To be fair, I edited those soon after Rihaku made that complaint, although I suppose that may have gone unnoticed. For that, I apologize, as it's clear it affected the voting. Cultivation would have elevated Kazuma to low-Ego Barrier to start with, Clockwork would have conferred him with supernatural durability, and Undecided would have granted some protective and useful abilities to start with.
Ah, well, once the hounds of posting are let loose, it can be hard to coax them back. I really like this update, though, so I might have chosen Verdant Decipher Fortress anyways!
(My OTP is now Clockwork + Blue Magic, since that combination seems like it would give amazing dividends, and also would let you swap Wretched for Debtor for a very significant amount of breathing room compared to this build. Or Cultivation + Blessed Arcanum, if one was really insanely greedy, though if you didn't take Wretched and Slumber together it would still be pretty safe.)
Anyway, I have some good news for you all. I had some free time at the end of today because we had to cancel, among other things, Dungeons & Dragons. So I decided to do the natural thing and mine Arete.
Welcome to another episode of, *protracted sigh,* Kono Mijimena Sekai Ni Noroi Wo!! "Curses Rain Down On This Accursed World!!"
I'm sorry that your D&D session was canceled, but I can't say I'm sorry to be receiving another subquest update. You're really mining this arete...your pickaxe hand must be actively smoking at this point. Now I'm glad that I started doing the reactions, not just for the bonus Arete but also because the amount of words you're generating is probably matching my degraded omake bonus at this point and I really, really don't want to lose the Haeliel buildvote! Damn you and your insane productivity!
I must react harder, type faster, argue more vociferously with other people who are only trying to have fun on an internet forum....
Anyway, back to the subquest it is. Last time, we selected Kazuma's strategy and his Cheat Item. Although the strategy passed as, "Luck To Victory," without a fuss, the Cheat Item wasn't quite so.
I can't say that I'm especially surprised that we're following through on the Rihaku-approved strategy of Lucksacking out of the death hole that our Curses are gleefully digging for us. I was never in denial about my Cheat Power winning, but if I deterred Blessed Luck from taking it in the least, then I'm happy. Charity is a good pick with a lot of potential uses, especially if deployed strategically, so as to not alert the unscrupulous of Kazuma's "hero" status.
Let's hope Kazuma-san's adventure will be as edutaining and blessed as we can, okay~? I'm relying on you not to kill him, which given his selection of curses, might be difficult.
....
"Scatou Kazutrash, you are under arrest for over one-hundred hate crimes. How do you plead?"
Guilty, fucking guilty. Cannot believe you were so shortsighted, Kazuma. Really, Slumber AND Wretched? For shame.
Kazuma considered the nature of his available boons for a long time.
...
With a slow build-up, force started to ruffle Kazuma's tracksuit. It poured down from the ground at a constant trickle, slowly raising him up like a tremendous fan spinning at speeds that were considerable enough to null gravity's effects. Aqua was likewise affected, yelping, and then continuing her protests in vain.
As he should. I'm glad that his deliberations were thorough; the value of having +All Stats before dealing with Aqua is really showing its worth, though with The Accursed's insider take on the whole thing I'm sure he would've done better than canon regardless.
Kazuma drew that situation out like he was cracking an egg onto a hot pan, given how clean that little session of grilling was. It's a good thing that the Heavenly Bureaucracy seem to have focused all their stats into APP! Otherwise this exchange might have set off some serious warning sirens...though I suppose there must be at least one highly competent God in the business, probably the person who is actually benefitting the most from the whole system. Don't you find it strange that several of the Heavenly Bureaucracy have such feeble mental stats and charisma, to the point where barely mentally peak-human Kazuma can tweak their noses? Especially since they actively give out better stat bonuses to Heroes!
Yeah, Kazuma is going to have to watch out for the real enemy there when he inevitably ends up tearing down the heavens. Presumably there's a reason that past Demon Lords haven't managed it (beyond the obvious "they didn't have Progression").
Kazuma looked up and saw the bright light of the portal. He reached deep into his awareness and metaphysically grasped the lever to activate Fortune's Smile.
The Goddess and Cursebearer flashed upward, and Kazuma pulled the lever.
Suddenly, a feeling similar to warm confidence sprung in his chest. It was the last thing he felt before entering the next world. Everything in his awareness became white, and there was no sound other than static energy as his body was rebuilt.
Ah yes, the Felix Felicis full-body confidence tingle. I think that's a good sign!
There was a certain, heavy, rustic familiarity to this environment. A rude and pervasive familiarity, in fact. Kazuma recognized and placed it at once as the characteristic atmosphere of a town you'd see in anime or manga. The kind of place that a savvy Japanese mangaka assuredly thought looked classically European.
Or, to rephrase it, Kazuma found himself in a medieval city that wasn't even slightly medieval and far too clean. There was no lingering scent of shit or piss anywhere and the streets looked as if they'd been extensively and thoroughly combed for any drop of dirt only a minute ago.
Seeing as the whole place is basically a scamming machine, this is actually quite funny.
...do you think that it's all maybe just a shitty godly startup company? Like, some nerdy God had really particular ideas about fantasy aesthetics and decided to make the equivalent of an interdimensional bitcoin miner, all just to dress the whole project up to be bought by a much larger exploitative company?
Kazuma glanced to his right. The Goddess seemingly went through eight separate epiphanies and mental breakdowns while he was busy observing their surroundings.
...
In a way, he supposed, things somehow turned out well between them. He expected that he'd need much longer to achieve this level of... he wouldn't call it trust, or friendship, but... mutual dependency, maybe? No. He didn't feel as if he depended on her, but he definitely wanted her help.
Funny how this makes me somewhat feel bad for Aqua, despite the way I normally dislike her. I guess the same is true for Kazuma, though, since he was just thinking about how wretched (ha) and pathetic she was a moment ago. That's the power of protagonist perspective, baby! Haha, no, it's actually the power of being compelled by the Geas of Incompetence, Kazuma. It's too late now, you took her as a Companion AND have tied your fates together. Oh...joy!
Giving Aqua money and telling her to go figure stuff out (to go do useful things and take care of herself!!!) would be excruciatingly stupid, given his knowledge of exactly how pathetic she is and how compatible she is with the Geas of Incompetence. But I suppose that, if Fortune's Smile of all things thinks that it'll be fine, then it'll be fine. Maybe she'll be doing something surprisingly useful by accident, in the background?
Also:
Do or do not, but always try.
"I did not try to scam you," it explained patiently. "'Try' is an illusion, an abstraction of the mind. I merely succeeded. Success, failure, these are true things. 'Trying,' that is the lie."
When it wasn't spouting anodyne re-framings of pop-cultural wisdom, the thing could, despite current evidence, occasionally extrude some incisive statements. However, both the former and the latter were emitted with the same driving motivation: utter slothfulness and greed.
Why yes, I am having a lot of fun using EFB quotes to react to things. Why do you ask?
The ability to create utility pockets was there, dormant but rousing to awareness with stunning momentum. He opened a small portal in the middle of the air, then deposited the rest of the coinage within for safety. There was no way he'd be getting pickpocketed at an inopportune moment.
...Misfortune would totally have gotten all of our gold stolen without Charity or Fortune's Smile, huh? Good thing we have both for extra layers of security, though I supposed one alone would've been fine.
Kazuma considered what he should do first. There was an hour of time that he needed to take advantage of.
And now it's A N A L Y S I S T I M E.
Plus, you're explicitly weighting arguments, like some sort of Rihaku??? This is clearly my dream vote.
So, we're budgeting from 10 Luck/Time units. Right off the bat, our priorities are definitely:
1. Immediate safety
2. Mid-term safety
3. Power itself
4. Long-term safety
My reasoning is that Progression will provide 3 so long as we take care of 1, given that we have access to the Adventurer Card system. 2 is basically smeared together with 3, since they amount to much the same thing. If I remember correctly, Kazuma and Aqua loafed around for 6 months doing construction work instead of anything productive (maybe that's just fanon that I've absorbed due to general exposure)? So there's a decent buffer of time between Kazuma and Beldia, or the Mobile Fortress Destroyer bullshit that would definitely kill him with Misfortune in play. And so 4 isn't something we can really control, beyond handling 1/2/3 well and having Aqua take care of all of our tier 1 mitigations.
Speaking of Tier 1 Mitigation, what are our options?
Affliction of Slumber is a no-brainer, since the only real options are direct mitigation to take 2 hours off of the sleeping time every day OR a mitigation that alters the sleep dynamics to be less/differently punishing, since I don't think that there's likely to be A Hunger, Sated equivalent. In my opinion, every second of leverage counts in the early game, so direct mitigation is the only choice.
Affliction of Misfortune is a bit more complicated, since it's already mitigated, plus it's easier to mitigate overall, plus we already have Fortune's Smile. Direct percentage mitigation is probably superior to burning +Luck for indirect mitigation, because the former preserves the possibility of coming out of the Curse (in the far, far future, I guess) with a very positive Luck Stat, instead of coming out of it neutrally. Direct mitigation attacks the effect causing the negative luck directly, allow the Luck Kazuma attains to eventually shine through. However, if he's just erasing the Curse by matching each bit of bad luck with a bit of good, then complete mitigation just means having an ocean of positive Luck buried under the Curse's negative luck, which I don't like. Admittedly, stats become individually more potent the more of that stat you have, even if they become ever-less marginally valuable, so maybe it is better to neutralize with Luck directly? I might be misunderstanding the dynamics at play, here.
What's going to happen to Fortune's Smile once Misfortune is completely mitigated? Will it vanish? We have Progression: is Fortune's Smile something we could upgrade, or its Curse-defying power too high-tier for us to have the XP to improve? Would it be EFB-strength advancement territory? Can we take a specialized mitigation of Misfortune that instead simply improves Fortune's Smile? Is
that EFB Mitigation Stage territory? Who knows! In general, Misfortune is probably the least important to worry about at this juncture.
Brand of the Wretched has several paths I can imagine for mitigation. There's percentage intensity mitigation to decrease the Curse's impact, there's mitigation that greatly defers or reduces the impact of the Curse for select people, based on a certain set of criteria (e.g. who they are, how powerful they are, the degree to which they have to interact before it triggers, a small number of people/time that Kazuma can deliberately mark out as being much, much less effected, etc), and there's tradeoff mitigations (e.g. intensifying the initial bad impression on everyone to make it easier to overcome it with effort, lowering the impact of the Brand on a certain group in exchange for raising it on another, etc.).
Of these, I can see the utility in all of them. Normally I would be in favor of direct percentage mitigation above all else, but since Kazuma can reliably optimize towards This Cursed World as a very, very long-term base, not having Indenture, it might make sense to take a tradeoff mitigation to be hated more by monsters and less by people, or to have a mitigation stage that is half intensity mitigation and half sensory ability for those people who he could build good relationships with regardless of the Brand. I guess we'll find out what the options are like once we're given them?
Doom/Geas of Incompetence is pretty lashed to Aqua, and we're obviously planning to keep her around for a long time. I'm not sure exactly how direct percentage mitigation works across both the Doom and the Geas state, but it might be better to just assume that we're keeping Aqua around forever, in which case it might be prudent to burn this mitigation stage on something unevenly slanted to the Geas side. Like lowering the requirements so that we can help Aqua become a better person without losing her as a Geas target. Or maybe taking advantage of our twinned fates to make it so that she auto-rezzes near us after a set period of time if she dies, or is auto-teleported back to us if she's in grave danger, etc.
Hmph, I guess it turns out that there are actually a lot of possibilities for mitigation paths. Slumber is the only straightforward one. I guess we'll just have to wait to see the specifics of what Birdsie offers to be able to make a judgement.
Here are the options, as well as their sub-picks:
-Acquire License: One of the things that I mentioned to be a potential priority, so I'm going to take it seriously. Of the classes, most of these look mediocre besides the last four. We probably have access to all of them whenever we want, besides Fortune Teller and Fateweaver, which are probably related to our insane Luck. Confirmed by WOG that this is true for the latter since I started working on this post:
Fateweaver is basically an advancement of Wizard/Fortune Teller that unlocks a handful of destiny and chaos-themed spells and skills. At basic levels, it lets Kazuma see a little into the future or self-boost with a very, very, very, very diminished version of Fortune's Smile for a duration of minutes, with a limit of one casting every couple of days. For offense, it includes things such as cursing opponents with comically bad luck or, at higher levels, with luck so bad they become the protagonists of the latter part of a Final Destination movie. Similar stuff.
If you ever manage to level as Fateweaver into the 200s, which I need not say is a very ridiculous figure for the Konosuba-verse but not unthinkable for a Progression-type, it might come in handy with mitigating the Affliction of Misfortune, but that's unnecessary because mitigating it is already easy as fuck for Kazuma. If he doesn't reach the equivalent of Stage III-IV Mitigation in the next two centuries (probably much less, especially given Aqua's existence), you're doing something wrong.
What's notable about it is that its main prerequisite is having insane Luck, so you can only take it as a Class while you have Fortune's Smile active.
I'm generally not impressed with what either of these Luck classes offer, since they're built around the user having high enough Luck to make their effects worthwhile in the first place, which we simply won't. In my mind, the utility that this class offers is way, way too low and focused in the wrong place.
On the subject of Cursebearer, I was initially shitting myself a little. Surely, it'd be bad that the Adventure Card system is built with Cursebearers in mind? It seems ludicrous that the Accursed would sneak such a little tidbit into the system, right? Seeing as it would basically just be for Kazuma. Maybe he had a Cursebearer pull some strings on the inside of the Heavenly Bureaucracy? Doesn't seem likely at all. So I just assumed that the class is a coincidence of translation, and the actual requirement is "be sufficiently Cursed", which Kazuma...certainly is! Then again, both Fateweaver and Cursebearer are "Unique" classes, so maybe the Adventurer Card system is more flexible and reactive than I thought it would be? Since you would expect it to be maximally throttled by the implementers, to prevent...issues. Even if the classes are reflexively generated, surely the Accursed isn't actually involved?
But by WOG:
Cursebearer is similar in a lot of ways, but you're one constantly and therefore, can change to it at any time. Mechanically, it's not that much of a mark-up from Adventurer: boundless versatility and eventual power, but you suck more right now at the start. It does, however, provide aid with the curses (not mitigation, it just offers abilities that can help live with them more easily and not get fucked too bad,) and eventually, at very high levels, it can provide abilities that draw inspiration from actual Remittances or lets you impose Curses on people. These are explicitly not the actual thing, just a baby-sized imitation of the actual thing, meant to look and behave like one.
It might let you get the actual Praxis if you level it into the 200s, though.
That...still seems like a lack of power, though it's utility that is very tightly focused towards Kazuma's curse-based needs. But what is this? You can get actual Praxis Access through it? What the shit. Well, I guess it's not unprecedented, since Hunger was able to get
some access with an Accretion EFB, but that was with The Forebear's Blade, which was not only a remnant artifact of an actual legendarily high ISH figure, but also a directly provided remittance of the Accursed, for a magic which already had TSH and was itself empowered directly by The Accursed and was still limited to the "Blade" technique access.
So I guess either level 200 is double-EFB equivalent as far as Progression is concerned, or The Accursed is...constructively interfering on Kazuma's behalf here, since I don't see any other way for the bar to be set this low. But interfering like that would surely cost The Accursed more than he's willing to invest in someone as potentially shitty as Kazuma. Maybe it
is like a bar to set for Kazuma, with Praxis being the reward to encourage a Kazuma who didn't manage to fuck up badly and actually shows some promise?
Anyways, I'm not really in favor of this class, since it lacks the offensive potential or breadth of power that Arch Wizard and Rune Knight have from the get-go, even if it gets better over time. But the class isn't going anywhere, so theoretically a future Kazuma, who has outscaled the setting stat and ability-wise, might just go back and switch to this class, then powerlevel enough to unlock Praxis! That's a shot in the arm as far as Kazuma's Cursebearer longevity goes. There's your real "Blue Magic Prestige Classes", huh Ber? Dao of the Cursebearer, ho!
Other Classes WOG:
Arch Wizard is a moderate-to-high pick in my eyes, but far from the worst.
There's better avenues to consider, and I'm not even referring to his Unique Classes or Adventurer; Thief would go a long way to avoiding nasty surprises while taking his sixteen-hour long naps. No one can bother you if your bedroom is as trapped as a secure, paranoid lich's dungeon and you've learned how to maintain Lurk while asleep.
Anyhow, the only real issue with Arch Wizard is if his Mana can keep up with the demands, but that shouldn't be an issue. So long as you take Discount, he starts with a half-kilo of highly pure manatite which, so long as he uses it sparingly and only for real needs, should last him a good while. Being a magic caster sure is expensive.
Thief's trapping/stealth abilities are nice, but in my mind they depend too much on Luck as a passive boost to hit correctly, and with bad luck they're right out. Maybe the Skyrim Nightengale questline made too large of an impression on me re: the importance of Luck to Thieves. I don't know.
That leaves Rune Knight and Arch Wizard. Physical stats are nice to have, but honestly they're the easiest to grind with Progression, and the lure of spell creation and magic utility are too high. And we also know that the class development paths are reactively free-form and can offer unique classes, so Progression might end up offering an opportunity for an insane "higher" class to move to from Arch-Wizard, once Kazuma gets some advancements under his belt.
Seeing as the lady who administers things can see their stats when they register, is seeing Kazuma's temporarily transcendent Luck going to freak her out? That would actually be pretty funny.
I'd also be for getting Arch Wizard if the current action budget doesn't allow, since I assume it won't disappear if we don't get it now, but will simply be more annoying to get later. This is all pre-speculation, insofar as the Class vote wouldn't be 'til next update anyways. But it's still good to get out there.
I wonder if anyone is reading these reactions.
On that very topical note:
-Acquire License: Fame: Well, you'd have to take the last choice right away to get this. I think that this might be the easiest way to make Axel socially safe, though I'm sure other options will offer it as well. This is frankly a default pick, so long as the "Acquire License" line doesn't get shoved out entirely.
-Acquire License: Kingdom: Even better version of the last offer, though if Kazuma was taking it, then I'd bet we'd want to be joining Jatis to exploit what we payed for as much as possible, and would change locations to the capital. In my mind this provides a lot of extra social safety and growth potential, but is too costly to take. Axel is, frankly, a stupidly good place to learn things and gain disproportionately valuable allies. "Greet Adventurers seems like it might just be better, strategically taken 5 times! And addressing the social problems in Axel will likely settle things down sufficiently for our purposes. This option is a no-go.
-Greet Shopkeepers: Slightly more costly, but makes Kazuma's general life much, much easier in Axel. I don't know that asking him to balance the scorn and hatred of the shopkeepers is something that we want to inflict on him, mostly because piling it on top of the other struggles he'll have to face would be just painful. This option is like "Fame", but targets working people instead of the whole community, generally. It's probably worth it, since the results are good, but also because:
-Greet Shopkeepers: Ancientry: this is gated behind it! Wiz is an awesome friend to have, even if I'm not particular psyched about the actual items, since the alternative of having her heavily dislike Kazuma is...painful. Though I assume she'd be neutral at worst if we take "Greet Shopkeepers" anyways? If that's the case, I'd not actually worry about this option, since Kazuma can make friends with Wiz on his own time. She'd be a great ally to have, but I...doubt...that Kazuma could pry her away from how things are now.
Would you just be rolling for the items, or would we get a build vote? I'm an absolute fiend of build voting, as you can tell.
-Greet Shopkeepers: Discount: An instant, definite, and necessary boost to Kazuma's power, even if it comes at the cost of most of his money. (Let's hope that Aqua didn't fuck things up while securing housing....) As for the item choices, I would be interested in everything besides the vigor potion and alchemical ingredients, though sticking to 2 items (3 max) is best, since Misfortune is likely to pounce on the opportunity offered by Kazuma incurring any significant debt like a rabid animal. He'd better get in the habit of putting everything into Charity.
Hm, something about the screaming gingerbread fairies feels familiar. Yes, I recognize that entad! (ha, I'm sure it's actually from a bunch of different things. Still creepy.)
Anyways, this option is probably indispensible with Arch Wizard because of the Manatite, and if Kazuma has got an absurd discount on these pieces of equipment, he can likely sell off the pieces he doesn't end up needing to other adventurers for a significant turnaround profit! I'd be in favor of the Dragon Meat and either the Fairies or the Circlet. I know that Circlet is incredibly valuable, but I don't want to underestimate how useful reliable healing items are: I remember our nightmare spiral at the start of this quest (AST I).
Greet Adventurers: Fame, but targeted at Kazuma's potential peers instead of at the shopkeepers or the general public. Getting in good with Chris is probably essential to Kazuma's long-term survival, since she's slightly important person overall!
Greet Adventurers: Friendship: The real meat and potatoes, which allows us to make direct allies out of canon individuals. The premium choices here are probably Chris, Kyouya, and Megumin. I know some people would be in favor of Darkness as well, but I couldn't bring myself to trust her with Kazuma's safety, given how she acts in general.
This is absolutely imperative to take if we want to have a bigger, more functional team to use Retinue with. Actually, wait.
@Rihaku How does the math for Retinue work? I'm assuming that the 25% loss to your Progression is of the total amount of Progression you have at the time, so 75% full with 1 person, then ~56% with 2, then ~42% with 3, and so on down to ~24% with the full 5. But is the "Progression 1/4th the potency of your own" 1/4 the potency of your total full progression (.25/1) or 1/4th your Progression after the multiplicative loss? I'm assuming the former, since that neatly works out to having 6 People with ~25% Progression, but if it's the latter then Retinue considerations are maybe a bit more complicated.
-Meet Natsuki Subaru: Not necessary to take, since we'll be meeting him and becoming acquainted regardless, but a premium pick for a singular free spot given that it enhances the effectiveness of all the other actions while also bolstering Subaru's reputation via osmosis to our actions.
Overall, my vote would probably be
Acquire License (1)
Acquire License: Fame (1)
Greet Shopkeepers (2)
Greet Shopkeepers: Discount (2-1)
Greet Adventurers (2)
Greet Adventurers: Friendship x2 (Kyouka, Chris)
Meet Natsuki Subaru
Even though it's a free reputation boost, I'm not so sure I want the general fame bonus, since it makes our capabilities very public. It's virtually "free" with Discount, though, so I guess it's obligatory value. I'm also in favor of having Subaru around for the bonus to our other social actions, to Discount, and to better Subaru integration. Discount is necessary for the manatite, since I'm hoping for Arch Wizard. For friendship, I think that Chris and Kyouya are the best options, since they'd offer more active power and influence (that is technically aligned against the Demon King) than the other choices. There is some fuzzy lack of synergy here to think about, since taking Rune Knight with Kyouya/Dust or taking Thief with Chris would get me mentors. Wiz would also fill that role, but I think it might actually be better to have the Subaru effectiveness benefits? I'm pretty torn
Of the other plans, Runeblue's is too large (11 Points! Wait, that doesn't seem right....) and focuses Darkness and Wiz over the people I would pick (Chris + Kyouya). Beyond his imprudent socialization choices, our plans are pretty similar! I get why having Wiz as a magic tutor might be valuable, and having Darkness as a tank looks attractive. But we'd be much safer and acquire better connections with someone as strong and renowned as Kyouya, even if he's kind of an idiot. Him being a doof cancels out, though, since with Darkness you constantly have to fight past her fetish to get her to be properly useful. Greet Adventurers already makes a decent impression on Chris, so I could be convinced to drop her "Friendship" pick for "Ancientry", but she plays such a generally important role (...resurrection permission) that I want her as far on-side as possible.
Rihaku's plan is...also too large, at 11. Am I off my fucking head? 1 + 1 + 2 + 1 + 2 + 2 + 1 + 1 = 11!? We only have 10! Something is clearly not right here.
Did you change the cost of something after posting? Or am I somehow doing 4AM math wrong like a fool? Bad reading comprehension????
EDIT: I fucking found it. I forgot that taking Fame discounts Discount by one, even though I did that in
my build. What a fool I am. What an ignoramus. A simpleton.
Anyways...Rihaku an I have
very similar builds, though he takes Wiz instead of Subaru. I don't think that it's actually necessary to pick her in particular to disarm her as a lethal threat, since she's presumably already neutrally inclined to Kazuma at worst due to the base "Greet Shopkeepers" selection, which accounts for all shopkeepers! I would rather have Subaru as an even greater general effectiveness buffer and swing back around to develop a relationship with her later, if it becomes explicitly necessary. The synergy between Arch Wizard and taking Wiz is undeniable, though. Hopefully next vote, we'll see the classes in their full splendor and I can make a more informed decision.
Redshirt Army's plan is also...the same as everyone else's, basically, except he goes for the Wiz/Megumin/Subaru triad as his focused socials. Basically this trades a better impression on Chris for a better impression on Wiz, and takes Megumin as his friend of choice. I don't think Megumin blowing Kazuma up is that much of a worry, especially since, as Rihaku argues, a magic-based class can likely counterspell that problem away. Actually, even if you want one of the other classes, I'd bet that having Megumin near you while having Misfortune might make you more likely to get domed by a shockwave, even if she really likes you. Accidents happen, man. Especially with those explosion-obsessed chuunibyous.
I don't really like any of Beowolf's builds. The first is just going in triply (Greet + Ancientry + Friendship) in on Wiz, which I'm not a fan of, and taking Subaru, otherwise being basically the same build as everyone else here has otherwise. The other two both go all-in on friendship, but don't have Discount, which I think is honestly too good to pass up right now, since it secures too much benefit to disregard.
There don't seem to be any other builds. The meta-choices seem pretty settled here, perhaps due to Rihaku's early conjecture? And the only thing we disagree on is our specific targets to socially focus. Everybody else likes Wiz more than I do...maybe taking Subaru instead of her is dumb? I don't know, it's kind of sad that it took me so much time typing out explicit analysis to come to the same conclusion everybody else reached in a snap. But hey, Arete!
