Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

Nervaqus987 · Feb 24, 2018

Pest Elimination: Divinations have shown that Silver Mark Locusts will shortly begin their swarming season in the east. A disciple in required to cull their populations before this begins. 20 Sect Points

This seems like a good job for us. If we pump it, we can spread our mists over eighty meters and then hit everything inside it with Dissonance.

A round or two of that should clear these things nicely.

That would give us 68 points that we could splurge on a Third Floor Art. To be fair, not the greatest need. Of our Arts, our core stuff needs well over two hundred successes to level up. Aside from Mirror(which needs over two hundred on its own), our Argent Arts are going to need a couple hundred between them. Thousand Ring Fortress needs a solid three hundred, and Abyssal Exhalation and Frozen Soul Serenade are still on low masteries. Not to mention Phantasmagoria which we haven't even started.

Even if we don't use it to get an Art immediately, it'll be nice to have on hand in case something comes up like maybe getting an Art for Flying Swords. Alternately, we might check out a big old book of Formations to mess around with.

TheLastOne · Feb 24, 2018

Nervaqus987 said:
This seems like a good job for us. If we pump it, we can spread our mists over eighty meters and then hit everything inside it with Dissonance.

A round or two of that should clear these things nicely.

That would give us 68 points that we could splurge on a Third Floor Art. To be fair, not the greatest need. Of our Arts, our core stuff needs well over two hundred successes to level up. Aside from Mirror(which needs over two hundred on its own), our Argent Arts are going to need a couple hundred between them. Thousand Ring Fortress needs a solid three hundred, and Abyssal Exhalation and Frozen Soul Serenade are still on low masteries. Not to mention Phantasmagoria which we haven't even started.

Even if we don't use it to get an Art immediately, it'll be nice to have on hand in case something comes up like maybe getting an Art for Flying Swords. Alternately, we might check out a big old book of Formations to mess around with.

Honestly, we just periodically find new good arts. Unless we're shopping for something specific, I don't think we should bother.

PrimalShadow · Feb 24, 2018

Nervaqus987 said:
That would give us 68 points that we could splurge on a Third Floor Art.

I don't see where you are getting that number. The mission gives a flat 20 sect points.

Thor's Twin · Feb 24, 2018

PrimalShadow said:
I don't see where you are getting that number. The mission gives a flat 20 sect points.

We have 48 sect points saved up

PrimalShadow · Feb 24, 2018

Oh. Well, we could get 20 sect points from the mission, certainly. But we could equally get 20 sect points with another 10 on top of that by doing the tournament cleanup mission, and that gets us potential intel as well.

George · Feb 24, 2018

George said:
I'd be a bit surprised if there's actually an inner sect disciple who does EPC and is available to tutor us, personally. I do want to focus on EPC insofar as we are able, though. The enticements of laying a strong foundation, potentially getting a free green stone a week, potentially being able to bind a grade 3 spirit, and advancing in the cool moon route stuff are quite attractive to me.

Also, I think at this point it would be unwise to go for Appraisal - we have a lot of Arts to work on, plus our Domain.

So allegedly, going by his discord post, Black Noise discussed this a couple weeks ago with yrsillar in a PM and we indeed can get a tutor for EPC. Whether doing missions in order to get the tutoring bonus is worth the actions is quite another matter, though.

I really wish reading yrsillar's posts in the quest was enough to keep up to date on confirmed information :/

PrimalShadow · Feb 24, 2018

So. Lets talk turn 41+. Our breakthrough is finally over, thankfully - so we can actually start pushing our cultivation. I think that barring use of our rare medicine, we want turns that look roughly like this:
[] Train FVM/FSS with Zeqing
[] Open Meridian in White Room
[] Mission
[] ???
[] ???

Let me walk through those in order.

We obviously want to use Zeqing tutoring for something, given that there are a bunch of applicable arts that we want to train anyways and it gives us a social encounter on top of that. I don't know if I prefer pushing FVM of FSS here, though. On one hand, pushing FVM lets us potentially do FVM7 before the tournament - and plus, it trains our domain. On the other hand, FSS also needs a bunch of work to get to Green, and Zeqing explicitly expressed a desire to see us train that with Hanyi. Decisions, decisions.

Generally speaking, I think we want to be opening a meridian in the White Room each turn. We really need meridians right now, and it is tough/risky to open them any other way - and even if that isn't at issue, training Meridians in the Whire room gets us a good 20 points of extra overflow into Spiritual.

Finally, I think we should be trying for a mission each turn. We've got a nice list of missions to do, and most of them give sect points, potential stealth successes, AND possibly other bonuses like information. A mission almost pays for itself with the sect points by enabling a future tutoring action, so I think this is generally well worth doing.

~~~~~
On week 41, I intend to vote for something like this:
[] Train FSS with Zeqing
[] Open Meridian in White Room
[] Tournament Cleanup Mission
[] Bribe the Dragon
[] Finish up EPC

Arkeus · Feb 24, 2018

PrimalShadow said:
So. Lets talk turn 41+. Our breakthrough is finally over, thankfully - so we can actually start pushing our cultivation. I think that barring use of our rare medicine, we want turns that look roughly like this:
[] Train FVM/FSS with Zeqing
[] Open Meridian in White Room
[] Mission
[] ???
[] ???

Let me walk through those in order.

We obviously want to use Zeqing tutoring for something, given that there are a bunch of applicable arts that we want to train anyways and it gives us a social encounter on top of that. I don't know if I prefer pushing FVM of FSS here, though. On one hand, pushing FVM lets us potentially do FVM7 before the tournament - and plus, it trains our domain. On the other hand, FSS also needs a bunch of work to get to Green, and Zeqing explicitly expressed a desire to see us train that with Hanyi. Decisions, decisions.

Generally speaking, I think we want to be opening a meridian in the White Room each turn. We really need meridians right now, and it is tough/risky to open them any other way - and even if that isn't at issue, training Meridians in the Whire room gets us a good 20 points of extra overflow into Spiritual.

Finally, I think we should be trying for a mission each turn. We've got a nice list of missions to do, and most of them give sect points, potential stealth successes, AND possibly other bonuses like information. A mission almost pays for itself with the sect points by enabling a future tutoring action, so I think this is generally well worth doing.

~~~~~
On week 41, I intend to vote for something like this:
[] Train FSS with Zeqing
[] Open Meridian in White Room
[] Tournament Cleanup Mission
[] Bribe the Dragon
[] Finish up EPC

A few things.

First, FVM doesn't need to be trained every weeks with Zeqing (we can train it without her) but it needs to begin and end with her, I think. Likewise, doing it likely will begin Domain instruction to higher extent (though Sixiang could help there at the end of this week). So, I'd say FVM with Zeqing, though we alternate FSS and FVM every other weeks.

Second, if we have to finish up EPC, we might want to do a EPC/PLR tutor. Finishing EPC with a tutor might make it slightly better, and tutor PLR should help us get it in one action.

Most importantly, however, is that we are close to being able to get 2 meridians in one action:
YSS35 + White room 30 + Lan Lan 5 + Pills 16 + Larceny 5 = 91 dice + 11 autos... giving us 56% chance to get 61. We need 30 for next meridian and 31 for the one after. So, even without GSS, we have not horrible odds of trying double meridian next week. This means not getting any overflow from meridian action, but I think 56% chance to gain a second meridian is worth the overflow.

Neshuakadal · Feb 24, 2018

One of the things I would like to push for is a formations major action. We know that a Elder Jiao is looking at as and showing interest in formations may be the way to accelerate his offer.

I don't expect it this week but I think we should star pushing that way.

PrimalShadow · Feb 24, 2018

Arkeus said:
Finishing EPC with a tutor might make it slightly better, and tutor PLR should help us get it in one action.

I don't see any credible reason why EPC would be better just for finishing it with a tutor. In point of fact, I think spending a tutor on it would be a waste, given that we would simply be pouring those extra successes into Spiritual (which is the easiest stat to work on and therefore not something that should be a high priority for extra successes).

Furthermore, by doing EPC + PLR this turn, we forgo the EPC bonus to PLR, which I expect to be non-trivial.

In light of these facts, I would argue against such a course of action next turn.

Arkeus said:
Most importantly, however, is that we are close to being able to get 2 meridians in one action:
YSS35 + White room 30 + Lan Lan 5 + Pills 16 + Larceny 5 = 91 dice + 11 autos... giving us 56% chance to get 61. We need 30 for next meridian and 31 for the one after. So, even without GSS, we have not horrible odds of trying double meridian next week.

I'm not sure what conclusion you want us drawing here. Is your point merely that we should grab maximum meridian pills next turn?

Arkeus · Feb 24, 2018

PrimalShadow said:
I don't see any credible reason why EPC would be better just for finishing it with a tutor. In point of fact, I think spending a tutor on it would be a waste, given that we would simply be pouring those extra successes into Spiritual (which is the easiest stat to work on and therefore not something that should be a high priority for extra successes).

Furthermore, by doing EPC + PLR this turn, we forgo the EPC bonus to PLR, which I expect to be non-trivial.

In light of these facts, I would argue against such a course of action next turn.

There has been narrative hints that finishing arts with tutors make them better, and there has been thread talk about it too from Yrsillar, though non-conclusive (saying that FVM strengthened by Zeqing is a 'tutor bonus').

I'm not sure what conclusion you want us drawing here. Is your point merely that we should grab maximum meridian pills next turn?

No, my point is we should do this:
[] White Room
-[] With Lan Lan
-[] Meridian: Head, Leg

Yeangst · Feb 24, 2018

PrimalShadow said:
So. Lets talk turn 41+. Our breakthrough is finally over, thankfully - so we can actually start pushing our cultivation. I think that barring use of our rare medicine, we want turns that look roughly like this:
[] Train FVM/FSS with Zeqing
[] Open Meridian in White Room
[] Mission
[] ???
[] ???

Let me walk through those in order.

We obviously want to use Zeqing tutoring for something, given that there are a bunch of applicable arts that we want to train anyways and it gives us a social encounter on top of that. I don't know if I prefer pushing FVM of FSS here, though. On one hand, pushing FVM lets us potentially do FVM7 before the tournament - and plus, it trains our domain. On the other hand, FSS also needs a bunch of work to get to Green, and Zeqing explicitly expressed a desire to see us train that with Hanyi. Decisions, decisions.

Generally speaking, I think we want to be opening a meridian in the White Room each turn. We really need meridians right now, and it is tough/risky to open them any other way - and even if that isn't at issue, training Meridians in the Whire room gets us a good 20 points of extra overflow into Spiritual.

Finally, I think we should be trying for a mission each turn. We've got a nice list of missions to do, and most of them give sect points, potential stealth successes, AND possibly other bonuses like information. A mission almost pays for itself with the sect points by enabling a future tutoring action, so I think this is generally well worth doing.

~~~~~
On week 41, I intend to vote for something like this:
[] Train FSS with Zeqing
[] Open Meridian in White Room
[] Tournament Cleanup Mission
[] Bribe the Dragon
[] Finish up EPC

Is double meridian opening feasible?

Thor's Twin · Feb 24, 2018

A couple of other options for planning purposes.

Forego using the White room for a week and do a double mission week, something like:
[] FSS with Zeqing
[] EPC
[] Dragon Appeasement
[] Tournament Clean up
[] Lost and Found

The purpose of this would be to allow EPC to finish up which may potentially allow us to have an easier time getting 2 meridians opened up (we'll see) but also getting over 90 sect points stocked up. A total of 103 sect points if I am not mistaken.

This would allow us to do a tutor three times in quick succession without having to spend actions in between refreshing our sect points. Also, narratively Ling Qi has been stuck in her house meditating for a long time without going out all that much, it's time to explore the world as a Green!.

Another option is to forego Dragon Appeasement and do a tutor for AM + AC while foregoing White Room meridians to do AS for a total of 3 Argent art actions. So, something like this
[] FSS with Zeqing
[] EPC
[] Tutor: AM + AC
[] AS
[] Tournament Clean up

This would get a good start on the argent arts and getting them all to green. Taking the requisite pills would also allow us to make decent progress on Spiritual/physical.

Another option is to forego doing a mission in the previous case and doing a White Room meridian opening. Or... a more drastic approach would be to do a huge meridian push such as:
[] FSS with Zeqing
[] EPC
[] Tutor: Lung + Lung
[] Leg
[] White room: Leg

This gets us 4/5 of the way to having enough meridians to equip all of our recent acquisitions. All we would need would be another lung for PLR.

And you know what's great? All of these options are possible because we are done with breakthrough!

TehChron · Feb 24, 2018

Arkeus said:
No, my point is we should do this:
[] White Room
-[] With Lan Lan
-[] Meridian: Head, Leg

Why Lan Lan in partivular?

Nervaqus987 · Feb 24, 2018

TheLastOne said:
Honestly, we just periodically find new good arts. Unless we're shopping for something specific, I don't think we should bother.

See, that would be my point.

Yes, we do periodically just luck into good Arts because Spirits and dice gods really love us. But it's not exactly to count on and even less so for something specific.

It's nothing super major at the moment, we're gonna have enough trouble finding time to level our Arts as is, but it's something nice to have if we suddenly find ourselves in dire need of patching a hole or gaining a new ability.

Plus, this job could be a decent way of slapping a training action onto FVM. So you know, multitasking.

Arkeus · Feb 24, 2018

Thor's Twin said:
A couple of other options for planning purposes.

Forego using the White room for a week and do a double mission week, something like:
[] FSS with Zeqing
[] EPC
[] Dragon Appeasement
[] Tournament Clean up
[] Lost and Found

The purpose of this would be to allow EPC to finish up which may potentially allow us to have an easier time getting 2 meridians opened up (we'll see) but also getting over 90 sect points stocked up. A total of 103 sect points if I am not mistaken.

This would allow us to do a tutor three times in quick succession without having to spend actions in between refreshing our sect points. Also, narratively Ling Qi has been stuck in her house meditating for a long time without going out all that much, it's time to explore the world as a Green!.

Another option is to forego Dragon Appeasement and do a tutor for AM + AC while foregoing White Room meridians to do AS for a total of 3 Argent art actions. So, something like this
[] FSS with Zeqing
[] EPC
[] Tutor: AM + AC
[] AS
[] Tournament Clean up

This would get a good start on the argent arts and getting them all to green. Taking the requisite pills would also allow us to make decent progress on Spiritual/physical.

Another option is to forego doing a mission in the previous case and doing a White Room meridian opening. Or... a more drastic approach would be to do a huge meridian push such as:
[] FSS with Zeqing
[] EPC
[] Tutor: Lung + Lung
[] Leg
[] White room: Leg

This gets us 4/5 of the way to having enough meridians to equip all of our recent acquisitions. All we would need would be another lung for PLR.

And you know what's great? All of these options are possible because we are done with breakthrough!

Tutor gives less meridian dice than white room, so it can't do lung/lung.

Also, doing 2 missions doesn't give anymore successes than 1, so I have no idea why you are saying "doing so will help for EPC". One mission is enough if you want it.

Thor's Twin · Feb 24, 2018

Arkeus said:
Tutor gives less meridian dice than white room, so it can't do lung/lung.

Also, doing 2 missions doesn't give anymore successes than 1, so I have no idea why you are saying "doing so will help for EPC". One mission is enough if you want it.

A tutor gives two actions though, so in those two actions, we do two lungs.

I also... don't know where you get where I'm saying that doing two missions will help EPC? I never said that. That isn't even a part of the consideration. EPC will be fine without mission successes going towards it. What getting EPC first before doing meridians may help with is the possibility of getting additional dice to Meridian cultivation.

There is nothing about getting the missions to help with EPC.

Arkeus · Feb 24, 2018

Thor's Twin said:
A tutor gives two actions though, so in those two actions, we do two lungs.

I also... don't know where you get where I'm saying that doing two missions will help EPC? I never said that. That isn't even a part of the consideration. EPC will be fine without mission successes going towards it. What getting EPC first before doing meridians may help is the possibility of getting additional dice to Meridian cultivation.

There is nothing about getting the missions to help with EPC.

Thor's Twin said:
A couple of other options for planning purposes.

Forego using the White room for a week and do a double mission week, something like:
[] FSS with Zeqing
[] EPC
[] Dragon Appeasement
[] Tournament Clean up
[] Lost and Found

The purpose of this would be to allow EPC to finish up which may potentially allow us to have an easier time getting 2 meridians opened up (we'll see) but also getting over 90 sect points stocked up. A total of 103 sect points if I am not mistaken.

This would allow us to do a tutor three times in quick succession without having to spend actions in between refreshing our sect points. Also, narratively Ling Qi has been stuck in her house meditating for a long time without going out all that much, it's time to explore the world as a Green!.

This implies that doing the two missions help with EPC, when they do not.

Basically, doing 2 missions in one week is losing successes because of the cap, and I don't see how you could be planning to use more than 80 sect points in one week anyway, so it's utterly useless.

I'd also say that using tutor for meridian is the worst use of tutor that's possible (especially both actions) unless it's in SLP week.... and doing so means not being able to do double meridian with white room, to boot.

tenchifew · Feb 24, 2018

We now know that maxing out Argent Arts we have give us the fourth bonus one - I really think we should try to achieve that.

PrimalShadow · Feb 24, 2018

Yeangst said:
Is double meridian opening feasible?

Arkeus suggests that it is worth trying, and I don't see any reason to object. I would just open a Leg meridian, and have it overflow into another Leg if it works out. We are going to need those soon enough anyways.

Thor's Twin said:
Forego using the White room for a week and do a double mission week, something like:
[] FSS with Zeqing
[] EPC
[] Dragon Appeasement
[] Tournament Clean up
[] Lost and Found

The purpose of this would be to allow EPC to finish up which may potentially allow us to have an easier time getting 2 meridians opened up (we'll see) but also getting over 90 sect points stocked up. A total of 103 sect points if I am not mistaken.

This would allow us to do a tutor three times in quick succession without having to spend actions in between refreshing our sect points. Also, narratively Ling Qi has been stuck in her house meditating for a long time without going out all that much, it's time to explore the world as a Green!.

This fails to open a Meridian this turn, which means that Grinning Moon successes go somewhere other than SCS, which is our hardest-to-train Yin art by a nontrivial margin.

It also doubles up on Missions, which means that if they both would have given stealth successes those are likely lost.

It does give us extra sect points as a result, but I question the value of hording a pile of sect points that way. Certainly, it doesn't seem worth it considering the above concerns.

Thor's Twin said:
Another option is to forego Dragon Appeasement and do a tutor for AM + AC while foregoing White Room meridians to do AS for a total of 3 Argent art actions. So, something like this
[] FSS with Zeqing
[] EPC
[] Tutor: AM + AC
[] AS
[] Tournament Clean up

This would get a good start on the argent arts and getting them all to green. Taking the requisite pills would also allow us to make decent progress on Spiritual/physical.

We should not forgo the dragon action unless we plan to just not take it ever, period. It is also an illegal plan, because it doesn't open a Head Meridian for training AM.

Thor's Twin said:
Another option is to forego doing a mission in the previous case and doing a White Room meridian opening. Or... a more drastic approach would be to do a huge meridian push such as:
[] FSS with Zeqing
[] EPC
[] Tutor: Lung + Lung
[] Leg
[] White room: Leg

This gets us 4/5 of the way to having enough meridians to equip all of our recent acquisitions. All we would need would be another lung for PLR.

Opening too many meridians makes it hard for us to find enough to do during SLP weeks. If you think meridians are important, I urge you to propose this same plan plus closed door and SLP, but next week - when we should have EPC and hopefully the Dragon Site up for their bonuses.

Thor's Twin said:
And you know what's great? All of these options are possible because we are done with breakthrough!

I like your enthusiasm, but I think the space of plans we would actually want is smaller than you are making it out to be.

Chronic · Feb 24, 2018

tenchifew said:
We now know that maxing out Argent Arts we have give us the fourth bonus one - I really think we should try to achieve that.

Do we even have enough time left to develop yet another art? I was under the impression that trying to get PoLR and FSS up and running plus upgrading our existing arts and other commitments is gonna be tough enough until the tournament.

Thor's Twin · Feb 24, 2018

Arkeus said:
This implies that doing the two missions help with EPC, when they do not.

Basically, doing 2 missions in one week is losing successes because of the cap, and I don't see how you could be planning to use more than 80 sect points in one week anyway, so it's utterly useless.

I'd also say that using tutor for meridian is the worst use of tutor that's possible (especially both actions) unless it's in SLP week.

Alright, let us take it in parts here.

You are clearly misreading the post I made if you are claiming that it is implying the purpose of the two mission plan is to have the mission successes help speed up EPC. Either that or I improperly communicated it. Either way, the purpose of not doing meridians in that week is to give EPC a chance to give us dice to meridian cultivation. That would give a higher possibility of doing two meridians in a single action with the White Room.

Then, doing two missions in a week will allow us to get over 100 sect points. And the point of having that many sect points is so that over the course of the next three weeks we could get a tutor each of those weeks. There is no need to spend all the sect points at once, and to claim that we need to is utterly absurd given that we have already stocked piled 48 sect points for weeks now without using it. We don't need to use sect points as fast as we gather them.

Next, doing two missions in a single week is not losing successes if you assume that the missions selected won't give the full, or any, stealth successes. Which given the missions I listed is a good assumption. Should you judge a mission solely on the number of EPC successes that it will give you, then you are going to lose out on interesting, intriguing, and useful missions simply because of a refusal to do something that doesn't directly impact our cultivation.

Last, doing a tutor for meridians is not the worst use of a tutor, by far. A simple example is using a tutor to do a physical cultivation action when we aren't even going for Bronze 2. Next is doing a tutor for spiritual cultivation if we don't want to get to Green 2 (and even then it's probably a waste as the extra successes would be of much higher import). Next worst is arguably EPC, as we will be getting EPC anyway, it won't save an action at all and the rest will be going to Qi. In fact, Meridian training with tutors probably fall into this, as the additional successes will be going to something useful. So extra is not a waste, and getting the extra meridian a turn earlier will allow us to use the arts we have a turn earlier, which would allow us to do things that might get us resources earlier. Attaching a skill to train with meridians is a bit trickier, but not impossible.

Ayashi · Feb 24, 2018

Arkeus said:
Basically, doing 2 missions in one week is losing successes because of the cap, and I don't see how you could be planning to use more than 80 sect points in one week anyway, so it's utterly useless.

PrimalShadow said:
It also doubles up on Missions, which means that if they both would have given stealth successes those are likely lost.

You are assuming every mission has at least 2 stealth rolls to get us to hit the 30 autos cap.

PrimalShadow · Feb 24, 2018

tenchifew said:
We now know that maxing out Argent Arts we have give us the fourth bonus one - I really think we should try to achieve that.

It would require a considerable amount of work, and would require us to curb our ambitions with regards to leveling our other arts. It would also only end up getting us another art, which is of questionable value when we are already drowning in arts to cultivate.

As it is, we already have Green level arts that we are currently struggling to fill out; what do you plan on sacrificing to make room for training Argent Storm to 5 and Agent Questionmark to a competitive level?

Ayashi said:
You are assuming every mission has at least 2 stealth rolls to get us to hit the 30 autos cap.

I said "if they both would have given stealth successes". That is by no means guaranteed; I'd give it roughly 20% odds or thereabouts. Nevertheless, that is still a significant waste, and not something I'd want us doing without good reason.

Chronic · Feb 24, 2018

PrimalShadow said:
As it is, we already have Green level arts that we are currently struggling to fill out; what do you plan on sacrificing to make room for training Argent Storm to 5 and Agent Questionmark to a competitive level?

Shouldn't Argent Questionmark start at Green level? After all you need to master the three other arts to Green to get it, so it would make sense for it to start where the other arts end. So probably only one or two levels to cap without going Appraisal?

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