Hm. Now that I think about it, Magic-Defeating Stance would be really good for you now. Your melee combat abilities have been enhanced into the stratosphere with Cut Through, so the Apocryphal mitigation, ability to fight inside Tides of Nullity, and general exotic attack resistance of Magic-Defeating Stance would be amazing inside the Temple. If you don't want to SAVE, and with Zweihander having a substantial lead, you guys should really consider Magic-Defeating Stance. It costs 0 picks so you could even take it now, and it's probably better in the short-medium term than King!
Add them to the update then! You must advertise these things :p

Count me for surge unless Rihaku protests.
Will do, may be a bit late for that, but eh.
 
Prime's a solid choice, especially since Uttermost buffs Rank gains by 30%. Full-blown Astral Rank and the ability to exert Pressure's an advantage of Hunger's, as opposed to only having the defensive stuff that prevents telekinetics from assassinating people by giving them aneurysms or a pyrokinetic starting a non-metaphorical flame in ypur heart. Dreadnought's unfortunately not getting much play, probably because of its cost in picks and Arete, but I feel compelled to point out that we're being offered Rune King again right before picking up another magic system. No coincidences!
 
but I feel compelled to point out that we're being offered Rune King again right before picking up another magic system. No coincidences!

That has serious potential to mitigate the problems with a low arete surgecraft element. It might even let us unlock multiple elements if I'm understanding conceptual limits right. It could enable more reliability and control on a surgecraft element too.
 
[X] Prime
[X] Fierce Quickening
[X] Check up on Gisena


Hmm, King Stands Alone, but is a long term power. If we want Long Term powers we should complete the Ring.

And now that I realize it with Pillars we CAN guarantee a drop of it, though it may take several attempts to get right. So I'm suddenly valuing rarity a lot less. Having the ability to cheat worthy opponents that drop what you want into existence is useful, even if the accuracy is a bit low.

That has serious potential to mitigate the problems with a low arete surgecraft element. It might even let us unlock multiple elements if I'm understanding conceptual limits right. It could enable more reliability and control on a surgecraft element too.
It think we're still stuck with the one element, but it lets us do shit with it that shouldn't make any sense. Like cool things down with fire.
 
I feel compelled to point out that we're being offered Rune King again right before picking up another magic system.

I mean, we're also getting offered it right after taking the most transcendently powerful and synergistic magic that is ever likely to be available to us. Forgive me for not being too jazzed, especially with my aesthetics.
 
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Also dreadnaught is coming at a massive opportunity cost this time even if you don't share my foibles about Hunger sacrificing his eye.

Also we kinda have Sword Praxis now. We can probably figure out TSH eventually without any self-sacrifice required.
 
{ } Atlanta - The Sunken City

'Murica post-Water World is some shit. Almost certainly not Hunger's America but cool nonetheless. Might reignite some of the ideals Hunger had before his rebirth, which would be helpful to mitigate (though not Mitigate) the Doom of the Tyrant. Would probably be quite funny and I'm sure Rank could let us bumble into some kind of legendary signed baseball bat or whatever. Or maybe even something meaningful; Hunger might have lost most of his memories but surely there's some glimmer of the boy he once was in there. Any kind of details telling us about how far he's changed would be neato burrito.

Not an ideal contest for us though, not with Bear being able to teleport and already starting with a substantial advantage. And I really don't want to eat whatever gross mutant fish exist here, especially considering their apparent lack of magic. Who knows if whatever we catch will even be tasty? I mean, it probably will, just because this would be a waste otherwise but why take the risk?

{ } The All-Blue - The Chef's Dream

Probably advantageous for us; I think our basic stats would be better than Ber's and the fact we can start fishing immediately instead of hunting around, which nullifies the benefits of his teleportation. I imagine this one also requires the lowest Bait Quality since we can just use our lesser catches, which is useful considering the Rod of Ages malus. Plus, everyone knows Gamers are masterful baiters, so I think this would render most of his greatest advantages redundant. He might not accept the loss though, since this is hardly the sort of fishing fit for a king.

An incredibly risky strat that might completely subdue Ber's spirit is the ol' Summon Bigger Fish gambit. This place almost certainly has shit like Lorn-Flukes and other terrible, antediluvian beasts that swim in the darkest depths. Catching fish to bait even greater fish, working our way up the food chain until we can find something to draw the interest of a true Big One, that would end any contest in one fell swoop and ensure we seize our crown. Maybe we'd be able to add Ber as a party member? He was kind of a shitfuck earlier but this guy seems chill enough.

{ } Lethe - A Monument to Pique

- The boundary between the World and the Underworld, Lethe contains many prizes, though few that man would wish to claim.

- Cut from the world by a vengeful blade long ago, Lethe trembles oddly at the Cursebearer's approach. Should such a broken creature still manage to seek vengeance, then it could represent a major hazard!

- As an old friend of death, Hunger can use his Wraith form to freely fish on either side of the great river, and it is no great trial to cross. A decisive advantage over Ber, if you can handle the risks involved.

Oh shit, how are you doing Lethe? Still just being a river in a broken realm near the corpses of your dead-and-dying siblings? That's cool. Must really suck that the fuckup of one of your souls' souls ended up making you suffer a Heartless 10 Odyssial punishment. Really wouldn't recommend messing with a Cursebearer though; he might have chilled out over time but he's still more than capable of hitting you with an extra spicy infinite, unbearable torture, though this time with more cardinalities.

More seriously, could actually provide a worthwhile advantage for us, so long as Lethe remains broken and we retain a strong attitude. I cannot imagine the fish would taste good though, considering the sheer spiritual impurity of the underworld. Or maybe they'd taste great and the fact that they're soaked in Lethe water would make it so you forget the experience of the flavour with every bit until the last, ensuring that each tastes as good as the first time you experienced the novelty. The former is more realistic but the latter is more in genre so who even knows?

P.S: 557 words
 
Wits doesn't upgrade martial abilities; that's Willpower. An All Blood build would look like this:
[Fierce Quick x2]
[Vigor Itself x2]

The STATS would be:
[++++STR, ++++CON], ++++AGI ++CHA, ++WITS, ?

…plus a potential blurb/? for taking all of the Blood Upgrades.



Friendship Regain with Not Dying, now STATS and NOT DYING and SAVE All are My best Friends.
[X] +1 pick below
[X] Fierce Quickening
[X] Fierce Quickening x2
[X] Vigor Itself
[X] Vigor Itself x2
[X] Check up on Gisena

-[] Gun.
 
Okay, so if I understand how Pillars works correctly we can abuse the shit out of it to farm supposedly Unique or super Rare drops. Meaning if we get it - and we have unlocked it - we can in the long term gain all of these super cool long-term powers that aren't so helpful in the medium term, like The King Stands Alone. I suspect it has a high miss rate for actually generating the proper enemy, but even 1/10 is more than sufficient for these purposes.

This lets us cheat and kick the can down the road even though it's supposed to be cemented to the ground.

As such we can focus on the short-medium term right now fairly safely.

Thus the best option seems to be to grab Apex and then either start grabbing Blood stuff or begin paying down the next stage for our ring.

We can also grab Valor, of course. But I'd rather grab that in a fight that doesn't offer Rank. Or just kick that can down the road so far we get Ruling Ring or even Pillars and it becomes kinda irrelevant.
 
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[X] Prime
[X] Fierce Quickening
[X] Upgrade Letrizia's Magic (from 2 Arete-equivalent to 7-Arete equivalent)
[X] Check up on Gisena


You know what, this is a very good Arete-saving plan. I might change my vote depending on which magic system wins and whether a good argument is out for Magic-Defeating Stance, but for now I am a proud member of a S A V E gang.
 
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Well that was an oof. Being Ranklet sure sucks, huh.

[X] +1 pick below
[X] Fierce Quickening
[X] Prime
- +.3 Astral Rank
[X] The Ring of Power - Dominion War

Dominion and Prime would give us combined 0.65 Rank for combat purposes, which is about as much as Venrir offered us. Quickening because stats are nice.

Issue with Valor is that it makes us better at cutting things when, as we saw in this update, our issue is getting to part where we cut stuff. As such, merely upgrading our cutting won't do much.

King is super good and I am for swapping to it if we save enough. 2x Quickening/Vigor is another valid strategy.
 
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One thing i'll point out about the inner temple is that atleast one of the 'boss' choices we had in the earlier parts of it would have involved us going up against a platoon of very skilled and coordinated 'knights'. On the way here, one of our possible combat encounters was with a Human Sphere Black Ops team. It seems like groups of elite enemies able to challenge us together is, for the time, going to be a feature of the quest so even if the temple fights don't involve rank, the dueling aspect of it could still be very relevant depending on what encounters we run into.

Besides that, it really helps our ability to take out the rotbeast if we get a chance who we know does rely on rank and is around the level of danger as the prime we just fought. Keeping it from being able to call in primes for help, which even if their not as bad a matchup for his still could affect our chances against it. This would be a great boon considering the benefits we just got from beating that lower ranked prime and the benefits we've seen the city itself can offer us throughout the updates if we take out it's greatest immediate threat.
 
So I'm going to propose this build:
[X] +1 pick below
[X] Prime
[X] The Ring of Power - Dominion War
[X] The Ring of Power - Dominion Passion

[X] Check up on Gisena


Aka the "Screw it. I'm getting both of them at once" plan.
 
You know if you get King Stands Alone, due to Cut Through we receive +3 Might and +3 Agility right?
I'm troubled by the Arete expenditure. Now that we have Sword Praxis via Cut Through, the next priority is ++Progression imo. That means Ruling Ring asap. SAVE GANG only needs like 18 Arete again to buy Ruling Ring all at once.

Maxing out the blood-based benefits from the last Ring upgrade seems like a good first step to deciding Hunger is ready for the "contest of superiority" associated with getting Ruling Ring while at the Temple.
 
Well that was an oof. Being Ranklet sure sucks, huh.

[X] +1 pick below
[X] Fierce Quickening
[X] Prime
- +.3 Astral Rank
[X] The Ring of Power - Dominion

Dominion and Prime would give us combined 0.65 Rank for combat purposes, which is about as much as Venrir offered us. Quickening because stats are nice.

Issue with Valor is that it makes us better at cutting things when, as we saw in this update, our issue is getting to part where we cut stuff. As such, merely upgrading our cutting won't do much.

King is super good and I am for swapping to it if we save enough. 2x Quickening/Vigor is another valid strategy.
Can I perhaps tempt you into going for both remaining Domnions?

King isn't as good as it sounds. It's great in the long term but in the short-medium term it's kinda iffy. And in the Long term we can cheat our asses off using Pillars to force it to drop.

I'm troubled by the Arete expenditure. Now that we have Sword Praxis via Cut Through, the next priority is ++Progression imo. That means Ruling Ring asap. SAVE GANG only needs like 18 Arete again to buy Ruling Ring all at once.

Maxing out the blood-based benefits from the last Ring upgrade seems like a good first step to deciding Hunger is ready for the "contest of superiority" associated with getting Ruling Ring while at the Temple.
Might I tempt you with my build, then?

Way lower stats, but it unlocked both Dominions, leaving us with just 2 picks and 14 arete to go. At this point actually spending the picks is part of the problem with upgrading the ring, since the base Domnions are somewhat limited in gain.

Also much higher rank.
 
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Can I perhaps tempt you into going for both remaining Domnions?

King isn't as good as it sounds. It's great in the long term but in the short-medium term it's kinda iffy. And in the Long term we can cheat our asses off using Pillars to force it to drop.
Any argument that requires us to spend 25 Arete on another option first is ???

King is somewhat unreliable. If Temple has a singular ruler who hogs 90% of power, no more mind/soul powers and no high Rank fighters, then it will do little. On the other hand, if they have great deal of Vanreir tier fighters, major soul and mind attacks and something with high Rank in there(i.e. an Armament) it will be invaluable.

That being said, we should absolutely get it over War if we get enough Arete.
 
The King Stands Alone is quite good, but I don't think it's the best expenditure at the time. I'm even waiting for the magic system to see if we can spend it there; but if Vertex won then buying the Ring Domains here becomes much more appealing. So I'm going to gamble and vote for @Byzantine's plan for now:

[X] +1 pick below
[X] Prime
[X] The Ring of Power - Dominion War
[X] The Ring of Power - Dominion Passion

[X] Check up on Gisena
 
King stands alone is super strong. Being able to one on one people regardless of the number of opponents is huge especially against groups of opponents around our level or stronger. Being able to cap opponents rank advantages at a certain point is potentially even more valuable. It basically means any level of rank over 5.3 is meaningless against us.
 
[X] The King Stands Alone
[X] Forebear's Blade - Ruinous Valor
-[X] Zweihander
[X] Check up on Gisena


Prime is attractive, too, but we just beat an enemy that was stronger than us. Do you know why it was stronger? That's right, it had four arms. Zweihander doesn't give us four arms, but it does give us two arms and forearms, so it's progress.
 
Might I tempt you with my build, then?
It's definitely tempting but represents kind of a lateral move w/r/t our various goals within the narrative. The Blood Dominion is already invoked in every fight, so the actual effect of Dominion (War) is just a slight widening of the list of combat actions that receive an Effective Rank boost from the Ring. Similarly with Passion, but at least that domain can theoretically proc in diplomatic settings or in service of our always-risky Fishing problem.

I guess I'm asking "What's the advantage of getting Domain (War/Passion) now, instead of saving the Arete and buying Domain+Preeminence all at once?"
 
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