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A Simple Transaction I

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With the clarification about the relative Protection provided:

[X] An End to Misery
[X] Imprisoner's Vestige

Gaining an inventory system alone's an enormous amount of utility. In the long term, the Vestige will shine brighter than any Star of Grace. It's our Soul Evocation awakened at last, only viewed through the mirror darkly of the Evening Sky. Consider how relevant this would have been just a handful of updates ago. No need to bite the Larissa bullet, we could've personally evacuated anyone who surrendered to us, stowing a civilization within the folds of our mantle.

The Protection bonus lets the Evening Sky serve its intended purpose again. Rereading the updates it's easy to trace the diminishing efficacy of its defenses as we progressed through the Temple, from Vanreir Thrusting through effortlessly to the final fight, where we didn't even have access to it. This gives us a reason to take Iridescence so it'll stop showing up in every build vote asking for Arete handouts!
 
ImperatorV said:
The light of the soul huh... It seems this is indeed Soul Evocation, but different. Oriented around the Evening Sky instead of Seals, and with a bunch of immediate power bonuses. Also makes buying the Opalescence tree good, although we should probably do that after Trinity.

[X] Imprisoner's Vestige

It appears I'm waffling. Two different Evening Sky EFBs, both with mage cutouts, providing progress towards Trinity as well... This is a good vote.
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I recommend Silver, since we get full Graces and more Resistance to Rank.
 
SpectatingRaven said:
synergizes
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Sharkey_smt said:
*spits on the ground* Your kind is not welcome here. Begone and never come back.
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lol i actually love this joke

But there is something deeper going on with this update: We Cleared the Temple.

That means that we are not in immediate risk of gruesome death, or running out of time to finish the task before Apocryphal re-activates.

Of course, Apocryphal is about to start back up. That means that we need to decide on a general course of action to pursue. The benefits of Ring-Lord will be most useful if we want to rush to Letrizia's society. The benefits of Heavenly Tomb will grow if we spend some time hunting for worthy enemies in the Voyaging Realm.

Neither option is obviously better in my opinion. Voters should think carefully about what they want Hunger to do next. My preference is to look for a way of leveraging the power of societies in the VR against the Human Polities. We can't raise an army and we didn't buy Dismal Science for Aeria so some experimentation will be necessary to see how much we can extract.

In any plan step 0 should be healing Versch!
 
When was the last time we defeat someone without killing them? Literally the Goldenrod Archer is what springs to mind. Tomb wouldn't have saved Vanreir nor any other heroic enemy we faced so far. For immediate bonuses; the Prot and extra mantle health are nice but defeated in value by Sliver Stat and Edeldross boost. It's also better in the mid-game due to better Graces, something we develop at double the speed due to Adept. Meanwhile, Tomb only shows it's true power after a great amount of time and training, something we are penalized in due to Hunger, while we can just outsource Edeldross research to Gisena.

We don't need Tomb to make the Evening Sky relevant again; we just need to take the damn options when they come up. Sliver will serve us much better than Tomb for the vast majority of the time. So I think it's clearly better to me.
 
Does Imprisner's vestige actually change what we get from our soul evocation? Because all it gives us details on is the changes to heavenly tomb. I also really like the sealing aspects of seven seal or azure moon and don't want to lose them. Speaking of, was it ever confirmed that What what azure moon was giving us was the seven seals as described in the beginning, or is the imprisoner we get from it not quite the same being not our main focus?
 
Silver is a good middleground between all options! AGI helps us fight gud, which is helpful for all things. Charisma is good for going to the Voyaging Realm. If we just want to sit down and research, we've got Elderboss!
 
I vastly prefer End to Misery. Letting him live at this point would be pure torture since his mind is broken, let's give him the peace of the grave.
 
Zfglx said:
Does Imprisner's vestige actually change what we get from our soul evocation? Because all it gives us details on is the changes to heavenly tomb. I also really like the sealing aspects of seven seal or azure moon and don't want to lose them. Speaking of, was it ever confirmed that What what azure moon was giving us was the seven seals as described in the beginning, or is the imprisoner we get from it not quite the same being not our main focus?
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Seven Seals meant the original isekai world hunger went to had Soul Evocations. Hunger's Soul Evocation is Imprisoner, which is the Seven Seals magic system unlocked by Azure Moon. Heavenly Tomb has significant enough overlap that it starts talking about Soul Evocations and Light of the Soul, only it changes the Aesthetic to the Evening Sky from Fuinjutsu.

Edit: Had Seven Seals won, Hunger would have had the Imprisoner Soul Evocation as the basis of his power instead of a panopoly.
 
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Zfglx said:
Does Imprisner's vestige actually change what we get from our soul evocation? Because all it gives us details on is the changes to heavenly tomb. I also really like the sealing aspects of seven seal or azure moon and don't want to lose them. Speaking of, was it ever confirmed that What what azure moon was giving us was the seven seals as described in the beginning, or is the imprisoner we get from it not quite the same being not our main focus?
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Rihaku said:
The light of the soul, awakened and intensified.
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It definitely seems like our Soul Evocation to me; it just starts with sealing "defeated" foes with no limit, and with time can cover all the powers Seven Seals could have developed. We don't know if Azure Moon would have given us Seven Seals, it just seems like good speculation since this is the power Hunger could have had and the name fits. Tomb covering many of the same effects through time and training might be a point in favor of that as well.
 
[X] His People Need Him

No mechanical benefits and don't really feel strongly enough about Sten to influence the decision.

[X] Star of Grace

Heavenly Tomb is awesome. It's definitely something I want to take one day. Hell, it's immediately useful now, as it would allow us to carry this civilization around with us and summon them like Pokemon instead of worrying what to do about them.

But Star of Grace is just too synergistic with our build, magic and the next EFB - ADS. Which should disqualify it from winning, but perhaps the Star will shine the light of hope onto this situation!
 
Orm Embar said:
Gaining an inventory system alone's an enormous amount of utility. In the long term, the Vestige will shine brighter than any Star of Grace. It's our Soul Evocation awakened at last, only viewed through the mirror darkly of the Evening Sky. Consider how relevant this would have been just a handful of updates ago. No need to bite the Larissa bullet, we could have personally evacuated anyone who surrendered to us, stowing a civilization within the folds of our mantle.
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Indeed! Haven't you ever wanted to drop a Moon on your enemies?

Talace said:
Silver is a good middleground between all options! AGI helps us fight gud, which is helpful for all things. Charisma is good for going to the Voyaging Realm. If we just want to sit down and research, we've got Elderboss!
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Silver is great, double AGI and Edeldross is amazing, but you guys should consider whether you want Hunger to develop along this stats-focused path or if you want to expand into esoteric capabilities! Are you guys really going to work on Edeldross Graces when you have the Sword Praxis to practice? On the other hand, Heavenly Tomb's imprisonment and inventory functions work right now, and are incredibly useful in many situations!

DkArthas said:
I vastly prefer End to Misery. Letting him live at this point would be pure torture since his mind is broken, let's give him the peace of the grave.
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Mm, I wouldn't say it was torture. Post-mindbreak Sten is not really suffering anything, if anything he's happily the Ring-Lord's obediant minion. Sten himself is indifferent to his life or death at this stage.
 
I enjoy the fact that I started a trend of the first poster after the update picking everything so the color's maintained in vote tallies. It just gives a nice warm feeling of camaraderie.


[X] An End to Misery
[X] Imprisoner's Vestige

I'm for just finishing the job. I don't particularly like Sten as a person, and didn't want to recruit him before we broke his mind. I certainly don't want to after we shattered him like the glass his soul evokes.

As for the powers, I don't really feel wowed by the Evening Sky EFB's but I think they're more interesting than the stance enhancement. I like Ring-Lord, quite a bit really, but honestly I do think we should let off on Ring enhancements and take something which will not only incentivize investing in the Evening Sky but will give more value from similar investments (looking at you, Opal-/Irid-/Pearlescence).

Ultimately, I don't mind any of these winning, so I'm not going to advocate strongly for or against any of them; they're all neat, they all have worthy effects, and they can all benefit some aspect of our build, so this is a vote where there is literally no losing choice. We'll either get something that synergizes with what capabilities we've already got, or we'll get something which expands our portfolio of capabilities yet further.
 
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Rihaku said:
Silver is great, double AGI and Edeldross is amazing, but you guys should consider whether you want Hunger to develop along this stats-focused path or if you want to expand into esoteric capabilities! Are you guys really going to work on Edeldross Graces when you have the Sword Praxis to practice? On the other hand, Heavenly Tomb's imprisonment and inventory functions work right now, and are incredibly useful in many situations!
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But require us to first defeat the things we store, and the capture trick is only useful on foes we unconditionally defeat without killing. Which is... difficult. We can definitely make use of it, but not to the extent that someone without the Ring could, since we can't use it to refight our enemies for more XP. Their inability to win means the ring scoffs at the attempt.

The protection from Heavenly Tomb is awesome. But how long would it take for Pearlescence to exceed that protection count?
 
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Rihaku said:
Silver is great, double AGI and Edeldross is amazing, but you guys should consider whether you want Hunger to develop along this stats-focused path or if you want to expand into esoteric capabilities! Are you guys really going to work on Edeldross Graces when you have the Sword Praxis to practice? On the other hand, Heavenly Tomb's imprisonment and inventory functions work right now, and are incredibly useful in many situations!
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Fair! But have you considered that getting an inventory would lock us indelibly into the [Gamer] class?
 
The capture trick is useful on anything that surrenders unconditionally or is defeated and helpless. With our blood magic, even mostly killing someone isn't the end if we don't want it to be, and if our healing isn't strong enough, just put them in time-out until it is.
 
[X] An End to Misery
Eeeeh. I consider the mechanical benefits in this case to be the people not seeing a broken husk of their leader worn on Hunger's hand like a ring-glove. Larissa will have to tough it out, sure, but at least we won't start cosplaying Sauron.
But seriously, I consider only his thirst for vengeance and his thirst for fishing to be Hunger's two valid motivations, and this doesn't help him with fulfilling either of them.
Unless Sten can serve as a very good boat, that is.

[X] Imprisoner's Vestige
 
I mean yeah, Tomb would have meant we didn't need Larissa, but Larissa cost far less than 25 Arete so I'm not sure that would be a favorable comparison exactly. Again, stat-wise Sliver has Tomb beat and also in versatility as well due to the Graces we can get. An Inventory system is good but far from revolutionary, and pocketing enemies in your time-locked cloak has ???? utility. And we are still penalized from developing Tomb further due to Hunger. We don't need to but this out of Evening Sky pity, people.
 
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