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

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commando2341 said:
Fair enough. Sleep well and thx. I'd originally thought it'd be some kind of dice boost, not just getting the next step.
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Nah. Actually, we hired a tutor to ask about it.

yrsillar said:
Her tutor in the Argent Arts still proved informative though. A young woman with a clean shaven head, wearing a variation of a temple monks robes done in pale greys and silver thread, Ling Qi had startled a bit at her appearance and the feeling of serenity that shrouded her.

The Argent Arts, she had learned, were ultimately pieces of a greater whole, created by the Sect Master to improve the military might of the Sect's armed forces. The Mirror was meant to defend against the battlefield manipulation of barbarian shaman's whose wide ranging arts allowed them to never set foot on the battlefield itself. The Storm empowered the soldiery, allowing them to both defend against volleys of arrows and to close distance, and the Current allowed the charge of Argent Peak soldiers to break enemy lines.

The Argent Pulse, then, was an art for commanders, those who stood at the head of formations and kept units working as a cohesive whole. The user would bolster their allies with the stability of the earth, and move them to action with the surety of heavenly might at their backs. In the wholeness of heaven and earth, a soldier could fight to their last breath without a loss of skill.
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Basically, someone who pursued the Argent way. She said that AP was what we got for mastering the other three arts.

Basically, argent arts are built like a chain: First three lead to AP, which leads to the next argent arts set.

yrsillar said:
The Argent arts are taught to soldiers once they're actually out in the mountains. A big chunk of early deployment is drilling in group tactics and cultivating the Argent Arts, most particularly current and storm. As for the Sect's arts being weak... Those are the basic forms, as noted in Mirror's description. Even then fully mastering them is obviously beyond average soldiers. 'officers' have access to the advanced arts, of which the Argent Pulse is the first.
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Which is to say, just to start learning it requires we invest in AS, which is garbage for us, and AC, which has been nerfed into being so-so.

Argent way is almost entirely melee, and isn't suited to LQ's style at all. I'm pretty sure we can find better uses for the time and meridians than pursuing it.
 
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commando2341 said:
I'm convinced now, albeit a bit sad that they didn't come to much.
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TBH, the real gem was the cultivation art. Argent soul was pretty damn good when we were starting out, and although Ling Qi thinks Argent Genesis is lower quality than Eight Phase Ceremony, I'm sure we'll get at least some use out of it. Assuming, of course, that EPC is nearing it's end.
 
veekie said:
Missed Repeatedly.
I still want to get Argent Pulse, but goddamn whats even the logic of that?
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Most of AC was always at best so-so, but there were new techs or upgrades that were super-powerful if situational once or twice, and after the GM read about how super they were he hit them with a nerf bat because apparently the "super" was unintentional.

Asael said:
TBH, the real gem was the cultivation art. Argent soul was pretty damn good when we were starting out, and although Ling Qi thinks Argent Genesis is lower quality than Eight Phase Ceremony, I'm sure we'll get at least some use out of it. Assuming, of course, that EPC is nearing it's end.
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Which is super sad, because it means we could have saved ourselves the effort of learning all the combat arts in the first place.
 
I think it's clear that the only use for the Argent Arts for Ling Qi is of social nature.
The combat potential of AS and AC is wasted on her, and Pulse is unlikely to, alone, justify the time spent on three arts.
At least for the Art Set we currently have. It might be possible, though i find it unlikely, that the next set has both useful arts for Ling Qi and is gated behind mastering the previous one.
 
Um, people might not want to be too quick to dismiss AG before we complete EPC. AG is more-or-less explicitly a secondary Art (which makes me wonder if that Art is also given to those actually following the Argent Way- as if it is, that means that they are limited to using a secondary Cultivation Art as their primary one) so I think the idea is that AG is primarily for the passives- like offering an additional virtual YSS per week and the extra dice on meridian cultivation.
 
@yrsillar what would we have to spend to set up some li silk guards in Ling Qi's cave-home? An ap or can we just do it in adventure mode?

Also after we set them up, would it be possible to use them as stealth training aids given their B rank detection? Something like:
Train by trying to sneak past the li silk guards 1 ap (stealth)

E:
sstabeler said:
Um, people might not want to be too quick to dismiss AG before we complete EPC. AG is more-or-less explicitly a secondary Art (which makes me wonder if that Art is also given to those actually following the Argent Way- as if it is, that means that they are limited to using a secondary Cultivation Art as their primary one) so I think the idea is that AG is primarily for the passives- like offering an additional virtual YSS per week and the extra dice on meridian cultivation.
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I think most people consider argent genesis usefully good, with some rather nice features and aren't dismissing it.
 
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sstabeler said:
Um, people might not want to be too quick to dismiss AG before we complete EPC. AG is more-or-less explicitly a secondary Art (which makes me wonder if that Art is also given to those actually following the Argent Way- as if it is, that means that they are limited to using a secondary Cultivation Art as their primary one) so I think the idea is that AG is primarily for the passives- like offering an additional virtual YSS per week and the extra dice on meridian cultivation.
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AG isn't explicitly a secondary art. If we didn't have EPC but instead some other archive-found cultivation art, it is entirely possible we would've dropped the latter in favour of AG. Like, the re-roll Argent Soul gave us was great, and until we got that larceny bonus Soul was beating out EPC w.r.t. meridian bonuses as well.

It's just EPC is too good for us specifically for Genesis to beat it out as our main cultivation art, especially if it follows the theme of Soul with having a load of passives at higher levels.
 
BungieONI said:
@yrsillar what would we have to spend to set up some li silk guards in Ling Qi's cave-home? An ap or can we just do it in adventure mode?

Also after we set them up, would it be possible to use them as stealth training aids given their B rank detection? Something like:
Train by trying to sneak past the li silk guards 1 ap (stealth)

E:

I think most people consider argent genesis usefully good, with some rather nice features and aren't dismissing it.
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The Li Silk Guard formation should under no circumstances require B stealth to bypass. It's a D rank formation, Ling Qi's version of it is not all that polished, and a solidly mid-2nd realm formation being almost impossible for peak Yellow stealth to bypass is ridiculous. Narratively, this would make it a superior security formation to the formations in Renshu's base that we raided and cost him: a jade slip holding his signature art, multiple Sable Light Pills, and his book of fraudulent magical slavery. The idea that Renshu's security, at the height of his power and him being a full Green, should be inferior to Li Suyin's fooling around with recreating a formation from the ground up in a handful of weeks is ridiculous. Ridiculous!
 
AbeoLogos said:
The Li Silk Guard formation should under no circumstances require B stealth to bypass. It's a D rank formation, Ling Qi's version of it is not all that polished, and a solidly mid-2nd realm formation being almost impossible for peak Yellow stealth to bypass is ridiculous. Narratively, this would make it a superior security formation to the formations in Renshu's base that we raided and cost him: a jade slip holding his signature art, multiple Sable Light Pills, and his book of fraudulent magical slavery. The idea that Renshu's security, at the height of his power and him being a full Green, should be inferior to Li Suyin's fooling around with recreating a formation from the ground up in a handful of weeks is ridiculous. Ridiculous!
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Like I said in discord, ah well.
 
AbeoLogos said:
The Li Silk Guard formation should under no circumstances require B stealth to bypass. It's a D rank formation, Ling Qi's version of it is not all that polished, and a solidly mid-2nd realm formation being almost impossible for peak Yellow stealth to bypass is ridiculous. Narratively, this would make it a superior security formation to the formations in Renshu's base that we raided and cost him: a jade slip holding his signature art, multiple Sable Light Pills, and his book of fraudulent magical slavery. The idea that Renshu's security, at the height of his power and him being a full Green, should be inferior to Li Suyin's fooling around with recreating a formation from the ground up in a handful of weeks is ridiculous. Ridiculous!
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Except Renshu made those formations himself or by what was commonly available, whereas the Silk Guardians are based off an instruction manual that has numerous Third-realm relevant Formations and methods to allow weaker cultivators to punch up with appropriate amounts of human sacrifice.

Hardly recreating things from the ground up, nor ridiculous.
 
sstabeler said:
Um, people might not want to be too quick to dismiss AG before we complete EPC. AG is more-or-less explicitly a secondary Art (which makes me wonder if that Art is also given to those actually following the Argent Way- as if it is, that means that they are limited to using a secondary Cultivation Art as their primary one) so I think the idea is that AG is primarily for the passives- like offering an additional virtual YSS per week and the extra dice on meridian cultivation.
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I do not believe anyone has expressed the opinion that we should dismiss AG. Worst case scenario, we cultivate it for it's Pemanant benefits and forget about it, same as we did with Argent Soul. Best case, we have something that we would want to sub in for EPC in select circumstances. And it is worth working on regardless.

What some people ARE doing is dismissing the Argent Combat Arts, which is a whole different story.
 
TehChron said:
Except Renshu made those formations himself or by what was commonly available, whereas the Silk Guardians are based off an instruction manual that has numerous Third-realm relevant Formations and methods to allow weaker cultivators to punch up with appropriate amounts of human sacrifice.

Hardly recreating things from the ground up, nor ridiculous.
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It was recreating things from the ground up, because she explicitly had to reinvent the formations from the manual to operate without all that human sacrifice yuckiness. Ling Qi herself called this out as no simple task. The resources that actually go into the formation are hardly realm-jumping besides, not like human sacrifice can be explained away as. First realm spider silk, random bones, and a yellow stone a month is pocket change. There's simply nothing that justifies post-peak second realm function.

Edit: Heck, we can use a tangible example from the manual to compare. The Ossuary Scout that we got from the manual to start was terribly primitive. So no, we don't have evidence of super high quality baseline performance after the translation into Imperial methods. What's more, the Li Silk Guardian was not nearly as perceptive prior to the system shift. There is no reason to assume that the current state of affairs is intentional or reasonable.

@yrsillar the formation simply doesn't work as you've currently defined skill ranks.
 
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PrimalShadow said:
I do not believe anyone has expressed the opinion that we should dismiss AG. Worst case scenario, we cultivate it for it's Pemanant benefits and forget about it, same as we did with Argent Soul. Best case, we have something that we would want to sub in for EPC in select circumstances. And it is worth working on regardless.

What some people ARE doing is dismissing the Argent Combat Arts, which is a whole different story.
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I'm more a little concerned people will decide to work on it after we master EPC, when it looks to me like it's considered to be a secondary Cultivation Art by most noble Scions.
 
sstabeler said:
I'm more a little concerned people will decide to work on it after we master EPC, when it looks to me like it's considered to be a secondary Cultivation Art by most noble Scions.
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We're training it in the current month plan, and should make significant progress on it. I don't know if we're going to have a similar set up next month. Depends how we do with EPC, since we need to get it to the next level so all its bonuses still apply, and next month might have most of our arts.
 
sstabeler said:
I'm more a little concerned people will decide to work on it after we master EPC, when it looks to me like it's considered to be a secondary Cultivation Art by most noble Scions.
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They both peak in Green Three, we'll need to find a new Cultivation after that point either way.

And given that we've got the time to master AG and accomplish our other goals, I see nothing wrong with doing so.
 
I'm pretty ambivalent towards working on formations at the moment. We have a lot of things to do and not a lot of time to do them. When thinking about doing formation work or getting 11-20 sect points or 1-4 contribution points, I feel that the sect points or contribution points will provide more value in the short term which can be leveraged better for long-term advantages.

Training stealth through the use of consistently breaking through formations and avoiding guards sounds like a good way to jump-start our stealth training though. So rather than develop the formations ourselves, I think a more productive use of our time would be making it a joint effort with Li Suyin. We already know, OoC that she was giving her bone soldiers training by having them fight her mentor's spirit companion's brood. Asking if Li Suyin wants to improve the detection and security formations on her guards would be a way for Ling Qi and Li Suyin to keep in touch and have a joint project even if we aren't fully developed in the security formations as Li Suyin.

It seems like a joint project that will really help Li Suyin's security and allow us a better understanding of how such detection works and how to break it. Making the both of us better at things we have distinct interests and advantages in.
 
Raising Kittens said:
They both peak in Green Three, we'll need to find a new Cultivation after that point either way.

And given that we've got the time to master AG and accomplish our other goals, I see nothing wrong with doing so.
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In that regard the main reward I'm hoping for from the moon map is either a moon cultivation art or the means to make one.

I'm also hoping the moon stag plotline might get expanded on like the comb will.
 
Yeah, EPC has a fair chance of completing this turn after the big omake investment that was put in it, which means next turn will be a good one to use our Silverblood Pill while working on Argent Genesis--and while we're at it we might as well just see about pushing AS and AC too.

Because if I'm not mistaken, Silverblood Pill got buffed with the transition to work like other super medicines where it gives you a special effect for the month in your Cultivation. And a push to finish the Argent set off while pushing AG up would effectively also give us...

(Does some math).

Another three AP or so of Physical and Spiritual Cultivation, which partially benefit from our stupid training bonuses of Argent Arts as a result.
 
Alectai said:
Yeah, EPC has a fair chance of completing this turn after the big omake investment that was put in it, which means next turn will be a good one to use our Silverblood Pill while working on Argent Genesis--and while we're at it we might as well just see about pushing AS and AC too.

Because if I'm not mistaken, Silverblood Pill got buffed with the transition to work like other super medicines where it gives you a special effect for the month in your Cultivation. And a push to finish the Argent set off while pushing AG up would effectively also give us...

(Does some math).

Another three AP or so of Physical and Spiritual Cultivation, which partially benefit from our stupid training bonuses of Argent Arts as a result.
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Can you show that math please? I'm interested.

Aside from that I don't really agree with the idea of spending ap on storm and current, though less strongly about it for current(for reasons I've laid out before). I'd rather spend next month getting our core arts and skills up. If I was going to use the silverblood I'd spend it by overloading genesis, which I want done as soon as possible cause it is quite nice.
 
BungieONI said:
Can you show that math please? I'm interested.

Aside from that I don't really agree with the idea of spending ap on storm and current, though less strongly about it for current(for reasons I've laid out before). I'd rather spend next month getting our core arts and skills up. If I was going to use the silverblood I'd spend it by overloading genesis, which I want done as soon as possible cause it is quite nice.
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The big problem is that next month, the only 'Core skill and art' we'll be able to train... Is SCS...

And on a second re-read of it... No, you're right, Silverblood Pills are still good, but they'd only effectively give us one bonus Physical and Spiritual Cultivation action for a full court press, I thought it was still "One third of the successes goes to your Physical/Spiritual"
 
I also would rather overload Genesis for any use of the Silverblood Pill (and would it affect a month or a week in the new system? How would that even work?) It's possible that isn't good either though, due to the bonus successes also being halved, in which case I think it'd be better to ignore the pill entirely and just overload Spiritual/Physical themselves.

The problem with AC and AS is they are basically entirely wasted actions now, with the Tourney in the back window we don't need to be developing desperation tier arts like that anymore.
 
DeAnno said:
I also would rather overload Genesis for any use of the Silverblood Pill (and would it affect a month or a week in the new system? How would that even work?) It's possible that isn't good either though, due to the bonus successes also being halved, in which case I think it'd be better to ignore the pill entirely and just overload Spiritual/Physical themselves.

The problem with AC and AS is they are basically entirely wasted actions now, with the Tourney in the back window we don't need to be developing desperation tier arts like that anymore.
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Not entirely wasted, AM did give us the innate Qi Sense as a permanent, and we can salvage some use out of them with the Silverblood Pill.

But realistically, our biggest bottleneck right now is our Physical and Spiritual Cultivation, and thanks to our last Silverblood Pill, we can shave about 2 AP off of our Physical/Spiritual grind at the cost of around 3-4 AP finishing the job (Which totals to around 2 AP 'Wasted' total, which is fine when you consider that we're going to be tight on stuff to train next turn anyway), and then we can finally see Pulse and see if it's useful to us (Though from what we know, it's a damage boosting + soak increasing aura)
 
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