He grimaced. The thought of it reminded him too much of his final blow against the Tyrant, an uttermost exertion of the self. The consequences of its use should not be quite as severe, but... he would use it only as a last resort. Only if all else failed.
From a character point of view, this surprises me very little.
Discontentedly he surveyed its remains. Fresh power surged within him from the ring, but he could not bring himself to be pleased with what had just occurred. The monster-knight had been his superior in strength and speed, though only by a modest margin. What rankled was that it had forced him into his wraith form so easily, and its was only that form's superior agility that had carried the day. Had he been a being of flesh alone, this would likely have been the end.
What can I say but lmao.
I'm becoming concerned with the ease with which Hunger leaves the flesh behind. Chill of the Grave indeed....
It turns out that, though we now do have Rage as a second backup, in base form we have neither offensive nor defensive supremacy against even the low-tier mobs of the Temple. So this next pick is pretty necessary to avoid disaster. I'm going to lay out my full thoughts below. (Does this count as a fanwork?? OR just a very, very extensive argument with myself?)
Options Analysis, Strategy
-Stragglers: Good, even relatively "safe" with the correct power upgrades. Allows us to gather info about other mobs.
-Vanquish: Was my first instinct, but that's just chasing a purposeful Rage proc for an extra XP, given that I feel even the best combination of power gains here won't immunize us
that much against the knights. We are already, due to shitty base stats, going to
have to use Form of Rage at some point, which comes with becoming Tired and losing Arete
at best. I Do Not Want to become Exhausted and give up 2 Arete so easily in this Temple. That sounds like a goddamn nightmare.
-Wait: I do not think this is a good idea, and believe that it should only be taken if we want to backsies and try again with Gisena and Vanguard. Probably gives Arete because otherwise it's incredibly silly. We came here for a good reason: power. Commit to it.
-Look: Calling a group weaker than us means that Tyrant isn't intrinsically awful. And it is possible to buff them a little bit if we charmed them a bit and took Vanguard. But overall, it's a weak play and what I would call a "bad idea". People weaker than us, even specialists with useful knowledge, are a huge drag in a place like this. I'm willing to carry someone we care about, like Gisena, but I'm not willing to risk my life protecting some randos that we'll have to massively outscale anyways. And we don't want to meet people stronger than us, because they're a danger and might interfere.
We need to be building power, so Wait and Look are both bad ideas. Vanquish will proc Rage with a high level of certainty, which gives us an extra XP if we survive but makes us Tired and takes away Arete/Advancements. Now, normally I would say that basically trading an Arete or a single past XP for a 3/4 XP options is a steal, but the cost of becoming Tired is committing us to a bad position early on, and an especially bad one when we likely end up using Rage a second time later on, which will happen even with a 3/4 pick of XP options given how bad we were against low tier mobs here. Plus I'm against it on a characterization level, especially with Hunger's feelings that he mentions in the chapter. Gotta be Stragglers, which is safer but still pursues the snowballing effect.
[X] Pick Off Stragglers
Options Analysis, Power
-Force: Stronk. ++Might, ++Agility. Pure stats is actually a decent offensive option here. It's just simple, clean utility, like a good bowl of cereal.
-Shroud: ++Protection, +Charisma, expands Evening Sky to have magic resistance. A defensive option, offers strong coverage against the Knights and other magical attack, which different strong
er mobs will surely have. Luscious but narrower utility, like a nicely baked piece of King Salmon.
-Knell: An offensive option that is really good as far as grinding Temple for XP goes, but might be substantially worse outside it, given that our more challenging fights seem to be 1v1s. Also doesn't handle single boss monsters well. I think this can be disregarded, as it has only transitory utility. Pop Rocks.
-Swift: Doesn't improve base stats, but a massive +++++Agility, +Willpower, way better healing, and better phasing in second form (though sadly it still takes a day to regenerate the stock, otherwise this would be obviously better than everything else). Fun and helpful, but better in specific circumstances. A fruit bowl.
-Undying Vanguard: I'm not sure what the stats on this are after subtracting Echo. I think it's probably +Might, +Agility? Maybe a +Con? Those stats are not worth the Arete, and the rest of the effect is something we can barely use without taking a highly undesirable strategic route. Puts us into Arete debt, which is bad when we are definitely going to have to use Rage at least once. A strong no from ya boy, inedible.
Vanguard is unusable thanks to being completely fucking unsuitable for this situation and costing too much Arete. Knell is only worthwhile because it handles general effectiveness, but in our normal circumstances it sucks, because it fails against 1v1s and therefore boss fights, which is where we generally need to watch ourselves, even if common mobs are our immediate challenge. Remember, normal stats kill common mobs just as well as special damage, but you can use them for other things. Force is good for the beginning of an offensive snowball, but it's a bit risky. Shroud is absolutely premium defense, and will help us in general, but doesn't help our lack of offensive power right now. I mean, if we pick Stragglers it's risky because it means we're on a clock where we'll have to play wear-down against these enemies who will absolutely purposefully group up or run away on us. If we pick Vanquish it's not any more risky, since we'll definitely proc Rage, but might make us safer when we're inevitably exhausted. Swift is extremely good right now, and pretty useful in general, but it has the same problem where it allows us to weather assault but not finish them. I don't want to play a game where we can't snowball against the dungeon because we're constantly having to run away mid-fight. Though Swift lets us run away really, really well whenever we get our ghost ejected in the future, which is hyper-valuable seeing how often it happens, even if it doesn't improve our base stats like Shroud.
I think it has to be Force. It's the only option that covers both offensive and defensive improvement, both of which we really need, and is better with Stragglers. I think Shroud is better with Vanquish because of it protecting us even without second form as a fallback, but Vanquish is a bad option anyways. If we get the option to pick Swift later I will absolutely hop on it ASAP. Super good pick for us, just not what is needed at this exact moment.
[X] Brute Force
My intuition is that this vote will be a struggle between people taking Vanquish and others pointing out how unnecessarily risky it is. Because Vanquisher won, people will now want to slam their hand on the "Nut" button that is Form of Rage so that they can blow their load, and it'll be very difficult, if not impossible, to convince them it's a bad idea. I've been typing this since the update went up, though, so I still have to read through everyone else's posts.
