After Shi Feng chose to upgrade the shop, the renovation time for the Candlelight Trading Company's branch store was very short.
In just ten minutes, the five one-star shops became two-star shops.
Although the shop's sales volume wouldn't increase, the number of life-skilled players they could accommodate increased several times over, more than enough to hold the 1,200 people recruited this time.
Divine Realm's development speed had already far surpassed Shi Feng's expectations.
Originally, after obtaining the three-star promotion order, Shi Feng hadn't planned to recruit so many people—five or six hundred at most would be the absolute maximum. However, after the system completed its fourth evolution, the steps for life-skilled players to craft items became more complex, greatly affecting crafting speed.
Previously, Youyu Weixiao had already compiled statistics on the crafting speed of everyone in the Zero Wing Trading Company.
The higher the item grade, the greater the impact on crafting speed.
For crafting items like whetstones, it only slowed players' speed by about 15%, but advanced whetstones reached 25%. This meant that in the time it used to take to craft five advanced whetstones, only four could be made now.
Not to mention the items that only intermediate and advanced blacksmiths could craft—just the crafting speed of Solidified Magic Armor dropped by 40%. The amount of Solidified Magic Armor crafted daily was already small, and now it was pitifully scarce. He had previously promised Heavenly Secrets Pavilion that he had to deliver ten bronze-grade mounts and two thousand pieces of Solidified Magic Armor within five days of entering Divine Realm, with the rest to be delivered within twelve days.
If he failed to do so, the black card would not only be revoked, but all previously delivered items would also not be refunded.
So Shi Feng's time was extremely tight.
To accelerate the pace, besides improving crafting success rates, the only remaining option was to increase manpower.
The improvement possible in success rates was limited; the only viable choice was to add more people.
Shi Feng didn't expect these new life-skilled players to immediately become a batch of excellent crafters.
His plan was to have these newly recruited Advanced Apprentices handle the work normally done by Junior Blacksmiths, have those Junior Blacksmiths do Intermediate Blacksmith work, and the Intermediate Blacksmiths take on Advanced Blacksmith tasks.
This would be sufficient to complete this seemingly impossible task within the required timeframe.
Immediately, Shi Feng delegated the task, instructing Youyu Weixiao to make preparations in advance. After all, adjusting the work distribution and arranging so many people wasn't something that could be quickly accomplished.
"Guild Leader, this is probably very difficult to achieve. Just for us three Advanced Blacksmiths to craft Solidified Magic Armor, even with the help of a Super-tier Crafting Room, we only have about a 40% success rate. The Intermediate Blacksmiths in the trading company, even with a Super-tier Crafting Room, probably only have around a 15% success rate. At that rate, just breaking even on each piece of Solidified Magic Armor would be considered good," Youyu Weixiao was all too familiar with crafting success rates, as she frequently compiled various statistics.
Although a 15% success rate seemed high, if you actually crafted ten times, all ten attempts would likely fail. Because crafting wasn't like gambling or opening loot boxes—the probability wasn't cumulative. Each crafting attempt held that same 15% chance of success; it didn't increase just because the previous attempt failed.
The statistical data showed that generally, only when the success rate reached 20% was there a high probability of succeeding once out of ten attempts. And only when the success rate hit 25% did the actual success rate undergo a qualitative change, succeeding almost once or twice out of ten attempts.