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

Voted best in category in the Users' Choice awards.
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Shenhua is not important. Sure she is kinda terrifying, but failing her task, is neither a death sentence nor a dooming to be medicore for eternity. As far as I can remember we are vassals to Renxiang and not her.
I am not sure, but that means something. Sure she can order her daughter to discard us if we fail, but she won´t cripple us nor raise her hand against our family. We will simply cease to exist to her, until the moment we become a piece on her board once again.

More important will Renxiang simply throw us away, because we missed the right rank a little or met more resistance in the tournament than expected? That is more important to me.


Truthfully while I don´t hope that we fail. I can see it only enhancing the story in the end.
 
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Mr Apollo said:
I can't wait for our first tutoring session with Bai Xiao Fen to take place on a totally Innocuous Hill.
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LQ: After all this tutoring on your arts, let's train your skills. More precisely perception. And reaction to stealth threat.
Snek maid : Perception, why so ?
LQ : You didn't notice the xuan wu.
Snek maid: What xuan wu :???:
Hill they were sitting on : *Bite the snek maid*
 
[X] While you will be present as much as you can, your household cannot be top priority yet. (Status quo)
Pretty tough decision, but I'm leaning towards this for now.​
 
archangis said:
LQ: After all this tutoring on your arts, let's train your skills. More precisely perception. And reaction to stealth threat.
Snek maid : Perception, why so ?
LQ : You didn't notice the xuan wu.
Snek maid: What xuan wu :???:
Hill they were sitting on : *Bite the snek maid*
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I like to imagine this is only after many hours of tutoring the entirety of which they also did on Zhengui's back.
 
So does anyone actually have exact numbers for what stats etc. we're going to need to succeed at the Cai quest and what it's going to take to get there?
Because otherwise the whole we absolutely need this 1 ap every month or we die and suffer forever thing seems pretty premature.

It also further illustrates just how shit Renxiang is at organising things if she hasn't even been able to give us a general idea of what milestones we need to hit and when.

Though I expect that's more because putting hard numbers on things like that would restrict @yrsillar in ways that negatively affect the quest .
 
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qwolfs said:
So does anyone actually have exact numbers for what stats etc. we're going to need to succeed at the Cai quest and what it's going to take to get there?
Because otherwise the whole we absolutely need this 1 ap every month or we die and suffer forever thing seems pretty premature.

It also further illustrates just how shit Renxiang is at organising things if she hasn't even been able to give us a general idea of what milestones we need to hit and when.

Though I expect that's more because putting hard numbers on things like that would restrict @yrsillar in ways that negatively affect the quest .
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There are no hard numbers. Some of us think we might need Green 6 to reach our rank goal of 530 or higher, which isn't guaranteed to happen.
 
[X] While you will be present as much as you can, your household cannot be top priority yet. (Status quo)
 
So we got confirmation by yrsillar on discord that it was everyone LQ considered familly. So our spirits are definitely included.

As such I am gonna make an argument for training our spirits, most importantly training the one that is far behind, Hanyi.

yrsillar said:
Physical Offense
Hit B (Strength C, Bite B) Unqualified Bonuses: BB 15
Qualified Bonuses: +3 w/ wood or fire art active
Penetration C15 (Strength C, Bite B)Unqualified Bonuses:
Qualified Bonuses: +15 on Fire
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yrsillar said:
Spiritual Offense
Hit: B (Manipulation D, Vocals B) Base 20, Equip 10
Penetration: B (Presence B, Vocals B)
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So let's compare Zhengui and Hanyi. Zhengui here is first, hanyi second.

What does this means ? Zhengui worst stat, offense, is as good as hanyi best stat (offense still). Now, a lot can be put on the feet of zhengui being of a significantly higher quality. But not everything, Hanyi is still the kid of a cyan spirit (while zhengui is from an indigo one). That massive difference is at least partly due to the fact that zhengui since he was a kid was trained by us (which made stealth possible for a giant turtle, and even gave him a stealth art).

Moreover we are both able to train her in technique and to train her in stats. Our manip is B to hers D rank, we have an A rank musical skill, ... As for technique, we have FSS. We know those techniques are going to fit her, as they were made by her mother. If we can train stealth to a giant turtle, it's gonna be a piece of cake to train yuki onna techniques to the kid of one.

This training is gonna make Hanyi far more powerfull, and thus significantly increase our power level, as we are a team. So the AP cost should not be seen as an AP cost but instead as an investement in our strenght. Wether it's better or worse than spending those AP is unknown, but given how our domain is built around providing support to our friends, in the long run, we are gonna need to train our spirits. Better do it now, before they start falling even further behind.
 
archangis said:
So we got confirmation by yrsillar on discord that it was everyone LQ considered familly. So our spirits are definitely included.

As such I am gonna make an argument for training our spirits, most importantly training the one that is far behind, Hanyi.





So let's compare Zhengui and Hanyi. Zhengui here is first, hanyi second.

What does this means ? Zhengui worst stat, offense, is as good as hanyi best stat (offense still). Now, a lot can be put on the feet of zhengui being of a significantly higher quality. But not everything, Hanyi is still the kid of a cyan spirit (while zhengui is from an indigo one). That massive difference is at least partly due to the fact that zhengui since he was a kid was trained by us (which made stealth possible for a giant turtle, and even gave him a stealth art).

Moreover we are both able to train her in technique and to train her in stats. Our manip is B to hers D rank, we have an A rank musical skill, ... As for technique, we have FSS. We know those techniques are going to fit her, as they were made by her mother. If we can train stealth to a giant turtle, it's gonna be a piece of cake to train yuki onna techniques to the kid of one.

This training is gonna make Hanyi far more powerfull, and thus significantly increase our power level, as we are a team. So the AP cost should not be seen as an AP cost but instead as an investement in our strenght. Wether it's better or worse than spending those AP is unknown, but given how our domain is built around providing support to our friends, in the long run, we are gonna need to train our spirits. Better do it now, before they start falling even further behind.
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For our overall power, it's almost definitely worse than spending the AP ourselves. It would be very weird if the family option made us stronger than the AP option, at least in the short term.

You also have to remember that we don't know for sure how much extra time we'll be spending training our spirits if we pick the family option. It could be a lot of training or none at all.

I got the impression that the family option is more about social interaction, which would be useful for leveling up our spirit SLs, which could provide combat bonuses through our domain. I'm not sure if this will have a big impact though, since we might still be able to increase the SL levels of Hanyi and Sixiang to 4 by the tournament even without the family option.

Also, just for clarification, yrsillar specified later that Meizhen isn't included in the vote. I'm pretty sure the vote applies to literal family + spirits only, not anyone else.
 
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Humbaba said:
For the route with absolute material superiority it hasn't felt like we've gotten much more than we might have gotten out of an elder's pocket change. We've got some useful benefits and the outfit upgrade was nice but things don't really feel that special, especially when you consider the difficuties Shenhua's challenge puts on us. I appreciate this is more due to Shenhua being tight-fisted rather than any reflection on Renxiang, but it is a bit grating. Maybe the advantages and how much it puts us ahead could be emphasised a bit more in the story?
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Off the top of my head, there's:
  1. Unspecified tax benefits for our fief in the future
  2. Complete funding of Zhengui's food intake (which last I tried to calculate could easily come to multiple GSS a month depending on how expensive cores and stuff are)
  3. Cai robe upgrade and high grade domain weapon (the latter referring more to the quality than the effectiveness)
  4. Subsidisation of pills/medicine for cultivation every turn to the tune of (assuming at least 12 AP on cultivation) at least 18 YSS a month
  5. Guaranteed GSS every month, that is confirmed to scale to our progress within the Sect (It started at 1/month at the beginning of the year, and at the start of Turn 4 had gone up to 3/month).
Plus stuff like organising the Death Mirror auction in order to get us the best deal possible.
EDIT: Oh, and access (though possibly temporary) to the Cai Archives for arts.
 
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Huo Yuhao said:
For our overall power, it's almost definitely worse than spending the AP ourselves. It would be very weird if the family option made us stronger than the AP option, at least in the short term.

You also have to remember that we don't know how much extra time we'll be spending training our spirits if we pick the family option. It could be a lot of training or none at all. I got the impression that the family option is more about social interactions, which would be useful for leveling up our spirit SLs, which could provide combat bonuses through our domain. I'm not sure if this will have a big impact though, since we should still be able to increase the SL levels of Hanyi and Sixiang to 4 by the tournament even without the family option.
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It's trading personnal power to train up our spirits. It's something we already did in the previous thread for zhengui, with the results we know. I am comparing this to the previous training that we gave zhengui as the way it's worded is relatively similar, both being about spending time with our spirits.

yrsillar said:
[] Spend time taking care of and raising Zhengui
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It's true that it will probably automate the raising of SL, which means 4 minors from this choice, but I believe it to be a minor benefit compared to getting Hanyi as a combattant strong enough to be helpfull to us.
 
This is a truly hard one! In the end, for me, cold calculation wins over heart:

[X] While you will be present as much as you can, your household cannot be top priority yet. (Status quo)

I think:
  • We will maintain our current relationship with our family, and might get one of our two social actions devoted to them down the line (as we did before), so this is not ignoring
  • We are currently at the sect, later, when wie set up our own fiefdom we will spend lots of time at home
  • Our little sis is still too young. If she were older I might be tempted to invest the AP into giving her leg up, but as is that can't happen
  • 1 AP per month is huge, especially since our build is not focussed very narrowly and we need some build flexibility
  • In the end, in order to protect our family and give them an established place in this world we need to establish ourselves, first. As we are now, the best way to do this is to fulfill and if possible exceed the Cais' expectation.
 
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Humbaba said:
Ugh. I do want more time devoted to socials in general, though I would much prefer it be more evenly spread around, but as unimpressed as I have been with the major benefits of the Cai route so far* we need to remember that Renxiang has already had her 'you have messed up' chance from Shenhua, with Gan's failure and Shenhua's thoughts about Renxiang's lack of personal strength. If Ling Qi also fails Shenhua's tests then that starts demonstrating a pattern of misjudgment, which has serious implications for her status as heir, our status and possibly her sanity.

We are improving things with our family, and given her interludes I'm extremely sure Quingge would prefer we ensure our little family unit isn't dashed to the winds by Shenua's political disfavour and have a decent amount of time with her than spend a lot more time with her at the expense of losing everything, again.

For the route with absolute material superiority it hasn't felt like we've gotten much more than we might have gotten out of an elder's pocket change. We've got some useful benefits and the outfit upgrade was nice but things don't really feel that special, especially when you consider the difficuties Shenhua's challenge puts on us. I appreciate this is more due to Shenhua being tight-fisted rather than any reflection on Renxiang, but it is a bit grating. Maybe the advantages and how much it puts us ahead could be emphasised a bit more in the story?
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Karnax626 said:
Off the top of my head, there's:
  1. Unspecified tax benefits for our fief in the future
  2. Complete funding of Zhengui's food intake (which last I tried to calculate could easily come to multiple GSS a month depending on how expensive cores and stuff are)
  3. Cai robe upgrade and high grade domain weapon (the latter referring more to the quality than the effectiveness)
  4. Subsidisation of pills/medicine for cultivation every turn to the tune of (assuming at least 12 AP on cultivation) at least 18 YSS a month
  5. Guaranteed GSS every month, that is confirmed to scale to our progress within the Sect (It started at 1/month at the beginning of the year, and at the start of Turn 4 had gone up to 3/month).
Plus stuff like organising the Death Mirror auction in order to get us the best deal possible.
EDIT: Oh, and access (though possibly temporary) to the Cai Archives for arts.
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everything karnax said, plus the Singing Mist Blade, the buy-whatever-you-want during the tournament and if we count immaterial benefits then the introduction to high tier nobles and cultivators during the tournament are all benefits LQ got from CRX and it hasnt even been a year since she started

Edit: oh I just noticed that karnax mentioned the domain weapon too
 
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Inserted tally
Adhoc vote count started by Aranfan on Apr 3, 2019 at 4:57 PM, finished with 14440 posts and 185 votes.
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HeiTian said:
We will maintain our current relationship with or family, and might get one of our two social actions devoted to them down the line (as we did before), so this is not ignoring
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HeiTian said:
We are currently at the sect, later, when wie set up our own fiefdom we will spend lots of time at home
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No we won't, there are always going to be fires to put out and Shenhua will be giving us even harder tasks after this that we'll need to pass so these same arguments will continue to be made.

Mom and Sis have always been ignored unless we were forced to interact with them like their arrival at the Sect and this current arc.

-1 AP is NOT "massive" and is going to be dedicated to our spirits as well. If anything the status quo vote is wasting that AP when a small sacrifice means all the people we're closest to get dedicated social time to improve our relationships with them and help them with any problems.
 
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1986ctcel said:
Stop doomsaying, this is not a make or break choice and people characterising it as one is beyond aggravating.

If -1AP a month is all it takes to fail in people's eyes then the Cai route is already fucked since Shenhua will be giving us harder assignments after this one.

If we can't afford to make time for our family now when we're just in the Sect we'll never be able to when we need to kill 1000 wild Cyan Spirit Beasts messing with our populace or turn our fief into an economic powerhouse or whatever else Shenhua comes up with
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1 AP each month is a huge amount and this will hardly be the last opportunity to devote AP to things that don't help us pass Shenhua's test.

Also, it's completely normal to not see your parents during your time at the sect and likewise normal to spend time with your household while managing a fief. Not doing it now definitely doesn't mean we can't do it later.
 
George said:
1 AP each month is a huge amount and this will hardly be the last opportunity to devote AP to things that don't help us pass Shenhua's test.

Also, it's completely normal to not see your parents during your time at the sect and likewise normal to spend time with your household while managing a fief. Not doing it now definitely doesn't mean we can't do it later.
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TIL Characterisation does not exist and Ling Qi does whatever we want whenever we want with no thought to her prior behaviour and that there are a ton of people who totally want to do the family SLs but they're just mysteriously absent whenever an SL vote comes up.

Pull the other one, I even said that Shenhua will give us even more tasks later on that will be a lot harder to complete than this one. No freaking way will people vote to spend time with the family when we have yet more insane tasks to do outside the Sect.
 
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1986ctcel said:
-1 AP is NOT "massive"
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i'll argue that -1AP per month, for some reason some people are strangely willing to forget that particualr part, is massive. It is enough to at least fully master an archive art for the inter-sect tournament, maybe even two.
Heck, in pure spiritual or physical cultivation it'll easily be the equivalent of three to four months of it, probably enough to rank up either of those.

1986ctcel said:
TIL Characterisation does not exist and Ling Qi does whatever we want whenever we want with no thought to her prior behaviour and that there are a ton of people who totally want to do the family SLs but they're just mysteriously absent whenever an SL vote comes up.
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So basically what you're saying is that voting to spend that AP per month is actually out of character for Ling Qi but that doesn't matter because ... reasons ?
 
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[X] While you will be present as much as you can, your household cannot be top priority yet. (Status quo)

Locking in a minimum expense of over 20 AP towards something we have no idea of what it entails, aside from a general idea of socializing with our family and what would be at best a shaky guess about benefits for interacting with mortals is one I am not willing to go for.
 
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1986ctcel said:
TIL Characterisation does not exist and Ling Qi does whatever we want whenever we want with no thought to her prior behaviour and that there are a ton of people who totally want to do the family SLs but they're just mysteriously absent whenever an SL vote comes up.
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95 of them are here now so this whining is a little absurd. Besides that, nearly every person we've prioritized over our family won't be around for our fief. In fact, the most recent one is already dead and so certainly won't be winning any more votes.
 
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