Even Further Beyond [Complete]

No, he's right. Unfortunately, once we hit current peak of a Stage, we have no choice but to sit there, waiting for Beyond to be unlocked and wasting all potential Cultivation in meantime.

If only we had a way to drop down a stage in order to create something that would permanently increase our power, up to and including giving us combat stages ... alas, something like that would clearly be overpowered to the point where we'd specifically boost Suizhen to farm the Vault for us.
Heh. I'd still like to look into using the Energy of All and Nothing to directly boost the effects of diagram spells, the way we've been using cultivation stages to fuel Artefacts. Apparently we recently tripled/quadrupled our Diagram spellcasting ability in terms of spells cast a day (I'm not sure where from?) but actually making each spell stronger would be neat. We have a virtuous cycle of using Cultivation to create Artefacts to improve our Cultivation - maybe we can find a similar virtuous cycle with the Diagram and Cultivation?
 
Maybe? I want to see what Truth and Eyes are about before trying to be cute with stuff.

It's very hard to plan when we are missing massive chunks of info about how shit works.
 
I doubt we can use the cultivation energy for diagram spell, Diagram energy is supposed to be several abstract level above Energy of all and nothing or something.
 
The Tomb is a bit of a black box. It's swallowed multiple Reality Formers and a Solipsist, so some method of nullifying Cultivation is a safe assumption. Survival doesn't look like it's directly correlated with strength as a Cultivator, from what little data we have. Banguo's in Reality Forming now, but hadn't settled on his Dao when he entered; the Bleak Procession seems tied to the cycle of Ages. One world gives way to the next, only for it too to be scoured away by casual, civilization-erasing cruelty. Practitioners can perform auguries, see the outline of Fate's design, but the path they walk is ultimately futile. Time permitting, we could interrogate him about his experiences (is he still stuck in Tyranshal's array?) and then use Cerebration after that, possibly after securing other testimonials? More data means better results. Care should be taken not to fall into the Deplian trap of excessive preparations. Time burns, always.

Assume our Cultivation isn't going to help in the Tomb. We have Llewyn's Prodigious Might, though, and no power in Heaven or Earth can keep us from utilizing the Diagram. The Bracer would be convenient here; we should be wary of attempts to dispel it, since that leaves us vulnerable. The Tomb 'resisted the greatest minds of the Age of Truth,' but perhaps the Eyes of Kong can uncover secrets that eluded the magi, since they're attuned to external energies? Suizhen ballparked the level of our Mordant Fire despite having no idea what it was. It's unclear if our Eyes can do the same, but if we have a high Security & Access Vault she could theoretically tag along safely and give us something to target with Unravel and Open the Way. If not, ask her for perceptual tips. It can't hurt anything but Xiaoling's ego. A pity we still don't have Truth access, I feel like this is a situation where it'd be helpful.

Also, and this is kind of superfluous, but we need to be prepared for weird shit. Banguo was unhinged by the standards of Tyranshal, the man who thought casting himself into the outer darkness was a great retirement plan. Confident, cocky, lazy, dead.
 
Even without FB, we could get Combat Vault that would be decent combat boost, and then revise point allocation once we get our Artifact.

Something like

Hab 1
Access 5
Sign 5
Size 4
Sec 5

We could raise Hab if we want to be capable of phasing inside our Vault to dodge attacks.
 
[x]Vault of the Ur-Pharoh
-[x]Don't go Further Beyond
[x]Journey to the West

You know if we don't have to actually know the Diagram to augment the Realm... something pretty fun to do might be casting Vigor Mortis onto the things Suizhen kills inside of us! There's a mass limit of 14,000 kg but that's still a pretty darn good beasty, especially if we have it forever savaging the other monsters that show up, so that even if it falls the spell would pick up whatever it killed.
Of course we wouldn't be able to make a true farm unless we went Beyond, but a flock of scout birds drawing Suizhen to good hunts or a pack of animals whose only purpose is harvesting what is left behind in her wake still seems good to me for what would be a free bonus.
 
You know, it's interesting that the Tomb hasn't given any rewards, but did give the Bleak Ravens dude inspiration. Whilst we should certainly be on the lookout for physical Priceless Treasures, we should also be on the lookout for gains more subtle and profound.
 
You know, it's interesting that the Tomb hasn't given any rewards, but did give the Bleak Ravens dude inspiration. Whilst we should certainly be on the lookout for physical Priceless Treasures, we should also be on the lookout for gains more subtle and profound.

It's possible that past survivors who got good rewards didn't talk about them. The thing moves around, so someone who leaves it has an opportunity to hide his gains before returning to people who know him.

On a different note: given artificing's versatility, I wonder if it's possible to make a self-updating treasure map that shows unowned objects in the area that the map's owner would consider valuable.
 
[x]Vault of the Ur-Pharoh
-[x]Don't go Further Beyond
[x]Journey to the West

You know if we don't have to actually know the Diagram to augment the Realm... something pretty fun to do might be casting Vigor Mortis onto the things Suizhen kills inside of us! There's a mass limit of 14,000 kg but that's still a pretty darn good beasty, especially if we have it forever savaging the other monsters that show up, so that even if it falls the spell would pick up whatever it killed.
Of course we wouldn't be able to make a true farm unless we went Beyond, but a flock of scout birds drawing Suizhen to good hunts or a pack of animals whose only purpose is harvesting what is left behind in her wake still seems good to me for what would be a free bonus.
That made me think - there's a ton of dead beings in the Tomb. If we FB'd Vault, maybe we could try to throw their bodies inside in order to use some sort of Knowledge/Death ability to speak with the dead? Or use some Knowledge ability to understand alien languages.
 
You know if we don't have to actually know the Diagram to augment the Realm... something pretty fun to do might be casting Vigor Mortis onto the things Suizhen kills inside of us! There's a mass limit of 14,000 kg but that's still a pretty darn good beasty, especially if we have it forever savaging the other monsters that show up, so that even if it falls the spell would pick up whatever it killed.
Of course we wouldn't be able to make a true farm unless we went Beyond, but a flock of scout birds drawing Suizhen to good hunts or a pack of animals whose only purpose is harvesting what is left behind in her wake still seems good to me for what would be a free bonus.
Non-Beyond Vigor Mortis zombies have at most Organ Refining level power, so they would be completely irrelevant.

Way too slow and weak to usefully help Suizhen, especially once she reaches Grand Solipsism level power, just like how the assistance of snails wouldn't help normal hunters.
 
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Tentative ideas for Journey to the West:
We could potentially get the entire Elven Empire on our side if we fess up about Zang Kong, and let them know that an entirely self-interested monster is about to gain power enough to overthrow the fates (and we're one of the two people that have a snowball's chance in hell of stopping him). I would imagine, though, that the elves will then (due to fate) request we smith an artifact to prove that we're being honest/will oppose him -- this request will be, naturally, for a binding oath against Kong Zang.
Pro: The greatest elven smiths have had essence on the level an ascendant titan -- if they still have any of those artifacts, they could prove useful even at our power level.
Con: Give up on the possibility of joining King Kong.

Other approaches, of course, include leveraging our power, Ming's rapid advancement (by the standards of normal cultivators), and our social skills in order to pressure the Ming clan. We could shoot low, and merely stop them from pressuring the elves into extinction, or we can aim to essentially take over the clan.
(I would imagine, though, that they're led by a coterie of Grand Solipsists -- do we have the ability to take them down? This latter approach is somewhat limited to builds that take the Palimpsest).
 
Oh, and
[X] Tomb of the Netherine
[X] Palimpsest of the Nameless One

The Tomb sounds ready-made to give us MM points -- something I very much want for Truth, and 3 combat stages is an almost ludicrously huge buff.
 
I'm really torn on the choice of spell now. Does anyone have any suggestions on how else we could feasibly deal with the Eyes of Kong?
 
Non-Beyond Vigor Mortis zombies have at most Organ Refining level power, so they would be completely irrelevant.

Way too slow and weak to usefully help Suizhen, especially once she reaches Grand Solipsism level power, just like how the assistance of snails wouldn't help normal hunters.
I'd argue that even a Titan could benefit from being told where in the empire something is by an otherwise powerless messenger, but yeah I agree with your point in general. More getting at how its basically a free bonus in addition to everything else.

...wait could we cast our tracking Sigil throughout the entire Vault as a realty effect?
 
@Rihaku did the minus loyalty from taking the eyes mean that we didn't get the loyalty milestone from Ming/would we get it back again from picking the elves?
 
No, he's right. Unfortunately, once we hit current peak of a Stage, we have no choice but to sit there, waiting for Beyond to be unlocked and wasting all potential Cultivation in meantime.

If only we had a way to drop down a stage in order to create something that would permanently increase our power, up to and including giving us combat stages ... alas, something like that would clearly be overpowered to the point where we'd specifically boost Suizhen to farm the Vault for us.
I thought my argument was clear, but we're not actually progressing to Reality Forming to create better artifacts and have higher combat power due to us waiting for Truth to improve Dao Cleaving.

Our bottleneck to power improvements is BP.

Also, on a practical matter, multiplying cultivation speed by 2.2 means we churn our 2.2 times as many artifacts with Palimpost - And those Artifacts are Titanic Grade, are guaranteed to be relevent, and are generally really good. Cultivation speed multipliers have a multiplicative effect - Each multiplier is worth more than the previous. This even works while Nameless is resting or adventuring!
 
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@Rihaku did the minus loyalty from taking the eyes mean that we didn't get the loyalty milestone from Ming/would we get it back again from picking the elves?
Raising Suizhen's Loyalty to four (combined with Nameless' frustration) triggered the event where she offered us the Eyes; if Xiaoling follows the same pattern, we should already have hit it. Two steps for the first half-elven Beyond Stage, one lost when we accepted the Eyes. Then we have the Spoiled proc, Party with Xiaoling, and Beyond Soul Chrysalis, each giving one stage. We're sitting pretty at four, making her a [True Believer].

Frankly, we need to dial back the rate at which we're investing in our allies and stop passing up Mastermind Points when they're offered. The primary benefit of [Truth Seeking Eyes] is the ability to spend them on the Truth. Taking the Eyes turned out to be far from a free lunch, but we could at least eat the meal now that we've paid dearly for it.
 
Also, I just don't like the idea of making Vault part of our Cultivation. It just doesn't sit well with me, the idea that we'd have people entering our realm through our body, and potentially an entire empire... eck.
 
Also, I just don't like the idea of making Vault part of our Cultivation. It just doesn't sit well with me, the idea that we'd have people entering our realm through our body, and potentially an entire empire... eck.
Remember the description of the high access vault? We can give access codes to subordinates who don't need to be physically near us if we get high access. I mean, it's not like we're turning our body into some horrific flesh portal here, Vault has always been a teleport straight in (if allowed) system, with accessibility just being how much faffing around we have to do to allow said teleporting.
 
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Raising Suizhen's Loyalty to four (combined with Nameless' frustration) triggered the event where she offered us the Eyes; if Xiaoling follows the same pattern, we should already have hit it. Two steps for the first half-elven Beyond Stage, one lost when we accepted the Eyes. Then we have the Spoiled proc, Party with Xiaoling, and Beyond Soul Chrysalis, each giving one stage. We're sitting pretty at four, making her a [True Believer].

Frankly, we need to dial back the rate at which we're investing in our allies and stop passing up Mastermind Points when they're offered. The primary benefit of [Truth Seeking Eyes] is the ability to spend them on the Truth. Taking the Eyes turned out to be far from a free lunch, but we could at least eat the meal now that we've paid dearly for it.
Unfortunately, Ming option was much better if we took Kong's offer, so that pushed overall vote heavily into her favor.
I thought my argument was clear, but we're not actually progressing to Reality Forming to create better artifacts and have higher combat power due to us waiting for Truth to improve Dao Cleaving.

Our bottleneck to power improvements is BP.

Also, on a practical matter, multiplying cultivation speed by 2.2 means we churn our 2.2 times as many artifacts with Palimpost - And those Artifacts are Titanic Grade, are guaranteed to be relevent, and are generally really good. Cultivation speed multipliers have a multiplicative effect - Each multiplier is worth more than the previous. This even works while Nameless is resting or adventuring!
Love how you managed to first shit on and then shill Cultivation multipliers in a single post. Like, i don't even have to address your argument, you already did so for me.

Regarding Artifacts, it seems that Titan Tiers are worth ~2BPs per pop, seeing how they kinda but not really add benefits equivalent to moving from GB to FB, or add two combat stages. Needless to say, they are super relevant.
 
To be precise we'd get 17.6 Artifacts per year, of a grade on par with Regalia of the Knight or Bracers of Might.

9.6 extra artifacts of Titanic Grade. 2.2x Cultivation speed. That brings us up to 6*3*2.5*2.2 = ~100x Cultivation speed at Dao Cleaving.

Evrry multiplier is worth more than the previous.
Remember the description of the high access vault? We can give access codes to subordinates who don't need to be physically near us if we get high access.
The Grand Diagram would be on our body. The Vault is anchored to our body. In a sense everything inside the vault is on.. Nameless' body.
 
At this rate, we may just lose because we are investing so fucking much in our minion. They are not going to be relevant against Zang Kong. We seriously need those mastermind point. I hope we can at least show some discipline untill we have the truth.

We can't be sure that we will choice a great Dao without the truth.
 
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