward the dock to check them out. On the way there, Garrick let Mark know that the outpost was indeed soon to be a village.

They finalized the last few things they needed to make it one and also made the decision to widen the road from a single lane to two lanes in both directions from Beaver Crossing to Harbor watch and change the trails that existed north to southern outpost a full road and south to Netwater to a full road to speed up the travel of those heading to the port. The influx of people was happening quicker than it did at the cave, which surprised no one.

On the way to the dock, Garrick kept pointing out the few things that looked brand new, like a street sign on one corner and a window in a house that looked almost ready to fall down. The talk about the little things here or there that were changing was all the people could talk about between their trips into the instance. Though all Garrick could talk about was the construction and engineering in the port. Garrick was looking for something specific.

He wanted to find any remains of a grain warehouse and wanted to look at the cranes. Mark just wanted to look around. After doing the instance when the warehouse area was not destroyed and comparing that to now was amazing to him. And if the place were slowly repairing, did that mean at some point they would have a functioning harbor? The possibilities of what they could learn from this place, looking at the ruins and then also running the instance and seeing it alive, were huge.

Garrick finally found a grain warehouse and started to look around. It was in really bad shape, so Mark just stayed outside for fear of making it collapse more. And while Garrick went and learned what he was trying to find out, Mark thought about trade. Which type of people could benefit from a trade instance? He did some trade as he set up many of the trade agreements that they had in place.

He understood enough trade to know they were missing important pieces, and maybe that is why the new instance type was created. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that the whole village council was in need of learning trade skills. They were in just a few days going to embark on a multi-month journey to improve the area, though the Grainworks Initiative pulled back up what it said about that.

And after re-reading, he realized that one of the benefits was to eventually do regional food exports, and if that was not trade, he did not know what was. Garrick finally moved to the docks, where he started to study the cranes. These fascinated Mark as he understood in concept how they work, but he thought about modern cranes. These things were nothing like that, but they could lift thousands of pounds, swing it onto the deck of a boat, and lower it into a hold. That was amazing.

This thought made mark wonder how long it would be until someone either repaired one of the sunken boats or built a new one that was big enough to do trade. With a port this huge, what possible places out there could they trade with? Were their other settlements like they had in the four zones he was familiar with? How big was this world, and how long would it take them to prepare to explore where this giant lake was that they were beside?

When Garrick was finally done playing with the cranes, they decided to head back to Beaver Crossing and talk with others about what they found. For Garrick, that was construction, cranes, grain storage, and future possibilities. For Mark it was trade and the future that this port might be.