Legacy of the Forgotten Ground (Original)

[mrttao]

From your initial scouting pass, you'd judge the children at being less than 10 Mana a pop, most of the adults at under 100 apiece, and maybe some of the strongest few at over 100 Mana. People like the one who was pulling metal through dirt as if it was water, or the monster-slaying guard -- that hatchet did not look like a particularly impressive weapon, yet he still killed a mostly uninjured Bloody Begonia in one hit with it. He could well have more Atk than you right now. Of course, you can fly, and you'd have the advantage of attacking him when he didn't expect it. Even if he's strong, he simply doesn't have the equipment he'd need to pose a threat to you. Your Dragonbreath should massively out-damage him.

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How fast do they recover their mana though? for example if they gave it up to feed our cultivore trait.

No such thing exists

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Alright, fair enough. In that case lets go with kitsune. you mentioned they are one of your favorite monsters.

 

[siflux]

How fast do they recover their mana though? for example if they gave it up to feed our cultivore trait.

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Clarification: Monsters can gain Mana by eating non-monsters. Non-monsters don't have a pool of Mana or anything, stronger people just provide more Mana if eaten. Non-monsters use the HP Burn option for <Cultivore>. Monsters can do HP Burn for <Cultivore>, but can also spend as much unspent Mana as they care to at the <Cultivore>.

Protag's offhand guesses: ~1k HP for kids, ~10k HP for adults, more for people with training. At <Cultivore 1>, you could get up to 1 Mana/average adult/day. Yes, the kids have HP on par with a tier 2-3 monster (or a tier 1 dragon).

 

[LeoAbogos]

Yes, the kids have HP on par with a tier 2-3 monster (or a tier 1 dragon).

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Must be something in the water.

Edit: Which makes me wonder about the weather. They've got their lake/pond there, and unless the water is somehow self-perpetuating it's refreshed by rain. Without a whole lot of land, weather patterns could get pretty strong, but if humans were doing their floating land project then they probably did something about that as well.

Worried storms might kick up some of that mist from time to time though. If so, there must be ways to deal with it or there wouldn't be anyone alive.

 

[siflux]

Spoiler: Plan

-[x] Approach someone alone in a non threatening manner and try to talk to them.

[BESTIARY] One-Tail Kitsune

You flumph out of the sky, landing as hard as you can in the flowers. Your dull golden scales stand out against the pink and green below you and blues of the sky above. Even with your small stature, there's no he can't see you. You're right in front of him and only a few dozen meters away.

He legs it, screaming.

"WAIT! I JUST WANT TO KNOW IF YOU SPEAK HUMAN!" You shout after him, to no avail. If he heard and understood you, he wasn't acting like it.

You patiently hold your position, watching as he flees towards one of the guards. He points at you, waving his other arm emphatically. The guard calls something out. The remaining villagers cluster together, eyeing you in terror. Their attention is on you and only you as they collectively retreat behind the safety of their walls.

On the bright side, they didn't attack you. But they still may not be aware that you are a thinking being who isn't about to kill them all. They may think you're just scared of their numbers.

Fortunately, this is not the first time you've made contact with people who don't understand monster speech. You'll just play this like you did when you first approached humans. Which actually went a lot like this so far, come to think of it.

You scurry towards the village, but stop almost immediately as you notice something. Your ovine target abandoned his basket when he fled. It's about half-full of the pink flowers. You take it with you. If you're helpful, maybe they'll recognize it.

You approach the wall a goodly distance from the sole gate. The wall is too tall for them to attack you over it, and you're going to need a little time to finish writing stuff in case they try chasing you off. You do, in fact, share one language with these weirdos. Not monster speech, not the Human tongue, but math. One claw extended, you carefully inscribe a right triangle into one of the wall's logs. Three dots by the shortest side, four dots on the middle one, five on the hypotenuse. Even without a different set of symbols, they should be able to count.

But you're not finished yet. You move a few logs over. You inscribe a square, then a diamond inside. On the next log from that, another square the same size, but subdivided internally with a pair of perpendicular lines into four rectangles, then two of those rectangles divided with a diagonal into two pairs of triangles.

Spoiler: Set of Carvings

Shoot, you're running out of time. There's a whole bunch of them coming out the gate, armed haphazardly. The longspear, sword, and hatchet won't pose you much of a threat if you just stay high, but pair of bowman could pose a threat. They nock, and you retreat obligingly, leaving the flower basket at the site of your diagrams.

They creep forward, putting you back in range. You fly a little higher, a little further back. Again, and then they pull back towards the village.

No, no, this won't do! They need to understand! You glide back towards them, and they obligingly center their aim on you.

This dance repeats itself for the next hour before you finally give up on it for the night. They refuse to pull far enough out to see your attempt at communication.

You curl up to sleep in the flower fields, well away from town. You may actually be small enough for them to miss you at this distance.

…END DAY 8

The problem with yesterday's plan was that they refused to look. Well, you can make them look. You can fly, and they have no roof on their fortifications. You grab yourself a nice, thick slice of tree and get carving. Then, just in case, you redraw everything on the reverse side as well.

Bombs away! Heh, look at them run. You float lazily over your drop site: the non-farmland field in the middle of the town. A crowd slowly gathers, peeking out of doors and windows at your terrifying presence overhead and the present you left behind. Eventually, the hatchet guard cautiously approaches your triangle carvings, the bowmen covering him. He stands over it for a few minutes. Then he rolls it out of the field, leaving it at the corner of one the farm sites. The village guards watch you, and the flower gatherers don't leave the village, but the adults are working their farms again by midday.

Ugh, what else can you do? They're still acting like you're a threat. Oh wait, the basket. You left that by your original math carvings. They never did take it back. You don't need to point that out anymore, so might as well deliver it by claw.

You leave the basket just outside the gate. No need to take it inside, where you might get shot. Even if it doesn't hurt, they'll probably think less positively of you once they've loosed an attack.

They're a lot more fearful than your humans were. This is much slower going, and you still haven't managed to get any one-on-one time with any of them. You've done all you can think of to at least demonstrate that you're not unthinking. Other than just spending enough time around them that they get used to your presence and stop fearing you, you aren't sure what else to do. And at a bare minimum, that could take days.
AFTERNOON DAY 9
[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

 

[mrttao]

[BESTIARY] One-Tail Kitsune

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Not seeing it in bestiary. I am seeing a slime-sapling was added though.

Also, it occured to me that the system really doesn't encourage transmigration. Since we can just acquire any trait we know of without actually hopping to a body that has it. And besides that it makes acquiring new traits way too easy. I would honestly suggest changing that so we can only add a new trait to a body if our soul has it, and only add a new trait to the soul if our body has it.

Also we can't put a body on storage, if the lab has a body storage capability it would again encourage us to hop bodies (since the MP invested in the current body is not lost). As it is, I can scarcely think of a reason to not just stay a dragon forever.

 

[mrttao]

[x] Plan give them some space
-[x] Go back to your lab island, and hunt until you gather 10,000 MP to performing what limited repairs and cleanup you can on the lab.
-[x] Design and print some clothes fitted for your current dragon body
-[x] Also a book and a writing utensil if you can
-[x] Now that they had some time to relax and think over things, go back to the island with those scared people again. This time wearing clothes, and sitting nearby while drawing them in your book, making comments, etc. When we start learning their language we would also make notes in it about said language.

So, let's see if we can drive hope the civilized thing....
(tempted to get a top hat, monocle, a chair, and a tea cup and have a tea party... but that is probably over the top)

[x] [BESTIARY] Something that leads towards slime dragon

 

[siflux]

Not seeing it in bestiary. I am seeing a slime-sapling was added though.

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Yeah, I'm being a bit slow there. I tagged the bottom of the story post as a reminder to get that done. I'll be on it shortly.

Also, it occured to me that the system really doesn't encourage transmigration. Since we can just acquire any trait we know of without actually hopping to a body that has it. And besides that it makes acquiring new traits way too easy. I would honestly suggest changing that so we can only add a new trait to a body if our soul has it, and only add a new trait to the soul if our body has it.

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I'm in agreement that the incentive structure isn't set up quite right. I'll give your proposal a shot. As an aside, in case I miss anything when updating the Bestiary for that change: assume any Traits in the pre-reqs that aren't listed in the precursor monster aren't actually pre-reqs. This only applies to spending raw XP and Mana to learn traits. You'll still be able to learn new traits in other ways, like getting training from something that has it.

Also, I want Slimes to be able to learn stuff out-of-band. Unfortunately, you already have <Adaptability>, which was my initial thought on supporting that. Maybe rework it and tie it in to <Slime>? I don't want to make it only work when you're a Slime-family monster.

Maybe just disallow spending XP to learn new traits if they have a cost of more than 100% normal. With <Adaptability 10>, Slimes would be able to pick up any new skills they want (I should probably nerf <Adaptability> from 10% to 1%, but the core idea still holds). This would also make Mage Initiate better able to do its job: Allowing monsters to pick up the Element traits without having to become an elemental variant.

Also we can't put a body on storage, if the lab has a body storage capability it would again encourage us to hop bodies (since the MP invested in the current body is not lost). As it is, I can scarcely think of a reason to not just stay a dragon forever.

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When I previously considered this, I was concerned about it over-encouraging body swapping, by way of 'Body X has a trait I want to level, so I'm going to swap over to it for just long enough to invest XP at a discount, then swap back'. Right now, the current cost of doing so is basically the mana cost of the root level of that family tree. In other words, not free, but very cheap, and the biggest cost is losing your upgraded body if you have one. I'm satisfied with that incentive setup and the results it's having so far. I can also see a niche for a new lab device that stores an old body, at a Mana cost of a percentage of the body's value. For now, I won't change anything relating to this, but I will keep it in mind for the future.

 

[mrttao]

Also, I want Slimes to be able to learn stuff out-of-band. Unfortunately, you already have <Adaptability>, which was my initial thought on supporting that. Maybe rework it and tie it in to <Slime>? I don't want to make it only work when you're a Slime-family monster.

Maybe just disallow spending XP to learn new traits if they have a cost of more than 100% normal. With <Adaptability 10>, Slimes would be able to pick up any new skills they want (I should probably nerf <Adaptability> from 10% to 1%, but the core idea still holds). This would also make Mage Initiate better able to do its job: Allowing monsters to pick up the Element traits without having to become an elemental variant.

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That is a good idea. Although it does make slimes a bit op... unless you want slimes to be basically op?

Maybe wild monsters (unlike us) don't just pick whatever they want, but rather require significant time, exposure, and mana quantity spent to mutate in such exotic ways?

Oh, how about this... for every level of adaptability, 1 MP of a kill will go towards getting you a trait that this kill had and you don't. Or maybe 1% of the MP that kill provided? So at max level of 10 you are getting either 10MP or 10% of a kill's MP being shunted into a trait it had and you didn't?
And then make level 1 of a skill cost 100 mp.

Maybe even make it so that only the first MP has to be gotten that way. That is, a slime eating a dragon will get 1 MP towards dragon trait... then it can get the rest of the MP needed to unlock it from just slow regeneration or eating other other slimes?

With maybe also ability of all monsters to be mutated over time by repeated exposure to wild mana? such as living inside a volcano for a while causing a monster to slowly gain fire element?

As to how it applies to the MC... we basically have to either eat a monster to unlock its new traits. Or hop bodies to do so.

 

[mrttao]

I had another idea... what if adaptation was to roll for a chance to unlock a trait from the consumed target at level 0. at which point it can be upgraded with mana. The higher the level of adaptation, the better the chance of unlock per consumed kill.

Beyond that you could have all monsters have a chance to mutate from environment (rolled per week of exposure).
with adaptation giving a significantly increase chance of mutation from environment.

 

[LeoAbogos]

[X] Plan Benevolent Distance
-[X] Spend a couple hours clearing out monsters around the village since they've been busy holing up in terror
-[X] Explore the island to the (currently) North-West
[X] [BESTIARY] More advanced demon

I think we should scout the other island to determine if there's any threats. This island doesn't seem to have anything, but the other one might, and I'd prefer to know what exactly we need to prepare ourselves against, if possible.

 

[mrttao]

-[X] Spend a couple hours clearing out monsters around the village since they've been busy holing up in terror

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There are no monsters on the island. we checked, they purged them. And a few hours of them cowering is not going to suddenly make a difference in that

I think we should scout the other island to determine if there's any threats. This island doesn't seem to have anything, but the other one might, and I'd prefer to know what exactly we need to prepare ourselves against, if possible.

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all the more reason to properly secure our phylactery first.

 

[LeoAbogos]

They haven't left their village in like a whole day, and they're likely to play it safe for a while still even after our departure. It's just polite to do some pruning on our way out.

As for the phylactery, if you're that worried we should ditch the body and respawn instead of waste time in transit.

 

[mrttao]

They haven't left their village in like a whole day, and they're likely to play it safe for a while still even after our departure. It's just polite to do some pruning on our way out.

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There is nothing to prune. Monsters are born from other monsters not thin air. and even then take time to develop into anything dangerous.

As for the phylactery, if you're that worried we should ditch the body and respawn instead of waste time in transit.

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I don't believe it is being invaded right now. And doing that would waste 1000 mp which will slow down our lab repairs

 

[LeoAbogos]

We literally saw monsters on this island and, as you say, they are not born from thin air. There are monsters, they're simply kept under control through continuous intervention. Intervention which our presence has interfered with. If we take a look around and don't notice any, then the action would obviously default to doing nothing. If there's nothing to hunt, it would be silly to hunt around for hours fruitlessly; this is the reason I included the intent with the vote. It's either not a waste of time or we don't waste our time doing it.

The lab should be safe from local threats, with the placeholder repairs especially, and the only external source of potential threat that we're aware of is the island that I want to go check out. It's possible for us to miss a threat in-transit, but I don't think it's particularly likely, and for a decent chunk of the flight over, we should be able to spot anything heading for our base. Unless someone's en route to our home island right now, I don't think there's any problem. And there probably isn't anyone doing that.

 

[mrttao]

We literally saw monsters on this island

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We literally saw 1 weakling monster being instagibbed by the locals, we tried hunting and couldn't find anything to hunt because

As for the local monsters, the villagers must keep the population aggressively under control. You spot a Bloody Begonia chewing up a Slime Sapling, only to get a hatchet through it. You haven't been attacked yet, but the natives may not take your presence so kindly if you get too close.

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---

Intervention which our presence has interfered with.

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No, it didn't. it has only been a few HOURS. that is far too short a time period. If we were here a few days then you would have had a point

If we take a look around and don't notice any, then the action would obviously default to doing nothing. If there's nothing to hunt, it would be silly to hunt around for hours fruitlessly; this is the reason I included the intent with the vote. It's either not a waste of time or we don't waste our time doing it.

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I don't think this is how your vote is actually phrased. if you phrase it more clearly that this is the intent then fine.

The lab should be safe from local threats,

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Not really, we have only done basic repairs. Completely securing the lab to the best of our ability is wise considering its our phylactery.
also, the local threats are evolving. also, we never found those vandal sophonts that vandalized our lab

 

[siflux]

Explore the island to the (currently) North-East

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Of the islands you know about, there's an island to the West about 50km (Lab Island) and an island to the NW about 70km (unexplored island North of Lab Island). Please refer to the Sky Atlas post for information. I currently give new islands an initial nickname when you find out they exist, and a more memorable nickname once you know what of interest is there (generally due to having explored it). For example, after you visited the current island, it got nicknamed Pink Flower Island. If you start getting proper names from the locals, I may use those as well/instead, but for now you're naming as you go to more easily differentiate places.

Monsters are born from other monsters not thin air

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This is not entirely correct. Monsters can be born from thin air. Only tier 1/root monsters are born this way (Floofball, Seed, etc). Monsters can also spend their Mana to reproduce, which can directly create stronger monsters.

a few hours of them cowering is not going to suddenly make a difference in that

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Based on your experiences on Lab Island, it takes about a day for tier 1 monsters to tier up, and around a week more for it to happen again. The monsters on Pink Flower Island are tier 2s, so a few days won't make a huge difference. If they stay under siege for a week, they may need outside help re-suppressing the island.

we tried hunting and couldn't find anything to hunt

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You didn't try hunting. You were too busy doing an initial scouting pass, than interacting with the natives. That said, hunting is better back on Lab Island than it is here. You could find a reasonably steady stream of Bloody Begonias and Slime Saplings on the far end of the island from the village, but you can as easily kill the stronger monsters back home for better rewards.

 

[mrttao]

Alright, thanks for the clarification... also, I was just going to give in anyways...

[X] Plan Benevolent Distance fixed
-[X] Spend a couple hours clearing out monsters around the village since they've been busy holing up in terror
-[X] Explore the island north of the lab
[X] [BESTIARY] More advanced demon

Fixed because the direction given in the original plan was wrong

 

[LeoAbogos]

I had a feeling monsters popped up on our island due to the failure of the mana condensers. This basically confirms it.

Thanks for catching the typo. One of those situations where you look it up specifically and then write down the exact opposite of what you meant. :/

Plan edited.

 

[mrttao]

Plan edited.

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well, now we are voting for the same plan but with a different name...

 

[LeoAbogos]

well, now we are voting for the same plan but with a different name...

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[X] Plan Benevolent Distance fixed
-[X] Spend a couple hours clearing out monsters around the village since they've been busy holing up in terror
-[X] Explore the island north of the lab
[X] [BESTIARY] More advanced demon

Edit: Something I keep forgetting to notice. Slimes can apparently evolve into any other slime, from any slime. This would make the family pretty flexible for us, since (I believe) we'd be able to swap slime bodies without access to the lab. More useful with a larger stable of slimes, obviously, but even things like the elemental-specced slimes has good utility.

Edit x2: It would also make the slime family a good way to pick up traits without a lot of mana-intensive body swapping. Things like the slime sapling.

 

[siflux]

Spoiler: Plan Benevolent Distance fixed

[X] Plan Benevolent Distance fixed
-[X] Spend a couple hours clearing out monsters around the village since they've been busy holing up in terror
-[X] Explore the island north of the lab

[BESTIARY] Devil: Esh

At this point, your only remaining idea to show the villagers that you're friendly is to help them out by killing some monsters. It probably won't help, and they'll probably think you're just doing it for yourself, but it's not like you have anything better to do. Apart from these people, this island is devoid of interesting things, and it's too late to fly to another island today.
END DAY 9
+1851 Mana
+4034 XP

Your flight Northwest to the other island you haven't explored is even longer and more uneventful than the one to Pink Flower Island. And then you get close to your destination.

Your first indication that something's different is when you're still an hour out from the island. There's a metallic grey blob that looks increasingly like a wall as you get closer and your vision sharpens up. Then you get within a few kilometers and hear an almighty BOOM from dead ahead. A black dot arcs towards you.

Wait, is that a cannonball? That's a cannonball!

You fall into a panicked forward dive. There's another explosion behind you, and your back is peppered in shrapnel. There's no turning back for you, though. After flying all day, you're too exhausted to make it back to Lab Island. You're either landing up ahead or losing this body trying. And you'd rather not burn the Mana if you can avoid it.

You continue diving, aiming to get below the line of fire. Another BOOM resounds from forwards and above, but you don't feel the sting of flak on your serpentine body. The gunner must not be pull in his aim fast enough. You hear another two shots before you reach the shadow of the flying island.

You fly on, rock above you and death below. You trace the perimeter of the island until you're all but completely exhausted. Then, it's out and up, hugging the clifflike rim and hoping there's nothing up top. When hit topside, you dash for cover. Fortunately, it's plentiful. You came up to a coniferous forest. You slither up a tree, coiling around the trunk halfway up. You relax as you aren't attacked, either by people or monsters, and slowly fall asleep.

You're not sure how threatening those cannons are, but after Pink Flower Island you didn't expect to encounter them at all. The metal city that fired on you is about a Lab Island radius-length away, and this place looks bigger than Lab Island, though you can't tell how much so without a little exploration, and you're just too tired to take that flight right now. You'll need to discover what the local monster population is like too. As soon as you wake up…

END DAY 10

[ ] Plan? (Write-in)

[ ] [BESTIARY] New Entry? (Leaf Node of Existing Monster, Target Monster, or Trait)

 

[siflux]

Rules change notes:

<Adaptability> nerfed. Slimes buffed to get more of it. Some trait text messed around with to handle some minor changes to XP cost system. It's now harder to learn new traits. See the XP/Mana Cost Modifiers threadmark for details. These changes mostly deal with making it harder to insta-learn new traits; you can still spend time practicing or hanging out in the right environment to learn new traits without spending XP or Mana.

New penalty added to prevent adding new traits with wild abandon.

 

[mrttao]

Hours of exhausting and boring flight where we have to rest as soon as we land... we really need to raise our flight but its getting expensive to do so.

It is also worthwhile to note that at such a long flight time, for returning to our island it is cheaper to discard this body and use said time to farm a replacement 1000 MP. Although doing so would leave us without a safety net for a while, we would need to increase our unspendable MP to 2000 if we do that.

[x] Hunt a bit to familiarize self with new island.
-[x] Then kidnap someone without harming them, show communication, then escort them back
[x] [BESTIARY] work towards slime-dragon

 

[mrttao]

New Trait: In addition to the 100 XP or 10 Mana needed to attain the first level of a trait, there's a 100% cost penalty (another 100 XP/10 Mana). This extra XP cost can be reduced or eliminated through the <Adaptability> Trait. This penalty only applies for traits known by neither your Body nor Soul.

Additionally, new traits cannot be learned solely through spending XP or Mana unless the final cost is 150% base cost or cheaper.

Trait Overload: For each different Trait currently on your body, there's a 1% cost penalty to add another Trait to your body. For each different Trait currently on your soul, there's a 1% cost penalty to add another Trait to your soul.

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Rules change notes:

<Adaptability> nerfed. Slimes buffed to get more of it. Some trait text messed around with to handle some minor changes to XP cost system. It's now harder to learn new traits. See the XP/Mana Cost Modifiers threadmark for details. These changes mostly deal with making it harder to insta-learn new traits; you can still spend time practicing or hanging out in the right environment to learn new traits without spending XP or Mana.

New penalty added to prevent adding new traits with wild abandon.

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1. I don't see any change to slime to make them better at adaptability. they just start with adaptability on their body already. which we could just add to any body

2. The 100% penalty for first level no longer says it only happens if you don't already have the trait from body or soul. Is this on purpose? it basically means that to learn a new trait we must first go to a body that has it and then raise it to 41+ on body to get the 50% off to drop it to 150% cost... although you then have the trait overload making it impossible to learn again, unless your adaptability score = trait overload score. (barring special traits that have additional reduction).

3. Trait overload basically caps the possible number of traits known. is this the intent? it will also mean exacerbated bookkeeping.

 

[siflux]

1. I don't see any change to slime to make them better at adaptability. they just start with adaptability on their body already. which we could just add to any body

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Non-basic Slimes just got more points of it, so their total bonus is about the same as before

2. The 100% penalty for first level no longer says it only happens if you don't already have the trait from body or soul.

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This penalty only applies for traits known by neither your Body nor Soul.

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Bug closed; could not reproduce.

3. Trait overload basically caps the possible number of traits known. is this the intent? it will also mean exacerbated bookkeeping.

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Trait Overload is a soft cap on number of traits known, not a hard cap. I removed the level cap on Adaptability, and other traits exist to discount cost like <Mage Initiate>.

Exacerbated bookkeeping: I am worried about this, especially with the precision on Learning the Known ramped from 10%/10 levels to 1%/level. If it's too much work to keep track of things, I may just make it a case of 'you must have a score below X to level traits' and stop having the modifiers affect cost. For now, I want to see how these changes influence things.

It is also worthwhile to note that at such a long flight time, for returning to our island it is cheaper to discard this body and use said time to farm a replacement 1000 MP.

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Huh, neat point, opportunity cost of return flights to Lab Island are surprisingly high.

Flight time: I'm assuming that the protagonist can stay aloft for 10h, with a cruising range of {flight score}km over that time period. You can judge speed accordingly and how increasing flight will speed things up.

 

[LeoAbogos]

Hmm. I'm not really comfortable with kidnapping people, at least to start with, mrttao . We might want to spend some exp on attack and defense too, since we're facing likely hostilities.

siflux , question/clarification about new trait learning. As written, I believe "new traits cannot be learned solely through spending XP or Mana unless the final cost is 150% base cost or cheaper." means that we'd need 80+ in Adaptability to learn an off-body trait purely through exp. Did you mean +150% base cost? Or rather, a cost penalty of <150%?

It's not a big deal either way, since I have no problem spending time training traits by training, it just doesn't seem like slimes are significantly more adaptable than non-slimes since you'd need 50 Adaptability just to bring the +100% penalty down to 150% of base cost.

 

[siflux]

question/clarification about new trait learning.

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A trait starts out at 100% cost. New traits have a +100% cost penalty, putting them at 200%, lacking other modifiers, and therefore unable to be learned through just XP/Mana. <Adaptability 50> would lower that enough to hit the threshold of 150% base cost, aka 50% more expensive than base price. The slimes in the Bestiary beyond the basic one now have <Adaptability 25> and <Adaptability 30>, taking them a lot closer to the threshold for learning new Traits.

 

[mrttao]

A trait starts out at 100% cost. New traits have a +100% cost penalty, putting them at 200%, lacking other modifiers, and therefore unable to be learned through just XP/Mana. <Adaptability 50> would lower that enough to hit the threshold of 150% base cost, aka 50% more expensive than base price. The slimes in the Bestiary beyond the basic one now have <Adaptability 25> and <Adaptability 30>, taking them a lot closer to the threshold for learning new Traits.

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Don't forget the trait overload penalty too. you need adaptability of 50+X where X is the number of existing traits in order to learn a trait without transmigrating to its body.

Of course if you do transmigrate then then you can learn all the traits, up to 60+adaptability+other discount traits (like mage initiate for elemental traits). possible to raise it by another 40 from the body having a high enough score.

So effectively it's easier to transmigrate. and with the opportunity cost of flight (10 hours aka 100 monsters killed) we can expect to transmigrate often as we travel anyways

Hmm. I'm not really comfortable with kidnapping people, at least to start with, mrttao . We might want to spend some exp on attack and defense too, since

Click to shrink...

They are literally shooting at us with a cannon... kidnapping and returning unharmed after forcing them to listen is the least violent path forwards.

 

[LeoAbogos]

I'm... not sure I have the energy to fight against jumping into fires like that on a constant basis. If that's going to be the tone of the quest, the level of thought given, then I'm afraid I'll have to withdraw my participation. There is no other player base to appeal to at the moment, so I'm left with very little choice.

siflux It's been an enjoyable experience, and I regret that I won't be seeing more of your world.

Edit: I'll clarify since on reflection this post is a bit brusque.

If Joe Human approached a community and abducted a member of that community so that he could then release them to show he was not a threat, the only circumstance that community is going to welcome him in is in order to try him for the crime he committed. Very very few communities will be sympathetic enough to his circumstances to forgive the trespass against them. And they shouldn't; allowing strangers to manhandle your people for their own convenience undermines the security the community is supposed to deliver.

As a monster, we've every bit the disadvantage that Joe Human has with the course of action, except that we also suffer under very strong biases against the very order of being that we are. The community won't be more sympathetic towards our circumstances, and they won't appreciate our comparative disadvantage in social interaction that might lead us to such drastic actions. We'd be a monster who kidnapped a member of the community. Monsters who trespass against a community are generally, I gather, killed. After kidnapping someone, they will not look on us any more favourably than they would a fellow non-human who did. It'll be a far less friendly reaction. There is no plausible way that the plan works as intended.

This seems obvious to me, so it's more of a burden to argue for. A playerbase of two means a constant debate over everything, and it's inherently more competitive because one side or the other needs to actually capitulate instead of simply losing a vote. Votes have already been left hanging because I haven't wanted to agree right out or felt like a big debate or like tying up the vote pointlessly. Nor do I want to be the player who shows up at the Nth hour after a full day and obstinately flips votes to my preference just to keep things moving. There's no satisfying path forwards for me, or probably anyone, so I'm out. It's not about any particular vote or disagreement, I've just realized the play I can actually anticipate would be more obligation than fun.

 

[mrttao]

If Joe Human approached a community and abducted a member of that community so that he could then release them to show he was not a threat, the only circumstance that community is going to welcome him in is in order to try him for the crime he committed. Very very few communities will be sympathetic enough to his circumstances to forgive the trespass against them. And they shouldn't; allowing strangers to manhandle your people for their own convenience undermines the security the community is supposed to deliver.

Click to shrink...

The "community" is literally trying to murder us. Capturing someone who is trying to murder you nonviolently, talking to them, and then letting them go, is proving them wrong on their assumptions that you are a clear and present danger to them. And it is at best self defense (where you go above and beyond and use nonviolent means to defend yourself against someone who is attacking with lethals force) and POW capture (followed by a swift release) instead of "the grievous crime of kidnapping". Also you are being very ethnocentric there too, they are clearly not a 21st century westerner society. Seriously, put us on trial?

And considering they are an actual threat to our life, this is the only way we could establish contact with them without getting killed.

Incidentally, you never actually suggested an alternative and it was your insistence we even come here in the first place. For all you know, if you had bothered suggesting an alternative I would have just said "oh, that is a better idea than mine! lets do it!". The only argument was that you called my idea stupid in a way that goes beyond and implies I am stupid ( to the point where I am so stupid I will ruin the quest unless you constantly "bail mrttao out") and I then defended my idea for 1 post. You didn't provide your own counter idea

<MP Regeneration>Recover X MP at the end of each round.

Click to shrink...

Is this the same MP we gain from killing stuff and spend to upgrade the body? if not, then it probably needs to be named differently. Because this trait gives 14,400 MP/day per level otherwise.

----

Anyways, moving on. Considering the diversity of species in there, and the fact some appeared on our island without there being a settlement on it. We can surmise that they likely have some means of travel between islands. In that case it is likely that the language is common, in which case it would be easier and safer to learn the language from the weaker less threatening village first. Also, we could get illusions from the kitsune tree first. so, new plan

[x] Ignore the local people, while hunting monsters until you have 12,000 MP.
-[x] Transmigrate into Floofball (150 MP)
-[x] Upgrade Beast @soul to level 5
-[x] Evolve into Fluffy Fox
-[x] Upgrade Mage Initiate @soul to level 10
-[x] Evolve into One-Tail Kitsune
-[x] Learn new trait Illusionist @soul
-[x] Spend 10,000 MP fixing up the lab as best as you can
[x] [BESTIARY] Kitsune evolution

After doing that, we will see if we meet the prereqs of kitsune evolution and if there is something worth snagging there. As well as how far we need to train our illusions to help us in contact making. (since at the moment illusionist is ?)

At some point in the future when we are ready, go back to dragon, fly into the eastern island, this time wearing clothes and try to learn the language of the locals. Once we learn the language at the east island we can start considering what to do on the northern island (if anything)