Does tutoring come with arts? It did with Elder Ying, but that was a special case
I also suspect the next level of FVM may give us some bonuses to using FVM.
Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
I also suspect the next level of FVM may give us some bonuses to using FVM.
Tutoring does not usually come with arts - but it can come with ADVICE about arts easily enough.
*Shrugs* This is obviously a major setback for Sun Liling. We'll have to see how much tomorrow. As people pointed out, Cai left her fortress intact for reasons, but we don't know what spin will be put on Ling Qi's escape.
As bad as all that is, though, I would expect Sun Liling's fraying temper with her own people will do as much damage as Cai's attack will. I don't see her anger as being completely under control, and if Ji Rong or Chu make a dumb comment at the wrong time I would expect an impromptu 'spar' that leaves them hospitalized. More importantly, Yan Renshu is going to be ultra-pissed at this failure just as much as Sun Liling and he's used to being the big man. A total falling-out is unlikely when he has nowhere to go, but if they have harsh words with each other his support for her might wither a bit. Sun Liling's also going to want a win REALLY bad now, and that's going to prompt her to sink even further to unfair tactics- which most of her guys won't mind, but Chu might.
I'd suggest some caution in our missions and buying up an escape talisman or similar precautions just in case- I don't expect another attack from Sun Liling so soon, but Yan Renshu is DEFINITELY going to try something else.
As bad as all that is, though, I would expect Sun Liling's fraying temper with her own people will do as much damage as Cai's attack will. I don't see her anger as being completely under control, and if Ji Rong or Chu make a dumb comment at the wrong time I would expect an impromptu 'spar' that leaves them hospitalized. More importantly, Yan Renshu is going to be ultra-pissed at this failure just as much as Sun Liling and he's used to being the big man. A total falling-out is unlikely when he has nowhere to go, but if they have harsh words with each other his support for her might wither a bit. Sun Liling's also going to want a win REALLY bad now, and that's going to prompt her to sink even further to unfair tactics- which most of her guys won't mind, but Chu might.
I'd suggest some caution in our missions and buying up an escape talisman or similar precautions just in case- I don't expect another attack from Sun Liling so soon, but Yan Renshu is DEFINITELY going to try something else.
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Ling Qi and Meizhen shopping
Black Noise
Curious
- Location
- About 1AU from Sol
Big as a victory it was for us and Cai's faction, Ling Qi just got her face shoved in by just how much she's outclassed by the Monsters. Which is funny considering she regularly trains with Meizhen. Like, what did she think would happen if they were to have a serious fight?
In other topics, I drew a thing while waiting for this update:
I apologize in advance for the low effort and faces, but in my defense polish takes way too much time and faces are hard.
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Dammit I forgot the Cai arm-band, even had it in my pencil sketch too...
In other topics, I drew a thing while waiting for this update:
...
Dammit I forgot the Cai arm-band, even had it in my pencil sketch too...
The way I would describe it is that she takes well calculated and aggressive but also mostly unnecessary risks.
Thunderdome redux didn't need to go down the way it did. Sun Liling could easily have adopted something like Chu Song's position of "CRX isn't the empress of the mountain" instead of her chosen rallying cry of "fighting everywhere all the time, no safe zones, crush the weak!" -- it would have been easy to rally people who were pissed off at the prospect of being taxed by a fellow student (!) and she would have had a shot at convincing people like Han Jian that they should be CRX's peers rather than subordinates. OTOH she still had a decent shot at winning and a victory under the circumstances she created would have been epic.
Summoning the sunflowers was another example. She probably could have disengaged from the fight at that point and emerged with a "Sun Liling fought the entire council to a standstill" kind of reputation. Escalating with the sunflowers brought her within a hair of a crushing victory (even if she got slapped down by the elders, a reputation of "Sun Liling beat up the entire council thanks in part to the scary forbidden arts she knows" is exactly the kind of thing she wants), but when it fell short it left her in a much worse situation.
This week she went for the big score again. If she managed a quick takedown on Ling Qi there wouldn't have been an opening for CRX to take (or CRX wouldn't have known about it) and she would have had major reputation-reinforcing victory. Once it turned into a running battle she was locked into a strategic setback. Ling Qi actually escaping was just the cherry on top of the shit sundae. As with the other two, it was an unnecessary risk. She could have just laughed off Ling Qi's infiltration ("we caught her sneakin' in and she was lucky to get away; she won't dare to try again") or delegated the capture to one of her stir-crazy underlings like Ji Rong.
Taken together it does make you wonder a bit what she's thinking. Each of the risks that she took probably had a positive expected value but given her initial position she didn't really need to take any risks at all.
Don't forget FSA or another attack art. By the time the tournament rolls around we're going to have to defeat people who are spec'd to survive against the level of DPS we just saw. Ji Rong, Kang, Chu, probably Lu Feng, maybe Han Jian. Not counting the monsters. All of them can be expected to be in Green, levels 1 or 2, by the tournament. Really, what we want is a wind or darkness-based knockoff of Radiant Lance. Even if we don't get perfect damage to counter everyone else's TRF equivalent we need a boost in base damage.
That depends on how we want to win.
If we want to win via Attrition, we don't need to worry about dealing damage; instead, we need to work on boosting FVM and increasing our defenses.
If we want to win via Damage, we should be boosting FSA, AC, or something like that.
There is no need to do both.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
Basically, it's the problem suffered by people who have nothing to lose but their own ego.
There's literally nothing anything anyone can do that would actually set Sun Liling back, because she doesn't need to be here. Everything she needs to Cultivate--Arts, medicines, talismans? She can get with a quick letter home. Her doing all this is just her feeding her Cultivation Art and being entertainment. So she can always risk the big plays because the worst that can happen is that she loses the game. Yet all she needs is for one of her big plays to actually succeed and she likely takes the gold medal, because pretty much everyone else she's competing against is vastly more brittle than she is.
She'd be winning if she could actually stomach being in a position of weakness. But she can't, she's incapable of appearing like a loser--even if she didn't actually outright lose, so she always has to escalate until she wins. She always has to up the ante, and that's going to keep happening. She's not ripshit mad because we're a valuable asset. She's furious because she declared beating us to be her objective, and she failed at doing this.
Sun Liling's fatal flaw is that she's a sore loser, and it drives her to do things that risk losing the long game, despite her endless pile of advantages. The problem is that the amount of damage she can do in the meantime is astronomical, to people who have much more to lose than she does (Who's future is assured, and probably has little--if anything--to gain from her presence here)
There's literally nothing anything anyone can do that would actually set Sun Liling back, because she doesn't need to be here. Everything she needs to Cultivate--Arts, medicines, talismans? She can get with a quick letter home. Her doing all this is just her feeding her Cultivation Art and being entertainment. So she can always risk the big plays because the worst that can happen is that she loses the game. Yet all she needs is for one of her big plays to actually succeed and she likely takes the gold medal, because pretty much everyone else she's competing against is vastly more brittle than she is.
She'd be winning if she could actually stomach being in a position of weakness. But she can't, she's incapable of appearing like a loser--even if she didn't actually outright lose, so she always has to escalate until she wins. She always has to up the ante, and that's going to keep happening. She's not ripshit mad because we're a valuable asset. She's furious because she declared beating us to be her objective, and she failed at doing this.
Sun Liling's fatal flaw is that she's a sore loser, and it drives her to do things that risk losing the long game, despite her endless pile of advantages. The problem is that the amount of damage she can do in the meantime is astronomical, to people who have much more to lose than she does (Who's future is assured, and probably has little--if anything--to gain from her presence here)
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...That kind of assumes that we'll always GET to win with attrition or direct damage. Relying on a single tactic to win, efficient as it can be, can also backfire massively.
No joke. Unfortunately, we've kind of won her personal grudge at this point. I'd expect her to go after someone we care about just to show she CAN hurt us next.
Like, I'm not too worried about Ling Qi next turn, it'd require personal attention that's been shown as just too risky a gamble, but I wouldn't be shocked if she sent someone after Gu Xiulan or the SuSus just to get some satisfaction.
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That's the thing though - FSA is no longer our best tool here. Flute/AC is. And you know what helps that? More music dice.
Alectai
Speaks Words of Wisdom... On occasion
FSA is also not even mastered to be fair, we know that it's evolution too is a Third Floor Art--and I doubt those are any weaker than AE on average, given the massive price hike from second floor to third.
We actually really are not overspecialized.
I don't think we're in much danger of that, frankly.
AC isn't a burst damage art. It's the art you use when you WANT to be throwing out large numbers of attacks on a regular basis. As opposed to spending most of your turns debuffing then unloading a few big attacks. It's highly valuable, and we need a good default attack, but it's a slightly different niche.
FVM deals 1 point of damage at best. Blockable by armor. Even Hong Lin was immune to that, back in the original Thunderdome. Some INSECTS were immune in our first trial.
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Not the point. The thing is that SS is a good 1 qi attack that we can use without interrupting FVM. It doesn't need as much dice if everything is working because of all the defense debuffs we can drop.
Basically, outside of sniping or the odd desperate burst scenario, flute is likely to be the better strategy.
FSA is now - thank god - a utility art.
tbf depending on how finding our "Way" works we might need to specialize if we want to go beyond the Cyan realm.
...Does anyone notice that when we're in a scary spot, omake production GOES THROUGH THE ROOF? Apparently the prospect of a hanging spurs creativity.
It did for me. I'll probably have one myself tomorrow or day after. Want to see turn end first.
It did for me. I'll probably have one myself tomorrow or day after. Want to see turn end first.
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Yeah, dissonance is armor damage. In fact, it's really good now becaus AC passive means it removes 2 durability each hit.
Elegy is the main damage source.
Yeah, my feeling is that people probably experiment a lot in green, and then take that foundation and knowledge to consolidate down into thei Way at cyan.
It doesn't matter. If we are fighting via attrition, then our goal is to stack enough debuffs on our enemy that they basically can't hit us without burning off ridiculous amounts of Qi. We don't need a source of damage at all until our enemies are well and thoroughly debuffed, and at that point a couple of levels in our combat art aren't going to make any difference one way or another.
Are we gonna pull a Sun Liling and start punching below us? Plus we need to punish Reshu even more, so it sounds like its a good time to go loot crazy on anyone that even thinks of supporting Sun. Anyone that comes out of her fortress should be fair game. Plus we should also try to stop them from being able to get sect points and the like.
Qi drain gets worse as a strategy every day because Qi increases faster than health boxes. Even being reduced to 0 Qi doesn't actually end a fight: as long as you have a weapon you can just keep attacking normally until you get lucky. Health boxes are what end fights, that's why we spend Qi to protect them.
More to the point, it doesn't gain us enough. We're past the point where the stones we'd get from them are really needed, and weakening the losers doesn't weaken our actual rivals.