Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

[Seventeen]

It's the start one where people start taking numbers, those numbers get challenged, other numbers get brought in. Like, this is what I and @Arkeus are getting a little annoyed about. There isn't 'a post'. There's fifteen some odd pages of discussion that I just linked to, and people get tired of it after two. Which is why we keep having this. People tune it out or skip over it, and then we end up here again.

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Maybe you can summarise it, then, since you already know what happened. That or stop complaining. Expecting someone to dig through fifteen pages of probably mostly irrelevant discussion because you can't deal with them not being up to date on old discussion is just silly. Using that as an excuse to shut down your opposition is arguing in bad faith.

 

[tricholysis]

I understand that this conversation may be frustrating because it has already been beaten dead. However if a new action system is created then it has to be gone over again because all of the actions now have new values.

Edit
Minimum efficiency would be to take a pill that doesn't help our cultivation at all.

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It still can't be dismissed simply because of the hanging spectre of a possible new action system. You can't plan on indefinites, but a plan based on old information at least still shows, for example, an order of priorities.

 

[Thor's Twin]

But that we have seen that even with maximal possible resources, less than 4 cultivation/week only means treading water, not getting ahead .

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With 5 cultivation actions per week on average, we have sprinted from having nothing to being Yellow/Silver in 15 weeks. I don't know if 4 cultivation actions will be us only treading water, when really only Ji Rong has been able to match our growth.

Anyway, time for me to talk about my feelings on the possible changes and what that means for us!

First off, we currently have 6 actions in total, so Yrssilar is going to be adding another action to our action pool. Yes! However, with these changes comes added restrictions and what those actions can be used for. Hmmm... not as good but certainly workable.

Given these restrictions, we will have the option of trading between these different actions in order to create a mini-turn economy type thing. Alright, that sounds fine.

What I feel is that people are complaining that we would not be growing fast enough, or quickly enough, as they would like should this new system be implemented. Ok, but that was with the old action system, and now we will be using the new one. While these restrictions might be chaffing before we get used it them, in the end, we will get used to them and be able to maximize the new system.

With the ability to trade between the types of actions, I'm not seeing as much difference even if we had the older system. Now we have three slots dedicated to doing social and other things, and 4 slots for cultivation. When we want to get a quest thrown in there, we move one of the minor action, paying what the cost would be, and then do the quest. It's going to be tricky, but the new system will dramatically improve our ability to maintain friendships without feeling like we are missing out on cultivation.

All in all, I don't see much difference between this system and the old one. There will be more restrictions, but an extra action in compensation.

 

[mrttao]

so, lady cai wants to bring law and order and say she believes the elders are testing us with illusion of freedom
i wonder if she actually got this as a hint from her family or if she really concluded it herself.

 

[Grosstoad]

Eh...

Some people are including the semi-social training as cultivation, thus they conclude that 5/5.5 cultivation actions per week are the 'treading water'.

I'd say 'treading water', if we consider the top of the waves as 'water' as well.

There are chaff who are sinking down, there are lower peers that are diving, there average peers who are below the surface, and then there are those on the median average of the ocean level 'treading water', and then there are those riding the waves.

Ling Qi is included on those riding the waves. She is 'treading water', if we only consider the ones that were in the meeting as the 'ocean'.
Cai, Sun, and Bai are the tip of those waves on Ling Qi's year.
(EDIT)I probably should add that Ji Rong and Ling Qi are using dive scooters to rise up, but they are not yet at the tips. I am not yet sure if Kang, Zhuan, and Huang are at the tips as well, or just below that.(/EDIT)

Ling Qi is still clawing up from the depths of the Mariana Trench... If we consider the cultivating culture as a whole.

Which level of 'treading water' are we considering?

 

[Thor's Twin]

so, lady cai wants to bring law and order and say she believes the elders are testing us with illusion of freedom
i wonder if she actually got this as a hint from her family or if she really concluded it herself.

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I would think that the mindset came from her upbringing and heritage, but there is the definite possibility that her family told her the sect would always be watching. In my opinion, she was taught the more practical aspects of politics and how to quickly assume command in any given situation. Using this training, she saw a golden opportunity to make herself appear more valuable to the elders, appear more important to her peers, and network between incredibly important and talented people of this year's class. She then took that opportunity with both hands.

So, I would say that it is a mixture of her parents telling her to be on guard and her own insatiable ambition that caused her to see the opportunity in front of her.

 

[Neshuakadal]

Sure. The problem with what's been suggested is that it makes it so the best thing to do is go into closed door cultivation for three rounds or whatever the mechanism is for fudging minor actions into major, then come out on the forth and use all our actions on the job board, then doing it all again. It makes it super appealing to be a hermit in a cave, which is boring.

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I really disagree with this idea. What I am seeing from your posts is that you want to advance as fast as possible. This may not be true but it is the feeling that I get from your posts. I do not want to advance as fast as possible. I really don't. I want to advance at a self sustaining pace where we continue to build a framework of alliances that will support us when we fail. I feel that if we advance as fast as possible then what happened to Ji Rong will happen to us as well. Therefore it really does seem like we will never agree on what paths we should take at this juncture. It also seems unlikely that we will be able to convince each other of the other's viewpoint. I hope our discussion will not sour any discussions we might have in the future and has helped other people form options on the matter.

 

[TheLastOne]

Maybe you can summarise it, then, since you already know what happened. That or stop complaining. Expecting someone to dig through fifteen pages of probably mostly irrelevant discussion because you can't deal with them not being up to date on old discussion is just silly. Using that as an excuse to shut down your opposition is arguing in bad faith.

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A lower bound of the number of successes we need to get to hit targets for physical, spiritual, cultivation art, and qi is 2910 successes. That's discounting learning any arts, arts and Meridians could potentially inflate that by several thousand successes, @Arkeus suggested as high as 6000 more successes. That's made worse by the fact that Meridian rolls can fail making it even worse. We also need to buy at least a couple second and third floor passes.

The best arts are probably going to be ones we learn on the first floor, upgrade on the second, and then upgrade again on the third. Lets say we do that twice, and upgrade zephyr all the way to three. That mean we need to buy three second floor passes, and three third floor passes, which costs 210 sect point (which is a stupidly large amount, and means we're probably settling for less, but it's a goal).

We can't just keep gathering resources and then nova it. The post just made -

Hah. Statues Ji Rong is best Ji Rong though!

More seriously, this was a reference to the talent thing, though obviously Ji Rong is scary enough he'll soon catch up with us just after. The guy is almost certainly talent 7, and the only thing pushing him down is him wanting to be a Xanxia protagonist.

We have, actually. We have been using 5/5.5 a week on average. Moreover, we haven't been shooting ahead of our peers. We have managed not to be scrub-ified, which is good, but we aren't beyond our peers.

I think we are talking about different things though, because you are saying "it's better to constantly improve our multipliers for later", when I am saying "It is better to both max out the multipliers and actually use them". There is a limit to the possible multipliers we can have. We can have only one site at a time for each cultivation, for example. We can only take a certain limit of spirit stone a week. There are limited numbers of existing pills we can have access to. There is a limited amount of help our friends can give. And so on and so forth. We have been maxxing out, or close to maxxing out, our multipliers. Maybe instead of throwing 30+ dice we could have been throwing 40+... Except that at a certain point we need to actually use those dice to do something.

There is a second limiter, that is we can only do, if we want to be efficient, one of a type of cultivation per week. So a "optimal" week would be Si/Physical/Spiritual/Cultivation Art/Meridian/Combat Art with all the multipliers for our level maxxed out, assuming we only have the single combat art (so, not optimal). However, the price to pay for each non-cultivation action is "pushing back by a week" when we can get the nice threshold where we can actually improve our multipliers.

Let's give another example: The Argent Vent. We couldn't take the argent vent before week 9, when we did take it, because it needed Ling Qi, Su Ling and Li Suyin to have already improved their perceptions significantly as well as be combat capable. Going after it before that time wouldn't have helped.

What you seem to be saying is somehow "It's better to always stack the multipliers for the future actions that need them", but we are actually limited not only in the numbers of actions that can use those multipliers, but we are also limited in what multipliers we have access to by our existing abilities.

The problem is we already have those same resources currently, but we plan on not using them. The whole point is to try and arrange things so we always use close to the ceiling of possible resources while taking as many cultivation actions.... But that we have seen that even with maximal possible resources, less than 4 cultivation/week only means treading water, not getting ahead .

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covered that pretty well.

This is a nose to the grindstone thing. Actually, using more drugs and less cultivation actions is less efficient then using more cultivation actions and fewer drugs for everything but Meridians, because Meridian can fail.

 

[PrimalShadow]

We have, actually. We have been using 5/5.5 a week on average.

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Ah. You are probably counting the Class action as 2x. Makes sense, I suppose.

Moreover, we haven't been shooting ahead of our peers. We have managed not to be scrub-ified, which is good, but we aren't beyond our peers.

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I've been treating the Golden Fields Group as a rough measuring stick in terms of what our peers are. Pretty sure we've matched and/or surpassed everyone in that group at this point.

More broadly, judging by the peacekeeping meetup, there are only around two dozen Outer Disciplines who have even made it into Yellow or Silver at all. Going from being a mortal to being among the top 25 is more than a little respectable, I think.

I think we are talking about different things though, because you are saying "it's better to constantly improve our multipliers for later", when I am saying "It is better to both max out the multipliers and actually use them". There is a limit to the possible multipliers we can have. We can have only one site at a time for each cultivation, for example. We can only take a certain limit of spirit stone a week. There are limited numbers of existing pills we can have access to. There is a limited amount of help our friends can give. And so on and so forth. We have been maxxing out, or close to maxxing out, our multipliers. Maybe instead of throwing 30+ dice we could have been throwing 40+... Except that at a certain point we need to actually use those dice to do something.

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Certainly, there are limits - but I disagree that we've been maxing them out. Look at the Argent Vent; it gives us 5 autosuccesses and 8 dice, not to mention a free yellow stone each week. Obviously, that is a top-tier location and we shouldn't expect benefits like that often - but nevertheless I think that shows that there are SIGNIFICANT advantages to be had.

Yes, those kinds of benefits come at the cost of actions - but think about it this way. Right now, we are moderately secure in our position, and can expect to continue cultivating for tens of weeks yet. Even if it takes us e.g. 3 actions to find a location half as good as the Argent Vent, that means it costs something like 30*3=90 dice worth to find something that nets us about 10 dice worth per turn. That pays off in full in just two months, and plus we can do stuff like sharing it with our allies for additional bonuses, social or material.

There is a second limiter, that is we can only do, if we want to be efficient, one of a type of cultivation per week.

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We can do AT MOST one of a type of cultivation per week to be efficient. Doing more loses efficiency because doubling up only gives half-gains for actions past the first, but doing less doesn't actually cost us efficiency. Of course, if you skip a week only to double up next week that is inefficient, but I think we've established that we have enough fruitful actions to do each week that we'd never need to double up to get a good use out of our time.

So basically, skipping a type of cultivation on a give week just means we prioritize whatever we are doing instead higher then said cultivation; it is an opportunity cost, but not an efficiency cost. Unlike the skipping and then doubling-up example, there is no alternative sequence of actions that achieves the same results but strictly better.

However, the price to pay for each non-cultivation action is "pushing back by a week" when we can get the nice threshold where we can actually improve our multipliers.

Let's give another example: The Argent Vent. We couldn't take the argent vent before week 9, when we did take it, because it needed Ling Qi, Su Ling and Li Suyin to have already improved their perceptions significantly as well as be combat capable. Going after it before that time wouldn't have helped.

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That is a good point; certainly, frontloading has some value by virtue of enabling opportunities we might otherwise be unable to achieve. This benefit should be weighed when considering whether we should prioritize immediate power versus growth boosters.

What you seem to be saying is somehow "It's better to always stack the multipliers for the future actions that need them"

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Not so much? What I'm saying is that I don't think the 4-cultivation-actions-a-week is a good rule of thumb, and that we should be evaluating the merits of faster cultivation relative to the merits of additional growth boosters instead of saying that we somehow NEED to take some number of cultivation actions a week. I could be convinced that cultivation now is more valuable than looking for new multipliers; I am just of the opinion that that is a debate that needs to be made, rather than one that has already been decided in favor of the former option because doing otherwise would be "falling behind".

 

[Grosstoad]

I would note that I hate this kind of efficiency discussion again, when noses are put to the grindstone for one reason or another.

Why do you put your poor nose to that grindstone anyway? Just put it close enough that you can see the fine edge of the knife you are sharpening, no need to see the minute detail that you lose skin and flesh of your poor nose.

I know that people don't really mean to say full burn cultivation ala Ji Rong, and that they do acknowledge the benefits of Social Links and non-cultivating actions bringing in multipliers, but repeating all those efficiency talks in a very 'logical' manner and perusing technical terms like Spock would just makes it aggravating for us Kirk-minded people.

 

[Katreus]

It's not really that hard of a reach so long as you go into it with the mindset that the Sect is supposed to be a mini-training ground for the Empire stage with a few limitations to account for different starting levels of cultivation. There are definitely some hints that the Elders made that presumably, noble children who have been trained for a 'leader' job would have picked up.

That said, Cai's personality /ambitions seems suited for it, and she's in a unique position where she's both strong enough to assert leadership for the start of a student government, neutral enough that the others won't automatically refuse to attend, and with enough legitimacy from her mother and the sect location that other strong people can / should give her face. I'm curious if this is one of the fastest assumptions of power in Sect history for the Outer Disciple year. I can see previous years being slower to figure out that they should set up a government and even if they did, there'd probably be greater power struggles between factions that'd leave the situation unstable for longer.

I suspect she's spent a good portion of her non-cultivation time on charting the various factions and upcoming talents, setting up an information network / basic power base, and establishing relationships with the various powers of the OD crop. I don't think Xuan Shi's family is naturally inclined to work with her as a vassal family or anything so she's invested actions there given how gung ho Xuan Shi seems to be to enforcing her authority.

Good training for her. That meeting at the pavilion was clearly called under her authority with her leading the meeting. It was a little like a meeting of the court with the Duchess overseeing various court factions and adjudicating disputes, no? Plus, she gets potential networking opportunities with various up and coming nobles with a good cross-section across the Empire.

Honestly, that meeting's probably the most impressive political maneuver anyone's pulled off among the OD group.

 

[Tempestiel]

What I want to do is increase Ling Qi's talent. Somehow.

 

[PrimalShadow]

It's the start one where people start taking numbers, those numbers get challenged, other numbers get brought in. Like, this is what I and @Arkeus are getting a little annoyed about. There isn't 'a post'. There's fifteen some odd pages of discussion that I just linked to, and people get tired of it after two.

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I didn't find even the start of said numbers. If I could find the discussion that actually pertained to the subject I asked a source for, I'd be much more willing to look through it. As is, you might as well link me to the Wikipedia article for planning for all the good it will do in supporting your point.

 

[Grosstoad]

+le gasp+

That's defying Heaven's Will! Or something something xianxia genre.

 

[TheLastOne]

I would note that I hate this kind of efficiency discussion again, when noses are put to the grindstone for one reason or another.

Why do you put your poor nose to that grindstone anyway? Just put it close enough that you can see the fine edge of the knife you are sharpening, no need to see the minute detail that you lose skin and flesh of your poor nose.

I know that people don't really mean to say full burn cultivation ala Ji Rong, and that they do acknowledge the benefits of Social Links and non-cultivating actions bringing in multipliers, but repeating all those efficiency talks in a very 'logical' manner and perusing technical terms like Spock would just makes it aggravating for us Kirk-minded people.

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It's aggravating to even though of us who've looked at the minutia. It's boring discussion, and it can eat up hours, and other people find it boring and skip it, and then make all the same suggestions or assertions that made us have to do it the first time. Like, I would much prefer if this was a one and done thing.

I've been treating the Golden Fields Group as a rough measuring stick in terms of what our peers are. Pretty sure we've matched and/or surpassed everyone in that group at this point.

More broadly, judging by the peacekeeping meetup, there are only around two dozen Outer Disciplines who have even made it into Yellow or Silver at all. Going from being a mortal to being among the top 25 is more than a little respectable, I think.

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I wouldn't use them as a measuring stick. Our peers are the people who are going to be competing for the Inner Sect spot on the combat track, and no one who isn't already Yellow and Silver is up for consideration. We started really far behind with monsters like Lady Cai and Meizhen and Sun Liling already filling the top spots.

 

[Peter87]

Okay some of my thoughts about levelling.

There are 3 actions which would usually take 3 of 4 action slots, these are important long term and exp sink:
- Spiritual Cultivation
- Physical Cultivation
- Cultivation Art

I think physical cultivation is least important, also Cultivation Art wouldn't be always available.

I would use

normal week:
Little drug usage
[] Spiritual Cultivation
[] Cultivation Art
[] mission, event or exploring the mountain or physical cultivation
[] mission, event or exploring the mountain

[] social action
[] social action
[] social action

To gather resources and meet our social needs.

and

You won't be able to do that, since as you said that would be unduly stressing for me. Trading will be more of the 'closed door' thing described above. I. E go full hermit for an extra training action or the like. I won't put myself over the limit of what I can handle narratively.

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1.0 closed door week:
max drug usage
[] Spiritual Cultivation
[] Physical Cultivation
[] Cultivation Art
[] another cultivation action
[] another cultivation action

also we now have:
3 Starlight Elixir: Adds 5 dice to the cultivation of combat arts. In addition use of the pill triggers a single bonus physical cultivation roll, which receives a 3 die bonus.

SCS need 1 spine Meridian
AMA* need Head/Spine (either or both?)
One art from archive at least one more Meridian

Meridians Unlocked:

Head: 1
-blank
Lungs: 1
-Darkness(FVM)
Spine: 1
-blank
Heart: 4
-Wind( ZBx2), Water(FVM), Dark(FVM)
Arm: 0
Leg: 2
-Darkness (SCSx2)

we need one more spine + one meridian for archive art for

2.0 closed door week:
max drug usage + Starlight Elixir
[] Spiritual Cultivation
[] Physical Cultivation (free}
[] Cultivation Art
[] cultivation of combat arts
[] cultivation of combat arts
[] cultivation of combat arts

*

Argent Mirror Art
Mountain, Lake
Balanced
Head/Spine Meridian Required

The early form of the Sects defensive and perceptive arts. Through inner tranquility and surety of self, allows the user to defend against and dispel enemy illusions and crippling techniques as well. Through clarity of mind it allows the user to judge with world with sharp and clear eyes.

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[Neshuakadal]

@yrsillar Has the subjects that can be tought by inner sect disciplines already been answered? Because it might be good to know what subjects that they would teach us. If we could get a friend in the inner sect it would be really helpful when we get to the inner sect

 

[Mr.rodent]

I would note that I hate this kind of efficiency discussion again, when noses are put to the grindstone for one reason or another.

Why do you put your poor nose to that grindstone anyway? Just put it close enough that you can see the fine edge of the knife you are sharpening, no need to see the minute detail that you lose skin and flesh of your poor nose.

I know that people don't really mean to say full burn cultivation ala Ji Rong, and that they do acknowledge the benefits of Social Links and non-cultivating actions bringing in multipliers, but repeating all those efficiency talks in a very 'logical' manner and perusing technical terms like Spock would just makes it aggravating for us Kirk-minded people.

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Honestly same. Im horrible at these types of things and all of these pages of people trying to get top efficiency for every action we do and all of the numbers involved is kind of ruining this quest for me. There's nothing wrong with trying to get some efficiency and get the best results but after awhile it just turns toxic with people argueing on what course of action is best girl, and why it's the most logical , and then words are thrown around and mods get called in.

To say we are lagging behind or behind our peers is absolutely ridiculous. We are a baby cultivator (several months) who has been able to reach a stage most cultivators can't or won't (the thousands of red stages in empire ) and are slowly catching up to nobles who have been training for years with access to many recourses and personal trainers.

So can we all just take a step back from the maximum efficiency post for a bit and just talk about story, setting , things like that that actually make the quest fun ? Maybe someone write some omakes, let's talk about the world. Let's talk about ling qi, what haircut should we give her, outfits? Badass costume.

Let's talk about the story and not the numbers, because while the numbers do matter it's the Story that matters most.

 

[TheLastOne]

I didn't find even the start of said numbers. If I could find the discussion that actually pertained to the subject I asked a source for, I'd be much more willing to look through it. As is, you might as well link me to the Wikipedia article for planning for all the good it will do in supporting your point.

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The post I linked had numbers. @Arkeus had more about halfway down the page. Then they appear again in two/three pages, and so on. There isn't one post, there's posts, then there are posts that discusses those posts and point out how they're short-selling/overselling something. Then the discussion moves on, then the discussion moves back.

You aren't selling me on going through the effort of having a serious discussion when you won't even read one page.

 

[Neshuakadal]

@TheLastOne The link does have a lot of math that deals with where we want to be and the number of success needed to get there. However i read like 4 pages and it did not really come to a consensus of four actions per week are the minimum we need to get to the target. It sort of just wandered around talking about how many success we need. It is also really mudded by all the math for the vote that turn. So I am still really confused by where you got the number 4. Also all the math was based off a single persons view on where he wanted to be for the inner sect exam.

 

[Katreus]

Ji Rong takes a slot too. That's basically half the slots gone already. There will be ODs from last year's group who probably just missed out (the 9 and 10 for the slots) that will have had another year to cultivate so count on some of them charging in to grab at least 1 slot. We'll have to hope the Xuan guy goes for a production slot; I think some people are assuming that but I'm not so sure given that he seems pretty well specced toward the use of formations in combat.

That leaves, what, 2 slots? Our competition is probably Kang Zihao level and he's at least mid-Yellow, probably Late/Peak Yellow by the end of the year. This isn't counting Han Jian's group or any of the various 2nds who will be competing for the last slots (Lu Feng, Gan Guanglin). We might not need to be max-efficiency everything, but there is a certain level of competence that we'd need to hit to be competitive for the slots, which requires a certain number of action slots spent on cultivation. And given that events and social don't trigger cultivation rolls, it has to be dedicated action slots.

I know some people wonder what's so important about getting into the ID section, but we're only here for 2 years before we're off to the military. If we don't make it this year, we can basically skip year 2 because Meizhen and other interesting people will be in ID and barred from meeting us except in certain locations at very rare times, all the stuff on OD mountain is geared toward red and early-mid yellow cultivators, missing out on the cool arts (like Genesis) and more interesting quests or interaction with various Elders...

(It hurts me to argue this because I love the scenes with other characters in this quest. But I'd like to continue interacting with them and to do that, we have to be relevant. It's funny because I think it's super cool to have so many neat characters in this quest, but most of them are like noticeably above the curve - I can't imagine other years having 1, much less 3, late Yellow characters hitting Peak Yellow and probably Green by the end of the year - which makes this year both interesting in the Chinese sense and incredibly competitive.)

 

[Seventeen]

I wouldn't be so certain about Ji Rong. Sure he's talented, but he's also just lost a month of cultivation and his archive pass. On top of that, he's probably lost any valuable belongings, drugs, etc., he wasn't keeping on his person because his house has been left unguarded.

And I have to reiterate that it really doesn't matter if we don't get chosen for the Inner Sect. Cultivating all year so we can cultivate at a higher level is not interesting, at least to me. I'd be perfectly happy with heading off to war after the year is up.

 

[Neshuakadal]

but we're only here for 2 years before we're off to the military

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Are we only here for 2 years? I thought it was three years. However looking at some of the early chapters it never really states. It just says we have eight years of service after training. Has yrsillar already answered this early on in the quest?

Edit
One thing about the inner sect exam is that accidents happen all them time. Some of our top tier challenges to the inner sect spot might just die in the 40+ weeks we have. Best snek even said she would kill one of them. We really won't know our foes until the event approaches.

 

[Thor's Twin]

Are we only here for 2 years? I thought it was three years. However looking at some of the early chapters it never really states. It just says we have eight years of service after training. Has yrsillar already answered this early on in the quest?

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Yeah, we have a total of three years training here before we go to the military. The goal is to get into the inner sect the first year so we have two years in the inner sect before being shipped off.

 

[Katreus]

Are we only here for 2 years? I thought it was three years. However looking at some of the early chapters it never really states. It just says we have eight years of service after training. Has yrsillar already answered this early on in the quest?

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I intend to have timeskips in the future to keep the story moving. Basically the week long turn model will get switched out for month turns for a time and then when things go 'active' again it'll switch back to weeks. Military service is probably gonna start at the two year mark

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I also don't want to stay on Kiddie Mountain for 2 years even if yrsillar changes his mind to a 3 year stay at the Sect. Meizhen is going to be IS and so is Renxiang. I want to be in IS to see new, cool things and interact with those 2 and other IS disciples and Elders. Spending a year doing hard gathering missions or whatever is just not very interesting to me nor, presumably, to the Elders (as we'd have publicly failed or at least shown to be of middling results) so we don't even get interesting and fun opportunities.