That's awesome. I wonder though if the numbers line up completely with the fluff. Because this depicts a highly talented student with good social connections and decent resources barely making Green and Bronze when the impression I got was that the disciples who couldn't make the jump to the Inner Sect were the ones who topped off at Green and Bronze, implying that they were mid to late Green/Bronze, but didn't have the talent/motivation to break through. And I'm talking about the average students who never make it to the Inner Sect.Alright, I'm going to post a pretty long document. It has numbers, it has maths and it has what my belief is the strongest route forward in the long term. And I do mean long term. This is an analysis of our current capabilities and extrapolating them forward into the future. The possibility for growth has been largely ignored, but discussed in the document. It is going to have a fair amount of math though, so feel free to ask for clarification or notify me of where I went wrong because I probably did.
Spiritual cultivation
120 to mid-yellow
240 to late yellow
480 to peak yellow
Total of 840
Physical cultivation
120 to mid-silver
240 to late silver
480 to Peak Silver
Total of 840
Qi cultivation
26 qi, 27 qi, 28 qi, 29 qi, 30 qi, 31 qi, 32 qi, 33 qi, 34 qi, 35 qi, 36 qi, 37 qi, 38 qi, 39 qi, 40 qi, 41qi, 42 qi, 43 qi, 44 qi, 45 qi, 46 qi, 47 qi, 48 qi, 49 qi, 50 qi, 51 qi
Total of 991 successes in order to get to 60+ qi
With Bear Marrow Elixir successes drop to 711.
Total number of success to get to Late yellow/late silver with 60 qi
2,671 successes
Divide by an average of 15 successes per action =
179 actions.
With three actions a week, that will be
59 weeks to reach that goal.
With four actions a week, that will be
45 weeks.
With five actions a week, that will be
36 weeks.
With Bear marrow elixir our needed successes and actions drop to
2391 successes
Which divided by 15 average success per action =
160 actions.
With three actions that means it will take
54 weeks.
With four actions that means it will take
40 weeks.
With Five actions, that means it will take
31 weeks.
This assumes 15 successes an action for a premise. The moment we change that to 16 or 17 successes a week, everything changes. Every additional success seems to reduce the weeks required by 3.5 (around never exact)
With the assumption of 16 successes
2391 divided by 16 =
149 actions
With three actions a week that becomes
50 weeks
With four actions a week that becomes
37 weeks.
With 5 actions a week that becomes
30 weeks.
However, the magic will happen when we get 17 successes a week.
2391 divided by 17 =
141 actions
With three actions a week that becomes
47 weeks.
With four actions a week that becomes
35 weeks
With five actions a week that becomes
28 weeks.
As we can see here, Bear Marrow elixir is absolutely essential in order to do this in the time required. If we are able to get a total of 17 successes per action per week, we will be able to get to peak yellow, and peak silver, and 60+ qi within 35 weeks. This would leave one week to do a breakthrough to either bronze or green depending on what we wanted to do before the 52 weeks were up.
You might be saying though, but how can we get to 17 successes for a spiritual, physical, and qi cultivation every single week? And where are the arts and meridians we need! Fear not, for with the notification that we have 5 major actions we are going to be able to do everything we need. The reason for that is that we will get much more than 17 successes a week, and, in all likelihood, we will be able to get 18 or 19 successes a week.
At the current level, without any pills or other modifications, we have
Talent + AS + Red stones + Yellow Stone + AS vent = ?? + 2 auto successes
6 + 6 + 5 + 5 + 8 = 30 dice being thrown at the problem.
With an average of 15 successes + 2 auto-successes, we have 17 successes on average for every action involving physical, spiritual, and Qi rolling.
With only spending 3 red spirit stones we are already getting on average 17 successes. Now we throw in the pills we can buy: Steady growth pill (SGP), Bear Marrow Elixir (BME), Argent Elixir (AE), and Flowing rivers pill (FRP). (Note: I will also start referring to Spiritual cultivation as SC and Physical cultivation as PC)
From most expensive to least we have
AE = 10 red spirit stones (4 additional die for physical cultivation)
SGP = 8 red spirit stones (4 additional die for PC, SC, Qi)
FRP = 6 red spirit stones (3 additional die for water arts and SC)
BME = 4 red spirit stones (3 additional die for PC, + Qi expansion)
With the three red spirit stones we normally use, that brings us up to 31 spirit stones used per week for cultivation. Now some of you will be wondering "Why is AE being used, it's primarily used for Argent Soul cultivation and not really anything else." The answer is, it depends on Yrsillar. If he allows the AE proc to occur, but the overflow goes to SC, then we should most definitely use it because it will help SC keep up with PC. However, if Yrsillar views that it is gaming the system too much and using a pill for something that it was not designed for, then we can switch that pill with White Heart pill, which is cheaper, but gives one less die, and also only triggers for training wind arts and PC.
Moving on to the math then! This is where it becomes trickier, because the pills begin to affect different things, and so different cultivations will get different results. However, if we are able to get a rough approximation of which action will get what number of successes, we can hopefully see a medium amount of successes from the actions
This is Physical cultivation
Talent + AS + 3 redstones + 1 Yellow stone + ASV + SGE + BME + AE = ?? + 2 auto
6 + 6 + 5 + 5 + 8 + 4 + 3 + 4 = 41 dice + 2 auto's
On average that would be around 22 successes an action
(The loss of AE where it is replaced with White Heart Elixir will not change this number)
This is SC
Talent + AS + 3 redstones + 1 yellow stone + ASV + SGE + FRP = ?? + 2 auto
6 + 6 + 5 + 5 + 8 + 4 + 3 = 37 dice + 2 auto's
This comes out to about 20 successes an action
This is Qi expansion
Talent + AS + 3 redstones + 1 yellow stone + ASV + SGE = ?? + 2 auto
6 + 6 + 5 + 5 + 8 + 4 = 34 + 2 auto
This comes out to about 19 successes an action.
As you can see, PC will be moving at a bit of a faster clip than SC, but will also be helping Qi along as well. I'm not counting the addition to Qi right here because that addition was already calculated at the beginning in order to come up with the initial targets to hit. Now that we have this out of the way, we can work on what 20 successes a turn would look like with the previous numbers
With the BME the number of successes to hit is around
2391
To get the number of actions required to meet that number I have been dividing it based on the number of successes that I predict we will need to hit in order to determine that number of weeks it will take. However, I have decided that while that worked for the above hypothesis that it was possible to get to Peak yellow/silver it would be prudent to work in more detail in order to establish the growth rate of each level. This is because the medicines have messed with the numbers as well as to determine the exact number of actions we need for each specific area.
PC was a total of
840
Divide that number by the number of average successes we expect per turn, and we should have the number of independent actions it will take to get to peak yellow.
840 / 22 = 38 independent actions
SC was a total of
840
Divide that number by the number of average successes we expect per turn, and we should have the number of independent actions it will take to get to peak yellow.
840 / 20 = 42 Independent actions
Qi expansion (with Bear Marrow) was
711
Divide that number by the number of average successes we expect per turn, and we should have the number of independent actions it will take to get to peak yellow.
711 / 19 = 37 independent actions.
So there are some hard numbers on the number of actions it will take for each category to be at the minimum level we want them to be in. They can be depressing as it appears to be a lofty goal to have everything ready and still break Green Bronze by the time of the Thunderdome 2. However, fret not! There are things I have not included in these calculations because A) I do not know their value, or B) I'm not going to do 36 separate calculations to determine when we hit mid yellow/silver in order to calculate the boost that having a second yellow stone will give.
We don't know what AS 5 does nor do we know what EPC does, nor do we know what beast cores do. All of these are valuable resources that can greatly speed up our cultivation if we know about them. Also, I haven't even considered what benefits friends will give us, or the possibility of tutoring (Tutor Spiritual cultivation, we need more dice). All of these will give us large boosts to the speed and efficiency that we can cultivate. Consider also the tokens that we have received, something which gives a bonus action to a specific cultivation. This is most likely going to be SC as well as Qi expansion and that gives us 3 actions in each section that should not be ignored.
There will be cries though, we don't have the time by your calculations to cultivate EPC, or Meridians, or combat arts! Fear not, I say! For I have only calculated for a total of 3 actions, PC, SC, and Qi. That leaves the fourth action to be used for EPC, Meridians, or combat arts as the situation demands it! There is also the possibility of closed-door training to be considered as well, and the speed at which we will increase cultivating once we reach EPC and Mid yellow/silver can not be ignored either.
There are no social actions either in this plan! You're right, there isn't. With the new system that Yrsillar developed, I could focus my pure unadulterated attention on the mathematical portion of cultivation without a care to the social side. Because of this division, I don't need to calculate if becoming a social pariah is needed in order to reach our goals. We can have a strong thriving social network as well as becoming the number one cultivator in the sect. Because make no mistake, that is my goal. To stand as the last one among the tourney goers and say "I have made it this far by reaching out to my friend while reaching for the stars at the same time. I have decided to try for everything and I have yet to fail."
It may be arrogant of me to believe that this is possible, but it is still my belief that I can bake a cake and eat it as well.
This math has not been combed through thoroughly for errors, and there may be some. Please be jubilant in pointing them out so that we may all profit from them. Ideas are welcomed for condensing our actions to better fit the format that Yrsillar has provided as well as getting the most out of each action, as well as ideas on how to make up actions that have been lost in the pursuit of other noble goals. This is a document specifically espousing the need and desire to have a quest from the Job board every single week in order to fuel the engine of cultivation we will require. The math is used to support that idea, but free to take the math for yourself and create long-term goals from it.
While we do not know the values of mid yellow or late yellow, I have taken Arkeus's recognition of the pattern in red and have based my assumptions on that.
Edit: I have not included the rerolls for one, mainly so that my math can have some leeway, as well as to give us a nice boost the longer the route goes on.
@TheLastOne I got it done before Wednesday!
Forge of Destiny(Xianxia Quest)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Fantasy
That's awesome. I wonder though if the numbers line up completely with the fluff. Because this depicts a highly talented student with good social connections and decent resources barely making Green and Bronze when the impression I got was that the disciples who couldn't make the jump to the Inner Sect were the ones who topped off at Green and Bronze, implying that they were mid to late Green/Bronze, but didn't have the talent/motivation to break through. And I'm talking about the average students who never make it to the Inner Sect.
Ehhhh, can confirm that Ling Qi's year is an abberation with the number of high level 'rookies' it started with. You can bet that a bunch of folks who failed last year gnashing their teeth and feeling super salty about this F**cking ridiculous crop of newbies.
The idea that we should not share things because it'll be looked down upon seems a little... ehhhhh. I don't really see why this might be so.
All these gifts we are getting we will pay back through years of military service. Either these are prizes we have earned and they are ours to do as we see fit, or they aren't and yet another test of character to which it is unlikely that the right answer is 'generosity is terrible'. Cai is known to have gotten the pill from Elder Su's test even if it was useless to her and the assumption is she gave it away to one of her companions even if they hadn't earned it. In the Sect, friendship is treated as a form of worth. Dong Fu advised Ling Qi to make friends and even Bai Meizhen feels a lot better with a single friend (I had forgotten until I wrote the omake, but up until Ling Qi approached, Bai Meizhen had her head down and shoulders hunched). To then say 'we owe the Sect its secrets that they have never told us to keep' seems a little paranoid. I mean, it's quite likely that these are good techniques and all, but even if we tried to hand them out we run into the fact that most disciples:
There are only so many arts you can equip and our talent is absurd and we have omake power which makes a lot of meridian problems not problems, but I think you guys might have the problem backwards: it's not the act of giving it away that's going to be a problem, it's getting people to accept that's going to be the real trick.
All these gifts we are getting we will pay back through years of military service. Either these are prizes we have earned and they are ours to do as we see fit, or they aren't and yet another test of character to which it is unlikely that the right answer is 'generosity is terrible'. Cai is known to have gotten the pill from Elder Su's test even if it was useless to her and the assumption is she gave it away to one of her companions even if they hadn't earned it. In the Sect, friendship is treated as a form of worth. Dong Fu advised Ling Qi to make friends and even Bai Meizhen feels a lot better with a single friend (I had forgotten until I wrote the omake, but up until Ling Qi approached, Bai Meizhen had her head down and shoulders hunched). To then say 'we owe the Sect its secrets that they have never told us to keep' seems a little paranoid. I mean, it's quite likely that these are good techniques and all, but even if we tried to hand them out we run into the fact that most disciples:
- Don't have spare meridians just hanging about
- Might already have a perception art
- Aren't specialized in mountain or water
There are only so many arts you can equip and our talent is absurd and we have omake power which makes a lot of meridian problems not problems, but I think you guys might have the problem backwards: it's not the act of giving it away that's going to be a problem, it's getting people to accept that's going to be the real trick.
- Location
- Brazil
On the pills, I'm pretty sure there are equivalents to those we've seen that work for Heaven, given the amount of reskinned pills on the list.
Ok that makes a lot more sense. So usually, a lot of the people advancing to inner sect would be older students who spent a year or more breaking through into Bronze/Green? possibly even a majority?
EDIT: And are most people who are accepted into the Inner Sect Green/Bronze? My initial impression was that they were the level above, but these post imply that some people might have made it while still Yellow/Silver
Last edited:
Yeah I'll add at least basic pills for whichever elements you guys have. as in the standard two die ones, those exist for all the basic ones.
- Location
- Brazil
Question: is that 16 new disciples a year a hard cap, or are there ways to advance without going through the tournament.
Ling Qi doesn't know, but yeah there are ways.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Dollar's to donuts we get told "Ling Qi doesn't know."
Edit: Ninja
It's kind of odd to think on but Ji Rong is presumably quite educated in comparison to Ling Qi, who missed several years of any education at all and is probably the one forced to 'wing it' every day. Then compare that to those who probably see her as a scheming opportunist in league with a traitorous snake whose every move is ruthlessly calculated.
I agree. Money exists to be spent. Resources exist to be utilized to their fullest extent. Advantages exist to be seized. If we can leverage our archive pass or techniques in order to secure some extra bit of power, favor, or goodwill we should do so.
Of course helping our competitors could reduce our chances of winning the tournament, but there are plenty of people who are either weaker than us, like Han Jian's crew, or who are so much stronger than us it doesn't matter if we empower them further, or who are crafting cultivators, all of whom we can help without reducing our comparative advantage.
If the Elders want us to keep a technique a secret they'll lock it.
Last edited:
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
As I said, I have a theory that there are four different tests, each of those tests will have a silver or 'argent' reward, and those four rewards are the four foundational techniques of the sect which will have some kind of synergy if you learn them all. There's no way we could find them all by ourselves, but roping in Suyin and Ling might be doable. Sharing the arts would be an easy way of roping in Suyin (though I'm not sure how we would bribe Ling. She can't read so techniques are worthless to her).
- Location
- Cyberspace
On the sect being pissy about 'sharing prizes'... why the heck should they be? It's not sharing the art with outsiders - it's doing so with other Argent Sect disciples. Ling Qi was able to share the location of the vent with Bai Meizhen, and there's been a vigorous discussion about sharing it with others as well. Or giving someone Ling Qi's remaining Qi Foundation pill.
- Location
- United States of America
I don't believe that would be a problem. Remember when we got the Jade slip for FVM, SCS, and EPC? The knowledge of what they were was imparted directly to us. This argent slip could be similar, and then we just draw pictures and give verbal instructions if she wants to practice it
I honestly think that telling Ling there are a bunch of hidden trials on the mountain, filled with high end beast cores that she needs along with new arts for her and Suyin to work with would be enough to pull her in. She may not be able to read but she can probably get Suyin to reads things to her when we aren't around to make it more awkward.
- Location
- scrabbling
I'd personally prefer Thunder over Heaven as Ling Qi's 'damage' element. It swallowtails much better with FVM.
Jade Slips are meditated on and impart knowledge, though, right? Do you need to be literate for that?
It is sharing arts that were hidden behind tests with people that now don't have to bother exerting themselves to take the test. In much the same way that the kids that were not good enough to stay in the classes did not get continuing education giving arts to people that did not do the work to earn them seems to go against the behavior of the Sect in general. Obviously I think this is mutable to a degree, but I don't think giving out arts we earn through trials to our friends is going to be looked on the same way that sharing medicines is. Better to help them find a trial and then all of us do it together, proving they are actually capable and rewarding all of us.
- Location
- United States
Agreed with Thunder. Also it has to do with sound which in a different art further down the line may increase our stealthiness.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Thunder is sound, Heaven is lighting. And yes you do - Su Ling specifically hasn't learned Argent Soul or picked an art up from the liberty because she can't access the information in Jade Slips, because she can't read.
If I'm right about this... it's all about sharing. I bet you whether we went up or down we would have found an argent something as one of our options - down we found the Lake, up we would have found a Mountain of some kind. I bet you Bai Meizhen didn't though. One path could chose the Argent prize, one path can't, two people enter. Do that four times, and you only have a 6.25% chance of always ending up on the path with the Argent prize. You could only earn it by sharing.
Last edited:
- Location
- United States
Really? Do you remember what chapter that was in?
Personally, I think that trying to bribe it is a bad idea, given how badly the last write in turned out and the fact that
really isn't reassuring.
Yeeaaahhh, no. This:
pretty much sums it up.
... Did you not read the whole thing about how binding an unwilling spirit costs you way more qi?
No worries -- I don't think most of us want to see that many rolls in any case.
Missed the vote, but obvious choice is obvious so I don't really mind.
really isn't reassuring.
Yeeaaahhh, no. This:
pretty much sums it up.
... Did you not read the whole thing about how binding an unwilling spirit costs you way more qi?
No worries -- I don't think most of us want to see that many rolls in any case.
Missed the vote, but obvious choice is obvious so I don't really mind.
- Location
- scrabbling
So? We just had an encounter with sound attacks (though they weren't all that effective for various reasons). If FVM picks up Thunder and Ling Qi's already with that element, then Thunder reductions and cultivating bonuses for the damage art and for FVM will pair up together. If Ling Qi picks up a whole new element for one purpose then she has to go relatively far out of her way for the same benefits. I'd rather cut along a single long side than walk the other two legs of a triangle.
TheLastOne
Person of impeccable tastes (for destruction)
Really? Wow, I utterly misremembered.
In that case I am genuinely curious what exactly you think Bai got. Not to mention, I don't think there is an actual problem with sharing with whoever went with you on the Trial. I think the problem is sharing it past that, with people that did not have to pass any of the related tests.