History's Most Mediocre Cultivator (Xianxia Quest)

[Deathbybunnies]

@Timewinders can we say "Cultivate Ghost Eyes until we reach the next stage, then do X"? Or do we have to commit to a certain number of actions? It seems weird that we could do 2 Ghost Eyes actions, get unlucky and then Shen would just go and do other stuff despite being on the cusp. It would make sense on a shorter timescale, but not 11 weeks.

 

[Sickul]

Plan wise, I'm building towards Earth/Gravity heavy melee attacker/tank, leveraging our spear mastery(which is Talent agnostic) to make up the gap.

Click to shrink...

Air has a skill to enhance weapon rolls, while the gravity one is H2H I think.

So far we've seen nothing that rewards going into Elements, until we do why not get Skills that seem useful no matter the Element? At least until we get some kind of benefit to specializing.

I like your basic plan Veekie but not the Heavy Punch, I'm torn between Air Blade and Still Water. Air Blade would be so good for us right now... but Still Water, Suyin showed it to us but in our fight versus her she also used an Art to increase her strength. I wonder if we learn Still Water and meet with her, will she then teach us the Strength Art? Because that one would be so good for us. I'm going to roll the dice on it before we go to the Sect and can't meet with Suyin for awhile.

[X] [Minor Action] Gather the spiritual herbs that the Honored Elder spoke of.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Suyin – the daughter of one of your father's closest friends and a minor noble in her own right, Suyin is good company and an intelligent conversationalist when you can get her to speak. Though that would mean putting up with Father's teasing.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Chin, Fang, and Daquan – they are good friends, and you'll be leaving soon. It couldn't hurt to spend time with them.

Spoiler: Old plan

[X] Plan Please Teach Us Suyin-Sensei
-[X] [Cultivation] Ghost Eyes until Finished then Physical Cultivation
-[X] [Cultivation] Physical Cultivation x10
-[X] [Cultivation] Spear Mastery x11
-[X] [Cultivation] Still Water – a red-level water element art that increases balance (0/45 successes) x10 If Finished early then Stone Skin
-[X] [Tutoring] Spear Mastery x11
-[X] [MedBuy] Spirit Herb Pill (+ 5 dice to all cultivation rolls for one week. 300 coppers each).
--[X] 1
-[X] [MedUse] Heaven Flower Elixer - Physical Cultivation
-[X] [MedUse] Spirit Herb Pill - Physical Cultivation

 

[Timewinders]

@Timewinders can we say "Cultivate Ghost Eyes until we reach the next stage, then do X"? Or do we have to commit to a certain number of actions? It seems weird that we could do 2 Ghost Eyes actions, get unlucky and then Shen would just go and do other stuff despite being on the cusp. It would make sense on a shorter timescale, but not 11 weeks.

Click to shrink...

Sure, that's fine.

 

[Timewinders]

[X] [Minor Action] Gather the spiritual herbs that the Honored Elder spoke of.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Xiaoli – Now that she can cultivate, it might be a good idea to keep an eye on her, if only to make sure she doesn't burn down the entire province.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Suyin – the daughter of one of your father's closest friends and a minor noble in her own right, Suyin is good company and an intelligent conversationalist when you can get her to speak. Though that would mean putting up with Father's teasing.


[X] Plan Heavy Hitter
-[X] [Cultivation] Ghost Eyes x2
-[X] [Tutoring] Physical Cultivation x10
-[X] [Cultivation] Spear Mastery x11
-[X] [Cultivation] Stone Skin – a red-level earth element art that increases defense (0/60 successes) x5
-[X] [Cultivation] Heavy Punch – a red-level gravity art that aids physical attack rolls. (0/60 successes) x5
-[X] [Tutoring] Spear Mastery x11
-[X] [MedBuy] Spirit Herb Pill (+ 5 dice to all cultivation rolls for one week. 300 coppers each).
--[X] 1
-[X] [MedUse] Heaven Flower Elixer - Physical Cultivation
-[X] [MedUse] Spirit Herb Pill - Physical Cultivation

Going to take a bit of a risk here. The herbs would jumpstart us, but risks death. But with our low talent I think we're going to need to try some of the risk. Though its not tied to the plan.

Plan wise, I'm building towards Earth/Gravity heavy melee attacker/tank, leveraging our spear mastery(which is Talent agnostic) to make up the gap. We'd only be good at the one thing however. We can't grab whatever element clicks to our eye, so we'd need to specialize early. Earth and Gravity makes for a very strong defense with solid offense, but not much mobility(though both aren't entirely unable to do it, they do wallwalk and burrowing after all)
And since nothing else helps with spear, FULL daddy training there once we break through. 2 Ghost Eyes should achieve that.

Click to shrink...

As JoshieWoshie pointed out, there are only 11 actions that can be tutored.

 

[Deathbybunnies]

Sure, that's fine.

Click to shrink...

Great!

As JoshieWoshie pointed out, there are only 11 actions that can be tutored.

Click to shrink...

Given that this means the current plans are non-viable anyway, I ask that the plan-makers also change their plans to include "as many Ghost Eyes actions as is necessary to finish", and leave their least-important action as "all actions left over".

 

[Sickul]

Ya I'm guessing it's just the wrong tag and was meant to be Cultivation. I also specified where to put the Still Water overflow training if we get lucky with it, hope that's ok too.

 

[Valder]

Ugh ok people making plans we have 11 weeks, so 33 cultivation actions, 11 tutoring actions, and we can assume a budget of 1900. So everyone needs to adjust their medicine purchase and usage sections.

I hate that I'll be on mobile for a couple days. Will try to throw a plan together regardless.

 

[veekie]

^^
I'll adjust the spending to make use of the additional wealth

Don't we only have 11 tutoring?

Click to shrink...

Copy paste mistake. It's supposed to be Cultivation

Air has a skill to enhance weapon rolls, while the gravity one is H2H I think.

So far we've seen nothing that rewards going into Elements, until we do why not get Skills that seem useful no matter the Element? At least until we get some kind of benefit to specializing.

I like your basic plan Veekie but not the Heavy Punch, I'm torn between Air Blade and Still Water. Air Blade would be so good for us right now... but Still Water, Suyin showed it to us but in our fight versus her she also used an Art to increase her strength. I wonder if we learn Still Water and meet with her, will she then teach us the Strength Art? Because that one would be so good for us. I'm going to roll the dice on it before we go to the Sect and can't meet with Suyin for awhile.

Click to shrink...

I'm picking with a view towards long term elements, rather than building for what works now. Earth and Gravity would also have weapon arts, keeping that in mind, and since we aren't fighting yet, the DIRECTION of the thrust is what you want our themes to be. Wind and Water should be focused upon being a fluid, highly mobile fighter with evasion and stealth as major strategies, Earth and Gravity would be the Solidity combination, where you hit hard and tank hard, focused heavily upon weapon skill and equipment quality.

And well, partly I'm avoiding Wind because I want to avoid constant comparisons against Ling Qi.

 

[Sickul]

I'm picking with a view towards long term elements, rather than building for what works now. Earth and Gravity would also have weapon arts, keeping that in mind, and since we aren't fighting yet, the DIRECTION of the thrust is what you want our themes to be. Wind and Water should be focused upon being a fluid, highly mobile fighter with evasion and stealth as major strategies, Earth and Gravity would be the Solidity combination, where you hit hard and tank hard, focused heavily upon weapon skill and equipment quality.

Click to shrink...

Based upon the Elder's words

Of course, you can always supplement your main elemental focus with a few useful arts in other elements.

Click to shrink...

why not just cherry pick at this point? We have no incentive not to and in fact the benefit of being a unimpressive cultivator with social ability is the ability to learn Arts outside from those friendly to you, like Suyin taught us Still Water. Dodge and Defense both help mitigate; being good at both just helps us defend better.

If learning this Art does lead to Suyin teaching us the Strength one... that one raises Strength by 4, that's good for attacking no matter what element it is, Earth Wind Light...whatever I want that one too. No reason to specialize when there's little benefit to limiting ourselves that way. If there's a benefit to specializing later then we can do so and still use our off specialized elements, as the elder says.

 

[kalugin]

[X] Plan Heavy Hitter

 

[Nevill]

[X] [Minor Action] Gather the spiritual herbs that the Honored Elder spoke of.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Father – You do spend quite a bit of time with Father during training and some social events visiting subordinates. But outside of duty, you could still get to know him better as a person.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Suyin – the daughter of one of your father's closest friends and a minor noble in her own right, Suyin is good company and an intelligent conversationalist when you can get her to speak. Though that would mean putting up with Father's teasing.

Herbs, Dad and Suyin. Commense the teasing. Could swap Dad for Xiaoli, but I'd like to have at least 1 more major interaction with the old man.

Not sure about the cultivation, I'll let others figure it out. I am leaning more towards Suyin's arts, but we'll see.

Edit:
[X] Suyin Stealth

 

[Valder]

We are at 300 coppers. In 1 week, 5 weeks, and 9 weeks we get our allowance, so 800 each gives a total budget of 2700 coppers. This translates to 9 Spirit Herb Pills.

@Timewinders can a single pill be split between cultivation actions? The pill description says all cultivation actions over the week, so I assume so in my plans below. Otherwise for efficient medicine usage we should always cultivate in weekly slots, i.e. in groups of 3 actions. It muddles the dice math some though.

2 cultivation actions give a 99.9% chance of reaching Ghost Eyes 2, at which point each cultivation action gives 30 dice.

Assuming Ghost Eyes 2, 7 cultivation actions and the use of Spirit Herb Pills give a 97.6% chance of finishing a boost technique. I picked Wind and Earth because that is what I favour. Feel free to change.

11 spear training actions with tutoring gives 220 dice. Expected result should leave us at 119/600. Not sure it's worth it myself.

Putting at least 7 cultivation actions and some pills towards Physical Cultivation guarantees reaching Flexibility Cultivation 2. Increasing both HP and dodge. Another 9 cultivation after that gives a good chance of reaching the next Physical Cultivation, further increasing HP and either dodge or defense. The plan below guarantees two levels of Physical Cultivation, and has a good chance (97.5%) of finishing a third.

This plan should place us where Suyin was at our spar 3 months ago.

[X] Plan Rushing Physical Cultivation
-[X] [Cultivation] Ghost Eyes x2
-[X] [Cultivation] Air Blade – a red-level wind art that enhances a weapon's sharpness, aiding physical attack rolls. (0/60 successes) x7
-[X] [Cultivation] Stone Skin – a red-level earth element art that increases defense (0/60 successes) x7
-[X] [Cultivation] Physical Cultivation x17
-[X] [Tutoring] Physical Cultivation x11
-[X] [MedBuy] Spirit Herb Pill (+ 5 dice to all cultivation rolls for one week. 300 coppers each).
--[X] 9
-[X] [MedUse] Heaven Flower Elixir x1 - Physical Cultivation x3
-[X] [MedUse] Spirit Herb Pill x9 - Air Blade x7, Stone Skin x7, Physical Cultivation x13

 

[The Meddler]

Uh, I might be missing something but aren't we at 394/400 for Ghost Eyes? Wouldn't it be better to train something else and use the one-third of successes to it to level up?

 

[Valder]

Uh, I might be missing something but aren't we at 394/400 for Ghost Eyes? Wouldn't it be better to train something else and use the one-third of successes to it to level up?

Click to shrink...

Hitting Ghost Eyes 2 adds 5 dice to every cultivation action thereafter. It'd be a waste of potential dice when the whole point of spending the last 2.75 months cultivating Ghost Eyes was the increased dice pools.

 

[Sickul]

Interesting plan, I was thinking of trading the spear training for sparring myself for the long term goal of getting martial up, that would raise spear as well, but both are a long ways away.

Something to keep in mind is that we have both Non Elemental Arts trained a bit. And they both seem broadly useful.

The Physical Cultivation does seem useful. I am changing my plan away from the Spear Mastery for it. After thinking a bit I'm going to train the Stealth and Qi Dampening Art; to increase our chances of being able to get the Herb without alerting a Spirit beast. We aren't talented, so we are going to need to be resourceful and get things to speed up our growth, think the stealth will be useful long term.

Hopefully this build will give us the chance to learn another Art from Suyin and get the herbs safely.

[X] [Minor Action] Gather the spiritual herbs that the Honored Elder spoke of.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Suyin – the daughter of one of your father's closest friends and a minor noble in her own right, Suyin is good company and an intelligent conversationalist when you can get her to speak. Though that would mean putting up with Father's teasing.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Chin, Fang, and Daquan – they are good friends, and you'll be leaving soon. It couldn't hurt to spend time with them.

[X] Suyin Stealth
-[X] [Cultivation] Ghost Eyes until Finished then Physical Cultivation
-[X] [Cultivation] Physical Cultivation x12
-[X] [Cultivation] Still Water – a red-level water element art that increases balance (0/45 successes) x6
-[X] [Cultivation] Soundless Step – a red-level shadow art that eliminates the sound of one's footsteps, aiding stealth rolls. (0/60 successes) x7
-[X] [Cultivation] Qi Dampening: (11/60 successes) x5
-[X] Any overflow can after learning these 3 can go into Stone Skin.
-[X] [Tutoring] Physical Cultivation x11
-[X] [MedBuy] Spirit Herb Pill (+ 5 dice to all cultivation rolls for one week. 300 coppers each).
--[X] 9
-[X] [MedUse] Heaven Flower Elixir x1 - Physical Cultivation x3
-[X] [MedUse] Spirit Herb Pill x9 - Still Water x6, Soundless Step x7, Qi Dampening x 5 Physical Cultivation x9

 

[veekie]

why not just cherry pick at this point? We have no incentive not to and in fact the benefit of being a unimpressive cultivator with social ability is the ability to learn Arts outside from those friendly to you, like Suyin taught us Still Water. Dodge and Defense both help mitigate; being good at both just helps us defend better.

Click to shrink...

Wrong way around. We'd need talismans and drugs to boost stuff, so the more diverse we get the worse our Talent screws us because our time is a very precious resource.

The Elder said we can pick up a few side arts for utility and that's correct. But this ISN'T utility here.

 

[Valder]

Physically we want our two main elements to cover as many of the 5 types of physical boosts as possible: Attack, Defense, Flexibility, Balance, Speed. We apparently only get to have one boost of each type at a time, being efficient there is important.

At the moment we know Wind has Speed, Water has Balance, Stone has Defense. Almost everything will have Attack. Thematically Water and Wind are good bets for Flexibility.

Attack and Defense are higher priority for boosts, so Earth is a good fit. Of the three dodge stats I think Speed is the most generally useful, which is why I advocate for Wind.

At the moment though we're simply picking our first technique. Would it not make more sense to go for an offensive art to have a ranged attack? It covers one of our current deficiencies.

 

[Sickul]

Consider, Ghost Eyes 2 also raises our perception. Soundless Step and Qi Dampening raise our Stealth. Together they could turn the risky business of gathering the herbs the Elder talked about into something we can try and do fairly often to aid our cultivation.

We can't be talented, but we can be hard working and sneaky.

 

[Alratan]

I think focusing on a melee build is a mistake. When you're inherently weaker than the competition, you need to win through guile and subtly, not try to match them brute force for brute force. Being a tank seems like a particular problem, as that doesn't really allow for the use of skill or intelligence, those with the better cultivation and so most hit points and techniques will win.

I'd agree that Soundless Step and Qi Dampening are the way to go here, before moving on to things like poison or things we can prepare in advance.

As a spear user, we may want to look into thrown weapon arts as well. Ideally, we'd have picked something like a bow, but that ship has sailed.

 

[Valder]

My issue with picking the herbs is that we're off to the sect in just 11 weeks. Soundless Step and Qi Dampening would require around 5 weeks to finish I believe. So we might benefit from the herb once before heading off to the sect. Maybe if we had focused on this at the start of the 5 month plan. For now my intention is to shore up our basics to some minimum standard so that we have some hope of competing for initial resources and attention at the sect. Regardless of what we specialize in eventually we will want basic boosts to all stats if only for versatility. Physical Cultivation 2 is only 70 points each. That's kind of low hanging fruit still.

 

[Neptune]

[X] [Minor Action] Gather the spiritual herbs that the Honored Elder spoke of.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Suyin – the daughter of one of your father's closest friends and a minor noble in her own right, Suyin is good company and an intelligent conversationalist when you can get her to speak. Though that would mean putting up with Father's teasing.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Chin, Fang, and Daquan – they are good friends, and you'll be leaving soon. It couldn't hurt to spend time with them.

[X] Suyin Stealth

 

[Timewinders]

We are at 300 coppers. In 1 week, 5 weeks, and 9 weeks we get our allowance, so 800 each gives a total budget of 2700 coppers. This translates to 9 Spirit Herb Pills.

@Timewinders can a single pill be split between cultivation actions? The pill description says all cultivation actions over the week, so I assume so in my plans below. Otherwise for efficient medicine usage we should always cultivate in weekly slots, i.e. in groups of 3 actions. It muddles the dice math some though.

2 cultivation actions give a 99.9% chance of reaching Ghost Eyes 2, at which point each cultivation action gives 30 dice.

Assuming Ghost Eyes 2, 7 cultivation actions and the use of Spirit Herb Pills give a 97.6% chance of finishing a boost technique. I picked Wind and Earth because that is what I favour. Feel free to change.

11 spear training actions with tutoring gives 220 dice. Expected result should leave us at 119/600. Not sure it's worth it myself.

Putting at least 7 cultivation actions and some pills towards Physical Cultivation guarantees reaching Flexibility Cultivation 2. Increasing both HP and dodge. Another 9 cultivation after that gives a good chance of reaching the next Physical Cultivation, further increasing HP and either dodge or defense. The plan below guarantees two levels of Physical Cultivation, and has a good chance (97.5%) of finishing a third.

This plan should place us where Suyin was at our spar 3 months ago.

[X] Plan Rushing Physical Cultivation
-[X] [Cultivation] Ghost Eyes x2
-[X] [Cultivation] Air Blade – a red-level wind art that enhances a weapon's sharpness, aiding physical attack rolls. (0/60 successes) x7
-[X] [Cultivation] Stone Skin – a red-level earth element art that increases defense (0/60 successes) x7
-[X] [Cultivation] Physical Cultivation x17
-[X] [Tutoring] Physical Cultivation x11
-[X] [MedBuy] Spirit Herb Pill (+ 5 dice to all cultivation rolls for one week. 300 coppers each).
--[X] 9
-[X] [MedUse] Heaven Flower Elixir x1 - Physical Cultivation x3
-[X] [MedUse] Spirit Herb Pill x9 - Air Blade x7, Stone Skin x7, Physical Cultivation x13

Click to shrink...

Yes, a pill can be split between multiple actions.

 

[wingstrike96]

[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Meiling – Soon you will be gone and will rarely see your sister for two years. It might be good to spend some time with her now.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Xiaoli – Now that she can cultivate, it might be a good idea to keep an eye on her, if only to make sure she doesn't burn down the entire province.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Suyin – the daughter of one of your father's closest friends and a minor noble in her own right, Suyin is good company and an intelligent conversationalist when you can get her to speak. Though that would mean putting up with Father's teasing.
[X] Plan Heavy Hitter

 

[RideTheWalrus]

[X] [Minor Action] Gather the spiritual herbs that the Honored Elder spoke of.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Suyin – the daughter of one of your father's closest friends and a minor noble in her own right, Suyin is good company and an intelligent conversationalist when you can get her to speak. Though that would mean putting up with Father's teasing.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Chin, Fang, and Daquan – they are good friends, and you'll be leaving soon. It couldn't hurt to spend time with them.

 

[Anfauglir]

[X] Suyin Stealth

[X] [Minor Action] Gather the spiritual herbs that the Honored Elder spoke of.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Suyin – the daughter of one of your father's closest friends and a minor noble in her own right, Suyin is good company and an intelligent conversationalist when you can get her to speak. Though that would mean putting up with Father's teasing.
[X] [Minor Action] Spend time with Chin, Fang, and Daquan – they are good friends, and you'll be leaving soon. It couldn't hurt to spend time with them.