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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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I'd like to note that counters that can back-propagate through field effects seem like a pretty high level trick which shouldn't be common outside of defense-focused high nobles (basically just Meizhen at our level), and direct spiritual attack counters we can deal with because our actual dps output is pretty decent and our sp.armor isn't too bad either.

It's just that Meizhen's bullshit counters exploits and punishes our build specifically for throwing down huge field effects that deal consistent and but not huge damage to everything in them, which allows her to flip our attrition strategy on its head.

On the off-chance we do encounter something like it we can always go full FSS instead and turn it into a soul punch brawl, and if we're lucky our decent hp and sp.armor will let us win the dps race.
 
There is also the slight issue that optimizing for combat is not the same thing as optimizing for power or for usefulness. We are forced to treat 1v1 duels where both parties start knowing where the other is as the yardstick for power, but this is heavily biased against social/stealth builds right out the gate. So, a lot of cultivators coming up through this system are going to be stunted by the need to develop something outside their core competencies. (A spy is not a soldier, right?)

So I think that the starlight mantle will probably help us win more confrontations, but the stealth/flight will make us more powerful and flexible in the actual struggles we face.
 
Hi! First time voting, hope I'm doing this right.

[X] The ethereal green lights of the Grinning Moon.

The mantle sounds beautiful, but this one makes more sense to me.
 
Glau said:
There is also the slight issue that optimizing for combat is not the same thing as optimizing for power or for usefulness. We are forced to treat 1v1 duels where both parties start knowing where the other is as the yardstick for power, but this is heavily biased against social/stealth builds right out the gate. So, a lot of cultivators coming up through this system are going to be stunted by the need to develop something outside their core competencies. (A spy is not a soldier, right?)

So I think that the starlight mantle will probably help us win more confrontations, but the stealth/flight will make us more powerful and flexible in the actual struggles we face.
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An excellent point, it's just that the mantle art is also for social combat, and the social-based combat art also does social combat (who knew). But yes they all have rather different yet significant utility outside a duel-context combat scenario.
 
veekie said:
1) Loyalty. She explicitly chose Ling Qi to make the offer to first, because she saw that Ling Qi's loyalty, once given, is something she goes All In on. This is extremely important because most of Renxiang's assets are actually exclusively loyal to Shenhua personally, not her clan.
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Risky call on her part in my opinion, if voters liked her personally just a little bit less, I think we could have still signed up with her but only in a transactional sense where Ling Qi doesn't actually care.
 
reignonyrparade said:
Risky call on her part in my opinion, if voters liked her personally just a little bit less, I think we could have still signed up with her but only in a transactional sense where Ling Qi doesn't actually care.
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Eh, she doesn't know that. But for a meta reason, the very fact that the thread picked her indicates the thread likes her enough to stick with her.
 
[X] The ethereal green lights of the Grinning Moon.

My vote is clearly needed in this close, practically tied vote.
 
[X] The pale grey lights of the Hidden Moon
Because I like being unfathomable. I like taking Ling Qi's tendencies to be flighty and operate on her own internal logic and to make that into an artform. To be someone who can be talking and playing in front of you, or trying to rip the life heat out of your beating chest all with undeniable grace and yet still seem impossibly distant. For interactions to some how seem incapable of marring her as all they can do is interact with the reflection before them.

It's powerful, thematic, and evocative. The other arts to me describe actions, of specific behaviors, but something of ISM calls to mind a way of being.
 
[X] The pale grey lights of the Hidden Moon

I'm switching! Maybe we can be Tank buddies with Meizhen.

I can just imagine the moment when our tankiness can finally hold against Meizhen's comparatively weaker offense and they stalemate on a training ground under the sparse light of the Hidden Moon...

While Cui, Hanyi and Zengui play elsehwere and barge in to ruin the scene.
 
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query said:
I wonder if the speed of these methods is proportional to the danger involved?
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Naw, the big deal with the Imperial Method is that its shockingly reliable. It can take hundreds of mediocre talents and give you hundreds of Reds, with hardly anyone dying if they are guided properly. It can reliably produce Whites at a slow drip. It can train cultivators of just about any specialization, as long as someone pursues it.
And the trick is, the more Red alchemists, the more Yellows the system supports. The more Yellow alchemists, the more Greens the system supports. More drugs => More power.

The tradeoff of the Imperial Method isn't speed, but rather cost. The Imperial Method lets you go ridiculously fast, but you need a steady supply of Spirit Stones, produced in very few mines, you need drugs which requires peer production cultivators to make said drugs.

This pretty much makes a direct link of socioeconomic status with cultivation power.

The two contrasting methods we know of at enough detail to predict strengths and weakness:
-Pre-Imperial cultivation's approach is essentially using spiritblooded to turn the local spirits and wildlife into powerups. However, spiritblooded tend to have narrower talents, emulating their spirit ancestry, while blood dilution or mixing is a major issue. This method is great for early settled tribes, it incentivizes them to hunt their surrounding region for powerups, then plateau unless they find new and dangerous things to eat.

-Cloud Nomad cultivation's approach is to bond with a spirit beast as soulmate and then use it to basically 'tow' yourself along as the spirit grows. The advantage of it is that it can be ridiculously fast...if you can get a suitably OP spirit. The drawback is that such spirits are rare, getting a talented cultivator paired with a talented spirit at the right point in time is playing a crazy gacha, and spirit beasts have their racial peak...after which you're now unable to progress without getting your spirit to break their limits. Theres a reason why we don't see Cloud Nomad Whites.

-Pillarman cultivation we don't know a lot about, but their ritual cannibalism method is very nearly a closed loop. It's rock solid stable, but it grows at a snail's pace, and the amount of powerful cultivators in the system is very nearly static.
TehChron said:
Cant dispel what you can't see
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[Waves hand at Cai Renxiang]
She literally had an art that specifically dispels what she can't see lol.
 
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Adhoc vote count started by Killer_Whale on May 22, 2019 at 10:28 PM, finished with 359 posts and 164 votes.
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Adhoc vote count started by Killer_Whale on May 23, 2019 at 12:58 AM, finished with 362 posts and 165 votes.
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