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204 (Patreon)

Published:
2022-06-26 05:01:00
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2026-06
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Content

2022-06-26
2022-07-03
2022-07-10
Break
2022-07-24

Comments

L Pedersen

The title for the next chapter: More confrontations! :P

Ziggy

You know, I meant to bring this up ages ago, but I keep on forgetting to. Velika is, very likely, a high vigor build. Combined with her prior noble status, class, and accolades? She has to have overstamina out the ass. Overstamina is great, but it keeps you awake. Similar to how Rain has to make his body sleep several hours a night in spite of his brain being refreshed after a very small amount of time, anyone with overstamina needs a few hours of sleep mentally in spite of their body constantly being refreshed and raring to go. Now, how does Velika constantly act? Irritable, mood swings, paranoia. She's sleep deprived.

Connor Oswald

I love the way that the most obvious thing Rain has picked up from Dozer is that he swears with "filth"

Mike G.

No one else is intrigued about « mantle »? Tectonic tracking, or something soul-related?

Starless
>>86486830

I also think this is the case. Also keep in mind how much a Stamina/Vigor build would need to eat. With Ascention being low on supplies, V is probably both tired AND starving.

Kyle
>>86486830

Sounds like it's too bad rain couldn't get the secret unlock reqs for torpor from brovose before they killed him. That may have been a key skill to fixing overstamina builds and bringing Velika into a more normal mindset

Kyle
>>86488487

I think it's clearly referring to the artifact they implanted in her when they made her a placeholder citizen to hold fel sadanis for them

Ziggy
>>86488487

There we go. For me, I saw "mantle" and I was like, "...the earth's mantle? What? I'm reading it wrong, cause she was not in the damn mantle." The spike is called the Mantle! Thanks, that was bugging me.

Ziggy
>>86486830

All Velika needs is to learn to meditate to let her mind sleep. Now the question is if it's wiser to teach her anything that can lead to her possibly delving into her soul and the benefits therein, or to be stuck with a sleep deprived and irritable goldplate for however long their trip takes. Both sound like shit options, really, but I'd at least try to bring up the problems with sleep deprivation.

Starless
>>86486830

This is probably a common problem for people who get powerleveled. Your level/power increase much faster than your soul does, with the imbalance leading to the awakened constantly overdosing on chaotic essence. Velika is probably going to go the way of Laverro unless she gets some soul lessons from Rain, Amelia, or Tallheart.

ricky jackson

feels like its been a month since a chapter dropped

JC
>>86491118

Just 0.46666666667 months since last post.

jdouglas

"needed to have a long talk about taking the blame for things that weren't his fault".... that talk/thought has happened many times, Rain initially moved on, then regressed. Posting for awareness, credit goes to Horatio Hornet: Been following the series since the first chapters posted on RR and typically don't comment since I am just along for the ride, but after seeing the reaction that people had to the last chapter and then this one, I realized that there has been something frustrating me from time to time. Namely that Rain seems to regularly regress character wise. I wonder if this has to do with your own perspective of him? Has he changed as much in your perception of him, as he has in the story? In the story he has become a powerful silverplate, physically imposing, leader and founder of a community, survivor of many near death experiences, winner of many battles, and a character heard of by distant strangers. To counter this you have given him an inner gentleness and a set of insecurities. I have no problem with gentleness. True masculinity requires it, otherwise you end up with something hard and unfeeling that will try to crush everything. However it feels like in order to allow for him to remain kind and gentle, you feel that he must have insecurities. Don't get me wrong. It was good writing to include that he possessed such imperfections. Such things also do not go away quickly, they take time and effort to heal. But while he has grown externally, he has not grown internally. None of his insecurities have grown better or worse (except maybe for his paranoia about safety, but that has been a meme since he first got his armor). He has not tempered his kindness with maturity and wisdom, thereby making it often seem like nothing but "niceguy" syndrome. The fact that he has grown so much externally, just amplifies how little he seems to have grown internally at times. The best swords across all of history and cultures possess two characteristics. First they have two key elements, a "soft" core and a hard exterior. When the two elements are combined, they create a strength and cohesiveness not found in either individually. The second characteristic is that they do not possess imperfections. The imperfections are beaten out first with fire and hammer, followed by prolonged and focused grinding. The elements for Rain's inner growth (and external) are all there. The stage is consistently set, but who he is at his core, forever remains the same insecure child that arrived in a world even harsher than our own. Somehow he has survived and seen so much, but whenever his inner dialogue is heard or he makes himself vulnerable to others, we find that the insecurities are not gone and real maturity in his thinking has not set in. The Rain of chapter 202 comes across as no wiser or more confident than the Rain of chapter 2. If anything the Rain of chapter 2 was braver simply because he possessed less information. Rain's inner man should change, and not necessarily entirely for the better. PTSD is a real thing (although I don't feel like this story warrants such a change in Rain yet, simply using it as an example), but so also is the act of someone growing wiser and more mature. Disclaimer: I really do love this story and this is probably my only real complaint. The world building is excellent, the fights are intoxicating, the characters of others outside of Rain are well developed (although there is the danger that they might never change...), there is mystery, an uncertain future and outcome, the plot continues to move and develop, and so much more. I look forward to continuing to read your work and hope to see you continue to grow as a writer.

Cirvante

Velika has zero chill, I hope she doesn't lose her shit when the DKE forces try to board Temerity. Everiss was a pleasant surprise, though it feels like she isn't taking the Empire as seriously as she should. Their soldiers would wreck her bronzeplate guilders. I'm getting the typical guilder vibes from her, delusions of grandeur and invincibility. The guild archives are an interesting bit of lore, it's been bothering me quite a bit that the guild's knowledge of the system seemed to be only word-of-mouth, while the watch keepers had extennsive archives, even though both descended from the Majistraal Ascensi Guildum. Being forced to raise your guildscore through questing before being allowed insight into their hidden skill libraries is a good incentive for guilders to work hard and conduct themselves professionally. I also liked Halgrave calling out Ameliah for mouthing off to goldplates. Back when she shouted at him for kicking out Rain, she had the strength of a strong bronzeplate. She's lucky that he's relatively chill. The watch officer is adorable, using Dozer as a stress pillow, I was hoping she'd come along.

ricky jackson

so are we getting a battle chapter next? cus thts wht it seemed like

MurderByNumbers

Should of resupplied provisions first. Looming war is horrible for hyper inflation of goods

Cirvante
>>86501816

Yeah, but no gear. So she was on the level of a strong bronzeplate. Her class needs bonus stats to really shine.

Ole Halvorsen
>>86501816

well I dont fully support that statement cirvante. Ameliah could build builds that could do great without the need for a lot of equipment. her not having specializations made her a lot weaker at copying other pure builds, but She could come up with some builds/combinations that is a lot stronger and not possible for others to do. So to say she was bronze is a bit unfair.

Zarik0
>>86486830

This is a real good point But i really think people of the statue she have before already know and get educated and get training for years and childhood about that aspect and have solved it, so yeah good point but i dont think its relevant here for her now Maybe a left over of past training she done when she goes this direction with her stats when she was younger? and so it "fixed"/formed her character/personnality like that

Zarik0
>>86493251

Perfect comment man, say clearly basically all I liked this chapter and a lot of thing into it But i still feel Rain have regressed here (less than past chapter) but it bother me a bit and feel off for me on some of the regression and tone of him we can get here I mean seriously man? did he not wake up on some aspect and all that and matured on the reality of this world and the situation his group is? why he is so in "nice guy syndrome" and still think everything will be fine if he be upright and so other are good guy? where is the paranoia and the stress knowing they are in a deathly and very complicated situation and where is his priority and responsability (first his group and his people and after yeah do what he can for other) he feel a bit delusional and "cherfull nice guy" in this regression when previously he have realized and know the reality of thing and how fucked up thing can be, you focus before on your people, your loved one and yourself, and specially focus on it priority when they are not SECURE as of now, i feel his focus is off or atleast his tone about it (maybe add some line here and here, showing his thougt and stress and worry about these subject, what he have done and his action are fine, its how its bringed into the chapter and the tone of him when he do it who feel a bit off for me) Playing nice and feeling him not really focused and prioritizing his people/group and himself and expecting thing to go alright when the situation is completly fucked up, his tone feel a bit off in some specific aspect The rest, just really good, a lot of thing that i liked a lot, Velika and Ameliah, and Hargrave part was golden, i loved too the part in the guild and some of his interaction with normal unawakened of the town :)

JC Silver
>>86493251

Can you guys elaborate on exactly what was "niceguy" about Rain's behavior this chapter? I'm not sure I necessarily disagree with his lack of internal growth, but I don't see how this chapter illustrated that. He was firm in what he wanted, was surprised to find someone else that seemed responsible about it, and is working to build allies with the Watch through officer Sena to help safeguard Ascension from the increasing complex interests of powers like the DKE, Bank, and Empire. Maybe the chapter a few weeks ago this was kind of an issue since he was clearly dissappointed with the entire population of the city, but even then you can understand that in terms of culture-shock and being jaded with how he needs to cut through red-tape when there's a clear threat on the horizon.

JC Silver
>>86501816

Yeah, if anything she's actually pretty strong for a Silver without gear due to her versatility and ability to make optimized builds. With Tallheart gear she is capable of at least threatening a Gold-level threat like the Incarns despite being Silver with an even stat spread.

Ziggy
>>86501816

No, Ameliah without equipment is about the weakest a silverplate can be. If we ignore people like Khurt that totally screwed their build. The biggest power upgrade from bronze to silver is getting your specializations. They make you about 100x as powerful, as we can see from Rain. Ameliah is unique in that she gets zero specializations. When Ameliah went from level 25 bronze to silver, the only immediate benefit she got was her stat multiplier increasing and the ability to gradually switch out skills. And with her forcefully spread out stats, she only had effectively 160 in every stat at the time. Which is pitifully low for a silverplate. Ameliah's build is a deliberate choice to trade power for versatility. It should come as no surprise that her power is lesser than other, similarly equipped silverplates.

Cirvante
>>86501816

Yeah, what Ziggy said. With 63 in every stat, she had effectively 163.8 with her class bonus. That's not a lot for bronze, nevermind silver. Her ability to respecialize and having access to T4 would have allowed her to match strong bronzeplates. I'm talking about level 24 with uncommon/rare classes and full bonus stats. But against actual silvers she would have been a joke, Thrast would have wiped the floor with her. Remember how she got spanked by the Crimson Swords? And they were trying to capture her alive and weren't really all that strong afterall.

Stormlock
>>86501816

Even without gear Ameliah is on par with other silver plates. What she loses in specializations she gains in cheating the requirements and having more synergies than anyone else of her level possibly could. Instead of 3^4 for damage she's got 2^6. The fact that she's near gold now is owed to the fact that her build revolves around multiplying the power of equipment, and she has gold tier equipment. And her stats aren't bad as long as she's using all or most of them. Jamus might have the same raw focus as her, but he's probably got like ½ of her clarity and 1/8th of any of her other stats.

Starless
>>86486690

Either that, or "Rain gets arested for his counterfeit money scheme."

Cirvante
>>86501816

On par with other silverplates? Come on, man. Even the average silverplate with an uncommon class would have probably Rank 20 in their specialized tree and Rank 15 in two others. That catapults their damage output from the tens of thousands into the hundreds of thousands. Ameliah had no bonus stat gear, no armor and no weapons. Her health was around 9-12k. Hitting the 9,999 damage limit with every strike is trivial for a silverplate (as well as some bronzeplates). And she is neither gold tier, nor does she have gold-tier equipment. Both her power and equipment are at high silver. Halgrave's hammer is gold tier. Velika's swords are most likely silver, or they would have survived bisecting the Fist of Progress. Ameliah made a decent showing against the Hydromancer Incarn, but mostly on account of being an archer against a mage and even then she could only distract him.

Starless
>>86505781

It'll be nice seeing how strong a ""strong"" Silverplate is supposed to be. Ameliah is a bit of an anomaly, so I feel as though our worldview in this regard has been rather limited. We got Bronze/Gold plates as far as the eye can see. Can't even turn around these days without stepping on a Goldplate. Now I want to see a decent Silverplate going balls-to-the-walls crazy. Might even motivate Ameliah to start actaully pushing the limits of her absurdly powerful class ability.

Ziggy
>>86501816

Without gear? She's definitely not. Pit any optimized build versus Ameliah and she's much weaker. The class purposefully gives up power (specialization, focused stats, class stat bonus) for versatility (Skill swaps). Her somehow still being as powerful as an equally equipped, focused silverplate would be pretty weird and go against that. We can prove it pretty easily. Go to the spreadsheet. Look at bronzeplate Rain's numbers. Now put those up against silverplate Rain's numbers. His build wouldn't be more optimized by replacing any skills, so Ameliah would have the same skills. Because Ameliah gets 0 specializations, bronzeplate Rain versus silverplate Rain is the same as silverplate Ameliah versus Silverplate Rain. Except it's worse than that. Replace bronzeplate Rain's stats with them all being effectively only 164 instead. While silverplate Rain has effectively 5120 clarity. Now it's accurate. And as you can see, Ameliah without equipment is much, much weaker in comparison. Even if you give her some free skill points to spend over Rain to help her use her physical stats or something, it's still a completely one-sided comparison. The only reason she can go toe-to-toe with other silverplates is the OP cheat that's Tallheart. She herself pointed out point blank in a POV chapter how his gear makes her more powerful than an entire team of standard silverplates. Whereas it only took 2 bronzeplates with some accolades to take her down when she had no equipment. Generally, the idea of a pair of bronzeplates taking down a combat classed silver in a fair fight like they did with Ameliah is ridiculous. Even with accolades.

Ziggy
>>86486830

My guess for the issue at hand with Velika doesn't have to do much with soul issues. It's a stat thing, leading to overstamina. Whether or not she leveled up to gold slowly or quickly, the same issue of overstamina and needing to sleep in spite of it would be present. As for her education helping her alleviate the issues, it's possible. But I doubt it. Namely because I'm assuming the overstamina issues were less problematic when she was still silver. She was probably still sleep deprived, because she's a stubborn ass and would insist she's fine, but the silverplate bonus probably left room for catching some sleep now and again. But now she's gold. At minimum, the class path should bump up her prior class stat boost by x4, or x8 if she went from rare to legendary (though I'm assuming she was already legendary). So whatever issues she had before, they'd be worse by several degrees now. And even if she was taught how to deal with the overstamina issues? There's a difference between knowing what you have to do, and actually doing it. She's even had good reason to skip out on sleep. She's had goldplates chasing her down to kill her. Which has led to her becoming even more paranoid and irritable than she used to be, to the point she's worrying about Rain; the one person that's earned her trust several times over.

ricky jackson
>>86505781

im still thinking ameliah is stronger cus rains soul sense doesnt take into account equipment other then maybe accolades, plus ameliah is a legendary class imitating a legendary archer, while the guild leader probably has good info and access even velika and halgrave find interest and slight desires in there group, if gold plates could want for the info and skill they posses i imagine a silver will be left overwhelmed. like bakal vs rain, and rain is turning him into a ice pop, the spearmaster just aint ready for deathzone, but im still looking forward to the flex anyway and seeing some new skills

ricky jackson
>>86501816

a focused class definitely wins againt a jack with neither of them being fully kitted due to the reasons stated above. But a jack is the best class to synchronize with crafters out of arguably all classes, they are batman with the right tools and preptime it doesnt matter what the enemies class and equipment are they will win. But that doesnt mean if a Jack faces the same class they are copying they will be the better user of the class, no they will get destroyed

Ziggy
>>86505781

For silverplates, we at least have a scale of relative power. 1 is for totally helpless crafters and people that utterly screwed up their build. 2 is for Ameliah (without equipment, specifically). Ameliah mentioned in her POV that her equipment from Tallheart makes her stronger than an entire team of silverplates, so Ameliah with equipment is rated way higher at like 8. Tallheart had a moment of fear about how Ameliah was stronger than him after he gave her equipment and he has no combat skills, so he's weaker and we'll place him at 5ish. Velika at the top of silver with all her advantages (levels, accolades, nobility, equipment) could've probably beaten Ameliah with equipment, so she was a 9. Silver Lavarro is the top of the heap at 10. Velika considered Lavarro stronger, and her ability to jump ranks and beat goldplates is patently ridiculous given what we know of rank ups. She's currently the strongest silverplate we've seen in story, no question.

ricky jackson
>>86505781

true, but there is big difference between a lvl 30 silver and a lvl 45+ silver, im sure ameliah will scale diffrent when she is part of the higher lvl bracket, as it is she is stronger then a entire team of similar lvl silvers with out equipment, tht is likely to stay the same as she levels making her ltr around Lavarro scaling

Ole Halvorsen
>>86505781

If anything it says more about peoples lack for equipment. And Ameliah even before cant be a 2, we have seen multiple silvers that would be weaker than her pre gear.

Cirvante
>>86501816

The point was that Ameliah was mouthing off towards a goldplate when she was one of the weakest silverplates around, not counting failures like Khurt. Even now she is antagonizing Velika when, even with Tallheart's fancy equipment, she wouldn't stand a chance against her. She's got a bit of an attitude problem.

Cirvante
>>86505781

No, Khurt was the only one who was weaker than her pre-gear, unless you want to count the frontline healer Sentinel. Even Thrast would have stomped Ameliah pre-gear.

ricky jackson
>>86505781

yea ameliah pre gear is unique and useful but doesnt power scale to the same lvl, more useful for various task but not the best killer, her and rain are a utility couple

Cirvante
>>86505781

Mind you, if she had gotten her hands on ten +5 to all stat rings and maybe some heavy armor (both are bronzeplate gear), then with Empowered Rings she could have had 423.8 in every stat and some decent defenses. Not amazing, but enough to easily stomp the Crimson Swords. The fact that she had pretty much zero gear strikes me as odd. At least bronze-tier equipment should have been available for a couple of grand tel in the DKE.

Starless
>>86505781

Hopefully the branch leader has a cooler nickname than the spearmaster. That's almost as bad as back when Carten called Rain Little Mouse all the time.

Ziggy
>>86505781

Ameliah relied on magic a lot more before Tallheart. While bronzeplate armor would've been doable, it likely would've been metal by necessity. Metal armor is abundant, but we know cloth armor is expensive and less common. So it would've interfered with a lot of her go-to builds' magic, and she would've had to lug around a heavy and bulky set of armor in a lot of circumstances instead of wearing it. That or give up on some of her favorite builds for long periods of time. I think Ameliah could have saved up and gotten some cloth armor or weak stat rings. But she was also busy looking for Lerith for a while. When she gave up on that, she was pretty listless and without any concrete goals. So I can excuse her not having had the drive to get said equipment. Plus she was a silverplate. Even though she was a really weak one, hitting silverplate at all is rare enough where she was likely in the top 0.01% of the population of the planet when it comes to power. Her build also eliminates the more basic weaknesses of a focused class. All three of her stat pools are a decent size, she has great regen compared to anyone but monoliths, she can fight longer than most without hitting stamina/mana/health overuse soulstrain, while also being very coordinated, fast, and having decent resistances. A casual confidence she could fight or escape in most circumstances wasn't entirely unwarranted.

Cirvante
>>86505781

I'd call it overconfidence after her poor showing against Anton and Brovose. But I agree that it was probably due to complacency and lack of direction. She told Rain that she was just going through the motions before meeting him. I just wanted to point out that even without Tallheart her class wouldn't have had to be weak. A legendary jack can easily use Heavy Armor Inventory to carry around one or two suits of bronzeplate armor. Rings and an amulet that give equal stats would have to be expensive custom orders, but ressource acquisition isn't that hard for a silverplate. Empowered Rings would let her get the most out of them. Dislocated Casting would allow her to still use magic. Cloth or leather armor shouldn't be that expensive either when cities like Barstone have delvings they can farm for ressources, including monster hides. Also, her build during the Everdeep Fortress was clearly a melee one. She one-shot the Umbral Charger doing more than 10k damage, the recoil must have been rough if it's 10% like item strain. I could see the Martial Arts tree having a skill that works like Equipment Mastery for unarmed recoil. But a better alternative would be plate armor customized for unarmed fighting. A good bronzeplate heavy armor made from force steel would have around 1,000 hardness. So with Hardened Plate, Deep Hardness and Empowered Armor, she could have 8,000 hardness. That would allow her to hit for up to 80,000 damage per second before damaging her armor with recoil, more if a recoil dampening skill exists. Rather than throw some weak Firebolts or use Cloaked in Flames, she could cast Concussive Blows with Overcharge and Chanting, then throw some hands with Mana Striking and Shockwave. Since the System tends to calculate in your favour, I wouldn't be surprised if Concussive Blows was added to the base damage, then multiplied by meta skills.

Starless
>>86505781

Amelia is worth so much more than just being another DPS machine. I'd say she should take a leaf out of Anton's book and design a build meant to take down Awakened, specifically Silver/Gold level combatants. Hargrave was right in saying Ascension can't just rely on outsiders to keep them safe. My Silver Bullet build would be to hybridize Intrusion + Stone Arrow + Light Arrow stacked onto a Piercing Shot. Intrusion to bypass magic defenses/barriers/resistances, Piercing Shot to bypass hardness/durability and Light Arrow to make the attack instantaneous, negating both distance and evasion. Ameliah is already experienced with Geoevocation, so she should be able to learn Intrusion fairly easily. There would even be a bit of poetic justice in seeing the Geomancy strategy that previously lost to bronze plates is now strong enough to kill Goldplates, all while Amelia is the exact same level. She'd also be able to pierce the barrior around the Empire's ships and take the fight to them for a change. Just attach a Immolate Aura Anchor to the arrow and watch as everyone inside the ship's barrier boils alive, trapped in a coffin of their own design.

Ziggy
>>86505781

Totally forgot about heavy armor inventory, that's fair. Granted, it was a hidden skill. It depends on how well known its existence and the unlock requirements are. I'll just chalk this up to more of Ameliah being listless and adrift. I'm not sure about dislocated casting. If metal isn't a problem for any mages that pick that skill up, there'd be way more mages wearing metal armor. Even if it's a higher tier skill, there'd be at least a few famous mages that wear metal armor to make the idea less outlandish. Whereas the reaction to Rain almost every time he casts is, "a mage.. in armor? Madness!" Her poor skill choices when the Swords beat her down are also a good point. She was definitely the opposite of optimized at that point and probably would've done much better if she hadn't been so lax. She had 3 skills dedicated just to purify and metamagic to make it stronger, afterall.

Cirvante
>>86505781

The Dislocated Casting was more for casting while wearing ten rings. I'd argue that it makes casting in heavy armor somewhat more viable, but still messes the spells up enough to be a hindrance to high-level mages. Also, by the time most mages pick the skill, they'd have already invested a bit into the Light Armor tree. But yes, in her fight against the Swords, she probably could have done much better by using Alacrity, Quickstep and Airwalk. Maybe Concussive Blows, Mana Striking and Shockwave. With that she could have quickly battered down even Brovose's barrier from a distance without triggering the damage reflection. She also could have inflicted damage much faster than through casting and Chanting. She knew there would be a confrontation and should have prepared. Overconfidence. @Starless Fights against goldplates in an unranked zone are always a slog. And Intrusion doesn't ignore the damage limit. Only environmental effects like Bowcraig's Thermal Conversion or Westbridge's overheating of Halgrave's armor can do that.

Starless
>>86505781

That's the beauty of the build. The point of it is not to deal damage. It's designed to kill targets with a clean headshot. Just like how Anton killed the Musk Wolf, or that other bow dude killed the razerspine, or how the Knives took out Gavin. The Incarn also gets some bonus points for going for the instagib with Drowning Sphere.

Cirvante
>>86505781

The musk Wolf already had it's health depleted when Anton killed it, as did the Razorspine. The Knives were literally sawing through Gavin's throat and slowly pushing a blade into his eye to get through his health. Because health works as a buffer and you need to deplete at least 50-75% of it before you can inflict serious injuries. Against an armored goldplate in an unranked zone, your headshot will just bounce off and do 2,500 durability damage. While skills like the Drowning Sphere and a hypothetical air equivalent could kill someone, it was absorbed by Ameliah's armor.

Stormlock
>>86501816

You're very, very hung up on what the biggest damage number a character can produce is, when that's a very silly way to define power. She can already easily hit the damage limit and by extension overwhelm the defenses of any normal silverplate. Yeah, another silverplate with crap gear can do more theoretical damage than Ameliah could with crap gear. But they'd run out of stamina and health or mana faster, have less mobility, no way to heal themselves, couldn't see mana, etc. These are all big force multipliers in a real combat situation, as we saw when she was fighting the Hababa king, where most silverplates would have died. Obviously Ameliah copying Rain's build would be awful, why would she do that? She can throw tier 4 spells augmented with every tier 4 synergy that can be applied when a normal silverplate of her rank probably has access to like, 1 or 2 of those, and has wasted at least half a dozen points on totally useless skills they needed just to unlock other things. Lastly, Tallheart's gear is certainly goldplate level. There aren't a bunch of level 50+ crafters running around making stuff like what Halgrave has. Velika's gear is representative of what a new gold plate would have, and she wanted Tallheart to make her stuff even before she got all the shit she inherited blown up. Likewise, the platehunters had gear far beyond their level, since they were murdering people in their sleep and stealing it, or buying it after selling accolades. They were clearly decked out in the kind of stuff only silverplates would normally have. They're not even close to being a good metric for a normal team of bronzeplates.

Cirvante
>>86501816

First of all, Ameliah used to have 9-12k health with absolutely no gear. A silverplate Fire Mage could have snapped his fingers and one-shot her. Even a bronzeplate Archer could have easily killed her as we saw. And Tallheart's gear only seems like it's gold-tier because of the scarcity of good gear and crafters. He's using silver-tier materials and is a mid-silverplate, albeit with a legendary class and almost monolithic strength. The only independent goldplate crafter we've heard about so far is the dude who made Halgrave's hammer. And he's being courted by every goldplate, Citizen and wealthy noble in the world. Just because no gold-tier gear is available doesn't make Velika's swords "entry-level gold gear". She's a goldplate using silverplate gear because she can't get anything better. This is proven by the fact that using her full strength destroys her blades. Tallheart's equipment is high-silver tier. Which makes it way better than anything a silverplate or even a fresh goldplate could get their hands on. But to make true goldplate gear, he'd need gold-tier materials. Just like he needs grand tel, grand crysts and deepened metals to make silver gear. That weird crystal from Halgrave's hammer seems to be the only gold-tier material we've encountered so far. But I'm convinced that when you go delving in Rank 50+ areas, you'll eventually encounter the next tier of tel, crysts and metals. The difference between bronze gear and silver gear seems to be at least an order of magnitude. It stands to reason that the jump to true gold gear is by another order of magnitude. Tallheart can't make anything like that.

Bzzt
>>86501816

Jumping in here to re-post a discord not in story disclaimer from SS when someone asked about next level materials in the discord in March: “-not in story disclaimer- Yes, it is commonly accepted that deepenedx2 materials exist, but more as like a "myths and legends" type of thing, not something anyone expects to find/use (except maybe our platinumplate folks)” They then go on to say you have to 1) find something like that and then 2) find someone who can actually work with the material. No definitive proof of whether Halgraves hammer is such a material (but likely) and I don’t think it was ever explicitly said in story that the smith Karamaugin was actually gold (though, again, likely), just that he was the only one rain had heard of who made gold level equipment. Not to say there aren’t others, but they are probably squirreled away. Rain just knows of this guy because he’s unattached

Cirvante
>>86501816

Fair enough. You might have to go to Rank 60+ before this shit starts dropping and at that point most goldplate teams find themselves unable to compete with the titans roaming those zones. And finding a crafter able to work the stuff is of course difficult to impossible, to the point where a chunk of T3 metal would just be a very rare paperweight. Just like a level 8 metalworker would be unable to work adamant, to work those higher tier metals you would need at least a high-silver smith, but ideally a goldplate. And getting a crafter to gold is very difficult. I bet Vigilance has at least one, Ter Karmark as well, then there's Karamaugin and finally Fecht probably IS the crafter in the Empire. But that kind of gear would be necessary to advance past level 60 and most goldplates just don't have access to it, which is one of the reasons why they eventually stop advancing or die. Back during the Majistraal era, this kind of true goldplate gear must have been available, with the platinum-tier gear being mostly out of reach.

Starless
>>86501816

probably would be a paperweight for the Watch, Guild, Bank, and DKE. Fetch on the other hand would probably use the infinite respec accolade to make one of his generic Called into a crafter Incarn if the Empire even stumbled across T3 materials.

Cirvante
>>86501816

A crafting Incarn? Of all the harebrained, outlandish theories you've come up with, that's got to be one of the dumbest. Fecht is famous for being the best at literally everything, including crafting. So he doesn't need to raise up goldplate crafters, it's probably one of his hobbies to craft goldplate stuff.