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History's Most Mediocre Cultivator (Xianxia Quest)

How should the remainder of the five months prior to joining the sect be handled?

  • Same as usual (i.e. 5 more updates similar to the last 2)

    Votes: 10 43.5%

  • Vote for a cultivation plan for all 5 months at once and then having a training montage

    Votes: 4 17.4%

  • Vote for a cultivation plan for all 5 months and then have updates with character events and RPing

    Votes: 15 65.2%

  • Continue as usual, but with shorter, more frequent updates until the five months are up

    Votes: 6 26.1%
  • Total voters
    23
  • Poll closed .
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Umi-san said:
Done.
Why is the progress time for Ghost Eyes so long?
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Ghost Eyes basically determines how well you can learn arts because of your proficiency with qi in general as well as your ability to use high-level arts with complex Qi flows, since you need to be very good at observing qi in great detail in order to do anything. In order for it to realistically take centuries for a cultivator to go from red to white, it needs to take a large number of successes to get to white. Otherwise any noble could do it. The number of successes also scales so it takes progressively more successes to get to the next level. 400 successes means your average noble with a talent of 5 would take about 3 months to go from red to orange, assuming they spent all their time training Ghost Eyes and didn't have a tutor or use medicines.

Tam Lin said:
What if we just passively trained Ghost Eyes by being blindfolded all the time.

Just make Ghost Eyes our main method of sight for a few turns and see how that goes?
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It only shows qi, so you'd run into walls, not be able to open doors, not be able to eat, etc. It's also not great for social interactions. In order to get by you'd end up relying on other senses like touch or hearing, which defeats the purpose.
 
Umi-san said:
>looks at our slow progress on ghost eyes
>begins crying

[X] Plan Get Daddy To Make Stronk
-[X] [Cultivation] Ghost Eyes x5
-[X] [Cultivation] Physical Cultivation x2
-[X] [Cultivation] Elemental Qi Control x3
-[X] [Cultivation] Spear Mastery x1
-[X] [Cultivation] Qi Dampening – a basic nonelemental stealth art to hide one's qi signature. x1
-[X] [Tutoring] Ghost Eyes x1
-[X] [Tutoring] Physical Cultivation x2
-[X] [Tutoring] Qi Transfusion – a nonelemental art that allows one to transfer qi to or from another person. Requires physical contact, can be used to take qi, give qi, or enhance healing of another person. x1
-[X] [Medicines] Spirit Herb Pill (+ 5 dice to all cultivation rolls for one week. 300 coppers each).
--[X] 2
-[X] [MedUse] 3x Elemental Qi control; 3x Ghost Eyes

Ghost Eyes are the key to rapid progress in arts, but is mostly a matter of self-practice.
Physical cultivation is a good base and our dad is stronk so we can be stronk too if we get him to help us.
Learn Qi Transfusion w/ dad because it might be useful some day and you probably can't practice it alone.
Learn Qi Dampening because it might be useful some day and you can practice it alone, kind of.
Elemental Qi cus y'all won't be fine w/ just being a non-elemental cultivator like I'd like.
Spear training to keep the skills up-ish.

Spirit Herb Pill is the best value for $.
5/300 = 0.0166666667
7/500 = 0.014
10/800 = 0.0125

Obviously when we have a higher allowance the value of time will increase, and thus we'll buy better pills. But atm we're poor.
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One other issue I didn't notice until now. If you want tutoring for Qi Transfusion then you need to spend an action on Qi Transfusion cultivation. Or did you mean for the tutoring to be for Qi Dampening?
 
Hmm, each week of effort is Ghost Eyes 1*5 + Talent 4*5 dice, which as d10s rolling under Talent is about 3/10 of the dicepool in average successes. So while Ghost Eyes is at 1, we'd be looking at the following gains:
-Base 25 dice => 7.5 successes
-With Spirit Herb Pill(we aren't looking at the other drugs, since the Heaven Flower elixir is too expensive and the Elemenetal Pill is useless without an element) 30 dice => 9 successes

Our thresholds are:
-Elemental Qi 27/50 - 3 actions with Spirit Herb Pill or without it.
-Ghost Eyes 41/400 - 40 actions with Spirit Herb Pill, 48 actions without it. Fortunately other types of cultivation feeds into it.
-Flexibility 19/70 - 6 actions with Spirit Herb Pill or 7 actions without
-Qi 0/3, curr 8. Fortunately other stuff feeds into this too.

It'd take 40 actions dedicated to Ghost Eyes to raise it even with drugs, but it makes ALL other cultivation easier, so it's well worth it.

[X] Plan Ghost Eyes Foundation
-[X] [Cultivation] Ghost Eyes x6
-[X] [Cultivation] Elemental Qi Control x3
-[X] [Cultivation] Spear Mastery
-[X] [Cultivation] Qi Dampening – a basic nonelemental stealth art to hide one's qi signature.
-[X] [Cultivation] Qi Transfusion – a nonelemental art that allows one to transfer qi to or from another person. Requires physical contact, can be used to take qi, give qi, or enhance healing of another person.
-[X] [Tutoring] Spear Mastery
-[X] [Tutoring] Ghost Eyes
-[X] [Tutoring] Qi Dampening – a basic nonelemental stealth art to hide one's qi signature.
-[X] [Tutoring] Qi Transfusion – a nonelemental art that allows one to transfer qi to or from another person. Requires physical contact, can be used to take qi, give qi, or enhance healing of another person.
-[X] [Medicines] Spirit Herb Pill (+ 5 dice to all cultivation rolls for one week. 300 coppers each).
--[X] 2
-[X] [MedUse] Spirit Herb - Ghost Eyes x2

Okay, so here, I think my priorities are:
1) Unlocking elemental qi. The elemental herb pill is just that much better but we can't use it yet.
2) Grinding Ghost Eyes. We want Ghost Eyes as high as we can manage before we go to the Sect, because it adds to ALL cultivation and our target numbers will be large.
3) Picking up skills from dad, so the Qi Dampening and Transfusion are a good start. So is finishing the weapon mastery.

Physical cultivation on the backburner, I think the Ghost Eyes is more urgent since no combat yet
 
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Timewinders said:
Ghost Eyes basically determines how well you can learn arts because of your proficiency with qi in general as well as your ability to use high-level arts with complex Qi flows, since you need to be very good at observing qi in great detail in order to do anything. In order for it to realistically take centuries for a cultivator to go from red to white, it needs to take a large number of successes to get to white. Otherwise any noble could do it. The number of successes also scales so it takes progressively more successes to get to the next level. 400 successes means your average noble with a talent of 5 would take about 3 months to go from red to orange, assuming they spent all their time training Ghost Eyes and didn't have a tutor or use medicines.



It only shows qi, so you'd run into walls, not be able to open doors, not be able to eat, etc. It's also not great for social interactions. In order to get by you'd end up relying on other senses like touch or hearing, which defeats the purpose.
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Do wood and paper not have Qi?

Is Feng Shui not a thing for managing the flow of Qi through the house?

Oh, also food doesn't have Qi?

I thought there was something about eating certain foods so your Yin Qi and Yang Qi are balanced.

I might be confusing Chinese mythology in general with xianxia
 
Tam Lin said:
Do wood and paper not have Qi?

Is Feng Shui not a thing for managing the flow of Qi through the house?

Oh, also food doesn't have Qi?

I thought there was something about eating certain foods so your Yin Qi and Yang Qi are balanced.

I might be confusing Chinese mythology in general with xianxia
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This setting is inspired by xianxia but doesn't follow every xianxia trope. Qi exists but only in living things, so it's there in trees but not wood or paper. The elements are different rather than the classic Chinese elements. There's still the philosophical concept of Yin and Yang, and certain elements are thought to be associated with yin or yang, but it has no mechanical effect in the quest.
 
Valder said:
[X] Plan Ghost Eyes Foundation


The target number seems to be our Talent though, which Ghost Eyes does not affect.
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Yes, similar to Forge of Destiny the number of successes is the number below Talent. So where Ling Qi could expect around 50% of her dice to be successes, for Shaohuo it's more like 30%. Ghost Eyes still helps with all types of cultivation though. For elemental arts (which most arts are), the elemental mastery level also plays a role.
 
Tutoring might be more profitable on Ghost Eyes than either of the new techniques then. Especially as neither seem especially useful yet.
 
@Timewinders How much is our allowance? 400/month?
What will the impact of our father's tutoring be? Are all tutoring options equally beneficial, numerically?

As far as yin/yang/elements go, did you retain the elemental cycle?
 
Umi-san said:
@Timewinders How much is our allowance? 400/month?
What will the impact of our father's tutoring be? Are all tutoring options equally beneficial, numerically?

As far as yin/yang/elements go, did you retain the elemental cycle?
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There isn't an elemental cycle here. Just philosophical concepts like Light and Fire are considered Yang arts while Shadow and Water are considered Yin arts, etc. It's also considered a good idea to have a balance of Yang arts, which tend to have more offensive uses, and Yin arts, which allow for subtlety and fine control. Father's tutoring was actually shown in the previous chapter - it adds 10 dice to each cultivation roll. However, teaching (i.e. from an experienced teacher who's highly skilled in cultivation like you'd find in the sect) will give a larger bonus of 20 dice, but will often be harder to obtain. Your allowance has been increased to be 800 per month (you got 400 for these two weeks). This is actually quite a bit since for the sake of convenience I've given 1 copper a similar purchasing power to a dollar. Some things are still more expensive due to lacking modern manufacturing, and cultivation medicines are always going to be very expensive due to scarcity of materials, craftsmanship needed to produce them, high demand by rich nobles willing to pay, etc.
 
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veekie said:
Deliberate. Pre sect our best bet is to raise Ghost Eyes at least once...and its as good as doubling our maximum drug intake for everything we train. Physical cultivation included in accelerated progression once we achieve that.
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And so you sacrifice it but still do elemental because you want to use the elemental spirit pill, despite the fact that the elemental pill is not actually more effective than the herbal pill per dollar.

Timewinders said:
[X] [Medicines] Spirit Herb Pill (+ 5 dice to all cultivation rolls for one week. 300 coppers each).
-[X] Number of medications
[X] [Medicines] Elemental Spirit Herb Pill (+ 7 dice to all cultivation rolls of a particular element for one week. 500 coppers each).
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Elemental Spirit Herb Pill: 500/7 = 71.4285714
Spirit Herb Pill: 300/5 = 60.
I.e., Spirit Herb Pill costs 10 less per point gained.

If we had > 2k allowance/month then sure, elemental spirit herb pill would be more worthwhile. But atm we don't. So while the basic Spirit Herb Pill has less effectiveness per unit of time, its effectiveness per unit of money makes it a better choice until the point at which we can freely buy 4 elemental spirit herb pills a turn. Which is not likely to be soon.
veekie said:
1) Unlocking elemental qi. The elemental herb pill is just that much better but we can't use it yet.
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As such, the precedence you give unlocking elemental qi is without merit if you follow the argument underlined above. The elemental herb pill is better... if we can afford it.

Edit: But if it really will only take 3 more actions to bring it on par with our flexibility that's fine.
[X] Plan Ghost Eyes Foundation
 
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[X] Plan Physical Specialization
[X] [Cultivation] Physical Cultivation x 12
[X] [Tutoring] Physical Cultivation x 4
[X] [Medicines] Spirit Herb Pill (+ 5 dice to all cultivation rolls for one week. 300 coppers each).
-[X] 2
[X] [MedUse] Use 1 first 2 weeks

Seems to me with less talent you need to specialize, especially since we are doing more than just cultivation nonstop.

Seems hard to go wrong specializing in physical right now.
 
veekie said:
With less Talent we need Cultivation boosters ASAP actually. Thats why Ghost Eyes. Getting it a year early is 60 more dice
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Are we always going to have this much training time?

My thinking is more that being mediocre we have to choose something to focus and become exceptional at, because trying to do it all with mediocre talent you just end mediocre. But if you focus your mediocre talent on one thing and specialize you become Rock Lee.
 
Sickul said:
Are we always going to have this much training time?

My thinking is more that being mediocre we have to choose something to focus and become exceptional at, because trying to do it all with mediocre talent you just end mediocre. But if you focus your mediocre talent on one thing and specialize you become Rock Lee.
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Mechanically incorrect, we're behind enough that we need growth accelerators before specializing does anything but leave us further behind
 
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