[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

I'm willing to go with your build Byzantine. Personally I prefer to hunt down Linear Halo to apply to Accretion or Sword Praxis so we can leverage our literal musclebrain to get rare advancements that way instead of doing life or death battle every other update
 
[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

I'm willing to go with your build Byzantine. Personally I prefer to hunt down Linear Halo to apply to Accretion or Sword Praxis so we can leverage our literal musclebrain to get rare advancements that way instead of doing life or death battle every other update

Hunger actually is very smart (++++INT), he's just also extremely aggressive! For example, in this update he correctly determined the optimal strategy to attract maximum enemy attention, and executed it! And it lead to a great result, he finally mastered the core philosophy of the Forebear's Blade!
 
Just putting this out there but I'd be willing to switch to visiting Gisena if someone switched to upgrade letrizia. I feel like this is a very good value option as we are essentially getting five free Arete for her which is probably worth more than one pick. I do hope someone considers this, I am going to sleep for now.
 
[X] Upgrade Letrizia's Magic (from 2-Arete equivalent to 7-Arete equivalent)
[X] The King Stands Alone – 7 Arete
[X] Feat: Prime
[X] Check up on Letrizia

Awesome update! My personal choice, Valor is unfortunately outdated, so it's better for us to simply heal our injuries with ruling ring. The King Stands Alone is also too good to pass up.

Also, I suspect that willpower is currently Hunger's most important stat. Praxis is based around sacrifice and will, unless I'm mistaken, and it's likely that our imitation follows the same logic. And this is without mentioning the other upsides of it.
 
So for everyone voting Valor: If we go save and go all in on the ring we can probably complete the thing before Apocryphal wears off. This will allow Hunger to regrow his arm without burning 3 picks on it. It only requires ~14 more arete than we started with, so is well within the realm of possibility within a week, real time.

Any argument that requires us to spend 25 Arete on another option first is ???
I mean, it's a long term item and a long term goal. Why shouldn't I argue for that?

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.
Vanrier would have been completely unaffected by King, just to note. It is not safe to assume even if they have fighters of the proper tier that it is actually usable against them.

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.
It's still a massive advantage of rank alone, and Rank is not the only weapon they are likely to have. It is good, but Rihaku noted it was probably not the best thing for the temple.

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?"
Number of picks, basically. But there's also the fact that Chief domain does not give us a rank boost for non-blood related things, so War actually amps our rank up in fights while Chief Domain only does it for our blood manipulation. Aka War is applying the rank up to more things, rather than a broader set of encounters.

I'm willing to go with your build Byzantine. Personally I prefer to hunt down Linear Halo to apply to Accretion or Sword Praxis so we can leverage our literal musclebrain to get rare advancements that way instead of doing life or death battle every other update
That would be hilarious. The thing with Pillars is it is limited by Time, and that is one thing we have plenty of, assuming we don't die. And yeah, Haloed sword praxis would probably be called cheating.
 
[X] +1 pick below
[X] Forebear's Blade - Echo of the Forebear x 2
[X] Evening Sky - Opalescence
[X] Evening Sky - Iridescence - 2 Arete
[X] Check up on Gisena - +Gisena, +?
 
Awesome update! My personal choice, Valor is unfortunately outdated, so it's better for us to simply heal our injuries with ruling ring. The King Stands Alone is also too good to pass up.
King is a long-term and we can probably force the drop through Pillars. Return to the Save group!

(Or, well, join my "put the arete down into the ring already, damn it!" group)
 
[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

This is called foreshadowing, where we set up seemingly random things for the eventual betrayal.

mebbe
 
[X] Upgrade Letrizia's Magic (from 2-Arete equivalent to 7-Arete equivalent)
[X] The King Stands Alone – 7 Arete
[X] Feat: Prime
[X] Check up on Letrizia

Rank, Sword Praxis and daughteru bros unite!
 
Vanrier would have been completely unaffected by King, just to note. It is not safe to assume even if they have fighters of the proper tier that it is actually usable against them.
I'm not a KSA voter, but it is safe to assume that Hunger must be strong enough to defeat every individual Ring guardian in order to clear the temple. KSA makes it so that Hunger does NOT need to be able to defeat all Ring guardians simultaneously. In that light it actually reduces the required power to liberate the ring by a tremendous amount. (Fighting everybody one at a time is by definition easier than fighting everybody at once.)

Number of picks, basically. But there's also the fact that Chief domain does not give us a rank boost for non-blood related things, so War actually amps our rank up in fights while Chief Domain only does it for our blood manipulation. Aka War is applying the rank up to more things, rather than a broader set of encounters.
I already noted that domain:war "widens the list of combat actions that receive effective rank boost."

However, I'm not sure I understand how the picks issue enters into the discussion. Must we fight an enemy that drops Preeminence (War/Passion) before we're allowed to buy Ruling Ring? I thought if we got to 18 Arete it would just... happen.
 
So Valor can be ignored a bit if we rush the Ring, because scaling ruin is no longer as important, and the regrown arm can be done by the Ruling Ring automatically.

I'm grabbing both ring Dominions because at the moment we can't afford a preeminence.

The King Stands Alone is incredibly powerful, but isn't that helpful in the temple apparently, so we can push that off and probably use Pillars to force the drop, given a few tries. Which is a hilarious abuse I'm ashamed I only just realized. That lets us shove off it being a rare drop and focus on the short-medium term. And in that we want the damn ring. It heals all of our conditions, including the hidden ones from the missing eye, arm, and half a lung.
 
I do like spending towards Ring, but this Letrizia buff is only going to be offered this one time. And the proposed Ring picks are offered almost every time we get any picks at all. As a matter of effectiveness, I'd rather take a 3 pick when it's offered then 3 1 picks. Though if the vote sways enough towards Ring I'll support it over King.

Must we fight an enemy that drops Preeminence (War/Passion) before we're allowed to buy Ruling Ring? I thought if we got to 18 Arete it would just... happen.

Yes, it was explicitly stated earlier by Rihaku that we would need to find enemies that would drop those Preeminences. That said, I don't know if that is still the case.

You'd also need to find an enemy that actually drops Preeminence: Passion...
 
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However, I'm not sure I understand how the picks issue enters into the discussion. Must we fight an enemy that drops Preeminence (War/Passion) before we're allowed to buy Ruling Ring? I thought if we got to 18 Arete it would just... happen.
I may be confused on that front, indeed. If we can get it like we just got Cut Through then yours is indeed a superior plan, though I'd prefer to complete Quickening and get Prime rather than compete both Quickening and Vigor.

But I was assuming we have to actually buy it piecemeal, including the picks.

@Rihaku: If we get 18 arete now without buying the ring dominion/preeminence can we just skip to Ruling ring, or did that boat sail when we got the Chief Dominion?

I do like spending towards Ring, but this Letrizia buff is only going to be offered this one time. And the proposed Ring picks are offered almost every time we get any picks at all. As a matter of effectiveness, I'd rather take a 3 pick when it's offered then 3 1 picks. Though if the vote sways enough towards Ring I'll support it over King.
I'm just not sure the Letrizia option is going to matter too much, given Apex seems to have won (It had a vote lead and omake power was only slightly weighted in Surge's favor) and the strongest apex stuff is... not well suited for her.
 
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Taking the Dominions right now doesn't actually provide us with a significant boost in power, not in the way that getting more STATS and non-overlapping bonuses would. And we need even more power since Cut Through isn't a Power-type EFB. Taking the King Stands Alone right now along with some +STATS would be a reasonable compromise between power and potential.

What would the Forebear do?

As a sidenote, this part actually made me really happy. Both because Hunger's discovered the truest principle of action he's got access to and because it feels like a reference to the thread discussion. I really like it when you do stuff like this, have the quest respond in teeny, tiny subtle ways to the things we say and art we make. Thank you.
 
Apex? Is that Surgecasting or Vertex?
(#pedantic, but also confused)
I am very, very tired, god.

Vertex. probably.

Taking the Dominions right now doesn't actually provide us with a significant boost in power, not in the way that getting more STATS and non-overlapping bonuses would. And we need even more power since Cut Through isn't a Power-type EFB. Taking the King Stands Alone right now along with some +STATS would be a reasonable compromise between power and potential.
According to Rihaku if we want that we can just get all 4 Vigor+Quickening boosts we have left to buy and probably be safe as long as we don't pull a stupid.

So King probably isn't a needed expenditure.

I can be talked out of the ring purchases but not into spending Arete for anything else at this point. I'm mostly getting them because we keep putting off taking them and being 4 picks away from completing the ring bugs me.
 
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Even if it applies the effect is applied to all magic after the pick. So Praxis will not benefit

I just thought it didn't retroactively increase magic you know, but it still increases if you learn more from that magic system. In either case, we haven't learned any of the magic yet, just unlocked the potential to do so if I'm reading Cut Through right. So it should still be good?
 
Inserted tally
Adhoc vote count started by Conjured Blade on Jun 23, 2020 at 3:46 AM, finished with 195 posts and 36 votes.
 
Taking the Dominions right now doesn't actually provide us with a significant boost in power
You're completely right, but also consider that this will always be the case, and taking the domains is about paying towards future power acceleration and not immediate power. I get your case about balancing power and potential, but given how hard we've unintentionally gone recently (between Vanrier and this last update), this is a good, Apocryphal-Free time to dump into potential-type EFB progression if we're planning on taking it. Any other time, taking less than maximum power puts you behind the curve. Here, it doesn't, since Apocryphal will come back outscaled and then readjust to whatever level of power we have. It might even be worth purposefully putting off taking the strongest efficient options, so that we can take them during Apocryphal to scale better.

Not that situational +rank is no power, but it won't compete with basic blood advancements. And that makes sense.
 
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