Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)

[TheLastOne]

@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.

Click to shrink...

@Arkeus's views are basically 'peak yellow if not green' which is the obvious bare minimum for getting into the Inner Sect. Basially look at an action as worth somewhere around 15 successes. It will track up as we go along, but we're discovering we need more things that require more successes.

Going by the old 6 actions a week, with thirty weeks we have 180 actions. It would take 194 to hit all the cultivation action goals, so we basically have to find ways of doing it faster. So we tie down one action a week for sect missions, and say that increases our average to 20 successes a cultivation action via drugs.

Again, we'll probably get more then that at some point, but we're also discovering more needs.

That moves us all the down to 145.5 actions to hit all the basics. Note that isn't including arts, whose needs are a lot harder to calculate. But it's also tied down thirty actions, so that's really 175.5. Ten free actions.

Like, we weren't driving home exactly how limited the action economy was because we were hoping for more wiggle room, but yeah it's tight and we are going to have to fall short of our goals somewhere. But 'fall short' and 'accept falling short' are different things. It's one of the reasons we were talking about doing several more searches of the mountain with Suyin and Ling, and why they're more important friends the Xiulan and company. Maybe they can find us another good multiplier? But remember every action we spend looking for that multiplier is one not spent progressing on all of those painful numbers.

 

[Alectai]

On the point of the whole "4 slot" brainbug, it's brought up from the post back in week eight, where in week seven, we functionally spent only two actions Cultivating, and when we were talking to Elder Su the next week, she mentioned our pace was slowing down, to the point where she was concerned we hit a bottleneck. (Our shitty rolls on Cultivation might have contributed to that, admittedly)

Four might be a bit much, but two at least is at the point where people are definitely thinking that we're phoning it in.

I wouldn't go below three at least, but four is probably just overcompensating a bit. We do need to progress, but we can't do it at the cost of not having effective resources either. Ji Rong might be able to afford being a murderhobo who gets by on his inflated combat skills and can thus spam adventuring and cultivating, but our build isn't one that can work effectively if we go that way--we live and die by our connections.

So yes, four slots for training and Missions is just fine, that leaves us enough to make solid progress while still gaining resources, and the fact social efforts have been detached from the old action economy helps tremendously.

 

[Neshuakadal]

@TheLastOne I thought the minimum to get into the inner sect was to place in the top eight in a tournament. To enter the tournament do we need to be green? We don't know the tournament structure we don't know who the main competition for the top slots will be we know nothing. Setting up these kind of arbitrary deadlines seems to be misleading and hurtful to our overall progress.

Edit
Basically what I am seeing are a lot of assumptions for your math from a action is worth 15 success to the competition levels of the tournament. I really can't get behind that conclusion. You are also using words like obviously for things that you are not supporting very well.

 

[PrimalShadow]

The post I linked had numbers.

Click to shrink...

This is the post you linked:

Drawing plans back a little from "end of the year", this is kind of what I'd like Ling Qi to accomplish in, say, the next four weeks:
* Complete Argent Soul.
* Get the first level of Eight Phase Cycle.
* Get the third measure of Forgotten Vale Melody.
* Get the third step of Sable Crescent Step.
* Advance Formations to 3 dots; learn some practical applications and learn what the skill would be capable of in Ling Qi's hands at what level of additional investment.
* Learn the first level of a new art - the ideal one to my mind would perhaps be water/yin/spine+arm.
* Improve social attributes and skills; just some progress across the set will do.
* Improve physical attributes and skills; progress across the board, but also Dodge 3.
* Improve mental attributes and skills; again, just progress across the board is good enough - Wits 3 would be nice though.
* Investigate the tokens; if it unlocks an 'action chain', just the initial action is fine.
* Send money home to her mother, just to wrap that up and to satisfy Ling Qi's lingering guilt and minor "heart demon".
* At least maintain Ling Qi's existing social links; gaining new ones or advancing existing ones further is optional.

EDIT:



Errr... "Plan Backlog, Cultivation, & Helping" has the tokens, and it's only 4 behind the leader (social is behind by 9). I missed that too, first time around.

Click to shrink...

The only numbers here are on the labels for what ranks we want to each (e.g. Get the third step of Sable Crescent Step).



As for Arkeus... yeah, I suppose I missed that; there are numbers there. It makes the valid point that getting to stuff like Mid Green / Bronze, with six arts at Peak Silver/Yellow and 50 base Qi and "at least 4" spirit beasts and 10+ stats to 5-6 and EPC up through low Green... if we want to do all of that it would take a great deal of successes. But note that this doesn't actually match the question we originally talked about. You original claim was that we need at least 4 cultivation actions to "tread water". Doing even a quarter of the stuff described on this list is not "treading water". It's "I want to be stronger then everyone else here including noble scions who started at high second stage cultivation".

None of this in any way compares our advancement rate to the advancement rate of our peers, which is the actual discussion we should be having when we talk about "keeping up" with people. It also doesn't talk about the relative merits of gaining advantages, alliances, and growth boosts compared to simply cultivating more, which is really what the discussion should be about.

 

[TheLastOne]

@TheLastOne I thought the minimum to get into the inner sect was to place in the top eight in a tournament. To enter the tournament do we need to be green? We don't know the tournament structure we don't know who the main competition for the top slots will be we know nothing. Setting up these kind of arbitrary deadlines seems to be misleading and hurtful to our overall progress.

Click to shrink...

We need to be maxed level yellow (not peak, peak is for breaking through) and and maxed level silver. We have people who are already there - it we can't get to where Meizhen is now by then, it isn't going to go well for us. There just aren't that many open slots and there are people who've started out ahead of us who we haven't caught up to. At best, we'll be starting in the bottom tier of people who will make it through, and that's only if we do everything right.

Fail that, and we're going to be stuck on the outer sect mountain at least until next year, which will sink our relationship with Meizhen friend from to acquaintance/retainer at best. Suyin will probably make it through as a production cultivator, so we'll lose all of our closest allies.

 

[Neshuakadal]

We need to be maxed level yellow (not peak, peak is for breaking through) and and maxed level silver. We have people who are already there - it we can't get to where Meizhen is now by then, it isn't going to go well for us. There just aren't that many open slots and there are people who've started out ahead of us who we haven't caught up to. At best, we'll be starting in the bottom tier of people who will make it through, and that's only if we do everything right.

Fail that, and we're going to be stuck on the outer sect mountain at least until next year, which will sink our relationship with Meizhen friend from to acquaintance/retainer at best. Suyin will probably make it through as a production cultivator, so we'll lose all of our closest allies.

Click to shrink...

If the tournament is mono e mono sure. Is the tournament mono e mono or is it the last 8 standing? I have no idea. Also if we chart growth curves we are doing great compared to others. We also have 40+ weeks to continue to cultivate our friendship with best snek. So I am really not that concerned losing that friendship. I recognize that you really like math and want absolute successes that lead to perfect results. That is not that important to me. The dice will help or hinder us so we need to cultivate a system that can handle failure. In other words we need a robust long term plan that has fall back options and alternate paths to a goal. If we are very concerned with the tournament then we need to work on both a mono e mono system that will help us get victory as well as a variation for victory for any type of tournament that can happen. It seems much saner to build up steadily. If we don't make late yellow fine. If we don't make late silver fine. We will just have to use the advantages that we built up using the actions that didn't go to those for victory.

 

[kitsune9]

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.

Click to shrink...

wait what, I thought that getting rid of all of that was the whole point of the upcoming system change. I mean why else would he split the actions for the turn into two categories.

Consistent cultivation in each area is required to continue moving forward. There are now four actions each turn, solely focused on cultivation. This will provide Physical, Spiritual, and Foundational cultivation, as well as the cultivation of Arts or the opening of new Meridians. Any new actions gained by large amounts of Qi would default to an additional cultivation action.

The remaining three actions will be focused on character interaction and development. Sect quests, social links, and searching for new places to cultivate will all fall under these actions. Training Skills and Stat's will also fall under these actions.

There is one exception to this, when you select breakthrough, a single minor action informs your social links, and the other two minor actions are transformed into a new major action granting five pure cultivation actions all focused on breaking through.

By separating things into Social actions and cultivation actions people do not need to worry about the amount of cultivation actions per turn. Rather they will only have to decide which four cultivation actions they need to do first.

 

[Neshuakadal]

@kitsune9 I think the main contention is that we are pretty sure sect quests take a major action.

 

[drake_azathoth]

The most likely thing that could render the math irrelevant would be priority-based advancement during a timeskip. Barring that, a crazy cultivation technique or medicine that offers LOTS of successes. But the math isn't really wrong, we'll need to cultivate heavily and often to be relevant at Meizhen's tier by year end.

 

[TheLastOne]

If the tournament is mono e mono sure. Is the tournament mono e mono or is it the last 8 standing? I have no idea. Also if we chart growth curves we are doing great compared to others. We also have 40+ weeks to continue to cultivate our friendship with best snek. So I am really not that concerned losing that friendship. I recognize that you really like math and want absolute successes that lead to perfect results. That is not that important to me. The dice will help or hinder us so we need to cultivate a system that can handle failure. In other words we need a robust long term plan that has fall back options and alternate paths to a goal. If we are very concerned with the tournament then we need to work on both a mono e mono system that will help us get victory as well as every a variation for victory for any type of tournament that can happen. It seems much saner to build up steadily. If we don't make late yellow fine. If we don't make late silver fine. We will just have to use the advantages that we built up using the actions that didn't go to those for victory.

Click to shrink...

If we don't make Inner Sect that Meizhen will go off to anther peak and won't interact with us anymore. Then she'll stew in all her toxic 'be a good Bai' bull and resolve herself to act appropriately.

The thing is, a robust long term plan for success and for failure is exactly the same, because in both states the ideal place is to be as personally powerful as possible.

And how do you mean we're doing great compared to other? If your benchmark is Han Jian and friends... well they're losers who aren't going to be inner sect. Are you comparing us to Meizhen, Lady Cai and others? Because that's where you need to compare us. This isn't a nice setting, if we settle for less then the best, then we'll end up a minion without the resources to improve our standing. We had so great luck earlier own getting the Darkness Aligned arts, but the big thing it got us was an elders attention. We'll only actually keep that if we don't fall behind, where 'fall behind' is defined as being someone who isn't in the top eight for our year.

 

[Alectai]

Yeah, to be blunt... If Han Jian and his crew showed up in any other year, they'd probably be doing great.

but they showed up this year, where all the fucking monsters ever are running around. Like, four of the Inner Sect spots are already basically locked down to the Meizhen/Liling/Renxiang trio plus Ji Rong. There's positively no way that the four of them are going to fail a test of combat ability when they're already this strong and have another 7 months to get even more hardcore. Which means the rest of the competition is over the four spots remaining, of which there's at least Kang sitting in the upper portions of Yellow/Silver, and that formations guy might be in the combat courses too, and would be a complete asshole to fight.

Like, even if he somehow miraculously breaks his talent bottleneck or whatever it is that's slowing him down, he's going to have a hard time matching the real fucking monsters.

That being said, one possibility exists, that Inner Sect disciples are allowed to bring retainers along with them, who they can share what they get with freely outside of stuff that's straight up restricted. This seems to be a likely way the thing will work, as it doesn't completely hamstring people who aren't specced for single combat.

 

[TheLastOne]

Yeah, to be blunt... If Han Jian and his crew showed up in any other year, they'd probably be doing great.

but they showed up this year, where all the fucking monsters ever are running around. Like, four of the Inner Sect spots are already basically locked down to the Meizhen/Liling/Renxiang trio plus Ji Rong. There's positively no way that the four of them are going to fail a test of combat ability when they're already this strong and have another 7 months to get even more hardcore. Which means the rest of the competition is over the four spots remaining, of which there's at least Kang sitting in the upper portions of Yellow/Silver, and that formations guy might be in the combat courses too, and would be a complete asshole to fight.

Like, even if he somehow miraculously breaks his talent bottleneck or whatever it is that's slowing him down, he's going to have a hard time matching the real fucking monsters.

That being said, one possibility exists, that Inner Sect disciples are allowed to bring retainers along with them, who they can share what they get with freely outside of stuff that's straight up restricted. This seems to be a likely way the thing will work, as it doesn't completely hamstring people who aren't specced for single combat.

Click to shrink...

Yeah. That would be being literally reduced to minion. Like, we would no longer be the protagonist. Meizhen would be. I would rather play Meizhen Quest at that point.

Well, Meizhen Quest would be awesome as has already been established, but you know what I'm saying.

 

[Alectai]

Yeah. That would be being literally reduced to minion. Like, we would no longer be the protagonist. Meizhen would be. I would rather play Meizhen Quest at that point.

Well, Meizhen Quest would be awesome as has already been established, but you know what I'm saying.

Click to shrink...

It wouldn't be a bad thing necessarily, in the sense that our agency would be destroyed, but it would mean that we'd basically be hamstrung unless we somehow became the personal disciple of an Elder.

So certainly something to be avoided if we can. Fortunately, Talent 6 is a hell of a drug.

Hopefully we can find a potentially strong spirit beast here. Wouldn't it be a hell of a thing if the big-ass superbeast we've seen everything eating left an egg or two behind that's still alive? Getting a spirit beast that starts as a baby but eventually grows to a stalwart companion is totally in genre, and they get to grow with you that way as well--and a baby is probably something we could actually bind and foster over time.

 

[Neshuakadal]

If we don't make Inner Sect that Meizhen will go off to anther peak and won't interact with us anymore. Then she'll stew in all her toxic 'be a good Bai' bull and resolve herself to act appropriately.

The thing is, a robust long term plan for success and for failure is exactly the same, because in both states the ideal place is to be as personally powerful as possible.

And how do you mean we're doing great compared to other? If your benchmark is Han Jian and friends... well they're losers who aren't going to be inner sect. Are you comparing us to Meizhen, Lady Cai and others? Because that's where you need to compare us. This isn't a nice setting, if we settle for less then the best, then we'll end up a minion without the resources to improve our standing. We had so great luck earlier own getting the Darkness Aligned arts, but the big thing it got us was an elders attention. We'll only actually keep that if we don't fall behind, where 'fall behind' is defined as being someone who isn't in the top eight for our year.

Click to shrink...

I disagree with you that a robust plan is being the most personally powerful. To me the most robust plan would be one where we don't assume we are the most powerful person on the mountain and act accordingly and thus can achieve our goals. There is always a bigger fish. Also I was talking about growth curves compared to others. The only other person I can think of that has matched our growth curve is Ji Hong and he is currently frozen in time. A growth curve is mapping where something started and how long it took to get there. So we started out at 0 and reached level 2 in 3 months. Han Jian and company started at 0 and reached level 2 in 3 or four years. Bai started at 0 and has reached level 6 in 14 years. Renxianing started at 0 and has reached a level below 7 in 3 to four years. If you look at like that our growth chart is amazing. I can't see as being anything other than unnatural. It's like there are a bunch of voices in Linq Qi head making her choose the most effective choices or something. On the a more serious note about Bai we can still meet up with her in the village if we don't get in the inner sect. Friendship doesn't have to end if we stop living together. Even if we don't talk for a whole year I can't imagine our friendship would be lost. The reason for this is that she is not being surrounded by familial propaganda about how to act. She is seeing that just because someone acts differently than her doesn't mean that they won't advance just as fast or even faster than her.

Edit:
One things as well that I didn't cover very well in the above post was your idea that we need to be the most powerful person that we can. I don't think we do. Your argument is that this is world is unkind and thus we need power. This is true. However we don't need to be the most powerful personally. What we need is to achieve a set of power that it is no longer enticing to attack us. Where the gains vs lost ratio is tipped to the lost area. As long as we avoid emotional charged attacks (like da's fiance) then people will act rationally and not attack us if it would cause them to lose more than they could gain. This can be achieved by personal power yes. But like I said early there is always a bigger fish. It is better to achieve this through a network of alliances and agreements as well as enough personal power to gain those alliances. I agree that personal power should be something that we strive for. But we should tamper that we alliances in order to ensure a peaceful training period.

 

[TheLastOne]

It wouldn't be a bad thing necessarily, in the sense that our agency would be destroyed, but it would mean that we'd basically be hamstrung unless we somehow became the personal disciple of an Elder.

So certainly something to be avoided if we can. Fortunately, Talent 6 is a hell of a drug.

Hopefully we can find a potentially strong spirit beast here. Wouldn't it be a hell of a thing if the big-ass superbeast we've seen everything eating left an egg or two behind that's still alive? Getting a spirit beast that starts as a baby but eventually grows to a stalwart companion is totally in genre, and they get to grow with you that way as well.

Click to shrink...

I suspect yrsillar is expecting us to pick one once we start EPC, since he just went out of his way to mention EPC will give benefits there.

I disagree with you that a robust plan is being the most personally powerful. To me the most robust plan would be one where we don't assume we are the most powerful person on the mountain and act accordingly and thus can achieve our goals. There is always a bigger fish. Also I was talking about growth curves compared to others. The only other person I can think of that has matched our growth curve is Ji Hong and he is currently frozen in time. A growth curve is mapping where something started and how long it took to get there. So we started out at 0 and reached level 2 in 3 months. Han Jian and company started at 0 and reached level 2 in 3 or four years. Bai started at 0 and has reached level 6 in 14 years. Renxianing started at 0 and has reached a level below 7 in 3 to four years. If you look at like that our growth chart is amazing. I can't see as being anything other than unnatural. It's like there are a bunch of voices in Linq Qi head making her choose the most effective choices or something. On the a more serious note about Bai we can still meet up with her in the village if we don't get in the inner sect. Friendship doesn't have to end if we stop living together. Even if we don't talk for a whole year I can't imagine our friendship would be lost. The reason for this is that she is not being surrounded by familial propaganda about how to act. She is seeing that just because someone acts differently than her doesn't mean that they won't advance just as fast or even faster than her.

Click to shrink...

You're not suggesting a robust plan that pushes us anywhere, though. You're just opposing plans that have numbers and logic guiding them and saying we should be more ad hoc, which is the opposite of having a plan. It's how you end up in a muddled worst of all worlds situation.

Ji Hong started where we are, got ahead of us, and now has been given a slow down that probably drags him back to our level. But he's still more talented then us, and he certainly isn't going to be wrestling with making efficient cultivation plans. So he'll pull ahead again without much trouble.

And again, you can't compare us to the group that's failing unless you want to set up for failure. Treading water means we aren't getting further away from being able to make it to the top. Keep in mind that as that's time sensitive, not making enough progress means you're further from the top. Actually making progress means your approaching the top faster then the top is receeding keeping in account of the fact that we'll have fewer and fewer actions to make the distance with as we get closer.

If we can't beat Han Jian entire group at once with just us and our own spirit by the time the Inner Sect quest comes around we're probably failing. If we're not leaving them in the dust we aren't treading water.

 

[Thor's Twin]

You're not suggesting a robust plan that pushes us anywhere, though. You're just opposing plans that have numbers and logic guiding them and saying we should be more ad hoc, which is the opposite of having a plan.

Click to shrink...

Nonsense! I am, in fact, doing the math and crunching the numbers to do a three action a week cultivation plan, one quest a week, and still get to the same location that you and @Arkeus have been wanting to get to.

It's tricky, that is true but doable. It will require sacrifices, but what plan doesn't? I'm basing my math off of the 15 successes you have hypothesized and not adding any speed from EPC, AS 5, or what beast cores could do for us.

Numbers are being crunched, and double checked. But it is possible. Barely possible, but possible all the same.

Merely because the plan has not been properly defined yet, doesn't mean that people aren't working on it, and that is what is wonderful, we still have plenty of time to crunch the very long list of numbers and figure out where to go from here.

Also, just to be clear. My goal is to win the tournament, not just get to 8th place.

 

[TheLastOne]

Nonsense! I am, in fact, doing the math and crunching the numbers to do a three action a week cultivation plan, one quest a week, and still get to the same location that you and @Arkeus have been wanting to get to.

It's tricky, that is true but doable. It will require sacrifices, but what plan doesn't? I'm basing my math off of the 15 successes you have hypothesized and not adding any speed from EPC, AS 5, or what beast cores could do for us.

Numbers are being crunched, and double checked. But it is possible. Barely possible, but possible all the same.

Merely because the plan has not been properly defined yet, doesn't mean that people aren't working on it, and that is what is wonderful, we still have plenty of time to crunch the very long list of numbers and figure out where to go from here.

Click to shrink...

Wasn't critizing you, since you haven't been 'anti-math make it up as we go along'. Though I would like to see your math. Roughly 30 turns, or 120 actions under the new system. 175.5 actions required to meet basic but not ideal cultivation goals. Can't turn minor actions into major except with 'closed door cultivation' that sacrifices all minor actions, possibly at penalty. (we don't have all the rules yet).

 

[Humbaba]

Frankly something's gone badly wrong with the game design if what we're doing only counts as treading water.

We absolutely have been shooting ahead of our peers. Our peers are people like Li Suyin (maybe peak red and mid gold), Su Ling and so on. People who started with nothing. The only peer we haven't beaten is Ji Rong. We're actually doing well enough that we're beating out people like Xiulan and (to a lesser extent) Han Jian, who came in far ahead of us.

We only look vastly behind when compared to the people who came in at absolute monster level. Meizhen came in with very good arts, a great spirit beast whilst at late or peak yellow. Sun Liling is a physical prodigy who came in at late or peak silver. Lady Cai is similar.* They've all being doing this for years. Given they're all clearly of reasonable talented, hardworking and have been given the best resources for years I very much doubt we can catch them within the first year if we want to have anything resembling a viable build at the end of this and pegging our development to theirs is actively unhelpful to determining where we should be at the end of the year.

Honestly, at this point and with the info from Meizhen about what contitiutes a decent bulid I'm somewhat doubtful green soul is in the cards for us before the end of the year. Hell I'm not sure we want green soul until the question of how Argent Genesis works is answered (Xiualn free action I hope). I have never been convinced that Green soul is a requiremtent for the tournament.

Even if we assume Cai, Bai, Sun Lilling and Kang are all certian to get a slot there are still at least 4 slots open in the martial tournament. Ji Rong will be competing for one but he's also lost a month worth of actions. I was complaining about the death spiral earlier and Ji Rong's just got a much more severe version of it, probably lost most or all of his money and drugs to boot. I suspect he'll have a hard time catching up to is by the end of the year. This doesn't mean we should slack off but as I said comparing ourselves to the real monsters seems to be skewing people's perception of where we should be for the end of year tournament.

That said I wouldn't be surprised if anyone jumping up to green within the year , like the monsters, simply got snapped right up into the inner sect. It would make a lot more sense to grab them out of the outer sect at that point in order to have them continue their growth unimpeded whilst not impeding other talented cultivators that could emerge. This seems like an exceptional yeargroup and it benifits the argent peak sect to take exceptional measures to grab as many young cultivators who look like they can go far as possible.

This sort of talk also fails to account for the fact that all our rivals have to take actions outside of cultivation as well. And they should by all rights be suffering an action economy crunch at least as bad as ours without our talent bonuses.


*Speaking of Cai I'm actually unsure where she and Kang stand. Kang was obviously not confident in takng on Meizhen without her being injured, so I suspect he is only mid-yellow. Cai called him one of the few who might be capable of giving her a decent duel, so it's possible she's actually mid yellow as well, but she probably is late.

 

[Thor's Twin]

Wasn't critizing you, since you haven't been 'anti-math make it up as we go along'. Though I would like to see your math. Roughly 30, or 120 actions under the new system. 175.5 actions required to meet basic but not ideal cultivation goals. Can turn minor actions into major except with 'closed door cultivation' that sacrifices all minor actions, possibly at penalty. (we don't have all the rules yet).

Click to shrink...

I'll get you the math probably in a couple of days. It will go faster with 4 actions of cultivation that is true but only to a point. The problem is the drugs I believe we need, and we need them desperately. I'm still fine tuning the math and figuring out the best format to put it in, but I hope to post the math (probably in a rough format) by Wednesday. My goal is to have everyone rip into the math and figure out where I went wrong and figure out the best course of actions.

I don't believe a closed door cultivation will give penalties, I think it will give benefits, but I don't want to do it all too often and I think that there will be a limit to how many we can do just like with Meizhen's tea.

 

[TheLastOne]

Frankly something's gone badly wrong with the game design if what we're doing only counts as treading water.

We absolutely have been shooting ahead of our peers. Our peers are people like Li Suyin (maybe peak red and mid gold), Su Ling and so on. People who started with nothing. The only peer we haven't beaten is Ji Rong. We're actually doing well enough that we're beating out people like Xiulan and (to a lesser extent) Han Jian, who came in far ahead of us.

We only look vastly behind when compared to the people who came in at absolute monster level. Meizhen came in with very good arts, a great spirit beast whilst at late or peak yellow. Sun Liling is a physical prodigy who came in at late or peak silver. Lady Cai is similar.* They've all being doing this for years. Given they're all clearly of reasonable talented, hardworking and have been given the best resources for years I very much doubt we can catch them within the first year if we want to have anything resembling a viable build at the end of this and pegging our development to theirs is actively unhelpful to determining where we should be at the end of the year.

Honestly, at this point and with the info from Meizhen about what contitiutes a decent bulid I'm somewhat doubtful green soul is in the cards for us before the end of the year. Hell I'm not sure we want green soul until the question of how Argent Genesis works is answered (Xiualn free action I hope). I have never been convinced that Green soul is a requiremtent for the tournament.

Even if we assume Cai, Bai, Sun Lilling and Kang are all certian to get a slot there are still at least 4 slots open in the martial tournament. Ji Rong will be competing for one but he's also lost a month worth of actions. I was complaining about the death spiral earlier and Ji Rong's just got a much more severe version of it, probably most or all of his money and drugs to boot. I suspect he'll have a hard time catching up to is by the end of the year. This doesn't mean we should slack off but as I said comparing ourselves to the real monsters seems to be skewing people's perception of where we should be for the end of year tournament.

That said I wouldn't be surprised if anyone jumping up to green within the year , like the monsters, simply got snapped right up into the inner sect. It would make a lot more sense to grab them out of the outer sect at that point in order to have them continue their growth unimpeded whilst not impeding other talented cultivators that could emerge. This seems like an exceptional yeargroup and it benifits the argent peak sect to take exceptional measures to grab as many young cultivators who look like they can go far as possible.

This sort of talk also fails to account for the fact that all our rivals have to take actions outside of cultivation as well. And they should by all rights be suffering an action economy crunch at least as bad as ours without our talent bonuses.


*Speaking of Cai I'm actually unsure where she and Kang stand. Kang was obviously not confident in takng on Meizhen without her being injured, so I suspect he is only mid-yellow. Cai called him one of the few who might be capable of giving her a decent duel, so it's possible she's actually mid yellow as well, but she probably is late.

Click to shrink...

They talk about how if you don't make it your first year, you're unlikely to ever make it. That means that they probably get a crop of peak yellow who break into green every year, and they set people who don't make it in their first year against those people at the start of the tournament to knock them out. So no, they probably aren't going to give anyone a by.

Ji Rong has been noted to have found a lot of 'luck' searching the mountain, so I expect his resources are things like sites and knowledge rather then read stones. I don't think he'll lose much in the way of ability to cultivate, but he will lose time. But every dice he gets is worth more then every dice we get. He'll pull ahead again without too much trouble, but it will probably make him meaner and more aggressive.

Actually making green is not a good idea, no. It simply takes too many successes. But high yellow and high silver are definitely going to be the floor. There are too many people who've already made it into silver/yellow.

And yes, we do need to compare ourselves with those who have years more experience. Those are the people we're in competition with.

 

[tricholysis]

what haircut should we give her

Click to shrink...

Braids for sure. If Ling Qi's got that troublesome Central Asian Turco-Mongol hair and wants to be jumping all about without tangling it, braids are necessary.

 

[Neshuakadal]

I suspect yrsillar is expecting us to pick one once we start EPC, since he just went out of his way to mention EPC will give benefits there.



You're not suggesting a robust plan that pushes us anywhere, though. You're just opposing plans that have numbers and logic guiding them and saying we should be more ad hoc, which is the opposite of having a plan. It's how you end up in a muddled worst of all worlds situation.

Ji Hong started where we are, got ahead of us, and now has been given a slow down that probably drags him back to our level. But he's still more talented then us, and he certainly isn't going to be wrestling with making efficient cultivation plans. So he'll pull ahead again without much trouble.

And again, you can't compare us to the group that's failing unless you want to set up for failure. Treading water means we aren't getting further away from being able to make it to the top. Keep in mind that as that's time sensitive, not making enough progress means you're further from the top. Actually making progress means your approaching the top faster then the top is receeding keeping in account of the fact that we'll have fewer and fewer actions to make the distance with as we get closer.

If we can't beat Han Jian entire group at once with just us and our own spirit by the time the Inner Sect quest comes around we're probably failing. If we're not leaving them in the dust we aren't treading water.

Click to shrink...

I am a little miffed that you think I want to do things ad hoc. I would also like to point out I am opposing your plan of doing four personal cultivation actions per turn and nothing else with the major actions. I have yet to see you actually pull the math out that says that is needed to reach those goals that you have set.

You have set those goals with little knowledge and a desire to be personal strong. Quests get us more resources. More resources gives us more dice. I believe that doing quests will give us far more than 15 success you say a normal cultivation action would give us. Quests will let us find more cultivation locations. Quests could give us combat experience. Quests give us sect points. Quests are supremely action efficient.

You are letting your fear of not being the best we can override the logic that we don't have to be. We can set up a good alliance base and a good resource gathering base with our major actions and they will pay dividends over the course of the quest. This will allow us a steady rate of growth that will outstrip our any potential competitors. (We also don't know who are competitors could be. I think Ji Hong will die before the tournament happens. )

To me right now you are fear mongering. You are putting to much weight on what the future might hold and not enough weight on what actions we can do right now to create a foundation for that future. You are letting your fear push you to extremes while I am arguing for a more moderate path.

Pull out the math and citations that say that the only way we can ever survive is to be a late yellow and late silver by the end of the year and that the only way to reach there is by following your plan of only using the those major actions for pure cultivation. You are saying that logic supports you when I don't think it does. It is far more logical to follow a more moderate path that should get us to a goal with firm alliances and resources income then a plan that should get us there but get us nothing else.

You are right if we devote all four, or more, major actions to pure cultivation purposes we will be unstoppable but then we will have no other major connections, no major resources, no more knowledge about the world.

 

[Katreus]

Use paragraphs. Please.

 

[TheLastOne]

I am a little miffed that you think I want to do things ad hoc. I would also like to point out I am opposing your plan of doing four personal cultivation actions per turn and nothing else with the major actions. I have yet to see you actually pull the math out that says that is needed to reach those goals that you have set. You have set those goals with little knowledge and a desire to be personal strong. Quests get us more resources. More resources gives us more dice. I believe that doing quests will give us far more than 15 success you say a normal cultivation action would give us. Quests will let us fine more cultivation locations. Quests could give us combat experience. Quests give us sect points. Quests are supremely action efficient. You are letting your fear of not being the best we can override the logic that we don't have to be. We set up a good allaince base and a good resource gathering base with our major actions and they will pay dividends over the course of the quest. This will allow us a steady rate of growth that will outstrip our any potential competitors. (We also don't know who are competitors could be. I think Ji Hong will die before the tournament happens. )To me right now you are fear mongering. You are putting to much weight on what the future holds and not enough weight on what actions we can do right now to create a foundation for that future. You are letting your fear push you to extremes while I am arguing for a more moderate path. Pull out the math and citations that say that the only way we can ever survive is to be a late yellow and late silver by the end of the year and that the only way to reach there is by following your plan of only using the those major actions for pure cultivation. You are saying that logic supports you when I don't think it does. It is far more logical to follow a more moderate path that Should get us to a goal with firm alliances and resources income then a plan that should get us there but get us nothing else. You are right if we devote all four, or more, major actions to pure cultivation purposes we will be unstoppable but then we will have no other major connections, no major resources, no more knowledge about the world.

Click to shrink...

Paragraphs, use them.

And I did give numbers. Assuming 20 successes an action, which we could only make assuming we do take sect quests for resources, it would take 175.5 actions. With four actions a turn, we only have 120 actions. Actually, it gets worse then that in some ways, because we'll have to use more pills because each pill will benefit fewer actions, though working out those numbers is basically impossible.

A good alliance with people we're going to leave behind? Half the social actions give us long term resources, though I've talked before on how just because a resource give you a bonus, doesn't mean it was worth the action that got the resource. A +1 per roll on air arts would probably not be worth a action to get, because it would take 16 actions before we 'paid off' the action of getting it.

And then you have wishful things like trying to write off Ji Hong.

So no. I think you aren't being vary disciplined in how you're looking at what we have, what it takes to get where we want, and what the opportunity costs are.

 

[Arkeus]

Pull out the math and citations that say that the only way we can ever survive is to be a late yellow and late silver by the end of the year and that the only way to reach there is by following your plan of only using the those major actions for pure cultivation. You are saying that logic supports you when I don't think it does. It is far more logical to follow a more moderate path that should get us to a goal with firm alliances and resources income then a plan that should get us there but get us nothing else.

You are right if we devote all four, or more, major actions to pure cultivation purposes we will be unstoppable but then we will have no other major connections, no major resources, no more knowledge about the world.

Click to shrink...

He isn't saying that if we devote all four actions we will be unstoppable, he is saying that the minimum for being competitive is to devote all four. Those are different assertions. Likewise, our connections actually aren't going to be any worse if we devote all four to cultivation. They aren't competing for cultivation slots.

Anyway, I think I am in the middle of @Thor's Twin and @TheLastOne here. I think having only 4 major actions is doable, but that it won't let us have any give at all, and that even without any give it won't let us catch up, just let us be competitive. However, the problem is that 5 major actions might give us too much give.

Let me give examples. This is how I think '4 actions' would work, in practice, in a month:
Week 1: 3 cultivation, 1 Job
Week 2: 4 cultivation
Week 3: 3 cultivation, 1 Job
Week 4: 6 cultivation.

This not only give us an average of 4 cultivation and makes sure we have all the resources necessary for those, but also leave us gain additional secret resources though events and jobs. Sure, 4 cultivation is being significantly slower than we were in the first 3 months (we had 5 cultivation average), so we will be not only significantly weaker than Ji Rong but probably won't catch up to any of our rivals. However we will be effective and competitive.

Now, if we had 5 major actions we would 'in average' do the same as we did in the first 3 months... except we'll also do significantly more social. This can be reflected in being Yellow/Silver, but I think @yrsillar doesn't want the new formula to just be 'flat out better', but more of a give and take thing. So while I really, really want 5 major actions, I can understand why he would be wary of it.

As long as "closed door" is a minimum of 6 actions, so we don't lose out on cultivation heavy weeks, both choices are OK.