Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

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The mechanics of this and what it actually means seem opaque to me. While I get that the choice is called "soil studies" but does that mean that whatever bonus is gotten out of this is dedicated to agriculture/land quality? Ie. are the 10 bonus rolls specifically for something about the soil? What do 10 bonus rolls mean in general?
You get a +10 bonus to any development rolls.

Yrs confirmed on discord.
 
So. In the best interest of MAD at a personal level, after that terrifying encounter with Liling v2, at least sanity-wise and after what we could glimpse from her aura, I want to point out that we could, possibly, gain insight onto the Void in one of our arts. Which possibly could nullify, even counter, the Qi vacuum she seems to be.

The chances are rather low, 60% iirc. But it could be key, just in case, because she seems way to unhinged atm. And I'd rather have the blueprint of a really big gun when she inevitably lose it and jump on us.

[X] Rare reagents (Begin Forgotten Elixir Quest, complete Part 1 of 4 immediately)

Proper planning prevent piss poor breakthrough. The rest we can gather along the way.
 
I think soil studies would synergies with the wangs building our house and any future buildings. It's just not obvious since you would think of only agricultural purposes for it.

Edit- so that would be a +25 to our initial fief building
 
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[X] Soil Studies (+10 bonus development rolls in fief)

This is my preference, though the drug option is in second place if not soil.

"Give a cultivator a drug, and they shall have a boost for a day. Give that cultivator good soil, and they shall have drugs for a lifetime"
- Jesus, probably.
 
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What is a development roll? Like does this help in say... building roads or something like that?
Presumably it improves that chance of succeeding at whatever class of action "development" is. Roads should be classed under "Construction", and considering the context, development could be the "yield roll" for things like crops.

Yes, "presumably", "should", and "could" are all the important words there as we don't know what the shape of the quest will be once the fief becomes a thing, we can only infer. Considering Yrs does his best to avoid adversarial choices, a +10 to a class of rolls should be considered roughly equivalent to 200 green stones (which is a lot, that could pay for several common cultivator clans like the He for a decade or more) but on a longer scale.
 
We've got a crop and we've got a Zhengui

The better it looks the less we need to mess around and potentially piss off any local spirits we cant handle on our own

[X] Soil Studies (+10 bonus development rolls in fief)
 
Presumably it improves that chance of succeeding at whatever class of action "development" is. Roads should be classed under "Construction", and considering the context, development could be the "yield roll" for things like crops.

You get a +10 bonus to any development rolls.

Yrs confirmed on discord.

I guess this disconnect for me is that "development" is very broad, and "soil studies" seems very specific, so I don't just want to assume that it'll apply on a meta/mechanical level. I'm cool with it if it's abstracted like that and this knowledge is applied to whatever development entails, soil or otherwise, as Elsecaller's comment would indicate, I'm just trying to clarify if that's indeed the case. 200 green stones of value towards agriculture like I think Zeful is indicating (sorry if I misunderstood) is pretty different to 200 green stones of value generally.
 
We've got a crop and we've got a Zhengui

The better it looks the less we need to mess around and potentially piss off any local spirits we cant handle on our own

[X] Soil Studies (+10 bonus development rolls in fief)
Yeah, but we also live in an environment made of what the White Sky seem to categorize as a rare and valuable trade good. They presumably have valuable resources if their own, and we're one of basically three parties they've had contact of any kind with from our side of things.

Setting up trade infrastructure to move lumber across the wall seems like the kind of thing that'd have an excellent return given the size of the customer base.

Investing in farming as a primary income stream feels kind of like setting up a fishery on a river with visible chunks of gold in it to me.
 
Yeah, but we also live in an environment made of what the White Sky seem to categorize as a rare and valuable trade good.
Ling Qi isnt a businesswoman. She isnt going to have the ability to play those kinds of middleman games unless she hands it over to an actual expert (of which she knows only the one). And unless people want Ling Qi to be pulled a bunch of different ways trying to manage those competing interests as her economic lifeline, she'll need a staple crop to provide stability of her own rather than bet on out competing the other Clans and powers in the Emerald Seas for the choicest deals from the White Sky Federation.

In an open system monopolies never survive barring them being directly propped up by every major polity relevant to the supply chain.

And that simply isnt going to happen here. Shenhua doesnt play those kinds of games.
 
My hope, and this is a long shot and pure speculation, is that the regents for our elixir are plant based. If Zhengui could grow those rare regents, than we would have an easy money crop to make use of.

It's unlikely, but I think any chance to get rare and valuable plants for Zhengui should be explored.
 
[X] Rare reagents (Begin Forgotten Elixir Quest, complete Part 1 of 4 immediately)
[X] Insight Sharing (+1 Isolation and Ending XP)

These are both significantly rarer and more useful than the other options. While stones are always useful, we have plenty of other avenues to get them. The soil is great too, but it simply doesn't compare to enhancing our Dao insights, or working towards a breakthrough to the Cyan realm. In the end, our personal power is the most important thing. We can come back from our fief's crops failing, we can come back from running out of money, but we can't come back from Ling Qi and/or someone she cares about dying because Ling Qi's cultivation isn't high enough.
 
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[X] Rare reagents (Begin Forgotten Elixir Quest, complete Part 1 of 4 immediately)

I think it's safe to say that Lilling will not be joining us on our mission, nor will her subordinates. The Duchess is not so stupid as to risk her new alliance with the Bai by sticking their mortal enemy's heir on a mission with Meizhen. To say nothing of what that sort of tension will do to the odds of success. She'll probably be deployed on whatever extermination campaign Shenhua works out with the Jungle King.
 
[X] Soil Studies (+10 bonus development rolls in fief)
[X] Insight Sharing (+1 Isolation and Ending XP)


I just can't get too worked up over a quest that won't be relevant for IC years. Further boosting our development rolls should decrease the number of actions we need to sink into our fief for various projects or bits of upkeep (since the projects will succeed more quickly/reliably and we won't need to worry about upkeep if our income is high enough), and having more leeway with our time in the nearish future strikes me as far more valuable than freeing up actions over a year down the line.

Gains we get from actions now can compound, after all. Best to frontload them, at least somewhat.

These are both significantly rarer and more useful than the other options. While stones are always useful, we have plenty of other avenues to get them. The soil is great too, but it simply doesn't compare to enhancing our Dao insights, or working towards a breakthrough to the Cyan realm. In the end, our personal power is the most important thing. We can come back from our fief's crops failing, we can come back from running out of money, but we can't come back from Ling Qi and/or someone she cares about dying because Ling Qi's cultivation isn't enough.
This thing is, anything that gives us more resources, saves us more resources, or, most critically, saves us time can funnel those benefits back into our cultivation. Money can buy cultivation aids like rare pills, or net us useful equipment, or hire a specialist to deal with a problem that we otherwise would have done a mediocre job bashing our head against, saving us time. Money can also buy offerings - we've run into multiple situations where we pay cultivation XP to appease spirits, and if we had enough resources that we could hand over a Cyan brush instead without feeling like we were screwing our house over, we would be able to save the XP we would otherwise spend on the offering.

And time? Time can be funneled into cultivation actions, into exploration quests rather than political ones, into things that will net us more resources and power rather than into whatever happens to be on our plate that turn.

So a +10 to development isn't just a nebulous bonus to making the mortals happy, because we're responsible for the mortals and if they're going hungry it now costs us time or resources to fix the issue. Or on the positive end, the +10 could lead to us earning a bumper crop, giving us additional resources, or perhaps just some insurance against the mortals going hungry later should some disaster strike. (Or it could help us finish our road construction more quickly, because a +10 to development rolls is not just a bonus to agriculture.)

And a bonus to our fief's development is a bonus that persists on an ongoing basis, aiding multiple projects all of which will provide returns on that bonus years down the line.

Getting part of a Cyan Ascension quest done ludicrously early simply doesn't compare, at least not to my eyes.
 
[X] Soil Studies (+10 bonus development rolls in fief)
[X] Rare reagents (Begin Forgotten Elixir Quest, complete Part 1 of 4 immediately)

Would think of soil studies also helping for figuring out soil composition which helps for things like building solid foundations, durable roads, drainage for levees and dams, so not limited to straight farming.

Also we're about to auction a bunch of stuff so I don't see cash being as urgent.
 
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