Chapter 36: Continued Deliberations on the Future (Patreon)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1W7HFNtgGYTHZ3TmmEkXS3mgnt4I3zOTAyyehyNRAN1U/edit?usp=sharing

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“I’ve been researching some other potential tier three general skills that might work well for you.”

“Oh yeah? Any good ones?” Cayden asked as he leaned forward, any thoughts of stretching forgotten.

“Well, the most obvious would be a full attribute-boosting skill, one that combines the effects of the skills that boost each of the twelve stats, like your [Awareness], [Endurance], and [Hardiness].”

“Yeah, I suspected there might be a skill like that after I got [Endurance] and [Awareness],” Cayden replied. “They just seem too similar in format to not combine. I’m surprised you haven’t mentioned it before, though.”

“Well, it’s not completely ideal,” Elise explained. “It’s a passive, which is certainly good since it’ll synergize with [Boost Passive]. And if it adds in all of the secondary effects from the boosts into a single skill it will be amazing, but there are also some aspects which might make it worse than some of the other options.” She raised two fingers. “First, one of the tier two skills it should build from is [Magically Inclined], the most popular tier two skill for mages which boosts mana, mana regen, magic power, and magic control. But I don’t think you’ll be able to get any of the tier one skills that combine into it without first having a spell or two to exhaust and manipulate your mana with – which would require another general skill slot.”

“Would [The Moment] work? I’m not sure if it counts as a ‘spell’, but it’s a channeled skill that uses my mana.”

Elise hesitated. “Maybe. You’ll have to describe [The Moment] for me in more detail. But it would need to be a skill that lets you somewhat control how the mana is shaped within the skill, so you can really push the four magic stats to their limit.”

Cayden frowned. [The Moment] hadn’t felt like he could really control anything about the skill. Rather, it just felt like a toggle – it could either be on or off. But then, he hadn’t really attempted to exert any more control over the skill. He’d have to test it out later.

“What was the second issue?”

Elise looked confused for a moment, before glancing at her two still-upraised fingers. “Ah, yeah. The second issue: is it worth it?”

“What do you mean? It’s a tier-three skill – why wouldn’t it be worth it?”

“Ah, but it’s a tier-three attribute boosting skill. Sure, it would hopefully also have the secondary effects for each of the attributes, but the primary effect of the skill is to boost your attributes. And frankly, that’s not very useful for a good portion of your attributes.”

Cayden looked at her in confusion. More stats were always better…right? “Explain, please?”

“If everything else is equal, specialization always trumps generalization. You’ve got the ability to distribute all your stats from level-ups as free stat points however you wish, but you still shouldn’t spread yourself too thin. It’s much better to lock yourself into a defined role that focuses on a few specific stats, each of which you’ve raised into the fifties, than it would be to try to be good at everything and have all your stats be in the twenties.”

“That’s true,” Cayden said, nodding. “But what does that have to do with the skill?”

“Assuming the skill exists and does what we think it does, it will give a percentage boost to all of your stats. But if you’re specializing, some portion of those boosted stats will be useless to you. If you’ve got strength at fifty and magic control at ten, a skill that boosts your strength by thirty percent will get you an additional fifteen stat points. But a tier two skill that boosts both strength and magic control by the same amount will only get you eighteen additional points, fifteen in strength and three in magic control. The upgraded portion of the skill is mostly useless.”

“Ah,” Cayden said, suddenly understanding Elise’s point. “And if I’m going to have to fill my remaining slots with tier two skills, anyway…”

“Exactly!” Elise replied. “If one, or perhaps two, of the tier-two boosting skills affect all the stats you’re investing in, there’s really no point to getting it to tier-three. With the general skill-slots you have, you can only get one more tier-three general skill; better to use that opportunity on a skill that you can enjoy the full benefits of.”

“That makes sense,” Cayden said, nodding, though internally he didn’t completely dismiss the skill as a possibility. He had put a lot of effort into [Endurance], and very much would prefer to not lose to make space for a different tier-three skill. “What other ideas do you have for skills?”

“One other option that uses some skills you already have is a ‘weapons mastery’ skill, that would combine from [Blade Mastery], [Ranged Weapons Mastery], and some other tier-two weapon skill. But this runs into the same issues as the stat-boosting tier-three skill.”

“Unnecessary parts,” Cayden finished for her, nodding. “If I’m planning on using only one or two different weapons, I’ll likely lose out on some of the skill’s benefits.”

“Exactly.”

“What’s the solution, then? Wouldn’t all tier-three skills suffer from the same issues?”

“Possibly,” Elise replied. “That’s an issue with [Resistance] as well – generally you’ll only be resisting one or two damage types each battle. But the thing with [Resistance] is that the type of damage you’ll face will usually be out of your control, so having widespread coverage is still a benefit. For attribute-boosting or weapons master skills, you’ll almost always be in control of what attributes you increase or weapons you use, so the tier-two versions of the skills are just as useful as the tier-three versions. But I’ve been looking into some other potential skills, skills that combine vertically rather than horizontally.”

“Like what?”

“Obviously not ideal for you, but under the charisma stat you’ve got the [Socialite] skill, a tier-two skill that’s built from [Small Talk], [Flirt], and [Flatter]. And then there’s the [Leadership] skill, which is built from [Command], [Inspire], and [Bearing]. And with the [Empathy] skill, built from [Comfort], [Emotional Intelligence], and [Understanding], you’ve got three different tier-two skills that fall under the charisma umbrella. I’m not sure what they might combine into, but I figure it’s worth a shot to try something like that for you, except with skills that fall under a stat you focus. Perhaps endurance or vitality? Boosts to either of those would synergize well with [Resistance], I’d guess.”

Cayden felt a little insulted that he’d never been offered any of the social skills Elise had casually mentioned. He wasn’t that socially stunted…was he?

He pushed his annoyance away and refocused on the topic at hand; he could self-evaluate his issues later. “Have you found tier-two skills in any of the other stats that might combine into tier-three skills? I’d like to know what effects the tier-three skill might get me before committing to one of the stats.”

“Of course. I haven’t done as much research on it as I’d like to, but since you’ve got [Resistance] and have the skill slots open for another tier-three skill, I can look into it more. Keep in mind, though, that a higher tier of skill might not contain all of the effects of the combined lower-tier skills. That’s true of [Resistance], but it might not always be the case.”

“Really? It might lose some of the properties of the lower tier skills?” Cayden asked.

“Possibly. We obviously won’t know until you get offered the skill, but I know of at least two tier-two skills that aren’t able to produce the same effects as their tier-one constituent skills– that’s the reason the system offers you the choice to combine the skills rather than just combining them automatically. If a skill loses effects, though, it will gain something else just as or more powerful to replace it, so combining will usually be worth it. Also, don’t expect this to be a quick process. Like [Resistance], we might have to fiddle around to find the combinations that work.”

“Yeah, that makes sense,” Cayden agreed with a resigned sigh. That was part of the reason he had wanted to get started planning out the skill as soon as possible.

It had taken two years for him to get the [Resistance] skill. Hopefully, this new skill wouldn’t take quite as long.

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Splitting the loot with Andy took a bit longer than expected. The brothers hadn’t come, as they were needed at the shop and technically weren’t adventurers. Which would have been fine, except it brought to light an issue none of the temporary teammates had noticed.

The brothers weren’t adventurers.

The notice Elise and Cayden had created had been for an adventuring team, and it was completely fine for Andy to bring along non-adventurers as part of her ‘team’, but the payout had been for a normal guild split of even shares. But the guild split only applied to those within the guild.

Normally, payout was easy enough to do: administrated by a guild affiliate, they would submit all of the loot to be appraised and the affiliate would let them know what the loot was worth and then buy whatever they wanted to sell to the guild. The problem was, in the eyes of the guild, there had only been three adventurers involved in the delve, and any split administered by the guild would be separated that way.

Luckily for the siblings, neither Cayden nor Elise had any intentions of taking advantage of the mistake. But it meant they had to do the splitting themselves after they finished dealing with the affiliate and selling the experience crystals.

Elise bought out the enchanted necklace using her one-fifth share, some of her saved-up coin, and about half of Cayden’s share. Cayden had originally been planning on keeping some of the experience crystals to level himself up with, as it was much cheaper to use the crystals they’d harvested than to sell and then buy new crystals from another source, but with only half of his expected share, he decided to instead convert it all to coin.

Even with only half of his share, he was now richer than he had ever been in either of his lives. If he lived frugally, he expected he’d be able to survive for over a year with what he’d earned on the delve, which would let him commit his full portion of loot from future delves to leveling.

Of course, he had no plans to live completely frugally. Sessions with Diedrich and the cat beastkin adventurer weren’t cheap, but the lessons learned would be worth it, especially if he could directly translate those lessons into increases in his skills. Plus, he’d seen a few other notices on the board that offered training for acquiring certain general skills, which, after his talk with Elise, seemed like it might be a good place to fish for information.

But before he did any of that, they had another errand to accomplish at the guild. Cayden still wasn’t at his best, but he didn’t want to waste any time waiting for their next opportunity to delve: it was time to find a new team.

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