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Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

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Thor's Twin said:
A mechanical reason is for the domain dice. We have a total of 6 arts that give domain dice (TRF, SCS, PLR, AE, AM, FVM). Of those, SCS and PLR should be done in 2 weeks of work, TRF should be done in 3 weeks, and AM, AE, and FVM will take longer than that. This means that AM, AE, and FVM are the most consistent way for us to get Domain dice over the next 5 weeks. If we train FVM for 5 weeks, the minimum amount of domain xp should be about 30, which is about 1/3 of the progress we need to make from a single art.
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You missed AC in your list. Admittedly, we are 58 XP away from starting the Green-level AC5, but that should only be a single action worth of effort with the vent drip, so it should make an entirely viable source of XP all on its own.

Thor's Twin said:
Now, FVM7 is an odd level that also needs another meridian. This makes me think that there would be another technique involved. Which is enticing. Is it enticing enough to forgo either AM5 or AE4 (along with the other argent arts)? I personally think so. I believe that the training with Zeqing will be beneficial narratively (if not mechanically) that the potential to have one of our primary arts be 1 level away from completion by the time of the tournament and to see the mechanical upgrades that would entail is enticing enough to forgo one of our other arts.
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As a counterpoint - judging from FVM and FSS, evolving an Art to Green grants a major improvement, to the point where I think it would be fair to call such a thing a trump card at our level. So I think that getting AM and AC is likely to be a major boon.

In contrast, even if FVM gets considerably better, it is much more of an anti-crowd effect than a single-target one, and I'm just not seeing a need to push that any harder than we are already. As it is, we can take most of the crowd with near-contemptuous ease at this point - the trick is going to be hitting the true elites, and that is what I'd like to focus on. And AM's improved Spiritual defenses plus AC's "focus down a single target" specialty should be more helpful than FVM's crowd-control.
 
sstabeler said:
well, it's at least heavily implied they slept together after the Moon Party where they met...
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No, Ling Qi slept on top of Sixiang. Like, literally slept.
sstabeler said:
that's what we KNOW occurred, but there's an implication that they had sex. Sixiang certainly seems to imply it in their conversation afterwards.
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They did not have sex.

archangis said:
That's exactly what happened to Xin and it's common enough that one of the sisters want to do so.

Moon spirits are the diy waifu of the setting.

Aside, dropping a quest because someone that follow it too said something gross is weird. Why would anyone abandon something because other people they find "gross" like it too is beyond me.
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That's a really bizarre reading of those situations. One, Xin was deliberately antagonizing Jiao and as such the specifics of her claims are of dubious truthfulness in any practical sense. I'm skeptical Jiao set out to deliberately bag himself a spirit wife. Two, Ma Lei was... deliberately teasing her sister over a crush. It wasn't a serious suggestion. It was very obviously not a serious suggestion. In fact, given the context of its use as a teasing statement, the fact that spirit blooded families are out of vogue, and the overall human-centricity of the culture, we can assume that the idea is inherently scandalous. Ma Jun also expressed a desire to bind a spirit "skilled in song", not a moon spirit specifically.

And I'd be ditching the quest because people were attempting to move the narrative in gross directions, not because other participants are somehow innately gross and radiating grossness at me.
 
yrsillar said:
"Heh, Sis can't get a boyfriend, so she wants to make one,"
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AbeoLogos said:
That's a really bizarre reading of those situations. One, Xin was deliberately antagonizing Jiao and as such the specifics of her claims are of dubious truthfulness in any practical sense. I'm skeptical Jiao set out to deliberately bag himself a spirit wife. Two, Ma Lei was... deliberately teasing her sister over a crush. It wasn't a serious suggestion. It was very obviously not a serious suggestion. In fact, given the context of its use as a teasing statement, the fact that spirit blooded families are out of vogue, and the overall human-centricity of the culture, we can assume that the idea is inherently scandalous. Ma Jun also expressed a desire to bind a spirit "skilled in song", not a moon spirit specifically.
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It seem pretty obvious that moon fairy (or all spirits maybe) are considered as thing you make husband/wife out of. People can be teased by saying they want to make an husbando from a moon spirit so it's seen as a definite possibility and not an abnormal comportement.

Add to that what Xin said, and the interpretation of moon spirit being dyi waifu seem quite evidenced.

Aside, given the prevalence of famillies with spirit ancestor, I am not convinced about it being frowned upon. There isn't a single old familly without spirit blood that we know of. I find it hard to believe it's considered shamefull when everyone does it.

Lastly Ma Jun want to bind a moon spirit strong in song. That's why she asked for our advice with capturing moon spirit. It's not any strong in song spirit that she want.
 
I am fine with binding the muse because we were having trouble song writing. And hopefully make non-gloomy songs.

Plus if there is writers block, we can actually shake our muse in frustration.
 
PrimalShadow said:
I don't think that is a fair portrayal; you aren't properly listing the tradeoffs that go into each category.

FVM7 costs 500 successes. It is absolutely impossible to get it for free; you have to give up something. At best, what you give up is "free time". This is why you got away with saying that "if we do closed door, it might not cost us that." Closed door means we have 1 extra major action a week that is "free", and if you use it up in the FVM7-case you aren't giving up any allocated art in the no-FVM7-case. But you are still giving up the "free" actions there, and "free" actions are not actually free. They come with an opportunity cost - maybe pushing Arts that we weren't otherwise planning to push, maybe practicing formations, maybe doing something else. Point is, you can't just use up that valuable potential and say that it costs nothing.
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The 'free' actions are free when we have nothing to fill them in. This is why, well, the current plan has up to 4 actions with nothing in it and we go "why not formations there". Because we can't get AS5, but we have all the other arts.

Now, we could say get 'story' there, but the issue is we are in crunch time and shooting for tournament. We don't want story.

Thor's Twin said:
However, if we go for FVM7, I don't think that we will be able to get AM5 (or AE4 should we choose AM over AE) or much progress on the other argent arts. Just looking at the actions available per week and what we would want to do means that we would only have 2 or 3 weeks to get the three argent arts time to cultivate and that amount of time is probably not going to be able to get to AM5, let alone AC or AS.
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This is actually much better than that. Here is a 'current' plan courtesy of @Black Noise for the rest of the year. It assumes we get 10+ stealth exp against Renshu, and Renshu does not cost us an action right now. @yrsillar, can you confirm whether Renshu vote is costing us an action right now?
First line are the EPC successes.

         
PLR SCS AE    
AM PLR AM AM AM
AC TRF AC TRF AC
SCS AC TRF AC AS
FREE FREE AS FREE FREE
AS AE AE AE AC
As you can see, there is 4 'blank/free' actions in that current plan. It also assumes tutors every week, and a bunch of other stuff. I am not a fan of non closed door if we decide to go for FVM7 for the reason we are losing that leeway. Now, if we do decide to go for FVM7 but not go closed door , the 'safe' ways to do so would be to give up on AE4, or give up on AC5, or give up on AM5. A risky way would be to give up AS3, like this:

         
PLR SCS FVM FVM FVM
AM TRF AM AM AM
AC SCS AC TRF AC
PLR AC TRF AC FVM
FVM FVM FVM FVM FVM
Heart AE AE AE AE
As you can see, we would need FVM every weeks + possibility of tripling down on FVM the last week if we have bad EPC successes rolls (We can get 90-180, so if we have less than 80 after the first two EPC/FVM successes week, we'd need to have a closed door in last week to triple down on FVM).

Now, I dislike it. It gives us almost no leeway (sacrificing AC5 is best because we win at least 6 actions (heart meridian), but if you really prefer sacrificing AE instead works too). Still, it's not "losing 2/3" arts, it's losing one (or two in AS case) art level for FVM7.
PrimalShadow said:
You missed AC in your list. Admittedly, we are 58 XP away from starting the Green-level AC5, but that should only be a single action worth of effort with the vent drip, so it should make an entirely viable source of XP all on its own.


As a counterpoint - judging from FVM and FSS, evolving an Art to Green grants a major improvement, to the point where I think it would be fair to call such a thing a trump card at our level. So I think that getting AM and AC is likely to be a major boon.

In contrast, even if FVM gets considerably better, it is much more of an anti-crowd effect than a single-target one, and I'm just not seeing a need to push that any harder than we are already. As it is, we can take most of the crowd with near-contemptuous ease at this point - the trick is going to be hitting the true elites, and that is what I'd like to focus on. And AM's improved Spiritual defenses plus AC's "focus down a single target" specialty should be more helpful than FVM's crowd-control.
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AC5 should be really damn strong, but it's also something that has half its techs and passives not being directly being useful to us. It can be useful for minion strat.... but FVM7 can also be useful for minion strats, and arguably moreso.

FVM7 might be overall centred on anti-crowd rather than anti-unit, but it's also key to our death spiral strat, and those work for anti-unit. Hell, current FVM6 has Dissonance and Elegy being competitive against green people for their effects now. Getting FVM7 is going to make it even moreso, turning some 'elite' into 'crowd'.
 
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I understand if Meizhen thought there was a one night stand because jealousy lies to you, but it doesn't seem likely to me.

Ling Qi's ankles were exposed.

Ankles.
 
[X] It's time to finish this, one way or the other, infiltrate Yan Renshu's base and break the back of his operation for good.
-[X] Invite Meizhen along

I wanna steal his stuff and Cai is liable to not let us steal as much.
 
Arkeus said:
The 'free' actions are free when we have nothing to fill them in. This is why, well, the current plan has up to 4 actions with nothing in it and we go "why not formations there". Because we can't get AS5, but we have all the other arts.

Now, we could say get 'story' there, but the issue is we are in crunch time and shooting for tournament. We don't want story.
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Then don't say "we can get FVM without giving up anything!"; say that "we can get FVM, and all we have to give up is 6 minors and the 4 free actions we haven't yet allocated". Don't just silently drop the free actions from the calculation; give us the actual tradeoff so we can evaluate if it is worth making.
 
PrimalShadow said:
Then don't say "we can get FVM without giving up anything!"; say that "we can get FVM, and all we have to give up is 6 minors and the 4 free actions we haven't yet allocated". Don't just silently drop the free actions from the calculation; give us the actual tradeoff so we can evaluate if it is worth making.
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We can go closed door and lose nothing, or not go closed door and lose the 4 actions not allocated as well as 1 art level (or 2 with AS). Your insistence that I should use pleonasm by signalling losing minors twice when saying going closed door is baffling.
 
Do we know for certain which of our arts should jump onto green at the next level?
Given the expected power gain it would be more effective to sacrifice one that would still be yellow.
I like AE, but I have some doubts about AE4 being green level, for instance. I would be amenable to sacrificing it for FVM7 instead of AM5 or AC5 which should reach green.
 
Nemonowan said:
Do we know for certain which of our arts should jump onto green at the next level?
Given the expected power gain it would be more effective to sacrifice one that would still be yellow.
I like AE, but I have some doubts about AE4 being green level, for instance. I would be amenable to sacrificing it for FVM7 instead of AM5 or AC5 which should reach green.
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SCS6, TRF5, AE4, AM5, AC5, AS5 should all be green. AS5 is impossible without doubling (or tripling) up though.
 
Nemonowan said:
Do we know for certain which of our arts should jump onto green at the next level?
Given the expected power gain it would be more effective to sacrifice one that would still be yellow.
I like AE, but I have some doubts about AE4 being green level, for instance. I would be amenable to sacrificing it for FVM7 instead of AM5 or AC5 which should reach green.
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AE4 requires 250 successes, which so far has been the sole domain of green arts to my recollection.

However, for better evidence, working on AE last update, after we got AE3 and working towards AE4, gave us domain successes.
yrsillar said:
AE :
Talent 6 + YSS25 + GSS20 + Tutor 10 + Black Pool 6 + EPC 15 + Pills 20 + Lung 10 = 112 dice + 5 autos (Imperial 5).
1 1 10 7 4 10 3 3 1 2 7 5 9 2 7 4 7 10 6 8 2 7 2 5 9 8 10 10 4 2 1 6 2 10 2 7 1 6 9 2 8 7 8 8 1 4 1 9 5 8 6 7 4 10 3 5 9 2 4 4 5 5 10 7 6 1 3 9 7 4 10 6 2 9 5 4 2 6 5 7 5 10 5 1 1 7 5 10 1 10 3 5 6 2 3 4 5 8 2 1 3 3 8 6 1 2 10 4 9 6 2 4. 61 successes

Rerolling 13
1 1 1 9 6 7 7 1 2 2 4 3 1. 9 successes. 5 auto. 75 total
75/250

1/4th to spiritual, 1/10th to domain, improves resilience and resolve.
396/1200
90/200
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And since getting Domain xp can only be gained by working on green level arts, AE4 is most definitely green.
 
We will not be specced for any of AE's techs to be usable with the exception of the worms. I'm fine with dropping it temporarily in favor of FVM7 pursuit, as the worms are good enough right now to be useful for our purposes (giving us pressure crack bonuses and landing a grapple).

While I also was a proponent of pursuing formations work with the free slots we had, the now real possibility of binding Sixiang (even as a non-combat focused spirit) lessens their importance in my view.
 
The Worms from AE are improving pretty fast (both in quantity and quality), and despite the Art only having one useful tech for us it does have some very useful passives including Qi regeneration. I'm not enthusiastic about sacrificing leveling the Worms again in return for AM5 or AC4-5.

Now, if the comparison was AE against a hypothetical musical summoning focused Art, I'd of course be in favor of the latter. But I think we want to be leveling a summoning Art for the tourney to complement all this support we have, and AE is the only player in that game right now. There aren't a whole lot of reasons to believe AM5 is going to be needed because our expected opponents aren't very sneaky, and AC doesn't exactly have good techs for us either when you compare to Hoarfrost Caress. Granted, both arts have the potential for useful passives, but AE has useful passives as well.

In terms of priorities, I would put obvious easy stuff like finishing the current levels of TRF5, SCS6, and PLR2 first. Then I would put FVM7, ahead of everything else because FVM is our signature tech and we have every reason to believe the improvement will be useful, and we even have that spare Heart meridian for it. After that I think I would put AE4, then AS3 for the sheer short-term efficiency of one action maybe giving us a defense die. Amongst doing all these things I view as fairly necessary I would also say getting our Domain advanced before the Tourney is high priority too. I think AS4, AC4-5, and AM5 are all a ways after that in utility.

As for Formations, I wouldn't mind spending an action to learn the Horror and then spending an action to build it, but once you go much beyond that and trying to spend actions for learning about mobile skeletons and building that as well, I think we're getting pretty far outside what we're actually good at. And unlike AC5 and AM5 these Formation actions don't even give Domain XP.
 
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So, some more of my thoughts on the next five weeks!
PrimalShadow said:
As a counterpoint - judging from FVM and FSS, evolving an Art to Green grants a major improvement, to the point where I think it would be fair to call such a thing a trump card at our level. So I think that getting AM and AC is likely to be a major boon.

In contrast, even if FVM gets considerably better, it is much more of an anti-crowd effect than a single-target one, and I'm just not seeing a need to push that any harder than we are already. As it is, we can take most of the crowd with near-contemptuous ease at this point - the trick is going to be hitting the true elites, and that is what I'd like to focus on. And AM's improved Spiritual defenses plus AC's "focus down a single target" specialty should be more helpful than FVM's crowd-control.
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I agree that getting AM or AC to green would be a dramatic increase in their potency. However, it is kind of a coin flip for me whether the improvement will see play. We have evidence from FSA that the last "capstone" of an art may not see that much use when the rest of the art suitably fills in the rolls the last technique fills.

So I agree that AM will see a potent increase in power, but that the power will be situational. And looking at what we know of the roster of the tournament, not many people focus on the spiritual arts to the degree that we would need to be concerned. Of the monsters, only Meizhen seems to focus on the spiritual arts to a real degree and outside of that our current spiritual defense should suffice.

Contrast that to FVM in which we will be using it in every battle. It is our go-to art and I don't see a battle where we don't start out with it. So if we say that the increase in AM's power exceeds the increase in FVM's power, I would still vote to go for FVM over AM simply because we will use FVM significantly more than AM.

AC is different as it allows a group of people to overcome a stronger opponent. The first two techniques of AC specifically allow an ally to strike above their typical weight class. Coincidentally, this is helpful for Zhengui, a formation puppet, or the worms we summon.

I have no idea how powerful AC will become, but we can imagine that it will give a significant boost to allies, as that is the whole point of that art. Which means, if we want to go for AC5 we should also go for AE4 and formation minions to get the most out of that boost in power.

For me, I would ideally have all of our arts reach green with FVM7, but barring that I feel that AM and AS are the least needed. I'm not even sure if PLR is approaching green, and getting anything higher than PLR2 is not going to be happening.
 
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