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A Simple Transaction I

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I'd like to call out that if Starblade saint wins there is a possibility of non-astral denizen fight ensuing while we're exhausted. We should totally heal Verschlengorge to improve the ability of our party to deal with things while that's a concern. Evolved Gisena and Rank 5 Verschlengorge sounds funky dangerous for enemies.
 
Conjured Blade said:
2 days of exhaustion is fine
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We're already going to likely have to deal with Apocryphal in the final leg, how is giving up two more days of growth potentially knocking us down from being comparable to Inner level opponents to peak middle level when it kicks in, or some similar dropoff fine? The Temple is one of the worst places for Apocryphal because there's so much ready material it doesn't even have to strain the bounds of credibility to immediately throw at us. We want to have out-scaled as much of it as possible before it has the chance.
 
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Thomasfoolery said:
We're already going to likely have to deal with Apocryphal in the final leg, how is giving up two more days of growth potentially knocking us down from being comparable to Inner level opponents to peak middle level when it kicks in, or some similar dropoff fine? The Temple is one of the worst places for Apocryphal because there's so much ready material it doesn't even have to strain the bounds of credibility to immediately throw at us. We want to have out-scaled as much of it as possible before it has the chance.
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honestly the fights we're choosing for ourselves are worse than what Apocryphal was sending before; at least with Gown we have diversified capabilities.
Besides, even if we gear all of our picks towards doing so I think we'd face substantial risk of death trying to speedrun the Temple.
 
Thomasfoolery said:
We're already going to likely have to deal with Apocryphal in the final leg, how is giving up two more days of growth potentially knocking us down from being comparable to Inner level opponents to peak middle level, or some similiar dropoff fine? The Temple is one of the worst places for Apocryhpal because there's so much ready material it doesn't even have to strain the bounds of credibility to immediately throw at us. We want to have outscaled as much of it as possible before it has the chance.
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Apocrypha is semi-scaled to our power. It doesn't take into account things like souped up Gisena. In addition, if we end up getting in any fights as I suspect we might while we're exhausted(Astral Denizen or otherwise), souping up the Astral Denizens by upgrading Verschlengorge in conjunction with a souped up Gisena improves our odds of survival in general(what if they aren't astral denizens, evolved Gisena and Rank 5 Verschlengorge still helps) and gives us a better chance of actually getting some picks outside the temple in the meantime. The Astral Denizens are scaled to Verschlengorge, not Verschlengorge+Evolved Gisena+us.

Do we still experience rank penalties for fighting outside the temple? I suspect we do. Another reason why Studying Verschlengorge is a good idea for Star-Blade saint.

Edit: We do still experience rank penalties for Fighting outside the temple, given that inward focus lost on Red of Sky and Fang.
 
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Some more argument for blood-might:

It's not only the strongest in the short-term, not only does it use +progression into blood, but it is also hepful in deealing with complicaitons, us ending up with two.

Also, in the very-short term, that is, getting out of the temple, Bloodslayer is actually stronger than we were when we entered(paralysis debuff countered by thousand cuts.)Meanwhile, in the hypothetical zweihander hand, Star-Blade saint leaves us actually weaker than when we entered. Exhausted means that we don't have rank, and we can't use form of rage if shit hits the fan.

So, in the very-short term Bloodslayer is actually safer, unless there is something that i'm missing.

In the short-term, Bloodslayer is also better, the sheer STATS will mean that we will be able to hit very far above our weight class. Each stat taken also means that furtehr STATS

In the short-to-middle term, Bloodslayer is still better, because it's the build more likely to lead to an way to recover from Chill of the grave and paralysis, and will likely lessen the chance of future debilitations.

In the middle term, will unlock other blood-powers, all of which will be more efficient in terms of power than others, which means giving us acess to more immediate power.

On top of that, blood has been said to be able to help with long-term growth of people around Hunger, and it's likely that it can be enchanced even further beyond with Arete. I think the blood diagram might be a good way to think of use of our blood, even if our control over it is probably much conceptually stronger.

Our situation is also quite similar to Nameless in EFB, where our ring of truth made all diagram beyond points more efficient. A good chunk of Nameless's power was due to that. Blood+ progression means an significant force multiplier that we can get, and the more we invest into it, the more options we get to improve if further.

If we don't take quickening, or in the future, blood advancemnts, we will never get the option to have our other forms have blood, due to we not having an foundation to work towards, and it's basically throwing our +progression away. Learn the great lessons that the diagram thaught us previously!

Just because we have been inconscistent so far, doens't mean that we can't learn from it to make an consistent build, and a build with +progression as foundation is going to be better than most others.

Personally, as far as magic systems go, i prefered Mage-Lord, but Tolken WIzard with a bit of vampire is also quite fine, and it has quite an bit of long-term potential. Also, 452 words.
 
runeblue360 said:
Yeah, I think I'd like to call it in, thank you for the alert.
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Okay, you're currently on... checking, Study & Slayer.

[X] Study the Blood
[X] Bloodslayer

The biggest thing Bloodslayer has going for it? Momentum. The Star-Blade Saint's the safest option overall, but my guess is that it achieves that by avoiding rewarding fights in the near future. And it has to do so, because of Exhausted. We all remember the King Fish fiasco and how much of a pain the aftermath was to deal with, right? We only have 25% mitigation of the condition from Amaranth Star.

We can't afford to spend to spend roughly a quarter of our remaining Apocryphal-free time (8 to 9 days left) taking it easy, not if we want to resolve the Temple before the grace period expires. And we definitely do, because an Inner Temple Apocryphal proc sounds like quest-ending shenanigans to me. Lingering Paralysis isn't fun, but Bloodslayer offers methods of resolution in 'short order', so we may not have to tank it for the full fortnight.

Speaking of debuffs, Chill of the Grave? Still exists. I believe we still have half the original 10% buff from I Am the Danger, but if the multipliers are applied sequentially, we were operating at just shy of 100% going into the Outrider fight. It'll expire at the end of the month, but the description could provide clues to early resolution. If we're 'too eager to pierce the veil between life and death', perhaps concentrating power in our primary form and eschewing Second Stage for a spell's the key there. With only a few hours of downtime before we regain flesh, we can get straight back into the grind with minimal delay.

Plus, this path's got high synergy with Study the Blood's potential insights. Does anyone really believe our position's good enough that we can neglect even a chance at new or improved advancements? Whatever secrets Letrizia is keeping, will keep. Verschlengorge doesn't seem to have comms with the port, so she's not getting new information. We'll have a chance to dig into the exposition buffet if we walk away from the Temple and resume our long, slow trek to civilization, but it's currently irrelevant. First, we have to survive.
 
Thomasfoolery said:
That's the whole point, your whole argument rests on narrow scenarios, it would be like if in response to your argument all I did was constantly harp about the chance of failure in activating FOR, yes the failure states of any build are bad. If everything goes wrong for quickening indeed it's weaker. That's the trradeoff for otherwise being much stronger. If Quickening doesn't die it just immediately regens to full anyway so it doesn't really get attrited in most circumstances.
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"literally every fight in this place except the Magus" Is not narrow scenarios, dude. We have a terrible track record with not proccing Second Form. I think "everything going wrong" is much more likely to occur than not. Not to mention complications don't always come in easily regenable forsm; see Chill of the Grave.
Thomasfoolery said:
I don't know why you think it couldn't avoid complications? Generally I think we should be making a point that being reduced to Second Form means we're done for the day regardless, we can't heal it and we saw what happened even when we were taking a low risk option right next to the entrance when we pushed things. So I don't think there'll be a huge amount of increased uptime in comparison.

Anyhow, your scenario also seems to be ignoring progression, if neither build got picks after a fight and we got reduced to ghost then sure Saint would be safer. Considering the superior buys the fights slayer can pick would grant though and I don't see that as being a sure thing even in that very Saint favorable scenario.
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As I said above, Complications don't always come in regenable form. We can certainly get ground down even with Quickening. Not to mention fights like the Magus who superior stats wouldn't be of much help but saint would much more advantaged towards esoteric stuff in general.
Xalvitor said:
So, in the very-short term Bloodslayer is actually safer, unless there is something that i'm missing.
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We are a ghost right now, we don't benefit from Quickening. We lose it completely in any other form; that's the biggest reason I'm leery of it.
 
BrainInAJar said:
"literally every fight in this place except the Magus" Is not narrow scenarios, dude. We have a terrible track record with not proccing Second Form. I think "everything going wrong" is much more likely to occur than not. Not to mention complications don't always come in easily regenable forsm; see Chill of the Grave.

As I said above, Complications don't always come in regenable form. We can certainly get ground down even with Quickening. Not to mention fights like the Magus who superior stats wouldn't be of much help but saint would much more advantaged towards esoteric stuff in general.

We are a ghost right now, we don't benefit from Quickening. We lose it completely in any other form; that's the biggest reason I'm leery of it.
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We have thousand-cuts, however. Even with paralysis, we are stronger than we were when we entered the middle temple.
 
Another thing. We heal Verschlengorge, we've got a chance of finding out more Armament lore that it might only be able to deliver using the Totality system.

"Means of Disclosure are restricted" from Synchronization Complete could totally mean we need to unlock totality.
 
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George said:
honestly the fights we're choosing for ourselves are worse than what Apocryphal was sending before; at least with Gown we have diversified capabilities.
Besides, even if we gear all of our picks towards doing so I think we'd face substantial risk of death trying to speedrun the Temple.
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The gatekeeper guarding the sanctum of the Moon ring gets wind another ring nearby through some esoteric means, ports over when we're just finishing the middle temple and immediately kills us. I don't find this farfetched at all and think it's easily within Apocryphal capabilities. That's just off the top of my head, then you have things like the very good chance of non eventful escape we have right now would be much worse, with decent chance of the Dreadbeast intercepting us.

Conjured Blade said:
Apocrypha is semi-scaled to our power. It doesn't take into account things like souped up Gisena. In addition, if we end up getting in any fights as I suspect we might while we're exhausted(Astral Denizen or otherwise), souping up the Astral Denizens by upgrading Verschlengorge in conjunction with a souped up Gisena improves our odds of survival in general(what if they aren't astral denizens, evolved Gisena and Rank 5 Verschlengorge still helps) and gives us a better chance of actually getting some picks outside the temple in the meantime.
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Drawing in Astral denizens that are good with tangling with a rank 5 Armament while we're exhausted doesn't seem the best of moves to me, quite likely to draw attention or give us complications.

BrainInAJar said:
"literally every fight in this place except the Magus" Is not narrow scenarios, dude. We have a terrible track record with not proccing Second Form. I think "everything going wrong" is much more likely to occur than not. Not to mention complications don't always come in easily regenable forsm; see Chill of the Grave.
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You're not seeming to be getting anything I'm trying to say here, so we'll just have to agree to disagree.
 
BrainInAJar said:
Saint gets to use Cuts immediately too; Exhausted only prevents Rank exertions. We are stronger either way.
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Arguable. We don't know the full effects of exhaustion, if it's 'just' losing 75% of our rank or anything more. On top of that, with BloodSlayer we can acess form of rage if we enter an difficult fight, while the same does not apply to Saint.
 
BrainInAJar said:
Saint gets to use Cuts immediately too; Exhausted only prevents Rank exertions. We are stronger either way.
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Exhausted is spiritual exhaustion and these powers are derived from our Accretion. The last time we got tired, it's explicitly because we both overused blade-winds and our Pressure, it's unlikely we'll be able to exert the necessary energy to use Thousand Cuts to its fullest potential. Still stronger than before due to pseudo-Grace and Gisena but its a non-trivial issue.
 
Basically, for both-options in the very-short-term, if they went back and faced, say, the dreadbeast, Saint would be in a much worse position. Of course, that's unlikely to happen to begin with, but it's an argument for Bloodslayer: less risky immediatly, while being better than most forms of enemies afterwards.
 
Xalvitor said:
Basically, for both-options in the very-short-term, if they went back and faced, say, the dreadbeast, Saint would be in a much worse position. Of course, that's unlikely to happen to begin with, but it's an argument for Bloodslayer: less risky immediatly, while being better than most forms of enemies afterwards.
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I don't know if "better than most forms of enemies" is a fair characterization when the class of enemies that Saint excels at is "Magic using enemies like those found in the Inner Layer"

I don't think that Bloodslayer voters are taking seriously the level of beatdown that Hunger received from the Magus. Without Gisena, the groundskeeper was able to have us bleeding out the ears with a single word. There's no way that the Groundskeeper is the strongest magic user we'll fight moving forward.
 
Rank 5 Verschlengorge is basically a friendly dreadbeast in our corner. We get rank penalties for fighting outside the Temple right now. So if one happens against a peer adversary we're going to seriously need to upgrade our companions, astral Denizens or no astral Denizens. Dreadbeast tier Verschlengorge and Evolved Gisena seem like they should be enough for a lot of problems. In addition it's insurance/lowers the odds of a Ber hostage situation.
 
Xalvitor said:
Basically, for both-options in the very-short-term, if they went back and faced, say, the dreadbeast, Saint would be in a much worse position. Of course, that's unlikely to happen to begin with, but it's an argument for Bloodslayer: less risky immediatly, while being better than most forms of enemies afterwards.
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Rihaku said:
*The safest overall option, though not the highest short-term power
*Large stat buffs and Thousand Cuts compensate for Exhaustion in the short term
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Goddamn, if even the options lie to us now, I'm not sure I'd be able to take it.
 
Rihaku said:
Current vote count?



I'd say the second & third dresses are best, but the Evening Gown can somewhat shift form & color to appease the vanity desires of its wearer!

Findross infusion. It's no joke.
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Tally incoming
Adhoc vote count started by Conjured Blade on Jun 14, 2020 at 5:38 PM, finished with 405 posts and 63 votes.
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BrainInAJar said:
Goddamn, if even the options lie to us now, I'm not sure I'd be able to take it.
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I mean, i'm mostly based what i said based on this:

Rihaku said:
Sometimes you don't have any control over whether or not you're attacked! The Apocryphal Curse is an added complication, but not the only purveyor of unfortunate circumstance! Remember, you have to get through the entire Inner Temple with whatever condition this is. With some powers that's fairly trivial. With Exhaustion + minimal gains from this fight (due to being unable to use that +Rank) you might have trouble running away from something like the Dreadbeast! And of course there's always the risk of a non-trivial Astral Denizen fight or wandering adventurers fight!
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Maybe i'm just flat-out wrong and exhaustion is not that bad at this point, mostly because i don't think Rihaku would just flat-out lie about an option. Or maybe the agi bonus from Saint means that Hunger would just flat-out be able to outrun most enemies, which is possible.
 
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BrainInAJar said:
Saint gets to use Cuts immediately too; Exhausted only prevents Rank exertions. We are stronger either way.
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ATC's got a couple aspects to it: it septuples strength and speed of Fell-Handed Strokes and makes all melee attacks apply the same cursed wounds that baseline FHS does. The second part should work fine while Exhausted, but the first? Blade-winds and special attacks all draw from the same pool of supernal stamina that telling the world to cough up a beast with healing capabilities does, we'd be relying on the stats and Gisena to exfiltrate safely.

Not seeking out risky sources of enhancement makes SBS safer, but we kind of need to grind. Bloodslayer's got a window of vulnerability too, but it's smaller, since once Hunger heals back into human form we're good to go. In the unlikely event that we get ambushed, we still have Form of Rage on tap, which reduces Lingering Paralysis to five percent.
 
Thomasfoolery said:
The gatekeeper guarding the sanctum of the Moon ring gets wind another ring nearby through some esoteric means, ports over when we're just finishing the middle temple and immediately kills us. I don't find this farfetched at all and think it's easily within Apocryphal capabilities. That's just off the top of my head, then you have things like the very good chance of non eventful escape we have right now would be much worse, with decent chance of the Dreadbeast intercepting us.
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getting hit with overwhelming force and immediately killed is not "interesting times" it's too boring. There have been no posts saying the Apocryphal Curse will ever cause instant death without any hope for survival like that.
Also if it can do that our build literally doesn't matter and we can vote for whatever the fuck we want because the quest will end to rocks fall party dies anyway.
 
Rihaku already explained this, but the thing with Bloodslayer is that you get so much HP that you are twice as durable. Basically something that would cause Bloodslayer to proc Second Form would already do enough damage to kill both forms for any other build.

7 Con is not joke.

Of course, outside of balls to the wall amount of stats, what Bloodslayer really offers is that sweet, sweet Progression scaling. x3.33 increase in potency of our rewards, allowing for typical increase in power. No need to hope for specific enemies vulnerable to Nullity, just go full value town.

Ultimately, our goal is to beat Moon, and it's hard to argue against Progression+ when entire point of our current excursion is to Progress our way through the dungeon.
 
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