In that case I'm swapping out the Sidreal buddy and magic sword.
[X] Protector of the West
[X] The Conquering King
[X] The Rose Blossoms
[Exalted, ?] Most High
- Thread starter Rihaku
- Start date
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- Tags
- exalted (white wolf)
[X] Protector of the West
[X] The Conquering King
[X] The Rose Blossoms
You can't choose more than two options from the same epoch.
I still think that the Sword of Endings is better than the Rose Blossom, as not only is the sword good, but it also gets us a Sidereal ally that would help us, even in the Usurpation, which is good, since it is implied that if the choice isn't picked then their is a good chance that the sidereal will become resentful of Odyssial.
Rihaku
The Internet
Paying XP to reduced Heartlessness would use pre-multiplier XP as well. You do need a bit over a million, but yes, a million should get you to Greatness 10 unless no one contributes anything substantial. It is definitely not worth buying Conquering King for the XP if you are planning to pay down Heartlessness.
Usernames
Merc gonna merc ya
What happens if Odyssial gets Greatness ten with High Strategos?
Exactly how complementary are Conquering King and Protector of the West? I've made some suppositions in my reasoning, but it would be good to be sure.
Edit:
So we know that Heartlessness will cost at least 100k to buy down.
We become the most physically and politically powerful being ever, and go down in history as a unique existence surpassing M-R-L amongst Solars, the Unconquered Sun amongst gods and Theion amongst Kings.
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So we would need to crank out the fanworks then. At least the earlier build of conquering king + just two additional options would get that extra bit with 1.037 mill.
I wonder if the two social options plus the first two would be better for reducing heartlessness as we build up the social links.
Roses specifically only reduces Heartlessness with Lea, and the sword option doesn't reduce Heartlessness at all with the Sidereal.
If experience is your concern, the Lord Strategos more than has that covered, with only a single point of Heartless Might granting 130k experience. That number will only rise, as our base total climbs.
I did attempt to summon our resident clergyman when I put the call out for participants, but it looks like he's otherwise engaged.
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- Location
- The savanna.
[X] Lord Strategos
The Sword of Creation. We get access to the Sword of Creation. In addition to doubling down on our legend as an invincible general (not my first choice, but let's at least stick with our guns, yeah?) and get command authority over the entire Exalted host during exigent circumstances.
[X] Protector of the West
A really cool boat and a ton of benefits in the Age of Sorrows. What's not to like?
[X] The Sword of Endings
Sidereal ally, more dramatic tension during the Usurpation, and some bonuses with Ivory down the road if she remembers her past life. The idea that they contemplated creating a division just to handle Odyssial's endings kind of tickles my fancy, too.
...Oh, yeah, and we get the potential for an Artifact N/A. Which is unbelievable, frankly. For those who don't know what that means, it's a plot-device level item that has enormous potential, to the point where it breaks the ordinary artifact scale. Apparently Odyssial killed enough people to make one out of their fates.
The Sword of Creation. We get access to the Sword of Creation. In addition to doubling down on our legend as an invincible general (not my first choice, but let's at least stick with our guns, yeah?) and get command authority over the entire Exalted host during exigent circumstances.
[X] Protector of the West
A really cool boat and a ton of benefits in the Age of Sorrows. What's not to like?
[X] The Sword of Endings
Sidereal ally, more dramatic tension during the Usurpation, and some bonuses with Ivory down the road if she remembers her past life. The idea that they contemplated creating a division just to handle Odyssial's endings kind of tickles my fancy, too.
...Oh, yeah, and we get the potential for an Artifact N/A. Which is unbelievable, frankly. For those who don't know what that means, it's a plot-device level item that has enormous potential, to the point where it breaks the ordinary artifact scale. Apparently Odyssial killed enough people to make one out of their fates.
I was going for the minimum heartlessness needed to ensure greatness 10 which was 9 with the xp bonus and the extra 100k xp from conquering king since no point in going higher when I wanted to reduce heartlessness later. But as Rihaku pointed this was nowhere near efficient to do if we wanted to reduce heartlessness with xp later. Still useful if want to limit ourselves to heartlessness 9.
[X] Protector of the West
[X] The Conquering King
[X] The Rose Blossoms
I'm hoping for a little softening of the edges from Conquering King and Rose Blossoms, and I like the relative divorce from the centre of power that Protector might imply. Any of the leading options look cool though.
[X] The Conquering King
[X] The Rose Blossoms
I'm hoping for a little softening of the edges from Conquering King and Rose Blossoms, and I like the relative divorce from the centre of power that Protector might imply. Any of the leading options look cool though.
[X] The Conquering King
Considering the number of people concerned with having a high heartlessness I'm surprised that Conquering King isn't more popular, it does after all reduce effective Heartlessness for his kingdom and that's perhaps the most important area to reduce it in, this will mean the only people to suffer high from his ruthless optimization will be his enemies (who deserve it), his colleagues (who also deserve it), himself which giving that he's Odyssial he will effectively be at 20 heartlessness for that anyway because he's Odyssial and of course there's the gods of creation. For those who have read the previous quest and remember how Odyssial's mere name could reduce powerful gods to tears this suddenly makes sense, after all dealing with ultra optimizing Odyssial when you're a lazy god would no doubt put the fear of Solar justice into you.
[X] Lord Strategos
The greatest benefit of picking Commander is the ability to order the Solar host around and get their respect, as always I'm working from the assumption that no the Usurpation is not inevitable it does not have to happen and even if it does that Odyssial can mitigate the damage that it causes. As Lord Strategos he'll be in the position to do that, also it's the option most likely to really stick it to the Primordials and that's never a bad thing.
It also has the benefit of increasing the bonuses whenever we boost heartlessness, this means we'll be able to gain more benefits from picking options that boost our heartlnessness and we're quite likely to at the very least boost it by one, it also unlocks further options that might be beneficial.
Edit: Also combines well with potentially buying off heartlessness and the conquering king option (due to reducing heartlessness to those Odyssial rules combined with commanding the exalted).
[X] The Sword of Endings
Allied Sidereal, for all your manipulation needs.
Considering the number of people concerned with having a high heartlessness I'm surprised that Conquering King isn't more popular, it does after all reduce effective Heartlessness for his kingdom and that's perhaps the most important area to reduce it in, this will mean the only people to suffer high from his ruthless optimization will be his enemies (who deserve it), his colleagues (who also deserve it), himself which giving that he's Odyssial he will effectively be at 20 heartlessness for that anyway because he's Odyssial and of course there's the gods of creation. For those who have read the previous quest and remember how Odyssial's mere name could reduce powerful gods to tears this suddenly makes sense, after all dealing with ultra optimizing Odyssial when you're a lazy god would no doubt put the fear of Solar justice into you.
[X] Lord Strategos
The greatest benefit of picking Commander is the ability to order the Solar host around and get their respect, as always I'm working from the assumption that no the Usurpation is not inevitable it does not have to happen and even if it does that Odyssial can mitigate the damage that it causes. As Lord Strategos he'll be in the position to do that, also it's the option most likely to really stick it to the Primordials and that's never a bad thing.
It also has the benefit of increasing the bonuses whenever we boost heartlessness, this means we'll be able to gain more benefits from picking options that boost our heartlnessness and we're quite likely to at the very least boost it by one, it also unlocks further options that might be beneficial.
Edit: Also combines well with potentially buying off heartlessness and the conquering king option (due to reducing heartlessness to those Odyssial rules combined with commanding the exalted).
[X] The Sword of Endings
Allied Sidereal, for all your manipulation needs.
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Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
More likely, that turns out to be more ammunition for why it was needed.
Because the depression that resulted from the fact that they could never be as awesome as Odyssial caused them to go mad and destroy the first age?
Well it is an AU so it's certainly possible.
More seriously though how would high greatness be ammunition for the Usurpation, high heartlessness I could see being a possible catalyst but I don't see how simply being great would cause it.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Because Greatness tends to be tied with Heartlessness.
We know "Original" Odyssial was "Heartlessness 8", and Lytek Nearly had a heart attack when Ulyssian showedup. As in "He was so fucking horrifying that even someone who would barely interact with him normally was scared shitless of him".
Rihaku has also implied that Heartlessness 11 would be so ridiculous that it would Actually bleed over to Ulyssian. Possibly because that's the threshold where he would decide the net utility of continuing his work was worth indulging in forbidden science to jigger with his Exaltation to effectively hijack the consciousness of his successor to fulfilling his own goals. We also know that the scale does not increase fromthere.
So yeah, Greatness + Heartlessness 10 is probably going to create an unholy monster that everyone bands together to pull down before it's Too Late.
Oh so it is the heartlessness you're worried about, yeah I agree with that. I don't want to go over heartlessness nine myself due to basically just those reasons. That being said there's a number of ways to have high greatness without the dangers of high heartlessness so we shouldn't assume that just because one of those stats is high the other will also be high.
For example picking The Conquering King option will reduce effective heartlessness for the people we rule, considering that solars being heartless and taking their rulership for granted is the primary cause of the Usurpation picking this option, even as a bonus heartless option will actually reduce the reasons for the Usurpation. In addition it also grants bonus Greatness XP so it's definitely an option to pick if you're worried about being a potential catalyst for the Usurpation.
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