[LP CYOA] 傳

I would prefer 30 months, but I'd compromise to 24 if it meant that instead of 18.

 

Really, the only quest I am eager to resolve involves Yunzi. I am absolutely unwilling to make her wait for 3 years until Jings finally decides that maybe now is the time to make good on his promise to visit.

The rest I don't really care about. Though I still don't think that burying the head in the sand for two years will do Jing any good, however good a fighter he might become in this time.

 

So the amazing adventures Jing had and friends he met was just plot dragging? We need to do some training but on the other hand we don't want to do like Wang did, retire to some remote location for years while outside world still keeps going.

 

Well, no. Stat-wise, Zhang resolved our problem with neigong, gave us +5 unarmed, and a stat boost. The rest we did by ourselves, and that is quite a list. Compared to that, this training does not sound all that appetizing.

If we can take a break to visit the Fire Cult in the meantime, I can agree to return here. But this might not be in the cards.

Oh, and there is no such thing as 'you've met enough people'. The Guardian of METAL is out there, as well as the rest of the Amesha Spenta. The potential for techniques and stat boosts, if that is the only thing that interests you, is not limited to our island.

 

Ordinarily I'd find this very compelling. It's absolutely true that we've accomplished a huge amount in a short period, and that getting out there and learning by doing is much more fun, but metagaming says this training isn't as bad as it looks. Treave has stated he wants the pace to increase. Time will start flowing faster, and we won't be constantly gaining bonuses like we have in the next two years.

 

Hm. Very well. I guess Yunzi is a bit of a weakness for me, and you've made your point.

I'd be willing to bend my package my cutting off the qinggong upgrade. That would leave us still able to boost up to 11 strength and 12 agility with 9 and 9 as the base stats (boosting our unarmed potential), and we'd have a full year before the Huashan Summit to explore Tibet while still reasonably safe with boosted stats in case the Guardian of Metal is still aggressive. Would that be acceptable to you, Nevill?

 

Ehm. Can't we just ask Zhang to devise a one year training for us?

 

Well, metagaming says that once we get out, and find out that everything is right with the world, we can go back to timeskips and training montages. Until this is confirmed, I am not going to hit rewind.

 

Okay, might be a little early, but here's a proposal for a stat outline for 2 years, with a focus on neigong, unarmed and swords. There's some miscellaneous skill boosts as well to round things out:

6. Practice art with Zhang Jue. (Artistic Skill +2, 2 months)
13. Intensive sword training with Zhang Jue (Sword +1, 2 months)
14. Intensive hand-to-hand combat sessions with Zhang Jue. (Unarmed +1, 6 months)
20. Train to create a new self-taught sword technique based off the Yuchang Sword. (+1 Sword, 3 months)
25. Undergo strenuous neigong training to unlock your potential (Neigong +2, 6 months, Yuanshi Hundun now gives +2 to STR, AGI and END)
30. Intensive endurance training. (+1 END, 5 months)

Here's a tentative suggestion, with a 24 month timeframe, with most of the bare essentials. We become a legit master of Unarmed, skilled enough to develop our own techniques on the fly, we invest heavily in both improving our neigong and ensuring that we can tap into our qi more thoroughly thanks to a stronger END stat, and we improve our swordsmanship while simultaneously developing a new technique for it. More unarmed techniques would have been nice, but with Unarmed 8, theorycrafting our own techniques will be more than possible. What do you think?

Make no mistake, +5 Unarmed and a stat boost is a shitload. He also gave us the Shouwang Claws up to Lvl 4 and the Chuzhan Fist. Zhang gave us a lot of knowledge, especially considering that the year prior, Yao gave us very little in the way of martial arts knowledge. I think you're really underselling what the previous training with Zhang did for us. And I do think that Random Word makes a good point that treave wants the pace to pick up for now. Not saying that we should become a hermit here, just saying that sticking around for a while won't hurt us.

Yunzi will still be there for us too. She won't forget what we did for her. I'm so glad we didn't leave her to the orthodox douchebags, aren't you?

 

I'll edit my package.

14 23 25 28 33

Benefits are: 8 unarmed skill, 9 strength, 9 agility, 7 neigong, eye snake & eventual silk production/animal army route established, ability to boost strength to 11, agility to 12, and endurance to 7. This has us spend only two years in training.

Edit: I like some aspects of the package, Esquilax, but I'm afraid it's not intense enough in unarmed skill stuff. It doesn't allow for any room to grow in the unarmed skill past the current skill cap, and we know that those stat boosts are precious and rare, especially the strength boost that we've only seen as an option once before. I'm also not sure why in the world you have endurance in there-- our endurance skill isn't actually linked to our neigong aside from the fact that our neigong boosts our endurance, trying to boost our endurance won't help out our qi.

 

I want to be on the safe side and get out as early as possible while being reasonably prepared for taking on Huashan.
For me, this means poking the head out after a year, even if for nothing more than to say 'hi'. If there is nothing major going on (which I doubt, there is always something happening, the narrative demands it so), we can go and complete the training.

Basically, if this arc is split into 12 months of training - another 6 monts of adventure, even if 4 months of it goes to travel time - 18 months of further training, that would be perfect for me. But I have doubts it will work like that.

The major things I see that need to be done are visiting the Fire Cult, investigating the Huashan Sect and Wuxung, the Summit, Qi Luiwu and the Abbess (as the last survivors and witnesses) and the preparing invasion. I feel that some of them need to be checked out before 2 year limit.

 

Well, if we're leaving for nothing more than to say "hi", then we probably shouldn't have left to begin with. Considering that the Huashan summit is 3 years away, I believe that a year is more than enough time to attend to all the things you've mentioned here.

 

I'd like to split it up like that, but given the Codex' tendency to fling itself at the nearest sidequest I'm afraid that we might not get back in time... I would like to check out the fire cult and meet up briefly with Qi and the Abbess (I think treave said we'd visit them before venturing too far off anyway) but as far as I'm concerned Huashan and the head of the Orthodox world can fester by themselves. They'll probably launch some sort of scheme at their summit, but I'd rather worry about it when we get there at full strength from training rather than spend precious training time to poke around and figure out a vague idea of it to frighten the Codex in every choice leading up to whenever it's set into motion.

 

We could get techniques a lot faster if we spend 2 months learning artistic skill.

 

You're assuming Zhang will let us go back to the Island and train once we leave.

 

I agree with Nevill here, there is so much to do and so little time.

Let's keep training to the bare essentials. And what we need now are combat skills that can enable us to face stronger opponents.

 

This, basically.

But remember, every successfully completed sidequest gave us much more than it took away. Just look at those 15 potential neigong.

 

We could learn other people's techniques faster that way, yes. If we go for the maximum unarmed skill Jing will be able to figure out his own pretty quickly, we've never encountered many technique manuals anyway.

 

Well, I put artistic skill as a choice on my package. However, Artistic Skill will be more easily put to use if we go out there in search of poetry and martial arts manuals. Luoying Manor may have been burned to the ground, but there must be a few scholars around somewhere. Really, it's probably better if we have a year to go off in search of adventure so that we can find martial arts manuals that require an understanding of poetry.

The point is, we should pick a few areas to focus on, and not swerve from them. That's what will give us the biggest bang for our back.

 

Also we should make a list of things we can't learn somewhere else and sort them by usefulness

 

The one before that took away Jing's ability to fight for ages in exchange for boosting some stealth, eventually perception and giving the prince a good guard. It was badass, definitely, but we'll never really know what sort of chances we gave up on through all the "we can't choose that option because Jing will be killed right away in his current state" choices. Ghost hunting was surprisingly lucrative, not gonna lie... though who knows what that'll bring us to in later times.

 

Why wouldn't he? Didn't he say we should choose our own pace? We are still his disciple.

But the training here is not necessarily with Zhang. Qi leeching is trained with Cao'er and Qilin. Swords are trained with the pirates. Yuchang tech we train by ourselves.

Really, half of this list can be trained anywhere. All we need is to say 'ok, now we are going to skip time', and we are done. We don't need the island.

 

I am 18-24

 

Doesn't this mean we should prioritize Saber training, Minamoto kenjutsu, and Yoriwaka's Reikan bonus? Training with the Minamoto does require Maniac Island.

 

18-24 months > 12-18

Kipeci We only need 1 point in str or agi to raise sword/unarmed/saber max by 1. You could cut 1 of those out and not reach limit. It should round up like how the axe skill rounds up