Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

TheLastOne said:

So we're probably not going to burst open a ton of Meridians in one week again. If you want to get the starting point open any time in the near future, for example because you want arm techniques, you really should support the plan that opens them now rather then later.

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Well, we can do another big bing when we gain another action. We'll still have 6 actions to play with then. Not quite as good, but...

Also, meridian-wise the meridian washing pill is enough for us to get 6+6+3+2+5 red spirit stones(maybe more once at yellow), so we can still do them in one turn.

angelofwhim said:

..Are we like the only mass pill user?

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I suspect every nobles are mass pill users.

I wonder how many times we need to add the "warn others" thing when we go full drug/cultivation. Shouldn't it become habit at some point?

Asael said:

And actually, we should also warn our companions that it is likely that we will be trying for breakthroughs the following week and potentially the week after.

They made a point to warn us in advance, so it's only fair.

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Sure, small enough change.

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Vanguard_D said:

I wonder how many times we need to add the "warn others" thing when we go full drug/cultivation. Shouldn't it become habit at some point?

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We got chastised for not doing so, so I'll keep adding in when we're about to be anti-social until it officially because a habit and we don't need to micromanage it.

Oh, @yrsillar, what's the order of operations for overflow. Lets say we overflow Meridians to Spiritual, and we hit Peak Red. Where does/can the overflow go from there? Can we direct it at that point to physical or qi, or is it beyond our control at that point?

So - Physical about three-quarters of the way to peak, Spiritual about half-way to peak, Sable Crescent Step half-way... and Forgotten Vale Melody Second Measure gotten (and it's divided into Measures - neat). Athletics dots, good - that makes Ling Qi quite agile, and with the boost to Throwing Knives and the new knives (plus dex), Ling Qi's actually rather dangerous on the offense. First dot of Formations is good - start that adjunct ability! Empathy, good - and progress on a whole bunch of others.

New level of Forgotten Vale Melody - Boosted Perception a bit more (very handy, that), some protection from sonic attacks (haven't encountered other ones... yet). And a boost to expression, which is in turn used for Mastery. The new active again requires the basic effect (definitely a pattern), and is an actual attack! Granted, not that strong... yet... but definitely useful. Plus, it's a DOT effect and works equally well against multiple attackers.

So I'm definitely starting to see a combat strategy. Get the mist up, start the damage (particularly for long fights or against multiple foes), while racing around - optionally using thrown knives or hand strikes to overwhelm foes one by one. And with others helping... well, Ling Qi's doing reasonably well in the 'elite' physical cultivation class now. The last week's push should allow her to be well-prepared for most simple attempts at her things (or dominance attempts). We shall see, of course; I wager at least one or two rash attempts at Ling Qi in the first week of "Thunderdome", with more cautious hostiles using those attempts to gain more information about her and make plans (some will aim for easier targets if Ling Qi defeats her opponents without showing much vulnerability).

Hmmm... attempting to bring the 'wild' pair in the circle with the rest was mixed results. It wasn't a disaster, and there *was* some gain, but I feel like Li Suyin needs more confidence to integrate and Su Ling needs to be less defensive. Granted, some practice that didn't end horribly will probably help the latter. I wouldn't have Ling Qi try again for a while - this worked well to introduce everyone to each other, at least - pushing immediately for further cooperation would probably strain things.

Got a pill again - incidentally, note the Li Suyin got one even though she's still trying to reach Late Red. Huang Da did as well, more's the pity... albeit not unexpected. Interesting that Ji Rong both anticipated that and seems to be somewhat sympathetic to Ling Qi... I wonder if he could become an acquaintance in the future?

Now... upcoming actions. This turn mostly took care of the social obligations. It might be desireable to do more combat training - that progressed the following list: Strength, Dexterity, Stamina, Presence, Manipulation, Composure, Athletics, Stealth(?), Empathy, Expression, Persuasion, War. And Forgotten Vale Melody. And cultivate at the vent with Li Suyin and Su Ling (and Bai), of course. I don't see breakthrough (either) happening unless it's just about the only thing done. Sable Crescent Step for sure. Could probably make it a maximal turn for Sable pill and such... hmmm...

Kipeci said:

This decision to disregard cultivation is stressing me out. Suffering the foe's two instant auto-successes for their being in early yellow versus our late red is going to sting something fierce.

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WHAT decision to disregard cultivation?

We're going to have plenty of overflow from the meridians going into cultivation.

We're throwing around 40 dice at each meridian, 44ish after factoring in 1-again, 10 to 15 successes needed, overflow goes to cultivation.

yrsillar said:

It only applies when dice you roll, not to penalties applied to others.

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Do bonus elemental art dice from gear apply to rolls that just get passive bonuses from an art? (like Expression or perception from FVM?)
Do they apply to buffs from active use of an art (like the +3 to defense that we get from Crescent's Grace?)

Also, I saw a few places where we got a one-die reroll, rolled a 1, and didnt' get another reroll (Physical, SCS, *and* Spiritual) was that intentional?

[X] Plan All The Drugs
-[X] Two Red Stone, 1 Sable Light Pills, 1 Gushing Spring Pills, 1 Qi Foundation Pill, 1 Channel Cleansing Pill, 1 Qi Expansion Pill, 1 Clear Wind Pill, 1 White Hart Elixir, Meizhen's Tea
-[X] Instructor Zhou Class (Locked-In)
--[X] Warn Gui Xuilian and Han Jian that we've doing all the drugs next week, and will be worst company for the week.
--[X] Cultivate Physical.
-[X] Elder Su's Class (Locked-In)
--[X] Open Heart Meridian
--[X] Ask her how one would go about earning the next scrool of the Argent series, or of Zephyr's Breath.
-[X] Go up to the vent to cultivate with Su Ling, Li Suyin, and Bai Meizhen
--[X] Warn them that we're going to be doing all the drugs this week, and apologize for our lack of personality for the next little while.
--[X] Forgotten Vale Melody
-[X] Talk to Han Jian, he did mention wanting to do some training
--[X] Sable Crescent Step
--[X] Apologize for the earlier awkwardness
-[X] Cultivate on your own
--[X] Open Heart Meridian.
--[X] Zephyr's Breath
--[X] (Meizhen's Tea) Zephyr's Breath

...because we ought to spend at least one action cultivating Physical. We're so close, and it's so *very* important. This is also our last, best chance to do that, with the two elixirs plus Prof Zhou. We get qi from overflow cultivation of meridians... but with bear marrow and White Heart Elixir, we also get a fair bit of qi from physical cultivation. I'd rather grab the Physical cultivation that we will need soon, than go for the Spine that we'll hopefully have a use for if all goes well.

The physical cultivation of that one action is going to be 32 dice worth, plus 10 extra dice of qi from Bear Marrow. That's not nothing.

For our two friend-groups... I think we should just stop trying. They're fundamentally unlike, and they have little to no incentive to get along. It's *not* a good match. Right now, they do fine as two groups that both include us. We don't need to merge them into some nonfunctional monster-group. 5 is a standard squad size for a reason. Thus, I've put a bit of an apology in the Han Jian action. Should smooth things over a bit on that side.

@Sirrocco Woohoo, a cultivate physical vote that has double Zephyr's breath, so if people insist on doing physical I can switch to yours! I don't have to feel guilty for doing ALL THE QI plan

[X] Plan All The Drugs

Doesn't lose us much qi, basically locks in being ready to breakthrough to silver.

I like even more than the other on-plan versions.

Yes, yes, it costs us a sable light qi roll, but we're getting the Bear's Marrow success bleed instead.

pheonix89 said:

[X] Plan All The Drugs

Doesn't lose us much qi, basically locks in being ready to breakthrough to silver.

I like even more than the other on-plan versions.

Yes, yes, it costs us a sable light qi roll, but we're getting the Bear's Marrow success bleed instead.

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It also means we aren't picking up spine or arms, and we're spending a high cost action on a roll we might be able to make with normal round bonuses.

[X] Plan The Zephyr Will Fly

I desperately want to do physical cultivation but I like getting as much Qi as possible. I may switch once yrsillar weighs in on how overflow works.
Similarly I like the idea of an arm meridian but getting our combat ability up further now is the priority.

I'm going to try and think of a writein that Elder Zhou might accept for giving us the bear marrow elixir as I really don't want to lose it and he's going to drop us next week anyway.

Maybe something to do with these:

yrsillar said:

"You have earned the right to further resources to aid your training, in addition to my teachings."

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yrsillar said:

Be thankful to our Medicine Department for their kindness!

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his speech on the importance of unity and balance in cultivation and his advice on when and when not to retreat.

So far I'm thinking something about how important it is to not waste resources (like in war) and focus on how Ling Qi desires to balance her improvements to gain the best overall advancement possible. Maybe something about Thunderdome coming up. The issue is that we can't get him alone (or at least somewhat distant from the rest of the class) like we can Elder Su. I don't want to expose Ling Qi's potential weakness to our enemies either.

Putting these here in case someone comes up with something really clever.

TheLastOne said:

It also means we aren't picking up spine or arms, and we're spending a high cost action on a roll we might be able to make with normal round bonuses.

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That is true. OTOH I'm not 100% certain we can overflow meridians to physical, only 90%, and none of the plans are currently specifying that overflow. I could probably be persuaded if that specification was added, definitely with specification and QM confirmation its allowed.

pheonix89 said:

That is true. OTOH I'm not 100% certain we can overflow meridians to physical, only 90%, and none of the plans are currently specifying that overflow. I could probably be persuaded if that specification was added, definitely with specification and QM confirmation its allowed.

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I've asked the QM if it is allowed, and depending on what people want I might go Physical Overflow first. There is a couple other things I'd need to check too, like if Silver gives a free action or it's only if you are Yellow that you have it.

Arkeus said:

I've asked the QM if it is allowed, and depending on what people want I might go Physical Overflow first. There is a couple other things I'd need to check too, like if Silver gives a free action or it's only if you are Yellow that you have it.

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We know that Yellow is required to up our actions further. We're pretty sure there's a qi requirement, but we don't know what it is. We might not have enough even after the qi surge.

That said, if we're guaranteed to be able to overflow into physical, and that's actually part of your plan, I'd also be willing to switch.

pheonix89 said:

That is true. OTOH I'm not 100% certain we can overflow meridians to physical, only 90%, and none of the plans are currently specifying that overflow. I could probably be persuaded if that specification was added, definitely with specification and QM confirmation its allowed.

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I'm asking for overflow rulings right now. If I get it, I'm going to set overflow to Spiritual->Physical. I think breaking through to yellow is slightly more important then silver, even though silver is better in a fight. That's because Yellow will net us another action soonish probably, where as silver won't. Still, with four Meridian openings we're probably going to have some overflow from Spiritual which we can hopefully push to Physical. If we're close enough, we can totally spend next round with []Physical[]Physical Breakthrough[]Spiritual Breakthrough[] pray really hard for good rolls.

Still, if people prefer it, and it's legal, I'm happy to go overflow to Physical->Spiritual. We're so close we probably could just run next turn as []Spiritual[]Physical Breakthrough[]Spiritual Breakthrough[] instead.

Sirrocco said:

We know that Yellow is required to up our actions further. We're pretty sure there's a qi requirement, but we don't know what it is. We might not have enough even after the qi surge.

That said, if we're guaranteed to be able to overflow into physical, and that's actually part of your plan, I'd also be willing to switch.

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The QM I think has used Yellow as shorthand for Yellow/Silver level a few times, so I am unsure if it's just yellow or Yellow or Silver, or Yellow and Silver.

I think it depends on how much overflow we expect to get. If we can overflow into physical that'd be great and if we're only expecting a small amount of overflow physical is absolutely more important for the autosuccess. OTOH if we're expecting enough that peak red isn't out of the question we should absolutely go spiritual for the boosted library pass chance and equal autosuccess.

Humbaba said:

I think it depends on how much overflow we expect to get. If we can overflow into physical that'd be great and if we're only expecting a small amount of overflow physical is absolutely more important for the autosuccess. OTOH if we're expecting enough that peak red isn't out of the question we should absolutely go spiritual for the boosted library pass chance and equal autosuccess.

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We'll probably get to peak red with @Arkeus's plan. We'll almost certainly with mine, with some overflow from THAT to hopefully redirect into physical.

Anyway going to shut eyes a bit. I won't be able to edit my plan for a few hours, but I'll do so once we have a ruling on overflow and whether Silver gets us an extra action from @yrsillar.

Natural overflow goes spiritual=> Qi. You can choose to do physical instead though.

Will answer the rest after work

[X] Plan All The Drugs

I think Physical isn't losing that much if anything, so.

TheLastOne said:

I'm asking for overflow rulings right now. If I get it, I'm going to set overflow to Spiritual->Physical. I think breaking through to yellow is slightly more important then silver, even though silver is better in a fight. That's because Yellow will net us another action soonish probably, where as silver won't. Still, with four Meridian openings we're probably going to have some overflow from Spiritual which we can hopefully push to Physical. If we're close enough, we can totally spend next round with []Physical[]Physical Breakthrough[]Spiritual Breakthrough[] pray really hard for good rolls.

Still, if people prefer it, and it's legal, I'm happy to go overflow to Physical->Spiritual. We're so close we probably could just run next turn as []Spiritual[]Physical Breakthrough[]Spiritual Breakthrough[] instead.

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We're much closer to physical, though. If we set overflow to physical we're essentially guaranteed to be ready for breakthrough, but that's not remotely true for spiritual.

yrsillar said:

Natural overflow goes spiritual=> Qi. You can choose to do physical instead though.

Will answer the rest after work

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Ok, setting overflow route on my plan!

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pheonix89 said:

We're much closer to physical, though. If we set overflow to physical we're essentially guaranteed to be ready for breakthrough, but that's not remotely true for spiritual.

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I've set it to physical first, because that's what people prefer. It's close enough I don't think it matters. We're going to be rolling a hell of a lot of dice here, more then enough to fill ether tank, and if people like the physical tank I'll send it there.

Yeah, setting it to physical too so far as that's what seems to be the preference. If people change their minds, I'll change mine too. It's not a part of my plan I am deeply attached too, as I can see both Silver and Yellow having advantages as the one to breakthrough first.