Even Further Beyond [Complete]

The 'anti-Elven waifu' meme is a bit pathetic by this point, to be honest.

As for why we want the EFB Vault


With this, we can cheese incredibly risky Cultivation schemes, or we can serially research a Diagram multiple times in the same amount of objective time, or have our minions experiment with radical breakthrough techniques.

As Fate is our friend; we can also try to keep rerolling artifacts as well.

Deathbybunnies said:

I'm referring to the explicit mechanic where dangerous adventuring gives us 1 MM per month, instead of 1 per 6. Do we have a WOG to show that politicking does the same, or did you just make that up?

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Social adventuring has always counted as adventuring.

[X] Tomb of the Netherine
[X] Vault of the Ur-Pharoah

Alratan said:

With this, we can cheese incredibly risky Cultivation schemes, or we can serially research a Diagram multiple times in the same amount of objective time.

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That's amazing and I'm 100% onboard, assuming that it works for periods of time greater than a few seconds - which is how long Cultivator battles usually take.

Deathbybunnies said:

Neat! I'd still prefer to go with Netherine for a variety of reasons, but I concede MM generation may not be one of them.
Well, except that this is the last chance to get MMs through adventuring, whilst the Elven situation isn't going away in the meantime. In fact, if we go Netherine => Elves, we might feasibly get enough for Truth!

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The tomb won't collapse in a few months under our nose to our surprise. And a single use of the divination spell can easily find it. The elves could suddenly collapse in the next month because the Ming somehow getting Titan number 4 to exterminate them.

Savonarola said:

No pure elf waifus. Please, for the love of the Accursed. I can take build votes or waifu wars, but not both.

[X] Tomb of the Netherine

More shiny EFB options that we can't afford. Should've just picked Externalize, then we wouldn't have yet another fucking BP sink. Protector looked cool to me, but that's one bandwagon that isn't changing course, so just gonna vote Tomb and ignore Liminal. Shame about Center, be nice to know what's up with this Winter Labyrinth shit. A mystery box is fine too, though.

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Alas, poor Golem. It's not even bad - +1 to combat stage that allows increased risk and can be used elsewhere while we get durability boost? Very nice.

However, we already want to take Vault, and unlike Flesh spell, Protector didn't had it's shiny on the showcase.

Deathbybunnies said:

That's amazing and I'm 100% onboard, assuming that it works for periods of time greater than a few seconds - which is how long Cultivator battles usually take.

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Cultivator battles do; but this was a spell designed by Diagram Magi for Diagram Magi. Their battles took an awful lot longer.

And would ya look at that. A tie!

Inserted tally

DarkKing98 said:

The tomb won't collapse in a few months under our nose to our surprise. And a single use of the divination spell can easily find it. The elves could suddenly collapse in the next month because the Ming somehow getting Titan number 4 to exterminate them.

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That's vanishingly unlikely to happen - we'd know if that was a likelihood, having our Ming lieutenant. What is likely to happen is we go to the Elves, get even stronger - because of course we are or it's a complete waste of time - and suddenly the Netherine no longer counts as dangerous adventuring.

Alratan said:

Cultivator battles do; but this was a spell designed by Diagram Magi for Diagram Magi. Their battles took an awful lot longer.

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Neat! I'd be all over that.

Point of going into Tomb is to try and reinvent Cultivation. That's generally something we want to do prior to Dao Cleaving.

We can't really afford to wait until we finish with elves.

Current vote count?

You guys are overestimating the Realm score moderately. There are theoretical Realm configurations that let you raise zombies equal to your Cultivation level, but a Realm that Death-Aspected would limit the scope and scale of any enhancements placed from other Signs. The Realm enhancements must all follow a coherent theme.

George said:

Kong Zang knows everything we do about the Diagram and spoke in the color of the Truth in the quoted part below, so I think he would've just killed us if that amount of power were both within our grasp in less than five years and sufficient to kill him.

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He wouldn't know about EFBs either way, but perhaps he guessed (correctly) that you guys wouldn't be able to save up for an EFB anyway! Even now you only have 4 BPs total, with the prospect of missing out on an EFB Dao when it is offered...

Deathbybunnies said:

The fact that we get more build points appears to explicitly confirm it.

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You can add Design points to a structure, that does not imply that the structure's existing point allotment can be revised.

That's a bit of an issue. Most of builds we tend to go for prioritize Sign, Size and Hab over Access and Security, so making combat relevant Vault that could transition into Monster Dungeon plus Empire would be somewhat impossible.

So if we just get one MM point we can get the Truth? Shit, tempted even though it's inefficient.

ITT: people failing the marshmallow test left and right.

I just realized that Kong Zang's data on us doesn't include going Even Further Beyond at all. He might not even know we can. So... yeah. We may well need at least a couple of those if we want to beat his estimates.

Tally incoming

Box Lunch said:

I just realized that Kong Zang's data on us doesn't include going Even Further Beyond at all. He might not even know we can. So... yeah. We may well need at least a couple of those if we want to beat his estimates.

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He does sort of know about EFB level effects seeing how he got at least two.

Also the Elven Nation would probably fit the best with the vault. Of all the nations they're the ones who'd care most about evacuating civilians into our massive safe zone, they're the ones with a low enough population that we can start early. The war with the elves are about land basically, so there should be a contingent amount of them that have already lost their lands and would be grateful for a place to stay. A diplomatic way of getting elves to conceded a town sized land parcel would also greatly smooth over things with Ming in addition to the ton of stuff we have going for us like Xiaoling.
Not only that but there could be a chance to have elves inside of our vault practicing the half of Binary Magic that we've totally neglected, instead of Artifacting they could improve the quality of the lands inside our Vault with Naturalism. We'd have a high habitation score so it could even be better to practice such a thing inside than out. At the very least it would be much better to start something like that sooner rather than later.
Really that applies to a lot of the elven stuff, sooner rather than later. They might not fall in a couple of months sure, but they'd certainly be worse off and thus less able to help us, while the dungeon isn't going anywhere (aside from how it moves but you know what I mean). Stopping hostilities earlier means its a much smoother peace process, and the revelation of how your kids could have these awesome beyond stages that are currently making Xiaoling a whole 1.25 stages above her current realm would be game changing, when a .5 boost often comes at the cost of a dangerous and temporary Forbidden Technique.

Of the choices presented to us the elves might not give the highest possible level of mystery box, but they are certainly the choice that is best taken as soon as we can since them degrading in power over time was brought up over a year ago in game. The dungeon moves but we'll always be able to find it and its contents have survived some ten thousand years, they can sit for a couple more months.

Rihaku said:

You guys are overestimating the Realm score moderately. There are theoretical Realm configurations that let you raise zombies equal to your Cultivation level, but a Realm that Death-Aspected would limit the scope and scale of any enhancements placed from other Signs. The Realm enhancements must all follow a coherent theme.

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Can we have an Essence aligned Vault?

If the Sign effects can be based on unknown spells, could we do something relating to excellence, which seems in theme, which brings anything done in the realm closer to its conceptual ideal when the stars of the sub-realm are right?

We can then make artifacts in there, breakthrough Cultivation stages in there, etc.

Basically, trying to cheese free BP or BP discounts.

Also, if we can replicate spells we don't know, how about Fate battle diagrams? Can we gain the benefits of being able to see Fate and optimise artifacts inside the Vault.

If we're saving the elves, that would be amazing for them as well.

Box Lunch said:

I just realized that Kong Zang's data on us doesn't include going Even Further Beyond at all. He might not even know we can. So... yeah. We may well need at least a couple of those if we want to beat his estimates.

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...Yeah, I suppose if we've never actually gone EFB before he wouldn't have any reason to include it in his calulations.

Horrifying thought - Zang Kong is an extremely alarming Red Herring, the Heroine is the Reverse-Secret True Boss, and it's entirely because she can use Beyond Points and has the discipline to save up for EFBs.

Wolfy said:

He does sort of know about EFB level effects seeing how he got at least two.

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Well yes, I'm sure he knows they exist. Everyone knows, at least in theory, that a sufficiently talented and ingenious individual can do things others consider impossible on the level of absurdity. But I have to wonder if Kongo's Truth can tell him about our potential, or just what we have actually done before.

Box Lunch said:

Well yes, I'm sure he knows they exist. Everyone knows, at least in theory, that a sufficiently talented and ingenious individual can do things others consider impossible on the level of absurdity. But I have to wonder if Kongo's Truth can tell him about our potential, or just what we have actually done before.

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If it's the latter than it's not even his Truth. It's just his ability to see in our head.

[x]Vault of the Ur-Pharoh
-[x]Don't go Further Beyond
[x]Journey to the West

Deathbybunnies said:

Horrifying thought - Zang Kong is an extremely alarming Red Herring, the Heroine is the Reverse-Secret True Boss, and it's entirely because she can use Beyond Points and has the discipline to save up for EFBs.

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Let's hope not! She's a trashy reverse-harem anime protagonist, with eighteen years of slice-of-life action-comedy under her belt. Her Omake engine is far superior to ours.

The real frightening thing would be Kong not having the Truth, but plucking it out from us through the eyes when he wakes up.

Anyway, I figure Vault for Elves, Balance form if we get the upgrade. Elder Beast is just blindly aping Kong after all, and and Balance ultimately mitigates esoteric stuff like Fate Influence.

No BP spent extra yet though. If a Dao is something that isn't tied to Cultivation stages, we ideally want that to be an EFB

The Elves will still be there when we're done with the Tomb, but the converse may not be true. Literally, since the thing moves around and is so well-hidden that we need a Cerebration to find it. Both options have uncertain benefits; if we wanted to gorge ourselves on Forbidden Techniques and Cultivation resources, the Center was the way to go. Instead we're betting on a long shot, and I'd prefer to delve into this world's past than seek out tips from Nameless' own. The former is much more interesting, and potentially relevant to the struggle at hand. All those buried secrets... this is what drew us to the South in the first place, the desire to peel back the Ages until we laid eyes on the naked truth. Besides, it's convenient geographically to hit up the Tomb while we're still in Southern Vane. We won't be coming back for it, so unlike Journey to the West it's a one-time deal.