Starting Off Survival With A Small Treehouse
Chapter 183 - 174: Various Functional Areas, Tree House Major Renovation!

Chapter 183: Chapter 174: Various Functional Areas, Tree House Major Renovation!

The Silver King and Mimi, who had run up to the second floor, saw that Xu Xin was in no danger and went back to continue resting, leaving only Keke on the second floor. Keke climbed onto the nearby weapon and armor crafting station, lying there to keep Xu Xin company.

Xu Xin continued to study his alchemical abilities.

The materials required to make this coordinate (blue), were truly excessive.

First, there were the steel blocks, whose crafting method was unknown, and ten were needed, all of them blue grade!

He could produce ten pieces of wood (blue), but the ten universal alchemy materials (blue) were truly outrageous.

From the blueprint, it was clear that making a piece of universal alchemy material (blue) was not a simple process.

First, it required smelting ore into iron blocks (blue) and black gold blocks (blue) using a furnace, then combining the two metal blocks into iron sand (blue) and black gold dust (blue) on the alchemy synthesis station, while also preparing the juice of mutated vines.

Once these were ready, they could be synthesized into a piece of universal alchemy material using the alchemy synthesis station.

And a single coordinate actually required ten pieces of universal alchemy material, which meant it needed ten blue-grade iron blocks and ten blue-grade black gold blocks! Plus, ten blue-grade wood and ten blue-grade steel blocks! A total of forty blue-grade resources!

Moreover, a single coordinate was useless on its own, as explained, "[can teleport between coordinates]," meaning at least two coordinates were required for teleportation between two points.

Eighty blue-grade resources! At this stage, this was simply too excessive for them!

...Forget it, let’s not consider this coordinate for now. This is something he cannot afford to handle alone, perhaps it could be made through crowdfunding in the future, since it’s something everyone can use together.

Let’s first figure out how to make this steel block.

Steel blocks were brand new metal blocks, and once he acquired them, he could unlock new blueprints to create steel weapons, armor, and a series of tools!

He flipped through the crafting list on the alchemy synthesis station, and among a pile of potions, found a crafting blueprint.

[Steel Fire: Add to the furnace along with prepared iron blocks to smelt same-grade steel blocks. Requires mutated vine juice *1kg and coal (green) *25]

Found it! The materials for smelting steel! Surprisingly, it’s also crafted at the alchemy synthesis station!

This is what true alchemy is about.

The Steel Fire had no color grade, likely allowing the smelting of steel blocks of any grade, depending on the grade of the iron block.

But how can coal be obtained?

This isn’t the first time he’s seen coal appear in a crafting blueprint. In the novice period, torches could be made with coal. But so far, he hasn’t seen anyone selling coal on the trading platform.

Although he hasn’t made torches, he knew that wood could be smelted into charcoal in the furnace, and everyone used charcoal instead of coal to make torches.

Checked the trading platform, and unsurprisingly, no one was selling coal.

Looks like he needs to find it himself.

Wait.

That yellow light in his vision was a type of alchemy material. Since it was buried underground, could it be coal? Generally, coal is buried underground, so it’s quite possible.

He’d dig it up today. With his beloved at hand, he wouldn’t even need to do it himself.

Xu Xin headed up to the third floor. He first wanted to divide the functional areas within the treehouse.

"Huh!" Keke followed behind him, tugging at Xu Xin’s clothes with its little paws.

...Is this little guy hungry? Xu Xin readily gave it an apple, and it immediately stopped following him, sitting on the ground nibbling the apple.

Xu Xin also took out one to eat for breakfast, and casually opened the regional channel.

He found that the survivors in the regional channel were discussing not decoration degrees and functional areas, but rather something else.

They could now renovate the interiors of the treehouses!

"Everyone, the glass I smelted in the furnace finally became useful, I can make glass windows!"

"Finally, I can separate my bed from the workbench. Every time I open my eyes to see the workbench, it’s overwhelming!"

"Haha, I’m going to renovate and make a kitchen!"

They’ve finally been granted the ability to renovate interiors. It makes sense, as without interior renovation, they wouldn’t be able to divide the treehouse into functional areas.

Xu Xin’s interior renovation ability was obtained from the silver treasure chest in the jungle exploration activity, which not only allowed interior renovation but also the creation of external crossbows and armor. This was common among the "Explorers."

Now, other survivors could also remodel interiors, although the weapons and armor for external enhancements were still unavailable to them, requiring Xu Xin to manufacture and sell them.

Upon reaching the third floor, Xu Xin first made an art studio plaque and placed it in the study.

[A room featuring an art studio plaque detected. Would you like to designate this room as an art studio? Once designated, changes cannot be made for seven days, please consider carefully before selecting.]

Confirm.

[The room has been designated as an art studio. Would you like to allocate enhancement rates? Once allocated, changes cannot be made, please proceed cautiously.]

[Current total enhancement rate available for allocation: 210%]

Xu Xin did not allocate enhancement rates. He planned to designate all functional areas and then unify the allocation.

Placed a kitchen plaque in the kitchen and another dining room plaque in the dining room. Thus, his third-floor living area had four functional areas in total: bedroom, kitchen, dining room, and art studio.

He arrived at the planting room on the fourth floor and placed a planting room plaque, but strangely, no designation prompt appeared for the planting room this time.

Xu Xin glanced at the stairway entrance. The fourth floor goes directly to the third—does this mean it’s not considered a closed room?

He constructed a few more walls and a door to seal off this floor of the planting house, but still, there was no prompt.

What’s going on?

Xu Xin furrowed his brow.

Is it because this room is too large? The floor is nearly a hundred square meters, perhaps there is a limit to the area a wooden plaque can designate, which prevents him from assigning the entire fourth floor as a single functional zone.

He raised his wrist to look at his watch; in the [Explorer] group, everyone was discussing these functional zones.

Zhao Xiaochuan: "What do you all think about allocating everything to the bedroom? That way, we can reduce part of our sleep time each day and get more things done!"

Li Wenxi: "It seems there’s not that much to do, and we also have blue-grade oranges. I’ve got a lot of minerals over here, planning to majorly enhance the smelting room and the workshop."

This was the first time Li Wenxi revealed to them she has many minerals.

Zhao Xiaochuan: "So Wenxi’s got a mine at home!"

Wen Guixin: "Isn’t that obvious? All those nitrate mines, they’re all provided by Wenxi."

Qi Xuefei: "I can create a specialized medical room plaque here to speed up and increase the success rate of my pharmaceutical research, so I’ll primarily focus on this."

Wang Lei: "I want to enhance the kitchen and dining room; the kitchen can improve the effect of the food, and more importantly, the food made can really fill you up! Who knows if we might face famine like now in the future."

Xu Xin asked in the group: "Have you ever encountered a situation where you couldn’t designate a functional zone?"

Qin Yunlong: "Is it because you haven’t installed a door? My bedroom initially didn’t have a door, so it couldn’t be designated."

Li Wenxi: "I haven’t had this issue; is it because your place is too large?" They basically video call each other every day, so she knows Xu Xin’s tree house has double the area compared to theirs.

Ji Chaoyang: "Probably your designated area is either too small or too large. From my trials, the area for a functional zone needs to be between 10 square meters and 80 square meters; areas outside this range can’t be recognized."

So that’s really the case.

Although Xu Xin had already guessed it, he didn’t expect Ji Chaoyang to have calculated the area range.

Ji Chaoyang simultaneously sent a message in the regional channel: "Everyone, the minimum area for a functional zone is 10 square meters. Survivors with low-lying, small tree houses must pay attention; your single-floor area is around 25 square meters, so make sure to divide wisely. If one functional zone is too large, the rest cannot be designated."

"Thanks, expert!"

"So it’s only 10 square meters! That’s stable! Then my two-floor tree house can have four functional zones!"

"Isn’t one functional zone enough? We don’t have much decoration yet."

"Hey, eventually, there will be. This second phase has only just begun. Isn’t it better to plan ahead?"

"I’m such an idiot... I accidentally designated an entire tree house as a bedroom... Now I have to wait seven days to change it!"

"I am willing to call you the Master of Mistakes!"

After understanding the range, Xu Xin also began planning in his mind.

The first floor is about a hundred square meters; he needs to exclude twenty square meters. After thinking it through, he immediately cordoned off a twenty-square-meter area in the corner of the fourth floor.

The sound of a prompt rang; the remaining eighty-square-meter area of the fourth floor was designated as a planting house.

Using blue-grade nitrate, Xu Xin quickly transformed the twenty-square-meter small space he had marked into a cold storage room with temperatures around three to four degrees Celsius.

From now on, the storable green-grade vegetables and fruits grown on the fourth floor will be stored here. The large cold storage on the first floor is too cold, with temperatures at least minus twenty to thirty degrees, which can’t preserve green-grade vegetables and fruits.

That will serve as a freezer area, while here will be the cold storage area.

At this time, many green-grade fruits on the fourth floor are already ripe. Xu Xin picked some that were fully ripe and stored them in the cold storage room.

After tidying up the third-floor living area and the fourth-floor planting area, it was time to deal with the most troublesome second floor.

The second floor has many worktables: the synthesis table, furnace, weapon and armor crafting table, mutation potion synthesis table, basic appliance creation table, alchemy synthesis table, all haphazardly arranged on the second floor.

Looking at the chaotic second floor he arranged himself, Xu Xin had a bit of a headache.

He delineated a fifty-square-meter room, placing the synthesis table, weapon and armor crafting table, mutation potion synthesis table, and basic appliance creation table inside, and made a [Workshop Plaque], hanging it within the room.

This room is the largest and will definitely acquire other crafting tables in the future, which will also be placed here.

Next, he demarcated a ten-square-meter room for the furnace and hung a [Smelting Room Plaque].

The furnace is a standalone functional zone, possibly because furnace work releases a lot of heat. One effect of the smelting room is to control the heat release of the furnace, not only keeping the indoor temperature at a moderate level but also improving furnace efficiency.

Finally, there was his alchemy synthesis table. Alchemy, like Qi Xuefei’s [Medical King], is a separate field; Qi Xuefei has her unique medical room, and so does he with his alchemy room.

He delineated a roughly ten-square-meter room, placed the alchemy synthesis table inside, and hung an [Alchemy Room Plaque]. The alchemy room function increases the success rate of alchemy and has a chance of reducing material consumption.

Thus, he established all the needed functional zones within the tree house.

The fourth-floor planting house, third-floor dining room, kitchen, bedroom, art room, second-floor workshop, smelting room, alchemy room.

Zones that cannot be designated due to lack of functional zone plaques include the first-floor ice cellar cold storage and the newly built fourth-floor cold storage room.

Perfect!