Home Connection

I was having tea at Penpen's place, working on Home expansion through the menu, when a notification popped up for both of us the moment I expanded the land.

It read: "Home Connection with Friends is now available."

"Connect Homes? … What kind of feature is that?"

"You'll find out if you try it. Here goes, connect!"

"Oh, then I'll approve and connect on my end too."

So we went ahead and connected our Homes, approving from both sides, and…

A stone gate whooshed into existence in the yard!

"Ooh? Ooh… Ooh!? This is amazing! Come see, Tria-shi!"

"What, what? What happened? Whoa!"

"Oh, it's Spirit-sama. Welcome back!"

Stepping through the gate brought us straight to my Home, where Miitei-chan, who'd been working over there, greeted us. So that's what "connection" means.

So it seems like the feature creates a direct gate between connected properties.

"This is handy. It always took a bit of time to Fast Travel whenever I visited Penpen's place, so that had been bugging me a little."

"More importantly, Tria-shi, your house is still a 'Shabby Hut'?"

"… F-Furnishing it was too much hassle."

Honestly, I only ever use the warehouse and the field, so the house kept getting pushed to the back burner.

Besides, for alchemy purposes, it's actually easier without random stuff lying around.

"You should've said something. I've got old stuff I don't use anymore. Here, let me go grab it for you."

"Oh, thanks. But I'd feel bad getting it for free, so I'll pay market price."

"Right now I want materials more than money. Give and take… Also, did you know that setting up a dedicated alchemy workshop raises your success rate and quality?"

"Seriously? Guess I really do need to get my act together."

Since she hooked me up with useful info, I shared some armor I'd gotten as bonus rewards from the recent quest.

"Ooh, a full set of armor!"

"Don't worry, there's nothing inside. Miitei-chan already processed it."

Behind me, Miitei-chan wore a proud, smug grin. "I processed it!"

"If there'd been something inside, we could've used it as a material though."

"A material for what?"

"A skull goblet, maybe?"

"Demon King of the Sixth Heaven Penpen over here."

"It can't be helped!"

Well, guess I'll take her advice and start developing the hut too.

Let's place furniture and earn Home points. Penpen, put the sofa there. Table over here.

Points racked up fast, so the living room and entrance cleaned up nicely. More furniture, more points, and I rushed all the way to adding the basic workshop.

"Wow, it cleaned up just like that… Takes me back to Penpen's place when we first met."

"Well, it is the same furniture from back then. Also, this is pretty early-game stuff, you know? Everything up to this point is normally tutorial territory."

"Our tutorial ended when the tutorial ended, so…"

It's the difference between "everything up to this stage is basically still the tutorial" and the actual, literal tutorial.

"But yeah, this Home connection is really convenient for excursions too. Since I have the ranch, I can't exactly store my Home and head out."

"Oh, right. Because you can use my Home as a warp point."

The town of Tsudon had become our de facto base, and that was entirely because Penpen had set up her ranch here.

… Had other players put down roots in their own base towns too, making them unwilling or unable to move around?

In the end, we still hadn't met any players besides ourselves.

"This is supposed to be a social game, even if it's buy-to-play… What a mystery."

"There's also the mystery of the mystery filter, so it's all just one big question mark."

"Well, maybe we'll find new encounters if we go to a different town."

No clue where the Majark Republic is, but going to look for Zord and the others is an option. It's not like we have any particular objective right now.

They might even be part of a resistance trying to overthrow the government by now, and helping out wouldn't be a bad idea. A country doing that kind of research, I wouldn't mind seeing it fall, right? The regular citizens aside, I'd love to see the higher-ups replaced.

"Come to think of it, I'm in Tsudon, Tria-shi is in Wantos, and Alto-shi's nearest town was somewhere else, right? If it's one player per town, then new encounters are definitely possible."

"So it's not just My Home, but My Town…!? Wait, does that mean me and Alto have been neglecting our My Towns?"

"Maybe Wantos even has ranch land set aside for Tria-shi."

That's possible. My own personal ranch… Nah, I'll pass.

Taking care of cows seems like its own quiet hassle. The more daily tasks pile up, the less time you have for everything else.

Case in point, Penpen barely has room to go on excursions anymore.

"Once Alto logs in, maybe we start by heading to check out Alto's town. We've connected our Homes, so want to come sightseeing too, Penpen?"

"I'm looking forward to it!"

Hopefully it's a town with some character… Well, there'll be nightlife spots at least!

Surely they wouldn't say only Tsudon has shops you can enter, right?

I wanna visit that shop again too. Should I go? Yeah, let's go.