I like how talking about the weather with a spirit can carry a real risk of your brain exploding. Yay!
That aside, let's look at these options:
[ ] Cultivation materials (One guaranteed exotic material, chance for others, Temple options)
This one seems like a no-brainer to me, for greedy gremlin reasons but also others. One of my long-term goals with Snowblossom is to cultivate an effective priesthood which ideally even produces excess cultivator labor down the line. Distinct and potent cultivation materials from the lake is the kind of thing that's very well suited to feeding back into the priesthood and hopefully producing notable and capable cultivators. Fancy materials should also support domestic craftsmanship in Shenglu, in the long run. Top pick for me.
[ ] Oracles against Danger (Warnings of incoming danger, Defense increase.)
[ ] Blessings of Defense (Integrates Snowblossom into city defense arrays, Increased Defense, Expansion more difficult, potency increased while Snowblossom satisfied.)
The two direct defensive options. I'll be honest, I'm not enthusiastic about either of these.
Blessings of Defense has the downside of making expansion more difficult, presumably by making extending the reach of city defensive arrays a more temperamental process. But I think there's also an impact on Snowblossom here which isn't immediately obvious. In the event of an attack/raid/etc, Snowblossom would be more directly involved in the conflict, with her spiritual "limbs" present in the defense arrays fending off enemy attacks. This sounds extremely stressful! Above and beyond the impact of peaceful life on her shores being disrupted, which is unavoidable.
Considering the importance of Snowblossom to the settlement, I think we want her to have more of a remove from martial defense, to limit its impact on her when things go wrong. When we're recovering from a raid, we really don't want to deal with diminished fish stocks at the same time because Snowblossom is more stressed out. This is a bit like the "wild river influence on Snowblossom's personality" thing Ling Qi picked up on at the start of the update. There's less direct, but still important, implications with certain choices. Tying Snowblossom to the city's defense arrays necessarily makes her more sensitive to those arrays being tested, and I think that's strategically counterproductive; she's far more valuable as a reliable foundation to fall back on during cleanup, and involving her in the fighting more directly can threaten that.
On Oracles against Danger, I'm less opposed, but the current trend is Ling Qi becoming increasingly anti-divination by her nature. Feels like, as the eventual lord of the settlement, that could substantially limit the effectiveness of this boon. Possibly even to the lake's annoyance. Not to a serious degree, just that if the lake is nudged in the direction of emphasizing divination, you'd expect her to be less comfortable with someone who passively evades that sort of sight. Again (,ironically), looking at how interactions have to play out in the future.
[ ] Quantity of fishing (Ag. Production increase)
[ ] Quality of the fishing (Small ag increase, adds wealth options to fishery)
Fishing is fine, tbh. I'd probably lean more into the pure production, but that's mostly cause I'm burnt out on fiddly fief infrastructure options. I'd rather be poor than think about it.
[ ] Blessings of Health (Happiness Bonus)
[ ] Blessing against curses/Disease (Further removal of negative events and attack vectors)
Both cool. Subtly improving the general hardiness of the people would be nice, considering the relatively harsh environment. The anti-disease element is attractive if you want to be even more proofed against that sort of thing, and it's unattractive if you think what we've got is good enough.
[X] Cultivation materials (One guaranteed exotic material, chance for others, Temple options)
[X] Quantity of fishing (Ag. Production increase)
[X] Quality of the fishing (Small ag increase, adds wealth options to fishery)
May revise to double-fishes later.
Edit: I have revised to double-fishes later.
