|
Tunicate posted:Note that these were (like Nero's gladiator-watching sunglasses) made out of highly polished smoky quartz rather than glass, since China lacked good glass technology (since porcelain was so useful for most things other people used glass for) Now I'm imagining Resident Evil 4 but instead of woodpunk it's porcelainpunk.
|
#
?
Sep 7, 2019 00:35
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 10:00 |
|
|
CCG posted:"A money-making system? Why do you want to create such a system?" Senior White was puzzled. "If you lack money, you can simply take a stroll outside and get plenty of it. If you feel that the amount isn't enough, you can go to a mountain and start digging, obtaining quite a few valuable items. Then, you can sell these items and make a lot of money." I feel like this entire story is building up to a Senior White Privilege pun.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 18:00
|
|
|
That's just videogame economics.
|
|
#
?
Sep 19, 2019 18:45
|
|
|
If any Cradle fans aren’t aware, Uncrowned releases on Amazon next week on the 26th. Travis Baldree, the audiobook reader, has released about 7 minutes of what appears to be the prologue or chapter 1, no story spoilers involved. The Uncrowned stuff starts at about 2 minutes in, the first part is from another series by the same author.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2019 19:48
|
|
|
Silynt posted:If any Cradle fans aren’t aware, Uncrowned releases on Amazon next week on the 26th. Travis Baldree, the audiobook reader, has released about 7 minutes of what appears to be the prologue or chapter 1, no story spoilers involved. The Uncrowned stuff starts at about 2 minutes in, the first part is from another series by the same author. Thanks for linking this, it was very good.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2019 20:48
|
|
|
Tunicate posted:I feel like this entire story is building up to a Senior White Privilege pun. I think we are long past that point in CCG.
|
|
#
?
Sep 20, 2019 21:33
|
|
|
Cradle book 7, Uncrowned, is out today.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2019 17:49
|
|
|
Silynt posted:Cradle book 7, Uncrowned, is out today. Just finished it after burning through it 2-3 hours. It's not awful, but it's probably my least favorite cradle book. At least right now, with how things played out near the end. Tune in next week for the exciting conclusion to what feels like every single plotline in the book. Even the aftermath of the fight between Lindon and Yerin is put off.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2019 20:13
|
|
|
So does Lord of Mysteries get any good? It's popular, but the first dozen chapters that I've read seem somewhat dire.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2019 20:20
|
|
|
Cynic Jester posted:Just finished it after burning through it 2-3 hours. It's not awful, but it's probably my least favorite cradle book. At least right now, with how things played out near the end. Yeah it’s act 1 and 2 of a three act play, and instead of act 3 the director jumped out from behind the curtain and yelled boo then the audience was instructed to come see the sequel in half a year. The writing is great, but structure wouldn’t fly in tradpub.
|
|
#
?
Sep 26, 2019 22:56
|
|
|
The final fight in Uncrowned really rubbed me the wrong way and it was frustrating to read, especially with how blatant it was foreshadowed. The book would have benefited from tying off at least one more loose end to give it more of a conclusion. Up to this point every book has had its own arc that it brings to completion, but this one doesn't. Also I know it's not going to be the case but I want that final scene to lead to Dross getting taken away. I really don't like how Lindon was completely reliant on Dross for everything this book, and honestly Dross is one of the things about the series I dislike the most. In his notes at the end of Ghostwater he mentioned how characters like Dross are hard to handle but he thought he could manage it, and unfortunately I think he was wrong.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2019 08:27
|
|
|
Desuwa posted:The final fight in Uncrowned really rubbed me the wrong way and it was frustrating to read, especially with how blatant it was foreshadowed. The book would have benefited from tying off at least one more loose end to give it more of a conclusion. Up to this point every book has had its own arc that it brings to completion, but this one doesn't. My big issue with Dross is how inconsistent he is. Sometimes, like when Lindon schooled 12 Underlords at once, it's bullet time on crack with a side of precognition. Against Yerin, arguably the person other than Lindon Dross has the most information on, Dross did nothing. I like the interplay between Dross and Lindon as characters, but the effect Dross has had on other aspects of the story are far less interesting.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2019 10:56
|
|
|
Cynic Jester posted:Just finished it after burning through it 2-3 hours. It's not awful, but it's probably my least favorite cradle book. At least right now, with how things played out near the end. Anias posted:Yeah it's act 1 and 2 of a three act play, and instead of act 3 the director jumped out from behind the curtain and yelled boo then the audience was instructed to come see the sequel in half a year. The writing is great, but structure wouldn't fly in tradpub. Desuwa posted:The book would have benefited from tying off at least one more loose end to give it more of a conclusion. Up to this point every book has had its own arc that it brings to completion, but this one doesn't. I think you guys are being kind of hard on Uncrowned, considering Skysworn exists. Now there's a book that couldn't find an arc with both hands. I like it about as much as Underlord, I guess, so it's ranking... fourth or fifth out of seven? One thing I did like was, after spending six book getting salty about Suriel and Ozriel, Makiel is the one who fucks it all up in the end. The teen drama nonsense was another highlight. Lowlights: barely any Orthos time, what the heck. The Akuras, too, were kind of a non-event, which feels bizarre. I'm guessing Sha Miara will end up joining Lindon's band of misfits eventually, though she's a fair bit younger than the rest of them at this point. KOGAHAZAN!! fucked around with this message at 18:00 on Sep 27, 2019 |
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2019 17:08
|
|
|
KOGAHAZAN!! posted:I think you guys are being kind of hard on Uncrowned, considering Skysworn exists. I like it about as much as Underlord, I guess, so it's ranking... fourth or fifth out of seven? Well, when I read Skysworn its sequel was out already  Agree on what you felt was missing (I really wanted some Orthos-Kelsa adventures). Also, needed more Eithan, though his standard in weapons continues to be high. What sticks out to me is that interference of Ozriel's that Makiel was upset about enough to mess with freaking dreadgods, which can easily affect fates of basically everyone on the planet, was just Ozriel being way ahead of him on recruiting, and also far subtler about it (and probably better in quality with the assist of Suriel scouting Lindon and Yerin) OddObserver fucked around with this message at 17:50 on Sep 27, 2019 |
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2019 17:44
|
|
|
I liked the writing I just feel that Will stopped writing 2/3 of the way through the natural arc and said "that's enough for a cradle book" and put the NS ending there. The NS ending scene could be literally anywhere in the arc, since the dialogue that kicked it off was a single word that could have shown up anywhere. A1 - Tournament Preparation - ends at ~44% with the Tournament Director Seizing control "HOLD" etc. A2 - Tournament Pre-Seeding - ends at 95% with the final round reactions from monarchs etc. A3 - Top 8 *Record Scratch* ~Cliffhanger~ 5% of the book. That's not good pacing. Even if the next book is entirely the Top 8 with a typical will epilogue, which will be a fine book I'm sure, it's still bad pacing to do things this way. If he wanted this to be the natural end of the book, he should have had an extra arc earlier. For example a clearer transition between training time (A1) and journey to the tournament (A2) and then pre-seeding rounds at the tournmanet (A3, end with NS stopping the fight to ask his question). Lots of people I've talked with just read straight through "The End" expecting there to be more, because the transition from A2 to A3 was exciting, urgent, fast action, and then the book just Stops. I love the way the book ends. I dislike the -structure of the novel- because it is messy. I've said it elsewhere but Makiel and Ozriel should not have any more viewpoint scenes. They work better as people with inscrutable motivations doing ridiculous things.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2019 17:54
|
|
|
Uncrowned sucked for a lot of reasons. Forging Blackflame was supposed to be super difficult, and then Lindon just does it with absolutely no scenes regarding it whatsoever. More of the story was about preparing for the tournament than the tournament itself. Yerin winning against Lindon was an ultimately unsatisfying conclusion - and the way the results were revealed was doubly unsatisfying. The cliffhangers at the end were all pretty lame and boring to be completely honest. The whole thing was a solid step down in terms of quality.
|
|
#
?
Sep 27, 2019 19:22
|
|
|
In Forge/Thread of Destiny news, Kung Fu Stalin’s tailoring apprentice is Kung Fu David Bowie and he lives in a house made of sunrises surrounded by horned up moths banging
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2019 21:35
|
|
|
Its Rinaldo posted:In Forge/Thread of Destiny news, Kung Fu Stalin’s tailoring apprentice is Kung Fu David Bowie and he lives in a house made of sunrises surrounded by horned up moths banging Ling Qi also got new bling, learned how to modify her dress (which is a girl), and discovered an appreciation for David Bowie Labyrinth Pants.
|
|
#
?
Sep 30, 2019 23:30
|
|
|
Its Rinaldo posted:In Forge/Thread of Destiny news, Kung Fu Stalin’s tailoring apprentice is Kung Fu David Bowie and he lives in a house made of sunrises surrounded by horned up moths banging he's one bad rear end mothfucker
|
|
#
?
Oct 1, 2019 06:46
|
|
|
I liked Uncrowned. I think Charity and Fury are fun. I guess I’m sort of used to there not being great endings to these books. I actually felt like there was way more to Uncrowned than I expected. It felt like an earlier version of Wight would have ended the book when Yerin’s team got to the tournament.
|
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2019 21:12
|
|
|
One little detail I really liked (in recent Threads of Destiny stuff) is how, despite having no attraction to Meizhen, Ling Qi still finds herself feeling kind of jealous about her hanging out with other people and maybe showing romantic interest towards that Bao girl. That's a very realistic sort of irrational feeling. Unless I missed something, Xiulan needs to make some new friends. All of the other people Ling Qi knows are meeting new people, but Xiulan seems to have trouble forming connections with people, despite being superficially outgoing. edit: The recent Patreon early Royal Road chapter also reminded me that Thousand Ring Fortress was actually apparently some pretty fancy art that was given to her by an Elder as a reward; I had forgotten that and just assumed it was some random thing she got from the library. I guess that explains why it always felt kinda strong as far as defensive arts at their level go. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 23:38 on Oct 3, 2019 |
|
#
?
Oct 3, 2019 23:34
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:edit: The recent Patreon early Royal Road chapter also reminded me that Thousand Ring Fortress was actually apparently some pretty fancy art that was given to her by an Elder as a reward; I had forgotten that and just assumed it was some random thing she got from the library. I guess that explains why it always felt kinda strong as far as defensive arts at their level go. Meizhen got a similar super art out of her first Elder lesson. Early on it was a lot of the motivation for taking Elder lessons. For some reason that stopped being a thing later in the series. The reason is that Yrs was still working out how to make lessons attractive and the discord math cabal eventually bullied him into making tutor and elder lessons more time efficient instead of handing out sweet loot. The lack of interest in doing awesome stuff the voters showed in that forum game was staggering even though on a re-read all the cool stuff that let the MC catch up to the nobles very obviously came from exploring, adventuring, and just making friends. The new system where they're not allowed to not do cool stuff works much better.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2019 02:33
|
|
|
The new system has other problems though - time passes exceptionally slowly. We are just about a year into it and are on turn seven.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2019 04:57
|
|
|
Sampatrick posted:The new system has other problems though - time passes exceptionally slowly. We are just about a year into it and are on turn seven. I subjectively get the impression that Threads of Destiny is more content-dense and contains less "filler" content, though. It seems to just seamlessly from interesting scenario to scenario. Also isn't each turn a month instead of a week now?
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2019 05:06
|
|
|
I enjoyed uncrowned but it felt like a book and a half crammed into one. I was expecting a set up book that ended at the start or maybe first round of the tournament. Instead the book kept going and ended in the middle of an arc and many things happen offscreen.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2019 05:14
|
|
|
LLSix posted:Meizhen got a similar super art out of her first Elder lesson. Early on it was a lot of the motivation for taking Elder lessons. For some reason that stopped being a thing later in the series. Not quite- it's more like people bullied Yrs into having Elder Ying lessons including an art, and then when we got to Elder Jiao lessons Yrs went 'you failed the test so you aren't worth an art' as an argument. OTOH, for inner disciple lessons, yeah it began as "if they like you they might give you goodies", which happened only for the very first time. Later on it was more about efficiency of the system. As for Meizhen, she got her first earth art from Elder Ying, then decided she liked earth and asked home to send her more earth art. She then Beat Sun Liling using an earth art
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2019 06:58
|
|
|
another ToD tangent, Li Suyin and Su Ling are both third realm now, right? I wonder how they're coping with the sudden elevation to nobility. telling her parents that she's now the legal head of the household seems like a rough conversation for Suyin.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2019 09:30
|
|
|
I didn't think Su Ling was (I vaguely remember her being near the peak of second for both spirit and physical, though could be misremembering), though I could have forgotten something. I think that Li Suyin is third realm for spirit and at the top of second realm physically, which I guess counts as third realm?Arkeus posted:As for Meizhen, she got her first earth art from Elder Ying, then decided she liked earth and asked home to send her more earth art. She then Beat Sun Liling using an earth art Which art was her earth art? The thing where she came out of the mud near the end? Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Oct 4, 2019 |
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2019 21:40
|
|
|
Su Ling advanced offscreen a few weeks ago, I forget who told Ling Qi about it. Yrsillar said that he rolled for her and she triple-critted her rolls to level up, totally changing her storyline.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2019 21:57
|
|
|
Next time Ling Qi meets with Xiaofen she finds out that Su Ling kicked Gan Guangli's rear end and took over the outer sect. edit: She should actually be one of the 2 or 3 strongest people in the outer sect now, right? Like, there shouldn't be many third realms out there aside from Guangli and maybe that dude who uses the wires.
|
|
#
?
Oct 4, 2019 22:44
|
|
|
I... actually liked Uncrowned a lot? Blackflame was hinted at thorough the whole book, so it didn't feel 'cheap' to me that he learned it offscreen. Finaly fight basically went how I wanted it to go in a way that makes perfect sense, though I am disappointed We haven't seen Eithan going all out to destroy the golden dragon. I mean, yeah. tournament arcs aren't the most fun. There was a few scene early on in the book where it fellated Lindon a bit too much. But overall it was quite a bit better than I expected, from the people comments here. Ytlaya posted:Which art was her earth art? The thing where she came out of the mud near the end? Yeah, that one. Iirc she also used it do dodge an attack. Ytlaya posted:Next time Ling Qi meets with Xiaofen she finds out that Su Ling kicked Gan Guangli's rear end and took over the outer sect. Sadly, there is a LOT of competitions. Gan Guangli, Lu Feng, Wen Ai, Han Jian, Chu Song are all confirmed third realms, and most of those have better ressources and arts than Su Ling. Bai Xiao Fen and the Jin guy are probably going to be there, too.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2019 22:49
|
|
|
Reading the latest book, I really want there to be a Cradle animated series. Too bad, that isn't really a thing that happens for western works, and even if did get an adaptation, it'd probably have a bunch of stuff changed.
|
|
#
?
Oct 5, 2019 23:01
|
|
|
Arkeus posted:Sadly, there is a LOT of competitions. Gan Guangli, Lu Feng, Wen Ai, Han Jian, Chu Song are all confirmed third realms, and most of those have better ressources and arts than Su Ling. Bai Xiao Fen and the Jin guy are probably going to be there, too. No idea how I forgot about Han Jian, but I did totally forget about Wen Ai. I thought Chu Song wasn't a factor because you could only stay in the Outer Sect (or that part of it, anyways) for 2 years? Otherwise it seems like the Outer Sect would be swamped with a bunch of older lower third realms. That still leaves only like 4 or 5 people on her level, though. Do we have a clear idea where Bai Xian Fen stands (relative to Meizhen when she first started)? Unless she's around that level, I doubt she'll catch up to someone who went third realm in the earlier part of the year.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2019 02:00
|
|
|
The j novel translation of bookworm is almost caught up to blastron's. Just one chapter left. I've been reading along to refresh my memory.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2019 04:25
|
|
|
Hey, I just started very casually translating a fantasy webnovel in a format which may or may not be impossible to read and I figure y'all might be interested. I don't have much clue what it's about cuz I'm spontaneously translating blind, but I saw it topping the rankings on Narou for a bunch of weeks after it started, and it's a daily-updating story which I always find either impressive or at the very least you get something *consistently* terrible. At first I thought it was an isekai because it opens right up with a textbook bodyswap scene, but it turns out it's actually a vanilla fantasy bodyswap, no isekais involved. Here's the thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3900328
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2019 06:11
|
|
|
IShallRiseAgain posted:Reading the latest book, I really want there to be a Cradle animated series. Too bad, that isn't really a thing that happens for western works, and even if did get an adaptation, it'd probably have a bunch of stuff changed. I bet Powerhouse would be up for it, if anyone got them reading the books.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2019 12:31
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:No idea how I forgot about Han Jian, but I did totally forget about Wen Ai. I thought Chu Song wasn't a factor because you could only stay in the Outer Sect (or that part of it, anyways) for 2 years? Otherwise it seems like the Outer Sect would be swamped with a bunch of older lower third realms. From what I understood lurking the game threads, it's less that the outer sect has a hard 2 year timelimit and more that Ling Qi's year was freakishly strong. A typical sect year sees one maybe two students reach early green and most of the new entrants to the inner sect are peak yellow at most. Reaching green at all in the outer sect is usually a guaranteed ticket to the inner sect. The time limit is more about anyone who hasn't made it to the inner sect in two years being insufficiently driven or too untalented to ever reach green before dying of old age, especially with all the good elder challenge rewards being restricted to new students only, and ending up as one of the for-life outer sect students that run the sect post-office or grind low-level resource gathering and pill-making quests for the rest of their life to earn their keep and provide the resources for the actually takented new students. With three ducal heirs, Ling Qi and Ji Rong in the same year and the harsher competition caused by Duchess Cai demanding the elders to be more hands off on enforcement, so Renxiang can get her thunderdome training, there's a record number of actually talented and driven green cultivators, who normally would have easily made it to the inner sect, stuck in the outer sect waiting for a new shot at the next year's inner sect tournament. Not to mention all the peak yellows who would also normally had decent enough chances to make it in a less freakishly harsh tournament. It's going to take a few years for all of the normally talented enough cultivators, who just couldn't compete with the ducal heirs and monster commoners, to filter into the inner sect and the usual status-quo to reassert itself.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2019 16:39
|
|
|
Oo Koo posted:From what I understood lurking the game threads, it's less that the outer sect has a hard 2 year timelimit and more that Ling Qi's year was freakishly strong. How does Chu Song fit into this, then? Why didn't she make it into the inner sect last year? It seems like if someone like her can exist outside of the inner sect and reach third realm in the outer sect, there should be at least a few other people in the outer sect who also reached third realm in their third or fourth years or whatever. Also, do we even know if she's still particularly "active" in the outer sect and hasn't just fallen in with Guangli's new regime? Now that Sun Liling is in the inner sect, there shouldn't really be any sort of organization opposing Guangli's continuation of Cai Renxiang's organization. edit: Unrelated, but upon re-reading the Bai Meizhen/Sun Liling fight and even the Gu Xiulan/Wen Ai fight, Ling Qi really needs to get some flashier abilities. She mostly just makes her mist and then freezes people. I feel like the other characters often have aesthetically neater and more coherent powersets because they're left up to the author, instead of the readers choosing stuff based upon game stat stuff. Ytlaya fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Oct 6, 2019 |
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2019 20:07
|
|
|
Ytlaya posted:How does Chu Song fit into this, then? Why didn't she make it into the inner sect last year? It seems like if someone like her can exist outside of the inner sect and reach third realm in the outer sect, there should be at least a few other people in the outer sect who also reached third realm in their third or fourth years or whatever. If I remember the characters correctly, Chu Song's problem is that she is a very vocal opponent of Duchess Cai. When the time for the tournament rolls around, she gets an unfavorable match since the sect doesn't want someone like her representing them. They are located in Duchess Cai's province and she gives them support after all. As for the number of potential 3rd or 4th-year greens, I think it's just a case of there not being many third or fourth-year students compared to 1st or 2nd. Nobles return to help their families, scholarship students join the military, commoners can't pay tuition forever, etc.
|
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2019 21:24
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 16, 2024 10:00 |
|
|
Ytlaya posted:How does Chu Song fit into this, then? Why didn't she make it into the inner sect last year? It seems like if someone like her can exist outside of the inner sect and reach third realm in the outer sect, there should be at least a few other people in the outer sect who also reached third realm in their third or fourth years or whatever. Chu Song is a third year who made green her second year and is now G2. She didn’t make it in last year because her family rebelled against the Cai and while Mama Cai will tolerate dissent in her vassals, spitting in her face and outright rebellion gets you a quick trip to being a smear on the wall. Song is kind of a dumbass and instead of either keeping her head down or moving on to greener pastures she openly and publically kept talking poo poo about the Cai and was then used as an object lesson on how Inadvisable that is during last years tournament and got slotted against Ling Qi who dumpstered her in a humiliating fashion. Song is probably skulking about trying to maintain a small power bloc but doesn’t have the resources like any of the nobles do to bankroll a faction. It’s a lot more free wheeling then last years two super powers Ling Qi is set to get a bunch of new arts online in the next couple in story months as she finally has the resources to start cultivating her Bai arts package she got. I think that the replacements for Sable Crescent Step, Thousand Ring Fortress and Forgotten Vale are all coming online at once Its Rinaldo fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Oct 6, 2019 |
|
#
?
Oct 6, 2019 22:15
|
|