DarkKing98
Certified Village Idiot
- Location
- USA
What do you mean?
-
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Even Further Beyond [Complete]
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
[X] Direct Investigation
[X] Scam People
[X] +40% Beyond Point Progress
[X] Scam People
[X] +40% Beyond Point Progress
DarkKing98
Certified Village Idiot
- Location
- USA
It's not like we'll get nothing if we don't get the priceless treasure. Scamming is how we refill our funds. The priceless Treasure is just icing on the cake.
Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
You would receive more funds through the loan, at no time or Mastermind Point expense!
Is trading a Mastermind point for cash truly worthwhile?!?
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Tally incoming
The scamming will work regardless of the MM. The MM provides protection from making new enemies and a small chance at a priceless treasure.
DarkKing98
Certified Village Idiot
- Location
- USA
A loan hurts the Yong's rep and probably the town's economy.
We do indeed desperately need wealth and Cultivation resources and related treasures. We know what we need them for as we know why.
What we also need is leverage over the local sects to support a direct approach. Mastermind Point boosted scamming should give us that. This is as much about giving us a mutually supporting plan as anything else. As I said before, look at Nameless' fathe/ advice. Don't put all your eggs in one basket. Have multiple simultaneous scams going so we have the option to declare success on the ones that work and abandon the ones that don't.
The Direct approach explicitly rewards us for coming up with plans. That's much easier to do if we can incorporate guaranteed to succeed (without getting caught) scamming in the Direct approach, as that means there's one leg of it that we know can be relied on.
For example, if the lich is in league with/in control of the Bleak Raven sect, it would be very useful to know this first because we've thoroughly infiltrated them by subverting key inner circle disciples and elders.
Also, Xiaoling was much more interesting last update than I expected her to be, and I'd quite like to wow her with Nameless' brilliance in her own sphere of expertise. It's not a particularly important factor, but I feel we really should double down on her totally falling for him, if we can do so very cheaply as a side benefit of our other choices. Partially because it will be funny as well as useful.
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There's desperate, and there is 0.4BPs desperate.
Remember folks, you are essentially paying 0.4BPs for any other option - in case of MM, that means that two things you get is a chance to make a long shoot on priceless treasure and no enemies from scamming(you might not even get any, depending). That's all you get for that expenditure.
Is that really worth 0.4BPs? That's halfway through to some of amazing bonuses that would either skyrocket our Cultivation speed or make us much, much stronger in the long run. That's +0.4 to our stage stats, if you take Might as benchmark. Would you vote not to take +0.4 to your stats in order to get chance at treasure and no enemies?
DarkKing98
Certified Village Idiot
- Location
- USA
Counter argument of, IF we get the priceless Treasure, we know they can be worth an ENTIRE BP. So one could argue going for it for the chance of something worth a BP.
Also, again, the Priceless Treasure is just the icing to the Scamming cake. Not the main target. At least, for me.
Well, we know that Priceless Treasures can be worth multiple BP, but as I said, that's not my main motivation here.
We're not actually guaranteed to find the lich, and we need to come up with a plan to make sure we do. I think that spending a Mastermind Point can make it much more likely that the fight plan will allow us to find him and place Nameless in a strong position when we do so.
The chance of Treasures does give us some diversification of the risk of walking away from this empty handed as well. This is a lesson that Nameless should well recall from his previous lesson. Diversifying your investment portfolio can reduce your risk without reducing your reward.
One Mastermind Point is generally worth around 0.5 Beyond Points. Losing a Mastermind Point in return for 0.4 Beyond Points seems likely to be a ba deal.
And, as I say, the value of a Mastermind here is the guarantee not to be caught/make an enemy when scamming, which means we can make very aggressive use of scamming and its results for the Direct plan, with much less risk of failure or back fire.
Well, technically, a peak Priceless Treasure is equivalent to an EFB, so ten Beyond Points.
It's vanishingly unlikely we'd get one that good of course, but even the chance for one at all is a good reward. As a baseline, the chance to get a Priceless Treasure was a feature of fief management, not murder hoboing.
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OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Tally incoming:
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Apologies for the double post but Tally by line incoming:
I've mentioned this before, but the biggest reason not to go for 0.4 BP is thread group psychology. If we're that close to getting something really shiny, I think that based on the track record of omake/art/reaction creation people would be motivated enough to get 0.4 Beyond Points in order to reach a threshold. If we take the option now, they won't need to be motivated, as we'll have the BP that we need. That lessened urgency means that it's more likely that taking this option is a pure waste, losing the chance to use a Mastermind Point for the first time and all the benefits it gives or nothing concrete in return, as all we'll do is reduce the BP generation rates.
Rihaku
The Internet
Anyway, some notes here:
There is likely more than one lich stronghold in the area, and if you can find one that's not being guarded by a Reality Forming Cultivator, you could approach this entire situation with a lot less risk. Consider Eyes of Kong + Pass: a plan that grants long-term power for one of your Lackeys while also allowing you to track Diagram residue in an area, great for finding not just this stronghold but any future ones. If the Heroine turns out to be Thrice-Great, it could help there too.
Scamming people, while playing to Nameless' strengths and possessing numerous advantages, does have the one major disadvantage of time. Since you are interacting with others, this will be objective time. Spending one objective month scamming is 6 months' training expended. Is the local economy of a mere three million person city worth a full month of your time?
On the other hand, if you want to secure access to the Lich (if there is one) in the most reliable fashion, Stealth Insertion + Mastermind Point all but guarantees it, and if there is no Lich then at least you didn't have to bother going through an entire Sect, socially or physically, in order to find out. I will say also - as some of you have already noticed, getting the right spell (especially if Beyonded) can be worth more than virtually any Priceless Treasure or Forbidden Technique. A Treasure that permanently doubles one's Cultivation speed forever would be fought over by the mightiest Cultivators in the vicinity, but one Haltsuphrect's Quickening does three times more and also improves combat ability.
That said, you guys do already have a lot of spells in your roster. If you encounter a Lich, you may wish to consider trading for a spell you can already develop and Beyond, as it would save you research time. Not many direct force multipliers are likely to exceed a Beyonded Llewyn's Prodigious Might, after all. And if you really needed to fight Reality Forming in a hurry, that would likely be the most expedient path...
There is likely more than one lich stronghold in the area, and if you can find one that's not being guarded by a Reality Forming Cultivator, you could approach this entire situation with a lot less risk. Consider Eyes of Kong + Pass: a plan that grants long-term power for one of your Lackeys while also allowing you to track Diagram residue in an area, great for finding not just this stronghold but any future ones. If the Heroine turns out to be Thrice-Great, it could help there too.
Scamming people, while playing to Nameless' strengths and possessing numerous advantages, does have the one major disadvantage of time. Since you are interacting with others, this will be objective time. Spending one objective month scamming is 6 months' training expended. Is the local economy of a mere three million person city worth a full month of your time?
On the other hand, if you want to secure access to the Lich (if there is one) in the most reliable fashion, Stealth Insertion + Mastermind Point all but guarantees it, and if there is no Lich then at least you didn't have to bother going through an entire Sect, socially or physically, in order to find out. I will say also - as some of you have already noticed, getting the right spell (especially if Beyonded) can be worth more than virtually any Priceless Treasure or Forbidden Technique. A Treasure that permanently doubles one's Cultivation speed forever would be fought over by the mightiest Cultivators in the vicinity, but one Haltsuphrect's Quickening does three times more and also improves combat ability.
That said, you guys do already have a lot of spells in your roster. If you encounter a Lich, you may wish to consider trading for a spell you can already develop and Beyond, as it would save you research time. Not many direct force multipliers are likely to exceed a Beyonded Llewyn's Prodigious Might, after all. And if you really needed to fight Reality Forming in a hurry, that would likely be the most expedient path...
Surely we wouldn't spend every moment of every day socialising. While some small fraction of the day would surely be limited to the clock other people were on, why wouldn't every minute that we're not actively talking to someone be spent doing something useful that benefits from x6 acceleration, whether that's cultivation or diagram magic research Particularly when we can teleport between social engagements, or be carried around in a palanquin.
One month of time is also one Mastermind point gained. If we move on to timeskip travelling after this, which is one twelfth as efficient at that, there's arguably some point at which it's more efficient to extend adventures rather than getting them done as soon as possible and then spending more months in time skip, as BPs can loosely substitute for time. After all, we're six months into our four years of adventuring and have generated the grand sum total of negative one Mastermind Point.
We've already spent eight months of objective time on this adventure (four months to Southern Vane, two months to this city, and then two months back when we leave). After that vast investment of almost 1/6 of our total adventuring time, we should really be careful to best exploit what we can get here.
The question is whether the liches would have any reason to know any spells that accelerated cultivation speed. While one Quickening does three times more, at the moment we're better off getting a x2 multiplier that is multiplied by chronomancy than a extra x5 added onto our Quickening spell.
What reason do we have to think that such spells exist that he doesn't already know - after all, Baenlixnaire had several years in which to either teach them to Nameless or write up notes to give him guidance in developing them, or even hint about their existence to put him on the right track? He apparently didn't, despite being a Rank 11 Magus more strongly invested in Nameless' success than anyone else we're likely to meet is.
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Rihaku
The Internet
You would be spending all scamming-related time scamming, of course, as Nameless is only doing it for money so that he can adventure. If he thought training was more productive then he wouldn't bother adventuring and would just train. And of course Nameless' work ethic is not so amazing that he's going to be anywhere near as productive as theoretically possible all the time.
Whether a spell can be used to accelerate cultivation speed is usually orthogonal to its original purpose. Baenlixnaire was certainly a powerful lich, but he didn't know everything, nor was he the mightiest of his kind. And any single Diagram mage's repertoire is finite by its very nature.
Even if you don't find cultivation boosters, however, any esoteric offense that can scale with Artifice or Cultivation would certainly contribute to Nameless' long-term plans of killing the Heroine.
So, he's just going to stare at the wall at night when everyone else is asleep, rather than do anything useful? Wasn't part of the benefit of becoming a lich that he could be productive 24/7 with no bodily needs to get in the way?
You'd have thought that he'd realise that a combination of training and adventure would be more productive than adventuring for a small fraction of the time and slacking off for the rest.
Do we have reason to believe they exist, or any evidence that any particular lich would be the one to develop them? Or that having developed such an esoteric offence which would presumably be utterly pointless against the grade of Cultivators that were the real threats to them wouldn't be a selected against trait in favour of having created spells that actually helped them stay alive for the past few thousand years. Where's the motivation here for them to have created such things?
Nearly all the spells that we've seen so far that helped with Cultivation speed, whether Divination, Transmutation or Chronomancy, are pretty obviously directly applicable to Cultivation. The only exception is Further Beyond Might which helps with a couple of specific stages.
We've so far committed eight months, one sixth of our entire time adventuring, on this excursion. The question is whether to double down in the hopes of getting super lucky with Diagram magic, or whether to diversify the risk so that we at least make some minimal level of profit for an additional month's investment along with an extra chance of getting something else really useful.
Unless we can judge how common esoteric Diagram attack spells that synergise with Cultivation/Artifice are, or how likely we are to find a Cultivation boosting spell we face radical, Kuhnian uncertainty, that we can only mitigate with diversification into something more predictable.
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DkArthas
CAPITAL IS TO BLAME
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- They
[x] Stealth Insertion
-[x] Expend a mastermind point
[x] Take Out a Loan
[x] Choose an ' expend Mastermind point ' option this update for free (you must choose this option to Expend any Mastermind points this update)
The direct action puts our party too much at risk, and we have no interest in the cultivators. Our goal is trading with the lich, So let's fucking do it and not waste our time. Masterpoint to figure out what the fuck is going on. Information is power and this can prove profitable.
We have no reason to scam for now and waste our time, when we can very easily just take a loan.
-[x] Expend a mastermind point
[x] Take Out a Loan
[x] Choose an ' expend Mastermind point ' option this update for free (you must choose this option to Expend any Mastermind points this update)
The direct action puts our party too much at risk, and we have no interest in the cultivators. Our goal is trading with the lich, So let's fucking do it and not waste our time. Masterpoint to figure out what the fuck is going on. Information is power and this can prove profitable.
We have no reason to scam for now and waste our time, when we can very easily just take a loan.
Rihaku
The Internet
He probably won't do nothing, he may even get some training in there, but there is no way he's going to train the entire time. Human psychology simply doesn't work that way outside of extreme outliers, which he is not. Nameless was working over twenty hours a day on the trip here, it's a miracle he hasn't procced Spoiled yet - the only reason he didn't is because Diagram research doesn't count as intensively as 'work' for him due to A Total Bookworm.
If they exist, the Diagram is the best place to look for them.
Diagram mages have 30+ spell slots. They can survive against the vast majority of Cultivators with two: Lichdom and Vault of the Ur-Pharoah. Getting two spells of that power is not easy and death is still possible, of course.
Yes, but developing Cultivation is completely orthogonal to their original purpose. Your concern was why a Lich would bother making a spell to improve Cultivation speed. The answer is that they didn't make such spells for that reason. But that doesn't matter. You can turn a sword into a plowshare with some hammering.