Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

PrimalShadow said:

The way I see it, for at least the foreseeable future (until we break through to Green, at least), we should be ignoring speculated elemental domains, considering elemental balance but only to the extent of not over-specializing, and making the bulk of our decisions based on elemental synergy and the bonuses we have available.

Let me elaborate.

Our first priority when choosing arts is to avoid elemental overspecialization. For us right now, that means we want to avoid picking up Darkness arts if we can help it - especially mono-element Darkness arts. Obviously if something high-level gets dropped in our lap we'd take advantage of it regardless of element, but when we have a choice of element we should be avoiding Darkness when possible. The way I see it, overspecialization is somewhat hard to fix, and since most of our arts are obtained from special encounters we can get arts that worsen the problem without our input; it is best to at least not make the problem worse with our choice of arts.

That said, insofar as it doesn't overbalance us, we should be picking elements that overlap with the elements we are investing in already. We are rather limited in what elements we can boost with talismans, which means that if our build is all over the place we won't be able to boost a significant fraction of our arts even if we do change our talismans later. For example, AM currently uses the Mountain and Lake elements, but unless we pick up more of those elements we probably won't be equipping anything that boosts it in the future. If we had instead gotten something like Mountain + Water (which overlapped with FVM), we would be in a much better position to boost the art.

Finally, we should be picking elements that we currently have talismans and cultivation bonuses for. Typically, this wouldn't take priority over elemental, though if it is an art that we aren't planning to keep long term or is something that we expect to be situational (and therefore not something we strictly need discount for in the long-term), then perhaps this factor might be more important after all.

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I concur, for the most part. Really, Ling Qi just doesn't know enough to know what Arts are out there that she has access to and how they'd synergize at this point - so she should get what's available and she's able to pick up fast. Wind is the biggest possibility here, as for low-level arts, "-10 successes needed per level" is a massive percentage, and only gets outweighed by "+5 dice" if the art in question has very expensive levels (I think the break-even point is "if it takes four or more actions to advance" or thereabouts).

A second criteria is "how effective/efficient is the element to use". s she has talismans that boost wind techniques' effects and discount their cost, Wind is still quite appealing from that aspect. And she only has a single Wind art, so elemental imbalance is not important.

There is a fourth criteria, mind you - "will this Art be useful enough before its replaced". Of course, if an art is useful forever, that's not relevant - but in my mind that's mostly going to be utility arts *or* arts Ling Qi gets as prizes. And, of course, if an art leads in to a 'higher level' art, then, depending on how its mechanically done, the time spent learning the replaced art is still useful. Now, of course, there's a prospective site that means that even if a Heaven art is discarded and never used after the end of the year, learning it will still lead to permanent benefits for Ling Qi (meaning the time is only a 'two thirds' wasted).

One last criteria is just a supposition, as the topic hasn't even come up for Ling Qi - art creation or synthesis. One minor trope in a lot of xianxia novels is the self-created technique being synthesized from existing techniques - and being stronger or more useful (usually because it's perfectly suited to the creator). I don't know how upper-level techniques work in this setting, or to what extent there's self-created arts as a common feature for experienced cultivators, or if learning a lot of arts inside an element or theme makes making such an art easier, or any of the related questions. Similarly, I don't know if there's breakthrough bonuses from "arts mastered" (overall, by element, by meridian or by theme).

Heh. I guess it's just a long-winded way for me to say "she should pick an art based on immediate utility and ease of learning" - which to me for this pick means "Wind or Wind/?, Arm/?". The only arts that I speculate on that I'd like her to actively seek out are any other 'Argent' arts, since she can auto-train them and, if they follow the Sect theme, they'll be an excellent foundation regardless of what direction her cultivation goes in the future.

Arkeus said:

I wasn't the one to mention the indebtedness. I was the one to respond when people were speaking of the indebtness to point out the indebtedness is not reflected by the actual action as to why it's not the actual underlying cause of her issues. Yes, she feels indebted, but it's more due to other issues that keeps piling up on her than anything. The indebtedness is not the root cause of her issues with us is why I spoke of it.

Also, how is it "now I am trying to have my cake and eat it too"? this was my argument since the beginning. You can re-read the last couple pages. That's what I have been saying all along.

I know what others have been saying, hence me responding about how the indebtness is not reflected in reality and how she is feeling deep self-esteem issues because she she is feeling like shit currently and while she does see she can give back to some measure, her lack of independence makes everything worse. My argument hasn't changed, and it was from the start a response to "she feels indebted so we shouldn't give her more".

E.G, instead of saying "she feels indebted so we shouldn't give her more", I believe that we should try to solve the root cause of why she feels indebted so strongly.

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While I adore these character discussions, you've mentioned that it's 3AM where you are so I can't really in good conscience reply to you. >_>;

Honestly, I think we should see if Li Suyin and/or Su Ling can recreate the Qi Foundation pill or at least figure out how to make a lesser version of it, because we could presumably sell that for a lot of stones.

PrimalShadow said:

The way I see it, for at least the foreseeable future (until we break through to Green, at least), we should be ignoring speculated elemental domains, considering elemental balance but only to the extent of not over-specializing, and making the bulk of our decisions based on elemental synergy and the bonuses we have available.

Let me elaborate.

Our first priority when choosing arts is to avoid elemental overspecialization. For us right now, that means we want to avoid picking up Darkness arts if we can help it - especially mono-element Darkness arts. Obviously if something high-level gets dropped in our lap we'd take advantage of it regardless of element, but when we have a choice of element we should be avoiding Darkness when possible. The way I see it, overspecialization is somewhat hard to fix, and since most of our arts are obtained from special encounters we can get arts that worsen the problem without our input; it is best to at least not make the problem worse with our choice of arts.

That said, insofar as it doesn't overbalance us, we should be picking elements that overlap with the elements we are investing in already. We are rather limited in what elements we can boost with talismans, which means that if our build is all over the place we won't be able to boost a significant fraction of our arts even if we do change our talismans later. For example, AM currently uses the Mountain and Lake elements, but unless we pick up more of those elements we probably won't be equipping anything that boosts it in the future. If we had instead gotten something like Mountain + Water (which overlapped with FVM), we would be in a much better position to boost the art.

Finally, we should be picking elements that we currently have talismans and cultivation bonuses for. Typically, this wouldn't take priority over elemental, though if it is an art that we aren't planning to keep long term or is something that we expect to be situational (and therefore not something we strictly need discount for in the long-term), then perhaps this factor might be more important after all.

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I'm not sure I actually agree that we really need to diversify elementally.
I'm fairly sure that from a purely mechanical point mono-specializing actually makes you a stronger cultivator.
The reason for this is that every breakthrough you are going to keep getting buffs for a single element (instead of having buffs spread out between 2+ elements) as well as every talisman boosting every art you have. In addition, your same element arts are probably going to synergize as well, especially if you pick a elemental focused cultivation art.
Yes, going all in into a single element will give you personality problems, but that seems like something that might very well be worth the cost (a cost that apparently quite a few clans are willing to pay).

On the note of breakthrough gains, has anyone figured out what the ??? that gave us the wind cost decrease and ranged bonus is?

lemon10 said:

I'm not sure I actually agree that we really need to diversify elementally.
I'm fairly sure that from a purely mechanical point mono-specializing actually makes you a stronger cultivator.
The reason for this is that every breakthrough you are going to keep getting buffs for a single element (instead of having buffs spread out between 2+ elements) as well as every talisman boosting every art you have.
Yes, going all in into a single element will give you personality problems, but that seems like something that might very well be worth the cost (a cost that apparently quite a few clans are willing to pay).

On the note of breakthrough gains, has anyone figured out what the ??? that gave us the wind cost decrease and ranged bonus is?

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Nothing suggests you get better breakthrough bonuses for mono-focus. Rather, all breakthrough bonuses seem to be pretty equivalent, so the opposite seems to be the case - you want as many elements as is possible if you're looking at it from a 'breakthrough bonus' perspective.

Personally, I consider debts between Ling Qi and Li Suyin to be roughly equal, but I can absolutely see why she would feel differently. The training was mutual, the pills were helpful early on while we were dirt poor, everyone benefits from the Argent Vent, offered some encouragement to a friend, I personally wouldn't count the talisman given the surrounding context (not that we were indebted to the gals for not swinging in to rescue them, but if you have a surplus on hand and friends are struggling, sharing some small measure if only as a gesture of support just seems natural to me assuming it wouldn't offend), and sharing Argent Mirror cost us nothing while better equipping our exploration buddies for exploratin'. However, from her point of view, we're the more advanced in cultivation, saved her from total physical cultivation obsolescence, buoyed her spirits while she was considering quitting the sect, gave her a valuable talisman, and freely shared an invaluable sect technique.

I'm probably forgetting a thing or two. I understand her point of view, and I'm sympathetic towards it, but I don't respect it. I do, however, respect her and that means acting like I do, mostly. I don't think the pill will make an impact, personally, but I can see how others do think so.

Something I think we might pursue is dragging Su Ling and Li Suyin along hunting with Han Jian and his group. The first reason is to show off Su Ling's survival prowess, as well as hopefully up our exp for it from the action but it's not vital, while socializing her with the group in a context she can contribute more than as a junior student; both her performance and attitude should be better, and her tone more tolerable for others in a realm of her expertise. The second is twofold: have Li Suyin interact with the group in a more decisive (and roguishly badass with that eyepatch) state while letting the group tackle much more challenging prey due to the presence of her healing; and to give her combat experience where she disables, maims, and even kills acceptable living targets.

Not looking to merge the groups or anything, but cordial relationships are a beneficial thing to have. And the more cordial our various acquaintances' relationships are with each other, the less of a pain in our ass it is.

Arkeus said:

Her giving us something of 8+ stones is much better than us giving us something costing us 20 stone after we betrayed her.

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I don't think we betrayed her? Betrayal is when someone that you owe something has a a reasonable expectation of you, you know about it, and yet you fail to meet said expectation. If we had promised to be there for Li Suyin and weren't, that would be betrayal - but there were no such promises. At worst, we failed to prioritize her needs above our own, but that is selfishness, not betrayal. And sometimes, you can't afford to not be selfish.

Arkeus said:

Likewise, Suyin feeling her relationship with us is uneven is because she is currently in deep shit, and her whole life has been overturned. It's expression of her issues, it's not her issues themselves.

Her issues is she can't be who she wants, can't give back, can't be awesome. She is forced into being someone she doesn't like.

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I really like the way you presented this argument here; focusing on the fact that Suyin's problem is internal (which her lack of ability) and not external (with what she owes) is a valuable perspective that we haven't encountered before.

That said, I maintain that us giving her more stuff now would be exacerbating the issue. Sure, the root of the issue would be addressed by Suyin being able to pay as back as she thinks she should, but until that point making her feel like she owes us more is going to only make things worse.

CircleTheSkies said:

(meaning the time is only a 'two thirds' wasted).

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4/5ths wasted. The site give 1/5 overflow to Qi, not 1/3.

CircleTheSkies said:

Heh. I guess it's just a long-winded way for me to say "she should pick an art based on immediate utility and ease of learning" - which to me for this pick means "Wind or Wind/?, Arm/?". The only arts that I speculate on that I'd like her to actively seek out are any other 'Argent' arts, since she can auto-train them and, if they follow the Sect theme, they'll be an excellent foundation regardless of what direction her cultivation goes in the future.

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Also Water. Our passive bonus to Wind doesn't extend to Water, but two of our current talismans use Water and we have a site that boosts it as well; between the two, I like Water as much if note more than Wind at the moment.

PrimalShadow said:

4/5ths wasted. The site give 1/5 overflow to Qi, not 1/3.

Also Water. Our passive bonus to Wind doesn't extend to Water, but two of our current talismans use Water and we have a site that boosts it as well; between the two, I like Water as much if note more than Wind at the moment.

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Yeah, I keep doing that. Reflex from the similar line in the drugs, I suppose.

On water... as I said, +5 dice to cultivation isn't as good as -10 successes per level for this level of arts. Although yes, I rather like Water too. A two-element art between them would be ideal

Kyr'am said:

Honestly, I think we should see if Li Suyin and/or Su Ling can recreate the Qi Foundation pill or at least figure out how to make a lesser version of it, because we could presumably sell that for a lot of stones.

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I imagine the ingredients and the time required to make it are enough to offset those profits. Remember, there are people who work on this stuff already; it seems a bit arrogant to think that our companions will be able to do it better than the medicine-hall disciplines who are presumably the ones making this stuff currently. And if there was that much money to be made here, the I expect said medicine-hall disciplines would be making it.

lemon10 said:

I'm not sure I actually agree that we really need to diversify elementally.
I'm fairly sure that from a purely mechanical point mono-specializing actually makes you a stronger cultivator.
The reason for this is that every breakthrough you are going to keep getting buffs for a single element (instead of having buffs spread out between 2+ elements) as well as every talisman boosting every art you have. In addition, your same element arts are probably going to synergize as well, especially if you pick a elemental focused cultivation art.
Yes, going all in into a single element will give you personality problems, but that seems like something that might very well be worth the cost (a cost that apparently quite a few clans are willing to pay).

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We don't actually know how breakthrough bonuses work. It may be that you get a fixed quantity of reward that is spread out among the elements you use, but I find that kind of unlikely. I think it is far more likely that you receive rewards for each element you've invested in, and passing certain thresholds gets you better bonuses. In that case, the question is how high the thresholds go; e.g. if we've already crossed the highest threshold for Darkness, specializing more wouldn't get us anything extra on breakthrough.

I do admit that getting focused boosts from talismans is super useful.

I'm not sure that arts of one element synergize that well. I mean, I'm sure there is some synergy, but I suspect you might get even better results with a broader elemental variety, just because elements do somewhat limit the arts they can grant, and having a wider variety of effects to choose from has more options available that might be synergistic.

CircleTheSkies said:

On water... as I said, +5 dice to cultivation isn't as good as -10 successes per level for this level of arts. Although yes, I rather like Water too. A two-element art between them would be ideal

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You are forgetting the -1 to qi costs (from our robe). That is a big deal in my eyes, and what pushes it to the same rank as Wind.

Alright, well I guess it is time for me to input my opinion on the thorn bush that is any discussion involving Li Suyin.

Here is my controversial and unheard opinion, the pill will neither help or hurt our relationship with Li Suyin. Now, some of you are going to say, it will make her feel more indebted to us thus compounding the issues that are coming to the front. Others will say that it will help get her strong thus allowing her to feel useful and thus helping resolve the negative mentality that she is in. I disagree with both of these points.

I do not believe that the root cause of her problem revolves around a feeling of indebtedness. It is true that she feels glad to have helped us, and there is certainly a feeling of indebtedness there that is making some of her issues worse, but indebtedness is a problem that is easily solvable at her current level, and Suyin has not engaged in any activities that would do so. If the root of her problems is a feeling of indebtedness, then we would see a lot more dialogue and action from her part to try and clear the debt that she feels is between us. No human being wants to have the feeling of being in debt to someone else, and this goes to a more significant amount in eastern cultures. As such, since we are not seeing the actions on Li Suyin's part to attempt to discharge the debt between us, I would have to think that there are deeper issues at stake here which will not be solved by merely clearing the debt between us.

However, neither do I agree with the idea that the root of her problems is uselessness. Again, just like the feeling of indebtedness, it is most likely an issue that is not helping her root issues, but I do not believe that it is the root issue. If her root issue is feelings of uselessness, then I believe we would be seeing a slightly different interaction pattern with her. Instead of asking ways to clear up the debt between us, she would be asking for ways to help us cultivate. She knows that we are big on cultivation and that we are sprinting along, but that we also are still receiving help from her in order to do so. When an individual feels useless, they seek other ways to make themselves feel useful, unless their pride prevents them from searching for other opportunities in which case they either work all the harder at one thing or stop trying altogether. Suyin has some pride, but where she is working all the harder is not in an area that she naturally feels comfortable and is not a path that she initially chose for herself.

My personal feelings on the matter are that the root of the issue is deeper than that, and is tied intrinsically to self-worth. I believe that she has an extremely low sense of self-worth and that this is what the core issue is about. She doesn't believe that she should have our help, she doesn't believe that her time is as valuable as our time, she doesn't believe in herself. She views herself as intrinsically less than us, and that leads to a situation where she might feel indebted to us (because everything she does for us is of less worth than what we do for her) and that she feels she is useless (because she compares what she can do to what we can do). A pill will not help any of that or hurt any of that.

What needs to happen, is that she needs to get past the revenge stage of her existence and start moving towards actually constructing a life for herself again. Moving forward towards a goal that is of her own making, rather than seeking revenge on other people and letting those people control what she does. Now, these are just my opinions, but I think that the best thing for Li Suyin to do is start studying formations with us and start doing other things rather than focusing on revenge. She might rediscover the joy of cultivation again.

. . . So she is waiting for Ling Qi to vassalage (sp?) her?

PrimalShadow said:

And if there was that much money to be made here, the I expect said medicine-hall disciplines would be making it.

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See, I rather think they are making money (well, stones) from pill making and stuff, and I want to get in on it. Only we're not good at it, except we have two friends who are and in the case of Li Suyin feels like she owes us something.

Kyr'am said:

See, I rather think they are making money (well, stones) from pill making and stuff, and I want to get in on it. Only we're not good at it, except we have two friends who are and in the case of Li Suyin feels like she owes us something.

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I'm sure they are making money off of it, like any professionals plying a trade. The problem is, this would basically be our friends getting jobs, not a get-rich-quick scheme.

I'm not saying that jobs are bad, either; we ourselves have to do stuff like hunting or sect-missions to earn the money for our cultivation, and it might be more efficient for Li Suyin or Su Ling to do crafting instead. But the truth is, I doubt being able to examine a single pill is going to be a big deal here, and I think that our friends would know better than us about what sort of money-making avenues they want to try developing.

[X] Plan Getting Armed

PrimalShadow said:

I imagine the ingredients and the time required to make it are enough to offset those profits. Remember, there are people who work on this stuff already; it seems a bit arrogant to think that our companions will be able to do it better than the medicine-hall disciplines who are presumably the ones making this stuff currently. And if there was that much money to be made here, the I expect said medicine-hall disciplines would be making it.


We don't actually know how breakthrough bonuses work. It may be that you get a fixed quantity of reward that is spread out among the elements you use, but I find that kind of unlikely. I think it is far more likely that you receive rewards for each element you've invested in, and passing certain thresholds gets you better bonuses. In that case, the question is how high the thresholds go; e.g. if we've already crossed the highest threshold for Darkness, specializing more wouldn't get us anything extra on breakthrough.

I do admit that getting focused boosts from talismans is super useful.

I'm not sure that arts of one element synergize that well. I mean, I'm sure there is some synergy, but I suspect you might get even better results with a broader elemental variety, just because elements do somewhat limit the arts they can grant, and having a wider variety of effects to choose from has more options available that might be synergistic.

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I don't think that the synergy between same element arts is that amazing really, but I do think that it would add into a non-trivial bonus.
I do agree with you on the fact that thresholds seem to be logical way to do it, but I'm not sure that there really *is* a highest threshold, it seems more likely that you would simply have to put more effort in to reach each progressive one (eg. 1/2/5/10/20/40, ect), with each further tier being (possibly slightly) more rewarding.
Really though, both of those matter less then the talisman bonus (which will just keep getting bigger and more important as we go on).
Plus, there are going to be other things that only give bonuses to one/two elements (eg. element specific pills/an element alligned cultivation art/rare high bonus single element training area) that would further benefit someone going all in in a single element.

TheLastOne said:

Nothing suggests you get better breakthrough bonuses for mono-focus. Rather, all breakthrough bonuses seem to be pretty equivalent, so the opposite seems to be the case - you want as many elements as is possible if you're looking at it from a 'breakthrough bonus' perspective.

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Mmm. I disagree. Like primal suggested I'm pretty sure there are thresholds, and if you focus all your effort into a single element you will simply get more rewards for that element (even if it ends up being slightly less overall). You are right though that I have no proof, and although it could totally be as you suspect I don't think it is.
Now, getting everything might end with you getting slightly more total rewards, but given how much less focused it would be I don't think it would really work any better.

lemon10 said:

I do agree with you on the fact that thresholds seem to be logical way to do it, but I'm not sure that there really *is* a highest threshold, it seems more likely that you would simply have to put more effort in to reach each progressive one (eg. 1/2/5/10/20/40, ect), with each further tier being (possibly slightly) more rewarding.

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If there is no top threshold but thresholds scale nonlinearly, that still encourages us to diversify. With your example scaling, I'd rather have 5/2/2/1 for a total of 3/2/2/1 bonuses in four elements than having 10 in one element for a total of 4 bonuses. Note that while we haven't seen too many bonuses, most seem to be generic boosts as opposed to ones locked to an element, so getting an extra bonus in one category is almost certainly going to be less valuable than multiple bonuses in other categories.

lemon10 said:

Really though, both of those matter less then the talisman bonus (which will just keep getting bigger and more important as we go on).
Plus, there are going to be other things that only give bonuses to one/two elements (eg. element specific pills/an element alligned cultivation art/rare high bonus single element training area) that would further benefit someone going all in in a single element.

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Talisman bonuses are definitely the biggest deal, yeah. I fully admit that talismans as we've seen them so far strongly encourage specialization.
You have a point about pills too, though one I'm not as concerned about. As is, I doubt that element-specific cultivation aids are going to be a critical part of our cultivation, so the efficiency of being able to cross-apply pills is useful but not essential. Even if we get rare medicines at some point that are darkness aligned, we'd still wouldn't be losing out too much by being spread out. Especially since it means if we pick up rare medicine that is aligned with something else we can still use it gainfully.

lemon10 said:

Mmm. I disagree. Like primal suggested I'm pretty sure there are thresholds, and if you focus all your effort into a single element you will simply get more rewards for that element (even if it ends up being slightly less overall). You are right though that I have no proof, and although it could totally be as you suspect I don't think it is.
Now, getting everything might end with you getting slightly more total rewards, but given how much less focused it would be I don't think it would really work any better.

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Sadly, I don't think we have the information to judge at this point one way or another; our own breakthrough didn't really give us enough information to say.

Hmm, switching vote. After some sleep, I feel like including a Xuan Shi action.

[X] Plan Preparing for Learning

EDIT: Can I suggest though, that we switch the attached minor action from talking to Meizhen about arts that may or may not exist, to talking to Han Jian about nobility or Su Ling about hunting?

Inserted tally

@Arkeus I have lost track of the meridian issue a bit, so I am wondering if it would be worthwhile to use the meridian action for 'whatever meridian lets us use the new art' instead of specifically spine. Seeing as we don't know what art we will pick, and if we go arm/arm we won't be able to use it at all. I don't know if this is worth it though, I just figured I would bring it up.

mc2rpg said:

@Arkeus I have lost track of the meridian issue a bit, so I am wondering if it would be worthwhile to use the meridian action for 'whatever meridian lets us use the new art' instead of specifically spine. Seeing as we don't know what art we will pick, and if we go arm/arm we won't be able to use it at all. I don't know if this is worth it though, I just figured I would bring it up.

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We need a spine for Sable Crescent Step.

TheLastOne said:

We need a spine for Sable Crescent Step.

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Well nevermind then. That actually makes me pretty happy then, we won't have to worry about any issues for immediate art use making arm/spine sound better if we won't have the free spine either. Thanks.

mc2rpg said:

Well nevermind then. That actually makes me pretty happy then, we won't have to worry about any issues for immediate art use making arm/spine sound better if we won't have the free spine either. Thanks.

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Eh, we're going to be trying to open a meridian most turns for a while.