Remove ads

Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

Reader mode
Karnax626 said:
You're kinda making some assumptions here.
Can't speak for anyone else, but I'm not voting for this because I feel guilty. I'm doing it because I honestly believe it's a fair trade. We lose literally nothing by giving Su Ling access to Argent Current (that I can think of at least), and in return we get some pills which honestly are more useful to us than to Su Ling. Plus Su Ling is explicitly looking for some way to rely less on her fox heritage, ideally a melee art of some sort, so AC is pretty damn good for her.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Alright, from the top!

First off, the assumptions I'm making are minor, at best. The post I quoted, which was the first to postulate the idea, and which you have articulated again, is the idea that trading AC for the shaman bags is a fair trade. You can claim that it is a fair trade, but my argument is in opposition to that idea. I don't think it's a fair trade and I gave a logical breakdown of why that is. If we want to be fair then we need to make sure we are actually fair and not scamming her. What if she wants the arts that could be in the bag rather then AC? Is it fair to say that even though we couldn't have gotten those arts without her help she can't have them? How do we determine fairness in this situation?

In fact, because we lose nothing by giving her AC, we are inherently taking advantage of her in that exchange. She is losing out on the items from the bag and gaining AC, while we are gaining the items from the bag and loosing nothing. That's not fair to her. We gain everything and she gains half. If we give her AC as a gift for helping out before, then she gained something for helping. We don't lose anything and she gets rewarded for her actions, that's fair. Then we can talk about the shaman bag separately and figure out what is the fair exchange for the shaman bag. Ideally, we lose something and she gains something. Or she gets to use stuff from the shaman bag like arts or talismans.

The argument that I make then, and here, has nothing at all about what to do regarding the shaman bag and if we should give it to her or not. That is not the point of the post, and neither is it the purpose of the argument that I went for. This is nothing about what Su Ling doesn't know won't hurt her, and I'm not making that argument. The wording was used in that post to convey the idea that the reasons for giving AC to Su Ling and giving AC to Su Ling for the Shaman bags are intrinsically different reasons. People don't want to give AC to Su Ling because its fair to, people want to give it to her because they want to give it to her. It's that simple. The idea that we need to give something to Su Ling for the shaman bag is linked to fairness. That it is not fair for us to get all the benefit from the Shaman bags while Su Ling gets nothing. My argument is that it is fairer to give Su Ling something from the Shaman bag then it is to give her AC for the Shaman bag.
 
Last edited:
Arkeus said:
We are currently having Elder lessons, and iirc you were the one thinking we couldn't get tutoring when we also had Elder lessons.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I was more hoping than thinking, for the sake of system integrity - but @yrsillar hasn't commented on that. :(

Once we don't have Elder lesson, it just takes an action to get the necessary points for tutoring, given the new sect missions.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Not especially convinced. Why is it going to be any easier to find a free action for a mission later when we don't have Elder Tutoring?

ZB stack with that for all of those
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
It stacks in the same way that ordering two entrees at a restaurant instead of one stack. Sure, you can eat one or the other, or even sample from both of them, but unless you are really hungry you are going to be wasting food.

Or perhaps I should use a different example. It stacks in the same way that having a black pen and a blue pen on your desk stacks. You can choose which one you use, and once in a blue moon you will be filling our a form and they will ask for a specific color, or you will need to lend someone a pen and having an extra will prove useful - but really, the value that doubling up on pens her provides is very much minimal.

Arkeus said:
Physical Crowd control.

ZB focuses on being able to manipulate enemies' speed and movements as well as enhancing allies', and while the stacking options for FSA or FVM or TRF are really nice, especially if the passives go AoE, we shouldn't forget its primary purpose.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
And how often is that going to matter, really? I can think of one fight where it might have helped (the chase scene at the end of growing pains), and even then I doubt it would have made a major difference.

All in all, I'm not interested in grabbing every possible combination of [Physical/Spiritual] [Offensive/Defensive] [Allied-Buff/Enemy-Debuff]; I think that is optimizing along an axis that doesn't really matter. These sorts of differences are going to make only a minor difference in most fights; I'd much rather work on the arts we already have to increase their strength.

Karnax626 said:
The thing is, a lot of the defensive stuff we currently have mainly applies if we take a hit. ZB helps stop us being hit (at least against ranged attacks).
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I don't think so?

  • Deepwood Vitality gives us an ablative health box that takes the hit instead of us, and extra physical defensive dice.
  • Ten Ring Defense also gives us extra physical defenses, and reduces the level of damage we take. It also lets us negate damage entirely with Qi.
  • Tranquil Rebuke gives us spiritual defenses vs one attack (a whole 6 dice altogether), and lets us counter the attack with one of our own if we win.
  • Crescent Grace just gives us defenses straight-out.
All of these need to be triggered before an attack, and stop us from getting hit. The only ones that help us AFTER an attack are:
  • Formless Shade, which gets us out of formations or mobility restrictions.
  • Discerning Gaze, which gets us out of illusions.
  • Serene Reflection, which gets us out of debuffs.
And of these, we would occasionally want to use Formless Shade before an attack for the perfect defense.

So all in all, not sure your point holds.

What do you mean by the extra action?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Sect training uses a major + minor, and lets us choose two major actions worth of cultivation to advance. This gets us an extra major action.
 
Last edited:
Arkeus said:
-[] Resources: 3 RS, 1 YS, 1 qi expansion pill (inventory), basic water/wood pills (4), 2nd level water/wood pills (12), 1 Black Ichor Elixir, 1 sturdy oak pill (8), 1 steady growth pill (18), 1 Qi Sea Pill (25). Total = 1 YS, 70 RS

This seems fine to me. Has all the pills for FVM/TRF, has black Ichor and all the pills for Qi.

@Erebeal, we need the second level water pill if we want to be sure to get FVM5 on week 30.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
We should be averaging 89.1 successes out of the 83 needed (after Eightfold week) without using it this week.

If people really want it though then I can add it.
 
@Erebeal and @SynchronizedWritersBlock

I know this might be tedious and a pain to do, but if we know the name of the pills in the inventory shop, please use them. The second level pills of the various elements give bonuses to cultivation in various areas and it is a pain to figure out what they are without naming them.

The first level water pill is called: "Gushing Spring Pill"
The second level water pill is called: "Flowing Rivers Pill"

The first level wind pill is called: "Clear Wind Pill"
The second level wind pill is called: "White Hart Elixir"
 
Some thoughts:
  • Regarding formations: the problem here is that we just aren't that interest in them. We've got decent dots there, but our general lack of engagement and lack of any real attempt to seriously train them limits us fluffwise. If we want to actually use formations we need to write in some serious study options and actually put in some work. Not just hopr that we can use Jiao to avoid doing that. Personally, as a yutor I'm not wildly impressed by someone who doesnt bother to actually engage with the subject on their own, and just wants the tutor to give them the answers - and we saw that kind of response from Jiao.
  • I'm not opposed to bringing Meizhen with us. We can't actually turn invisible, so stealth is more not being in the same room as people. Meizhen has good perception and those 3rd realm autos, so she should be alright. The real question is how good she is at suppressing her qi to avoid detection... We know she has a darkness movent art similar to scs, and the Bai have been referred to as "assassins", so she might actually be pretty good.
  • If we do take Meizhen, we might want to think about formless shade qi cards. Do we have any left? Is there anything else we might want to buy from the market?
 
Eh.

To be fair, half the reason that we can't afford to spend time on Formations is because this is a year of absolute monsters participating in the Inner Sect Examination. Any moment we're not spending trying to make up for our poor birth.

Like, I imagine if we end up getting stuck because of bad luck (Congratulations! You're fighting Sun Liling in Round One!), we're going to make up for our loss of Cultivation speed by branching out.

I mean, I would fucking love Ling Qi to get a Formations Mastery subspec, because that shit is just cool. It's just... We just don't have enough time to branch out without risking losing our shot at the Inner Sect this year. Our foundation just started out too weak.

A lot of people seem to find it easy to forget that Ling Qi doesn't know anything about how this society works, and what's generally a good idea or not. She's basing her standards off of what the best of the best of the best do, and thus, she leaves herself little time to develop other skills that she'd like to develop. And she's technically not wrong to do this, because this year is a bunch of freaks of nature who would all be liable to sweep the Inner Sect Tournament in a normal year.

Like, if we didn't need to prepare to have to compete with the likes of Cai Renxiang, Sun Liling, and Bai Meizhen, Ling Qi would have plenty of time to do little things like "Study Formations in Earnest because Formations are cool". But we do, and that means we need to be at least on the same level of monster--but with far less preparation time than they had.
 
Last edited:
Alectai said:
Eh.

To be fair, half the reason that we can't afford to spend time on Formations is because this is a year of absolute monsters participating in the Inner Sect Examination. Any moment we're not spending trying to make up for our poor birth.

Like, I imagine if we end up getting stuck because of bad luck (Congratulations! You're fighting Sun Liling in Round One!), we're going to make up for our loss of Cultivation speed by branching out.

I mean, I would fucking love Ling Qi to get a Formations Mastery subspec, because that shit is just cool. It's just... We just don't have enough time to branch out without risking losing our shot at the Inner Sect this year. Our foundation just started out too weak.

A lot of people seem to find it easy to forget that Ling Qi doesn't know anything about how this society works, and what's generally a good idea or not. She's basing her standards off of what the best of the best of the best do, and thus, she leaves herself little time to develop other skills that she'd like to develop. And she's technically not wrong to do this, because this year is a bunch of freaks of nature who would all be liable to sweep the Inner Sect Tournament in a normal year.

Like, if we didn't need to prepare to have to compete with the likes of Cai Renxiang, Sun Liling, and Bai Meizhen, Ling Qi would have plenty of time to do little things like "Study Formations in Earnest because Formations are cool". But we do, and that means we need to be at least on the same level of monster--but with far less preparation time than they had.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

That assumes that what's in the last bag isn't worth the action, which I suspect is wrong. Art, tool, or anther medicine in line with what we just found, there's many things we could get worth more then that action spent getting them.
 
Alectai said:
To be fair, half the reason that we can't afford to spend time on Formations is because this is a year of absolute monsters participating in the Inner Sect Examination. Any moment we're not spending trying to make up for our poor birth.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Oh I agree. I'm more arguing against more formations tutoring if we aren't serious about it. Beecause I dont think it will really help that much.


@Thor's Twin I get what you're saying, but my plan doesn't a actually have any physical or spiritual rolls anywhere, so it's a moot point.
 
Honestly, I think an interesting thing might be taking the Formation Tutoring--but then using it as an excuse to start making some of our own.

Like, how useful would it be for us to develop a Light Swallowing Formation of some kind? Create Darkness when we need to put our gameface on so we can get the full benefits of our various Darkness Arts?

Or a Sound Echoing Formation that can perpetuate our music while we shift to another form of attack. Ling Qi is all about field control, Formations would be amazing to supplement that.

It's just... We just don't have any fucking time to do this.
 
Last edited:
Erebeal said:
Regarding formations: the problem here is that we just aren't that interest in them. We've got decent dots there, but our general lack of engagement and lack of any real attempt to seriously train them limits us fluffwise. If we want to actually use formations we need to write in some serious study options and actually put in some work. Not just hope that we can use Jiao to avoid doing that. Personally, as a tutor, I'm not wildly impressed by someone who doesn't bother to actually engage with the subject on their own, and just wants the tutor to give them the answers - and we saw that kind of response from Jiao.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Personally, I think next time we train formations, whether with Jiao or the Archives, we should focus on Spirit Beast Warding Totems. Not only is it relevant (they saved our/Sun Ling's life during the Cloud Shaman mission, there's a Sect mission to repair some), but they seem interesting, and we could branch out from that to normal wards to protect our house/stuff.
 
Erebeal said:
Some thoughts:
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I agree totally agree with the formations aspect. I just don't think that we will get the time to do that type of stuff until A) SCS and FVM are finished; or B) we hit green. If we get ZB+ this round and (fingers crossed) the Yan Renshu art, then we will be pretty much set for arts in the foreseeable future. Should we have free actions while working on them then we will have a good shot at hitting the archives and digging through formations and figuring out what we are good at and what we suck at.

Becoming friends with Xuan is also a good direction to go if we want to get good with formations, as friends help friends get better at an area of mutual interest. It will be tough, but possible.

Alectai said:
Like, I imagine if we end up getting stuck because of bad luck (Congratulations! You're fighting Sun Liling in Round One!)
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I mean, to be perfectly honest, I think we have a good shot at beating up Sun Liling come tournament time. I ran the numbers on what our defenses are as they stand right now, and we have exploded from where we were during Thunderdome redux. During Thunderdome Redux, with Han Jian's buff, we hit 17 dice as our defense. Right now, if my calculations are accurate, we could hit 32 dice for defense. And we haven't even hit 3 or 4th stage of TRF and we still have 5th stage of SCS to go. We will be tanky as all get out. In comparison, at Green/bronze Sun Liling hit us with everything and that ended up being 28 dice. At the moment (excluding auto's) our defenses could have beat hers then.

She will probably have improved since then, but we will certainly be putting up a good fight.
 
Honestly, I think the reason Ling Qi is focused on her arts instead of her formations and other skills is that arts have a linear curve for the most part in that they'll always give her some type of gain whether it be passives or actions that she can do. Whereas formations, music, and all her other assorted skills work on an exponential curve.
 
TheLastOne said:
That assumes that what's in the last bag isn't worth the action, which I suspect is wrong. Art, tool, or anther medicine in line with what we just found, there's many things we could get worth more then that action spent getting them.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
Is there a reason we need to worry about what is in the bag now? Won't it still be there in a couple of turns, by the next time we have a minor action free?
 
My dearest hope, by the way, is that Yan Renshu is operating from this base. The chances of that are slim, but if so we might be able to snag the art and book and complete the quest from the grinning moon. Once that happens we will know what we are actually dealing with in terms of an art and I can't wait to see what it is!
 
I think formations would be a fantastic addition to our arsenal, not in the least because doing pre-preparation means we are in effect extending our qi reserves because we can lay down an effect or even a technique without spending much qi on it. That's huge given that qi is life.

Just like, ffs, we're so crunched trying to prepare to make green right now. With the tournament looming as a major deadline.
 
Last edited:
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
I think formations would be a fantastic addition to our arsenal, not in the least because doing pre-preparation means we are in effect extending our qi reserves because we can lay down an effect or even a technique without spending much qi on it. That's huge given that qi is life.

Just like, ffs, we're so crunched trying to prepare to make green right now. With the tournament looming as a major deadline.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

If we want to get ANYWHERE with formations, we need to decide a specialty and pursue it.

None of us here have ever suggested a specialty or seeked one out, even just to test it.

I mean, we could choose a random one that seems like it would fit and see how it works out. For example, we could choose a specialty in Binding techniques with formations. That seems like it would be useful, and considering Xuan Shi's Viridian Stakes that seal people, I bet he could give us a few tips.
 
Codex said:
If we want to get ANYWHERE with formations, we need to decide a specialty and pursue it.

None of us here have ever suggested a specialty or seeked one out, even just to test it.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...
I mean, I've suggested barriers before.

We already know ways to get past the most common types of barriers through our specialty in breaking formations, and the biggest weakness a barrier formation would have would be how easy it is to bypass or break. I'm pretty sure we could make some mean barriers if we put our mind to it.

It would also help us in the field of battle. We are an attrition specialist, set up a nice barrier around us that people can't reach us as easily, and just keep playing the music. They have to spend qi and actions to get through it, and there is no guarantee that they will get through it in one shot. As long as we are safe we will eventually wear them down. Something like the Droidikea's shields.
 
Honestly, if we are doing formations, I'd want to do musical formations.

Yes, I know. It probably doesn't exist. Fuck that, I still would like to do it.
 
Reader mode
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top