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A Simple Transaction I

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runeblue360 said:
I will note that the mental contamination from Vanreir is gonna be pretty rough. There are benefits to being more linear but many of our greatest victories have come from cunning and thinking outside the box, though age and treachery. If we do decide to go with this, we'd have to truly commit, which I don't think we're capable of doing in the absence of a Defining Advancement changing our incentives. I'd be a lot more on board with taking it if we'd grabbed Cut Through but most of our methods are pragmatic, even if the decisions behind them are reckless.
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In some ways the Librarian may be the best passenger... his arrogance has less room to deal damage with the Doom of the Tyrant already present, and his capabilities are immense. Think how much deadlier Hunger would be with even a fraction of the Librarian's teleportation, invisibility, mental / soul attacks, summoning, etc! And he directly gives +INT! What a broken character, Age and Treachery indeed!

The Librarian would also be a source of interesting conflict, while offering more than enough utility to offset the practical concerns.
 
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Dark Abstraction said:
Yes, at the cost of unacceptable maluses in other aspects, which will impinge our ability to do the things to gain it. Stranglethorn offers 20% and hurts us less, if the modofier's what you want you should vote for that.

Neither, however, gives Rank directly, unlike Kinslayer.
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20% < 30%

Stranglethorn is good at staying alive, but if we want to advance our rank we have to actually kill something. Uttermost is the way to make that happen.
 
Rihaku said:
A Kinslayer + Heal Letrizia's Mech strategy is also worth considering, as long as you can dodge Exhausted. Probably best to just take the liver hit and bank on healing it later, since you need the power now. Segues well into Blademight - Magic-Defeating Stance counters supernatural poisons and diseases, while Hero-Defeating Stance raises your Rank either further.
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You almost had it, until you said True Maiming instead of Punctured Soul, which is inferior since it introduces a permanent malus instead of simply reducing capabilities for a period of time that we'd be more than able to wait out.


Zampano said:
20% < 30%

Stranglethorn is good at staying alive, but if we want to advance our rank we have to actually kill something. Uttermost is the way to make that happen.
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20% & not wearing competency horse-blinders >>> 30% and wearing competency horse-blinders

Killing things well in a specific way, until it doesn't work anymore and you die, is not superior to the ability to kill things in ways of much wider breadth and being harder to kill inherently.
 
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Dark Abstraction said:
You almost had it, until you said True Maiming instead of Punctured Soul, which is inferior since it introduces a permanent malus instead of simply reducing capabilities for a period of time that we'd be more than able to wait out.
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Our risk taking strategy has been frontloading risk for rewards later which should mean less risk in the future. More of that habit is not good.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by runeblue360 on Jun 18, 2020 at 4:01 AM, finished with 316 posts and 44 votes.
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Dark Abstraction said:
You almost had it, until you said True Maiming instead of Punctured Soul, which is inferior since it introduces a permanent malus instead of simply reducing capabilities for a period of time that we'd be more than able to wait out.
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I'm really not convinced we're gonna wait out Punctured Soul. Bearic is coming and Hunger is committed to the Temple. I think we'd end up trying to farm 1-2 pick fights
 
Shard said:
Our risk taking strategy has been frontloading risk for rewards later which should mean less risk in the future. More of that habit is not good.
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The reverse would be helpful in your current situation. That said, all the major options on offer are at least okay, as long as you avoid anti-synergy like Kinslayer + Exhausted.

Zampano said:
20% < 30%

Stranglethorn is good at staying alive, but if we want to advance our rank we have to actually kill something. Uttermost is the way to make that happen.
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Stranglethorn can be really great if it gets that additional oomph, its problem is it costs 4 picks and a good fraction of its power is tied to Establishment which mostly shines in the long-term. Still, even with its weak AGI it's a decent option, and once you get your AGI back to normal you have a lot more HP and damage to play around with. But yeah, in a direct comparison of immediate power to Uttermost it's not very close. Being able to use your ultimate attack for free is just absurd.

Dark Abstraction said:
You almost had it, until you said True Maiming instead of Punctured Soul, which is inferior since it introduces a permanent malus instead of simply reducing capabilities for a period of time that we'd be more than able to wait out.
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Are you sure?
 
George said:
I'm really not convinced we're gonna wait out Punctured Soul. Bearic is coming and Hunger is committed to the Temple. I think we'd end up trying to farm 1-2 pick fights
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That's the thing. That would be part of the waiting process. Waiting it out involves healing Versh and just spending time with the ladies and Versh skullfucking Astral beasts until it times out.
Shard said:
Our risk taking strategy has been frontloading risk for rewards later which should mean less risk in the future. More of that habit is not good.
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Permanent maluses that require specific options be taken later to mitigate them is poor planing, since we are highly unlikely to convince the voterbase to pick up those options. So this is really the lower-risk avenue.

Yes, it's a temp-nerf to Hunger. That means we'll be forced to stop shoving our fingers into the pencil sharpener and actually be conscious of having down-time where the risks are reduced (farming 1-2 picks instead of constantly going after 3-4 pick encounters that lead to devastating complications like what got us here in the first place)
 
Dark Abstraction said:
That's the thing. That would be part of the waiting process. Waiting it out involves healing Versh and just spending time with the ladies and Versh skullfucking Astral beasts until it times out.

Permanent maluses that require specific options be taken later to mitigate them is poor planing, since we are highly unlikely to convince the voterbase to pick up those options. So this is really the lower-risk avenue.

Yes, it's a temp-nerf to Hunger. That means we'll be forced to stop shoving our fingers into the pencil sharpener and actually be conscious of having down-time where the risks are reduced (farming 1-2 picks instead of constantly going after 3-4 pick encounters that lead to devastating complications like what got us here in the first place)
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Given thread habits so far, I do not believe this to be the case. We'll likely just shove our hand into the grinder, whatever build we go with. And the Apocryphal scales and grows. One month of playing ultra safe and not doing anything could well be lethal.
 
I don't think permanent in most cases means the same for us as it does other people.

[X] The Ring of Power - Inheritor (3 picks, 2 Arete)
-[X] The Librarian
[X] Fierce Quickening
[X] True Maiming

I think we desperately need the different avenues the Librarian would provide. It would also seem to be a Soul Evocation with high potential?

I'm torn, there's a part of me that wants Opalescence just because I feel like the Evening Sky has the best chance to help vs Mental Contamination in future picks.

Ultimately I'm thinking Inheritor and Quickening to keep rolling along. Inheritor with Librarian should give us a huge boost in mental stats that is much harder to get. There's a point where it pays off to fight smarter, I think we are reaching that point where our physical stats are so high compared to our Mental that doing so will pay off.
 
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It may not be obvious due to the blinding radiance of this work of art but the extra arms are supposed to be afterimages.


I call this "Nooo, you can't just tank all your mental stats and only use offensive moves at the cost of defense!"
 
[X] True Maiming
[X] The Ring of Power - Inheritor
-[X] The Unerring
[X] Fierce Quickening

Back to True Maiming. I honestly think this is the safest debuff to go with even with something like Stranglethorn. It's only with a choice like Unerring that we would prefer something other than True Maiming.
 
Strategic split voting with separate Complication and Build considerations? It's more likely than you think!

Dark Abstraction said:
Yes. Unless you are explicitly going to say that that it's a strategy built on foundations of sand, I'm going to call your questioning it baseless devil's advocacy and ignore it.
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Have you considered that the original post which you quoted had nothing to do with your proposed strategy?

I wonder what % of the information given is baseless...

Sickul said:
I don't think permanent in most cases means the same for us as it does other people.

[X] The Ring of Power - Inheritor (3 picks, 2 Arete)
-The Librarian
[X] Fierce Quickening
[X] True Maiming

I think we desperately need the different avenues the Librarian would provide. It would also seem to be a Soul Evocation with high potential?

I'm torn, there's a part of me that wants Opalescence just because I feel like the Evening Sky has the best chance to help vs Mental Contamination in future picks.

Ultimately I'm thinking Inheritor and Quickening to keep rolling along. Inheritor with Librarian should give us a huge boost in mental stats that is much harder to get. There's a point where it pays off to fight smarter, I think we are reaching that point where our physical stats are so high compared to our Mental that doing so will pay off.
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Librarian is pretty sick, plus he's probably the most knowledgeable of the souls you could get. Think of the quasi-free info!
 
Dark Abstraction said:
Yes. Unless you are explicitly going to say that that it's a strategy built on foundations of sand, I'm going to call your questioning it baseless devil's advocacy and ignore it.
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Even when he's balatantly devils advocating, at the very worst Rihaku only leaves out information. Anything he actually says is the bedrock of all arguments in this thread, if we can't believe Rihaku's clarifications we might as well just vote at random.
 
Shard said:
Given thread habits so far, I do not believe this to be the case. We'll likely just shove our hand into the grinder, whatever build we go with. And the Apocryphal scales and grows. One month of playing ultra safe and not doing anything could well be lethal.
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Look, either the thread stops shoving the fork into the electrical socket or the quest dies. If the playerbase can't check themselves enough for that then we'll wait a year or two and see if they've learned the patience of a 5 year old when Rihaku finally decides to run a new one.

Apocryphal's off for another couple weeks, so when it does come back online it won't be able to drop anything on us of incontestable potency immediately; it won't have the build-up. Worst we could face is Ber,which would be difficult probably but we are massively more powerful than we were as a party in addition to Hunger specifically, so I like our chances more. Not to say I wouldn't prefer us to curbstomp him when that clash comes, but meh. Ber's going to be a 3-4 pick opponent no matter what, I suspect, unless we just zoom straight to Letrizia's civ and singularity shortly afterward.
 
[X] The Ring of Power - Inheritor (3 picks, 2 Arete)
-[X] The Librarian
[X] Fierce Quickening
[X] True Maiming

Sickul, I don't think your formatting works. You need -[] before The Librarian
 
Dark Abstraction said:
Look, either the thread stops shoving the fork into the electrical socket or the quest dies. If the playerbase can't check themselves enough for that then we'll wait a year or two and see if they've learned the patience of a 5 year old when Rihaku finally decides to run a new one.

Apocryphal's off for another couple weeks, so when it does come back online it won't be able to drop anything on us of incontestable potency immediately; it won't have the build-up. Worst we could face is Ber,which would be difficult probably but we are massively more powerful than we were as a party in addition to Hunger specifically, so I like our chances more. Not to say I wouldn't prefer us to curbstomp him when that clash comes, but meh. Ber's going to be a 3-4 pick opponent no matter what, I suspect, unless we just zoom straight to Letrizia's civ and singularity shortly afterward.
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Consider that Punctured Soul is basically being ~4 picks behind the norm, and ~4 picks make a 4 pick enemy as hard as a 2 pick enemy.

In other words, when we hunt a 2 pick enemy, it's now as hard as a 4 pick enemy. For the same rewards.
 
Rihaku said:
Have you considered that the original post which you quoted had nothing to do with your proposed strategy?
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I had not, but it was a 2 word response from you. There's a downside to trying to be enigmatic; sometimes your point is incoherent due to misinterpretation.

I wonder what % of the information given is baseless...
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You're being enigmatic again. It kind of comes across like "You should just take what I say on faith even if you disagree with me" which, respectfully, no I'm not going to do that.


LordOfMurder said:
It's actually only off for 9 more days, so the only debuff that will have worn off by then at all is exhaustion.
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Shoot, you're right. That's my bad. Well, that does change the calculus a bit, but I still feel that the depreciation of capabilities from Punctured Soul are more workable than the others in conjunction with my preferred strategy.
 
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Dark Abstraction said:
Look, either the thread stops shoving the fork into the electrical socket or the quest dies. If the playerbase can't check themselves enough for that then we'll wait a year or two and see if they've learned the patience of a 5 year old when Rihaku finally decides to run a new one.

Apocryphal's off for another couple weeks, so when it does come back online it won't be able to drop anything on us of incontestable potency immediately; it won't have the build-up. Worst we could face is Ber,which would be difficult probably but we are massively more powerful than we were as a party in addition to Hunger specifically, so I like our chances more. Not to say I wouldn't prefer us to curbstomp him when that clash comes, but meh. Ber's going to be a 3-4 pick opponent no matter what, I suspect, unless we just zoom straight to Letrizia's civ and singularity shortly afterward.
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Hunger is committed to the temple due to thread actions. We are still likely weaker than Bear. Sitting on our asses for a month is not a viable strategy under these circumstances. At this point, we are committed to the point of no return. Any short-term debuff increases our odds of dying, because we can't wait a month to heal. Even exhaustion I consider too risky, because that means going into the temple with apocrypha if we wait to lose all of it.
 
LordOfMurder said:
It's actually only off for 9 more days, so the only debuff that will have worn off by then at all is exhaustion.
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Exhaustion... isn't that the debuff that makes it so we can't actively use Rank in any fights?

What if instead of relying on blunt uncontrolled Rank pressure, we concentrated our offensive power into form of ranged blade-like projections, and made it so that each projection had 7-times the speed and power of a basic Fell-Handed Stroke, with a 10% chance of triple damage & increased bleeding? We could even use this attack to impose wounds that bleed both blood and spiritual power! This blade-like projection would not even require extra energy to use, so we would have an active defense even while we are Tired or Exhausted.

If only there was something we could vote for... something like...
[ ] Forebear's Blade - Uttermost
 
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