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It's also not a proper cultivator story until the hero gets all of the techniques no matter how little sense they make. I know so many stories where the righteous hero is like "huh a poison arts book? But I don't use poison qi. gently caress it, let's do it anyway!"
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Jun 7, 2023 21:01
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6. Building Bonds in the Midst of Brigands Oh, it’s you again! See, even I can learn a face if fate brings us together enough times. What am I doing at this Immortal Shrine, you ask? Well, as always it’s a long story...   I had just broken into the Foundation Realm when we last met, right? At that time, to celebrate my breakthrough I went on a short trip into the mountains. I figured that if I found a desolate enough place, then Bi Wenyao wouldn’t be able to find me. Well, it turned out that the place was being artificially maintained by a formation array, which I found while wandering the mountainside. A local spirit begged me not to disrupt the array. Now, this Peng Jun had no intention of doing so, and I told the spirit as much. It was so ecstatic to hear that, that before I could say anything else, it handed me a Mental Skill manual before vanishing back into the mountains.  After practicing the technique, I found that my vitality had greatly increased. Relaxed and refreshed from my vacation, I felt ready to handle anything!   I was quickly disabused of this notion. Waiting for me at the base of the mountain, dressed in a simple grey robe without adornment, was none other than “Fiery Flayer” Wang Huili. Had she not been recovering from a recent wound to her abdomen, she would have been half a step into Qi Condensation. Instead, she merely reflected her true status as a Cultivator at the Peak of the Foundation stage with access to the wealth of an entire region, and training from a powerful master.  When looked at from that perspective, the most amazing thing was that I didn’t immediately fall over and die. Instead, the Flayer raised a maze of flames to trap me in, before she pummeled me at a distance with fireballs, over and over again. I even managed to parry a few of the fireballs back at her and land a hit or two with my blade, though I could not overturn my fate. After I had been broiled alive and was left lying on the ground gasping for moisture, Wang Huili dropped the maze and walked over to my wretched figure. Based on her reputation and her daughter’s proclivities, I was expecting that she would take this opportunity to torture or kill me.  Instead she sat next to me, looked deeply into my eyes, and spoke. “So young. I was not expecting you to be so young. Had karma not made us irreparable enemies, I would have taken you as my personal disciple.” A look of regret passed on her face before she continued. “The world is harsh and cruel, boy. I spent 40 years trying to overcome my limits, and I would be slaughtered in an instant if I went beyond Yong Ning. My daughter will not give you 40 years, no matter how many times she needs to squash you like a bug before you die for good.” Wang Huili closed one of her hands into a fist, and a knife made of fire emerged from it. She brought her fist just above my face so I could feel the flames dancing on my eyes. Had it not been for my cultivation base, I might have gone permanently blind. The intensity of the heat made me want to scream, but I didn’t even have the strength left to do so. “By my word, no pavilion in Yong Ning will sell you a single technique. No sect will take you. The YangTa Auction House won’t even bother to let you bid on a Spirit Fruit. Even if you should advance your cultivation base, you will find yourself in a wretched existence that all your talent will prove impossible to overcome. This is my final warning, boy. Find a girl, screw her until she agrees to marry you, and have many children. Live the rest of your days in contentment for all I care. Or don’t. But either way, you’ve lost. The world of cultivation is not for you.” Faster than the eye could see she extinguished the knife, opened her still-heated palm, and slapped me in the face. Then she got up and walked away, leaving me alone at the foot of the mountains. I strongly considered it. Her words. What was the point of my journey if I couldn’t get through Yong Ning? If I couldn’t report what had happened to the Bai Yuan branch of the Peng family or find Tian Yun Mountain? Maybe if I went back to Bai Yuan as a Foundation stage cultivator, I could at least find the subclans and rebuild my family or come back in a hundred years after the two of them had died and give my report to someone in Hua Feng with my final breath. I would like to say that I had a heroic reason to reach deep within myself and find the strength to continue going, but for this one time that would be a lie. Just this one time, I actually had a brain in my head and knew what was going on... You see, neither Wang Huili or Bi Wenyao knew why I hadn’t died. So that meant they didn’t know if they could kill me for good, and I was already improving my cultivation by leaps and bounds. So I came to the conclusion that Wang Huili had tried to scare me off in the hope that I would give up on cultivation of my own accord instead of continuing to come back stronger and stronger like some kind of wrathful ghost. This meant that the one thing I couldn’t do was give up, or else I would be playing right into her hands. Pretty smart, huh? Hey, what do you mean, “smarter than I look?” ...she did follow through on her threats though, for months afterwards, I couldn’t even get a member of the manual pavilions to look me in the eye. (That was a lot of words for the practical effect of “NPC who hates me beat me up, reset my Reputation to 0, and now I had to grind it back up again to be able to buy any Foundation level technique.”)   Fortunately, Ai Deyun, clever rogue that he is, had a solution to my problems: Most of the sects in Yong Ning apart from JingYue Sect knew of the lairs of Foundation level Mythical Beasts that lived in their territories, but didn’t have Foundation Realm cultivators who could be spared to assist them in recovering treasures. I had the cultivation base and the free time, but didn’t know where any such lairs were located outside of ones where I would be bullied by JingYue Sect. So he suggested that if I agreed to assist each of the sects in their own individual plundering projects, then apart from getting a cut of the loot, I could eventually build a good enough rapport with all of the Sects such that they could at least get me back to being treated as well as any other Rogue Cultivator by the Manual Pavilions. They wouldn’t be able to protect me from Wang Huili and Bi Wenyao directly, but at least I could have a chance at growing strong enough to face them myself.    Well, what else could I do? As my older brother Yongsun used to say: “Once you start to ride a tiger, it’s hard to get off.” Since I had already committed to staying in the world of cultivation, it was the best possible plan I could think of. Fortunately, Ai Deyun and the other sect leaders were as good as their word and even chipped in a bit of additional loot on the side. There were occasionally a couple of changes in circumstance: where the individual making the request was so weak that I had to complete the mission by myself, or I needed to rescue someone’s family member who had gotten lost in the monster’s den. But for the most part, the next several months passed by with little incident.  There was one particular Mythical Beast of note though, the Zhujian is a beast like a leopard with a single eye in the center of its forehead that can raise the earth far into the air when it pounces and shake the earth with thunderous blows when it lands. I found my battle against it to be exceptionally difficult and sought to adopt its strength for my own. It turned out that the amulet was fairly easy to alter in terms of which Mythical Beast it sought to emulate, as long as you had seen the beast in question use a technique at least once. (I swapped around Eye techniques a couple of times unstated, in fact I will be continuing to use the Goliath Crab’s poison field throughout the rest of the update, but this is going to be the first notable upgrade. The Zhujian’s shockwave does a lot of damage, comparable to several other Beast spells’ single target damage, and it does so in an AoE centered around yourself.)  Unfortunately, it turned that Bi Wenyao had not been idle either. With the knowledge that she might face a dangerous threat at some point in the future, she finally went and formally claimed the title of Number One Blade Cultivator in Yong Ning, as if to say that she feared no one who sought to use the weapon against her. (Not ideal, this makes fighting Bi Wenyao even more of an uphill fight as long as we’re in the same Realm as her. Combined with the mediocre skill situation, the game’s really encouraging me to get past Foundation as quickly as possible before I die for good.)   I was finally shaken from my routine when, one night at the inn between beast hunting expeditions, I heard a loud banging on the door to my room. I opened the door and saw a young woman with tears in her eyes, begging me to save her from a villain who was trying to take advantage of her injuries to forcibly dual cultivate with her. The bastard in question was fast approaching, and he bluntly told me not to get involved in a matter between Partners, at which point the woman burst out crying. I told him that not only was I going to get involved, but as his grandfather he’d better bow his head and beg for my forgiveness or I was going to beat him within an inch of his life.   Sneering, the man said he’d like to see me try and used a water movement technique to keep me distracted with a clone while he attempted to get behind me and lay his hands on the girl. I quickly switched the amulet to a technique used by the Goliath Crab and activated it, knocking both the man and his clone off balance and sinking them into the muck.    Of course it turned out that things weren’t going to be so simple. The rapist had brought several of his friends along on his expedition to the inn, all disciples of the BaiYun Sect, and when it turned out that his sport hadn’t gone according to plan, they all decided to gang up on me.   Stranger, by the time we were done, there was barely an inn left standing. The fight rapidly descended into a chaotic brawl with Water, Blade, Sword, and Fire techniques flying left and right. The assailants brought Talismans and Ultimate techniques that they had earned from their Sect, but in the end they were still in the late stage of Qi Refining. Even four to one, armed with better resources, and with me limited in my motion as I sought to protect the girl, they could not stand against the might of a Cultivator in the Foundation Realm.  Several of the ones who had joined in sought to buy their lives, which was only fair for the harm that they had caused, and I let them go. I had intended to kill the instigator, but reflecting his base cowardice, the instant that he saw that the fight wasn’t going his way, he had run, leaving the others to cover his escape. And at that point, I could not afford to chase after him, as I had my own escape to make. Not only had the battle destroyed the local inn, but all of the assailants had loudly shouted that they were members of BaiYun Sect and that this was a terrible insult that would not stand. Even though they were only Initiates and Disciples, I didn’t want to risk having a Sect Elder declare me and the girl as enemies of BaiYun Sect by bringing up the issue in public and forcing him to condemn us to save face. After all, even if I could endure it, who knew if she could?  So as carefully as I possibly could, I escorted the young woman out of town without drawing any attention to ourselves. Having gotten the chance to regain her poise, she introduced herself as Ge Yi, a fellow Rogue Cultivator who had just started on the path and the very first thing she had run into these thugs. She thanked me profusely for my help and said that she would work hard to grow strong enough to be able to return the favor. I said it was unnecessary, but she absolutely insisted on the matter. Funnily enough, for some reason I believed that if anyone could do such a thing, it would be her. We spoke on some other general matters and eventually we said our farewells. But with Ge Yi gone, I started reflecting on what had happened and came to the conclusion that between JingYue Sect and now this, I was rapidly running out of patience with Yong Ning’s Sects. I wanted out, and despite Wang Huili’s description of the difficulty, the only way out was by breaking through to the Qi Condensation Realm! (Another scripted event: the meet-cute. A Heaven-Chosen, or NPC with explicitly boosted stats and Destinies, Rogue Cultivator of the opposite sex to your character spawns in at the minimum possible level, under assault by a third party. If you agree to help them out and manage to successfully save them, they immediately become your best friend and will pretty much follow you around for the rest of the game. Like most NPCs, they’re very slow to cultivate, but their Heaven-Chosen status means that they’ll do a better job trying to catch up to you than most other NPCs would. They can save your life guaranteed 1-2 times, but I’m not sure if that’s specifically geared to this NPC or just a thing that happens when you get people up to really high levels of friendship status. Also, this doesn’t have to happen at an inn. Usually it happens in a field out in the middle of nowhere and you just have to face the one assailant. The game just decided to make this one super-involved for some reason. Friends in general do things like offer you gifts and to take you into dungeons where you can find cool stuff, but also ask for help with those things in return at a greater rate than random people on the street. Like most things involving social actions in this game, it’s not really worth the time and effort to go out and make friends with people. But it’s there if you want to RP it/try and figure out how to game the system.) Jossar fucked around with this message at 05:19 on Jun 8, 2023 |
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Jun 8, 2023 04:45
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So other than finding those skill-up items from the prior update, how do you increase your combat skills, training in Sects and through general use? That 87 fire on Wang Huili seems like a lot for a late Foundation cultivator after looking at your stats and some of the other NPCs' stats. ...though she's 98 so I guess spending the better part of a century training would do it.
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Jun 8, 2023 16:40
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Evil Fluffy posted:So other than finding those skill-up items from the prior update, how do you increase your combat skills, training in Sects and through general use? That 87 fire on Wang Huili seems like a lot for a late Foundation cultivator after looking at your stats and some of the other NPCs' stats....though she's 98 so I guess spending the better part of a century training would do it. You don't. Well, strictly speaking that's not true, there are random events that can raise your stats, but you have no way of controlling them. If there is anything beyond that, which there might not be, it is hidden mighty deep. This is actually worse than it sounds because Spirit Fruits cap out at a certain point for each region. The first region's spirit fruits, for instance, cap out at 50 points in a particular skill. After that, you are entirely dependent on RNG to improve your elemental skills (note that this is different from other systems such as the levels on individual techniques, which you can level just by pure practice). In practice, this doesn't matter too much for players, because the expectation is that you'll just break through to the next Realm/Region and continue your progress there. So if a NPC has stat parameters above 50, it's because to the extent the game is trying to simulate the game mechanics in character generation at all (and not just making numbers up entirely based on vibes), it is doing so based on what the characters would look like after a number of years of improving their stats entirely via RNG . So Ai Deyun is 32 years old and has a 52 in Wood because he's only recently hit the end of his ability to improve. But Bi Wenyao is 56 years old and "only" has a 62 in Blade and Wang Huili is 98 years old with "only" an 87 in Fire because they've long since hit the point where they can only improve via RNG. 87 is kind of crazy though. If Wang Huili wasn't limited by her cultivation, she could learn an Epic (purple) rarity technique all the way in Golden Core, two realms above her, and be just shy of a Legendary (orange) rarity one. Jossar fucked around with this message at 23:49 on Jun 8, 2023 |
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Jun 8, 2023 23:28
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I wonder if the game would send even more people at you for that event? Just a long man train of newbies serving as an endurance match.
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Jun 8, 2023 23:34
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Scalding Coffee posted:I wonder if the game would send even more people at you for that event? Just a long man train of newbies serving as an endurance match. The big limit here was just the number of BaiYun Disciples present in the town at that time, but especially in something like one of the later cities, there's no reason why you couldn't have 20 dudes jump you at once if you decided to pick a fight. Still might be improbable, but there's nothing mechanically limiting it, especially if they come in as a train rather than all at once.
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Jun 9, 2023 00:01
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Jossar posted:The big limit here was just the number of BaiYun Disciples present in the town at that time, but especially in something like one of the later cities, there's no reason why you couldn't have 20 dudes jump you at once if you decided to pick a fight. Still might be improbable, but there's nothing mechanically limiting it, especially if they come in as a train rather than all at once. Just imagining your character beating the poo poo out of a bunch of people as more keep pouring in, Neo vs. Agent Smith Army style.
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Jun 9, 2023 00:31
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7. Getting Stronger (But Not Strong Enough)  I figured that at this point, I really needed to start upgrading my techniques so I could deal with whatever the Sects, especially JingYue Sect would throw at me. Even with my manual pavilion ban reversed, I simply could not find any Blade techniques of higher quality available due to JingYue Sect’s control on the distribution of Blade techniques in Yong Ning. So I settled for expending one of the tomes of knowledge that I had found in the Lands of the Spirits to revise my primary Blade art to a higher level. (Here’s how upgrading techniques works. Pick an upgrade book, pick a technique, and slap on an additional sub-skill effect for being able to reach a higher overall level. Unfortunately, this is kind of a terrible technique and a Legendary rather than a Mythic book, so I don’t have that many options, with me picking anti-Cultivator damage because I expect that to be the biggest problem going forward. But in addition to bad shop RNG, I’m beginning to run into the problem where since the game is being very stingy in handing me Blade fruit, I can’t even wield the higher rarity Foundation level techniques and have to settle for Rares and even Uncommons. This is… suboptimal, since it means that everything about my techniques is terrible compared to say, Bi Wenyao, who’s running around with Legendary techniques. Also, it's fun to see the technique names change when you upgrade the skills.)   After that, I had a singularly strange occurrence. A qilin came up to me and tried to drag me off somewhere. It had immense difficulty trying to convey anything, so instead it used mental transference to show me images of a cultivator who had assisted it in the past. Utterly confused, but curious, I followed it.   I had to fight through a cave of weird insect demons and monsters, but lying there at the end was a Heaven and Earth Treasure used for breaking through to the Qi Condensation stage, somehow outside of a Land of the Arcane! I turned around to try and find the qilin after this, but it vanished. Over the course of the next few days it would return bearing gifts of spirit fruits, soul stones, and other treasures, before vanishing entirely. (Uh… whoops? Despite this event chain being entirely untranslated, it’s really good. Helping this guy out at each tier gets you a bunch of free stuff including an orange rarity Heaven and Earth Treasure for the next level up. Still all Finger fruit/manuals. Again, I really should have stopped eating the fruit to see if I could catch up on Blade somehow, but at this point I just wanted any kind of damage resistance at all.   This is as good a place as any to talk about breaking through to the next tier. Unlike last time, there is only a single method of reaching Qi Condensation, eating a Qi Condensation Elixir which is either made through Alchemy, buying the pill from a sect, or bringing plants to a Workshop. The more self reliant methods give pills with better chances for success, although I think really great RNG can still give you a high quality pill even from the Workshops. The three orange treasures are acquired from the Foundation level equivalent of the Lands of the Spirits, Lands of the Arcane. They have different bosses and cost 1000 spirit stones to enter each time instead of 500. Finally, the Mythic level ingredient means that we’ve reached the part of the game where we need to start hunting down World Bosses, tougher variants of pre-existing bosses which spawn on the world map, in order to get the capstone ingredient that has the biggest effect in boosting stats when leveling into the next tier.)     While out performing my beast hunting missions, I came across a cave which was particularly large and filled with dark energy. There dwelled the Harpy Lord that Hou Yi needed me to defeat in order to acquire one of the ingredients for his bow. The beast had a number of impressive tricks, including the ability to send out a great many funnels of wind and throw rocks at my head to stun me, but ultimately it did not quite live up to its fearsome reputation. Frankly speaking, I had fought tougher flying beasts even that very same month! I carefully plucked out the Golden Feather that Hou Yi needed, all the same.   Eventually, getting fed up at the sluggishness of the Manual Pavilions, I simply took the first Blade Movement technique that they had on offer, as I advanced my cultivation to the Late level of the Foundation stage. I was better equipped than I had been in Qi Refining, but ultimately Wang Huili’s prediction had come true: I was a shadow of what I could have been if I had the full resources of a Blade sect behind me. (Finally, a movement technique! The blade movement skill lets you jump into the air and deal damage when you land, and is generally not that great compared to others, but it still lets you use the spacebar to dodge and get some bonus agility.)  Undaunted, after a few more months of preparations, I went to face the first of the Lands of the Arcane to begin on the path forward to breaking through to the Qi Condensation stage...  Why, oh heavens?! Why must you be so cruel to this Peng Jun and make the first of the Arcane Guardians a total bastard? (I hate this guy so much. During its fight the Mountain Specter alternates between constantly spamming cones of small meteors at you and performing charge attacks that can only be outrun/dodged if you act immediately or have very high agility for your level. If you trigger invincibility frames during the second part of the charge attack you can lock it into an idle animation for a long time to pile on damage, but it’s really annoying to get the timing right. Also, you have to fight this guy multiple times – not only is it one of the Land of the Arcane bosses, but it’s the boss for every iteration of Quicksand’s Reach if you want to get the higher rarity orb, AND it also shows up as a World Boss. I know at least Coatl also does this too, so it’s not a unique problem, but that one’s only really an annoying boss at the World Boss stage whereas the Mountain Specter is a problem in every form.)   Fortunately, I was saved at the last moment by the timely intervention of Ge Yi, who happened to be in the area outside of the Land of the Arcane while on her way to gather elemental Qi Orb shards for her own breakthrough to the Foundation realm. Honestly, I don’t know what I would have done without her help!  After she left, I once again ran into that mysterious young boy with the black and white clothing. He cryptically warned me that I had a difficult battle coming up, and then healed me before vanishing, as was his wont.  It turned out that his prophecy would not take much time at all to come true. Bi Wenyao was waiting for me on the road ahead. She expressed disdain at my still being alive, in accordance with her mother’s words, and said that this time she would make sure I died for good.  The two of us leapt through the air and our blades met in a furious clash, much to Bi Wenyao’s surprise. She had thought that based on the heavenly mandate she had received as the best Blade Cultivator in Yong Ning, and the previous level of skill that I had displayed, that this would be an easy fight. But even if she was still my superior in bladework, there was now room for uncertainty in the outcome of our duel.  From that point on we matched technique for technique and treasure for treasure. I used spells to summon the powerful strikes of the Zhujian, so she used an artifact that allowed her to summon earth spirits that threw boulders at me. She used talismans to fortify her defense, so I brought forth medicinal pills to heal my wounds. All the while, we were repeatedly leaping back and forth from the ground to the air to gain a positional advantage on one another, in the midst of a veritable forest of blades.  In the end though, my reserves were just too shallow. After a day of fighting, with both of us heavily wounded and exhausted, Bi Wenyao burned the last of her energy reserves to summon the shadow of a Blade Demon and strike me down. With a much less cool and frosty demeanor compared to last time, Bi Wenyao walked over to my fallen body. In between breaths for air, she screamed: “Four years! It hasn’t even been... four years, and you’re already at this level! You’re too dangerous! You can’t... be allowed... to live in this world! Just die already, Peng Jun!”  And then she slit my throat... before proceeding to wildly stab my corpse several times for good measure. At least I had learned to hide everything I had of value in my Tree Vault so she couldn’t rob me blind again.   I had to sell everything that I owned that wasn’t immediately essential to my future progress to get the amulet functioning, but I was able to do so. Truly, I was just thankful that it hadn’t shattered into a million pieces by this point.  While I was recovering in YangTa City, Ge Yi often visited me to ask about the progress of my recovery as well as ask for advice in cultivation. At one point she expressed annoyance at how she was being held back by a lack of a Water Qi Orb, and this struck a nerve. I could have helped her! I would have had an extra orb that I could have given her right then and there, if Bi Wenyao hadn’t stolen it from me! Upon seeing the look on my face, Ge Yi tried to calm me down saying that it wasn’t really that important, but in truth at that point I was just angry. Angry at JingYue Sect for having impeded my cultivation in so many respects, and at myself for being unable to do anything about it. Still injured, I stormed out of the inn over Ge Yi’s protests and walked into the wilderness to be alone with my thoughts. What happened next would change everything. Would you mind if I showed you via mental transference? The story is so outlandish that you wouldn’t believe me if I just told you, anyway... Jossar fucked around with this message at 03:12 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 03:02
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Man this game is just not giving you any breaks.
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Jun 10, 2023 04:34
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I will say that usually the game is not this bad and that this has been a particularly rough start with the lack of a relevant sect to join and the game trying to force me into running a Finger build due to the RNG at the beginning. But this is a good example (among many) as to why you generally try really hard to do whatever it takes to not piss people off. Even if the NPC in question doesn't have quite as much of a capacity to ruin your life directly, they can eventually bring a lot of people down on your head who can, unless the two of you can come to terms. Objectively, I really should have been trying to make peace with JingYue Sect here, but by this point I figured that Peng Jun could not bear to live under the same sky as Bi Wenyao and Wang Huili after all this nonsense. Jossar fucked around with this message at 04:58 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 04:41
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Should you just abandon the blade and focus on fingering?
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Jun 10, 2023 05:28
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I eventually fix the discrepancy by the point I'm currently at in-game, it just takes a while. Among the things that the next update provides is a tool to start dealing with this.
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Jun 10, 2023 11:36
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Well, guess what I am wishlisting on steam. As an aside, I really enjoy your characterization of Peng Jun. This kind of Xianxia protag is easily among my favorites.
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Jun 10, 2023 12:05
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8. The Battle of Yulan Field The view is depicted from Peng Jun’s perspective. He turns his head to look back into the distance at YangTa City for a moment, before turning his gaze to the forest ahead. After marching through the forest at a rapid pace, his sharp eyesight catches sight of two Cultivators standing at the forest’s center. At that point, the trees have receded, and all that remains is a field of reeds, a few rocky outcroppings, and a single early-blooming Yulan magnolia tree.  Despite them being quite a long distance away, Peng Jun finds that he is able to hear the two Cultivators in question with perfect clarity. Drawing upon the Eye of Providence to magnify his perception, the young man finds that the two can do so effortlessly because they have reached the peak of cultivation… they are Immortals of the Transcendent realm!  The first is a woman with a righteous bearing, wearing a shoulderless pink dress covered with intricate silver metalwork and wearing a necklace made of the same material. She stares harshly at the other Immortal as she speaks. ”Ding Yuhua, let’s end all our old grudges and new feuds today.”  The second is also a woman, wearing a black dress with a single sleeve left uncovered, and the tattered remnants of a grey coat partially covering the other and partially repurposed into a sash. She also wears what appears to be a tiara in the shape of a set of horns atop her head. She responds curtly to the first Immortal. “Hmph. Hong Yuhe, one of us shall die today.”  The two clash and the force of their techniques immediately darkens the sky and buffets the area in hurricane-force winds, with the reeds and even the great magnolia tree struggling to remain in place. Hong Yuhe unleashes a series of water funnels to shape the battlefield to her favor, before switching to her primary offensive technique, a raging torrent of water aimed directly at her counterpart. Ding Yuhua unleashes a rain of swords from the heavens to carve out channels for the water to flow into, while throwing line after line of sword qi at her opponent. The perspective shifts slightly as Peng Jun grasps onto a tree for dear life near the forest’s edge.  It soon becomes clear that Hong Yuhe’s mastery of the battlefield is just too far-reaching and cannot be contested. The waters uproot everything around them and nearly wash Ding Yuhua away as well.  Fortunately for Ding Yuhua, she is able to react quickly to the change in environment. The Sword Immortal manages to teleport behind Hong Yuhe and throw her halfway across the field, directly into one of the rocky outcroppings. Heavily disoriented, Hong Yuhe tries to retaliate, but the terrain in which she's been boxed into means that she can only send a few blasts of water towards Ding Yuhua, while the latter’s sword qi blades are able to unerringly home in on the Water Immortal.  And then, faster than the eye can see, the situation reverses itself once again. The cultivators have traded places, and while Ding Yuhua’s blades obtain an ethereal, ghostlike quality, Hong Yuhe is able to summon the essence of Water of an entire sea and aim it directly at Ding Yuhua.  After what feels like an eternity, Ding Yuhua finally falls to the ground defeated. The field is a mess of mud and water and ghostly swords, but somehow the Yulan tree remains standing, despite it all. The cultivators begin to speak again. ”So I lost. Just end it already.” ”What, you think I’m going to let you off so easily?” Hong Yuhe’s face twists into a sneer as she ascends into the sky. Her voice can nevertheless be heard loud and clear even as she disappears. “Crawl. Crawl like a mortal in the dirt until you die, helpless, and knowing that you will never again be able to return to heaven under your own power.” For a moment, Ding Yuhua looks like she is going to cry, but she quickly masters herself and turns her head as if to face Peng Jun, despite him being on the opposite side of the forest. ”Hey kid, quit gawking and come over here for a second.” Peng Jun’s voice then sounds out, though there is no visible speaker. The mental transference is from his perspective, after all. “Immortal, I didn’t mean to…” Ding Yuhua then frowns. ”Doesn’t matter, no one cares. You looking on is the same as an ant watching humans fight a war, now come on over here and listen to me.” The view changes as Peng Jun disperses the additional power of the Eye of Providence and simply focuses on keeping aware of his surroundings as he makes his way to Ding Yuhua. Once he makes it over, she starts speaking again:  ”I don’t suppose you want a boost to the Qi Condensation Realm? It’s not like I’ll need all this cultivation where I’m going.” “Yes.” Despite her terrible condition, the Sword Immortal gives a deep, hearty laugh.” ”Wow, that was quick. You’re not worried that I’m going to snatch your body or something?” “Wait, you can do that?… no, it doesn’t matter. At this rate, without your help Immortal, I’m going to die before I reach Qi Condensation anyway, so as long as you let me finish a few things first, even then I wouldn’t mind. Besides, I already said it, so I can’t take it back.” ”I’d laugh again if it didn’t ache all over. Well, fortunately for you, I can’t do that. There is a price though...”  ”Sometime in the next 50 years, I need you to find me a Legendary grade Body Reconstruction Elixir. Think you can do that?” “I wouldn't even know where to begin.” ”Don’t worry, it’ll become obvious once you reach Reborn.” “Immortal... are you really saying that you think I can reach the second highest level of cultivation in 50 years?” With that, Ding Yuhua raises her head and takes a long look at Peng Jun before nodding. ”You’ve got a shot, at least. Besides, weren’t you saying that you didn’t even care if I stole your body as long as you could reach the Qi Condensation stage?” “Then I accept my karma. Why do you need a Body Reconstruction Elixir, though, I thought you were just turned into a mortal?” ”I refuse to accept that. I used a secret technique just as Hong Yuhe destroyed my Immortal Soul to carve out a second one from my remaining lifespan. Soon I’ll be no better off than a ghost, but if you can get that elixir to me within 50 years, I’ll be back to my whole self, good as new. Fail though, and the backlash in karma means that you die. Or your cultivation gets screwed up beyond repair and you’re cursed for the next ten lifetimes, hard to tell with karma. Last chance to back out.” “This Peng Jun would rather die a thousand deaths. He has already started on it, after all.”   With the last of her strength, Ding Yuhua gets up, assumes a cross-legged meditative position and hovers into the air before transferring a stream of energy to Peng Jun. The sensation is intense, like the entirety of the world has been filled with light, as his dantian condenses into a highly stable crystalline form, which then proceeds to project an even greater amount of energy outwards than it had a moment before. The process ends and Ding Yuhua floats back to the ground, still in the cross-legged position. After a few seconds, she starts talking again, but it is clear from the waver in her voice that she’s rapidly growing weaker.  ”Hey kid, are you part of a sect by any chance?” “No, Mentor, even though I'm from a great clan of Cultivators, in truth I never got the chance to do anything more than awaken my Qi and learn the basics of the blade. Ever since I was forced by circumstance to leave home, I’ve been a Rogue Cultivator in all but pride, and at this point I'm not sure that I would want to join a Sect with what I’ve seen.” ”It was a little bit different for me, but in the end, the spirit is the same. I thought that by walking my own path, I would forever be free and be able to choose my own destiny as I wandered throughout the vast and wide world...” “...until you realized the price.” ”Until I realized the price. What I had to work for years to achieve, a Sect member could buy through Contribution points, and a Sect prince or princess could receive from their parents for free. There were many times when I lay face down in the mud, having been defeated by Mythical Beasts when I wondered if it was worth it. Missing out on all of those benefits just so I could stay stubborn and independent, and be beholden to no man. But as I lay here about to become a ghost, and look back over the full view of my life and of my journeys, I can say that it was all worth it. Except for one thing…”  "Everyone wants to leave a legacy in this world, and until now I had no one to leave mine to. Peng Jun, I like your temperament, will you become my apprentice?" There is a long moment of silence before the perspective rapidly moves upwards and downwards, with what could likely be interpreted as Peng Jun kowtowing to Ding Yuhua. “Peng Jun greets his Master!” Ding Yuhua laughs again, at this point she clearly does not care about the consequences of doing so. ”Then I can die with no regrets.”  A snapping sound can be heard. ”Go and live your life as a true Immortal, carefree and unfettered. I release you from this karma, and present you with my inheritance.”  A cultivation manual and a shining sword emerge from Ding Yuhua’s spatial ring.  With Ding Yuhua’s final words spoken, a gentle wind picks up, stirring the branches of the magnolia tree. The Sword Immortal’s body disintegrates entirely in the breeze, and where she once sat, there falls a single freshly bloomed yulan flower. The vision ends. (Okay, so we’ve got a lot to talk about here, but there’s so much that I have to explain that I am going to make a separate mechanics post for it.) Jossar fucked around with this message at 22:03 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 21:37
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8-A. Wait, What? The Battle Between Immortals is a scripted event during Foundation stage where two RNG Transcendent Realm Cultivators duke it out for supremacy, giving you a taste of what endgame combat looks like, minus a few additional features. The winner vanishes to go back to the later parts of the map, or just vanishes period, and the loser offers you a deal. A free, perfect breakthrough to Qi Condensation now in exchange for an obligation to speedrun the rest of the game. Except, not really. As shown above, you can pledge yourself to be the Transcendent Cultivator’s personal disciple and not only does the obligation vanish entirely, but you get a free Legendary manual for Qi Condensation and a low grade Artifact without having to go through all the hassle of forging it yourself. There are arguments on the Steam forums as to how much of this is Rogue Cultivator specific, but my opinion is that the game just isn’t that robustly coded - it’s an amazing event for a Rogue Cultivator, especially with the Rewrite Destiny involved, but a Sect Cultivator will still get all of the benefits except for maybe being stuck with one option in their Rewrite Destiny pool of choices that they definitely won’t take. Normally I would have considered this to be kind of game-y, but... based on how the playthrough's been going, Peng Jun is pretty much the perfect fit for the archetype anyway. This changes my calculus about the LP, especially after I went and looked up some additional information on how some systems work.  - The Transcendent Cultivator exists on the map as an entirely insensate, freely marked NPC for 50 years, where the only meaningful interaction that you can perform is giving them the Body Reconstruction Elixir, and going beyond the timer means that they die. I am going to try and save Ding Yuhua if possible to repay her kindness to Peng Jun, which means trying to run through the game as fast as possible and getting a high Alchemy stat to make the pill, but I will not otherwise actively pursue Alchemy as a skill. - But if I ultimately can’t do it, then it is what it is. Peng Jun was given the luxury of not actually being on a timer, and I will not bind the LP to it when it doesn’t really exist.  - I won’t make a better Artifact, but I will otherwise engage with the Artifact upgrade and enhancement systems to use the one I now have to the best of my abilities. If you thought Rewrite Destinies were a gacha, just you wait... - For narrative reasons and pursuant to the Rewrite Destiny which I have been hinting at and am about to explain, Peng Jun will be remaining a Rogue Cultivator unless it turns out to be impossible for me to win the game without relying on the resources provided by the Sects. Sect mechanics will have to be explained in another playthrough, if we ever get around to one.   - Here are the Rewrite Destinies. To summarize: Fleeting Beauty: I’m not going to explain this one again, this is the make friends when you escape dying Rewrite Destiny. It was terrible then, and it’s terrible now. Burning Jealousy: You deal 15% damage to Cultivators with a Partner or a Husband/Wife. It’s a good bonus, but it’s really narrow to the point of being basically inapplicable. Despite how this playthrough’s been going, normal Cultivators are not your primary concern in the long run. Wood Burst: In battle, you can summon 1 Small Flower Faerie every 12 seconds. Each Small Flower Faerie exists for 7 seconds. I have at least heard of the build where this works: designed around using a ton of summons to distract people while you pop a reliable DoT skill. I don’t know if that’s actually viable though, and for everyone else this is useless. Jo’s Here!: When Vitality drops below 30% in battle, you have a chance to receive help from the Mystery Man Jo. (Cannot trigger more than once per battle.) Get out of the Cycle of Destiny, Jo, what are you doing here?! Most Rewrite Destinies built around trying to save your life when you get to low HP that don’t involve emergency shields are a bad idea. Usually the effect triggers, but then you’re still stuck in the situation that put you there, so you die anyway. This one’s no different in that regard. Blood Power II: This is just an additional stack of Blood Power I. Either you’re the sort of person who’s content with the bare minimum of life-leech and getting Blood Power II doesn’t interest you at all, or you want to be running as much as you can, in which case this interests you very much. Given the rest of these Rewrite Destinies, I probably would have picked it, were it not for… Unfettered Cultivator: Travel Speed +500. If you haven’t joined any Sect, you will have a 50% probability of finding some Spiritual Fruits every time you cultivate on a tile with 100 or more Qi. As far as I can tell, uniquely acquired from this event. Might be possible if you continue to make breakthroughs as a Rogue Cultivator? Basically mandatory if you intend to play a Rogue Cultivator long-term. Nearly everything else that you can acquire from a Sect is a matter of convenience that can be made up for by farming, but not having regular access to Spiritual Fruits hurts a lot, because they’re a pain to farm relative to the amount that you need. With this destiny, not only do you get access to a regular supply of Spiritual Fruit (although entirely randomized), but it is possible to outpace the rate at which Sect members get fruits for their relevant skills. Important to note – you don’t have to personally gain Cultivation experience for this to work. You can be at the Peak of a Realm and as long as you cultivate on a blue spot, you have a chance to get the fruit. The Travel Speed boost is a nice bit of utility, and also helps you get to Qi cultivation spots faster (to find more fruit).  Especially given the flow of the narrative, this is a no-brainer. Worst case scenario, I’ll just replace this Rewrite Destiny later.  - Master/Apprentice relationships are pretty much just Friendships, except you can learn skills from Masters/teach them to your Apprentices. Again, not worth pursuing actively, but I won’t say no if the game is just going to hand me one. As mentioned before, this is even less applicable than usual, as for all intents and purposes Ding Yuhua is dead. But if Peng Jun could revive her, she might have some cool things to teach…  Anything else that needs to be answered about what just happened? If so, I'll answer it separately and add it back to this post if generally relevant. Jossar fucked around with this message at 22:29 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 21:48
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Even with all that cultivation and life experience, their travel speed is still slower than yours.
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Jun 10, 2023 22:11
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That sounds like a really rough challenge given that so far every set-back costs us like 6 months. Hopefully we can save her, she's been like the nicest person so far to poor Peng Jun. Seraphic Neoman fucked around with this message at 23:12 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 23:08
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Honestly I'm not a fan of this event. I like to take my time in these kind of games, and even if you go join a sect it's basically forced onto you.
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Jun 10, 2023 23:24
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Seraphic Neoman posted:That sounds like a really rough challenge given that so far every set-back costs us like 6 months. I would say that even as of the latest point of play (beyond the updates), I am on track for at least the pure cultivation needed to get there, although I haven't seen a lot of Alchemist skill book drops. I am kind of roadblocked without an obviously "easy" way through my current end of tier breakthrough though, and can only afford to be so for another year, maybe two before it starts tipping into the "this is never going to happen" territory. I am trying to allow for the calculation that the game gets harder and harder with each Stage and not just assuming I can get all six steps in a period of four years each or what have you, so that may be biasing it slightly negatively compared to the actual play experience. It's meant to be difficult though. For comparison: The game considers beating the whole thing (or at least reaching Transcendent) within 50 years to be a speed run. This is known to not be a lot of time. Jossar fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jun 10, 2023 |
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Jun 10, 2023 23:31
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I decided to pick this up on Thursday and gave it a try. After a couple of rerolls I ended up with a character who had elder dragon blood, martial wonderkid, and falling star] as my starting destinies which meant, among other things, starting with 44 spear proficiency (and a bunch of forge skill I've still never used). Joined a sect the mountain hamlet that elder dragon blood spawns and now that I understand at least some of how the sect mechanics work it seems neat but also extremely, comically abuse-able for making money. Especially since sect leaders can just take manuals for free and then immediately sell them in towns/cites/auctions like normal. That... should probably get patched out unless it has some real bad side effects I'm going to find out about the hard way. I got that Qilin encounter too and just clicking through hoping I made the right choices (I did) and I wish it was translated because bot they like to show up pretty regularly even when not giving presents or enemies to kill (for more presents). On my first breakthrough I took Elixir Recycling on my first breakthrough and while it's RNG reliant, when the RNG is being kind it can get real silly. Pretty sure I had it refund more than half a dozen elixirs in one case. Jossar posted:I will say that usually the game is not this bad and that this has been a particularly rough start with the lack of a relevant sect to join and the game trying to force me into running a Finger build due to the RNG at the beginning. But this is a good example (among many) as to why you generally try really hard to do whatever it takes to not piss people off. Even if the NPC in question doesn't have quite as much of a capacity to ruin your life directly, they can eventually bring a lot of people down on your head who can, unless the two of you can come to terms. You aren't kidding about the rough start for Peng Jun compared to my start. The character I made had a slightly easier time of things (no blood enemy hunting me down) and got lucky with some spear manuals being available to buy early on, though I didn't realize each Qi Condensation item had its own land of the arcane to drop from so I farmed the first one I found and was wondering how I ended up with 4 of the same item before I found another spot and the reality of it clicked. That was... a lot of wasted time. I never did find the final Land of the Arcane I was looking for either because I accidentally made it to the next area, then while exploring there I got the same immortal battle event you did, and also because I'm an idiot who doesn't use talismans nearly as much as I should. Iceblocks posted:Well, guess what I am wishlisting on steam. The game definitely has some jank and rough spots in the mechanics (IE: lots of stuff about sects, most that seem to be in the player's favor (so far?)) but it is really fun so far, though I should again stress that my start has been far, far kinder than what we're seeing with Jossar (though his is much more entertaining). I've also seen in some ambush fights in the elemental qi-farming areas that it looks like there are multiple rooms but there's no exits and clearing the enemies in the room you're in just ends the fight. But stuff like that is pretty minor relative to the fun of the game.
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Jun 11, 2023 01:27
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Glad to see you're enjoying it! The big downside with being a sect leader is that people can bully your Sect really hard/loot it when you move it to higher level zones and you can't be a last line of defense for your Sect at that point unless you're at the high end of the power rating for the zone or really going hard on fighting above your level. You also miss out on one or two cool opportunities by not being a Sect Disciple and getting to show off at tournaments. Maybe if you weren't Dragon Sect, people might try to challenge you for your position if you end up with disciples stronger than yourself, but you might be protected by plot armor there and I've never seen it either way. Otherwise, yeah it's good to be the Jossar fucked around with this message at 01:56 on Jun 11, 2023 |
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Jun 11, 2023 01:49
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Eh screw it, let's finish this arc off. 9. Karma Severing Blade Thanks to my Master, I had managed to finally escape the shackles of fate, and so it was time to say goodbye to Yong Ning, that land which placed them in such high esteem.   Of course, there were things I had to deal with before I left for good. First things first was getting rid of Bi Wenyao. She had killed me so many times and become so much my sworn enemy that if I had left her alone, I would have developed a heart’s demon. And given her personality, if she had been left to her own devices, she would have just started over again and found some other poor soul to torment. I tracked her to LanXing Sect, where she was being wined and dined by several of that sect’s True Disciples. Undeterred by the Sect, I kicked down the front gates and demanded that Bi Wenyao come out and face me. Infuriated by my mere presence, she didn’t hesitate to accept, without even questioning why I had come back to challenge her on my own terms.   The outcome was a foregone conclusion. I was surprised to discover that my rise in cultivation had not affected my inherent strength as much as I had hoped without access to superior techniques, but ultimately Bi Wenyao was no longer as dangerous on offense as she had once been. I called forth the might of the Imperial Sword and multiple sword qi blades quickly swarmed forth and pinned Bi Wenyao to the ground.   After everything she had done, Bi Wenyao even had the audacity to beg for her life with the very items she had stolen from me in the first place! I made her death quick. For that, at least, was the one kindness that she had always shown to me. Let it not be said that Peng Jun is ungrateful, even if he finds you disdainful enough to take your life. I did make sure to check thoroughly and ensure that she didn’t have a life-saving treasure on her, though. Even if Zhang San’s gift was unlikely to have a counterpart, I did not want to find myself a victim of the same arrogance that had allowed me to come back from death so many times already, and likely would many times in the future. I let LanXing sect have several of the items on Bi Wenyao’s corpse except for the Water Qi Orb and the Heavenly Treasure in exchange for the trouble I had caused. I also left them with a message to deliver to Wang Huili – that if she wanted to get revenge, she would have to find me in the place that was beyond her reach.  Finally, I said my goodbyes to those who had helped me during my time in Yong Ning. The manual pavilion owner in GuanWang Town who had first provided me with a blade technique and a blade to go along with it. Ai Deyun, who had helped me find my footing in Yong Ning, after all had seemed lost. He ragged on me a bit for causing trouble in his sect, but followed it up by wishing that his True Disciples had anywhere near my resolve. And Ge Yi, whose life I had saved and who had saved mine in turn. Before I left, I asked her if she wanted me to do anything about the BaiYun Sect Disciple who had assaulted her on her first day of cultivation, but she responded that she was simply happy to leave him in the dust as she moved towards the Foundation Realm. Smiling, I withdrew the Water Qi Orb and Heavenly Treasure from my spatial ring and left before Ge Yi could even process what had happened. I would have liked to say goodbye to Hou Yi as well, but he had long since vanished to other lands in search of treasures to complete his Artifact bow, and I would likely only find him again once I had acquired the Divine Mulberry Branch.  And then I began to walk.  Monsters abounded in Lei Ze, but ultimately they were in the Foundation stage and were too weak to be any real threat at this point. Even my now relatively undeveloped blade techniques were enough to slice them to ribbons as I proceeded throughout the wilderness to my next destination. (Lei Ze is the first of a series of intermediary wilderness zones that exist on the map. Wilderness zones are defined primarily by the fact that there is very little of interest in them, apart from Dungeons and World Bosses, and there being an incredibly high spawn rate for monsters to attack you out of nowhere like you’re wandering through tall grass in Pokemon. There are charms that can reduce/increase the spawn rate in case you want to be left alone or farm for lifeskill materials.)  As I wandered throughout Lei Ze and occasionally stopped to cultivate, I started noticing things which even my sharp eyes had failed to perceive before. There were so many spirit fruits just hanging in areas of high Qi concentration, which I would have found if I had simply taken the time to stop and look around. (Unfettered already starting to pay off, though even now as of the time of me writing this, I’m still not where I’d like to be with respect to Peng Jun’s Blade skill.)  As I left the wilderness of Lei Ze and entered Hua Feng, who should be waiting there for me but that vagrant from Bai Yuan who had tried to sell me overpriced breakthrough pills? He asked me if I was interested in Artifacts, as he had a chart for making one priced at a reasonable 5,000 Spirit Stones. Well not only did I not have 5,000 Spirit Stones at that time, but I had no intention of giving up the Imperial Sword. I told him where he could shove that chart, as I already had an Artifact. He did not react well to this. Not at my refusal to buy his wares, it seemed like Mystery Man Jo was already anticipating my refusal. But upon mentioning that I already had an artifact, his eyes widened behind his mask, and he grabbed me by the shoulders and coldly asked…  Stranger, that man must be hiding something. Never have I felt such a monstrous sword qi as was contained within those words, it was even stronger than that of my Master.  After I hurriedly explained the circumstances under which I had gotten my Artifact, he calmed down and started casually explaining what I would need to do if I ever wanted to replace my Artifact with one of higher quality. Now that I knew what to look for, it was almost as if he was an actor reading off of a script, and after he had recovered from the stumble, had gone back to reciting his lines.    Greatly shaken from my encounter with Jo, I fell into a Spirit Fox den. Fortunately the inhabitants were not too hostile, and after entertaining them for a bit, they set me on my way with a shiny gem, as a sort of present to welcome me to Hua Feng. (We’ll get back to what this is useful for in a while, but suffice to say, it’s convenient but really just saves on some grinding time.)     And so, at last, I came here to this Immortal Shrine. Before you arrived, I had just finished speaking with a local who explained the purpose of these shrines to me, to offer worship and devotion in exchange for rewards. But at this moment, I am just taking the opportunity to pray to the Immortal that Hua Feng be a more pleasant land than Yong Ning was. (As it says, you contribute donations of stuff you don’t need to the Immortal Shrine to try and earn things that you will find more useful instead. Also, there’s some additional mechanic involving these shrines that won’t be relevant until Transcendent or something stupid like that.) Oh, I didn’t expect you to be so moved by my story. You said that you were reminded of your own Master? Fair enough, we are still strangers of a kind, after all. I’ll leave you with your thoughts, and me with mine, until next we meet again. Jossar fucked around with this message at 05:38 on Jun 11, 2023 |
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Jun 11, 2023 05:32
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Jossar posted:Glad to see you're enjoying it! I also found out the hard way that by skipping the 2nd area with the first area's sect movement I seem to be unable to expand to the 2nd area at all now because the 3rd area wants me to move up as well and trying to use their flag in the 2nd area doesn't work. Lack of a sect location means I can't just invade someone to take their spot either, I think? That is definitely something they should change. 
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Jun 11, 2023 07:33
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10. A Pleasant Land Stranger, long time no see! I was beginning to think that you’d gotten sick of this Peng Jun, as hard as that is to believe. Well, feel free to join in, this party is for everyone! Come to think of it, this is the first time that I’ve seen you when it wasn’t just the two of us by ourselves. Nice to know that you’re not just a figment of my imagination! Oh, what’s the party for? As always, there’s a long story...  So when I first entered Hua Feng, there were two things of importance on everyone’s minds. The first was that it was becoming increasingly difficult to travel anywhere. In part this was because of a phenomenon known to the inhabitants of Hua Feng, where many years ago a giant monster rendered travel between Hua Feng and the Hundred Hills impossible. Either because it had taken up occupancy in the East Sea, or depending on who you spoke to, had created the Sea itself! The monster was hard to ignore, as every few years it came out of the sea and ravaged anything even remotely close. But there was also a more recent phenomenon where the Nether Mountains were starting to cough up some kind of terrible, foul substance called Nether Air that was difficult to breathe, and it was forcing people away from the mountains and closer towards the center of individual regions. The second was artifacts. Everyone in Hua Feng is artifact crazy. But funny enough, unlike in Yong Ning, no one seemed to care that I already had an artifact. They were too busy focusing on how they were going to get the perfect artifact for themselves and to the extent that anyone noticed my Imperial Sword, were happy to congratulate me on already finding an artifact that was well suited for my person. Of course, these were only commonalities. Everyone in Hua Feng was also discussing matters of personal import that ranged from the mundane to the fantastical, which I cannot be bothered to discuss, as the tale is long enough as it is! You shall have to go and ask them if you wish to know more. (The Nether Mountains is the name for the giant chain of purple mountains that blocks easy passage throughout the map. Yes, they do in fact have story significance. This is about the part of the game where I’m going to stop transcribing every adventure I go on, especially because at this point a lot of them seem cool but practically had the effect of “and then I got another Legendary Finger book." This also ties into a bunch of quests that help explain in further detail how to make artifacts which don’t really matter if you already know what you’re doing. If you want to know more… go and play the game yourself!)  Upon wandering throughout the land and trying to find the region’s capital so I could make my report to the Peng Family, I came across a local branch of JingYue Sect. Unfortunately, I was not as stealthy as I would have liked, so an outer Disciple caught me and asked me why I was loitering outside the gates. I explained that I had previously had a bad encounter with JingYue Sect’s Yong Ning branch in the past and was hesitant to approach if the Hua Feng branch was similar, at which point the Disciple frowned. I was worried that I was going to have to draw my blade right then and there… But much to my surprise, the Disciple apologized! He said that they heard a lot of stories like that coming from cultivators who had just gotten out of Yong Ning, and that were it not for an order from the Sect Leader, they would have disciplined the Yong Ning branch long ago. He even offered me an invitation to try out for the Sect, so that I could see for myself that JingYue Sect wasn’t really like that, which I had to decline. I was thoroughly weirded out. After all the ruthless behavior that I’d seen in Yong Ning… the people of Hua Feng were far too nice!   I was so distracted by this that I didn’t even notice that when I wandered into a den of Golden Core realm monsters who tried to tear me to pieces. (This is the death I’m the most embarrassed by. Just randomly walked onto a tile with unavoidable Tier IV monsters and ate dirt. The game starts difficulty spiking again in a bit anyway to the point where death is a regular occurrence, but for a non-boss enemy in Hua Feng this was just stupid.)  And even then, as I nursed myself back to health, the accommodations were far nicer than anything I’d had in the entirety of my life. Truly, I was coming to the conclusion that despite being the son of a great family, I had really been a nobody back in Bai Yun. (Inns get more expensive the further you go, which isn’t so bad now but will start adding up later. Of course, by that point you’re making more spirit stones too.)   I was starting to run into problems with my cultivation though. As previously discussed, I had not been able to strike as hard under my own power as I would have liked once I reached the Qi Condensation stage. I was still able to compete, but only by relying on the power of the Imperial Sword. The strength of my martial expertise and techniques was still vastly inferior to those possessed by the average Qi Condensation cultivator.  After being knocked around several times, I found myself in the presence of a mysterious young boy. Now, if you remember my stories, you will know that I had met one like this back in Yong Ning. Indeed, this boy had a similar appearance, but varied slightly in that he was primarily focused on light rather than a balance between light and darkness, and had additional pearls embedded in his forehead. He said that he was the second piece to be played, and so this region was his concern. Then like his counterpart, he vanished in the midst of broad daylight!   After I healed up, I continued exploring and eventually found JinDong City, the capital of Hua Feng. For a time, I browsed the many shops and pavilions of the city, but eventually I could no longer put off what needed to be done… (Two new additions to cities for the next zone: The first is an outfit shop. As far as I can tell, all these do is provide you the ability to customize your character’s appearance. The ones with red tags boost Charisma by a lot, but that’s it. The second is a tournament ground that ultimately doesn’t matter for this playthrough because it’s Sect members only. RIP.) I was heartened to learn that the set of disasters that had affected my Family in the previous regions hadn’t continued onwards forever, and that although it was true that Sects remained the ultimate power – within a region’s capital the Five Noble Families still reigned supreme. A shining white boulevard flanked by peach trees led the way through the nicest neighborhood in JinDong City to a manorial compound built into a hillside, adjacent to a crystal clear artificial lake, beneath a cloudless azure sky. This then, was the Peng Family Residence in Hua Feng. After reaching the gates of the compound, I explained the basics of my story to the guard on duty, namely that I was a family member who had spent the last several years trying to travel to Hua Feng to deliver news about the Bai Yun branch of the Family. The guard said he would deliver my message with all due haste, but asked me to wait outside. Perhaps if the branch in Yong Ning hadn’t been suppressed and I had been delivering this message near the start of my journey, I would have stubbornly insisted that this was important and that I needed to be let in to deliver the message to the Elders immediately. But by this point, I was glad to be able to deliver the message at all. I wasn't even sure that I wanted anything more than that - in Bai Yun, clan politics hadn't really been a thing apart from staying in my parents' good graces. But here in Hua Feng they would be prevalent and an unwelcome distraction from climbing to the heights of cultivation to try and save my Master's life. Eventually the door guard came back and said that a guest of the manor wanted to speak with me regarding the issue, but the guest had also said that it would be better if I got some rest and met him at a particular tavern in the neighborhood the following day. This seemed highly irregular to me, but the guard said that was all he had been told, before shutting the door. With little else to do, I made preparations to visit the tavern in question the following day. Although calling the Phoenix’s Nest a tavern does not really do it justice. This was the nicest restaurant in all of JinDong City: every wall, seat, and table in the place was covered in vermillion cloth interwoven with gold thread, the meals were mouthwatering - made from whatever it took to satisfy the demands of the chef no matter how rare the ingredients in question, and had I been covering the bill myself I would have quickly run short on spirit stones. I later found out that anyone other than a member of the Five Great Families or a Sect Elder couldn’t even get into the place without a reservation months in advance. It turned out that the guest that had agreed to meet with me was none other than my eldest brother, Kyung. I was overjoyed to see him and the two of us discussed personal matters for a long time before he got to the heart of the matter: the rest of our immediate family had successfully made it to Hua Feng, but the main Peng Family lineage had intervened and declared that since the Yong Ning branch had been suppressed decades ago and there was no corridor of access, and the Bai Yun branch was so small anyway, it wasn’t worth investing in reestablishing it. Our family was to instead remain as permanent guests of the Hua Feng branch. Things could have been a lot worse. The Hua Feng branch hadn’t turned them out on the streets or anything like that. Indeed, that would have been ridiculous to say when we were eating in the best restaurant in the city! But they also weren’t going to incorporate anyone into their own family structure. So it meant that anyone who chose to stay was resigning themselves to being a caged songbird for the rest of their life. I told Kyung that after everything I had seen over the last couple of years I couldn’t live that way, and that knowing that my family was safe, I had other obligations to fulfill. He said he understood, and would convey my well-wishes to our parents and siblings. There were two other matters to discuss: first, Kyung said that even right at the center of the attack things had been incredibly hazy and unclear, so he asked that if possible I should try and get to the bottom of what had really happened on that day. He didn’t want to go as far as asking that I take revenge given that we had all made it out alive, but still, he wanted to know the truth. Second, I asked him if he knew anything about Tian Yun Mountain, to which he said his guess was as good as mine. But he also said that everything beyond the East Sea had basically become a myth to the people of Hua Feng anyway, so maybe it existing wasn’t as much as a stretch as it initially sounded, and that I would find it eventually as long as I kept on moving forward. As I left the Phoenix’s Nest and said goodbye to Kyung, it was as if an invisible load lifted off of my back, knowing that my obligation to my family had been satisfied and that I was now in truth a free man.    And apparently, every woman in the city somehow noticed that as well, as I was immediately dragged off on a multitude of dates, picnics, romantic getaways and the like. The first few days were incredibly relaxing, but it started to get harrowing after the second week with no end in sight. Eventually, I had to slip out of JinDong City unseen just so I could get back to cultivation. (The upgrade to social actions with a member of the opposite sex is that once you reach a particular friendship threshold, sometimes they can invite you (or you can invite them) on dates in a suitably romantic/peaceful location, which consumes 5 days and grants three uses of any particular social action along with a number of relaxing activities which are just for flavor. In most cases, but especially in Peng Jun’s case since he gains the most benefit from gaining Cultivation xp by going out and cultivating on the map itself, the best option is to just debate with the other person three times to get the maximum amount of Knowledge possible. As far as I am aware, this is the most efficient way to gain Knowledge in the game.  Doing all this debating also raises Peng Jun’s mental perfection to the final state. This is a minor system that gives you a couple of bonuses if you go around debating people and don’t get horribly demoralized/knocked on your rear all the time. Apart from these bonuses, you can also transmit it to NPCs to turn them into Paragons, which are kind of like an incubator state for becoming Heaven-Chosen. As with most other long term social features, this is pretty pointless and only really matters if you’re already invested in helping an NPC for RP reasons or something like that.)    As I sat in the wilderness, preparing to make the breakthrough to the Late stage of Qi Condensation, I was surprised to see none other than Ge Yi, badly wounded, and dragging herself out from the borders of Lei Ze. When I asked how on earth she had managed to get through Lei Ze when she was only at Qi Refining, she said that after our parting in Yong Ning she had refused to be left behind and had forced herself to break through to the Foundation realm, and used Lei Ze to temper herself and rise all the way to the middle of the stage. I could not help but be impressed and offered to introduce her to a few people that I had met in Hua Feng through Bounty Missions, that might be able to help her further advance her cultivation. She’s floating around the party, by the way. I’m sure she’ll make her way over and say hello eventually... (This genuinely surprised me, I never saw an NPC, even the designated best friend one, try to catch up this hard before without me actively babysitting them. Unfortunately, Ge Yi then proceeded to plateau at Late Foundation, so she has about one more update of actual relevance before just being the best friend who shows up with strangely important gifts at random times.) Jossar fucked around with this message at 00:55 on Jun 16, 2023 |
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Jun 14, 2023 04:33
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I mean there are worse friends, really.
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Jun 14, 2023 07:32
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I've started playing this. Should I be guzzling pills to restore Vitality and Mind between dungeons?
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Jun 14, 2023 11:33
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The Lone Badger posted:I've started playing this. Should I be guzzling pills to restore Vitality and Mind between dungeons? I find that these kinds of games are a little more expectant that you have to do so in order to succeed, unless you're supremely good at the game. Gotta spend money to make money, as it were. Apart from that, it's a money v. time issue. If you find that money is no object, it's better to do that rather than spend a lot of time recuperating at the inn, and vice-versa. The inn is more efficient overall though. I would say that by the time you reach Golden Core/Origin Spirit you need to accept that no matter what you're probably going to be doing a lot of both though, unless you've already managed to lock down everything you need in a build to be truly self sufficient. But that's also a lot of grinding for what is still the "early" part of the game. Jossar fucked around with this message at 13:00 on Jun 14, 2023 |
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Jun 14, 2023 12:51
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Those cultivation woes makes it sound like Peng Jun needs to find himself a mentor (ideally a heaven chosen but goodluck with that). I just found out your mentor can teach you skills of a higher realm than your own, but you can only use up to 5(?) higher realm skills at a time which is kinda crazy but awesome.Jossar posted:As far as I am aware, this is the most efficient way to gain Knowledge in the game. There's one other way to get skill points but it requires a lot of money (early on just be a sect leader  ) since there's an immortal shrine that appears in the first area (I think you need to hit grade III first?) that gives skill fruit when you fill the bar and from what I've seen, it gives a 35 point skill fruit every time.You aren't kidding about money becoming easier to come by later on though but good lord I burn through spirit stones so fast. The Lone Badger posted:I've started playing this. Should I be guzzling pills to restore Vitality and Mind between dungeons? If you're in a sect the hospital's free, and what I did early on. As my pills built up (that life leech destiny helps a lot) I've started using the lower tier ones to top off if I'm doing multiple dungeons or mythic fights between town/sect trips.
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Jun 14, 2023 22:20
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Evil Fluffy posted:Those cultivation woes makes it sound like Peng Jun needs to find himself a mentor (ideally a heaven chosen but goodluck with that). I just found out your mentor can teach you skills of a higher realm than your own, but you can only use up to 5(?) higher realm skills at a time which is kinda crazy but awesome. Unfortunately, because I'm trying to get through the map as fast as I can (well, as fast as I can given my inefficiency ) to save the Transcendent Master, I just don't have the time to sit down and make friends with people/earn the money it would take to do a lot of this stuff. Well, I'm finally starting to make some money at the point where I am in my playthrough (as of time of writing, not as of the updates), but something's come up that I'm going to need it all for...And then after I save Ding Yuhua, a lot of this is going to become irrelevant either because I'll be too powerful for most other people to want to be my master or the Shrines are going to lock after a certain Realm threshold and make that method of farming skill points impossible. As for the other stuff: I've reevaluated the life leech destiny and I think at least one level of it is pretty much always going to be useful unless you have a very weird build in mind. Having some form of sustain is just too good. The sect hospital is even more useful in that regard than the way I'm doing it, but you are still burning time.
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Jun 14, 2023 23:10
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The problem with the sect hospital is having to hike all the way back. Map big.
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Jun 15, 2023 00:40
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11. A Crowded Room  Having reached the pinnacle of Qi Condensation, there was nothing left for me to do but start the process of finding Heaven and Earth Treasures that would assist me on my breakthrough to Golden Core. But in Hua Feng the process of acquiring those was a bit different than it was in Yong Ning.  Here, Spiritlock Circles guard a series of arrays that hide natural vaults containing the treasures in question. In the years since their abandonment, the circles have all been camped by a group of Spirit Tortoises that learned how to temporarily disable the vaults. They run a business where if you pay them three Grade Four Spiritual Fruits and keep out the monsters that appear when the energy of the vault is disturbed, they’ll retrieve a single treasure for you. This does not seem like what the creators of the arrays had in mind, but now that the tortoises are here, what can be done about them?   It was a difficult fight to keep the tortoise secure, but he was good as his word and after a few minutes returned with the treasure in question.  This made the tortoise infinitely preferable to others. While traveling throughout the land, I was accosted by a fortune teller calling himself the Sage Tianbao, who came up to me and offered meaningless platitudes about my future, but with the expectation I would tip him in gratitude for having received my "fortune." In truth, I was tempted to tell him to get lost, but there was a look in the fortune teller’s eyes that made me think that crossing him was a bad idea, so I handed him his spirit stones and quickly excused myself.  In my haste to get away from Sage Tianbao, I hadn’t realized that I had come across the location of the Divine Mulberry Tree! I asked the Guardian of the Tree if she would be willing to part with a branch for the sake of assisting the people of Yong Ning, but she said that the Divine Mulberry Tree was already weakened and she would not let a branch be taken without some divine water from Kunlun Pond to try and fortify the Tree.  The Guardian of the Pond, however, refused to listen to a single word that I had to say, and I had to defeat it in order to gather water that the Tree Guardian needed.  Conveniently, among the Pond Guardian’s possessions was a new Blade technique for me to learn. The Viewer’s Forceful Blade technique had more of a focus on performing wide circular sweeps compared to my previous one, which would be useful for preventing me from being surrounded or ensuring that I could always hit a target as long as they were anywhere adjacent to me.   In the end, it had turned out that the Guardian of the Tree had lied. The Divine Mulberry Tree was dying no matter what, and she had simply asked for the water from Kunlun Pond to ensure that there was no time limit as to the efficacy of the branch. She acknowledged that she would be judged harshy by heaven for this, but what else could she do if the tree was already doomed to die? I promised her that even if it took me a while to get back to Yong Ning, the branch would be put to good use. Perhaps I should have headed back right then, but in truth I was concerned that my cultivation was not sufficiently stable… As you should have been, idiot! Ge Yi, I... My apologies, I do not believe that we have met. I know it is rude to intrude into a conversation like this, but I simply could not let my friend here skip over how he nearly got himself killed! Well, it was really more bad luck than anything else. Stranger, do you know what he did?   This idiot walked into a thunderstorm to face a Mythical Beast by himself, entirely unaware that his Artifact was about to break!   Even then, I should have still been able to take on that Hatuibwari, I was definitely strong enough! (Here’s how you upgrade the Eye of Providence, by the way. After fighting enough Mythical Beasts of a certain tier, you upgrade it for free and all of the Mythical Beast skills you can use rank up to the new tier.)   When I found you, you were clutching the broken pieces of that sword right in front of the Beast. The whole time while I got us out of there, you were muttering about how you weren’t strong enough over and over again. (Yeah, so I pushed my luck a bit here, I didn’t realize that the Imperial Sword was about to break or else this fight would have been over in two seconds. To be fair, I didn’t quite fully understand the Artifact repair mechanics at this point.) Ge Yi, I’m sorry, it’s just... I know, you can’t afford to stop. Look, just try and remember that you’re no good to anyone if you’re dead, alright? No, we’re not having a moment!/No, we’re not having a moment! A...anyway Peng Jun, I have to go early, but I just wanted to see you before I left the party. Just letting you know that a few of us chipped in for some gifts. Enjoy! Oh, thank you so much Ge Yi, I’m certain they’ll be fantastic! ... You know, for somehow who mostly sits and listens you can have a really sharp tongue when you decide to speak. Is she definitely gone? Okay, Mengyi you might as well come out, since this next part concerns you. I suppose that is only fair. Wait... why is this woman laughing? Did I miss something important? Why, oh heavens?! Why must you be so cruel to this Peng Jun?   Well Stranger, if you are done amusing yourself, I will continue. In the far west of Hua Feng there is a location filled with evil energy called the Fallen Valley. After purchasing some Ultima Sand from a nearby town, I was able to use it to withstand the energy for long enough to explore the depths of the valley.  The place was filled with monsters, demons, evil spirits and undead. I even ran into a manifestation of my own inner darkness, which was no easy foe to overcome!  After having made a complete circle through the valley, I came across a strange crystal, which responded to fragments of evil energy that I had collected from the monsters, and crumbled into several smaller crystals.   Upon touching these crystals, I was privy to a flash of light right before I blacked out. I saw a vision of the greater heavenly realms, and when I came to…   I had woken up as well. I quickly found myself fading, so I took the only reasonable option and moved into the Artifact that had been so graciously provided.   And so, for better or worse I am stuck here with this snow fox spirit for the foreseeable future. At least with the materials I had managed to obtain from the expedition, I was able to repair the Imperial Sword back to its full condition, if slightly worse for the wear. Whatever you like. I am simply happy to be active and observing the world again... ( Jossar posted:- I won’t make a better Artifact, but I will otherwise engage with the Artifact upgrade and enhancement systems to use the one I now have to the best of my abilities. If you thought Rewrite Destinies were a gacha, just you wait... You need to go into Fallen Valleys to get Earthly Materials that you need as a basis to repair Artifacts and Heavenly Materials as a basis to upgrade them. Beat up mobs in rooms/do random events to gain Soul Lures, then feed them to the big crystal at the end. Get a lot and you get a chest filled with materials, get a little and you just get a few scattered about on the floor. To repair the artifact, go back to a city’s Workshop. Earthly Materials combine with a bunch of raw material in the form of metallic objects. Lower level materials have increased Impurity, especially as the Realm of the Artifact goes up. Impurity has some effect on the strength of the Artifact in its current iteration, but more importantly if your materials are too terrible, you can’t repair the Artifact at all.  Going to the Fallen Valley also unlocks your ability to roll the artifact spirit gacha, which takes the form of a number of crystals that are spawned alongside the materials/chest when you finish the dungeon. These crystals contain artifact spirits of varying rarity that you can bind to an Artifact to power it up and grant it abilities beyond the default.   Look, we all know how gachas work: Higher level spirits are generally better/rarer than low level spirits. Run the dungeon a ton of times to get multiple copies of a spirit to unlock an advanced form/more of their backstory. Feed Affinity boosting objects that the dungeon drops (which can be one of two different preferences per zone, yes this means you're stuck coming back here later to farm for affinity as well as other materials if you want to use a Hua Feng based spirit) to increase the spirit's Affinity level to the point where you can make a pact and gain access to the spirit's skill tree. Mengyi is arguably the best spirit for this area, and a pretty good one to focus on overall. Once the skill tree is unlocked, she does some independent attacks and can charm enemies. There’s a bit more to the system than that, but it’s going to be a while before I care about anything beyond just getting the Imperial Sword back up and running. Even having the artifact spirit isn’t really going to matter for a while, but since this is when I got her, this is when she shows up.) Jossar fucked around with this message at 17:16 on Jun 17, 2023 |
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Jun 16, 2023 00:44
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so we have a fox girl spirit in our sword now?
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Jun 16, 2023 02:14
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Seraphic Neoman posted:so we have a fox girl spirit in our sword now? Precisely. Even without having her skill tree fully activated, Mengyi is now in the Imperial Sword and will manifest on the battlefield just above the Artifact whenever it's used.
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Jun 16, 2023 02:27
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This is all new to me. Stopped right before meeting with Fubuki. A new cultivation game came to my attention called Immortal Tales of Rebirth and it looks more like an RTS version of this.
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Jun 16, 2023 03:29
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Scalding Coffee posted:This is all new to me. Stopped right before meeting with Fubuki. Ugh, I remember this one! Jossar posted:
Unless they drastically fixed it up from the NextFest demo, I'd say avoid. But then again, we don't pick these games because they're enjoyable.
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Jun 16, 2023 03:49
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Hatuibwari has what's probably my overall favorite ability to use via the Eye so far. Their skill that drops lightning blasts on your cursor and inflicts stun. It has carried me in fights I would've absolutely died in otherwise.Jossar posted:Going to the Fallen Valley also unlocks your ability to roll the artifact spirit gacha, which takes the form of a number of crystals that are spawned alongside the materials/chest when you finish the dungeon. These crystals contain artifact spirits of varying rarity that you can bind to an Artifact to power it up and grant it abilities beyond the default. The first time I did Fallen Valley I goofed and immediated did the crystal thing and got junk because I had 2 materials. My 2nd run I cleared all the rooms and the results I got were... not what I'd expected. I also keep forgetting to attach a spirit to my artifacts, and never repaired one because I kept selling the 'useless' materials like an idiot. With the passive you took, are you hitting most/all of the cultivation spots you see when moving around the map? I have to imagine meeting the demands from the turtles would be hell for a rogue cultivator otherwise.
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Jun 16, 2023 21:33
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Evil Fluffy posted:With the passive you took, are you hitting most/all of the cultivation spots you see when moving around the map? I have to imagine meeting the demands from the turtles would be hell for a rogue cultivator otherwise. I am, but honestly it's not THAT many fruit to get through all of the turtles, even the ones for the next stage of Golden Core. Especially because sometimes the rewrite destiny goes bonkers and you get like 10 fruit at once. Getting ones of my specific favored stat continues to be a problem, but ultimately I found that to be true even with sects sometimes (because you can only get so many fruit before the shop runs out).
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Jun 16, 2023 22:54
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12. A Golden Event As it turned out, simply going through the process of plundering the Fallen Valley had trained me well enough to defeat the Hatuibwari. Nothing more of that need be spoken.  The remaining Spiritlock Circles though… those remained a challenge. I hesitate to admit it, but without Mengyi’s help, even I might have had some difficulty. You mean that you would not have been able to challenge them at all. I will not concede that, no matter what you and Ge Yi say! I’d learned a lot since my first fight against the Hatuibwari and a man has to have some pride, after all!   Upon exiting the last of the Spiritlock Circles, who should I spy other than Sage Tianbao? He wasn’t coming to ask for more spirit stones though. With an entirely too wide grin, he produced a list of treasures that he claimed had “fallen out of the pockets” of a rude and unkempt sword cultivator who had passed him by. After handing me the list, Tianbao thanked me for my generosity and continued along his way. Indeed, he is definitely not a man to be crossed so easily. I am getting shivers down my spine just thinking about it. (You can find these without Tianbao’s note, if you have the locations memorized and ping the places with Geomancy/Feng Shui. There’s nothing super essential here, but depending on how strapped for Skill Points I am later, I might go back and look for the Skill Point Fruit cache.)   With that, all that was left to do was hunt down the remaining Qi Orbs from Hua Feng’s Elemental Lands. For the first couple, I was able to shortcut the process by fighting several Mythical Beasts. Such as the Blazing Lands’ Leonid… Ugh, do not remind me. Why you Cultivators need to go into such disgustingly hot places to get the materials necessary to refine your souls, I will never understand.  The heat was so great that Mengyi even had to sit out the last part of my fight against the Mythical Beast, although in truth it had a great deal of difficulty attacking me at short range, since it mostly preferred to attack by using a ring of fireballs.  The Leonid also possessed a Qi Condensation upgrade to one of my techniques that was within my grasp. This time, I abandoned long-sweeping range for a more powerful skill that could strike directly in front of me, which I thought to be more useful for something intended as a finishing blow.   Another Dangkang rounded out the trio of easily available Mythical Beasts. From that point forward, I simply had to go and farm the rest of the orbs myself. I let Mengyi sit that part out, no point in boring her to death for a task that could be completed without breaking a sweat. Much obliged. (I don’t think I’ve shown off the Drunken Flower Forest yet? Wood-Qi aligned Elemental Land, field special ability is that pools of poison spawn. Fairly easy to avoid or get out of.)    Between finishing off the Elemental Lands, I ran into an Alchemist who had descended into madness and Qi Deviation, and wouldn’t stop muttering about her pills. I sadly had to end her life, but at least her notes were useful in advancing my own progress on Alchemy, which I would need in order to craft the Body Reconstruction Elixir necessary to save my Master. (Lifeskill Training! Just go and beat up randomly generated boss mobs, they’re not that difficult for the map even for lower tier characters and drop a bunch of related items, including a book which increases the skill in question. I am going to be doing the rest of my Alchemy grinding offscreen.)  Finally there was nothing left to do except face off against Cloud Nine, the Lord of Hatuibwaris. I would like to claim that it was a great battle, but with what I had learned against its lesser brethren and Mengyi’s assistance, it was truly a simple fight… Barely worth my presence.    ...but the rewards were worth the endeavor. (Right, we skipped over the first World Boss. Anyways, as stated before: For a while, if you don’t cheat your way to the next Realm such as via the Battle Between The Immortals, starting at Foundation, the capstone fight of the Realm is against a bigger version of a boss that you’ve already fought, usually in an Elemental Land. They drop the Mythic level Heaven and Earth Treasure, as well as Mythic technique/skill books for the next tier as well and Mythic upgrade books for upgrading your current techniques to the next tier. They respawn some time after you defeat them, and if you’re not in a Sect or lucky in finding the perfect technique at the Auction House, this is your primary source of farming if you specifically want Mythic level techniques/skills. Those are some pretty harsh requirements for equipping them though.)  And with nothing left to do, it was time to break through to the Golden Core Realm. (Yes, there are five potential breakthrough options for Golden Core, it’s kind of hilariously unnecessary. Most of the lower level ones just vary in terms of how cheap of a pill you want to substitute out for the Qi Orbs.)   This time there were no fumbles or screw ups, everything went exactly according to plan. I absorbed the Heaven and Earth Treasures before using the power of the Qi Orbs to condense my Dantian even further, until the field collapsed in on itself and the previous crystalline structure supporting it turned into a smaller, perfectly spherical, self-contained, rapidly spinning Jindan.  The mysteries of the universe once again revealed themselves to me and allowed me an opportunity to rewrite my Destiny. (From the top, we have… Blood Power II: We already discussed this one. Enhanced Spiritual Skill I: Can enhance spiritual skills’ range +10%, can be upgraded to Enhanced Spiritual Skill II. Range upgrades generally aren’t worth it. Either you’re up close and personal like we are and just have to live with it, or the technique is already designed around shooting from across the map. Blood Claw I: In battle, you can consume Vitality to form a blood claw. The blood claw takes 5 seconds to form and will be released upon your subsequent attack. The blood claw explodes upon hitting an enemy, dealing 1280 damage to enemies within 250 range and increasing your Max Vitality by 45 (capped at 900). This damage’s type matches your highest Martial Art. Forming the blood claw consumes 15 Vitality every second. You can’t form it if your vitality goes below 20%. Can be upgraded to Blood Claw II. This is a pretty good bonus damage skill, but it kind of relies on you already generating enough lifesteal to not die by fueling it with your own HP. Commander of the Dead I: Every enemy you kill has a 10% chance to transform into a Ghost Warrior (up to 2). Can be upgraded to Commander of the Dead II. Again, summons aren’t really that great except in a dedicated summoner build, and maybe not even then. Burning Butt I: We already discussed this one. Realization III: Gain 80 skill points. I mean that’s a lot of skill points, but you also have other ways to farm those. Seems like kind of a long term waste of a Rewrite Destiny.  The only two ones I was seriously considering here were Blood Claw I and Blood Power II. I think a more experienced player would probably take Blood Claw, but I was finding that at this point I just didn’t have enough life steal to make it work reliably, so I went with the safe option and picked Blood Power II.)  So that’s what this party is for. The last few times were by necessity out in the isolated wilderness, but it seemed appropriate to celebrate at least one breakthrough in style, hmm? Anyway, might as well see what Ge Yi managed to organize…   Ehh? That’s a bit much isn’t it? The outfit, I can understand. But the horse… Even by my standards… You are going to get her something nice in return. I will not allow you to shirk from doing so.
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Jun 17, 2023 18:30
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13. A Legend Lived It’s been a while, hasn’t it, Stranger? Well I suppose I took a little longer on my path than I’d expected. To be fair, it’s been a fairly busy couple of years!  One of the rumors I had heard at the party for my reaching Golden Core was that there was a girl who wouldn’t stop standing at the edge of the East Sea and staring into it. Given that my only lead on getting past Hua Feng to finally reach Tian Yun Mountain meant dealing with the Sea, I figured that any strange occurrences involving it were of the utmost concern.  The girl in question, Jingwei, was a bit strange. Although at this point I am starting to wonder if there are any Cultivators beyond a certain point of development who are not. Not only was she singularly obsessed with trying to fill the East Sea…  But she would repeatedly try to turn into a large bird and fill it with rocks, even though this angered Leviathan, the Mythical Beast who went on rampages through the area every decade or so.  This time her antics annoyed the beast so much that it trapped her in its tentacles, and me and her birds had to work together to free her before she could be crushed to death. (Talking to Jingwei throws you into a warmup fight against Leviathan. Most of the bosses up until this point have been big, but just that. Leviathan is the first of the bosses that’s so big that it pretty much defines the arena that it’s in. The goal is to smack its head and avoid the tentacles, occasionally smacking the tentacles where you can.)  Once rescued, the girl expressed her gratitude, and said that she was getting desperate to find some way to fill the East Sea and end Leviathan’s reign of terror. The only thing left that she considered even had a possibility of working was Yu the Great’s flood-controlling stone, called the Xirang. Fortunately, she had heard a possible location of the stone, but she was concerned that if she stopped to go and search for it, Leviathan would submerge for another decade. She asked if I could do so instead. I agreed…  But on my way to the location in question, another Cultivator tracked me down and said that he had received a message from a girl in Yukong Village, all the way back in Bai Yuan, that was meant to be delivered to me. Curious, I opened up the message and learned that the Old Man in Yukong Village who had worked to open the mountains had died, and that I was invited to attend the funeral. Well, he had helped set me on the path to get out of Bai Yuan all those years ago, so I figured that I at least owed it to him to attend his funeral, so Jingwei’s task would have to wait.     This was apparently the right thing to do, as all sorts of karmically positive things happened on my trip towards JinDong City. I was practically pelted with spirit fruit whenever I tried to cultivate, Immortals threw enough spirit stones at me such that I could upgrade my Spatial Ring, I even figured that I might as well try and take advantage of all this good karma and see how much I could get for one of my mythic Golden Core techniques at JinDong City’s Auction House.  I had enough left over from my shopping trip to be able to afford a rare luxury - a direct teleport from JinDong City back to Yong Ning. (I don’t know if I’ve shown this off before? The range on teleportation isn’t unlimited, but you can go pretty darn far for relatively cheap between sects and cities as long as you have at least a little bit of liquid assets handy. Sects might not let you use their teleport portal if they aren’t friendly enough with you, though.)  I confess Stranger, that I had forgotten about Hou Yi by this point, but once I reached Yong Ning it was clear to see that the situation with the Three-legged Crows had gotten much, much worse. The Sects had been unable to ward them off at all, so it was only by Hou Yi’s efforts, after he had returned from the expedition to gather his share of the materials, that the land had not collapsed into drought and famine entirely. Guiltily, I handed him the materials he needed to finish off his Artifact Bow, but he wouldn’t let me say a word. He was just grateful that I had gotten back to him at all, no matter how long it had taken, so that the rampage of the Three-legged Crows could finally be put to an end. (Partially I held off on completing this quest because I wanted to ensure that I had no problems with the fight, but part of it is because I just didn’t really have a reason to come back to Yong Ning until this point, and the funeral quest gives me a good excuse to finish this one off.)    Stranger, the Bow is a rare weapon in the world of Cultivation, but even if it were not, I wager that I never will again see such mastery as Hou Yi displayed on that day, as he struck down the majority of the Three-legged Crows from the sky, killing each one in a single perfect shot.  And it cost him his life. As Hou Yi lay there dying, having consumed his own life force to accomplish his task, he begged me to finish the job now that the Crows were weakened… but amazingly enough he did not want me to kill the last few Crows, just drive them away from Yong Ning. He could not bear the thought of eliminating them entirely, especially since it might have a negative effect on the world. As he faded away, I set forth with blade in hand to accomplish the task.    Sunny and her last remaining brother stood there on the heat-blasted plains in burning anger, barely able to contain themselves. They could barely chirp out how I would die a dog’s miserable death, before loosing their human forms and rushing at me with trails of flame roaring behind them. But now that I was in the Golden Core realm they were no match for me, and their strikes had all the effect of raging chickadees. After a few strikes, they were rapidly sent packing, hopefully to never trouble Yong Ning again.  I hear that they’re calling Huo Yi a hero in Yong Ning now, “The Man Who Shot Down the Suns”, and for once I am glad that the name of Peng Jun has no attachment to the story. It was his victory, and his alone. I just helped clean things up.  Besides, I would have been too busy to deal with any such fanfare: I had a funeral to attend. (The main quests all have these big, really cool ending cinematics that help to drive things home. A shame that Huo Yi’s is the least relevant to the plot, but I think it might tie into something later? Can’t guarantee it. The rest of them are at least somewhat related to kicking you along towards Tian Yun Mountain, though.)
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Jun 19, 2023 01:49
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| # ? May 6, 2024 06:57 |
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Huo Yi's quest does unlock a really good starting destiny for your next character though.
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Jun 19, 2023 02:40
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