|
I like the ending slides, those are really cool.
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 05:41
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 06:50 |
|
|
Wait you can unlock stuff for future characters too? Ugh, I really should play this game more. I keep restarting because I'm never happy with what I ended up with for my char and I hate rushing so I don't like the transcendent quest line but I'm also too nice to just let him die 
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 06:11
|
|
|
If you reach Qi Condensation before you head into the marshland then that event never fires. Letting the transcendent promote you is a bad deal, right? Since you miss out on the stat bonuses from all the treasures you could have thrown into the pot of breakthrough-soup. Yami Fenrir posted:Wait you can unlock stuff for future characters too? Some of the starting destinies don't appear in the random pool until you have the achievement that unlocks it.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 06:14
|
|
|
The Lone Badger posted:If you reach Qi Condensation before you head into the marshland then that event never fires. Oooh, good to know. How do I reach Qi condensation without the stuff from the Marshland though?
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 06:16
|
|
|
Yami Fenrir posted:Oooh, good to know. How do I reach Qi condensation without the stuff from the Marshland though? The final Land of the Arcane is in the swamp, but you can substitute a lower-tier treasure from an elemental-lands boss or the treasure pavilion. (Or be lucky enough to get a Nether Slab from the horsething)
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 06:19
|
|
|
The Lone Badger posted:The final Land of the Arcane is in the swamp, but you can substitute a lower-tier treasure from an elemental-lands boss or the treasure pavilion. That's the untranslated event, yeah?
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 06:19
|
|
|
Yami Fenrir posted:That's the untranslated event, yeah? Yeah. You can use Google Translate on your phone camera to get an idea of what's going on in most scenes, though pretty rough. It's random which of the four treasures it gives you though, and it's the Nether Slab you want.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 06:24
|
|
|
The Lone Badger posted:Letting the transcendent promote you is a bad deal, right? Since you miss out on the stat bonuses from all the treasures you could have thrown into the pot of breakthrough-soup. As far as I am aware, the Transcendent promoting you gives you equivalent stats to if you got the best possible breakthrough of the tier, so there's no downsides except the timer (unless you accept being a student and don't even have that). I haven't tested it comprehensively though. Also the dark secret is that because the stats are continuously getting higher and higher, in about two tiers afterwards, it doesn't really matter what you did at any one particular tier's breakthrough. Though this is, of course incumbent on you making it that far. Yami Fenrir posted:Wait you can unlock stuff for future characters too? The Lone Badger posted:Some of the starting destinies don't appear in the random pool until you have the achievement that unlocks it. Yeah, I should probably farm destinies a bit more at some point, but honestly I just want to beat the game once before I try for any more achievement nonsense. Jossar fucked around with this message at 11:45 on Jun 19, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 11:43
|
|
|
Jossar posted:And with nothing left to do, it was time to break through to the Golden Core Realm. The Core levels all give different stats (because they use fewer and fewer treasures). I can't imagine wanting to do a G5 Golden core though unless you know the game inside and out, have some sort of crazy OP build that can safely ignore the lower stats, and are doing a speed run. Or if there's an achievement for transcending a character who has used the weakest breakthrough option every step of the way. Yami Fenrir posted:Wait you can unlock stuff for future characters too? There are also rewrite destiny options that only show up if you breakthrough in a Sect's pavilion and while they vary in potency, one I've seen mentioned online but isn't available in any sects in my game makes every one of your hits auto-crit for several seconds when it triggers.
|
|
#
?
Jun 19, 2023 14:31
|
|
|
14. A Legend Relived The funeral at Yukong Village for the Old Man was a well attended affair. It was not particularly solemn, as that would not have been line with his wishes of trying to ensure a brighter future for the village’s inhabitants, but it was respectful all the same. After the funeral, I was approached by the Old Man’s granddaughter, Xi. Primarily because she did not know who I was, something which I was starting to get used to at this point, and was curious as to why an outsider was attending her grandfather’s funeral. After an explanation from myself and the village’s Scholar, who was still alive and kicking, she got to the point.  Her grandfather had left her a family heirloom, some kind of special iron ingot, and apparently she was supposed to let me have it. Well, I’ve certainly held onto weirder treasures before that turned out to be useful, so I agreed to take it, at which point the ingot immediately reacted to my Qi. It rose up into the air, spun around for a bit and then pointed towards a particular direction. I tried to turn it around, but the ingot would always return to its pose, like it was a compass. Xi, upon seeing the ingot’s reaction, immediately bolted off in the direction that the compass was pointing. I ran off after her to make sure that she didn’t run into any monsters along the way.  The ingot eventually lead the two of us to the Jagu’s cave, which was strangely deserted. Maybe she had finally moved on now that her responsibility towards the villagers had been satisfied?  Once we reached the cave, the ingot immediately began to fly through it at rapid speed, illuminating a bunch of faint text on the wall. This quickly attracted the attention of a group of Bambuki, who continued to squat in the place even though the Jagu was gone. One would have thought that they would have been weaker without anyone to direct them, but instead the Bambuki had reverted to a sort of primal savagery that would have made them difficult to deal with for anyone under Qi Condensation, or perhaps even Golden Core. Fortunately, by this point I had long since passed them and was able to chop them into pieces with just the strength of my blade arm.  After summarily dispatching the Bambuki, me and Xi were able to read the carvings on the wall. They told the story of a young man and woman, the first foolhardy but cowardly, while the second was more restrained but able to tame the beasts around the mountains easily. Eventually after some time, the carvings began to flicker and obscure themselves, releasing an evil energy in the process. The light from the iron ingot was still present, so I figured that something must be blocking the rest of the message from being revealed. When I asked Xi if she knew anything that might work, she told me that one of Yukong Village’s Elders had always said that washing curses in the blood of beasts would dispel them.  I thought it was worth a try, so I quickly left to slay a nearby Dangkang before running back to the cave to make sure that Xi was safe.  Stranger, Dangkang blood is truly terrible smelling. I would not recommend dealing with it yourself if you do not have to. Nevertheless, I did what I was told and painted the walls with the Mythical Beast’s blood, which revealed more of the story. Again, it was mostly exploits of the boy being foolishly brave, while the girl worked to befriend the animals in question that he had managed to upset.  Eventually, the iron ingot lead us to the back of the Jagu’s Cave where a Coatl was waiting. Again, this would have been a fearsome beast if I had come at any time before Golden Core, and even now was something of a struggle, but no more so than any of its equivalent realm brethren would have been.  The iron ingot illuminated the last set of carvings, which were different this time as they showed the girl saving the boy from drowning in a flood that was so great that it nearly covered the mountains. Buried underneath the last carving was a bamboo chip. I reached down to touch it, and then everything went black...  I saw a vision of a young boy conversing with what was very clearly the Jagu, albeit much younger. This must have happened years and years ago, if that was the case! In any event, the boy had been approached by a bunch of diviners from the rest of Bai Yuan saying that they had determined that he was the only one who could help them save the region from a flood. But because they had tried to attack the Jagu while approaching the cave, he refused to help the diviners and sent them away. The Jagu chewed the boy out for it, saying that he had a duty to humanity and the world, to which the boy eventually agreed. The boy said that he would go out and solve the problem of the flood, and then once accomplished he would return and see the Jagu again. At which point Xi kicked me in the shin. To her it did not look like I was having a vision, just that I was staring at the ground. She asked if there was anything special about the bamboo chip, and looking at it again, it seemed as though what I had received was just a faint impression from the chip itself and that most of its energy had otherwise been expended. I would need some sort of sympathetic energy source to get it to reveal more.  And well, what would be more sympathetic than the core of a Mythical Beast Bambuki? This Beast, unlike the others that I had faced so far and most of the other Bambuki, was a serious threat. No misshapen bamboo growth struggling towards full consciousness, but a fully developed swordsman of the highest caliber, it was able to match me blow for blow – sword against blade. In addition, it was also able to summon lesser Bambuki to assist it, as well as large shoots of bamboo from the ground to create a veritable forest to try and impale me. It was a hard fought battle, won by no special techniques, but simply a test of equally matched personal skill. Oh, well the thing about that is… Look, I don’t want to talk about it, okay? Me and Mengyi aren’t quite on speaking terms right now.   After taking the Sword Bambuki’s Bamboo Heart and feeding it to the bamboo chip, it was restored entirely. The chip prominently displayed the character “Yu” on it, confirming that the boy from the carvings and my vision was none other than Yu the Great, in whose footsteps I was trying to follow by looking for the Xirang in order to fill the East Sea. My restoration of the chip was also marked by the timely appearance of a second set of visions, although these mostly just revealed the perspective of Yu with regards to the carvings, in that he thought he was protecting the Jagu. Hah, as if she needed his help!   With the story having come to a close, Xi asked for the iron ingot back, which I gladly gave her. The real prize was in learning that the Xirang did have the level of power that Jingwei would need to seal the East Sea. And also the bamboo chip, which had a mysterious latent power of its own… (Despite what it looks like, this is not considered to be a main quest, just a very intricate side quest. It is still useful to complete though, as it gives you a one-use item for rerolling a Golden Core-or-below Rewrite Destiny. It also serves as a requirement for later side quests that give similar items for higher level destinies. I’m pretty happy with my Rewrite Destinies and don’t expect to need to use this one, but you never know.)  I had one or two affairs left to deal with in Yong Ning, so wanting to be prepared for a possible confrontation, I asked one of the villagers in Yukong Village if they had heard anything about Wang Huili in recent years. The villager told me that while passing through Yong Ning he had heard a story about the matter: with her daughter having been killed by a rogue cultivator *cough*, Wang Huili went mad with grief and finally tried to break through to Qi Condensation to obtain the power that she needed to exact her revenge. But the heart’s demon that she had developed was too great and she died during the tribulation. Honestly, I was impressed that she cared enough to try, rather than just discarding all sentiment for her daughter and continuing to remain a tyrant in Yong Ning for the remaining years of her life. For all the stories I heard about Wang Huili, it always felt like she was a monster made by frustration at her circumstances rather than a truly wicked nature. Of course, maybe in her younger years she was more like Bi Wenyao and had just grown more sentimental with age? I do not think that I will ever know the truth of the matter. (Wang Huili suddenly dropping dead saves me the trouble of having to deal with an NPC temper tantrum spiral, where I get an infinite line of higher and higher Realm NPCs demanding compensation for their relatives’ deaths.)   As thanks for the gifts that Ge Yi gave me at the party, I had a workshop make me a highest grade Qi Condensation Elixir to help her try and her breakthrough to Qi Condensation. The gesture was appreciated, although Ge Yi said she would prefer to work on breaking through at her own, more relaxed pace. Stop and smell the flowers, as it were. I did, in my own way, while I was in Yong Ning: I visited my Master’s not-quite grave to pay my respects. The Yulan tree and that single perfect blossom still remain in that field in the center of the forest, even years later.  Then it was back to Hua Feng and JinDong City. I had an auction to attend, after all. All sorts of local big shots were spending thousands and thousands of spirit stones on all sorts of secret techniques, so I was hoping that even if I didn’t reach the vaunted price of some of them, I would at least be able to get a good deal on the technique that I had obtained from Cloud Nine.  Why, oh heavens?! Why must you be so cruel to this Peng Jun and have not a single person bid? (Yeah, I hate the auction house. Leave a Mythic level technique sitting until the start of the year, just to fail to get even a medium-level bid. Maybe at the higher levels where you expect to take more than a few years to break through to the next realm it’s worth it, but by that point you also sort of don’t really care about spirit stones any more anyway. Just unload your products in bulk at the Market and move on.)   The merchants were more than happy to take the technique though, as things of such rarity did not usually make it down to their hands and were jealously kept among the Sects or in private auctions. The merchants started referring to me as some kind of big shot, and were happier to see me come to town with something for sale than they had been before. (Benefactor Priest and its successors are probably the easiest set of titles to acquire, just by throwing around a lot of stuff at the markets and making bank in spirit stones. They further help you in this endeavor by giving you better market treatment when equipped.) Jossar fucked around with this message at 14:43 on Jun 24, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 14:37
|
|
|
For a second, I thought that sword plant was smoking and thought it looked so cool.
|
|
#
?
Jun 24, 2023 23:58
|
|
|
Yeah, I thought so too, but sadly I think it's just one of the tassels from the hat lined up with an explosion. Why those have dynamic enough motion to clip through the boss, the world will never know.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2023 00:12
|
|
|
drat, shame Ge Yi is falling off already. She's really nice after the early game rear end in a top hat parade.
|
|
#
?
Jun 25, 2023 08:58
|
|
|
15. A Legend Defeated  Now that all of my other matters were dealt with, it was time to go and deal with Leviathan. But first I had to find the Xirang. Fortunately, in this case the heavens were smiling on me: while I was wandering through Hua Feng, I found a man under assault from monsters. Upon dispatching them, the man thanked me profusely and asked me to return with him to his home village, which had been beset by a monster that refused to let the villagers leave.  Once I reached Duality Village, the Village Chief was more than happy to explain the situation to the best of his ability. Admittedly, he didn’t know much, but he did confirm that the Xirang existed and was in the care of the Bi Fang who had kept the villagers trapped for generations.  But I had heard this all before in Yukong Village, so when I found the Bi Fang, I asked what horrible fate it was trying to prevent by keeping the villagers contained. It was surprised, both at my concern for the people of the village and that I already mostly knew what was going on. In this case, many years ago, a Cultivator had sunk into true Blood Cultivation and had been feeding on people in the surrounding area. He was suppressed by Orthodox practitioners, but the people of Duality Village had unknowingly loosened the seal just enough that a fragment of his consciousness was able to escape and had gone rampaging throughout the land as a Blood Lord. The Bi Fang obtained the Xirang and used the stone’s powers to trap the Blood Lord under a boulder, but now the Blood Lord’s seal was also weakening. So if the Bi Fang let go of the Xirang or the villagers went and disturbed the new seal, then the Blood Lord would get out and start killing people, which while not as bad as if the original cultivator escaped would still be disastrous. The Bi Fang agreed that if I could kill the Blood Lord, then there would be no need for the Xirang. I guess the original seal had been restored so there was no concern of another Blood Lord breaking through? I don’t know, I’m not a Talisman master, and this story is already starting to loop in on itself too much.  For all the talk around how much of a threat the Blood Lord was, it turned out to be kind of underwhelming. However, this is around the point when I discovered that my Master’s Imperial Sword was entirely ineffective against anything beyond the Qi Condensation Realm. Fortunately I did not need it to win this duel, but Mengyi was extremely frustrated that for all intents and purposes she had effectively just traded one kind of prison for another. We got into a big fight after the Blood Lord was defeated, but ultimately I didn’t have the time to let the Leviathan sink back into the sea for another decade, just to indulge one spoiled snow fox princess’ whims. (Yeah, so it turns out that artifacts are basically useless outside of their own Realm. Enjoy having to engage with the upgrade or forging systems if you want to use an artifact long-term! I’ll explain why the upgrade system is annoying next update.)  I was in a truly terrible mood. When Sage Tianbao showed up on the road back to the Bi Fang, I did not even contest his request for spirit stones, but just threw them in the donation box and continued onwards. (I’m… not actually sure what happens if you don’t pay Tianbao off after the first time you meet him. I always do so because I assume you’ll have an “accident” of some kind if you don’t.)  The Bi Fang was as good as its word and once it confirmed that I had indeed defeated the Blood Lord, handed over the Xirang, before flying off into the unknown.  The villagers from Duality Village all marveled and wondered at this, but none troubled me as I left to go and return to Jingwei with the stone. The time had come.   The Leviathan sensed that this time, things were different, and appeared before me and Jingwei in its full terrific majesty. The Mythical Beast would not leave until we were both dead, or it died in the process of trying to kill us. (Okay, now it’s time for the real boss fight against the Leviathan. Jingwei does not directly help in this fight, she’s too busy summoning up the energy to use the Xirang, although she will periodically send out a green light that heals you for a couple of hundred health.)  At first, me and the Leviathan traded a few blows, my blade scratching its head as it reached out to try and slap at me with its tentacles. But eventually, I learned that these were mere feints compared to what the beast was capable of. Soon, the Leviathan began slamming its tentacles down with earth-shattering force, and I had to dodge and weave several body-lengths out of the way as whole sections of the shoreline broke apart and fell into the sea under its wrath.  Eventually, upon seeing that this was having minimal effect, the Leviathan reached back, opened its mouth, and expended a great deal of Qi… in order to summon the essence of Water of the East Sea and fire it directly at me and Jingwei. But no matter how powerful the Leviathan was, this was not a Divine Guardian, just a mere beast. So unlike Hong Yuhe, it did not have the cultivation level or finesse necessary to make this torrent inescapable. I rushed over to the rock where Jingwei was standing and, after picking her up, barely managed to get the two of us to safety. From that point on, there were no new tricks. There was only a days-long dance of blades and tentacles between me and the Leviathan. But eventually, the water tyrant weakened and I found my opening for a final blow.  As the now slowed tentacles came crashing down onto the shoreline, I leapt on top of them, and in confusion the Leviathan retracted its appendages towards itself to try and figure out what was going on.  Once in sight of the Leviathan’s head, I unleashed a massive blade strike, consuming the rest of my energy to carve it in twain! The creature collapsed back into the sea, defeated.  But even this was just a temporary measure, after all, if the Leviathan could be defeated so easily, it already would have been. The only true hope in defeating the Leviathan lay in the Xirang, and for as long as I had been fighting the beast, Jingwei had been pouring her energy into the stone. Eventually she announced that she was nearly ready, but the girl looked utterly exhausted, even moreso than myself. Instead of letting Jingwei blow herself out like a candle to finish charging the Xirang, I sacrificed a portion of my mental energy to complete the preparations myself. What, no wisecrack this time about my lack of mental energy? I guess we must finally be becoming friends, then!  As the Leviathan once again rose from the sea, Jingwei in turn rose to meet it, Xirang in hand.   And with her came the earth. The entirety of the land beneath the East Sea rose up into the sky, hovering in the air for a brief moment, before falling back down and pinning the Leviathan and the entirety of the sea underneath. An unearthly scream marked the Leviathan’s death and the opening of the way through to the Hundred Thousand Hills.   I asked Jingwei what she planned on doing now, and she said that she didn’t know. The girl had honestly expected that she was going to die during the battle and hadn’t thought that far ahead. So I invited her to stay with me, at least until she figured things out. H...hey, what’s with that face? I thought we were past those sort of jokes already! (If you don’t give Jingwei 10% of your permanent Max Vitality/Max Energy/Max Focus, she dies. If she lives, she hangs out in your Tree Vault for the rest of the game. You can give her items and it’ll increase her Affinity, and she’ll occasionally burn off some of that Affinity to give you stuff in return. Anything you lose now is a relatively minor % of what your overall stats will be later, and letting her live unlocks some stuff later in the game - although nothing too important – so I dump some Focus just to have her tag along for the ride.) Jossar fucked around with this message at 13:15 on Jun 26, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2023 02:36
|
|
|
Focus is probably the least useful of your three bars, even if it is the only one that can't be recovered using drugs, so it makes sense to sacrifice it. (Focus is mostly useful for artifacts, and as discussed having a useable artifact can be way too much work)
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2023 03:13
|
|
|
Look at that cool bird. For something so big and so old, it doesn't seem that powerful beyond adding another hp digit and a low one.
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2023 03:19
|
|
|
Scalding Coffee posted:For something so big and so old, it doesn't seem that powerful beyond adding another hp digit and a low one. Yeah, until we get very late into the game, a lot of bosses are built up as way more powerful in-universe than they're depicted mechanically and the fights don't get much more complicated than this, although bosses will start throwing around more patterns. So you go through all this big hoopla to get to the fight, only for it to be a tougher-than-normal but still standard brawl relative to your current power level. To be fair, this is like twice the HP of the Golden Core level World Boss, although I found that fight to be more difficult than this one for other reasons. Jossar fucked around with this message at 03:40 on Jun 26, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2023 03:37
|
|
|
This game sure likes its tier-based busywork doesn't it?
|
|
#
?
Jun 26, 2023 05:48
|
|
|
I've so far managed to grind my way into two ranks past Golden Core and have yet managed to luck on the exact combination of items required to actually forge an artifact, or even upgrade one of the ones I've blundered into. Instructions on how to find the type of materials you need are... Unclear.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2023 07:50
|
|
|
kaosdrachen posted:I've so far managed to grind my way into two ranks past Golden Core and have yet managed to luck on the exact combination of items required to actually forge an artifact, or even upgrade one of the ones I've blundered into. Instructions on how to find the type of materials you need are... Unclear. Kill the world bosses and farm the valley of fallen souls a bunch, for the materials as best I can tell (materials can be found elsewhere but have worse impurities?). While hoping you get enough skill books to hit the forging level requirement if you want to make it yourself and not rely on the workshop (which I assume can't hit the same top tier quality that the player can). I didn't forge a high(est) quality artifact until the endgame stretch though.
|
|
#
?
Jun 27, 2023 23:11
|
|
|
16. A Realm Transcended  Unlike the barren wasteland of rock that used to be the East Sea, the valleys and peaks of the Hundred Thousand Hills were teeming with life, all of it very much disturbed by the overturning of the nearby sea and highly aggressive. Fortunately, at the peak of the Golden Core stage they posed no real threat, but they were still in large enough numbers that I worried about succumbing to attrition.    Eventually, I spotted a series of Demonseal Circle Array Formations, similar in nature to the Spiritlock Circles, but even more unruly due to the nature of the treasures being contained within. Of course, the tortoises already knew all this and when I approached, they charged me a greater fee than their fellows had for their services in finding Origin Spirit realm-grade Heaven and Earth Treasures.    I emerged from weeks worth of travels in a land of deadly blizzards, this then was Yun Mo. I had no intention of staying here for long, as even the least of the disciples who bothered to roam freely in this land was at the Origin Spirit realm! So I arranged for transportation back to Hua Feng, however I was informed that having been attuned that I would be able to return to JiangQian Town, so at least I would not need to traverse the wilderness again unless it was specifically necessary. (After a certain point, I was deep enough in the Hundred Thousand Hills that I thought it was better to just unlock a portal to the next zone and teleport between the two as necessary, rather than leave halfway.)  Once I returned to JinDong City, I learned through rumors that a great Cerulean Coatl had started flying through the skies above the barren land where the East Sea had once been with a nine-colored branch held in its appendages. I figured that this was just what I needed to maximize the benefits I would gain when breaking through to the Origin Spirit realm. After all, how difficult could the beast be to slay?  Why, oh heavens?! Why must you be so cruel to this Peng Jun? (Yeah, so I died here. I’m not sure what exactly made this boss so difficult for me apart from just generally having my skills underleveled and a lack of pattern memorization. This also marks the point where, having stretched the limits of what I was familiar with before starting the LP, I start dying a lot off screen. So from this point on, I’m only including what I consider to be actually interesting deaths or else the updates would be plastered with them.)  As I lay there charred almost to death by the serpent’s lightning, I could feel Mengyi’s contempt radiating out to me from the Imperial Sword. So at that point I figured that fine, I would try things her way.     At first, things seemed to be really looking up. I was able to acquire upgrade materials for the Imperial Sword in a Soul Devouring Pagoda, and even find a more powerful Mythical Beast spell for the amulet. The monster at the tower even had a strange egg which… agreed to serve as a mount for me?  But the core material for the Sword itself could not be found, no matter how hard I looked. Stranger, I must have spent months looking for it, even encountering the guardian monster of the Fallen Valley numerous times. Eventually, I had to accept that unless I was going to spend years looking for the material in question, I would just have to move on and hope that the experience I had gained would let me triumph over the soarer of the skies. (Okay, so here’s how Artifact upgrades work. There are three parts: 1. Get a bunch of Heavenly Materials from the Fallen Valleys. No problem, you get a bunch just from running them in the first place. 2. Do a couple of runs of a boss rush tower called the Soul Devouring Pagoda which you can only enter by expending Soul Devouring Stones that you farm from the Fallen Valley. These are kind of annoying because the bosses can be really difficult, if not downright impossible to defeat if you’re at the “early” realm for the map. But here that’s no problem, and I only needed to run a few times for the material I needed (a certain grade of Quartz). 3. The item specific grind. For the Imperial Sword, that’s farming a boss in the Fallen Valley that only has a low chance to show up at the end of the dungeon and may or may not decide that it feels like dropping the upgrade item in question. You can also forcibly summon the boss at the beginning of the Fallen Valley by expending Nether Breaths, which you get in place of an extra copy of an Artifact Spirit that you already have the maximum number of copies of. You can fight a more difficult version of the summonable boss by spending additional Nether Breaths at once, for a better drop rate (maybe a better drop table?). The funny thing is that the overall grind isn’t that bad! Well, unless you’re at the lower-level realm of the map in which case depending on the map’s Soul Devouring Pagoda, it may be literally impossible. But for some reason the item-specific grind was taking me in-game months to years and eventually I decided that it just wasn’t worth it any more if I wanted to stay on schedule, unless I literally could not beat Cerulean without the Artifact.)  Unlike the supposedly great Hatuibwari, the lord of the Coatls truly did deserve its title. There was a single aspect in which the struggle against it varied from its normal brethren, in that the ringing of its bell made it difficult for me to concentrate on using pills unless I cleared my head. But in all other respects it was the same, simply faster and stronger, with less room for error when fighting against it. With the aid of the Lightning Circle Spell I had learned from the Soul Devouring Pagoda, I was able to barely eke out a win, but even this felt like luck more than anything else.  But the rewards were accordingly vast, even without accounting for the Heaven and Earth Treasure which had been my primary aim. (Yeah, that’ll do. Definitely a sign that I’m lagging behind on root levels though, if I need to get over twice my Blade skill to use it in the next tier. So in the usability department, it might not be quite as good as it seems at first glance) In my haste to gather all of the Heaven and Earth Treasures that I would need to break through to the next realm, I had neglected to get the foundational pill itself. Unfortunately, I was informed that such pills were not sold outside of the Sects and if I wanted a Spirit Transformation Elixir, I would have to make it myself. (Yeah, whoops. Turns out that if you don’t have access to a sect’s Treasure Pavilion you’re stuck manually making any pills you might need from this point onwards. Good thing that I was already grinding alchemy!)    To make matters worse, all of the herbs required could not be grown, but instead had to be harvested from plant spirits. However, this was a known conundrum and to solve it, a plant-offering altar had been set up in a Wood Qi-aligned cave in the Hundred Thousand Hills called Cloud Cave. If one was willing to burn medicinal herbs on the altar, it would create a powerful fragrance that would summon those spirits that could produce the required materials in question. Simply slay enough of them, and you could make the Elixir. (This is why you try very hard not to throw away anything that could be used to make an Elixir or an Artifact. It all comes back to being useful in at least some way, sooner or later.)    With the herbs in hand and a pill furnace, it was time for me to start crafting. I was not too worried: after all, I had been reading a large number of texts on alchemy. How much could practice deviate from theory?   Not much as it turns out! Truly a simple matter for this Peng Jun! ...why’s your eye twitching like that? (What’s supposed to happen is that you try to add in additional herbs to get as close to the ideal elemental composition as possible, using the special techniques of your pill furnace to further tilt the composition in your favor. I kind of screwed up the alchemy formula by dumping in a bunch of stuff that I wasn’t supposed to. But it was either within acceptable deviation or I got lucky, and the game spat out a perfect quality Spirit Transformation Elixir nonetheless. I don’t think a terrible Alchemy skill stops you from trying to make pills, but good Alchemy either directly or indirectly through things like furnaces, decreases the odds of the resulting mixture failing.)   After everything else, the breakthrough was a mere formality, and the wheel of destiny began to turn again. And now I prepare to take another Teleport Stone and head back to Yun Mo, for what will certainly be a much longer stay this time! (We already know what Blood Power III, Blood Claw I, and Fleeing Beauty do. Killer Vibe: Other cultivators may hate you after you interact with them; you have a lower chance of encountering monsters. Worse than useless. If you really want to deal with less monsters, just buy a repelling charm. Fight and Learn: When fighting or sparring with other cultivators, have a 20% chance to learn a skill from them. Can only trigger once every 6 months. Might be worth it if there was no timer. As it is, it takes years to become worth it, if it ever does at all. I can see where it would be useful if you’re at Transcendent and farming for skills, but I still wouldn’t waste a slot on it. Witchcraft I: Each of your attacks has a 10% chance to turn the target into a harmless chicken for 10 seconds. (Can be upgraded, ineffective on Mythical Beasts and other Cultivators). The upgrades still don’t work on Mythical Beasts and Cultivators. So… basically only useful on the stuff that you can already room clear. Pass.   So yeah, the only two destinies even worth bothering with are Blood Power and Blood Claw again. Given the level of difficulty that I’ve been having staying upright, I opt to go for Blood Power. I might just go full turtle/regen build at this rate.) Jossar fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Jul 1, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 1, 2023 21:47
|
|
|
Oh god, your root levels are even worse than mine were at that stage (because I only still had the Hamlet in the starting area and didn't take over others to expand fruit options). I wish you luck in getting caught up without access to a sect to buy fruit. There is a workaround/solution you can consider: If someone's your master and teaches you a skill, the root level requirement is waived. You can also take this a step further and find some blade-focused Heaven's Chosen who's 1-2 (ideally 2) stages above you, has skills you'd like, and gift them whatever you can to get them to like you a lot (a single red manual from my Yun Mo sect branch was taking recipients to 4+ hearts from a fraction of a heart/hate) and take you on as an apprentice. Then ask them to teach you some of their skills, which takes a few months due to the teaching cooldown. You can use 6 higher-realm skills at a time and needless to say, having some mythic skills 2 cultivation levels above your own is strong. You don't need to meet the root requirements or cultivation stage to do this either, though for passives you will need enough points available to equip those skills and unless you've been hitting the skill fruit immortal shrine often you'll cap out fast. I'm not sure if this works with characters 3+ realms above yours since when I figured it out I was already at the 8th stage, but if that works then you could get very silly with it and some patiences in cultivating (  ) friendship with the right people.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2023 00:22
|
|
|
The big problem I have is that I just hate sitting around and doing all the meditating it would take to grind out the fruit as long as I can theoretically win "right now" by going back in and slamming my head against the boss until I win by pattern memorization, especially because of the timer that I'm trying to stick to. I'm curious to see if your overall method is faster, although I feel like in my heart of hearts it should be since you're breaking the game wide open. Peng Jun is about 14.5 years in from the start at this point of Origin Spirit.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2023 00:50
|
|
|
For you going the rogue cultivator route I imagine it'd be pretty huge. If you're looking for passive like stun chance on hit, or whatever blade skills get, you might strike out finding a master with the skill you want and the passives you want but when I picked up an attack skill and the +atk mind skill the higher base numbers made the difference pretty huge. I only did it a bit because I had a bunch of skills that were set up to compliment each other once I figured out how I wanted my character to work.
|
|
#
?
Jul 2, 2023 05:21
|
|
|
The real cultivation is the friends we met along the way. So I guess charisma build best build?
|
|
#
?
Jul 3, 2023 08:40
|
|
|
So it seems like a recent update changed this. Some more stuff is updated, and also the transcendant cultivator event is now completely unavoidable. I broke through in a city, took one step, and it triggered.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 18:26
|
|
|
17. Desolate Snowland Stranger, I don’t know how you aren’t freezing to death. It’s cold out here, even for a Cultivator! Oh, I see that my tale has preceded me this time and you merely want to know the details? Well, fair enough! I suppose every so-called righteous cultivator knows the name of Peng Jun by now, and how their grandfather exceeds them all in moral virtue one thousand times over!    As is well known, the core struggle in Yun Mo is between the Cultivators of the Righteous sects and the Untamed, a group of fleshwarped demons.  All of the Untamed are extremely strong, but first and foremost among them is their leader, Feng Yunchuo, capable of standing up to all of the Sect Leaders and Elders in Yun Mo at once! An idle boast? Certainly not! He’s just as strong as the rumors say… but I’m getting ahead of myself.    Powerful techniques are absolutely abundant in Yun Mo, to the point where I was finding them hidden in snowbanks. Alas, most of them were too fundamentally deep for my cultivation level. I did take the opportunity to cultivate some of the ones from Hua Feng though. During the process, that mysterious qilin that had shown me visions reappeared to help guide my cultivation and learn the technique in an instant. What a heaven-sent opportunity, as rare as phoenix feathers and… well, you know. (I legitimately did not know this guy could help you skip to the end of learning from a technique book. The more you know!  )  But even if I had wanted to, I could not escape the conflict between the righteous cultivators and the Untamed. It was everywhere. And for all the terrible stories I had heard, it was always the demons that were being chased down and executed by the righteous ones! (The game is very clearly hinting here that the demons are in the right, but rules are rules: assisting the Untamed in any of these conflicts boosts your Demonic Points and assisting the Righteous Cultivators boosts your Righteousness Points.)    But there was a point where I just could not sit idly by any more: an initiate from Hua Feng had snuck into the region to try and earn favor from her sect by killing demons and being too weak to kill any of note, had resorted to capturing a young girl.   After confronting the disciple, I told her to let the girl go, and when she refused we engaged in a quick duel. The raging vortexes she summoned were not enough to overcome my unerring blade, and the disciple was quickly defeated. I was tempted to slit her throat right then and there… but that would mean doing so right in front of the girl, so I let the disciple run off while I rushed to see if the girl was alright. (I’ve had this fight RNG really difficult opponents instead, so I’m glad this one was easy.)  The young demon girl turned out to be fine, and politely introduced herself as Feng Lixi, daughter of Feng Yunchuo. An ambush of righteous cultivators had separated her from her father, and in the ensuing chaos she got captured. When asked about the situation in Yun Mo, she explained it from the perspective of the Untamed: they were simply a group which took in anyone with demonic heritage, and that was enough for the righteous cultivators to determine that they were evil and needed to be exterminated. Because of their strength, especially that of Lixi’s father, the Untamed were able to stay alive, but had been forced into a camp in the southwest of Yun Mo near the Nether Mountains. But this was only a temporary solution because the Nether Mountains had begun emitting noxious air that was quickly becoming intolerable. I offered to return Lixi home, and she said that on the one hand it would be nice, but on the other hand she didn’t want me to get in any more trouble on her behalf. A touching concern, but how could I refuse? The fighting was omnipresent throughout the province and she would have just been killed by the next wandering cultivator. So onwards we went towards the Untamed camp. I figured that even if a Nascent Soul level cultivator showed up, I could still at least buy time for Lixi to escape.   Why, oh heavens?! Why must you be so cruel to this Peng Jun? (This guy can’t even exist in this zone. He specifically came down from the next area to kick my rear end.)  I made a respectable showing of myself in trying to weave and dodge for as long as possible, Stranger, but how could I escape the terrifying speed and all-seeing eyes of a cultivator in the Enlightenment Realm? Now it is my general policy to never let such evildoers get away with their actions cleanly, so after Qiu “Purifying Flame” Puyu captured me I went into a tirade on how he should be ashamed of himself coming in and claiming I had murdered his sect members and was consorting with demons while in reality I was just trying to bring a lost little girl home to her family. I figured that if he was anything like Wang Huili, he would take this opportunity to explain himself or torture me, something that would buy Lixi more time to escape.  And that proved to be the case. After I was finished ranting and raving, Qiu Puyu spat on me and called me a disgrace to all righteous cultivators, but said that he would wait until I got to his level before killing me, and let me go.  After receiving what was now the new record in the worst beating I had ever had in my life, I looked up to see if Lixi had escaped, only to find another one of the mysterious young boys looking at me with a smirk on his face. This one was clearly more condescending than the rest, to accompany his theme of darkness, complete with a black agate embedded into his forehead. The boy said that he was the third piece to be played, and so this region was his concern, and oh boy did I ever need his help. I was in no position to give him a piece of my mind, so I had to lay there until he finished healing me and disappeared.  Fortunately, there were no further incidents, and so after finding Lixi in the hills, the two of us were able to make our way to the camp of the Untamed. A few of the demons were patrolling the area and seemed aggressive at first glance, but after noticing Lixi they settled down and allowed us to pass.  Sitting in what was ever so slightly the largest tent in the camp was the leader of the Untamed, Feng Yunchuo. Looking at him, it was plain to see why no one in Yun Mo could defeat him. No, even if the Sect Leaders from the main branches of those sects that existed in Yun Mo had come down to fight him, they would not have won. Despite whatever differentiation exists in terms of Demonic cultivation, it was clearly evident that he had managed to reach the apex of the Transcendent realm. Feng Yunchuo thanked me for having returned his daughter and apologized for being unable to reward me properly, but plainly stated their camp was not the best equipped of locales.  As if to hammer the point home, it was just at that moment that one of his subordinates came in and told the leader of the Untamed that a number of people had collapsed from exposure to Nether Air, although they were currently in stable condition. Then the three of them… yes three, Lixi also popped up to contribute to the conversation, discussed the viability of Feng Yunchuo going out into the Everfrost, the frozen wastes beyond Yun Mo, to find some treasure called the Holy Fire in an attempt to stabilize the camp’s situation. Feng Yunchuo thought it was possible, his subordinate said it was just a myth, and Lixi said that it might be real but there was no way to guarantee that the Sects hadn’t found it first. In the end nothing was decided, and it was at this point that Lixi escorted me out of the camp as she was worried that if I stayed for too long, the air would poison me as well. She said that she was grateful for everything, although she wasn’t sure if we would ever meet again. I said that we would definitely meet again, and that I wouldn’t leave things like this. But of course, I had to get stronger first. So now it was time to go and face the challenges of Yun Mo proper. Jossar fucked around with this message at 19:01 on Jul 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 18:55
|
|
|
Yami Fenrir posted:So it seems like a recent update changed this. Some more stuff is updated, and also the transcendant cultivator event is now completely unavoidable. Dang, that sucks. I guess people really hate Foundation stage or something, so they're just automatically giving people a way out?
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 19:04
|
|
|
Jossar posted:Dang, that sucks. I guess people really hate Foundation stage or something, so they're just automatically giving people a way out? Which is funny, cuz I hate the idea of being rushed. That said the update also includes the translation for the Kirin or whatever it's meant to be.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 19:10
|
|
|
Also, I restarted with the Eye of Providence... and I'm still not sure how to activate the beast skills?
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 19:19
|
|
|
14 years to get to that area as a Rogue Cultivator doesn't seem too bad. If you're having issues with money you can sell the breakthrough material that the heaven/earth area bosses drop since you'll only need 1, they sell for a decent bit, and those bosses seem to pop up pretty often, one per year if not both. Unless this update changed that, but I doubt it.1 Jossar posted:
And here I thought it was bad that for me the first fight to save the girl was against a heaven chosen Nascent Soul(VI) in my playthrough.  There was also a stage 9 cultivator as a sect leader in one of the sects in this region in my game but at least I could ignore him (and not conquer his sect with the others before moving on). Yami Fenrir posted:Also, I restarted with the Eye of Providence... After you learn an eye skill you have to select and equip it, then it's activated with a hotkey when it's not on cooldown and you have enough energy to use whatever you selected. You can only equip one at a time. Evil Fluffy fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Jul 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 19:38
|
|
|
Evil Fluffy posted:And here I thought it was bad that for me the first fight to save the girl was against a heaven chosen Nascent Soul(VI) in my playthrough. Yeah, but which button is it? Is it the "Cast Heavenly Art" one? Edit: Found it. It's apparently the "Artifact" skill. I thought that referred to, you know, artifacts. Yami Fenrir fucked around with this message at 19:45 on Jul 8, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 19:43
|
|
|
Yami Fenrir posted:Yeah, but which button is it? Is it the "Cast Heavenly Art" one? Fhould be the F key by default.
|
|
#
?
Jul 8, 2023 19:48
|
|
|
Christ slamming a rank 8 on you is rude as hell.
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 05:23
|
|
|
I just realized that the Grade 8 cultivator who attacked him isn't even in the same sect as Ba Mo, the cultivator he saved Feng Lixi from. It's not the same sect as the cultivator he fought with right at the start of the game either. Did you murder some cultivators off screen or does the game really just hate you that much?
|
|
#
?
Jul 9, 2023 22:52
|
|
|
Seraphic Neoman posted:Christ slamming a rank 8 on you is rude as hell. Evil Fluffy posted:I just realized that the Grade 8 cultivator who attacked him isn't even in the same sect as Ba Mo, the cultivator he saved Feng Lixi from. It's not the same sect as the cultivator he fought with right at the start of the game either. Did you murder some cultivators off screen or does the game really just hate you that much? Peng Jun posted:Now it is my general policy to never let such evildoers get away with their actions cleanly, so after Qiu “Purifying Flame” Puyu captured me I went into a tirade on how he should be ashamed of himself coming in and claiming I had murdered his sect members and was consorting with demons while in reality I was just trying to bring a lost little girl home to her family. I figured that if he was anything like Wang Huili, he would take this opportunity to explain himself or torture me, something that would buy Lixi more time to escape. Jossar fucked around with this message at 00:32 on Jul 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2023 00:29
|
|
|
Jossar posted:I think the game may be scripted to throw someone at you here no matter what, but getting this guy in particular is 100% RNG bullshit. He also now hates me, so presumably once I hit Soul Formation and sit on the new map for an appreciable amount of time, he'll show up and try to kill me again. If he's not a super picky heaven's chosen you could try to gift him a very expensive manual you find and don't need. Anything red from the area will probably work and give a huge favorability boost (reason #128430284 why Sect Leader is cheat mode) and if he is very picky, buy a bunch of mood items of whatever item types he likes and hope he accepts them and that it's enough to tip them towards liking you, even if only a little. Unless this event scripts the selected cultivator to always go after you even if they like you in which case good luck dodging the very angry expert until you're strong enough to kill them and hopefully he was only visiting this area, because it's entirely possible he's an out of depth cultivator living in the 3rd region.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2023 00:44
|
|
|
I dodged more than the grind by cutting out early. Other issues people have are the game not working and frequent unwinnable battles.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2023 00:56
|
|
|
18. Playground of the Nine Tailed Fox   In Yun Mo, the Heaven and Earth Treasures needed to break through to Nascent Soul are concealed in a more complicated manner when compared to previous regions. First, one needs to use mental focus to unseal an array, which creates a field that tries to burn one to death while summoning undead warriors. Resealing the Array Core allows one to obtain a map hidden at the center of the array.   After infusing several thousand spirit stones worth of energy into the map, it then reveals a location in Yun Mo, which needs to be uncovered via Geomancy.  I spent a couple months at that location improving my skill with the Blade, so as to be ready for the fight ahead.   And there, contained within the hidden map formation… Is my very annoying aunt, who seems to have taken it upon herself to guard all of the Heaven and Earth Treasures in Yun Mo for some unfathomable reason. Yes, we are on speaking terms again. I will let him explain it in due time. (The Nine Tailed Fox is the only Mythical Beast boss for this section for some unknown reason, so if you’re playing this yourself get used to seeing her a lot. She has three moves of note: she can shoot out a series of hearts in a bullet hell pattern, getting caught in which stuns you. She can shoot water projectiles at you for a large amount of damage, and she can fill up the screen with foxes that can hurt you and you need to find the safe zones in between.)    It is good to have you back, Mengyi. In any event: in between expeditions to the treasure vaults guarded by the Nine Tailed Fox, I discovered a Lydra in Yun Mo’s equivalent to the Elemental Lands, the Land of Origin. The fight against it was incredibly fierce, I had to weave between multiple spinning wheels of axe blades while the Mythical Beast tried to seal me with elemental spells, but in the end I just barely managed to emerge triumphant.  I came out of the fight half-dead, but the prize was worth it, a maximum quality manifestation of Heavenly Aura, the key to my ascent to Nascent Soul. At least this one seems sensible to acquire and does not require boiling yourself in the process. (While this fight was pretty tough, this was a pretty lucky find. This is the best version of the “pill” that gets you up to the next Realm. All that’s left to do is farm the Heaven and Earth Treasures and defeat the World Boss and we’re good as golden.)  The region’s mysterious young boy showed up to heal my wounds again, but this time he had something new to say. He was still condescending but at least was willing to give me some face, albeit due to my association with his master... It’s probably Zhang San. Who else in the world is powerful enough to have a bunch of mysterious yet highly skilled apprentices running freely around all of the land’s regions as part of a convoluted Go-themed metaphor and nevertheless have a reason to be interested in me? Well yes, I suppose whoever his theoretical opponent is. But if there is one, I certainly haven’t seen any traces of them throughout my journey so far, unless their actions are indistinguishable from those of the world in general. You think maybe they have something to do with my terrible luck? Or maybe they do not think they need to intervene because they believe that even with the help of the old master, you will get yourself killed on some foolhardy endeavor before you ever reach Tian Yun Mountain.  Again and again, I clashed with the Nine Tailed Fox, but something was clearly wrong. Throughout all of our contests she was mocking me, holding something back. And after defeating her, I kept finding duplicates of the Heaven and Earth Treasures that I had already acquired. Eventually, I managed to get the sixth and final treasure, and at that point I asked the Mythical Beast what on earth was going on. And this was her response, which I quote, so Mengyi cannot say any part of it came from me: “Why Cultivator, is it so wrong to test you to the bounds of your ability? And in any event, I think that you deserve a little bit of a trial for ignoring my cute little niece like that.” That is... (Unlike the previous zones, the Heaven and Earth Treasure lands are not fixed. They spawn in, then vanish for a certain amount of time, before popping up again in a random location. The maps lead you to different parts of Yun Mo and the edge of the Everfrost, but you aren’t guaranteed to get a full set of six treasures just by running each initial Array Core once and fighting the fox at the map you’re given. It took me something like 10-11 tries before I got the six Heaven and Earth Treasures needed to move on, which was highly frustrating.)   And reflecting on her words, I realized that she was right. So I went back to the Fallen Valley in Hua Feng and acquired a mountain of gems as an apology gift, at which point I promised Mengyi that we would be constant companions for the rest of the journey… Never to the part for the rest of your mortal life, and perhaps if you are lucky, even beyond. Mengyi, do you really have to phrase it like that… I only thought that it would be fair that you have your turn at being flustered. Aha! So you admit it, then! Hmph! Do not get ahead of yourself! (Yeah, we’re back dealing with the Artifact Spirit system again. The in-game reason for this is that the only thing left to do is fight the World Boss and I was terrified of this one and wanted to have as much of an advantage as possible. After getting a spirit to a certain amount of hearts by giving them gifts, you can bond with them, which lets you start unlocking their skill wheel. If you break the bond in exchange for another spirit, there are penalties. I'm not certain how bad these are or for how long they last, but still you really only want to do this for a spirit that you’re confident you’ll be keeping for a long time, if not until the end of the game.   The skill wheel! Spend a currency you get from farming the Fallen Valley of the region where you got the spirit to unlock additional skills, assuming that the spirit has the point capacity to learn the skill in question. Some skills have additional unlock requirements apart from this, including a few that I am uncertain as to whether I will even be able to unlock this playthrough due to being a Rogue Cultivator.  I just grab whatever I can until Mengyi’s current capacity maxes out. There’s going to be one last attempt at a grind here before I eventually give up and just decide to face the Origin Spirit World Boss directly, but I’ll leave that for the beginning of next time.) Jossar fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Jul 10, 2023 |
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2023 02:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 6, 2024 06:50 |
|
|
You can start on the skill wheel immediately on finding them. Bonding is only a requirement for about 10% of it.
|
|
#
?
Jul 10, 2023 02:25
|
|