I don't know if anyone noticed this yet, but 9 months, in other words 9 visits to the RoE, in other words 27 weeks within the RoE, has gotten us significant benefits.
+27 Wisdom/Luck/Might/Agility/Willpower is neat and all, but surely the strongest effect is finally getting our base Rank to 10.
Now that it is, with OaF I, we have Rank 12 Military rank. That's a serious boost in effectiveness, since IIRC we've entered a tier past the High Ranks past Rank 11.
In other words, a difference of 0.1 is enough to be Overwhelming, not 0.5. Though, beings at this tier do tend to have a lot of anti-Rank, as Hunger himself does, so perhaps it's not as a big of a deal as I thought.
there's also the fact that 0.1 is overwhelming,
all else being equal.
Different magical systems/powers, incredibly high stats, ISH elevation... all of this can compensate for the difference in rank.
And, presumably, Apocryphal would likely send either something with higher rank than us, or something resistent/immune/with a counter to it.
Epistolary means composed of letters. The entity is described as a blot of disinformation, as distinct to a lack of information. Thusly, Rihaku has received a copyright notice in incomprehensible legalese. An ISH 4+ threat!
We're truly approaching the limits of what is understandable by mere humans then...
I know right? Having Pittaro react to Lost Realm gave me a similar feeling.
This Pittaro sounds like a smart guy, I'd like to talk to him sometime.
eh, I have fun with my reactions, and they help me put things in perspective for when I then make a build, though it takes me quite a bit of time.
I really got into it after trying for the Furthermost Reaches. I suppose Rihaku corrupted me.
Really, I think the first time I REALLY got fascinated with character building, though, was when I went through Even Further Beyond. All the various options for Nameless, the HUNDREDS of pages basically spent only on arguing between this builds...
Fun fact: While I think I had already read a few of Rihaku's quests from SB by then (mostly Jounin quest, and a skim of Bleach and Madoka quest), that was the first time I saw a mention of cursebearer, and I was VERY confused about this strange Accursed fellow coming out of nowhere with little to no explanation to what and who he was
..by the way, for my build there I was honestly tempted to go for a Fake x2 (True Legendary) Overwrite for 8 inherent memories (+ whatever else I could afford), but then I decided to spread around, hoping synergies would compound more than a single focus. What do you think would be more effective, that, or the "reality+unreality+opposite working better together+jailbreak+skill+divination" that I got by getting the various Nihilus+Overwrite+white+black+orange+blue (with various levels of fake)?
Permanent 0.7 ISH elevation, combined with Seraph's Favor ensures that Hunger's Might, Agility, Wits, Prowess, Luck, Protection, and Wisdom (Combat) are all operating in the neighborhood of almost ISH 2.0 or maybe even above. Refinement of Quickness was a massive step up over Hunger's peer-level enemies at the time. This would be a dramatic upgrade.
mh.. on that note, shouldn't this indirectly boost our progress in our domains by a LOT?
AFter all our speed growth would take into consideration the now higher permanent stats, multiplying a HIGHER base rate of growth. Wits and Luck would be relevant, with Luck also synergizing with Rank.
Imprisoner True helps us with mitigation in two ways. First, by having access to more stuff we also gain access to more natural Hunger Sated mitigation. Hunger complained that there are no valid Hunger Sated mitigation targets left within the Human Sphere, but with Space domain we can look outside to find relevant enemies or fishing spots to get the mitigation we need. More importantly, Space gives us opportunity to conquer more stuff, allowing us to match our Grail Keeper range with our Decimator range. Ultimately, our goal is to have Grail Keeper running for years, and Space gives us a headstart in that endeavor.
To be fair there's a chance there are no more targets in our whole universe, and Indenture won't allow us to leave for other ones.
..Did Hunger try visiting the Astral Realm? Maybe there's some Rank 11+ beings in there that might be suitable...
What happened to Catherine? I know it's mentioned in the update that her Armament was cut down, so was she cut down with it? Kinda grim for her; she resolves herself to avenge her friend only to unleash a biological monstrosity that causes immense harm to countless people, only for that monster to be killed by the original enemy she sought vengeance against, who is now totally beyond any hope of being harmed by her.
Would have liked to have an insight into what she was thinking throughout the whole situation.
...wait, it was HER armament that rebelled?
...I might have mixed them up then, I thought it was the Tyrant Armament, which I THINK was mentioned to be the armament of the Imperial family.
Does that mean the Tyrant Armament is still alive and we could potentially link to it, and boost it in the same way we could boost Verschle?
again, I'm very sad that the Indenture Armament either never existed, or decided that A cursebearer visiting was a good excuse to leave for somewhere a few dimensions away 
Attramemnar was the one to be cut down, not the Etrynome. Attramemnar was the Imperial Armament, the bearer of Tyrant's doom and chief Armament of Empire. Due to nature of his curse it was impossible for him to accept our rule.
ah, I was right.
Still, I thought we could link to it to "absorb" its curse... Maybe our Tyrant's Doom is "different" enough that it wouldn't work?
@Rihaku seriously what does Gisena say if/when Hunger tries to ask about why she doesn't mitigate this? I'm interested in her excuses
So a lot of people seem to be forgetting one important thing, our Geas tasks are orders from the Accursed.
Our geass tasks are very specifically NOT orders from the Accursed. We're not sure who decides our targets/who benefits from it (behind a generic "the curse", assuming it's as sentient as Apocryphal seems to be), but we have been told it's not the Accursed that decides.
After all, who would decide the ACCURSED'S TARGETS in that case?
presumably though the quest target from the geass is equivalent to an instruction from the Accursed, otherwise he'd simply be able to ignore it.
I still agree that boosting Tyrant is risky. we'd get it to 105% (or 102.5 if All-Defeating Stance applies, which I'm not sure if it does), which doesn't
sound like much... but we don't know
what that means.
Amorphous Blood generally doesn't play well with Imperial Blood. One is sacred, the other is heresy. But with Amorphous Countenance to smooth things over, I'd imagine "Alex Mercer++"-type shapeshifting, capable of transforming into arbitrarily large creatures (so long as biomass as available) with arbitrarily complex biological features, or designing new life-forms/bacteria on the spot. It'd also be capable of affecting others with this power.
so it would basically jailbreak the ability to get around the "no von neumann swarm" limit?
I was thinking we'd eventually deal with the Ring training malus but maybe that's just unnecessary. The training malus doesn't apply to the Praxis, and in the long term the Praxis is the most powerful magic system we've got, so why bother? I'm sure we'll fix the malus eventually, probably right around the time the malus becomes irrelevant.
there's still the fact that Praxis is also NOT boosted by our various +progression.
Basically the only thing that we know of that can actually boost the praxis directly is TSH.
Generally speaking, I imagine that, once we fix the ring's malus, Hunger would get a LOT of strenght in the first few days/weeks/months after the start of a new indenture quest, simply because he'd get access to new magical systems. After that (and mastering them as much as possible), it's back to the praxis for general training.
Note that the Master of Myths bonus to the Power of Ruin is not small; it's more on the order of 10,000x than 5x!
mh.. Master of Myths + Power of Ruins is a pretty tempting combo then...
and it gives me an excuse to vote for Gisena ++
Once we unlock her second EFB we trigger the romance flag, right? That's what RPGs taught me!
Hm, that build is pretty much exactly what I'd use myself. You mind if I use this as a base for the Greedy build I am at this point obligated to make for CYOAs? I'll link yours, obviously.
eh, I still have to read the various Chihiro omakes (
I'm trying, I don't have the time! I'm getting multiple quest updates per day recently!), but I know I'll enjoy them.
...I'm still on page 1808 in terms of omakes, but I've read everything up to that point (except a few reactions)!
...actually, everything except Bard's CYOA. I just got intimidated by that one, there were a bit too many choices to make 😅
As for the Life domain, I think we have to admit that investments into civilizations are basically wasted. They grant us morality points, and maybe they feel good, but Hunger is already talking about the Human Sphere being too small for him. We aren't going to be spending wordcount on the intricacies of rulership - Rank 11 just paves over all those complications. Instead, we're going to spend wordcount on the Apocryphal proc that has twelve months worth of "credibility" charged up.
yeah, for all that I'd like that it's just not efficient to focus our valuable domain-time on the HS.
At least we'll get to that in... 6 years at the latest. Instead of focusing on them, they'll get the accidental benefits of our other advancements/domains, kinda like, say, Aeira and Letrizia got boosted by Companions, basically as a side-effect of boosting Gisena/Aobaru.
(Also: Did you see
Aab's CYOA? There are some neat options you should check out!)
it's on my list
Hunger finds Aobaru's lack of faith disturbing? If not for his fragmented recollections and the thought not being spoken aloud, you could mistake this for a reference!
oh, a reference? Do you remember who loved to make references?
That's right, the AZURE RING. THAT WE MURDERED IN COLD BLOOD.
...yeah, I'm still a bit annoyed at that, mostly because it came out of nowhere.
