A Simple Transaction I
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
- Original
ImperatorV
The Laughing One
- Location
- The Voyaging Realm
Now THIS is fighting like a mage (Finally, finally we have the versatility I've wanted). I'm partial to the conjuring endless hordes and beating Dien at his own virus game strats. Also leaning towards Prowess, although Might could in some circumstances be better for War Across the Stars.
Overlord seems to be frontloading the risk in exchange for maybe having better options when it comes to fighting Dien himself. That may be a worthwhile trade, hard to say.
I'll Form the Head I think we should keep in reserve for a different Apocryphal Proc. I think we can handle the current situation using what we have now, and having a back-up is nice.
Quick to Anger strikes me as reckless. Also, it seems like the number one thing pre-Archmage Hunger would try to do if he could, which means Dien 100% has plans for it and probably his best plans too. We have lateral capability now, let's use it.
Overlord seems to be frontloading the risk in exchange for maybe having better options when it comes to fighting Dien himself. That may be a worthwhile trade, hard to say.
I'll Form the Head I think we should keep in reserve for a different Apocryphal Proc. I think we can handle the current situation using what we have now, and having a back-up is nice.
Quick to Anger strikes me as reckless. Also, it seems like the number one thing pre-Archmage Hunger would try to do if he could, which means Dien 100% has plans for it and probably his best plans too. We have lateral capability now, let's use it.
Zampano
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- Location
- Simping for DSB
Wait, no, I think the Killing Blow might be bait. Here's why:
1. The last time I remember seeing question marks in a blurb was [ ] Absorb the Tower of Earth. This blurb says "What's the harm in trying" and that blurb says "Is this really the time for this?"
2. Aab asked me a good question: What's a plausible way that [The Killing Blow] could backfire?
a). The astral hyper-virus could be repurposed & turned against Hunger: he's personally immune to counterattack but his Rank itself might be undermined or infected.
b). The astral hyper-virus could be retroengineered by Dien, providing him a template for an astral-only disease vector that jumps past the Shogun's quarantine & starts attacking the people of the Empire.
c). The astral hyper-virus could be an additional evolutionary pressure that ends up improving Dien's biomanipulation itself. Fighting against an army might give Dien experimental results about which kind of Orc is a good soldier. But fighting against a disease vector might give Dien insight about which kind of biological manipulations are best in general. +Progression(Dien) would be a major catastrophe.
but i want killing blow
so... the next step is to think about which EFBs can be combined with Killing Blow (few), vs. which work best with War Across the Stars (most).
@ImperatorV I'd say that Overlord is just purely trusting that +Progression from EBA is general enough to problem solve whatever comes up. Killing Blow and War Across do better at implementing Hunger's new abilities.
Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
"What's the harm in trying?" the middle of the Apocryphal Tribulation is not the time to experiment or take anything less than the most effective option possible.
It could also end up spreading too slowly, thus allowing Dien to quarantine his controlled worlds and take them hostage against Hunger or perhaps massively accelerate consuming them.
It could also end up spreading too slowly, thus allowing Dien to quarantine his controlled worlds and take them hostage against Hunger or perhaps massively accelerate consuming them.
- Location
- Poland
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Spark of Prowess
[X] War Across the Stars
Originally wanted the astral virus, but playing to our opponent's strengths while not being that good at MAEGing seems like a spectacularly bad idea.
Also, we don't have a lot of time. Hell, this entire "power up and beat Dien" strategy we took was the long-term, time-spending one.
[X] War Across the Stars
Originally wanted the astral virus, but playing to our opponent's strengths while not being that good at MAEGing seems like a spectacularly bad idea.
Also, we don't have a lot of time. Hell, this entire "power up and beat Dien" strategy we took was the long-term, time-spending one.
Zampano
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- Location
- Simping for DSB
The only way to get good at MAEGing is to MAEG. i agree that it is a risk, however. War Across is a better fit for our build, especially if Regalia of Strife is ever affordable
edit posted too early: the problem here is that Might + Regalia makes more sense than Spark + Regalia
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Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
This is perhaps the wildest part of the entire blurb. We get to manufacture a billion people with half of Hunger's mental attributes. That's a civilization unto itself. Imagine if we turned this ability towards advancing technology. A billion geniuses working on any given problem should be sufficient to put a serious dent into it. Or maybe we could learn to channel Archmage effects through these wraiths or use them for farseeing purposes or even communication and transport. Imagine a trade network composed of a billion Armaments. Speaking of those, what if we could figure out how to stabilise the Astral with them? We'd never have the worry about invasion from Sovereigns for our whole tenure here. There's just so many possibilities this offers.
- Location
- US
Tbh, not quite sure which is the optimal choice. The only thing I'm certain about is that I don't want to spend the big merger on And I'll Form, the Head, especially since we have other options available. Tempted to just Cut Through... hmm. Dien should still be weakened, and while he might expect Hunger finding him, there's only so much he can prepare for with limited time and resources. Then again, that's what I thought about Augustine.
Killing Blow sounds neat and flexes Hunger's new magical muscles gloriously, but the only way it could be more explicit about tempting Apocrypha would be if it mentioned her by name. I don't know what exactly could happen, whether Dien could subvert such a virus after all, or if it would create problems down the line, but I'll pass for now. Maybe I'll revisit the option later once a better risk assessment has been made.
So it's between making Hunger clones and mashing the Progression button some more. The first is really cool, but it will probably extend the war the most of all options and gives Dien more time to think up some new horror. Slowly pushing him into a corner risks the release of some kind of doom weapon, though maybe he'll try negotiating first?
Overlord meanwhile isn't a solution on its own, just a broad improvement in preparation for some unexpected occurrences. It must be paired with another strategy down the line, so the question is whether that will be better than just picking a direction now and going with it.
Hmm. Looking at it this way, I think I'll go with
[X] Overlord
[X] Might Alone
I reckon Apocrypha and Dien will cook up something completely unexpected, so I don't want to commit to a specific strategy till we learn more. As the blurb says, when in doubt, pursue power. And since we're about to fight an enhanced Armament, power will surely come in handy!
Killing Blow sounds neat and flexes Hunger's new magical muscles gloriously, but the only way it could be more explicit about tempting Apocrypha would be if it mentioned her by name. I don't know what exactly could happen, whether Dien could subvert such a virus after all, or if it would create problems down the line, but I'll pass for now. Maybe I'll revisit the option later once a better risk assessment has been made.
So it's between making Hunger clones and mashing the Progression button some more. The first is really cool, but it will probably extend the war the most of all options and gives Dien more time to think up some new horror. Slowly pushing him into a corner risks the release of some kind of doom weapon, though maybe he'll try negotiating first?
Overlord meanwhile isn't a solution on its own, just a broad improvement in preparation for some unexpected occurrences. It must be paired with another strategy down the line, so the question is whether that will be better than just picking a direction now and going with it.
Hmm. Looking at it this way, I think I'll go with
[X] Overlord
[X] Might Alone
I reckon Apocrypha and Dien will cook up something completely unexpected, so I don't want to commit to a specific strategy till we learn more. As the blurb says, when in doubt, pursue power. And since we're about to fight an enhanced Armament, power will surely come in handy!
- Location
- Louisiana
Alright buckle up buttercups because I'm about to spit straight facts and logic into this thread. This seems like a pretty significant vote so I'm about to go through this option by option and explain why each option is godly or trash.
[ ] War Across the Stars
Starting with the new hotness of the thread we have war across the stars. This enables us to make a billion mini hungers that are basically discounted armaments to fight Diens hoard with a second cooler sexier and sleeker hoard. Picking Might Alone means they're all armament tier by themselves, picking spark of prowess means we can replenish them as fast as they're killed. This option is honestly really good, and I like proving to Dien that our schtick is stealing someone else's thing and doing it better.
[ ] And I'll Form the Head
Lol.
[ ] Overlord
It's like Form the Head but for people with more than two functioning brain cells. It enables the tried and true Hunger method of hitting the gym until the enemies plan no longer matters. Since this has failed to work against Dien approximately 3 times now I'm a little hesitant on how well it would work here. Also since people probably don't want Might Alone, this would be used on mental/social gym time which I don't see working very well vs Dien. But hey fourth times the charm, it has to work eventually right?
[ ] Quick to Anger
Honestly my preferred option, saying fuck this shit I literally just want to find the guy and stab him a lot. Focus literally all of our attention and growth on things that can find and neutralize Dien and any contingencies. It's hunger just going "ok fine I get it brute force wont work I'm gonna sit here until I find something that will." Seriously its weakness is "you might not be strong enough" after we just doubled our strength, when we were already too strong for Dien. We could probably take 3 of him if we could face him head on, which is what this option tries to do. I think the allure of the army dick measuring contest with Dien is dragging people away from the whole point of our current situation. Which I understand, it almost got me too.
[ ] The Killing Blow
Let's do a bio weapon against the bio weapon guy. It's so stupid that he won't see it coming so therefore it will work. This isn't as bad as Form the Head and it has the dick measuring contest energy of War Across the Stars, so I'll cut it some slack. However I really really doubt this will work. This is my second least favorite option
I wanted to go over these last cause they affect all the other stuff.
[ ] Might Alone
More dank is always good, and I like the secondary affects of this more than the ones for Spark. However I think that's intended, the pros of Might Alone is that it makes everything else better where Spark of Prowess is purely improvements on our Archmage functionality. Since I think this is our opportunity to give ourselves some much needed versatility, I think this is a slightly worse option. However if we go full gym bro mode this is a must have. Juicing up Supreme Commander and November Sky on top of rank buffs is nuts.
[ ] Spark of Prowess
Do mage things better. Since mage things are likely our ticket to dealing with Dien, I think this is probably the better bet. Especially with things that aren't Overlord, since the rest of the options are mainly about versatility.
With all that said my vote goes to my preferred combination
[X] Spark of Prowess
[X] Quick to Anger
However I'm ok with War Across the Stars, and if we decide to just say fuck it and juice up one more time I'm always willing to gamble on cutting through. It has to work eventually he can't keep getting away with it.
[ ] War Across the Stars
Starting with the new hotness of the thread we have war across the stars. This enables us to make a billion mini hungers that are basically discounted armaments to fight Diens hoard with a second cooler sexier and sleeker hoard. Picking Might Alone means they're all armament tier by themselves, picking spark of prowess means we can replenish them as fast as they're killed. This option is honestly really good, and I like proving to Dien that our schtick is stealing someone else's thing and doing it better.
[ ] And I'll Form the Head
Lol.
[ ] Overlord
It's like Form the Head but for people with more than two functioning brain cells. It enables the tried and true Hunger method of hitting the gym until the enemies plan no longer matters. Since this has failed to work against Dien approximately 3 times now I'm a little hesitant on how well it would work here. Also since people probably don't want Might Alone, this would be used on mental/social gym time which I don't see working very well vs Dien. But hey fourth times the charm, it has to work eventually right?
[ ] Quick to Anger
Honestly my preferred option, saying fuck this shit I literally just want to find the guy and stab him a lot. Focus literally all of our attention and growth on things that can find and neutralize Dien and any contingencies. It's hunger just going "ok fine I get it brute force wont work I'm gonna sit here until I find something that will." Seriously its weakness is "you might not be strong enough" after we just doubled our strength, when we were already too strong for Dien. We could probably take 3 of him if we could face him head on, which is what this option tries to do. I think the allure of the army dick measuring contest with Dien is dragging people away from the whole point of our current situation. Which I understand, it almost got me too.
[ ] The Killing Blow
Let's do a bio weapon against the bio weapon guy. It's so stupid that he won't see it coming so therefore it will work. This isn't as bad as Form the Head and it has the dick measuring contest energy of War Across the Stars, so I'll cut it some slack. However I really really doubt this will work. This is my second least favorite option
I wanted to go over these last cause they affect all the other stuff.
[ ] Might Alone
More dank is always good, and I like the secondary affects of this more than the ones for Spark. However I think that's intended, the pros of Might Alone is that it makes everything else better where Spark of Prowess is purely improvements on our Archmage functionality. Since I think this is our opportunity to give ourselves some much needed versatility, I think this is a slightly worse option. However if we go full gym bro mode this is a must have. Juicing up Supreme Commander and November Sky on top of rank buffs is nuts.
[ ] Spark of Prowess
Do mage things better. Since mage things are likely our ticket to dealing with Dien, I think this is probably the better bet. Especially with things that aren't Overlord, since the rest of the options are mainly about versatility.
With all that said my vote goes to my preferred combination
[X] Spark of Prowess
[X] Quick to Anger
However I'm ok with War Across the Stars, and if we decide to just say fuck it and juice up one more time I'm always willing to gamble on cutting through. It has to work eventually he can't keep getting away with it.
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HoratioVonBecker
Imperfectly Aligned
So, remember that the immediate next fight is Upgraded Etrynome. Apocryphal will want to make that one Interesting, and the obvious way to do it would be to have Ceathlynn meet the Shogun.
Actually, we might have a day or so before they fuse. Depends on how long it took Dien to boost her, and how long it takes Apocryphal to convince her to go to the Empire instead. Anyway, when we get out we should expect all of the following:
*Shogun has an Armament and possibly an independently-Foremost host. I'm guessing that looks like a three-to-four-pick fight, if they come at us immediately. Imagine the training dummy from a couple updates ago fused with Augustine. And probably an imitation of the Lathe of Heaven equal to at least Gisena's current level. The Makers knew what Cursebearers looked like; it's highly unlikely Gisena has already surpassed them.
*Dien is still up to his old tricks, but from Apocryphal's perspective, he's bait and background pressure. If she can get Hunger monofocused on him, that's the perfect setup for a suckerpunch. On the other hand he's does have to be dealt with, since otherwise he'll just eat the Human Sphere! We don't have any guarantee that the Geas won't try to kill us if more than 10% of the Human Sphere is destroyed, after all...
*In the background, The Spider is doing... something. Given that she's Foremost, and we have absolutely no clue how Stewards can keep up with Makers or Heroes, this should be great cause for concern. Maybe she's just collecting artifacts and Realms and stuff? Summoning something way stronger? Whatever it is, it's certainly going to be lore related, and it's almost certainly going to be a serious threat.
*We've seen three Foremost Castes, and three standard fantasy races, represented. Where's the fourth? IRL caste systems normally have at least four, each of which is represented by one of the card suits, and then optionally some others like sanitation and burial worker.
--Heroes/Orcs clearly map to Swords/Spades/Warrior Caste.
--Stewards/Elves map almost as clearly to the Cups/Hearts/Scholar Caste. Note that 'scholar' also includes 'priest' here.
--Makers/Humans is the least clear-cut of the bunch. I want to say they're the Wands/Clubs/Worker Caste, in a vaguely Marxist sense. It seems most probable. But...
--The Fourth Caste, the one we haven't seen any direct evidence of. The Dwarves. We know the Foremost were probably cut down by the Forebear, severed from the Real of Forms by his Cut. My assumption is that he retroactively destroyed the Dwarves, or at least sealed them more thoroughly, perhaps in a bid to keep them from Digging Too Deep in the fabric of the omniverse. Were they responsible for his Procession? Or did they just dig him out by accident? There's clearly something going on there.
The only confusing detail of this idea, is their role. They would have been the Coin/Diamond/Merchant Caste analogues, clearly - Diamond especially seems like a good fit for dwarves - but what would their Foremost Caste Name have been? Exchanger? Refiner? Almost certainly not Maker or Artificer, although that's certainly their standard mythological role. But perhaps the humans taking the role of Maker was an artifact of the dwarves' destruction?
--Hobbits/halflings/gnomes are theoretically also options, but I'd assume those are represented by subcastes.
--Untouchables, AKA the "don't go near them they're mortuary and sanitation workers" caste, might be related to Curses somehow. Then again, they might not be implemented. Hard to say.
Anyway, bringing this back to the original point, which strategy best balances Stopping Dien with Preparing For Other Stuff?
That's not the only reasonable justification for killing it for power. The concerning thing is that Hunger felt no apparent need to justify his decision.
Actually, we might have a day or so before they fuse. Depends on how long it took Dien to boost her, and how long it takes Apocryphal to convince her to go to the Empire instead. Anyway, when we get out we should expect all of the following:
*Shogun has an Armament and possibly an independently-Foremost host. I'm guessing that looks like a three-to-four-pick fight, if they come at us immediately. Imagine the training dummy from a couple updates ago fused with Augustine. And probably an imitation of the Lathe of Heaven equal to at least Gisena's current level. The Makers knew what Cursebearers looked like; it's highly unlikely Gisena has already surpassed them.
*Dien is still up to his old tricks, but from Apocryphal's perspective, he's bait and background pressure. If she can get Hunger monofocused on him, that's the perfect setup for a suckerpunch. On the other hand he's does have to be dealt with, since otherwise he'll just eat the Human Sphere! We don't have any guarantee that the Geas won't try to kill us if more than 10% of the Human Sphere is destroyed, after all...
*In the background, The Spider is doing... something. Given that she's Foremost, and we have absolutely no clue how Stewards can keep up with Makers or Heroes, this should be great cause for concern. Maybe she's just collecting artifacts and Realms and stuff? Summoning something way stronger? Whatever it is, it's certainly going to be lore related, and it's almost certainly going to be a serious threat.
*We've seen three Foremost Castes, and three standard fantasy races, represented. Where's the fourth? IRL caste systems normally have at least four, each of which is represented by one of the card suits, and then optionally some others like sanitation and burial worker.
--Heroes/Orcs clearly map to Swords/Spades/Warrior Caste.
--Stewards/Elves map almost as clearly to the Cups/Hearts/Scholar Caste. Note that 'scholar' also includes 'priest' here.
--Makers/Humans is the least clear-cut of the bunch. I want to say they're the Wands/Clubs/Worker Caste, in a vaguely Marxist sense. It seems most probable. But...
--The Fourth Caste, the one we haven't seen any direct evidence of. The Dwarves. We know the Foremost were probably cut down by the Forebear, severed from the Real of Forms by his Cut. My assumption is that he retroactively destroyed the Dwarves, or at least sealed them more thoroughly, perhaps in a bid to keep them from Digging Too Deep in the fabric of the omniverse. Were they responsible for his Procession? Or did they just dig him out by accident? There's clearly something going on there.
The only confusing detail of this idea, is their role. They would have been the Coin/Diamond/Merchant Caste analogues, clearly - Diamond especially seems like a good fit for dwarves - but what would their Foremost Caste Name have been? Exchanger? Refiner? Almost certainly not Maker or Artificer, although that's certainly their standard mythological role. But perhaps the humans taking the role of Maker was an artifact of the dwarves' destruction?
--Hobbits/halflings/gnomes are theoretically also options, but I'd assume those are represented by subcastes.
--Untouchables, AKA the "don't go near them they're mortuary and sanitation workers" caste, might be related to Curses somehow. Then again, they might not be implemented. Hard to say.
Anyway, bringing this back to the original point, which strategy best balances Stopping Dien with Preparing For Other Stuff?
It actually had quite a number of votes early on!
'Risk of failure in execution' is a reasonable thing to expect; it's part of the dice-based quester contract, and to some extent the non-dice-based. 'Risk of making a moral choice you don't agree with' is not a normal part of the social contract. Now, granted, it may well have been a natural effect of ++Heartlessness and --Mental Stability, but that was not an expected possibility. It seems to come out of left field, and is bothering quite a lot of us.
Basically this. My understanding is "Azure agreed to serve until Crimson is usurped by another power > Azure would not willingly sacrifice its' existence to save Hunger from Dien > Azure would be Just Fine with sacrificing Crimson were the situations reversed, and respects the choice eat it > fair play on both sides".
That's not the only reasonable justification for killing it for power. The concerning thing is that Hunger felt no apparent need to justify his decision.
I did find it kind of odd that no option to kill the Azure for power was offered at the end of the Temple arc. If that was just a matter of expedient power extraction, it seems like the sort of thing that should be brought up in the main story?
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Rihaku
The Internet
The risk of Quick to Anger is that Hunger's Rank will be simply too weak to overcome Dien's protections no matter how many domains he has, and thus be unable to actually find him. Note that Dien's Rank is significantly higher than Hunger's right now.
It sounds like a few of you are inputing a characterization to Hunger that simply doesn't exist in the text. As explained previously, Hunger cared a great deal about freeing the Azure from eternal torment, because eternal torment is something no one should experience. But his behavior afterwards in the wake of giving it to Gisena, and its effectively total absence from his thoughts, should be informative of his attitude beyond the extreme valence of those particular circumstances. In matters between Rings, Hunger is more Ring than person. Consider that this may not cause him to treat Rival Rings more as people. And perhaps he understands their essential nature better than humans would.
How would Hunger have meaningfully extracted anywhere near the Ring Azure's potential via destructive consumption at that stage of his development? Even Gisena at her current level was unable to do so without an OaF III-enabled Forebear's Blade!
Lealope
Not yet invincible
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Hunger was nowhere near hardcore enough to break the Azure at that point! And didn't have much reason to do so either.
- Location
- Louisiana
Significant as in significant or significant as in significant because if it's still that much of an issue once we've potentially added half an entire rank and his rank has been shredded down by our stance powers his rank must be frankly ridiculous.
Zampano
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- Location
- Simping for DSB
I, for one, think that Hunger made the right choice.
<snip> Ninja'd by the author:
Say Hunger is at Rank 10 and Dien has Rank 11. We'd have an effective 0.25 gap (thanks to Hero Defeating Stance + 2nd Empyrean Sign). Oath of Winter applies a further Rank debuff against Dien.
Despite these three abilities meant to deal with stronger opponents, Dien still had a meaningful advantage in terms of Rank. Getting raw +Rank is a poor way to catch up, because it duplicates the rank-equalization efforts of HDS + Bastion of Myth. Right now, each marginal unit of +Rank is redundant (until Hunger can catch up to Dien).
Prowess + War is a poor match for Etrynome, but it is a much more effective method of fighting Dien compared to Anger.
Overlord is kind of a ?? to me at this point.
<snip> Ninja'd by the author:
I worked this out a few weeks ago. Plagiarizing from myself:
Say Hunger is at Rank 10 and Dien has Rank 11. We'd have an effective 0.25 gap (thanks to Hero Defeating Stance + 2nd Empyrean Sign). Oath of Winter applies a further Rank debuff against Dien.
Despite these three abilities meant to deal with stronger opponents, Dien still had a meaningful advantage in terms of Rank. Getting raw +Rank is a poor way to catch up, because it duplicates the rank-equalization efforts of HDS + Bastion of Myth. Right now, each marginal unit of +Rank is redundant (until Hunger can catch up to Dien).
Prowess + War is a poor match for Etrynome, but it is a much more effective method of fighting Dien compared to Anger.
Overlord is kind of a ?? to me at this point.
Tyrant_Rayne
Probably Not Evil… Maybe
- Location
- Canada
That is a good point. At this point the only real way to get any significant amount of rank is with EFB's. Getting a whole 0.5 essentially for free is very good. So:
[X] Overlord
[X] Might Alone
This gives us the rank and we still get the prowess boost due to all the training. When in doubt just do everything. We can plan after we have more specifics.
[X] Overlord
[X] Might Alone
This gives us the rank and we still get the prowess boost due to all the training. When in doubt just do everything. We can plan after we have more specifics.
So that would have actually worked, huh.
[X] Might Alone
[X] War Across the Stars
Creating billion clones stronger than Letrizia is funny to me.
Rihaku
The Internet
With Archmage and a lot of work, sure!
There are worse plans than maintaining flexibility until you've seen what Dien's up to!
[X] Might Alone
[X] War Across the Stars
[X] War Across the Stars