Something to try in the future - combine Abyssal Exhalation with Forgotten Vale Melody. After all, the flute produces music through the exhalation of breath; I wonder if Ling Qi might not be able to blend the effects together with some practice.
That's a kind of training action that I'm kind of wondering about - as Zeqing showed, arts can be
refined as well as simply cultivated, leading to a somewhat different result. Perhaps it's something that opens up once you hit Green/Bronze and/or the inner sect; outer sect is about racing ahead, but Green is a longer period of cultivation, and I don't know how many more meridians someone can actually open (assuming they got close to the effective soft-cap in Yellow). Six ways to improve your personal combat power come to mind (not counting spirits and talismans):
1. Increase your cultivation. Everyone works at this, but it slows down, as I understand. Becomes less feasible, especially as you approach your effective limit.
2. Increase your attributes, skills and specialties. This is good for another die or two and
sometimes an effective cultivation level in some circumstances.
3. Open more meridians, gain more arts to get more passives and techniques in your active arsenal. Straightforward, but needs ever-increasing dice pools to open them.
4. Find or develop higher-quality arts, abandon old ones (or higher quality ones are successors that 'subsume' the previous ones, as per Zephyr).
5. Find arts compatible with existing meridians, swap out as needed for versatility.
6. Increase the potency of your existing arts.
That last one... well, I'm hoping that becomes a possibility once Ling Qi has settled down with her long-term set of arts.
In fact, in this very turn we see a fantastic art for something like that. Ma Jun has an art that gives +2 to musical arts and spiritual defence, as well as 1 free dispel attempt per turn for three turns. That's a fantastic art and I want the offensive version. +2 to music arts and spiritual attacks as well as a bonus to resisting dispel attempts. We could probably get an art like that or get two separate arts, one for spiritual offence and one for music buffing. I prefer getting the one art which covers both bases, despite it likely not being very powerful in comparison to getting two arts. It's just better for our action economy both in and out of battle.
Also our Spiritual Defence on the first turn should look like this now:
Resolve 5+ Resilience 5+ AE4+ Gown 4+ SCS 9= 27 dice
Serene reflection and Tranquil rebuke on the second turn makes it 34 dice. AE's spiritual defence passive is really neat, even better than TRF's physical defence passive and this is its second level.
Indeed. Defense dice are pretty good things to have. That's one of the reason I'm irked that people aren't interested in unlocking the next level of AS; another couple dice of physical defense (and possibly a boost to the instant technique that offers even more) could be extremely handy against an unhappy flower princess (as would yet more speed and initiative, of course
). TRF gives +3, AS gives +2; on the spirit side, AE gives +4.
Actually, I wonder...
Argent Mirror -
"The early form of the Sects defensive and perceptive arts."
Argent Current -
"The First form of the Argent Sects melee combat arts."
Argent Storm -
"The early form of the Sects physical enhancement and movement arts."
... you know, one thing that's missing is these descriptions is "spiritual combat". Argent Storm boost physical defense, Argent Current physical attacks, Argent Mirror boosts defenses against some kinds of spiritual effects... That might suggest a spirit attack art would complete the picture.
Hard to say, of course. So far what each Argent Art has covered has generally been a surprise, even if the element pairings were predicted. It could be what Ji Rong exhibited, and is meant to help one person fight many (or it could be that
and have a spirtual attack technique - area of effect, perhaps?), or could be something quite different from current speculation.
At least we're getting EPC to it.
Yeah, but it'd need four weeks of EPC bonuses to get level 3 on its own; two EPC bonuses (this turn, next turn; assuming breakthrough finishes week 38) and an action could make 88 successes and get it done before breakthrough finishes. Another 'strong art' level for earth and for dark should be good for the breakthrough, and boosting that breath technique would be quite nice.
