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Nobility on the Golden Plains [A Clan Builder / Cultivation Quest]

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I mean, having the Flowing Ivy Pill means our Mortal Population wouldn't bite the dust. Same with going for Kindness. The reason for Sadness is because of Karmic balance of how fleeting life is despite cultivating to have better life? Aka a potential philosopher of sorts whilst also potentially being a painter? Not to mention it synergizes with our Wood Qi. @_@;
 
[X] Flowing Ivy Elixir (Gold)
[X] Heal a beggar
[X] Suffer from Melancholy
[X] The Poison Phoenix, Zhuge Xin

Yeah, this seems reasonable. I am also tempted by the White Blooded Qi Pill, for sale as well as our own use, but Flowing Ivy Elixir is a good choice as well.

For weaknesses, I actually really don't like this one but I hate all the others more because of how petty they are. I wouldn't mind a flaw like selfishness, anger, vindictiveness, or being deceitful if it was less extreme and petty. Like...even by xianxia standards the stuff on those flaws is some petty hateful bullshit. Deceitfulness is probably the least so, but even on that one actually following through on our promise costs us basically nothing so we're conning someone just to con them, not for any actual purpose. And all the rest are mostly much worse.

Like 'I once destroyed an entire family' level of vindictiveness would be fine if the family actually did something real to provoke it, but crippling people for bumping into you is some crazy shit. Or murdering someone in a fit of rage after an actual insult, sure, I could see that...making someone homeless for accidentally serving you a bad drink? That's legitimately insane even by most cultivation setting standards.

All of them feel like there is no lower bounds, like any tiny little thing will set our protagonist off. All of them will have our protagonist committing atrocities over a cookie. It's wild.
 
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HousePet said:
Mortals shouldn't need Gold level healing pills. (It would probably kill them.)
The pill vote is for our strongest recipe. We will have lower ranked healing pill recipes and the means to develop more.
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Still Wood Qi, and I doubt we wouldn't be able to water it down for Mortal consumption. That and a healing pill that could be sold en massed helps too...? And it also denotes going further the healing path. @_@;
 
[X] Bundle of Stinky Herbs (Gold)
Carries the promise of a spirit beast, and includes fun personal history and characterizations.

[X] Heal a beggar

I might change the other two votes:
[X] Acquire a Map
[X] The Distant Heir, Zhuge Jiang
 
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[X] White Blooded Qi Pill (Gold)
[X] Pay a Debt
[X] Wave off an Incident
[X] Suffer from Melancholy
[X] The Mischievous Twins, Zhuge Huang and Zhuge Zhen
 
Sivantic said:
Is it though? Melancholy can lead to depression or a self-destructive state. I cannot imagine that making our cultivation any easier.

All the others might be mean but at least they do not hinder us.
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They mostly make a kind of ridiculous number of enemies. That's a huge hindrance in practice. Many of them are likely to actively alienate even our closest allies in short order given how extreme they are.
 
[X] Flowing Ivy Elixir (Gold)
[X] Heal a beggar
[X] Suffer from Melancholy
[X] The Poison Phoenix, Zhuge Xin
 
[X] White Blooded Qi Pill (Gold)
[X] A Merchant Quarrel
[X] Take a Spirit Flower
[X] The Poison Phoenix, Zhuge Xin

White Blooded Qi Pill can be more frequently used. If you want a cultivation breakthrough, take the pill. If you want to learn a new technique, you can train harder for longer.

Take a Spirit Flower: Being a cultivator means competing for scarce resources, to be the best of the best you have to be ambitious and selfish.
I also don't want to read about depression in my escapist entertainment.
 
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[X] Flowing Ivy Elixir (Gold)
[X] Heal a beggar
[X] Suffer from Melancholy
[X] The Poison Phoenix, Zhuge Xin

I'm a sheep and it honestly isn't the worst set up just maybe the sadness doesn't hold a strong effect on our ability to cultivate in addition to kindness in this setting must be measured but isn't the worst
 
[X] Bundle of Stinky Herbs (Gold)
[X] Enjoy the Day
[X] Take a Spirit Flower
[X] The Distant Heir, Zhuge Jiang

A hedonist build just sounds fun.
 
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DeadmanwalkingXI said:
They mostly make a kind of ridiculous number of enemies. That's a huge hindrance in practice. Many of them are likely to actively alienate even our closest allies in short order given how extreme they are.
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Enemies? Yes, but a ridiculous amount? Hardly. We are not at the capital and the town depends on our clan for survival. Being Deceitful hurts when you are bad at it.

Deceitful, the one that I am voting, especially can be a good one. This is Xianxia, everyone lies, everyone has schemes. Being good at social manipulation, is not a bad thing, particularly because we can temper it with good traits, like kind or calm.

Melancholy is lethargy, apathy, sadness. It is this constant battle to do something, killer to cultivation where you need to focus for long periods of time and need that self-motivation.
 
[X] White Blooded Qi Pill (Gold)
[X] Heal a beggar
[X] Suffer from Melancholy
[X] The Poison Phoenix, Zhuge Xin

Honestly I like the combo of caring for the small folk but also knowing how little their lives matter in the long run.
 
Arcanestomper said:
Now as a full fledged knight you have the power to back up your status. Which means the medicine hall as a whole is on much more solid footing. You can demand a larger budget, hire more alchemists, and provide input on the clan's plans as a respected head. Well to an extent. You are still very young after all.
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Ah! And here we have one of the benefits of the Barony pick shining through. Knight-tier is actually seen as an entirely reasonable level of cultivation to hold for someone running something like the Barony's Medicine Hall.

As for the vote?

[X] Bundle of Stinky Herbs (Gold)

...because I feel like we should lean into our family's Spirit Beast specialization at least some.

[x] Heal a beggar
[x] Suffer from Melancholy

"Kind but sad" does feel pretty healerish. Past that... well, sad is literally the only one of those personal flaws that isn't casually ruining things for others in an obnoxious Young Master sort of way. I don't want to be that kind of Young Master.

[X] The Poison Phoenix, Zhuge Xin

I like the idea that the core of our rivalry is that she's disappointed in us and feels like we should be working harder. It offers a nice little space for rapprochement later, if we can step up.
 
[X] Bundle of Stinky Herbs (Gold)
[X] Enjoy the Day
[X] Evicted an innkeeper
[X] The Mischievous Twins, Zhuge Huang and Zhuge Zhen
 
DiscordOxymoron said:
Still Wood Qi, and I doubt we wouldn't be able to water it down for Mortal consumption. That and a healing pill that could be sold en massed helps too...? And it also denotes going further the healing path. @_@;
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I'm quite certain that we have healing pills and potions and elixirs for the lower tiers regardless. This is just whatever our best is.

The benefit of the Flowing Ivy Elixir is that it's a good source of healing elixir for us and our family and retainers at a similar level, and it sells well. That's what it is. That's what it does. It's boring but practical.

Also, we'll almost certainly be able to develop/learn all of these elixirs eventually. The question is where we want our focus to be. Personally? I want to turn our focus back towards the spirit beasts. We've already locked in the "let's just stack alchemy as far as it goes" synergies. If we want to do more with our family's focus on spirit beasts than just have it be background details, then we need to start engaging with it and investing in it, and the Bundle of Stinky Herbs is a really easy way to start engaging with and investing in it that won't cost us anything in the long run.

As far as flaws... personally I went with The Sads because it looked like pretty much every other option made us an asshole, and I didn't want to be an asshole.
 
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