Affinities ranked

Mewtwo

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Hey everyone,

Affinities have come out recently (as of me writing this anyway) and have all sorts of benefits in all sorts of directions. For those among you who, like me, have/had trouble picking your Affinity, I've compiled this list of my thoughts and conclusions which have led me to decide what Affinities are how useful.

Note that the list is not exhaustive and assumes a lot of stuff! I’ll try to point out everything as I do it to help you form your own opinion. As Jeff put it in the Discord: “An argument could be made that, because Essence, Rank Cap, and Focus are capped, and Coin is not, that the Discount Affinities are the worst while Lucky, Specialized, Gifted, and the Affinities that raise your various Rank Caps are the best. But it's all super subjective anyway. As was my intent.” In short, every Affinity has its place!

THE BASICS

Here’s the facts as we know them in the current multerran ruleset:

Coin is earned through the 500 coin payout, claimed once a week. You also ‘generate’ coin (not obtained from other players in Transactions) through quest rewards and event bonuses.

Affinities that affect Coin can be shared via a quest where both players must write 500+ words. To ‘share’ an Affinity, the player who owns the Affinity does the purchase and collects their payment from the buyer. It is not possible to ‘pool’ your Affinities together in one purchase.


Assumptions are as follows:

-Subjective reasons à la “this Affinity fits my character’s personality/canon content” are disregarded. It’s all minmaxing from here on, to get the biggest bang for your buck!

-You only have one Affinity. Many of us will never get to the level where you can pick two, let alone three Affinities. Plus, Affinities do not directly stack, though one may indirectly boost another, such as Persuasive and Inspiring. It is, however, possible to pool affinities together to a certain degree. Calculating these potential benefits goes beyond the scope of this list.

-Everyone will trade. Nobody has a subjective IC or OOC reason not to trade with you (e.g. their character has beef with yours, or they’re lone wolfing) and you can meet them on whatever planet you’re needed.


We’re also taking the following into account regarding specific Affinities:

-Lucky, Formidable, Influential and Beloved/Fearsome are not included in this list as they can not be quantified: they are personal bonuses and don’t give you a tangible Coin or Essence discount (not to say they’re not useful, though!). I might correct this list once we find out what Beloved/Fearsome does, if it’s something quantifiable.

-Immortal only has its “1 OOC day before reviving your character” counted as the “potential damage reduction” cannot really be quantified, and I’m assuming that you always either use the Affinity or do a revival quest if you can’t wait the 1 day, and never buy a Revival Consumable.

-Exceptional only has its 25% personal discount counted (not the ‘internal reservoir’ part).

-Inspiring only has its +1 cap and -50% casualties counted (not the ability to buff minions).

-Gifted is a discount of up to 80% on your Master Skills. For calculations, the assumption is that you always use Gifted and buy 5 skills at the desired rank, for the price of 1.



With all that in mind, here’s all the Affinities we’ll discuss, neatly compiled as a list.

AffinityWhat it doesShareable?Notes
Thrifty50% Discount (Consumables)Yes
Enterprising25% Discount (Bases)Yes
Persuasive25% Discount (Minions)Yes
ImmortalQuick revivalNo
Inspiring (Cap)+1 Minion Rank CapYesGoes with Inspiring (Deaths)
Inspiring (Deaths)-50% CasualtiesNoGoes with Inspiring (Cap)
Gifted80% Discount (Skills), +1 Skills rank capNoDiscount assumes you always purchase 5 skills
Exceptional25% Discount
(Consumables)
NoDoesn’t stack with Thrifty
ExtravagantSize 9 bases, +1 base rank capYes
Specialized1 Modifier is freeNo

DISCUSSION

Thrifty, Enterprising and Persuasive are fairly straightforward. They give you a flat discount on all Coin purchases in their respective field.

Immortal saves you 2000 Coin every time you die, assuming that you are lazy or in a hurry and don’t write revival quests. You could probably use that one OOC day to write a bigger post for when you come back.

Inspiring has two effects. The Minion Rank Cap is shareable: you can buy higher-rank Effects for a minion army that belongs to someone else. The reduced casualties, however, apply only to your Minions. 50% reduced Casualties is pretty lovely though: something that would otherwise wipe out everyone (say, you pick an unequal fight with an Arbiter) will ‘only’ reduce those forces by 50%, keeping them operable and cutting your costs for replenishing lost Minions in half.

Gifted is effectively a 80% Discount if you use it effectively, which isn’t all that hard. Couple that with the +1 rank cap to skills and you could become a beyond-legendary luminary in several fields by the time you reach max level, quite cheaply.

Exceptional’s effect is a bit more focused on customizing your character. If you are minmaxing, Thrifty is strictly better because it is both a bigger discount and can be used to benefit others.

Extravagant has no direct benefit like the Discount effects, but instead adds one rung to how big you can go with your bases in size and in power. It benefits not only the megalomaniacs among us but can also be used to help other people, and you could ask for a little commission for your trouble.

Specialized is hard to quantify because of the numerous possibilities offered depending on what Modifier you pick, but Ongoing is probably the best pick because of how well it goes with almost everything (Damage, Protection, Healing, Flight…) and how it is the most expensive Modifier along with Indirect, which is more situational. It is also hard to compare given that it’s a “Discount” on your Essence, not your Coin.

Without further ado, here’s my…

RANKINGS

Ninth and last place is Gifted. It’s by no means a bad Affinity to pick, but it benefits only you and it cheapens an already very cheap purchase - Master Skills cost 50 Essence per Rank, something that most other Effects would need several modifiers tacked on to to match it. Plus, many people will not be as interested in buying as many skills as to make Gifted worth getting.


Eighth place, second worst, is Immortal. While yes, saving 2000 Coin every time you die (or arranging and writing out a 5000 word Quest) isn’t half bad, the savings do not measure up. Taking the extreme case in which staff hold an event quarterly as was announced, you participate and die every time, plus you die say twice per year for misc. reasons, that’s six deaths, or 12000 Coin saved through Immortal, every year (or 24 weeks of weekly Coin payouts if you write regularly). That is not a lot of Coin despite the sound of it, as you can earn a lot through quests and event bonuses. You are also much more likely to spend five-figure amounts of Coin on big Base or Minion purchases, where a Discount would come in handier in the long run and benefit other players. Most players will also die less often than six times and thus have fewer costs.
Finally, you are effectively all but eliminating a potential plot-hook by having your character be able to return from the dead without trouble. Recovering from death, maybe under the thrall of a necromancer, in a high-security laboratory made to study you, forced to pay back a big favor to the doctor that brought you back etc. are all marvelous storylines that fit snug into a 5000 word quest. Granted, this last bit is my subjective opinion, and some characters may absolutely find this to fit with their character.


Seventh best is Exceptional. As I noted above, Exceptional is not really a minmaxing Affinity because Thrifty is better, and wanting the freedom to flavour your Consumables as internalized resources rather than held objects is nothing exceptional - pun intended. You could just flavour your Essence-based Ability purchases as something internal for the most part!


Sixth best is Thrifty. While better than Exceptional, the Affinity simply doesn’t measure up to the ones above, due to its limited utility. Even with a 50% Discount, twice as high as Persuasive and Enterprising, it’s lacking.
Historically, Consumable purchases have been very low compared to Base and Minion purchases (28.965 compared to 156.535 and 93.125 respectively). It may be useful to you if you or someone you play with intend to rely strongly on Consumables, but even as a ‘merchant’ character you will not get a lot of people wanting to use your services, because Consumables are usually fairly cheap anyway. On the other hand, precisely the lack of people interested in using Thrifty may mean you’ll have less competition!


Fifth best is Inspiring. This one’s hard, and Inspiring is actually a fairly good Affinity if you intend on playing a warlord sort of character that has many Minions fighting for or with them. Fights will usually entail casualties, and the 50% discount on replenishing them is pretty juicy. In many cases you will have one or two groups of Minions, one with you and one guarding your Base, so it is more likely that one group will repeatedly suffer injuries than that you’ll buy more and more new ones. This makes Inspiring ideal if you want a Minion-based Affinity for personal use, with the ability to buy slightly more powerful Minions for others as a less notable but still nice-to-have backup.


Fourth best is Extravagant. While at the moment the Affinity is not going to see much use, as players get rich and powerful characters and new factions with big bases rise to power (especially now that a faction system and base modules have been introduced) big bases are eventually going to become more commonplace. Extravagant will of course benefit you too if you intend on lording over a massive domain with a base occupying roughly the same area as New Orleans, but if you can help others by buying a big base for them and collecting a commission for it, you can make a small profit. The raised Rank cap will also be interesting many established factions that need to fortify their bases, allowing you to cash in there as well.


Third place goes to Persuasive. A flat 25% Discount on Minions is less “adventurous” than the other items on this list, but Minions have historically had a large amount of Coin spent on purchasing them (93.125 Coin as of 25.08.2020) with the largest purchase amounting to 17.600 Coin in one go. A 25% Discount would have saved the buyer 4.400 Coin. And while granted, this is the best case, Minions can quickly get expensive when the Mob modifier is used, and thus individuals and factions will be very interested in acquiring or bolstering their forces, making characters with Persuasive very desired.


First/Second place is shared between Enterprising and Specialized. These two are hard to compare, but in my opinion they outrank other Affinities by a fair margin.

Enterprising, like Persuasive, is not a very adventurous or special Affinity applying a flat 25% Discount, but given that a base, even slightly damaged, is inoperable until repaired (unlike Minions who just have their combat effectiveness cut by a percentage), and that with the eventual rise of Size 9 bases the Coin cost to outfit and maintain these bases will skyrocket, players with Enterprising will be in high demand.

Specialized is a personal-use Affinity without utility to anyone but its wielder, but it makes up for it by being super useful to almost every character. As noted before, Ongoing is probably the best modifier to get Specialized with due to the immense savings potential on nearly every Ability you’ll want, be it combat or utility, but other Modifiers such as Ranged, Indirect or Triggered may also be interesting. Its only downside is that in the long run you’ll have enough Essence to get what you want without needing Specialized, but even that is relatively negligible given that many characters will not get to that point anyway.


OTHER NOTES

If you have the opportunity to work together with others or get a second and third Affinity, here’s some further notes on combining Affinities

-Extravagant can be used to purchase a Size 9 Base “barebones”, without anything in it. This will set you back 9000 Coins (6750 with Enterprising). A second person with Enterprising can then purchase the Effects, Abilities and other contents at their Rank Cap, to add to that base. For maximum Coin-saving, the second person can buy a Size 8 base (6000 Coins), then the first upgrades it to Size 9 (1000 Coins) and the second person adds stuff as desired. This will save you a further 2000 Coins but will require more quests. Enterprising and Extravagant in general work very well together if you can get both on one character.

-If you are in a faction, you can entrust Minion handling to a (trustworthy!) member of your faction who has Inspiring, and Persuasive too if possible. The effect of -50% Casualties is effectively a 50% Discount if you always replenish your defeated Minions. Minions will also have a higher Rank Cap.

-Inspiring effectively stacks with Persuasive if you can get both Affinities on one character, and you always replenish your defeated Minions. This amounts to a 62,5% total Discount: if your minions would be wiped out completely, they will instead suffer half their number in Casualties, which you get a 25% Discount for when replenishing them.

In case it interests you, I've compiled the numbers on people's purchases with Coin from the Counting House. You can view this list here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1EPvjNDhlWJl9KoYCQUkQg26GdEo030OLtl_kGaS9gs4/edit?usp=sharing
 

Saryuu Evan

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Gifted will always hold first place in my heart.

I actually like Gifted, despite of what people say about it, because it's actually really handy to have if you kinda think about it. Saryuu himself falls in the category because he's essentially a jack-of-trades type of character that's a combination of different things and Skills are essentially a half of his character ordeal. Now, imagine being able to buy that skillset of five with a ribbon tightly wrapped in a bow for the price of a single skill plus a bonus on Skill Cap and it's hard to turn down especially when you're saving Essence/Coin.

There are even missions that require a certain skillset and that's another thing that's nifty as well but then again, it's not just missions because skillsets are multipurpose. Just gotta find your sthick and go with it!
 

Rebecca Chambers

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I actually like Gifted, despite of what people say about it, because it's actually really handy to have if you kinda think about it. Saryuu himself falls in the category because he's essentially a jack-of-trades type of character that's a combination of different things and Skills are essentially a half of his character ordeal. Now, imagine being able to buy that skillset of five with a ribbon tightly wrapped in a bow for the price of a single skill plus a bonus on Skill Cap and it's hard to turn down especially when you're saving Essence/Coin.

There are even missions that require a certain skillset and that's another thing that's nifty as well but then again, it's not just missions because skillsets are multipurpose. Just gotta find your sthick and go with it!

Heck yes. I bought Arthur so many skills with this, and Liv, too! It’s great because Doc Ock is all science/education while Arthur is more practical skills, like camping and foraging and riding horses. It just gives me a ton of agency in my writing that I love, and it’s backed up by a shiny skill tree.
 

Mewtwo

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Yeah, like I said Gifted is the least useful if you want to minmax, but none of the Affinities are objectively "bad". I'm semi considering to get the Affinity for Koa as her second option, but that's still in the far future.

To a character who aims to have a large amount of skills, Gifted is absolutely worth getting, and ultimately it comes down to writing what you want to write :)

Also I only just noticed that the table code is brokeded, no idea why that happened since it was fine when I put in the code in the thread.
 
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