It's likely there will only be a few options offered for the Heroic Advancement, for obvious reasons! But the exact options may depend on which build wins here...
 
It's likely there will only be a few options offered for the Heroic Advancement, for obvious reasons! But the exact options may depend on which build wins here...
Heroic upgrade for either Exalted Spirit or Opalescence - because that is where the lost pick went.
Maybe Heroic upgrade for Echo of the Forebear, that will teach the thread to never doubt the Glorious Leader
 
Imagine having the chance to mega pog up Accretion with Heroic Advancement.

It's already busted. Bust it up even more.

Too bad it technically isn't an advancement.

Also wait—did Hunger fight Procyon with two functioning eyes already??? Do we even have two functioning eyes already
 
Kinda sad that Refinement of Purpose has no chance here; imagine how much sicker it would become as a Heroic Advancement!
 
Imagine having the chance to mega pog up Accretion with Heroic Advancement.

It's already busted. Bust it up even more.

Too bad it technically isn't an advancement.

Also wait—did Hunger fight Procyon with two functioning eyes already??? Do we even have two functioning eyes already
At the risk of schilling for an option I hate, heroism might qualify as boosted plot armor. That would mean Heroism Reward boosts Accretion. Even with that tantalizing idea, I can't vote for Heroism.

My bet is that a Heroic Advancement is going to be even more important than the defining advancements that we've gotten so far. Think about how nuts the blurbs for Uttermost and Fisher King have been. A Heroic Advancement will probably touch on Hunger's ideals, methods, and relationships.

In my opinion, making an informed choice from among several different blurbs is better than just rolling the dice on a mystery box like the Haeliel reward on offer.
 
Of course, I wouldn't bet on this. It might be out for the kill. It is a Curse, and a Crowning Curse at that.
The Apocryphal Curse isn't trying to kill us, if it was Apocryphal Onslaught would be active.
TooSlow gains some important rhetorical benefits from characterizing this wish as 'defensive' but that is not strictly true. Any information about "activation conditions" is certainly conjecture, which is pretty rich in a post that accuses me of "making things up" to benefit the options I like.
The Accursed would probably think not dying would be in Hunger's best interests.
Uttermost would also be cool to upgrade but I don't think many of us would be willing to spend it on a non EFB.
Imagine if Artful Thorn didn't cost anything though.
 
Y'know, Elixir would be an absolutely amazing get honestly, which might even be possible considering its own nature is basically a Heroic Edeldross. Not only would we gain the Fairbright Bloodline (appropriate for Hunger's new lease on life), we'd also get the services of the Lucenthorn (handy get for the Ring War), gain another 5% Apocryphal Mitigation (proven to be utterly vital), High Graces (300% attack speed???), we'd also significantly improve our Magnitude gains and cap.

That last one might sound underwhelming but remember, that's a passive percentage boost to all of our stats. With Silver's doubling, I suspect we could end up at something absurd like 200% at the top end. That would be pretty good for our physical stats alone but absolutely hilarious when it comes to our mental stats. Combine that with the Oath of Winter and we could end up at something absolutely wild like an effective 40+'s in both Wisdom and Intelligence, a staggering boost to our all around competence and effectiveness.

To say nothing of how it would give us actually worthwhile non-lethal options, as we've just seen in the fight.
 
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What a pleasant vote this is, where the prospect of defeat is so palatable.
Yep.
It's a mystery box, yes. But it's also a 5-pick Advancement benefiting from a Heroic Upgrade, costing twice as much as an EFB. Even sight unseen, we can pretty much guarantee it's the single strongest option we've ever been offered. I don't think anyone has the appetite for another 5-pick fight; if we don't take this now, we never will.
This is gonna be bar none the most impactful advancement we will ever see, Rihaku prices things fairly and this advancement is ridiculously expensive. It is an absolutely ludicrous investment, we have to get something spectacular out of it.
Yeah.

Myth and Legend has a 3 pick 12 arête advancement, and a 2 pick 7 arête advancement, and a companion EFB. If you ignore the companion EFB (which... would not be fair) it's... not the strongest pick from a 5-pick fight. Of course, the 28-arete companion EFB changes things -- especially as companion EFBs are like 4 EFBs in one. But then, they're also concentrated in a companion, and we don't get quite their full efficiency. Nor do our companions have our growth rate.

Hero's Reward is a bonkers and almost-unprecedented concentration of Arete and power. (I say "almost-unprecedented", because we'd technically seen it something like it before; when we had to pay 50 Arete to get Haeliel in the first place. :V)

I've been slowly moving my way to wanting Hero's Reward more than Myth and Legend, but I think it's happened. I really want that 50-Arete power.

This is the only 5-pick fight we had.

The Vanreir fight, at 4-picks, gave us Uttermost. And that was pretty big for us, and gave us Cut Through.

Concentrations of picks and power like this come rarely, so I think we should jump on it with both feet.

And, finally... I am semi confident that we might get healing from Haeliel, too. Or from Elixirdross upgrade. (Or maybe we'll get a Heroic Panoply!)
Y'know, Elixir would be an absolutely amazing get honestly, which might even be possible considering its own nature is basically a Heroic Edeldross. Not only would we gain the Fairbright Bloodline (appropriate for Hunger's new lease on life)
*Hunger will learn what the Fairbright Bloodline actually does. --Heartlessness.

I'm guessing that what the Fairbright Bloodline does, and the reason for Minus Heartlessness, is that Hunger finds out about Haeliel and her intentions and her attempts to try to make the world, the worlds, better. Or something like that.


[X] A Hero's Reward
[X] Grievous Exertion

It's a shame to miss out on Adorie's EFB, and on the Rank from Feat: Saber, but... argh. Ah well.

We just faced a huge, empowered, Apocryphal Proc.

We have an opportunity to gain a huge amount of power or Progression. We should definitely, absolutely, do it.

And then, maybe we can pick up a few components of Ruling Ring in the Realm of Evening. Not all at once, because we don't have the Arete. But like, a 7-Arete here and there. And we'll be even closer to getting another sweet, sweet, ++Progression. We'll be extremely well-set to start outscaling or at least being able to bear or better-deal-with the Apocryphal Curse.

We took a huge risk, and picked a fight with an Armament. Let's actually take the commensurate rewards.

I called Myth and Legend the conservative option of the options, and it is. (Accursed Implement is more like a 'prudent' or 'investment' option; it saves Arete for Realm of Evening, as it doesn't directly/immediately heal us.) Heroic Reward is the Big Purchase option. Big purchase, big rewards.
 
Grievious Extertion + A Hero's Reward is gambling pretty hard on Haeliel healing us. I think it's likely mind you considering how she healed us previously but man, "likely" is kinda dicey for another Apocryphal proc under that Condition.
 
Being fair, if Haeliel doesn't heal us, the Realm of Evening will. It's literally exactly what its good for. And the Apocryphal Curse is at 1/3rd severity while we're there.

Also...

Verschlengorge.

If we take him with us into the Realm of Evening, then we will have had enough time to heal him fully.

So, if the Apocryphal does strike afterwards? It can bite me, because it's facing this fully armed and operational Armament!

... Also, maybe we'll have the time to practice Piloting Verschlengorge too.

And 3 weeks of Artificing with Gisena.

... Yeah, I'm actually feeling pretty confident about this condition. If we didn't have the Realm of Evening coming up right now (and we still have a use of Silver of Evening left, if we need to use it against a surprise Apocryphal suckerpunch or something, for 2 Stages of Mitigation) I'd be a lot more concerned, but... yeah.
Grievious Extertion + A Hero's Reward is gambling pretty hard on Haeliel healing us. I think it's likely mind you considering how she healed us previously but man, "likely" is kinda dicey for another Apocryphal proc under that Condition.
Yeah. I talked about Accursed Implement + Grievous Exertion in this post of mine before, and while I don't think it will be as easy, I think we're extremely lucky because of the Realm of Evening proc happening the very next day.

A 1 month condition, and we're about to knock 3 weeks off that.

... Also. The Apocryphal will be at one-third severity while in the Realm of Evening
.

And the Realm of Evening is good for healing.

So, thinking about it... actually, even if Haeliel doesn't heal us, I think we'll be fine. Because that's exactly what the Realm of Evening is for. It might be better to get our healing from the Realm of Evening (and/or Elixirdross, if we get it like a few of us are thinking) and have Haeliel focus her upgrade on Power/Potential instead.


So, when we exit the Realm of Evening, we will have:

*No more "+25-50% boost to next Apocryphal Proc"
*6 days left on our 1-month condition, as 3 weeks out of 1 month have passed
*Lots of healing done, so our condition was probably mitigated
*The 50-arête option from Hero's Reward for power/potential or something
*However much arête we manage to mine and use for Realm of Evening
*Maybe we'll finally pick up Opalescence, Iridescence, Exalted Spirit, and Honing, and other cheap and efficient upgrades and purchases, because of that?
*Maybe we'll finish Fisher King too. Finally, hehe
*If we take Verschlengorge and Letrizia with us, then we can have fully healed up Verschlengorge too
*Gisena will have 3 weeks of Artificing to do!
 
Thanks for the thoughts, I didn't necessarily have a hierarchical relationship in mind for the colleague at the moment. Basically. the reason I had in mind if she takes the Geas is to convince whatever cosmic force in the Rihakuverse farks with AI research to stop doing that and if necessary kill them. Verity is a Curse specialist and I don't think we've seen any magic systems capable of any level of curse in Rihaku's quests before. I'm not sure I had anything that fancy about exploring aspects of the Rihakuverse as part of my inspiration for Brush but she is a wizard who can literally kill people with art from a civilization that currently has very similar naming conventions to people's names after they sacrifice them for power in the Rihakuverse.
 
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Being fair, if Haeliel doesn't heal us, the Realm of Evening will. It's literally exactly what its good for. And the Apocryphal Curse is at 1/3rd severity while we're there.

Even if we focus our full efforts into the Realm of Evening, it's uncertain if we'd master it sufficiently to heal ourselves (especially since our practice will be slowed due to decreased stats) and even then we don't know if it'll suffice to mend the damage of even the weakest Shattering Blow. It's not as though Hunger regained his memories from Haeliel's healing and if she can't do it (even if the avatar she sent wasn't at full power), the Realm of Evening almost certainly can't. Verschlengorge is a better bet here but see above re: insufficient mastery.

So yeah, there's a very real chance it'll be the results of Gisena's Artifice, a vastly weakened Hunger and a less than fully restored Verschlengorge against the Apocryphal with a week's worth of build up. This isn't the only possible scenario, of course, but it's one we should at least consider.
 
5 vote difference.
Adhoc vote count started by Rah13 on Nov 22, 2020 at 10:48 AM, finished with 390 posts and 66 votes.
 
Haeliel isn't around to give us orders! A distant ideal to pursue is infinitely preferable to a very materially present boss.
 
[X] A Hero's Reward
[X] Grievous Exertion


Let's open the mystery box and see what it has inside. Myth and Legend is pretty fine as well, though.
 
Grievious Extertion + A Hero's Reward is gambling pretty hard on Haeliel healing us. I think it's likely mind you considering how she healed us previously but man, "likely" is kinda dicey for another Apocryphal proc under that Condition.
Also it removes the next build vote for the Heroic Advancement. The simping for High Cursebearer Mommy has eroded the very foundation of Rihaku`s quests - build votes.
 
An interesting quote I stumbled on:

Though it'd be unlikely for Hunger, one must also take care not to overindulge in the ambrosial luxuries and become a lotus-eater pining away for Evening's Realm! It's a sad, dangerous thing to see heroes hollowed away by such stupefying opulence.

There seems to be some anti-synergy between Heroism and the Realm of Evening. Setting aside the intolerable narrative setback of being YEETed into a different Geas Task, I think we should consider whether adopting the mantle of heroic responsibility for the entire Voyaging Realm is compatible with taking a 3 week vacation immediately afterwards.

I campaigned hard for Boosted Proc followed by COMFY QUEST. This doesn't work if our advancement from fighting Procyon involves entering into the Campbellian Myth cycle...


edit: Also, losing out on a build vote about the Heroic Advancement would be a travesty
 
Everything else aside, can we take a moment to appreciate how good Feat: Saber is? You get 0.5 Rank for 12 Arete. 0.5! That's just crazy. We talked about losing entire Rank to (inefficiently) transform it into 6th Sign, and this just gives you half a rank like its nothing. While also advancing us towards our second Trinity.
edit: Also, losing out on a build vote about the Heroic Advancement would be a travesty
While I don't mind not having a build vote, I do admit that I'm interesting in seeing how Heroic Advancements look like in practice.
 
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