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A Simple Transaction I

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[X] +.75 Arete
[X] Fierce Quickening

Maximal S A V I N G, very good if we fuck up the Infiltration and need to kill these guys. We can currently use two Stances but that would be enough to create another meta-contextual gap between us and our previous self while All-Defeating Stance is likely to be even more ridiculous. If we're willing to spend a little bit of time gathering intel on the Inner Temple, that goal is well within our reach.
 
[X] +1 pick below
[X] Vigor Incarnate - 2 picks, 2 Arete.
protection's good, let's shore that up a bit
anyway blurb libraries, huh ... 120/year is probably like double what I normally spend on entertainment, but also, I have a lot more discretionary income than I used to by dint of having income in the first place, which will probably persist even after summer ends unless I turn out to be a massive squanderer at heart and I mostly just sponge off friends' steam libraries anyway considering theirs are like an order of magnitude larger because they buy bundles
patreon charges per month though so I can safely defer this decision to the first anyway
 
But yeah, we don't actually need to spend stuff here. Being better at Infiltration has obvious uses, but it's not necessary. Thanks to Stances, we can very quickly convert Arete to power giving us a huge safety net - even if we do end up fighting, snap buying Mage-Defeating and Weapon-Defeating stances would let us boost ourselves majorly while putting us halfway through to All-Defeating Stance.

On the other hand, Once and Future is a powerful safety net in of itself. Being able to buy mainly combat EFB in case things go sour has a ton of value, especially if our enemies believe that they have our mettle. Suddenly having 2 Rank burst of power is insane.

Getting something like Vigor or Adept is "proactive" choice where we increase chance of success due to more Cha, while SAVE would reduce chance of fallout due to having powerful fallback options if we roll badly. Difference between the two, of course, is that SAVE puts us very close to Once and Future.

If we don't need buffs, we keep our Arete. If we fail, we spend it on stances.

Then we get All-Defeating stance and option that would allow us to outRank Armaments because of course we'd get that.
 
You know what would be great?

If we could Theft away potential Panoply items either from others or on their own and then...feed it into our own. Let the Evening Sky devour mantles and magic stuff. Let the Forebear's Sword carve away the essence and absorb them. Let the Hunger Ring turn other items into future Bait for the Rod of Ages.

That'd be something.
 
Rihaku said:
And that's why you should always just shoot them! Escalate the conflict into areas where you're proficient!
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A policy of Just Shooting Them would've derailed the DF arc, though. That was a great sequence that Bearic could never have gotten. Curious whether Joon inspired him at all, as mentioned in the Age and Treachery reaction.

[X] +.75 Arete
[X] Fierce Quickening

I reserve the right to waffle shamelessly, but for now let's go with this. It'll all pay off if we can save up enough Arete; War's a common pick so the opportunity costs of passing it up (again) here are pretty low. By avoiding Shadowlord (nice pun in the name, by the way) we assassinate Gisena's word count retain Shadowcord as a character. I'm lukewarm on her, but eh, quiet competence has historically been my jam. Edeldross and Vigor are solid options that might be worth swapping to; Exalted Spirit + the reroll's good too, but if we dump Heartlessness how are we supposed to ignore the consequences of our actions?
 
Rihaku said:
I think the Stealth route is the lowest risk strat!
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That runs into the aesthetics of not wanting to eliminate a character from being written before we've even seen them (From a minimalist perspective though, less characters = better), although I did not vote for Shadowlord previous time around. Then again, stealth-good character. It would be novel. Exalted, Most High was the last time around I saw a stealth MC, and that basically doesn't count.

Okay. If we go down the Shadowlord route, is it possible to perform a heist and steal the Ring?
 
Really I just hope we can get Pillars sooner rather than later. We've probably already missed the window for this month, so if we can I'd like to get it before the next new moon. It's a utility EFB that just happens to remove Hunger's biggest weakness - he has to put himself in serious risk to grow quickly, and that require finding worthy but not overwhelming opponents.

Pillars, after some practice with it, lets us bypass all that silliness and do things like "I want to farm enemies to maximize my rank gain, have items to heal me from anything, and boosts that stack with all my other boosts."

Hence...

Actually...

@Rihaku: We've effective prepurchased Once and Future by putting 1 arete into it, and we've unlocked Pillars via the hotspring. Would you allow us to put arete down into such EFBs we've unlocked? Getting the political will to save 25 arete seems extremely difficult. But I suspect I can convince people to put ~2 arete into it several times, since we clearly don't put much value on 2 arete.
 
Domain + .75 Arete seems like the most impactful low cost bundle, due to so much of the social approach being out of our hands and down to luck which it improves. 1.25 out of pocket probably still leaves us with the ability to buy 2 stances.
 
It seems the power of the blurb is mighty indeed; for so many patrons to have converted themselves to getting 3 Blade EFBs when getting one for each Artifact had such a consensus last time; truly terrifying. Since I'm to yet exposed to that particular memetic hazard and want our Artifacts to feature more evenly, I suppose I have to vote for Shadowlord; what a shame, we were so close to the Ring too.

[X] +1 pick below
[X] Evening Sky: Shadowlord

That option's good for all the reason getting Shadowcord would be good, except in a far more powerful chassis that is capable of even further advancements! Expensive I know, but our added capabilities would actually compound our strength instead of merely increasing it and it would allow us to take advantage of that planning bonus we got forever ago.
Byzantine said:
@Rihaku: We've effective prepurchased Once and Future by putting 1 arete into it, and we've unlocked Pillars via the hotspring. Would you allow us to put arete down into such EFBs we've unlocked? Getting the political will to save 25 arete seems extremely difficult. But I suspect I can convince people to put ~2 arete into it several times, since we clearly don't put much value on 2 arete.
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EFB discounts are sincere rewards in this system that directly affect how much power an option is allowed to have though. He definitely won't allow us to just buy an EFB piecemeal.
 
BrainInAJar said:
EFB discounts are sincere rewards in this system that directly affect how much power an option is allowed to have though. He definitely won't allow us to just buy an EFB piecemeal.
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Probably not, but I figured asking wouldn't hurt. And I happen to dislike that system since it's taking advantage of the fact that a mixed and ever-changing group such at this one has our priorities in constant flux.

It's simply... less stressful for everyone involved to let the playerbase actually begin to visibly work towards a plan.
 
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Duquette7 said:
Wait, you think actions have consequences?
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Now you're thinking with portals Bearic! Though the former sort of implies the latter, given his intro.
Talace said:
Perhaps we could use Theft to even steal... a Ring?
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Ouch, such cutting words so soon after I betrayed Shadowlord. Rihaku did mention that King of Thieves would've enabled alternative resolution methods, though in this case we'd be more like a Duke of Thieves or a particularly wealthy Count. Don't think it diminishes the incidence of mage options either.
 
Thomasfoolery said:
Domain + .75 Arete seems like the most impactful low cost bundle, due to so much of the social approach being out of our hands and down to luck which it improves. 1.25 out of pocket probably still leaves us with the ability to buy 2 stances.
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Yeah, but that 2 Arete is easily an update of not having Once and Future. My current estimation is that we will need three updates to get it - if things go south you are likely looking at chapter of going to Temple, chapter of main infiltration, fight #1, fight #2 etc. My current hope is that we will hit Once and Future between fights #1 and #2.

Of course, if it doesn't come down to fighting, it means that we did well without Vigor and such, so you get both success and Once and Future, so that's a win win situation.

With debt we need 23, and we are at ~13 before counting in what we've got last update. We are so close I can almost taste that scaling Rank. Don't spend, HODL.
 
...Why Once and Future anyway, Wolfy? I suspect in the short run we can literally farm more rank via Pillars than we gain through Once and Future. (Naturally in the longer run Once and Future wins out.)
 
Wolfy said:
Yeah, but that 2 Arete is easily an update of not having Once and Future. My current estimation is that we will need three updates to get it - if things go south you are likely looking at chapter of going to Temple, chapter of main infiltration, fight #1, fight #2 etc. My current hope is that we will hit Once and Future between fights #1 and #2.
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I think if we go in as is the social approach is pretty doomed and we'll definitely have to buy stances. So I don't see this future where we've saved enough for once and future as happening in all but quite unlikely scenarios. So it doesn't have much value hedging for to me.
 
[X] +1 pick below
[X] Evening Sky: Shadowlord

Time to go back to my previous vote. Anyway, not interested in an Three blade EFB build.
 
Byzantine said:
...Why Once and Future anyway, Wolfy? I suspect in the short run we can literally farm more rank via Pillars than we gain through Once and Future. (Naturally in the longer run Once and Future wins out.)
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Because it scales, and there is a Special Advancement that makes it very, very good.
Thomasfoolery said:
I think if we go in as is the social approach is pretty doomed and we'll definitely have to buy stances. So I don't see this future where we've saved enough for once and future as happening in all but quite unlikely scenarios. So it doesn't have much value hedging for to me.
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Not really. We go in as we go in - in fact, difference between this and Adept is rather minor. If it fails, it fails and we get Stances(or Once and Future, depending on situation), if it doesn't fail we win and get the EFB.
 
DkArthas said:
[X] +1 pick below
[X] Evening Sky: Shadowlord

Time to go back to my previous vote. Anyway, not interested in an Three blade EFB build.
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Same. I've decided the ring is probably a lost cause till we at least have some idea what we are facing, too many people got spooked by Rihaku's "never actually said anything of any use except causing panic" bits.

I'm hoping I can push Pillars, given the benefits are actually really good and scale up with us. And remove Hunger's biggest issue of needing to find enemies to get picks and keep growing, at least for 1/4 of the time. (Also I'm aware we've mildly discounted Total Eclipse, but a Magic system, even a super powerful one, is not a good first choice for Evening SKy's first EFB, because we learn magic annoyingly slowly with additional effort. We should instead make a pick that helps us get additional picks faster.)

Wolfy said:
Because it scales, and there is a Special Advancement that makes it very, very good.
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Scaling means we can get it later. And the Special Advancement is probably more or less the same value as the one for one of each, but annoyingly sword-focused.
 
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Wolfy said:
Not really. We go in as we go in - in fact, difference between this and Adept is rather minor. If it fails, it fails and we get Stances(or Once and Future, depending on situation), if it doesn't fail we win and get the EFB.
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I don't think adept is a good buy either though? Infiltration just seems like a plan that I'm not clear why we voted for because it puts us in such an unfavorable position. So most outcomes are not going to be good unless we prep really hard. I expect next update if we try to social our way in the likely outcome is we get rumbled by some bespoke soul evocation tailored for the interrogation we've willingly subjected ourselves too and then the kill squad we've allowed to get into position by opening ourselves to this interaction jumps us and we need to panic buy to have a chance to survive.

Thoughts about once and future just don't seem particularly relevant at this point.
 
BrainInAJar said:
It seems the power of the blurb is mighty indeed; for so many patrons to have converted themselves to getting 3 Blade EFBs when getting one for each Artifact had such a consensus last time; truly terrifying. Since I'm to yet exposed to that particular memetic hazard and want our Artifacts to feature more evenly, I suppose I have to vote for Shadowlord; what a shame, we were so close to the Ring too.
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So now you see the need for regular Arete expenditures! Indeed, 'tis truth that 25-point purchases are more efficient, but it ought not to be forced 'less the need is truly dire. The greed! The pride! Who could stand 'pon a hoard of such hard-won prowess, such unbridled potential, and remain objective?! Like the slothful dragon of Norse myth, the bestial purs' of such terrible beauty cannot be so easily put down.
 
[X] +1 pick below
[X] Edeldross Adept

Low Arete expenditure in exchange of comprehensively improving what we get out of Edeldross, both in reliability and potency. Plus, there's that Limit Break option of pushing our stats by 50% (stacks with usual buff? I almost hope not, would be really broken) and when we have stats that add themselves to other stats (now with Willpower to physicals, and we're already being offered another one with Charisma to Protection) a comprehensive boost that leads to further additive improvements is exactly what we should be looking for!
 
I feel annoyed I'm immune to the power of blurbs. Because in my experience if you're being converted by the blurb you aren't actually thinking of the option. You're thinking of the writing. It's good writing, but that isn't a good way to make coherent non-suicidal choices in a quest.

All the options are going to be roughly equivalent for things like this. Rihaku is a very good salesman, though, so of course whatever he put in front of you a moment ago looks shiniest.
 
Thomasfoolery said:
Thoughts about once and future just don't seem particularly relevant at this point.
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Really? +1 Rank will help our social immensely(assuming that infiltration doesn't count for +2), and it has very obvious long term implications. Likewise, +2 combat will help if it ever comes down to fight.

Remember, we were offered 0.7 Rank for four picks. This is more, and it scales.

In the end, the essence of frugality is asking yourself if we really need stuff. I don't think that we really need any of Arete spending right now, and Stances really help with allowing us great deal of security with SAVEing.
 
Wolfy said:
Remember, we were offered 0.7 Rank for four picks. This is more, and it scales.
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And we can literally use Pillars to farm rank. I'm thinking you're being a bit monofocused, here, and missing anything that isn't literally the most obvious option to the path you want. Once and Future is actually inefficient to get now, precisely because it scales. We haven't reached the point where our rank growth is impacted enough to not instead just try to farm it.

Further, we already know the stances are explicitly worse than Praxis options, leaving out Magic-defeating stance's curse mitigation.
 
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