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A Simple Transaction I

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x3 XP does not necessarily equal x3 more powerful rewards, just as x10 XP does not equal 10x more powerful rewards! It's still a substantial increase, but XP requirements do not always increase linearly. This is so in almost any XP system...
 
[X] Speak to Letrizia
[X] Star-Blade Saint

I blame Micro's art, she makes that dress look dooope.
 
Xalvitor said:
I mean, i'm mostly based what i said based on this:



Maybe i'm just flat-out wrong and exhaustion is not that bad at this point, mostly because i don't think Rihaku would just flat-out lie about an option. Or maybe the agi bonus from Saint means that Hunger would just flat-out be able to outrun most enemies, which is possible.
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The Pseudo-Grace, Gisena buff and Thousand Cuts are not "minimal gains" though. We'd have quite a lot; which would allow safety on the return trip.
Orm Embar said:
ATC's got a couple aspects to it: it septuples strength and speed of Fell-Handed Strokes and makes all melee attacks apply the same cursed wounds that baseline FHS does. The second part should work fine while Exhausted, but the first? Blade-winds and special attacks all draw from the same pool of supernal stamina that telling the world to cough up a beast with healing capabilities does, we'd be relying on the stats and Gisena to exfiltrate safely.

Bloodslayer has a window of vulnerability too, but it's smaller, since once Hunger heals back into human form we're good to go. In the unlikely event that we get ambushed, we still have Form of Rage on tap, which reduces Lingering Paralysis to five percent.
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We have Amaranth Star, remember? He can still Blade-wind a bit most likely; the Pseudo-Grace would help too. Plus Gisena's buff! When it say's it is the safest option, I believe it.

Rihaku said:
x3 XP does not necessarily equal x3 more powerful rewards, just as x10 XP does not equal 10x more powerful rewards! It's still a substantial increase, but XP requirements do not always increase linearly. This is so in almost any XP system...
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Thank you for this statement. Thank you so much.
 
Rihaku said:
x3 XP does not necessarily equal x3 more powerful rewards, just as x10 XP does not equal 10x more powerful rewards! It's still a substantial increase, but XP requirements do not always increase linearly. This is so in almost any XP system...
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That goes without saying, yeah. Still, Quickening does establish sheer power of Progression+, and it's apparently a prerequisite to actually good stuff.
BrainInAJar said:
Thank you for this statement. Thank you so much.
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That doesn't let your pretend that getting 300% more value from our Hunger is somehow not Temple-winning, you know?
 
George said:
There have been no posts saying the Apocryphal Curse will ever cause instant death without any hope for survival like that.
Also if it can do that our build literally doesn't matter and we can vote for whatever the fuck we want because the quest will end to rocks fall party dies anyway.
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Going into this temple was voting to tiptoe through a minefield, Apocryphal means the mines can move. Apocryphal will endeavor to hit us when it's most inconvenient, the issue is in the Temple this is trivial to arrange with much higher level of opposition than usual on tap. Maybe it won't make it so the chief bigwig immediately finds out and ganks us, but knowledge of our ring being spread to the society that makes its trade on exploiting a ring certainly sounds pretty 'interesting' to me. Which leaves us in a pretty similar scenario to the first one anyway.

The build does matter because depending on how we progress we can scale to the level the minefield has become a field of firecrackers.
 
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Wolfy said:
That doesn't let your pretend that getting 300% more value from our Hunger is somehow not Temple-winning, you know?
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Not three times value, three times exp in Blood advancements, most of whom only benefit from in one of our three forms. That's very different. We can win the Temple without relying on anti-synergy. it's even safer to do so! Safety means power for a Progression-type; we can thrive as long as we can survive. There's little need to go all in our Second Form given much safer paths of advancements; especially given how much this place relies on Soul Evocation...
 
Reminder that we actually have 25% Tiredness and Exhaustion mitigation since the last time we were either thanks to a previous Evening Sky purchase in Amaranth Star, so even the short term debuff is reduced in worry from where it would otherwise be.
 
BrainInAJar said:
We have Amaranth Star, remember? He can still Blade-wind a bit most likely; the Pseudo-Grace would help too. Plus Gisena's buff! When it say's it is the safest option, I believe it
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I don't doubt the description, it's just that the safety probably comes in part from Hunger not throwing himself back into the deep-end meatgrinder of advancement. For at least a day, long enough to get Exhausted down to Tired and Form of Rage back online. But time burns, and Apocryphal-free days do so brightly. We should try and push forward, even if that's not the safest route overall, because risk comes hand in hand with reward. By spending 14 Arete here, Bloodslayer's still much safer than Heedless or Balance.
 
Orm Embar said:
I don't doubt the description, it's just that the safety probably comes in part from Hunger not throwing himself back into the deep-end meatgrinder of advancement. For at least a day, long enough to get Exhausted down to Tired and Form of Rage back online. Time burns, and Apocryphal-free days do so brightly. We should try and push forward, even if that's not the safest route overall, because risk comes hand in hand with reward. By spending 14 Arete here, Bloodslayer's still much safer than Heedless or Balance.
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Bloodslayer is over for the day anyway due to being in ghost form. Is one day of lesser effectiveness really worth less safety and anti-synergy making our additional forms comparatively worse? I don't think so. We can still grind a bit while tired anyway, and there's still other things we can do. We don't give up the day entirely.
 
While indeed 3 times XP doesn't mean 3 times as powerful, it still is a substantial increase in efficiency. On top of that, it's the most likely source of utility effects, something that any non-mage build won't have. Gisena is very useful, but she's kind of only useful to nullify things currently!
 
Still, I'd say overall that 3x XP translates to options that are somewhere between 50% and 125% more powerful within their purview. A Blood-based Echo of the Forebear would give something like ++Might, +Agi to forms with blood, or maybe +Agi, +Might, +Wits, +10% regen speed. A Blood-based What Rains May Come would grant triple reversed wound penalties at the cost of requiring an actual blood transfusion for the healing of others, etc. It's still incredible value for XP.
 
BrainInAJar said:
Bloodslayer is over for the day anyway due to being in ghost form. Is one day of lesser effectiveness really worth less safety and anti-synergy making our additional forms comparatively worse? I don't think so. We can still grind a bit while tired anyway, and there's still other things we can do. We don't give up the day entirely.
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That second part is actually false. The inner temple wasn't giving anything hugely useful for Hunger even before he managed to gain extra-power from this update. Unless he faces an dreadbeast, Hunger isn't gaining much from the inner temple. And for other things...true, but nothing that would help with power to help to advance within the temple.
 
BrainInAJar said:
Bloodslayer is over for the day anyway due to being in ghost form. Is one day of lesser effectiveness really worth less safety and anti-synergy making our additional forms comparatively worse? I don't think so. We can still grind a bit while tired anyway, and there's still other things we can do. We don't give up the day entirely.
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6-12 hours of downtime vs 48. There's no way I'd ever vote to hit the middle layer while Tired. That's way way too far. Not at all safe.
 
Xalvitor said:
While indeed 3 times XP doesn't mean 3 times as powerful, it still is a substantial increase in efficiency. On top of that, it's the most likely source of utility effects, something that any non-mage build won't have. Gisena is very useful, but she's kind of only useful to nullify things currently!
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I mean, Tolkien Wizardry is not exactly renowned for it's utility effects. I don't think we will get something like that even if Bloodslayer wins.

Xalvitor said:
That second part is actually false. The inner temple wasn't giving anything hugely useful for Hunger even before he managed to gain extra-power from this update. Unless he faces an dreadbeast, Hunger isn't gaining much from the inner temple.
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Thomasfoolery said:
8-12 hours of downtime vs 48. There's no way I'd ever vote to hit the middle layer while Tired. That's way way too far. Not at all safe.
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We can still Search for Adventurers, or try to capture somebody for information. Power is not just Progression, it can be other things too. I though most people resented the punishing pace we are setting anyway. As Hunger says, you can't unerringly pursue duty. A day of less stress might be good, maybe.
 
Rihaku said:
Still, I'd say overall that 3x XP translates to options that are somewhere between 50% and 125% more powerful within their purview. A Blood-based Echo of the Forebear would give something like ++Might, +Agi to forms with blood, or maybe +Agi, +Might, +Wits, +10% regen speed. A Blood-based What Rains May Come would grant triple reversed wound penalties at the cost of requiring an actual blood transfusion for the healing of others, etc. It's still incredible value for XP.
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I personally see it more akin to the ring of truth, just assume that it doubles the effective value of an choice. Might not be entirely accurate, but options that give less in raw power, would give more in utility, which really shouldn't be underestimated.

Conjured Blade said:
She'll need evolutions to have a chance of applying her nullity to other things. Question is what benefits will Gisena get out of this breakthrough?
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I don't think it needs to apply to other things, but rather, the raw power of future enemies is going to be too big for her to fully nullify, only weaken. I severely doubt that we will be facing enemies that are immune to nullity. If i'm not wrong, the main thing that she needs is more power, which is very much possible with blood.

Ignoring that, i'm not really opossed to Findross reserch in the future, especially if we get ++progression from ruling ring. I would actually be very supportive of that, especially if we could make Letrizia an sorcerrer! If she doesn't want to be Asuka, let's make her an magical girl!

Of course, stuff to think after the temple.
 
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TooSlow said:
It takes a day to fully heal from second form and form of rage costs 1 arete makes us tired or exhausted if already tired, so a buff to our first form would greatly improve our survival chances and would maximise the number of days where we can safely fight.
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First of all, Second Form only takes a night. Second, yes, Quickening would make us rely on them less, but make much more dangerous if we are pushed to it anyway. This is troublesome because there are indeed things that can push us to those forms even with Bloodslayer. Seriously, the Magus battle was the only one in which we didn't use another form. So, instead of making a trade-off like that, why not just improve all our forms? More, make us even more effective at countering the Soul Evocations this civ relies on? It's the safest option for a reason. As a Progression-type Cursebearer, trading safety for immediate power is usually a bad trade-off because as long as we live we'll outscale them anyway. Why abandon this fact for shiny blood abilities?
 
BrainInAJar said:
We can still Search for Adventurers, or try to capture somebody for information. Power is not just Progression, it can be other things too. I though most people resented the punishing pace we are setting anyway. As Hunger says, you can't unerringly pursue duty. A day of less stress might be good, maybe.
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The punishing pace is necessary if we want to emerge victorious, we voted for the grind, time to put our nose to it. Quarterly report is due soon. The value of Adventurers has fallen off at this point in any case.
George said:
this is only possible because it can't do the bullshit you described; otherwise there is always a bigger bomb.
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The curse is not indifferent to our actions, where it will always helpfully give us a static danger level 60% Uncomplicated Victory 30% Complications 10% death encounter or something. We put ourselves in a position where it only has to put a feather-light weight on the scale to result in extraordinarily bad outcomes for us. Other times it'll have to heave hard to even muster an inconvenience.
 
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Thomasfoolery said:
The punishing pace is necessary if we want to emerge victorious, we voted for the grind, time to put our nose to it. Quarterly report is due soon. The value of Adventurers has fallen off at this point in any case.
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Gabrielle Fairbright would like a word with you. The Brutes would've been good too considering their anti-Mage shtick and who we are fighting. Getting information can be just as valuable as pressing forwards as well. We'll be far from powerless even while Tired.
 
There's an interesting dissonance going on about the encampment. Voters simultaneously seem to think that:
  • There are no adventurers in the Encampment who would be strong enough to help us with the Middle Layer, let alone the Inner Layer
and
  • The Encampment was such an extreme risk that we mustn't approach for fear of negative consequences after a Doom of the Tyrant proc
 
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