Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

Regarding White Room use.

Yes, without the White Room opening meridians is going to be considerably more difficult. HOWEVER, it is something we can do at will without any rare resources, so people shouldn't be worried about us getting "locked out" of meridians later.

The main factor at play is that once we hit Appraisal Green, we will be able to use a second GSS. The first GSS only grants +10 over what we would get normally, but the second grants a +30, for a total bonus of +40 dice between the two. That matches and exceeds the 24 dice + 6 autos that we get from the white room now. In other words, as far as meridians are concerned, anything we can do now with just the White Room, we'll be able to do later with double-GSS weeks.

Now, admittedly, spending two GSS on the same week is quite expensive. However, it will get cheaper if we finally unlock a virtual GSS. Even without the virtual stone, if we do tutoring that week to push us up to 6 actions, we would be getting +40*6 = +240 dice across all of our actions - and 1000RSS is a reasonable price to pay for that (it comes to a little over 4RSS per die, which is on par with what we are generally willing to pay as it is when choosing medicines).



So in conclusion, please don't worry about not opening meridians with the White Room. We will be able to get those same meridians open without too much trouble once we've hit Appraisal.
 
Now, admittedly, spending two GSS on the same week is quite expensive. However, it will get cheaper if we finally unlock a virtual GSS. Even without the virtual stone, if we do tutoring that week to push us up to 6 actions, we would be getting +40*6 = +240 dice across all of our actions - and 1000RSS is a reasonable price to pay for that (it comes to a little over 4RSS per die, which is on par with what we are generally willing to pay as it is when choosing medicines).
I am unsure we'll have access to tutoring while in the inner sect. Or rather, easy access to it. I don't expect being tutored by inner sect people to give +1 action the same way things currently work, and it feels like Core Disciples probably have too much to do and are too highly placed to be forced to tutor inner sect students regularly.

Which leaves 'reward' Elder tutoring.
 
Honestly I'm not super enthused about leaving AM to languish when its capstone is clearly within reach. And AS has its own cumulative benefits if we push for its fifth level as well.

But a stealth or expression combat art to further round out our build to stack dice has a certain appeal since we need to have such a huge margin of error to cover the income gap with those noble scions who doubtless would put Ling Qi into their sights.

We've elected to punch up, and that means our best means to overcome High-Peak Yellow Noble Scions is to punch up so hard that their consumables are utterly irrelevant to combat against Ling Qi.

That means rendering them incapable of touching her, either through abusing uncapped Expression or rendering her untraceable through combat stealth.

Both have a strong appeal, quite frankly, and such arts would no doubt slot in well to our domain later on.

I still prefer capping an Argent Art in the short term (Mirror will likely grant us the ability to analyze Domains at its capstone which is invaluable)

But the ability to potentially drag a Monster into Debuff Hell through Expression dice stacking appeals as well.

As does the ability to trivialize encounters with lower realm cultivators through stealth...

But I'll likely go for Expression dice if the AM5 dropping lobby pulls through. Better to follow through.

Unto the very, bitter end.
 


Been learning Blender in my spare time over the last couple of months. Obviously very rough and untextured. Also vastly underestimated how long the snake part needs to be to be able to bend around and reach to the front.
 
The main factor at play is that once we hit Appraisal Green, we will be able to use a second GSS. The first GSS only grants +10 over what we would get normally, but the second grants a +30, for a total bonus of +40 dice between the two
We could also spend more than one action per week on the same meridian for the 50% dice increase. (Unless that doesn't work for meridians?)
A bit time inefficient, but it is an option.

And, ah, do we know for sure that the first GSs dice are reduced?
Since we're actually running off of yellow stones still, the GSS would just provide surplus power like our extra YSS?
 
I still prefer capping an Argent Art in the short term (Mirror will likely grant us the ability to analyze Domains at its capstone which is invaluable
The problem though is that due to silverblood we don't really want to just do one argent art - we want to do all of them together.

Also, while something analysing domains would be useful later on, it wouldn't really do much now. No-one has anything significant in their domain yet.
 
I prefer advancing argent arts to a new art. We simply don't have enough actions to level up the new art enough so that it can provide the same impact as the argent arts.
Please remember, archive arts are useful, but generally low in quality.

As for formations, I feel that thematically, they will only ever be a secondary skill for Ling Qi, and I consider them a nice thing to have, but not at the expense of arts.
 
[X] Sixiang will be casting off their physical form soon enough, and you have had some fun. See if there is something the spirit would like to do before they go?
[X] Be prepared to take Xiulan out for some fun, whether in commiseration or celebration
[X] Tag along to make sure Zhengui and Hanyi get along the next time they play
 
I prefer advancing argent arts to a new art. We simply don't have enough actions to level up the new art enough so that it can provide the same impact as the argent arts.
Please remember, archive arts are useful, but generally low in quality
Argent storm may be a useful high quality art for someone else, But I wouldn't consider it one for ling qi. Better to pick up an art that helps push our doom spiral with more expression passives.
 
I prefer advancing argent arts to a new art. We simply don't have enough actions to level up the new art enough so that it can provide the same impact as the argent arts.
Please remember, archive arts are useful, but generally low in quality.
Well, the big thing is that we'll know when we get FSS3 and FVM3 in the upcoming update how much of a jump we get from arts getting to early green compared to late yellow.

Argent arts.... we can expect, I guess, to get AM5/AC5/AS4 if we focus on them, however the argent arts mostly don't fit us, with the possible exception of AM. AC has nice passives but unless we go the summoner route doesn't have techs we are likely to use, and while AS techs are really powerful they are, likewise, not something that truly fit us.

So depending on the jump in power from late yellow to early green, it might be better to stay at AM4/AC4/AS4 (minimal action sink) and get a new art that fit us more where both techs and passives increase our abilities.
 
This is something that has been mentioned a lot of times but I need to challenge it.

How exactly AS does not fit Ling Qi?

Ling Qi is a tanky speedster that uses these advantages to initiate (and maintain) a death spiral.
AS helps the tankiness and speed.

As for AM, I would like to capstone it, and see its final technique; I find it narratively important, and it's the only art that we can put in our domain this early (other arts don't cap, other argent arts aren't suitable enough for our domain).
 
This is something that has been mentioned a lot of times but I need to challenge it.

How exactly AS does not fit Ling Qi?

Ling Qi is a tanky speedster that uses these advantages to initiate (and maintain) a death spiral.
AS helps the tankiness and speed.

As for AM, I would like to capstone it, and see its final technique; I find it narratively important, and it's the only art that we can put in our domain this early (other arts don't cap, other argent arts aren't suitable enough for our domain).
As tanky and speedy aspects are nice, but the issue is that's not just what AS is about. AS seems like a bruiser technique focused in rushing at the enemy and hitting them back in melee. Maybe AS3 will show something different, but from we can see so far it's not about evading attacks or some such, it's about rushing toward attacks and countering hits.

Think of it this way: SCS is like AS, except that instead of rushing toward enemies and hurting them in melee for daring to attack us (and armour) it instead give us offence and stealth and ability to disengage and not be tracked. Half of SCS and AS are about that tankiness and speed (more speed for SCS, more tankiness for AS), but the other half of the art is useful for SCS but not so for AS. Most other leg/spine or Leg/heart techs would probably work better for Ling Qi, considering a good half of the technique is focused in something she doesn't want to do.
 
The argent arts aren't really that useful for us. AM is fantastic, but I'm sceptical of how much we need more spiritual defense and perception for the tournament. AC's techs have limited use for us, and the most useful things levelling it has to offer is another die on the the attack aura, and a better pressure crack. AS is thematically awful for us since we aren't a brawler. We get away with being able to use it because the mechanics are really too loose, but Ling Qi doesn't really fight like it wants. Anyway, we already have amazing physical defense, and we've yet to level up SCS, TRF, and PLR, which will give us even more. We don't need more AS.

In contrast, our weaknesses are likely to be limited dps, potential failures to get our debuff spiral going, and dispels. Getting more music to boost that, or spiritual support could be really helpful. Dispel resistance to stop people being able to break our flow (and again I noted that PLR has no dispel resistance), more dice, and the possibility of genuine spiritual offensive buffs could be fantastic. FSS in particular would benefit hugely from any buffs that gave us more AP or bonus damage.

A stealth art is a bit more of a dice roll. It could potentially be amazing, but it depends on the tournament set up. Reliable stealth offers great advantages. Being able to determine when and how a fight starts, and, for instance, prebuff could win fights. More sneak attack can give us a stronger initiation. The downside is that we don't know how the single matches are going to be set up. If they're in an open arena with no opportunity to use stealth then it isn't a great investment. Otoh, if they're using those formations to set up awesome fight areas with lots of cover etc. then it could be great. Would be nice to poke Xiulan and see if she's gotten any details about that from her sister.
 
As tanky and speedy aspects are nice, but the issue is that's not just what AS is about. AS seems like a bruiser technique focused in rushing at the enemy and hitting them back in melee. Maybe AS3 will show something different, but from we can see so far it's not about evading attacks or some such, it's about rushing toward attacks and countering hits.

Think of it this way: SCS is like AS, except that instead of rushing toward enemies and hurting them in melee for daring to attack us (and armour) it instead give us offence and stealth and ability to disengage and not be tracked. Half of SCS and AS are about that tankiness and speed (more speed for SCS, more tankiness for AS), but the other half of the art is useful for SCS but not so for AS. Most other leg/spine or Leg/heart techs would probably work better for Ling Qi, considering a good half of the technique is focused in something she doesn't want to do.

Regarding your argument against AS.
I get the drawbacks.
However, we don't have another leg/spine art lying around, def. not of similar quality to AS, nor could we upgrade it quickly enough even if we had it.
We will in time phase out AS for another art better tailored to Ling Qi, there's no question about that.
Before the tournament, though?
Let's stick with what we actually have.
 
Ah, right. And formations is good to train right now because we finally got a decent minion out of it. Making sure that's good and usable for the tournament could be really valuable.

If we hadn't gotten that then, yeah, I'd be advocating for dropping it.
 
We should at the very least put in the necessary actions to learn horror.

Damn, money is such a limiting factor. A LQ with backing could easily get the best pills every week AND kit out herself and zhengui AND easily pay for the horror.

We need to pick and choose and hope to get at least some goodies along the way.
 
Oh, and another note: people are overestimating our stealth. We get saved a lot by our reroll. In something like the tournament though we might need to make a lot of stealth rolls, in which case we could easily use up the reroll and then be out of luck. Getting more stealth could save us a lot of grief.
 
Oh, and another note: people are overestimating our stealth. We get saved a lot by our reroll. In something like the tournament though we might need to make a lot of stealth rolls, in which case we could easily use up the reroll and then be out of luck. Getting more stealth could save us a lot of grief.
OTOH, we might not even want to use stealth in the tournament depending on how it's done.
 
Inserted tally
Adhoc vote count started by Black Noise on Apr 20, 2018 at 7:17 AM, finished with 295 posts and 101 votes.
 
Unless mechanics change between now and the tournament, spending one action establishing stealth is not worth it.
It's not about using stealth in the middle of a fight (though if we can use abuse stealth in mist then it's totally viable) - it's about using stealth to control how the fight starts to begin with. Being able to determine how the fight starts, and open with our buffs up and mad sneak attack initiation could seriously win us fights.

... if the tournament format supports that that is. Which is the big question mark here, and why I'd really like more intel on the singles matches.
 
Formations are one-shot. We'd be better investing the time and resources into Zhengui in training and talismans.

First of all no, the horror is not one shot. Second even if it were that would be okay as only the 16->8 fight truly matter, as it is the one that ensure getting into the inner sect. Lastly no matter what we spend ressource wise on zhengui, he will never be 1) green 2) an additionnal combattant.

A green horror and a yellow zhengui are better than a green level zhengui only.
 
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