Threads Of Destiny(Eastern Fantasy, Sequel to Forge of Destiny)

[TimEd]

Or maybe the fact that CRX cant really do her organizing shtick when most anybody is close enough in strength to her to not be immediately subordinate. And she doesnt really have friends friends. Aside from Meizhen and us, and those are either fairly recent (meizhen) or in our case, subordinste to her.

Also CRX might have had a bit of a heart break when she saw our Music Battle against that girl some time back.

 

[Sundancer]

I doubt Cai Renxiang is lacking appropriate designer drugs. She probably does earn less Sect Points than us, but she should have a considerable allowance from home even if Shenhua wants to make things hard on her. We also have evidence that she has significant contacts outside the Sect, and to crafters, too. If she wants decent drugs, she could simply approach these contacts and offer X amount of Green Stones for drugs. Crafter do sell high-quality drugs for stones in the greater context of the Empire, I'd think.

So being 'gifted' drugs by us won't help Renxiang (aside from all the social issue it would create...)
Renxiang probably simply lacks time to cultivate as much as we do, while keeping up her social and political obligations. Although Ling Qi mentioned Renxiang's Cultivation schedule was tough, so I am not even sure she cultivates less. Maybe she is otherwise distracted or ran into one of these mythical 'bottlenecks' and needs some time to work through it.
To help Renxiang, we probably can just wait for any signals she sends or maybe we get an social option to check up on her sometime. Although it would probably face stiff competition...

Black Noise is correct, though, we need to keep our focus on our own progress and cultivation. Shenhua's order is a tall one, and Ling Qi simply doesn't have the time or capacity to spare much of her attention to help others without early payback. Note, that I said much. I don't advocate a single-minded mono-focus on cultivation or "becoming strong" to the exclusion of everything else. Yet, it needs to a strong focus. Just not the one and only important thing.

 

[qwolfs]

Or maybe the fact that CRX cant really do her organizing shtick when most anybody is close enough in strength to her to not be immediately subordinate. And she doesnt really have friends friends. Aside from Meizhen and us, and those are either fairly recent (meizhen) or in our case, subordinste to her.

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CRX should be at minimum a peak human level administrator. I have just barely seen middle school group project level efforts from her (when it comes to our group, her administrating outside that field like with the magistrate for our mom has been acceptable).

Being unable to administer equals is hardly beyond the best human administrators, or even average professionals.

 

[archangis]

How about No on this whole line of thought. Or did you forget we need to basically get just as strong as CRX to end at most 5 ranks behind her, and we need to do that without the benefit of knowing what we're doing build-wise.

Some sort of inter-SL mutual assistance thing is reasonable later on (like helping Suyin explore and getting a cut of the expedition returns), outright donating large chunks of time to further CRX's cultivation is not.

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If we keep getting great drugs such as the melodic elixir we are gonna get as strong as her, which is evidenced by the cultivation gap narrowing.

We have no benefit to overtaking our liege, and under those assumption, ensuring she can keep up with us is important to our goal (and thus worth the AP loss).

 

[Inferno Vulpix]

If we keep getting great drugs such as the melodic elixir we are gonna get as strong as her, which is evidenced by the cultivation gap narrowing.

We have no benefit to overtaking our liege, and under those assumption, ensuring she can keep up with us is important to our goal (and thus worth the AP loss).

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While I can imagine a situation where we've overtaken CRX in cultivation, can reasonably expect to hit Rank 530 by the end of our time in the sect, and therefore would want to spend our energy helping CRX reach 525, I can't imagine us reaching a situation like that for quite a long time. There are still a very large number of unknowns at this point in the game, especially including whether CRX actually needs the help in the first place or if her own cultivation will accelerate, and our own security is far from certain.

Further, it's possible that offering CRX our own resources to help her reach Shenhua's milestone would be considered 'cheating' and only reflect badly on CRX for attempting it. We were forbidden from helping Gan Guangli in his second chance in the Outer Sect, so if Shenhua finds out that that CRX only reached 525 by leaning on us then it may be worse than falling short.

 

[Varder]

So. How to fix CRX issue ? Well, as always the solution is more drugs. We can either convince her to spend some times on sect missions or simply buy her some drugs from times to times.

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To help Renxiang, we probably can just wait for any signals she sends or maybe we get an social option to check up on her sometime. Although it would probably face stiff competition...

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She spends a lot of time on social meetings. I think we should ask her if there are any that Ling Qi can manage on her own. Even if it costs us one AP, I don't think that's a too steep price.

If one wants to get pedantic, then our order wasn't to reach 535th position or lower, it was to get 5 positions higher than CRX. With our talent advantage, I don't think we'll fail to accomplish it.

Regardless, this is too early to make such conclusions that she's slowed down or is stuck. Maybe she's preparing for a whole month of crazy drugged parties cultivation to shoot far ahead of what even shadow math cabal can predict.

 

[archangis]

She spends a lot of time on social meetings. I think we should ask her if there are any that Ling Qi can manage on her own. Even if it costs us one AP, I don't think that's a too steep price.

If one wants to get pedantic, then our order wasn't to reach 535th position or lower, it was to get 5 positions higher than CRX. With our talent advantage, I don't think we'll fail to accomplish it.

Regardless, this is too early to make such conclusions that she's slowed down or is stuck. Maybe she's preparing for a whole month of crazy drugged parties cultivation to shoot far ahead of what even shadow math cabal can predict.

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A AP a month is 21 AP over the rest of our times here. It's a significantly bigger cost than merely 4 AP for a drug (that would if it fit her as well as the melodic elixir did us, give her those 20 something AP).

It would be worse for us and by far.

 

[Varder]

It would be worse for us and by far.

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It feels like you don't take into account thread's ability to plan ahead and cut out CRX's actions from our turns if Ling Qi starts falling behind.

 

[archangis]

It feels like you don't take into account thread's ability to plan ahead and cut out CRX's actions from our turns if Ling Qi starts falling behind.

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It's an inefficient 1 for 1 conversion. No matter how good the planning ability of the thread is, the math people can't do magic. 1 for 1 convertion of AP is trash when we have access to pill such as this one :

Unwavering Discipline Pill: For each AP spent training arts add 25 successes to Physical Cultivation

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Which assuming 20 AP spent on art offer 500 succ (the equivalent of about 4 AP from a quick look in this month plan). For a 2 AP cost.

A 1 for 1 conversion is terrible. Even assuming we are going to cut it out, from the very second AP dedicated to meeting people, CRX is worse off than if we bought her drugs.

 

[Varder]

It's an inefficient 1 for 1 conversion. No matter how good the planning ability of the thread is, the math people can't do magic. 1 for 1 convertion of AP is trash when we have access to pill such as this one :



Which assuming 20 AP spent on art offer 500 succ (the equivalent of about 4 AP from a quick look in this month plan). For a 2 AP cost.

A 1 for 1 conversion is terrible. Even assuming we are going to cut it out, from the very second AP dedicated to meeting people, CRX is worse off than if we bought her drugs.

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That's true. I misunderstood what you meant before, then.

Otoh, I don't believe CRX will be insulted if we offer to take some more responsibility, which can happen if we offer to sponsor her. It also builds up Ling Qi's political connections and, who knows, maybe we'll find another friend there. Plus it further sharpens her social skills which we are in dire need of and gives plenty of opportunities to field test social arts.

And it gives more CRX screen time without picking her sl, which is always a plus.

 

[FakePriest]

While I can imagine a situation where we've overtaken CRX in cultivation, can reasonably expect to hit Rank 530 by the end of our time in the sect, and therefore would want to spend our energy helping CRX reach 525, I can't imagine us reaching a situation like that for quite a long time. There are still a very large number of unknowns at this point in the game, especially including whether CRX actually needs the help in the first place or if her own cultivation will accelerate, and our own security is far from certain.

Further, it's possible that offering CRX our own resources to help her reach Shenhua's milestone would be considered 'cheating' and only reflect badly on CRX for attempting it. We were forbidden from helping Gan Guangli in his second chance in the Outer Sect, so if Shenhua finds out that that CRX only reached 525 by leaning on us then it may be worse than falling short.

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I think we have solution of how to help CRX without slowing down. We just need to go exploring new sites. It will help our cultivation in long term and if we find some Light or Heaven sites we can show them to CRX, like we did in Outer Sect, without going out of our way to help her. It's one thing to outright donate to your Liege by buying her drugs, it's another one to share your good fortune with a friend.
Moreover, what if will loose access to Zeqing's site this Turn? I find it entirely possible, then we will need to go site-hunting anyway.

 

[BossFight]

[X] The situation between Zeqing and Hanyi is deteriorating. You have mastered her lessons and her art. The time for a tribulation is here, and perhaps it can solve the terrible situation forming before your eyes.

If the other vote was about taking some time to think about what family meant I would choose it, but as is it isn't focused enough on the Zeqing problem

 

[Inferno Vulpix]

I think we have solution of how to help CRX without slowing down. We just need to go exploring new sites. It will help our cultivation in long term and if we find some Light or Heaven sites we can show them to CRX, like we did in Outer Sect, without going out of our way to help her. It's one thing to outright donate to your Liege by buying her drugs, it's another one to share your good fortune with a friend.
Moreover, what if will loose access to Zeqing's site this Turn? I find it entirely possible, then we will need to go site-hunting anyway.

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Well, exploration wouldn't slow us down if it was already the optimal move, but if in a vacuum there'd be better things to spend our AP on then we'd still be making a suboptimal action by exploring for sites in the hopes that some of our findings might help CRX.

It's certainly a smaller hit than simply giving CRX our AP or buying her drugs since it still helps us to some degree or another, and that means I'd be less hesitant to go for it, but we'd still have to evaluate the odds that this path makes the difference between pass or fail for CRX and Ling Qi before I'd be happy with it.

 

[FakePriest]

Well, exploration wouldn't slow us down if it was already the optimal move, but if in a vacuum there'd be better things to spend our AP on then we'd still be making a suboptimal action by exploring for sites in the hopes that some of our findings might help CRX.

It's certainly a smaller hit than simply giving CRX our AP or buying her drugs since it still helps us to some degree or another, and that means I'd be less hesitant to go for it, but we'd still have to evaluate the odds that this path makes the difference between pass or fail for CRX and Ling Qi before I'd be happy with it.

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Exploration actions more useful earlier on. If we were stuck in Inner Sect for only a year i would be more hesitant, but with two years here we have more than enough time for Exploration to pay off. Call it investment in the future.
Especially if we can find something like this

Grove of Thirty Three: Multiplies the successes of Wood Art cultivation by 1.2. In addition add 1/10 of the successes of arts containing physical attribute keywords to physical cultivation

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or this

Silent Stones: Multiply successes of Moon, Sun and Earth arts by 1.3. +1 to the XP dice of skills trained using those arts.

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with bonuses that helps with more than just Arts cultivation, now that would be optimal move.

 

[ParticipantAward]

Maybe we should try asking CRX what she needs? I know that seems like a tall order for Ling Qi, but it's usually an option.

 

[DeAnno]

Which assuming 20 AP spent on art offer 500 succ (the equivalent of about 4 AP from a quick look in this month plan). For a 2 AP cost.

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I think your assumptions are flawed. Basically, though you aren't saying it in so many words, you're assuming CRX is too stupid to use her own AP effectively and incapable of proper cultivation planning, that we basically need to go find drugs for her because she can't find her own. I find this to be totally ludicrous, honestly. Even if the weirdness of how we interact with the mechanics seems to indicate that CRX could be doing more, I don't think it makes sense in universe for it to work that way,

 

[Arkeus]

I think it's fairly obvious that CRX is going to have better drugs and better organisation than Ling Qi. Sure, she will also spends more time doing social things than Ling Qi, but it's been a constant that Ling Qi is thinking "CRX cultivates more than me", not less.

As for drugs... If you believe that CRX's imposed limit by Shenhua includes "have worse ressources for cultivation than Meizhen or Sun Liling", we just aren't going to agree.

 

[Nagon]

Remember that CRX has lower base talent. She has been keeping up with better resources.
But in the inner sect that advantage is much smaller.

Note that once one reaches higher cultivation levels there are ways to boost once talent with methods similar to what Xiulan did.
Also the difference between talent is relatively smaller at higher talents, so we can probably catch up to CRX, but we won't race ahead.

 

[Alectai]

Yeah.

CRX is being denied cheat codes, such as access to top-tier crafters to make stuff at bargain basement rates. she's not going to get denied the cultivation resources expected of a Ducal house, because that would imply Shenhua can't afford it.

Us catching up is less because we're cultivating better, and more than the numbers are such that our initial disadvantage is less telling than it used to be. A difference of "6" is overpowering when the other side has only 10, but it's not as big a deal when they have 100.

It makes complete sense for us to be able to get in the same league without needing to nerf the Ducals, just because even if they have a few months of 'Effective Cultivation' on us, the numbers themselves were much lower. And we hit Appraisal running.

 

[archangis]

I think your assumptions are flawed. Basically, though you aren't saying it in so many words, you're assuming CRX is too stupid to use her own AP effectively and incapable of proper cultivation planning, that we basically need to go find drugs for her because she can't find her own. I find this to be totally ludicrous, honestly. Even if the weirdness of how we interact with the mechanics seems to indicate that CRX could be doing more, I don't think it makes sense in universe for it to work that way,

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Except we have been explicitely told she does even more cultivation than us.

She knew the girl was spending a great deal of time arranging and holding meetings with a wide array of Inner Disciples, on top of keeping a cultivation schedule that had even raised Ling Qi's eyebrows a little, due to its strictness.

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She simply doesn't have the time to do missions and thus get drugs that would boost her significantly. We barely have the AP to do those missions ourselves and we spent almost none of our time on social stuff.

I think it's fairly obvious that CRX is going to have better drugs and better organisation than Ling Qi. Sure, she will also spends more time doing social things than Ling Qi, but it's been a constant that Ling Qi is thinking "CRX cultivates more than me", not less.

As for drugs... If you believe that CRX's imposed limit by Shenhua includes "have worse ressources for cultivation than Meizhen or Sun Liling", we just aren't going to agree.

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Except meizhen is also on the same situation as CRX, which is why we are catching up with both of them. If they had better drugs, that gap would be widening instead, as they kept up with us in the outer sect, where drug access was limited.

 

[Raising Kittens]

Except meizhen is also on the same situation as CRX, which is why we are catching up with both of them. If they had better drugs, that gap would be widening instead, as they kept up with us in the outer sect, where drug access was limited.

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To put it simply, CRX and Meizhen can afford to go 'whole ham' on the 'basic' drugs - the generic ones that provide a flat increase to Resource Dice for everything. A consistent extra +20-30 dice just isn't all that much when compared to something hyper-specialized like the Melodic Elixer, which is part of why we're catching up.

The other reason we're catching up is that a single extra point of talent means more the more Dice there are. A 10% difference when there's 10 dice being rolled isn't all that much in an absolute sense, but a 10% difference when literally thousands of dice are being rolled adds up fast - and we rolled somewhere around four thousand dice this turn.

 

[archangis]

To put it simply, CRX and Meizhen can afford to go 'whole ham' on the 'basic' drugs - the generic ones that provide a flat increase to Resource Dice for everything. A consistent extra +20-30 dice just isn't all that much when compared to something hyper-specialized like the Melodic Elixer, which is part of why we're catching up.

The other reason we're catching up is that a single extra point of talent means more the more Dice there are. A 10% difference when there's 10 dice being rolled isn't all that much in an absolute sense, but a 10% difference when literally thousands of dice are being rolled adds up fast - and we rolled somewhere around four thousand dice this turn.

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I completely agree, but that was my point right here. CRX and meizhen while having access to common drugs do not seems to partake in "high level" drugs, aka the ones sold on the sect market for sect point (or equivalent coming from their familly). I wanted to spend some of our sect points to buy those for our liege because there might be a logical reason behind her not snorting some already (maybe it's bad optics for a future province ruler to do work for a sect, or something ?).

 

[Alectai]

To be fair though, I doubt their Talents are weak. They're minimum 5, and I think CRX is likely 6--which is how she's generally making good headway despite splitting her focus as hard as she evidently is.

 

[Arkeus]

Except meizhen is also on the same situation as CRX, which is why we are catching up with both of them. If they had better drugs, that gap would be widening instead, as they kept up with us in the outer sect, where drug access was limited.

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We aren't catching up to them because they don't have good drugs, we are catching up to them because each levels take more time than the last. It's an illusion. In outer sect was where we constantly had a lot of insane drugs falling in our laps, too, and they kept up just fine.

We also have WoG that they are going to have access to much better resources in inner sect than outer sect, including rare drugs. We are not going to 'catch up to them' easily here, especially as their specific advantages will be hard to beat (E.G, every single one of their arts being as good as FVM/SCS, access to coherent and synergistic style, etc).

 

[paebel]

To be fair though, I doubt their Talents are weak. They're minimum 5, and I think CRX is likely 6--which is how she's generally making good headway despite splitting her focus as hard as she evidently is.

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I mean, I don't really care about this that much, but I'd be mildly surprised if CRX is actually Talent 6 right now. I'd be kind of flabbergasted if she actually had a higher Talent score than Bai Meizhen or Sun Liling. CRX is indeed managing to make headway in cultivation and generally stay on par in comparison to them, yeah, and she's more busy, yeah.

But she didn't cut out her cultivation time because she's busy, she cut out everything else and is being incredibly strict on herself. To the extent that Ling Qi, who is noted for cultivating a lot, thinks it's maybe a bit extreme.

"Pretty strenuous," Ling Qi admitted. She had started to become slightly concerned when her liege had actually been a full minute late to their first spar after her recent spate of cultivation. Cai Renxiang was usually frighteningly punctual. She knew the girl was spending a great deal of time arranging and holding meetings with a wide array of Inner Disciples, on top of keeping a cultivation schedule that had even raised Ling Qi's eyebrows a little, due to its strictness. "Of course, I don't really have much room to talk."

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