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Shards of Awakening

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The cultivation boosters don't apply retroactively right? Just need to make sure before planning xp distribution.
 
Exo said:
The cultivation boosters don't apply retroactively right? Just need to make sure before planning xp distribution.
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Quan Jia used the Gyre (and other things) during those three months. Her father doesn't understand the idea of restraint when it comes to spoiling his only child.

CedeTheBees said:
Can I change it to 'sleeping equipment' to include blankets or would that be too broad?
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It's the aesthetics that are important more so than any particular details. That may be a different story if she were wielding a king bed, but pillows and blankets are totally reasonable.
 
"I mastered the Pillow Style!"

"That's.. . That's too lewd!"

"Hitting someone with a pillow? That's the most innocent thing I can think of!"
 
[X] Plan Prioritizing Pace
-[X] Hidden Blossom Bracelet
--[X] Dexterity
-[X] Serene Drop of Moonlight
--[X] Awareness
-[X] Emanating Fatigue's Wave
-[X] A censer scribed with the character for heat embossed in black enamel on each of its sides. [The Gyre of Five-Fold Enlightenment provides a multiplicative bonus* of 1.2 to the number of cultivation dice that can be applied to the cultivation of arts, techniques, attributes, and base cultivation level.]
-[X] Skills
--[X] Martial Arts
---[X] Unarmed
--[X] Knowledge
---[X] Cultivation
--[X] Commerce
-[X] XP
--[X] 34xp to Meridians (for a total of 10)
--[X] 5xp to cultivation
--[X] 10xp to stamina
--[X] 4xp to Dreamer's Endless Journey

The most important point of this build is grabbing meridians up to the first soft cap now as they affect the time it will take us to cultivate anything else.

The Cultivation booster is under the same train of thought, I chose it over the meridian booster because this lets us start with an effective rate of 4.8 xp per cultivation session, instead of grinding our way up there from a 2.4 xp per session if we try to maximize the meridian artifact.

Commerce because we're in a position to make use of it thanks to our funds. And the technique was picked because its the quickest way to have some kind of combat threat instead of just being a fully defensive nuisance. (Tho I'm not too attached to these, the meridians and artifact are the most important part imo.)
 
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Cool! A new(ish) cultivation quest!

Wish I was around for more of the chargen but at least I can do this:
[X] Plan Let's be Sand(wo)man!
 
So to add to my prievous reasoning a bit, running some math on how long it would take us to reach equivalent cultivation speed if we don't invest into meridians now, it would take us 10 cultivation sessions to do so (to get to 10 meridians with Gyre or 12 with Paths Unwalked.) In those 10 sessions, we could otherwise have gotten 48 xp to place anywhere else (losing us a net 14 xp in oppurtunity costs.) This is assuming we can use all our initial cultivation sessions for meridians, every time we don't or can't this gap grows larger.

Still, I'll do the populist thing and offer a compromise alternative.

[X] Plan Sandrunner
-[X] Hidden Blossom Bracelet
--[X] Dexterity
-[X] Vigorous Lunar Bead
--[X] Potency
-[X] Sleep's Glittering Sands
-[X]A censer scribed with the character for heat embossed in black enamel on each of its sides. [The Gyre of Five-Fold Enlightenment provides a multiplicative bonus* of 1.2 to the number of cultivation dice that can be applied to the cultivation of arts, techniques, attributes, and base cultivation level.]
-[X] Skills
--[X] Martial Arts
---[X] Pillows (and other headrests.)
--[X] Knowledge
---[X] Cultivation
--[X] Knowledge
---[X] Politics
-[X] XP
--[X] 34xp to Meridians (for a total of 10)
--[X] 5xp to Cultivation
--[X] 10xp to Potency
--[X] 4xp to Dreamer's Endless Journey

[X] Plan Prioritizing Pace
 
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@Exo @dingdonghadron Could I maybe interest you in replacing Unarmed with Pillows and Blankets? Blankets to distract and ensnare our opponents, and pillows to beat them into submission.

We'll be the cutest little warrior in town
 
So uhhh, I decided to run through more options thanks to boredom, and arbiter is only mildly worse in terms of pace short term but pulls ahead after roughly 12 weeks. Since I think Jia can afford to coast by a bit on her family's reputation and money and because the early deficit is really small (likely a single digit amount of xp on average) until the point the 2 options match pace, I'll update the plans to reflect this.
 
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CedeTheBees said:
@Exo @dingdonghadron Could I maybe interest you in replacing Unarmed with Pillows and Blankets? Blankets to distract and ensnare our opponents, and pillows to beat them into submission.

We'll be the cutest little warrior in town
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I'd rather not - it's more of a cartoon angle that I'm really feelin aesthetically.


Exo said:
MATH
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You've neglected the gobs of cultivation resources (minimum 5 per turn, assuming we earn literally zero) that Quan gets to throw at things. It starts making a pretty big difference w. the multiplicative relic.

Starting out at level 1, we can throw two level 1 gems into whatever, giving us 6 bonus dice (and can do that to two things, and also remove the penalty from a third) So we do actually want to be spreading out our cultivation, at lest initially, over multiple areas to capitalize on our wealth.

At level 2 we'd probably want to drop down to cultivating 2 areas (3 in 1, 2 in the other, for a bonus of 18 and 12 dice)

Then at level 3 go for a 4/1 split (for a 36/9 bonus die split)

At level 4 we might want to start mono-focusing, dumping all 60 bonus dice into a single area to really crush through it - from here on the general cultivation relic is giving us a bonus *twelve* dice to whatever one of the four areas it covers, just from our wealth alone, not to mention any other bonuses.

Meridian artifact is fine, but, due to our wealth, we get less-of-a-return from boosting our baseline affinity than a poor cultivator, because our meridian affinity dice are going to struggle to keep pace with our money-is-a-superpower dice as we progress.

Side note - ofc, once/if we break into Opal soul, suddenly resources are a bit of a different game - but crushing through to Amber soul ASAP to really milk the money train, and combine with a 20% boost, could really like Quan warpspeed ahead.
 
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I somehow missed the bit at the end of the intro-post.
This changes both the rate of meridian acquisition and reduces their impact... I can't actually recheck things right now, so if someone else can do the math instead it'd be great.

Edit to avoid doubleposting: my brain is stuck on this for some reason, so have some crude math.

Assumptions: (early/mid/late) diamond soul costs (20/40/60) to complete, leaving Jia with 100xp to base cultivation until she completes hers.
3*1*2=6 dice will be gotten in diamond from extra gems and 3*2*3=18 dice in quartz. (According to the info post agate as level 3 will get 3*3*4=36 dice which is my source here.)
Both meridians and base cultivation are cultivated every turn and we go the 10 meridian start (anything else is always going to be slower to quartz by some amount).
Fractions of dice were rounded down, fractions of xp weren't as they're just averages.

Gyre: after 12 weeks will have 16 meridians unlocked with a total of 104.8 xp into unlocking them, will have 107.6 xp for each other weekly cultivation action, and will have just finished Diamond Soul, will have 40 dice after breaking through to quartz.

Arbiter: after 12 weeks will have 19 meridians unlocked with a total pf 98 xp into unlocking them. Will have 101.6 xp for each other weekly action, still enough to finish DS, but not as reliably. After entering quartz will have 37 dice.

If another Gyre-like multiplier is added to either build after quartz is hit and stacks additively with the real Gyre, they get to roll 47 and 45 dice respectively, maintaining Gyre's lead.

With an extra 6 additive dice from resources on top of the extra from gems, Gyre can finish DS in just 9 turns, with 16 meridians (107.2 and 104.4 xp respectively.)

Arbiter with the same 6 additive dice finishes DS on turn 10 with 20 meridians (110 and 106 xp respectively.)

For comparison, if one uses Gyre and has the 6 extra dice, but ignores meridians completely staying at the initial 6, they get 100.8 xp for a weekly action over 12 weeks on average, failing to finish DS in the time period 43.53% of the time.

Conclusion: Gyre is better than Arbiter in basically all cases so I'll update my plans again, also, meridians are still very important.

Hopefully I got things right this time.
 
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I'm going to reiterate that not starting with Qi of 2 is a bad idea because it makes us a combat pushover, since a single use of a single power isn't going to decide a conflict with anything tougher than a rabbit.
 
[X] Plan Let's be Sand(wo)man!

Look, I kind of want us to lean into the superficially comic relief character but with deep thonks.

Kind of like an Orihime who isn't a useless damsel.
 
I simply don't think we're going to have much to fight over early. Most of Jia's monetary needs are already paid for, and nothing I saw in the quest indicates we're entering a battleground, at least in the short term.
 
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