- Location
- Texas
- Pronouns
- She/Her
They don't call it the eight phase ceremony because it's only got a couple phases. We gotta get those numbers up. Seven is totally insufficient.
Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)
- Thread starter yrsillar
- Start date
- Original Users' Choice!
Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
Honestly, I feel the same way about the archive 1 arts as PrimalShadow. We should stop and wait for a bit till we are able to access the 2nd floor which is like one challenge away. The only exception that I may be willing to make is AFL just so we can have a speed/stealth art and even then it's cutting close. Not to mention the Cai art is coming next month so before we make any plans, let's just wait and see what happens.
It's inside the cultivation spoiler in laste update. For HDW it's measure and for SES it's storm.
- Location
- Cali
[X] Began to sing a more coherent song that echoed her own
We might be able to swing (heh) our sword into a buffing weapon for allies too once it gains the ability to attune to others. Seems like we're going for a tool for every occasion build anyways.
We might be able to swing (heh) our sword into a buffing weapon for allies too once it gains the ability to attune to others. Seems like we're going for a tool for every occasion build anyways.
Varder
Tired Cultist
- Location
- Hell
ENM provides a unique 'retry' ability though.
I don't recall a specific timeline on the Cai arts ever being established.
??? What tech are you talking about ?
Black Noise
Curious
- Location
- About 1AU from Sol
This is missing the point; AFL stealth focuses on a mix of minimizing noise through gliding and enhanced mobility and in facilitating combat-viable Larceny. Both of these are less than ideal:
- SCS already gives us as much physical stealth as we need between its own obscene mobility and dematerialization themes. AFL adds nothing new here beyond the mechanical number stacking.
- Combat larceny is extremely situational. In the vast majority of cases where we can use it we'd be better off using CtE to finish the fight or a lesser attack to make a still bigger impact than swiping a talisman.
Contrast with ENM which adds the following:
- Connections/Memory themed "blanking" to enhance existing stealth, up to target awareness state reset.
- Tech to leverage a greater advantage from a smaller Stealth-Perception gap, without the OWS downside of ending up in melee range.
- Doubles as a Fade Art, something we currently have 0 appropriate Arts for and as we've seen from both FSS deadliness and SES spiritual counter, not something one can neglect.
Or the stealth aspect of MNO/DLS which explicitly serve as Anti-Perception for spiritual senses (with false info and presence erasure respectively) and serve to complement our SCS-based physical stealth.
As for ENM not being in-theme... I'm gonna call your bullshit here. It's a Dark/Wind art that focuses on Connections and Memory. Connections is something we deliberately chose to explore in context of Wind, and Memory is something that's been in theme for us since we went Hidden and is even more-so now with Sixiang and the metaphorical memory sea in our dreams.
In fact, I'd go as far as saying all archive arts we've seen are in-theme for LQ. It may be in-theme with aspects we'd rather minimize (such as the case for me with CWY and the hunger/desire themes), but all of them would fit just fine.
Don't get me wrong, AFL is still an attractive enough art that's gonna work great with Sixiang both narratively and mechanically, but it's core strength is in enhancing our mobility and in allowing flight-based derived Athletics down the line, and that's not a time-sensitive matter.
Still, there's a reason ENM has so much weight in near-term plans; it's a workhorse of an Art that both gives us much more robust stealth and addresses our lack of (not horribly expensive) Fade.
EternalObserver
eYe Gaze baCk
- Location
- The Void
That.....I'll get back to you on that. Busy at the moment and can't remember at the top of my head where I saw it (though I think it was stated OOC)
He be talking about this
I acknowledge ENM as a good stealth art but in terms of the themes..eeehhhh
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That tech is sorta useless given how the system work tho.
So for it to be usefull we need to be within one rank stealth/perception wise of our ennemy. The problem is that if we are at one rank perception wise of an ennemy, merely enhancing our stealth is not gonna be sufficient to reset the state (as it would not be the rank up needed). So we need more stealth techs than this art to actually use that tech.
Moreover even if it land the bonus is merely +10, which is not a strong bonus, as it's easily dissipated by perception arts.
That second tech is only usefull if it land tho. And if a random spiritual tech can land we do not need the bonus it provide as we could use instead one of our superior music art.
I didn't say it was not in theme, but instead that the themes of the art are terrible. I really hate the idea of ling qi being forgotten.
Lastly for fade, I agree but if we want a stealth fade art MNO is much better theme wise and fix the issues SCS has. ENM is at that akward state were we need yet another stealth art to fix its issues (to be able to use the first tech as something as good as AFL first one), and the second tech is never gonna be usefull so long we have so much bonuses for music arts.
Aaaaaah. Well, see the explanation a bit higher for it.
- Location
- his hidden lair
I'm getting really annoyed with how dismissive and squeamish people are about themes. Themes can be negative and explored in a positive fashion, themes can be an unhealthy and explored and integrated without turning into a monster- and the goal is not some healthy super well adjusted human being Ling Qi. The goal is a post-human super powerful being becoming increasingly unto a facet of reality given agency.
I mean, we just fucking insighted an Art about a lonely and lost soul's desperate soujourn in the unknown where they inevitably died. And we took away that hardship and loneliness is worth it if we can bring beauty to our treasured people. We would have never of taken FVM if it had been left to the people going 'muh themes' because it's painfully real and close to home for Ling Qi. Of a desperate struggle against a faceless and unforgiving world that only has one ending. How terrible.
And how about the theme about the cold uncaring grasp of entropy that's going to tear down and destroy everything we love or know. That everything is transient and doomed to end in ice and shadow. And we proceeded to derive an insight about persistence and the will and need to overcome one's setbacks. How dark and oppressive.
Any accusations based on themes of an art derived from a blurb, explicitly before we and Ling Qi have a full understanding of that art is a failure of the reader and not the Art.
I mean, we just fucking insighted an Art about a lonely and lost soul's desperate soujourn in the unknown where they inevitably died. And we took away that hardship and loneliness is worth it if we can bring beauty to our treasured people. We would have never of taken FVM if it had been left to the people going 'muh themes' because it's painfully real and close to home for Ling Qi. Of a desperate struggle against a faceless and unforgiving world that only has one ending. How terrible.
And how about the theme about the cold uncaring grasp of entropy that's going to tear down and destroy everything we love or know. That everything is transient and doomed to end in ice and shadow. And we proceeded to derive an insight about persistence and the will and need to overcome one's setbacks. How dark and oppressive.
Any accusations based on themes of an art derived from a blurb, explicitly before we and Ling Qi have a full understanding of that art is a failure of the reader and not the Art.
- Location
- The Temple of the Winds
It's on the same timeline as Zhengui's breakthrough : Too Damn Long!
- Location
- his hidden lair
How utterly unimaginative. It's so easy to reach positive insights themes from ENM that people are obviously not even trying. The importance of memories tied to our loved ones over the impressions of strangers. To value memories all the more because they are transient. Who remembers you is far more important than how many remember you. Etc. I spent 30 seconds on these and could keep going. And newsflash Ling Qi kinda just had major character growth in accepting she'd die, her beloved home would eventually be destroyed, and ultimately all she does will be forgotten. So what? Why would you let your hangups have power over a fictional al character when we just saw said character get empowered by refusing to let that hold her down?
- Location
- Earth
[x] It's cry grew ever more eerie
- Location
- The Temple of the Winds
I question this assumption. iirc the talisman we currently have are peak yellow gear we got in the old system. I think losing a green 2 talisman would be significantly worse...
refresh my memory on why it's important ? I know it's not the leveled up dodge skill from SCS, so i can't remember why it's an important skill we'd need to burn time and meridians on.
[x] It's cry grew ever more eerie
Fade is the skill that contributes to Spiritual Avoid, which is what's used for dodging spiritual attacks and debuffs. Our Domain also lets us give up to +1 rank in Spiritual Avoid to our loved ones up to Ling Qi's own rank. Our current Domain effects are pretty neat in that they encourage specialization by making close-knit groups we're part of, as a whole, benefit from it.
- Location
- United Kingdom
I fail to see how the various levels of the Archive could possibly differ in quality.
They're all part of the overall Sect Library. Sure, individual arts might be lower or higher quality, but as a whole the only difference between arts on different levels should be what stage of Green they start/end at.
Black Noise
Curious
- Location
- About 1AU from Sol
Losing a talisman would be worse if whoever we're fighting is relying on an overpowered talisman, but only if for some reason we can reliably snag said talisman but not take them out of the fight with FSS. Like I said, extremely situational utility.
And Fade is the spiritual counterpart to Dodge. You may have noticed how we've been hit by basically all spiritual attacks targeting us without so much as a mention of a struggle (Shen Hu, Antlion) and had to rely on Sixiang to dispel. It's not an acceptable state of affairs since there are spiritual attack vectors we'd much rather "dodge" than tank and dispel; namely all damaging effects and spiritual counters.
Now to address this wall of misinformation:
This is flat out wrong. Here's how relative stealth works:
- Stealth ~ Perception: Unsure
- Stealth > Perception: Unaware
- target completely ignorant of us: Unready
> +stealth
> +spiritual avoid
> spiritual hit or pen buff (on top of stealth-granted advantage)
> target reset with sufficient stealth
Do tell me how this is "sorta useless given how the system work tho".
This is also wrong; the second tech is an instant offense buff to be used together with an attack to increase its ability to hit. We don't actually have such instant buffs at the moment. In the near future there's SCS cap (which is hideously expensive and focuses on physical hits) and Joyous Toast (which requires expensive and very showy setup).
MNO isn't a Fade Art, it's about resist/stealth. You're thinking of DLS which is a Fade-heavy spiritual defense art that shares an anti-perception function with MNO (though likely weaker given no stealth passive).
As for themes, those are a matter of taste but I'll just put this here:
From how LQ managed to corrupted the FSS insight to be about "small endings are new beginnings", I'd guess the insight learned here will focus more on those memories and connections which "would better be remembered". And of course nothing forces us to slot an insight from every Art we master.
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- Location
- At the end of the world
Quality maybe no, but number of levels almost certainly. Think about it, we searched in Archive 1 twice and all we found is short Arts with 5 levels, absolutely all of them. Isn't it odd? I think all Arts with 6 and more levels are in Archive 2 or higher, almost certainly. I am not sure if they would be of higher quality though.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
There is the question of what it means to begin earlier/later, though. From what I understand, in concrete terms here is what it means to have a higher starting point:
- DC of art level is higher.
- Numbers of meridians taken by the arts is higher.
- Higher cultivation level potency of the art as a whole
- Higher letter rank of techs in specific
First, I'd say that with what we saw of the archive, we can hope for it to plug holes in our build, but we can't really use it to replace our core arts once those are finished. A simple example would be how SCS/FVM/TRF/PLR all had B rank techs in Early Green, while archive arts don't have those in Appraisal Green. This means that at best we can expect arts of the archive to lag two cultivation levels behind when it comes to ranks of techs themselves. This means that even in a best case scenario an archive 2 arts once capped in Green 4 would have techs similar to SCS, only superior in the higher potency of the art itself. That is 'best case scenario', too. In practice, this means there is very little reason to replace one of our core arts that finishes in appraisal with an archive art that's under Archive 4.
So, I'd say these are the roles for the archive currently:
- Plugging holes in our build because we can't count on lucky finds to have everything we want (even including Cai archive).
- Insights seems to have limited correlation with the power of an art, so archive arts can be domain slot fodder.
- Domain XP fodder.
- Experience with learning a wide breadth of arts might be necessary for either Advanced Insights or creating our own arts later.
I'd like to point out that this relative analysis may only be valid for NOW. Both archive 1 arts that we cultivated turned out to be very different than what we expected from their description.
Memories are what make one person. Stealing memories away is straling part of a person very soul. It's an incredible violation that I absolutely do not want to explore for the same exact reason I have zero interest in someone powered by torture.
Nope you missed the text of the tech.
It reset only if the stealth is sufficient (aka rank up). This is a tech that is only usefull if we get another strong boost to our stealth during the fight (to get that rank up). It's an art that require yet another stealth art to be usefull.
Because we are talking about stealth arts. That tech is worse than AFL's for stealth and the conditionnal is useless without another art.
It require to make the opponent forget a second. That's very obviously an attack art which require a check and if we pass that check despite having significantly less spiritual attack bonuses than musical ones, why would we ever use a spiritual attack ?
Also you forgot about FSS aria and echoes of absolute winter which are significantly better and can be used together.
So I did. I apologise for my mistake.
Arkeus
Crazy cat guy
- Location
- France
When we attack an opponent and are in stealth, we lose a significant amount of stealth. More than that, while Yrs doesn't roll he does have 'bad/good luck' narrative. So, we attack someone, we go from unaware to unsure, and then the ENM stealth tech takes us back to unaware.
Even in the scenario where we 'failed' our first stealth, it still offers an effective 're-roll/second try'.