I mean, it totally can! That's because my position is to scrimp and save Arete, since I think we as voters have a tendency to spend shortsightedly and suboptimally for various reasons. As such, my point is broadly that we would require at minimum to pick up OaF before I feel comfortable spending large amounts of Arete on other things, just because Apocryphal is unpredictable and we don't know how many interrim updates there are.
But that's just the thing: the argument here has nothing to do with how much arete we generate or have access to. Your characterization of voter behavior as "shortsighted" and "suboptimal" refers to 7-cost picks, specifically. This argument only works if 7-cost options are suboptimal
as a rule. I'm arguing that isn't the case.
I am sympathetic to prioritizing OaF, but the impending Arete explosion means that it's a lock. I'm not even a little concerned about getting it before Ber arrives. Whether we need it inside the Tower is something that we could debate, but that's not the argument you're making.
Mostly, the dismissal of 7-Arete options seems like such a weird way to play the quest. All the 7-cost choices that we've picked up have been pretty nuts:
Evening Sky, Thousand Cuts, various stances, Inherit the World, Triumphal Gleam... every one has combined with our other purchases in interesting ways.
- Thousand Cuts + Fall + Fell Handed Stroke: still the default strategy for combat while Hunger looks for ways to apply newer esoteric skills.
- Inherit the World + Triumphal Gleam: Indirect Tyrant mitigation, plus a memetic Public Relations campaign that can also build into passive Rank gain
- Evening Sky:
- Guile Defeating Stance + Edeldross: we can detect and shut down deceitful enemies, while simultaneously elevating the our allies to be more charismatic and intelligent. A politicians dream combination!
Buying a 25-cost is so impressive because it opens a bundle of interactive effects all at once, and they are guaranteed to have
synergy. By far the most interesting minigame of the quest for me has been fighting to select build options that compound on each other. Selecting 7-cost options is like building an EFB yourself piece by piece.
If your position is that we are in a comfortable position enough to not worry about spending 7, then that only means that our Arete generation is sufficient to spend more efficiently, which requires saving.
This, again, presupposes that 25 Arete expenditures are more efficient.
