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Marked for Death: A Rational Naruto Quest

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Stat Progressions for Akane

Here's another sheet in the same vein for Akane's stats progression. You can find it here (Resolve Grinding (Akane))

It turns out that not only is she not behind Kei, but she's actually a little bit ahead accounting for the XP already on her sheet -- which I attribute to Akane's overall higher stats.

Note: the sheet doesn't account for elemental halfcost.

Takeaways:
  • Akane has a lot of buffs that are very good, but they're also very, very expensive in terms of chakra. Leveling all of them, along with her chakra reserves, slows her down a lot.
    • Part of this is due to very harsh assumptions on how much Pantokrator's Hammer we'll need in the worst case. 5x at max Effect is a lot more than I think we'll need in the average case.
    • In practice, levels in CR to have an extra round of PKH might be better put into TJ, Ath, or Alt, which get us the boost faster, as well as increase the speed of the next detour.
    • FA is very, very expensive, as expected.
  • EM45 is just about 7 months away in-character, assuming we do them at the very first detour.
  • Among Akane's top stats, it doesn't matter which one we raise first for overall speed.
    • Turns out that raising her lower Alertness first gets us the same results as raising her higher Taijutsu, plus or minus around 4 days by the end.
    • Generalizing -- it doesn't matter too much what stats we choose as column stats as long as we stick with them in the long run, since most of our stats are about equally low right now.
    • However, excessive detouring cuts away at our overall speed more than selecting slightly lower column stats.
 
Oneiros said:
Because if we get them now we have them for when we we are healed instead of having to waste time afterwards. Prep work is a good idea and important

Why do you not want to look into obtaining personal power ups when we have the opportunity to?
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This is textbook FOMO: Fear of Missing Out.

Hazou does not immediately need Sage mode for any of his outstanding problems. In the short term it would be much more beneficial to have him rest and recuperate so that he does not have a mental breakdown.

Sage mode isn't going anywhere (as long as we don't piss off every single summoning clan), but the longer we put off having Hazou rest the more likely it is that his recovery will take even longer. Furthermore, the world war takes precedence over long term projects since Leaf's survival is a necessary requirement for us to achieve almost all of our far off goals. Hazou needs to learn about village military strategy and logistics IC if he's going to be a productive member of the Leaf war council even while he is physically incapacitated.

In the best case yet still realistic scenario I can think of, Cannai can let us know Sage mode exists and offer to teach us, but he will insist we need to be in better shape before we do so. After that, he's going to ask us why we need it now when we already have a world war and the dragons to deal with and our body is too injured to train anyway. I can't think of any reason Hazou can give Cannai other than, "I like shinies."

I am not opposed to getting Sage mode after Hazou becomes more physically and mentally sound. I believe we have more pressing matters to attend to before we should try to get it though.
 
Dictator4Hire said:
since Leaf's survival is a necessary requirement for us to achieve almost all of our far off goals.
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[Citation needed]

If Leaf gets nuked then we can always take our shinies and hop back off to Mist.

We are the most successful infiltrators on the planet. Always have been as of last Tuesday.

Yagura would be proud. Shame he died after giving us that long-term mission to infiltrate those Leaf stinkers -- might I mention that it's actually amazing they didn't execute us sooner for all our treasonous activities, a clear testament to our capabilities. Bless his awful haircut.

So, Auntie Ren, I heard you might be in need of a Clan Heir at some point...
 
MMKII said:
[Citation needed]

If Leaf gets nuked then we can always take our shinies and hop back off to Mist.

We are the most successful infiltrators on the planet. Always have been as of last Tuesday.

Yagura would be proud. Shame he died after giving us that long-term mission to infiltrate those Leaf stinkers -- might I mention that it's actually amazing they didn't execute us sooner for all our treasonous activities, a clear testament to our capabilities. Bless his awful haircut.

So, Auntie Ren, I heard you might be in need of a Clan Heir at some point...
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This is why I said "almost all" :p

There's always someone in the hivemind playing the "technically correct" devil/shoggoth's advocate.
 
Dictator4Hire said:
Hazou does not immediately need Sage mode for any of his outstanding problems. In the short term it would be much more beneficial to have him rest and recuperate so that he does not have a mental breakdown.
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I don't think we've seen evidence in the text of an impending mental breakdown. We already had some puppy time with Kei and Shika, and talking to Cannai is usually relaxing. I'd say we're as good to go as we could be considering the recent trauma from Oro
 
Oneiros said:
Yeah I'm not seeing any reason to not do it now in any of this. We have some free time and can use it to track down a powerup. And even if we can't learn it for a week or two the rest of the team can. So we can potentially get pay off right away. As for the recovery argument how does having a conversation going to endanger our recovery? We already gave Leaf the strategy to win the war but people are interested in advancing that quest line, so unless you want to advocate for us to actually get involved in the politics of recruiting Mist that's largely a waste of time.
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How can we give it to any of our teammates if we do not have Hazou himself learn it first?

We need to maximize recovery opportunities while we can since we do not know when the war or the dragons will force Hazou into action. All of the time spent teleporting to the 7th path and back is less time Hazou has to spend in bed healing. I advocated reading so he had something to do while letting his body rest.

We gave Leaf a tactic, not a strategy. We should not underestimate the other villages' resourcefulness nor their tenacity. If zoo rushing can solely win the war on its own that would be fantastic but I would rather err on the side of caution because we, as players, have no idea what MfD world wars are actually like besides that most only lasted for a few months.

I don't think we will need to actively seek out politics for us to get involved in them: politics, internal and international, will come for us. We need to be prepared by resting now for when that will happen, not if.

Sir Stompy said:
I don't think we've seen evidence in the text of an impending mental breakdown. We already had some puppy time with Kei and Shika, and talking to Cannai is usually relaxing. I'd say we're as good to go as we could be considering the recent trauma from Oro
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Hazou was legendarily taken out when Oro intimidated him. For all we know Rock and Cloud spies within Leaf have already reported that Oro has left the village and our enemies are preparing a decapitating strike against Leaf right now. Every moment we spend resting now will help us alleviate all of the maluses Hazou has accumulated over the past few months. Immediate rest could be the difference between Hazou's death and his survival in the event of a worst case scenario.

Hell, the QM's mentioning:
Velorien said:
If he {Oro} loses, he already knows that he can live a satisfactory existence on his own—again, assuming the taste of civilisation doesn't incline him to join one of our enemies, and sell our secrets in exchange for more corpses or whatever it is Orochimaru wants from life.
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Could be foreshadowing that Oro already has plans to defect.

I really do not believe Hazou is safe enough in the medium to long term to afford not to focus on his personal health in a moment of relative quiet.
 
Adhoc vote count started by eaglejarl on Nov 20, 2021 at 4:57 PM, finished with 122 posts and 13 votes.
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Voting is closed.
 
Dictator4Hire said:
Every moment we spend resting now will help us alleviate all of the maluses Hazou has accumulated over the past few months. Immediate rest could be the difference between Hazou's death and his survival in the event of a worst case scenario.
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Sage Mode is all about chilling out and vibing. Hazou loved learning earthshaping and communing with the earth, he'll probably enjoy Sage Mode too tbh. I think it's overly optimistic he gets it though. Like we never saw Kakashi use it and the Dogs loved that guy. More important that we find out it exists so Noburi at least can get it
 
Dictator4Hire said:
Hazou was legendarily taken out when Oro intimidated him. For all we know Rock and Cloud spies within Leaf have already reported that Oro has left the village and our enemies are preparing a decapitating strike against Leaf right now. Every moment we spend resting now will help us alleviate all of the maluses Hazou has accumulated over the past few months. Immediate rest could be the difference between Hazou's death and his survival in the event of a worst case scenario.

Hell, the QM's mentioning:

Could be foreshadowing that Oro already has plans to defect.

I really do not believe Hazou is safe enough in the medium to long term to afford not to focus on his personal health in a moment of relative quiet.
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I don't feel like it's a critical concern at this time. If the QMs imply Hazou is starting to freak out b/c of stress in the update, I will vote for something like what you suggested. As it is, there's too much to do right now for Hazou to take a day off.
 
Shrooms said:
Sage Mode is all about chilling out and vibing. Hazou loved learning earthshaping and communing with the earth, he'll probably enjoy Sage Mode too tbh. I think it's overly optimistic he gets it though. Like we never saw Kakashi use it and the Dogs loved that guy. More important that we find out it exists so Noburi at least can get it
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Do we know this for certain with IC data? For all we know (unless there is a QM quote that proves otherwise then I'll admit I am wrong) MfD Sage mode works differently enough from canon that we should not make assumptions.

Sir Stompy said:
I don't feel like it's a critical concern at this time. If the QMs imply Hazou is starting to freak out b/c of stress in the update, I will vote for something like what you suggested. As it is, there's too much to do right now for Hazou to take a day off.
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Velorien said:
And then there was self-care, so to speak. Twice in twenty-four hours, Hazō had been struck by the soul-deep violation that was Orochimaru's pointed will. Tsunade hadn't helped, or rather, she had—Sage's blood, she had—but getting caught in her aura hadn't left him unshaken either. He'd had all the stress of knowing Orochimaru might be after him—not for a fact, like Kei had, but it didn't take a high probability to stress you out when the possibility was of being kidnapped and vivisected. The world war, while honestly an afterthought right now, also preyed on the back of his mind, because he knew for a fact that Leaf would do better with his active involvement than without. He also knew that if Operation Clean Sweep led to catastrophe for Leaf, it would all be his fault, sending hundreds to their potential deaths so that he and his sister could live.

Right now, the Hagoromo could turn up at the gates with torches and pitchforks, waving conclusive scriptural proof that the Gōketsu were traitors to the Will of Fire, and he'd still have to delegate dealing with it. He was just in no condition.
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(underlines mine)

To me, this seems like Hazou is on the edge of freaking out and I would much prefer preventing a freak out than dealing with its aftermath. The most recent update was a good start to help Hazou relax, but I don't think we have given him enough time yet to fully recharge Hazou-the-pilot's personal spoons.

What wording would you consider adequate to convey to your sensibilities that Hazou is close to freaking out?
 
Stat Progressions for Hazou

Finally in this trio of posts, we have the most complicated member of the party to plot out. Unlike Akane and Kei, Hazou cannot straightforwardly optimize his combat stats as his Sealing is also very important if we're to ever break the setting over our knee. I propose a number of different builds to compliment his accelerating stats from Resolve training: here (Resolve Grinding (Hazou))

There are a number of builds proposed:
  • Standard, like with Kei and Akane, straightforwardly raises combat stats (Alertness, Athletics, Taijutsu) and ignores all else in order to maximize Resolve. This is the fastest path, showing that Hazou is only around 6 months behind Kei and Akane.
  • with Buffs, where we also level our PKH, PEA, and other useful skills. It turns out that these become very chakra expensive.
  • Social, the original build when first proposed by Noumero, we focus on our social stats to play into our politician role and focus on a win by controlling other people.
  • Sealmaster, a deleted build which raises Callig to 20, then raises Resolve to 59. After that, Callig and Sealing are raised in lockstep to to Callig 50, Sealing 48. Leveling then focuses on Callig and Sealing as the highest stats supporting Resolve.
    • This takes much longer, as Sealing is double-cost.
    • This build was obsoleted by...
  • Early-bird Sealmaster, where we do the same as above, but also raise Calligraphy and Sealing intermittently while raising Resolve, which doesn't cut too much time into our overall progression, but gives us a higher Sealing stat earlier. In fact, these early Sealing levels are totally fungible. Up to Sealing 48 (which lets us safely hit TN 80 seals), we can easily exchange speed for power by deciding whether to level Resolve or Sealing/Calligraphy, and not slow down by much more than a month.
  • Survivable Sealmaster, proposed by @_The_Bomb , where we use Athletics 57 (eff 60, AB7 with Iron Nerve) and Alertness 69 (to beat almost all jounin) as our column stats supporting Resolve, then switch over to Callig 70, Sealing 58 to focus on Sealing from there on.
    • It turns out that despite mixing and matching the focused stats and raising 2 50s rather than 1, this build is about as efficient as Early Bird Sealmaster in terms of time taken, though it has a lower average effective Sealing throughout.
    • This is also compatible with the Early Bird Sealmaster route, where we flexibly trade time and Sealing power.
    • This gives us our survivability fairly late, well over a year away in-character.
To aid in the decision-making process, I present a graph of the two Sealmaster builds:

As we can see the Early Bird Sealmaster gets more Sealing earlier in the build, while the Survivable Sealmaster gets a good Athletics and Alertness score relatively early in the grand scheme of the progression (see the labeled ticks on the x-axis).

So these are the two builds. Also in the spreadsheet are no-Wakahisa versions of the Sealmaster builds: these get us more CR along the way at a relatively natural growth rate, and allow us to be much more chakra-efficient. Given our desire for more chakra for Summoning, I suspect we may take a path more like that one.

Takeaways:
  • Hazou can get a ridiculous amount of Sealing ridiculously quickly if he focuses on it.
  • Hazou's progression is solidly behind Kei and Akane's, and he will fall even farther behind in terms of raw Resolve if he focuses on Sealing. However, his effective total XP and maximum stat (in terms of seals that he can make) will remain competitive.
  • PEA is too damn expensive.
 
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I will strongly advocate for Survivable Sealmaster, which starts by focusing on our ability to make seals until we raise our Safe TN from 36 to 56. After that, our sealing will be reasonably high enough for us to do some high level projects (like the Great Seal).

Once our sealing is good enough to truly play around with, our first order of buisness should be to stop rolling the metaphorical dice every time we leave the compound. As is, we are only one bad matchup or ambush away from a Game Over. Thus, we should divert some XP into raising our survivability, our ability to detect attacks and get away from them before we get killed. (You should ask @Paperclipped if you're curious about the specfics of the first round of combat with these skill levels). To be clear, we are absolutley not abandoning sealing here. We'll raise it to a safe TN of 72 during the jump when we increase athletics and then again to 86 when we complete the survivability detour.

Survivable Sealmaster is very much a sealing focused build, it's just one that uses survivability skills as our pyrmaid columns so we don't get OHKO'd the next time we get ambushed or we face a difficult opponent during our next mission on the Seventh Path.

I highly reccomend everyone checks out the specifics in the Hazou (Survivable Sealmaster) sheet on Paper's document.

EDIT: It's also worth noting that we don't have to stop our immedieate sealing focus at a safe TN of 56, that number was arbitrarily chosen by Paper and I. We could just as easily go to a safe TN of 80 before we start worrying about our survival odds. Survivable Sealmaster just means that we should favor being able to survive long enough to avoid a Game Over instead of raising, say, social skills or earthshaping.
 
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Shrooms said:
Eh, more like more running away rather than dying horribly. Potatoes, tomatoes
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I mean, at a certain point in our progression, we're going to attract enemies we can't fight (arguably, between Hagoromo, Itachi, Hidan, and Orochimaru, we're already there). And there'll likely be a situation that we can't talk/negotiate/diplomacy our way out --especially if Itachi is involved. Leveling punching stats means that Hazou is less likely to die, in the event he faces an enemy he can't talk his way out of.
 
RandomOTP said:
I mean, at a certain point in our progression, we're going to attract enemies we can't fight (arguably, between Hagoromo, Itachi, Hidan, and Orochimaru, we're already there). And there'll likely be a situation that we can't talk/negotiate/diplomacy our way out --especially if Itachi is involved. Leveling punching stats means that Hazou is less likely to die, in the event he faces an enemy he can't talk his way out of.
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We definitely already have them. I don't actually think he would be saved from any of the people you listed besides maybe Lord Haggy (not discounting the route overall just saying :rofl: )
 
@eaglejarl @Velorien How is the koi pond/chakra purchasing coming along?

Specifically:
  • In Chapter 403, we have 11 koi with some restrictions on how we could drain them.
    • Quote: "The koi are doing fine. The junior piscitist turned out to be capable of managing things. If the fish are used for chakra then it will be at least six months before they can breed. They typically breed some time between May and July, meaning that Lord Noburi may draw on them for the next six weeks or so but should refrain after that point. After they have spawned it is safe to tap the adults for another six months, or longer if we don't need them to breed. The spawn take approximately a year to reach sexual maturity, at which point we can either breed them or tap them for chakra. One of the fish sickened and died at the change in environment, so we only have eleven. No more are forthcoming, as we are expected to breed our stock up to forty on our own.
    • That was on September 26th, so we got a little bit of chakra from them before they went into pre-spawning. Now, they should be preparing to spawn in a few months.
  • Have we lost any more koi?
  • This seems to indicate that we won't be getting any chakra from the pond until May or June in-character. Is that correct?
  • How many generations does the piscitist think it will take to reach 40 koi?
    • How many offspring do the koi spawn? Should we expect hundreds of koi that we need to cull down? Will they cull themselves down (e.g. through cannibalism)?
    • Until then, we can only freely tap from the pond every other six months.
  • How much chakra are we purchasing from Leaf at large?
    • We don't want to spend all of this on SC training -- some amount is for Noburi's daily use, some amount is for helping others train, some other amount is for medic nin or wall building or other ordinary uses. We probably don't want to tap more than 10% of our overall chakra inflow to avoid suspicion.
      • [to the playerbase] 10% is arbitrary. What's a good number here?
    • Ideally, we might go for the low-chakra option and just have Hazou learn SC40.
 
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