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A Simple Transaction I

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Sickul said:
While it's true taking it earlier squeezes more juice from it, we absolutely know without a doubt that we are going to be fighting right now. We are already fighting at less than 100%.

Is taking a choice that lessens our time awake and doesn't help us survive right now really the best choice? Once we are in civilization and leading such that fighting might not be on the table sleeping is pure benefit, now? We can fight and advance faster with Hunger than the benefits of pure stats we would get from sleeping.
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Slumber of Aeons definitely helps us survive. It makes us super tanky while we're asleep something we'll want to be doing as much as possible since it substitutes for the training we're no longer able to benefit from effectively.

Besides if we take it now we might get a future option that heals us in our sleep since that seems to be thematically appropriate.
 
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LordOfMurder said:
Slumber of Aeons definetly helps us survive. It makes us super tanky while we're asleep something we'll want to be doing as much as possible since it substitues for the training we're no longer able to benefit from affectively.

Besides if we take it now we might get a future option that heals us in our sleep since that seems to be thematically appropriate.
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We're protected. They aren't. Sleep of the Just is assassination insurance, not something that'll help us protect the others.
 
[X] Forebear's Blade - Echo of the Forebear
-[X] 2 Arete: Undying Echo
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke

Yeah alright, let's survive to see this city.
 
Forget sleeping all the time, we already want to sleep 9 hours for the optimal fighting condition. This makes those 9 hours turn into 10 but will make those hours worth much more. Tremendous increase in strength gain indeed.
 
Interesting that all the 2 Arete options (besides Quelling) are so close to each other! King of Thieves is a bit more powerful, but also a bit more expensive in that it costs Arete and a pick...

Orm Embar said:
Also, the line separators are still present, curious how many others see these. I can edit them out of story posts if you'd like.
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Interesting! Are these present on all browsers, or just some? I've never noticed them either on my computer or on mobile...

Yes, feel free to edit them out as long as it doesn't change the actual line breaks. Wonder what's causing 'em...

Sickul said:
Does Hunger get stat perks at breakpoints like Seram did?
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He doesn't appear to have a formalized stats system at all, but who knows what may happen as he continues to Progress!

Orm Embar said:
Yeah, on reading the name I wondered if these 'Echo' skills aren't leading up to us getting the option for a Forebear simulacrum in our head or something. You said it doesn't give memories 'to an appreciable extent', but that it's possible at all's interesting! If the sword's something like a phylactery, does that make him a lich? What an absurd advantage, with this voterbase.
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That would be too overpowered, I think. Perhaps you might call upon the Forebear one day... if you somehow managed that, you'd potentially gain a tremendous amount of insight into the nature of the Hidden Ones!

ImperatorV said:
I like the arguments for Undying. For a progression-type cursebearer, survival is the most critical thing. As long as you survive you keep scaling up, and there's not really anything that can outscale a Progression-type. Essentially, high-risk high-reward plays are less good because we always have high rewards anyway, the proportion of gains relative to risk is not great.
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Yup! Though this is somewhat different for you since you have Hunger requiring you to fight level-appropriate enemies to advance. But in exchange your total growth rate is absurd... just a matter of creating a build that can fight level-appropriate enemies with minimal risk, or that can expend resources to deal with highly challenging enemies on your own terms.
 
[X] Hunger - Sleep of the Just
-[X] 2 Arete: Slumber of Aeons
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke

I'll go with this for now. Gives us a strong attack and dramatically improves our benefit from sleep, at a relatively minor cost of an extra hour a day.
 
Rihaku said:
He doesn't appear to have a formalized stats system at all, but who knows what may happen as he continues to Progress!
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Rihaku said:
"Alright," Seram continued, "Why the video game theme? It doesn't really suit you."

"It's not for me," said the Accursed. "The user interface adapts to a form you would find intuitive and comforting. Your power is that of unbounded progression. Immediate capabilities are minimal, but so long as you work for it, any ability is within your theoretical reach. The details will emerge from your interface over time."
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Perhaps because the video game system would be disconcerting to a man that hasn't seen his home in a long time and has acclimated to a Swords and Sorcery setting-- or maybe because the Hero has less potential than Seram, and as such isn't deserving of a video game interface?

Or perhaps... because creating a character sheet is tedious and time-consuming...!
 
Rihaku said:
Interesting! Are these present on all browsers, or just some? I've never noticed them either on my computer or on mobile...
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I see them pretty regularly, and from what I remember only from you. I would guess you use a different word editor?

I see the King of Thieves as weaker than it appears. It gives 1 Agility more than Echo, which is nice. And it does give long term benefits. But it's hard for me to believe that they are actually that great. I feel like the thieving abilities are probably going to need further powerups to be very useful against things our level, and I'm not sure I want to devote choices to making it useful.

It gives a lot of benefits, but I'm not sure most would want to further spread from Warrior to Thief, especially because I feel like Mage is going to be the choice for most voters as soon as we get the opportunity.

A Thousand Cuts could be the great basis of a build meant to destroy foes your own level. But I'm not sure on the chances of us getting to 7 in time, I would guess low.
 
Is it possible to game hunger gains by purposely drawing out a fight? Or is it just beating the opponent that gives us the power boost?
 
Talace said:
Perhaps because the video game system would be disconcerting to a man that hasn't seen his home in a long time and has acclimated to a Swords and Sorcery setting-- or maybe because the Hero has less potential than Seram, and as such isn't deserving of a video game interface?

Or perhaps... because creating a character sheet is tedious and time-consuming...!
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I thought we specifically picked remittances in the original that quantified our enemies and made our interface more gameresque.
 
Rihaku said:
Interesting! Are these present on all browsers, or just some? I've never noticed them either on my computer or on mobile...

Yes, feel free to edit them out as long as it doesn't change the actual line breaks. Wonder what's causing 'em...
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IIRC when I checked they were visible in Chrome & Edge, but not Firefox. Mobile as well, though they look different there. Anyway, found and removed about a dozen across all the story posts, will do another pass during tomorrow's reread. I also offer typo correction services for very reasonable amounts of Arete!
Rihaku said:
That would be too overpowered, I think. Perhaps you might call upon the Forebear one day... if you somehow managed that, you'd potentially gain a tremendous amount of insight into the nature of the Hidden Ones!
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The more we learn about this guy, the more interesting he becomes. A Forebear interlude sounds fascinating if it ever becomes available. Dying at an advanced age when Hunger transcended the mortal coil within three updates, though? C'mon.
Byzantine said:
[X] Hunger - Sleep of the Just
-[X] 2 Arete: Slumber of Aeons
[X] Forebear's Blade - Fell-Handed Stroke

I'll go with this for now. Gives us a strong attack and dramatically improves our benefit from sleep, at a relatively minor cost of an extra hour a day.
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Yeah, taking Slumber of Aeons early's good if we last long enough for it to start paying out. Fell-Handed Stroke depends on Hunger hitting his target, though, so there'll be a window where it could screw us over against fast enemies, especially since the Blade lacks reach in the current form.
 
Inserted tally
Adhoc vote count started by Byzantine on May 25, 2020 at 1:01 AM, finished with 149 posts and 29 votes.
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We might want to rig up some sort of external storage on the mech, stuff like the magic armor and sword could be good barter even if they're not worth using personally, and considering the many encounters to come there'll probably be a lot of that sort of stuff.

It has the potential to get wrecked when stuff hits the mech but I think it's worth the time regardless
 
If we had Doom of the Matyr it would have already proc'ed now. Meanwhile, it wouldn't have proc'ed even once for Seram in his journey! I think.
 
If we miraculously scrounge up another arete I want slumber of Aeons plus King of Thieves to really lean hard into the dragon themes. Plus the maximum greed build with bonus gains from sleep paired with bonus skill gains from combat.
 
Sickul said:
I see them pretty regularly, and from what I remember only from you. I would guess you use a different word editor?

I see the King of Thieves as weaker than it appears. It gives 1 Agility more than Echo, which is nice. And it does give long term benefits. But it's hard for me to believe that they are actually that great. I feel like the thieving abilities are probably going to need further powerups to be very useful against things our level, and I'm not sure I want to devote choices to making it useful.

It gives a lot of benefits, but I'm not sure most would want to further spread from Warrior to Thief, especially because I feel like Mage is going to be the choice for most voters as soon as we get the opportunity.

A Thousand Cuts could be the great basis of a build meant to destroy foes your own level. But I'm not sure on the chances of us getting to 7 in time, I would guess low.
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Hm... if we have decent thread activity and a few omakes I think 4 is very possible, and 6 if we have great participation over a number of days (since the escalating value per post doesn't drop until a major update). With the value of a 7 cost you can go into 1 Arete debt reasonably safely, which gets you there.

LordOfMurder said:
Is it possible to game hunger gains by purposely drawing out a fight? Or is it just beating the opponent that gives us the power boost?
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Technically yes, but the juice isn't worth the squeeze. For a worthy opponent you'd have to extend the fight in a way that increases the difficulty by ~50% to get a ~10% XP boost.

Much faster and safer to just defeat them.

Thomasfoolery said:
We might want to rig up some sort of external storage on the mech, stuff like the magic armor and sword could be good barter even if they're not worth using personally, and considering the many encounters to come there'll probably be a lot of that sort of stuff.

It has the potential to get wrecked when stuff hits the mech but I think it's worth the time regardless
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Perhaps the hero's biased, but he doesn't even see the sword as worth keeping. Such loyalty to one's blade is commendable!

The armor, perhaps, if it didn't have any contaminating effects. Alas, it's not magical anymore... you literally beat the enchantments out!
 
Thomasfoolery said:
We might want to rig up some sort of external storage on the mech, stuff like the magic armor and sword could be good barter even if they're not worth using personally, and considering the many encounters to come there'll probably be a lot of that sort of stuff.

It has the potential to get wrecked when stuff hits the mech but I think it's worth the time regardless
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I think the Evening Sky is gone if we don't Abduct it right now, since it's described as abandoning the wearer. But it's a good idea, we might want to salvage the enchanted (?) ballista bolts from the riverbed in addition to looting the ship. We killed them, now we take their stuff. That too is an inextricable part of life's rhythms.
 
Rihaku said:
Technically yes, but the juice isn't worth the squeeze. For a worthy opponent you'd have to extend the fight in a way that increases the difficulty by ~50% to get a ~10% XP boost.

Much faster and safer to just defeat them.
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Does this mean the value of abilities that let us hit above our weight class is compounded? If for instance we had a thousand cuts and managed to use it to beat someone four times as strong and fast as our base would we get 4 times the xp we'd get for fighting a peer opponent?
 
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I'm guessing it won't happen, but going to an alt world where alt!Seram and alt!Jotarun are fighting it out would be pretty awesome.

This probably isn't news since it costs 7 Arete, but Sevenfold is really good. It empowers every strike letting us grind down tough opponents, while also giving us insane burst that scales letting us kill less tanky opponents quickly.
 
Is alt!Seram even a cursebearer in this timeline? We did end up with alternate universe Gisena so maybe Seram's currently best friends with Control at the moment or fulfilling whatever destiny the accursed hinted at for him before he contracted.
 
Orm Embar said:
I think the Evening Sky is gone if we don't Abduct it right now, since it's described as abandoning the wearer. But it's a good idea, we might want to salvage the enchanted (?) ballista bolts from the riverbed in addition to looting the ship. We killed them, now we take their stuff. That too is an inextricable part of life's rhythms.
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In addition, it's also the only one that doesn't stem from an existing power or trait of the H-man. I think it makes the most sense to try and pursue Evening Sky right now instead of other choices that will reappear later, given that it allows for avenues of future progression and makes us immune to several avenues of attack. I wonder, though, if we killed the charming protagonist pirate of another story, and I imagine that if we took Retinue he wouldn't be a bad choice to add to our motley crew.
 
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