Talon Tiger Dino
From the best dinosaur fighting game
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Screw the Grail Church, every time we go there it slurps up some of our Scraps, and replacing those takes way too much effort.
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Esquestria: The House of the Sun - A pony cultist experience
- Thread starter OurLadyOfWires
- Start date
DelightedOne
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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It may not be top 5, but it was the last nail in the coffin.
We met Mareinette there and she took half of our influence, making our +40 to Grail turn into +20.
Consequently we did not reach the third threshold, something that would have been possible, since 24 + 14 (Diplomacy, Grail doubled) + 30 (GRAIL bonus, doubled) + 20 ("An Urgency of Appetite") +20(Other half of the Influence) = 108.
So yeah, we lost Twilight because we met Mareinette, because if we hadn't then we would have a full An Incarnadescense, which would have allowed Velvet to suggest the Forge's Redemption to fix her horn(and Shining's eventually since I doubt she would let her brother with a broken horn), consequently, she would not have been locked as an acquaintance and we would not have to worry about the Wolf taking her.
ses
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Yeah I know. You didn't have to explain it. I'm saying that calling that "The ruined church was responsible" is absolutely delusional. There were literally dozens of factors and dierolls and decisions that went into what happened. Heck, we rescued Twilight literally as soon as possible, Spike dying was probably a roll that went poorly for him to die on his first turn captured. Notice how the title of that roll is "Grieving, neglected, angry"? If Spike hadn't died, the DCs would have been different. If we hadn't Leashed shining armor and made him neglect her, the DCs might have been different (Or Shining might have been convinced we were a criminal, who knows.) If Twilight had been a Confidant instead of a Close Friend before she got captured we could have Leashed her and the whole problem would have gone away. If we hadn't chosen stupidly to reveal ourselves to Twilight and leave her alone with her thoughts she would have had -1 to the SAN roll but would have eventually recovered due to not hating us and therefore we could have used IotH and FR on her. If if if.
Hence "Not even in the top 5 reasons". Saying that things would have been different if we hadn't done Ruined Church that turn ignores that there's literally a dozen of better and smaller nudges that would have changed the outcome.
None of that is relevant to the fact that we have access to actual numbers.
Anyway, changing the subject.
We might actually make Manuscripts next turn? We dont have any Name summons to spend our Reagent craft on. We could spend 5 bits to make a Lantern 1 Reagent for MITL summoning so that it autopasses except on nat1s, but that's only 8% of 55 bits plus 8% of a Selene AP for 5 bits and the reagent craft. 5 bit cost for 4.4 bits saved on ritual costs in expectation and the 8% of a Selene action is probably only taking the expected net value of the reagent craft to a total of +3 bits give or take. Better than not using the reagent craft at all but we might consider instead making a Forge 1 reagent and spending Velvet AP on two manuscripts. Unless Velvet wants to commit to personally doing one of the major expeditions I'm not sure what we want to spend our Velvet AP on next turn anyway after the triple-Sacraments. Social actions on Mayor Mare, the Contact Somepony FO, and Cheerilee come to mind.
Or we could spend AP on Mansus exploration to fully explore a Shattered Stairways zone. I kind of think we take zero Cover Your Bases AP next turn so that the Risen can do a Manehattan expedition and the Servants do an expedition search. Risen and Servants make it very tempting to always do +1 Velvet AP but Manehattan calls and Expedition Searches are still a good use of Servant AP rather than Bases.
Yes I'm aware it's literally irl months too early to do this planning but the madness is creeping in waiting for Tall Tale.
Hence "Not even in the top 5 reasons". Saying that things would have been different if we hadn't done Ruined Church that turn ignores that there's literally a dozen of better and smaller nudges that would have changed the outcome.
None of that is relevant to the fact that we have access to actual numbers.
Anyway, changing the subject.
We might actually make Manuscripts next turn? We dont have any Name summons to spend our Reagent craft on. We could spend 5 bits to make a Lantern 1 Reagent for MITL summoning so that it autopasses except on nat1s, but that's only 8% of 55 bits plus 8% of a Selene AP for 5 bits and the reagent craft. 5 bit cost for 4.4 bits saved on ritual costs in expectation and the 8% of a Selene action is probably only taking the expected net value of the reagent craft to a total of +3 bits give or take. Better than not using the reagent craft at all but we might consider instead making a Forge 1 reagent and spending Velvet AP on two manuscripts. Unless Velvet wants to commit to personally doing one of the major expeditions I'm not sure what we want to spend our Velvet AP on next turn anyway after the triple-Sacraments. Social actions on Mayor Mare, the Contact Somepony FO, and Cheerilee come to mind.
Or we could spend AP on Mansus exploration to fully explore a Shattered Stairways zone. I kind of think we take zero Cover Your Bases AP next turn so that the Risen can do a Manehattan expedition and the Servants do an expedition search. Risen and Servants make it very tempting to always do +1 Velvet AP but Manehattan calls and Expedition Searches are still a good use of Servant AP rather than Bases.
Yes I'm aware it's literally irl months too early to do this planning but the madness is creeping in waiting for Tall Tale.
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DelightedOne
I trust you know where the happy button is?
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Sorry, I just have this mental illness that makes me believe that when I show correct data and valid arguments people would believe them. 
Solace2117
Not too sore, are you?
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I don't know if next turn will be the best time to do the Ruined Church expedition considering all the sacraments we'll probably be doing, but considering it's more than likely where we can grab a heirloom we'll want to do it at some point in the few turns.
Pittauro
Versed in the lewd.
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even after reaching page 5 of 6,
Well, I don't know what the SECOND one meant. In hindsight Jelloloaf had BASICALLY given me the answer there, but I just... didn't really use the hint as I should have, even after guessing what it meant. I was too hasty.
As I mentioned before, I took a different approach to finding page 4 (I only found the piece of paper "conventionally", though I suppose I was at least close-ish / in the general area), and finally page 5 clicked with me after that last hint from the Wise Wolf, who lived up to the title.
now page 6 left...
eh, butterfly effect, Bird would have rolled at a different time and we'd have gotten a different dice result
But yeah, losing that +20 was certainly a problem.
Yeah, and the truth is that all of us have different opinions on WHICH parts should have been done differently.
For example, I believe we shouldn't have revealed ourselves to Twilight in the urn.
And of course there's also the "We could have broken her trust in Celestia instead of accidentally push her to go and deliver herself to Chrysalis".
I'm still wondering if it was a bad roll, or a deterministic result. As in, was encouraging her ALWAYS going to result in her being captured, or did we fail a hidden roll?
...Sadly Bird never told us.
Also it could have gone even WORSE for Twilight in theory. Imagine if we ALSO had her brother die in the Canterlot burning... and of course, other things we could have done better, like the already mentioned "paint her as a possible cult recruit so they'd treat her better".
Potentially if we had given Selene to the Cult things would have gone much different there too, though of course probably worse in MANY other ways.
We could always craft a reagent for a future turn action. For example, a tier 3 or 4 reagent for a Call of Influence ritual. An influence that would last two turns and won't consume Name APs.
and we can always find more stuff to use Velvet APs on.
We could study our remaining Moth 3 and Knock 2 artifacts, which we can then use or sell for money as needed (assuming we don't get better ones this turn).
We could work on other sacraments.
We could summon more minions.
We could just explore more of the Mansus. really, I'd like to explore it all before we go for All In if possible, it wouldn't even take THAT much.
We have left... I think 1 Stairways Location (2-3 points?), Ruined Church (1 point), 1 beyond Tribal Door location (again 2-3 points), Soon we'll be able to access the Tower (1 point, need SH Sacrament), and maybe the Resting Place of the Sun-in-Rags (1 point, but we need the Winter Sacrament).
...was that it? I thought there was more.
aand of course you also mentioned the mansus, I should have finished reading before writing
ses
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We're too bits limited to spend making a high level reagent we dont need right away instead of more expedition tickets.
Studying the lower level artifacts is kind of a waste of AP compared to letting Jade do a study action every turn for the rest of the game, but I suppose we can fit in a Knock 2/Moth 3 study action and have Jade study a level 1 artifact... considering we'll probably get more artifacts from expeditions soon Jade will never run out.
There are no other sacraments we could really be working on: Our only options are Personal SH, Personal Forge, or Personal Winter. I'm opposed to personal winter in general, plus it costs bits we wont have. Personal Forge costs bits and we don't have the 2/4 Forge scraps we'd need unless we spent Forge Name AP that we'd rather spend miniaturizing for expeditions, and the thread has been averse to finishing our Personal SH without a SH influence due to danger.
Selene covers all the AP we could possibly have the bits to spend on summoning Mares. There's no way we can afford more than 2 summons at most optimistic and they'd both be done by Selene.
Directly from the story recap thread, lmao. Talk about making it explicit.
Pittauro
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I though Jade is NOT allowed to study artifacts for us yet? If this changed, I forgot.
ignoring the subjective (but totally fair) opinion on winter sacrament (it IS definitely immoral after all), the 30 bits it asks per AP are not quite negligible, but something we could probably afford.
ses
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Jade has her researcher trait formalized already. But I've been convinced that 1x Study Artifacts could be worthwhile since Jade will never run out of low level artifacts.
We really can't afford Personal Winter costs next turn without directly giving up an expedition ticket or MITL summon, both of which are far more immediately relevant.
105 bits current, minus the 60 on scries we haven't paid for yet, plus 160 salary, plus ~40 for Rarity career, plus ~100 Commission, plus 200 for selling the Edge 3 artifact, leaves us with ~550 bits next turn give or take.
That pays for:
Biedde
Book Hunt
Iotic Essence
Beyond the Map's Edge
Manehattan expeditions
MITL summons
We can't know exactly how much because we dont know if the 2 Name Befriending expeditions are Long or Short, but it'd be very hard to fit a Personal Winter ritual into that budget without skimping on an expedition ticket or MITL summon (or having Biedde pursue religious goals. Though honestly I'm not necessarily against it, considering that probably translates to "Biedde spends time giving Steppes Edge training as his first inner circle cultist"). It's unclear on if we can even afford the two MITL summons to go Soothe/MITL/MITL with Selene's AP. We certainly can't afford a level 3+ reagent we dont absolutely need.
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Pittauro
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hey @OurLadyOfWires out of curiosity... did YOU find all 6 pages? Was it easy or hard for you?
Right now I've reached page 5, though it took me a hint for page 5.
...technically a hint to start too, but that's mostly because I did not initially understand it was an ARG. I thought there was just a link hidden in the first post or image
Right now I've reached page 5, though it took me a hint for page 5.
...technically a hint to start too, but that's mostly because I did not initially understand it was an ARG. I thought there was just a link hidden in the first post or image
ses
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hey @OurLadyOfWires out of curiosity... did YOU find all 6 pages? Was it easy or hard for you?
Right now I've reached page 5, though it took me a hint for page 5.
...technically a hint to start too, but that's mostly because I did not initially understand it was an ARG. I thought there was just a link hidden in the first post or image
I'm pretty sure QM was the first person to do so: Jelloloaf told me that I was 2nd to his knowledge (I doubt I was actually 2nd) and I only found it because QM posted a hint that trivialized it.
Greymere
In hell we live, lament
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I think it's very unlikely that Mareinette's AP will be free to get an Imminence from her next turn. There's two expeditions and Mayor Mare that would be competing for that spot, and both "Name friendship" and "don't let the mayor die because we didn't tell Soft she was in a cult" take priority over poking the Mansus mystery box for me.