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Medicinal Crucible: A Xianxia Planquest

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[ ] Plan A Warm Welcome
-[ ] Pill Refining
-[ ] Make Formal Contact With a Sect (Towering Horizon)
-[ ] Make Formal Contact With a Sect (Pearl Ferret)
-[ ] Lead a War Party (Towering Horizon)
-[ ] Teach Disciples

Right now, we're a new and untested sect, so our two neighbors are raiding us to get our measure. This is normal, and while the intensity of raids is higher than normal, cross-border raids like this happening at all are in fact the norm. This is King of Dragon Pass: Xianxia Edition.

With that in mind, Blackstar confirmed in the Discord that a War Party counter-raid is the sort of expected level of response in the sense of a response that we won't take things lying down. It's the sort of thing that makes the other party back off with a "Okay, you've made your point" and often then spills into a parley.

So, this plan right now is about getting ourselves established diplomatically. We make contact with both of our immediate neighbors while launching a retaliatory raid on the Towering Horizon Sect. Pill Refining synergizes with that since in combat we just pop pills to supercharge ourselves (which makes us very powerful in a pitched battle at the cost of basically burning money.) We don't want to do Pill Refining too much, since we need to plant all our Herb Gardens, but one action on it should be alright for now, so long as we spend next turn focusing on setting up the gardens once the raiding dies down.

The 5th action is more up for debate. I was thinking Teach Disciples as it's the closest thing to a recruitment action we've got (and helps for training up more Inner Disciples to replace combat casualties), and we do need to replace losses. But it could be replaced with contacting the Jewel Blossom Sect as well.

I don't want to touch the Determine Disciple Rewards because our character has no idea about how Administration works, so I say hold off on that until he has more experience in how administration works. Remember, our Sect has been existing for some time, so the current traditional methods work, even if they're probably not amazing.

[ ] Plan Horizon Counterattack
-[ ] Pill Refining
-[ ] Make Formal Contact With a Sect (Towering Horizon)
-[ ] Lead a War Party (Towering Horizon)
-[ ] Inner Disciple Actions:
--[ ] Establish a Herb Garden (Burning Plums)
--[ ] Establish a Herb Garden (Divine Moss)
--[ ] Train Juniors

This is an alternate plan that sacrifices making contact with the Pearl Ferrets and Train Disciples in exchange for letting us use Disciple Actions to set up our Herb Gardens, which means we don't have to worry so much about burning through our seeds. I specifically chose the Herbs we have that are both seeds and the most combat relevant and so would be used for Pill Refining to bolster the War Party. The 3rd die is on Train Juniors because Inner Disciple Train Junior actions is the "get more Outer Disciples" action, and we need more after the pounding we took.

Divided on whether we want to contact the Pearl Ferrets instead of Towering Horizon though, but I feel the "counter-raid, then diplomatic approach" is important.
 
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All right, in deference to the fact that we are not very great at administration, anyone in favor of just assuming we actually only have 35000 spirit stones and it's just been rounded up to give ourselves a buffer until we can get a better idea of our finances? Possibly assuming that the costs of some actions have been rounded down too?
 
Yeah, it's best to play it safe when it comes to treasury numbers until our Sect Leader figures out math more complicated than counting his fingers and toes and doing ballpark estimates.
 
Here's hoping that this turn:
A) We learn more about what our disciples do without changing contribution points
B) The current contribution system encourages the establishment of small herb gardens

I think the only data points we can infer at this point in time are:
1. The clan maintains rare herb seed stocks
2. Inner disciples are encouraged to recruit new disciples
3. The clan might encourage the sustainable harvesting of whatever gardens/cultivations that do exist
 
I think the looters may be safe to put off or at least just a strongly worded letter first, but the killers must be slapped hard immediately.
 
Yeah, the combination of hitting back against the Towering Horizon Sect with a synergized Pill Refining and War Party is important for getting ourselves firmly established, especially in the diplomatic "don't pull this shit on us, because we'll punch back" style.

Pill Refining is important because when bolstered by Pills, we're actually really dangerous in a set-piece, pre-prepared combat, because we pop a dozen pills each and go into temporary turbo mode.

It's the small-scale, irregular minor raids and squabbles where we're at a disadvantage.
 
[ ] Plan Faceslap Introduction
-[ ] Pill Refining
-[ ] Lead a War Party (Towering Horizon)
-[ ]Teach Disciples
-[ ] Inner Disciple Actions:
--[ ] Train in Combat
--[ ] Build Treasures
--[ ] Train Juniors

Ok, here the plan is to eventually work on us being an economy power. The issue is that we have a strong-ish Sect Leader with terrible administrative skills, so the raids and pill refining are both to secure our powerbase, but more importantly to give us breathing room to work up our administration (next turn the plan is to plan the Inner and Outer rewards) without bankruptcy breathing on our necks.

Teach and Train juniors/disciples also works to help us get our base members into decent shape to surviving in this new territory we now hold. Training in Combat also works to do the same, but hopefully help us in the immediate term with the raid to Towering Horizon.

On Building Treasures is where we actually do the Economy bit of our economy power, but only for the lowest members. It's the one that doesn't need admin to do, after all.

The proposed plan for next turn would be to then contact the 2 neighbors along with Inner and Outer rewards. Maybe a Cultivate, or another Pill Refine to round it out, depending on how the economics work out of this turn.
 
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If we want to focus on economy we should work on planting the herb gardens. Those gardens are what provide the materials that let us mass-produce pills, which are our main moneymaker. More gardens means our Disciples can produce a wider variety of pills. Plus, we want the gardens planted before the risk occurs of someone using the seeds as materials before we have a sustainable supply. It's not a high risk, but it is one that exists.

In particular, Combat Training I don't think is necessary because our PC comments indicate that our Disciples already do a lot of combat training in their free time. And while he's a poor administrator, it's still one of the better indicators we have on what actions they're passively doing. That action would be better suited for setting up a garden to get new varieties of combat-booster pills.

I also strongly object to not sending out a diplomatic party to at least the Towering Horizon. We need to make sure that relations are normalized in the aftermath of our counter-raid so this level of raiding stops. That's important for us to actually have the breathing room to go along and start actively developing things.
 
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Planting those gardens are indeed important, but the real base of our economy is the manpower we have available to use. And bleeding low level members kills us in the medium term because our recruitment reach focuses on a smaller more comprehensive recruitment drive.

We need the people to use those gardens in the first place, and more people on the lower end gives us a way to cycle those herb gardens towards our internal benefit first and foremost.

This is a "Secure your house before driving off the foxes" approach, compared to your more measured diplomatic raid, which might leave our house unprotected for slightly longer if they are assholes about this whole thing.
 
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Then you should have more actions on Train Juniors instead of a personal action on Teach Disciples. Train Juniors is the action that actually focuses on recruitment of more Outers beyond the passive recruitment by word of @Blackstar

And the best way to reduce Outer Disciple attrition right now would be to stop the raids that are killing them, which is what the combo of Pill Refining, War Party, and Formal Contact are supposed to do. Formal Contact is also important because it's the thing we're expected to do as a courtesy to our neighbors, and not getting to work on it I think is likely to cause them to take offense and launch more raids. We don't have to do them all right away, but I feel it's important to at least start on it with the Sect that's currently hitting us the hardest, combined with the counterattack so they don't view us as pushovers.

Furthermore, right now our pillmaking in general is severely inhibited because we lack Fire and Earth type ingredients. Before even Treasures we should at least work on those herbs so our Cultivators can actually make the pills they need without having to gamble on tangling with a Spirit Beast in a hunting or foraging for what they require. And some of those herbs we only have seeds for are some of our best ingredients for Combat Pills, so leaving them as seeds severely dampens our combat capability. And it does so far more than combat training since our disciples already combat train a lot in their free time, but a large part of our military might comes from having a war chest of pills to give to everyone before a fight, and we can't make the full set with our incomplete Feng shui.

[]Build Treasures: Finer arrays, swords, alembics, and furnaces typically work for inner disciples looking to advance their own cultivation by making the tools. By enticing them to make far more than for personal use and for lower level cultivators much of the risk of those making their own first furnaces can be reduced. Much of the work will happen due to spending a few handfuls of spirit stones on internal commissions, but the cost should be minimal.
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On another note, @Blackstar can we actually trust our PC's word that the Build Treasures action isn't going to cost much in the way of Spirit Stones?
 
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Chimeraguard said:
Then you should have more actions on Train Juniors instead of a personal action on Teach Disciples.
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Disagree. The best way to protect the juniors is to have scarier seniors to use as both beatsticks and scarecrows.

Also, the advantage of our herbs is to help reach Golden Core. We thus need prospects who can more closely reach said stage, since I doubt Train Disciples will produce only a few if any new Golden Cores for our sect.
 
TimEd said:
Also, the advantage of our herbs is to help reach Golden Core. We thus need prospects who can more closely reach said stage, since I doubt Train Disciples will produce only a few if any new Golden Cores for our sect.
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Wrong. The advantage of our herbs is that they provide us with a reliable supply of base materials for pills. Pills which are not just used for Breakthroughs in Cultivation, but general combat boosts. Pills to rapidly resupply Qi, pills to enhance the combat abilities of our Cultivators, pills that improve their resistance to damage. These are all abilities specifically mentioned as benefits that our ingredients can give when refined into pills.
Blackstar said:
Qi Recovery: Increases Qi regeneration
Qi Reserves: Increases Qi capacity
Qi Density: Allows for more abilities/more capability
Qi Hardening: Allows for greater durability
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Since we can grow the ingredients domestically, we can produce the pills on a far greater scale without needing to expend our limited supply of Spirit Stones on importing materials, which means a lot more can be provided to the various Sect members to bolster their effectiveness, but that's only true once the herbs are planted and we have a sustainable supply from the herb gardens.

It was also specifically pointed out by Blackstar in her review of the Jade Seed Plan (The one that won) that a reliable supply of pills is what lets our Cultivators punch at or above their weight class compared to Martial Sect practitioners.
Blackstar said:
[] Plan Pragmatic Commerce
-[] Sect Name: Jade Seed Sect
-[]The Jade Pill Furnace:
-[]The Great Seed Repository:
-[]Follow the Fifteenth
-[]On the River

The Jade Seed Sect is in a lot of ways similar to the Red Plum Sect with a major difference in provincial location and the general development of the province. A universal acess to lower level pills is still there once terraces are set up and gardens are increased in size which means that lower level disciples can punch at or above their expected level with enough drugs. The riverine province means that while easy expansion of the borders is not viable and raids will mostly hit harder targets, you have the option of building up actual shipping on the river. Trade access means importation of ingredients is easier and easier to defend as you do not need a caravan and it's not that hard to stack a bunch of arrays and cultivators onto a boat. Where the unique aspects of gameplay come in is that instead of a constant series of raids, you have ocean acess and, generally, access to the rest of the realm outside of the empire. Officially you are of course not meant to venture far outside, but that is one of the most ignored laws in terms of cultivators. Many expeditions will not come back, but those that do can offer flat out unique things.
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[] Plan The Best Defense
-[ ] Teach Disciples:
-[ ] Make Formal Contact With a Sect (Towering Horizon)
-[ ] Lead a War Party (Towering Horizon)
-[ ] Inner Disciple Actions:
--[ ] Establish a Herb Garden (Divine Moss)
--[ ] Combat Training
--[ ] Train Juniors

This balances things a bit, I think, giving us one more garden but also taking time to train our disciples at every level.
 
Blackstar said:
Turn 1: Attacked on All Quarters
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well, that's promising...

Blackstar said:
Of the two nearby sects Towering Horizon has proven far more aggressive, slaughtering juniors doing normal activities and relentlessly looting our poorly protected juniors.
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well, that's annoying.

Great Pearl Ferret seems to be mostly doing "traditional" raids, so nothing too out of the ordinary there, but we really need to deal with Towering Horizon... which from my understanding is ALSO a newly established sect, so they shouldn't be out of our reach to deal with, eventually.

Blackstar said:
and it is rumored that a heaven-blessed disciple somewhere in the North has managed to pass into the Spirit Ascension realm at only one hundred and twenty.
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Xianxia MC?

Blackstar said:
[]Cultivate: A strong sect deserves a strong leader and while the further stages of the Open Lotus Art are undiscovered, that simply means more and harsher cultivation must be done. The golden core stage is not the end of the art and dozens have made the attempt to break through, with some historically accomplishing it. The methodology is unknown but it is certainly possible. Starting work from seeping the Qi into a general domain from the core so as to nourish the core is the current safe theory of cultivation and it must be attempted vigorously to achieve a great breakthrough. (30 Thousand Spirit Stones(to attempt/not per action)) (Bonus from closed door cultivation if taken 4 times)
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Well, seeing what the cost is like it seems like if/when we try we'll likely want to go with at least 4 actions to it.

Maybe we can wait a turn or two for that, and in the meantime firmly establish the sect's fundamentals. At least enough for it to continue even with a distracted leader.

Blackstar said:
[]Determine Appropriate Inner Disciple Rewards: Instead of cultivating at the highest peak and gathering and refining Qi, time can be spent on talking to inner disciples and gleaming the truth from their proclamations. There are few that would ask for less, but every one of them wishes to be paid in many spirit stones for doing nothing but cultivating all day. Local boards for rare ingredients focused around the refinement of pills can be organized along with partial shares instead of traditional rewards to ensure that they benefit directly rather than abstractly from the hardest work.

[]Determine Appropriate Outer Disciple Rewards: Those given a chance at immortality by inclusion into the sect are expected to long be grateful for the honor, but the gratitude never lasts long as each attempts to stumble higher. Training can be given favorably and pill furnaces are limited for the refinement of pills. By rewarding the outer disciples for achievements in hunting down beasts and providing spirit herbs by reduced price pills the sect can make tidy profit while improving its ranks. Those most capable of hunting will of course be the strongest and most capable of advancing, ensuring that the right cultivators receive the best resources.
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Those seem necessary, especially as we'll want to deal with the higher number we'll get from our recruitment method.

We need more dedicated disciples to manage the increasing number of disciples! :V



Blackstar said:
[]Observe Mortal Hunters: Recent improvements in technique and equipment has already led to hundreds of stories of mere mortals downing spirit beasts. Suppressing one's cultivation and following around a dozen mortals as they attempt to hunt spirit beasts to the death can prove enlightening and give a basis for working with the simplest outer disciples. The rumors may just be that, but then saving a few dozen mortal hunters from spirit beasts can create an image of benevolence. If their techniques are applicable, reducing the loss of outer disciples to the wilderness can be revolutionary in keeping up numbers.
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being able to potentially use Mortals to hunt for the weaker spirit beasts (or to assist cultivators in doing it) could be a way to leverage them into being more useful than just normal farming.

And if they die, we still get spirit stones from them anyway.

I'm leaning towards encouraging their tech. It's not like conventional tech will ever catch up to actual elders.


Blackstar said:
[]Lead A War Party: Constant low level raids from the Towering Horizon and Pearl Ferret sect have sapped through the lowest cultivators with their raids, stealing treasures and injuring our very weakest cultivators. Instead of allowing the insult to stand, a war party can be organized with the elders and inner disciples, crossing the border for a glorious slaughter of any that stand in our way. By the point that the enemy sects can respond we will have gained a massive amount of plunder, resources, and possibly even manuals and seeds. As long as the sect has a plentiful supply of pills at the golden core level any insult can be avenged and diplomatically reversed. (Loot) (Can combine with Pill Refining) (Chose Great Pearl Ferret or Towering Horizon Sect)

[]Pill Refining: The refinement of a new pill using the jade furnace is arduous work involving time spent away from cultivation for something as base as a few tens of thousands of spirit stones. The ingredients are there to make pills for golden core cultivators in a decent supply and spending time to make a few dozen can secure enough combat power and cultivation materials to further fund the sect. Local sourcing of ingredients and the poor financial accounts of the sect limit what can be done now but those will be fixed by the next auction. (Can Take Multiple Times)
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the rewards for the disciples, and those two for the Golden Core cultivators. seems reasonable.

Blackstar said:
[]Test New Pills: Using the jade furnace to work on the finest pills in the empire remains an option and poorer ingredients can be substituted for the first stages of experimentation. The refinement of a true five element breakthrough pill is beyond the herbs available and too risky, but lower level ones can be pioneered. Even successfully refining a pill capable of reliably breaking through otherwise stagnant outer disciples to inner ones would massively improve the capabilities of the sect and ensure it can overcome any obstacle. The work itself is going to be beneath an elder, but needs must at the current loss rates. (Can be taken up to 3 times)

[]Teach Disciples: As much as the immortals in the council of elders are determined that they will stand forever, training new inner disciples is how the sect grows and is the direct contribution to any capability. Guiding inner disciples through meditation and helping them to master higher level techniques directly instead of reading a dusty old tome can help them solidify their stage and attain a breakthrough. The physical actions needed to advance towards Golden Core Formation or even Golden Core are known, they must only be executed at a sufficient precision. Working individually is not an option, but even a few words and a good sense of Qi can help a disciple more than years of cultivation can. (Can be taken up to 3 times)
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and here is to help the transition from outer to inner disciples.



mh... I'm thinking the two rewards actions, Mortal Hunters for hopefully a way to use them in place of Outer Disciples for lower-level Spirit Beasts, and then some mix of Test New Pills and Teach Disciples to quickly expand our reserve of inner disciples before attacking the Towering Horizon Sect next turn if we get decent results.

Blackstar said:
Inner Disciple Actions(Costs Two Personal To Focus on Three) (Several Will Passively Proceed depending on Reward Allocation):
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as in, without using personal we can't do those at all?

I'm leaning towards focusing on the personal ones and letting those proceed passively then, at least for the first turn.

We can reevaluate after we see the rate of progress after personal lessons and a reward system being put in place.

Chimeraguard said:
[ ] Plan A Warm Welcome
-[ ] Pill Refining
-[ ] Make Formal Contact With a Sect (Towering Horizon)
-[ ] Make Formal Contact With a Sect (Pearl Ferret)
-[ ] Lead a War Party (Towering Horizon)
-[ ] Teach Disciples

Right now, we're a new and untested sect, so our two neighbors are raiding us to get our measure. This is normal, and while the intensity of raids is higher than normal, cross-border raids like this happening at all are in fact the norm. This is King of Dragon Pass: Xianxia Edition.

With that in mind, Blackstar confirmed in the Discord that a War Party counter-raid is the sort of expected level of response in the sense of a response that we won't take things lying down. It's the sort of thing that makes the other party back off with a "Okay, you've made your point" and often then spills into a parley.

So, this plan right now is about getting ourselves established diplomatically. We make contact with both of our immediate neighbors while launching a retaliatory raid on the Towering Horizon Sect. Pill Refining synergizes with that since in combat we just pop pills to supercharge ourselves (which makes us very powerful in a pitched battle at the cost of basically burning money.) We don't want to do Pill Refining too much, since we need to plant all our Herb Gardens, but one action on it should be alright for now, so long as we spend next turn focusing on setting up the gardens once the raiding dies down.
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Chimeraguard said:
I don't want to touch the Determine Disciple Rewards because our character has no idea about how Administration works, so I say hold off on that until he has more experience in how administration works. Remember, our Sect has been existing for some time, so the current traditional methods work, even if they're probably not amazing.
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...On the other hand, really good points here
 
Pittauro said:
Xianxia MC?
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I assumed it was a reference to whoever got the 10 year refined immortal pill that was sold to fund the initial Sect set up.

@Blackstar
If the inner disciple stuff proceeds on its own to some degree do we know what gardens they are planting, or are they dividing efforts evenly so it will be a while before we see anything without direction? Or is it random (from our perspective), I suppose?
 
MC is a cultivation junky who spent most of the last century metaphorically living under a rock.

He's just about as blind as to what the sect actually does in the course of normal operations as we are.
 
Ahhh we're in one of those cultivation settings where everyone is a huge, uncooperative dickhead. Going to have to slap some people around then.
 
Chimeraguard said:
[ ] Plan Horizon Counterattack
-[ ] Pill Refining
-[ ] Make Formal Contact With a Sect (Towering Horizon)
-[ ] Lead a War Party (Towering Horizon)
-[ ] Inner Disciple Actions:
--[ ] Establish a Herb Garden (Burning Plums)
--[ ] Establish a Herb Garden (Divine Moss)
--[ ] Train Juniors

This is an alternate plan that sacrifices making contact with the Pearl Ferrets and Train Disciples in exchange for letting us use Disciple Actions to set up our Herb Gardens, which means we don't have to worry so much about burning through our seeds. I specifically chose the Herbs we have that are both seeds and the most combat relevant and so would be used for Pill Refining to bolster the War Party. The 3rd die is on Train Juniors because Inner Disciple Train Junior actions is the "get more Outer Disciples" action, and we need more after the pounding we took.

Divided on whether we want to contact the Pearl Ferrets instead of Towering Horizon though, but I feel the "counter-raid, then diplomatic approach" is important.
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Burning Plums probably come from trees, which'll take longer to grow than the smaller herbs.
I don't think they'll be ready prior to the end of hostilities.

It can still be worth planting them now, to move up the timetable as to when they're available, and they are probably low on the independent disciple action track. But if we're looking for combat benefits that'll be relevant in the next couple years, I think we might want to switch it out for a faster growing plant.
 
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