As Shi Feng produced the port construction permit, the NPC senior steward verified it was authentic, then handed over a list of port blueprints for Shi Feng to examine.
Port construction was unlike other advanced buildings. Simply having a construction permit wasn't enough to build one directly—scale depended on the player's capital.
There were three sizes of ports available: small, medium, and large.
The larger the port, the more flying ships it could dock, and the better the ships it was equipped with.
"That's outrageously expensive!" Shi Feng glanced at the prices for the various ports and felt as though he had instantly become a pauper.
The cheapest option on the list was a small port at fifty thousand gold, while the priciest small port was a whopping one hundred and fifty thousand gold—not to mention the medium and large ports…
Although he had already known the base price for a small port was fifty thousand gold, he hadn't expected the price gap between different small ports to be this enormous.
Of course, you got what you paid for.
A brief comparison made it painfully clear just how shabby a fifty-thousand-gold port really was.
The fifty-thousand-gold port had only four small docking slots, and the flying ships it came with were all ordinary small vessels. Meanwhile, the one-hundred-and-fifty-thousand-gold small port had six small docking slots and came with six small Bronze-rank flying ships—they were not only 30% faster than ordinary small ships but also had 50% more cargo capacity. The difference in revenue alone more than doubled.
However, after accounting for the guild promotion costs and the gold the guild had accumulated over this period, he was left with just over ninety thousand gold. Buying the best small port was clearly out of the question.
And to become a senior manager of the Secret Stone Fortress, he still needed another sixty thousand gold…
Although there were still two days before the Secret Stone Fortress deadline, he could earn a decent amount in the meantime by selling rare materials from the Ice Crystal World and through guild town revenues. But even if he pooled every last coin, it would barely cover the cost of the cheapest port and the Secret Stone Fortress combined.
"Looks like I'll have to go with the cheapest one and upgrade later when I've got the funds," Shi Feng sighed, staring at the list.
Once a player had the right to build a port in a town, they could construct whichever version they pleased. However, there was one catch—ports couldn't be renovated. If, for example, you were dissatisfied with a small port and wanted to upgrade to a medium one, the cost wouldn't be the difference after deducting the small port's value. Instead, you'd pay the full price of a medium port—it meant tearing down the small port and building a new medium one from scratch.
Because of this, even super guilds didn't rush to expand their ports once they had the money.
"Respected Guardian, as the first Chosen to build a port in the Star Moon Kingdom, we have two specially recommended small ports and one medium port. Would you be interested?" the NPC senior steward asked with a smile, noticing Shi Feng's contemplative expression.
"Let me take a look first."
His eyes lit up at the offer. A special recommendation like this was essentially a bonus—naturally, he had to see what it entailed.
The senior steward then produced a separate list.
Though it was a single page with only three entries, the descriptions filled the entire sheet. Besides detailed specifications, there were various conditions attached.
Model 024 Small Port: priced at one hundred and fifty thousand gold. Equipped with five small docking slots and one medium docking slot, along with five small Bronze-rank flying ships and one medium Bronze-rank flying ship. An advance payment of sixty thousand gold was accepted, with the remaining two hundred thousand gold due within one month. Failure to pay would result in the port's ownership being reclaimed.
Model 039 Small Port: priced at one hundred and eighty thousand gold. Equipped with six small docking slots and one medium docking slot, along with six small Bronze-rank flying ships and one medium Bronze-rank flying ship. An advance payment of eighty thousand gold was accepted, with the remaining two hundred and forty thousand gold due within one month. Failure to pay would result in the port's ownership being reclaimed.
Looking at the two ports, Shi Feng couldn't help but be moved.
They not only offered installment plans but also included medium docking slots and medium flying ships—features normally exclusive to medium ports.
The medium flying ships docked at a medium port weren't just bigger. More importantly, NPC merchants could transport large cargo and special goods that small flying ships simply couldn't carry.