You were this 👌 close to greatness. An urban legend in the thread about the dangers of veto-less markers. But you have chosen morals over playing Duel of fates when you force DSB to vote for something else other than the Seraph. SMH - moral gang claims another victim
A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
635 words
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Grace is better than Favor for surviving the epilogue, it gives us a defensive wish every Geas task which has a 100% chance of succeeding in saving us unlike Favor, which has a 5% chance of avoiding Apocryphal procs meaning that we'd only have a 5% chance of surviving Apocryphal procs that would otherwise kill us and a 95% chance of just straight up dying.
It is also better for surviving the next Apocryphal proc as the Apocryphal curse scales with our current level of power. If we pick Favor instead of Grace we'd then have to continue to power level when we don't have a reliable source of picks and make as close to optimal decisions as we can as we wouldn't have the safety of a defensive wish.
Given the fact that the thread chose Strain I have little faith in this threads ability to survive without something like getting Renaissance Woman for free happening again.
Here's a reaction to support Grace and Defer.
We had just picked Regency, Consolidate power and Intensive research, and we chose cursebearer's strain to do so, boosting our next Apocryphal proc to 90% strength at best and 120% at worst. This would mean all of the Apocryphal mitigation that we had gotten would likely end up being undone for a single proc, far more than enough to kill us.
The Accursed came for the first time just before Hunger's execution, and the second time it was because we chose to empower the next Apocryphal proc. That alone should be enough to tell you that we had fucked up enormously.
The most populous city on earth is Tokyo, with a population of approximately 38 million, it makes up 1/200 of earth's population of 7.6 billion. If we assume Nilfel makes up a similar proportion of the population of the Realm of Myth then at a population of 10 billion in Nilfel then the Realm of Myth's population would be around 2 trillion.
Assuming Augustine's crimes against humanity would be equivalent to a genocide of 10 million on earth then since the Realm of Myth's population is about 250 times larger than earth's that's a death count of 2.5 billion. It's no wonder why Augustine was described as a tyrant of unfathomable malice.
It would be utterly absurd to think that Nilfel deserves that wealth when such atrocities were committed in the process of getting it.
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Grace is better than Favor for surviving the epilogue, it gives us a defensive wish every Geas task which has a 100% chance of succeeding in saving us unlike Favor, which has a 5% chance of avoiding Apocryphal procs meaning that we'd only have a 5% chance of surviving Apocryphal procs that would otherwise kill us and a 95% chance of just straight up dying.
It is also better for surviving the next Apocryphal proc as the Apocryphal curse scales with our current level of power. If we pick Favor instead of Grace we'd then have to continue to power level when we don't have a reliable source of picks and make as close to optimal decisions as we can as we wouldn't have the safety of a defensive wish.
Given the fact that the thread chose Strain I have little faith in this threads ability to survive without something like getting Renaissance Woman for free happening again.
Here's a reaction to support Grace and Defer.
This is the second time that Hunger has met the Accursed, the first time being just before he was about to be executed.
We had just picked Regency, Consolidate power and Intensive research, and we chose cursebearer's strain to do so, boosting our next Apocryphal proc to 90% strength at best and 120% at worst. This would mean all of the Apocryphal mitigation that we had gotten would likely end up being undone for a single proc, far more than enough to kill us.
The Accursed came for the first time just before Hunger's execution, and the second time it was because we chose to empower the next Apocryphal proc. That alone should be enough to tell you that we had fucked up enormously.
Taking the signs had cost us in more than just safety, we also ended up destroying almost all of Nilfel's reserves of wealth leaving its government able to function for only a single month. Nilfel would certainly fall into ruin if we failed to deal with this.
Augustine had stolen that wealth from Nilfel's neighbours. She had reaving squads take their wealth from them, being millitary violence would have been involved so the deaths and suffering of the people living under Nilfel's tyranny would have been great in number. Given that Nilfel alone has a population larger than earth a death toll in the tens of millions would be laughably low.
The most populous city on earth is Tokyo, with a population of approximately 38 million, it makes up 1/200 of earth's population of 7.6 billion. If we assume Nilfel makes up a similar proportion of the population of the Realm of Myth then at a population of 10 billion in Nilfel then the Realm of Myth's population would be around 2 trillion.
Assuming Augustine's crimes against humanity would be equivalent to a genocide of 10 million on earth then since the Realm of Myth's population is about 250 times larger than earth's that's a death count of 2.5 billion. It's no wonder why Augustine was described as a tyrant of unfathomable malice.
It would be utterly absurd to think that Nilfel deserves that wealth when such atrocities were committed in the process of getting it.
Despite having gotten 19 arete worth of signs Hunger's chances of surviving the next Apocryphal proc had worsened. They had worsened to such a degree that one of our lesser wishes activated because of Cursebearer's Strain empowering the Apocryphal to over 100%. Power is never worth boosting the Apocryphal curse to such a degree when it will scale to our level of power and be at greater level of relative danger to us too.
And people are saying that the options provided in justice are enough to render the Apocryphal curse irrelevant forever.
It is, the Accursed said so.
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- Location
- Louisiana
Pretty sure the apocryphal proc is already in the works so whatever power we get here is us attempting to outscale it. The stronger we get here the easier this proc will be to deal with. Acting like favor vs grace is only centered around apocryphal mitigation is almost willfully ignoring 90% of what we get from favor, which is based on power and potential growth. Not only does favor grant us an efb that is explicitly stated to make us extremely powerful, which was balanced by a downside that no longer would be in effect with favor, but it also allows us to get an EVEN STRONGER efb as soon as we get 2 picks and 25 arete. Apocryphal mitigation is not the main purpose of favor, and focusing just on apocryphal mitigation doesn't make any sense at all. I also agree with Zampano that it seems like there's this opinion floating around that gaining personal power does absolutely nothing to stop apocryphal, which is blatantly wrong and has been shown to be wrong by how we've managed apocryphal in the past. Apocryphal will attack us from bad angles. Apocryphal will use every dirty trick in the book to checkmate us. It will attack our weakest links, it will do everything in its power to make times interesting. But that doesn't mean that personal power does nothing. Personal power opens up options to be able to play around apocryphal. It lets us react in a way that might meaningfully impact it. Favor gives us options, even just looking at the mental stat boosts will improve our options immensely. Idk this entire argument here just seems like you're comparing everything grace does with the smallest bonus of favor, and then going "see guys grace is way better" which doesn't seem fair. We are inevitably going to power level, we're a progression based curse bearer that's our entire schtick. It's been our schtick this entire game.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
We're still getting 2 picks if A&D Succeeds absent immediate Apocryphal Interrupt. Favor raises odds of success and leads to greater odds of us getting an Arbitrary Mythic Platinum amount generation technique anyways.
In hindsight we didn't know what we were missing and Daylian was significantly better than we gave him credit for. Daylian(7 Arete) could have fed our cloak. As a Cosmic level healer he could have fixed our injuries as Haeliel did. Blood Sorcery(12 Arete) could have fed our cloak. We would have had two picks, 31 Arete, another High level combatant for improved force projection, and multiple venues of feeding our cloak to get to whatever the non TSH levelcap is for Empyrean Signs. The only drawback to all that is needing to save him from himself/the curse of Hubris.
In hindsight we didn't know what we were missing and Daylian was significantly better than we gave him credit for. Daylian(7 Arete) could have fed our cloak. As a Cosmic level healer he could have fixed our injuries as Haeliel did. Blood Sorcery(12 Arete) could have fed our cloak. We would have had two picks, 31 Arete, another High level combatant for improved force projection, and multiple venues of feeding our cloak to get to whatever the non TSH levelcap is for Empyrean Signs. The only drawback to all that is needing to save him from himself/the curse of Hubris.
It isn't irrelevant for dealing with the Apocryphal, but we have to gain temporal power every time there's a proc, however mitigations and wishes will always be relevant.
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
Direct Mitigation diminishes a moving average. In a vacuum spotting the actual effects of mitigation would be farking difficult. It's presumably good that we have it but the effects are basically invisible to us without a boatload of introspection to figure out what precisely diminishing a moving average means. Wishes are cool. Given the value of a wish though in terms of achieving bigger picture goals, if we ever have to use a wish as a panic button to save us from a specific apocryphal proc without achieving anything else, then odds are we have done something terribly wrong(Edit: Unless we are dealing with an outlier of outliers among apocrypha procs).
- Location
- Earth
Hmm, know what, why the heck not. My vote is for sale. Please @ me in the thread or on the Discord if you'd like to discuss, and it'll run mostly on a mix of first-come-first-serve + best offer, I guess?
I don't feel super strongly against any of the current leading options, and pretty much like most of what's on offer here. I offer two options for purchasing my vote, but if you guys have ideas that would make these offers more balanced or simplified, or have any questions, lmk.
Single-Option (SO) Marker: I will vote for one option of your choice here, and fill in the remainder of the votes with my choice of options alongside it. Likewise, when called, I will request that you vote for a single preferred option, but the remainder of the vote will be your choice. No vetos, no trades/exchanges.
Unless someone purchases the Full Plan first, there are 4 available SO Markers, as we have three wishes and the Sign vote here. Each individual may purchase up to two (2) SO Markers.
Full Plan (FP) Marker: I will namevote you here, supporting your full plan for this vote. In exchange, when called, please namevote me for that voting period. No vetos, no trades/exchanges.
One FP Marker available, unless SO Markers are purchased first.
I don't feel super strongly against any of the current leading options, and pretty much like most of what's on offer here. I offer two options for purchasing my vote, but if you guys have ideas that would make these offers more balanced or simplified, or have any questions, lmk.
Single-Option (SO) Marker: I will vote for one option of your choice here, and fill in the remainder of the votes with my choice of options alongside it. Likewise, when called, I will request that you vote for a single preferred option, but the remainder of the vote will be your choice. No vetos, no trades/exchanges.
Unless someone purchases the Full Plan first, there are 4 available SO Markers, as we have three wishes and the Sign vote here. Each individual may purchase up to two (2) SO Markers.
Full Plan (FP) Marker: I will namevote you here, supporting your full plan for this vote. In exchange, when called, please namevote me for that voting period. No vetos, no trades/exchanges.
One FP Marker available, unless SO Markers are purchased first.
I'll take this please.
Zampano
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- Location
- Simping for DSB
The Accursed said the following in his most recent appearance:
But the [Most High] says the following:
Just to pull that idea out from the nested quote, KidFromPallet's stated goal is to "stay ahead of the Apocryphal's level curve" by buying EFB picks. Rihaku's response is that we "could do that with Progression alone!" There's also his repeated claim that we could play a run with no Arete at all and still have a winning result. Unless you can provide some evidence to the contrary, I am going to trust the GM's word here.
I want to be really careful about the topic here, because Orm invested a lot and we should be grateful for it. But your description of the timeline here ignores some important meta level details:
The Accursed's visit was not a result of a defensive wish activation. Instead, the phrasing of Orm's lesser wish was "Whatever the Accursed thinks is in Hunger's best interests." Additionally, that bonus was from August. I think it's wildly premature to deduce that there was a critical flaw in the thread's decision to take Strain based on the evidence that a QM didn't want to wait more than three months before providing a $900 reward. Like, maybe this was just a good opportunity to make sure Orm gets his money's worth.
Consider Hunger's growth from the last few updates. The alarmist argument about Strain must claim that our existing build, plus Deathly Star (ranged, perfect attack scaling with Rank), plus Armor of Midnight (Universe level protection with prep) are insufficient to survive whatever challenge is coming next. Not "overcome", not "escape", not "survive"... the claim is that the boosted proc will be so irrecoverably bad that one of our wishes had to activate. I don't buy it.
As for this, GenericName has addressed the way your direct comparison between the two options neglects the considerations that I think are most important. All I have to add right now is that the Apocryphal Curse scales *imperfectly with our current power, which is a clarification that is missing from your post.
You do raise some good points about the eventual (hopefully) epilogue. However, I do have to point out that you also seem to be ignoring most of the other benefits of favor, and even the fact that while it's around 5% mitigation, it is stacked for the events we really need it for. This means that the actual percentage of surviving a completely fatal Apocryphal proc is decently higher than 5%.
Additionally, grace does have a time limit on procs, so it's mostly going to be relevant in the epilogue, not on the quest play itself, since it'll be gone after it procs once. It also does not increase out powerlevel, and since apocryphal procs scale somewhat independently, it really doesn't seem as good an option as you're making it seem. For surviving this one proc yes, but I'd like to hope that we're playing a bit longer game. Do note, however, that since we're just at the start of this geas task, longer does not mean so long we'll likely enjoy that many possible chances to use grace during the quest.
- Location
- Louisiana
Grace is only gonna work once per Geas, and I don't see us having a ton of Geas tasks over the course of the game. Look at the timeframe for this Geas task and then look at the timeframe for the course of the game so far. Grace will only realistically be relevant once, maybe twice, long shot three times. Favor gives us OaF II, which greatly improves our chance for this apocryphal proc. It also gives us immediate access to OaF III, which I also imagine would provide massive support to another apocryphal proc if it's even moderately comparable in power. Just comparing those two I would say favor has comparable, if not MORE impact to grace in handling apocryphal procs based on pure power alone. Then it has an additional 5% straight up shut down power. On top of that I'd much rather see hunger solve an apocryphal proc of his own power and growth than have haeliel rush in and deus ex a solution while we twiddle our thumbs so mommy can save us.
- Location
- Earth
Username sure doesn't check out, that was anything but too slow! Consider it done, and my sig will be updated accordingly.
[X] TooSlow
Zampano
🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
- Location
- Simping for DSB
I'm absolutely happy to torpedo TooSlow's purchase
...but I swear I'm discussing in good faith when I point out how much more valuable four separate SO markers would be compared to a single person's vote marker.
edit: it appears that i am the one who is too slow today. Touche, TooSlow!
- Location
- Earth
I'm absolutely happy to torpedo TooSlow's purchase
...but I swear I'm discussing in good faith when I point out how much more valuable four separate SO markers would be compared to a single person's vote marker.
edit: it appears that i am the one who is too slow today. Touche, TooSlow!
Alas, you got Aeira'd, but considering my general indecision and/or equal acceptance of options lately, you (and well, anyone else of course) may get another chance yet!
That said, yeah, I can see how SO Markers can be quite valuable in comparison, especially if one vote option would in practice dictate the remaining ones for optimization. This is why I limited purchases to two per person, though I had been considering limiting to one per person and invoking the Duel clause from that discussion all that time ago for competing markers.
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Zampano
🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
- Location
- Simping for DSB
pretending to be salty, without actually being too upset: this is why auctions last longer than five minutes!Alas, you got Aeira'd, but considering my general indecision and/or equal acceptance of options lately, you (and well, anyone else of course) may get another chance yet!
That said, yeah, I can see how SO Markers can be quite valuable in comparison, especially if one vote option would in practice dictate the remaining ones for optimization. This is why I limited purchases to two per person, though I had been considering limiting to one per person and invoking the Duel clause from that discussion all that time ago for competing markers.
/serious tho: You'll have to remind me what the Duel clause was, because that sounds both more entertaining and less contentious than the Infinite Zampano Husk (geddit, because the vote marker market was a husk after i got done with it)
eh? eh?
- Location
- Earth
I think I called it the "Fight Clause" or something similar before, but basically two or more people using equivalent markers on me on the same vote must settle marker priority with a children's card game (and must provide proof of the game and victor) or negotiate priority themselves.It gets around the timezone issues of first-come-first-serve policies, and hopefully provides entertainment for all! I may apply it later, but who knows.
I was responding to you saying that the unmitigated curse is non-lethal, I was not saying that the quest would be unwinable without Arete.
It was. It was also a point in which we would have a very high chance of death if the lesser wish didn't happen as suggested by this quote.
The quote from above suggests that the advancements we've already gotten are insufficient.
Correct, that is why we vote for more power. Alternative is to burn a wish and be back at square one for next proc.
- Location
- Louisiana
The current winning vote spends 50 arete for zero power gains right before a buffed apocryphal proc. This is by far my least favorite combination out of any of the wishes we could have gotten, we don't gain anything, this is like maximum greed but I don't even know what we're being greedy for. We're spending a third of it just to deal with the apocryphal proc because we've been told we probably don't have the firepower to deal with it as is, then grace is wiped out for at minimum half a century. Then we spend a third of it on advice, and save the last third. I'd rather at least get exaltation so we don't blow grace immediately and can use it as a guaranteed safety net, which is significantly better than just saying "well we don't need power right now we have grace."
OctarineShrike
Avatar of Mandos
For what it's worth the advice part can be used to get Gisena or other party members, including possibly us, initiation into the Ordinal Spiral. So it's somewhat better than just advice though that's a question of when we'll be able to do that.
In the worst case scenario our failure to invest in Aobaru or get another high tier combatant like Daylian means we actually need the Grace full stop to avoid experiencing a meaningful loss. I seriously hope that's not the case. How many single adversary apocrypha procs have we dealt with? Or it could be something weird.
If we get picks next update I'd like to think I'm going to go for party investment/utility options.
Edit: Checking my old list of apocrypha procs, 44 percent of Apocrypha procs that occurred or had the potential to occur involved multiple adversaries.(Edit: Maybe pirate maybe whaler guy, Ber Round 1, the Rotbeast, and the Republic Special Forces)
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The vote for favor is still not over. Start doing omakes/reactions if you wish your vote to have more weight. I usually am too jaded now with the thread decisions so usually such insane logic do not faze me much but you seem young and idealistic.
I am writing several omakes now, trying to save the BB from dying or wasting a wish and you can do that too.
Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Meanwhile this is my current mood seeing the vote
TL;DR - trying to understand the thread logic should be classified as a treatment for the clinically sane
EDIT: I suggest reading this post
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Shard
One and Many
- Location
- Malaysia
...
Hmm.
Would you like to buy a vote? Or perhaps as I may, enter a bidding war for it?