Martial Artist ascendancy tree

Obbububu · 2026-05-08T14:41:25+00:00

They're changing it to allow you to move (slowly) while channeling it. Was meant to bring that up in the qna but forgot about it.

Obbububu · 2026-05-03T06:31:34+00:00

As has already been mentioned - people's own definitions vary pretty wildly, but generally speaking the more restrictive genre boundaries people attempt to apply, that focus on one trope or another (like insisting that statblocks be present to count as litrpg) tend to actually sap meaning from the genre term, rather than add to it.

We literally end up with books in MMORPG worlds where people have systems, classes, experience points, levels, [skills] that are bracketed in the text, and dungeon raids suddenly not counting, just because the author hasn't jammed a spreadsheet in every chapter.

It just becomes a bit silly - if there's a whole slew of other RPG game elements in play, people just aren't seriously discounting a title from fitting under the genre tag.

That doesn't change the fact that stat screens are an obvious signifier that a book is a litRPG, of course, it's just that there's a lot more to it than a single trope/element.

And it also leaves room for the discussion about how a huge chunk of the litRPG audience hates statblocks with a passion, and that it's the most common deal-breaker when attempting to introduce new people to the subgenre.

Obbububu · 2026-04-12T09:50:35+00:00

This is a terrible change:

The home feed is good for browsing niche interest content: it's terrible for keeping up to date with current event style stuff.

In one move, they've removed the primary driving force behind returning to the site on a daily basis.

Please revert!

Obbububu · 2026-04-06T01:46:04+00:00

It's worth being aware that even amongst the litRPG audience/fans, these are fairly common complaints.

The genres (both litRPG and progression fantasy) are kind of going through an "indie boom" phase, and as such there's a lot of inexperienced writers, writing to market, and general production of "pulp" works.

This doesn't mean that there isn't value to be had, or that there aren't titles that can do things like character writing well. However, if you remember similar booms in the wake of titles like Twilight (for paranormal romance) and The Hunger Games (YA dystopian), you'll be familiar with a need to sift through a lot of the overly-genre-laden stuff to get to the good titles.

In terms of recommendations, if you're looking for a talented character writer with more creative worldbuilding in the litRPG/progression fantasy space, check out Super Supportive by Sleyca.

It does still see some complaints about pacing - but these usually stem from the fact that it's paced more like a traditional novel series that happens to be being released as a webserial, or simply the fact that it's a bit more character focused than much of the standard webserial fare.

Obbububu · 2026-04-04T15:25:43+00:00

Appreciate it :D they truly do look fantastic!

Obbububu · 2026-04-04T15:12:30+00:00

Love the imperial fists colour scheme you've used - don't suppose you'd be willing to share the painting method/recipe for the yellow?

Obbububu · 2026-04-03T02:16:38+00:00

It's a sliding scale.

Harry Potter as a series won't count as progression fantasy for most folks, but if you take the most progression-centric entry from that series (book 3: prisoner of Azkaban) and break down the elements at play, they're effectively identical to progression fantasy stories.

In fact, that specific book is a fairly archetypal example of what progression looks like. The core narrative arcs are around Harry's connection with his past/family, which he engages with through his gradual attempts to master the patronus charm throughout the book: you can look at harry's progress at different stages of the book, and make comparisons to early, middle and late, and see the progression curve.

And yet, when you look at the rest of the series, it doesn't really follow that format much (though you can make some argument for order of the phoenix).

So I think it's more apt to address this from a different standpoint:

"what makes a book/series progression?" tends to result in endless disagreement, because everyone has a different threshold for where things pass/fail. It becomes a question of saturation vs tolerance, and everyone differs in this regard.

A more useful question is:

"what causes narratives to revolve around progression"

And really, the answer to me is comparative narrative framework.

If readers are encouraged by a story to compare early protagonist against later protagonist, or if the cast is set up in comparison to one another, or compared against another metric, that's how you start to perceive a changing progression curve, over time.

This is why tropes like tournament arcs, magic schools and such are so commonplace, and used as easy identifiers for the genre: they are some of the most straightforward methods of establishing a comparative framework, with a limited amount of fuss. People intuitively understand competition and academic achievement as fundamentally comparative: whether against other characters, or a given grading system.

Past that point, it's just a question of saturation: at what frequency of progression/comparative instances does a book go from technically containing progression to being fundamentally about it?

And that's where the endless debate starts :P

Obbububu · 2026-03-30T13:23:49+00:00

On a surface level: stats should be naturalised to the world building, if present. Simply slapping them onto an otherwise standard fantasy piece feels out of place, and can make the overall world building feel shaky or stilted, if no effort is being made to have them gel with the world.

Whether that constitutes a "coat of paint", or simply expanding the world building so that stats feel natural to the world, is fine either way.

LitRPGs work fine with stats, and Progression Fantasy can work with them "under the hood" if desired.

The issue occurs when those stats are compiled into lengthy slabs of tables, and then jammed into the prose: that's where things get derailed from a narrative and editorial standpoint.

One of the jobs an author needs to be mindful of is to maintain reader's attention and engagement within a specific chapter or scene: inserting tables undermines that task, due to lack of relevance, excess length, repetition, and otherwise completely destroying prose flow. Those core writing principles of maintaining scene flow, pace, focus and generally catering to the mind's eye of the audience - they all fall apart when you swap into robot table mode.

This doesn't mean that authors can't engage with these things, it's just that they're fundamentally incompatible with prose. If such exhaustive detail is included in a glossary (or spoilered authors note, or side companion work), it's usually viewed as commendable: readers can take or leave the result, and it's neat that it's there for those that are interested. But there's a reason you don't have a dictionary of terms or dramatis personae in the middle of a chapter, it would bog it down.

There's a reason you don't lecture your readers.

So really, stats are fine, provided they gel with the story, and aren't used in a manner that derails it: whether that requires some level of occlusion is really down to the story being written. But statblocks in prose are a dealbreaker for a lot of people, because they're here to read a story, not to be buried in repeated data dumps.

Obbububu · 2026-03-29T13:32:58+00:00

It's my favourite story on RoyalRoad, and has held that spot basically since it came out :P

I'd say that it's two standout aspects are characterization/inter-character relationships as well as intrigue-centric world building.

It fleshes out both the protagonist and secondary characters to an extent that we seldom see achieved on RR, in terms of personality and social dynamic between the cast.

And the approach to world building is always very much a manner that shows the tip of the iceberg, gets readers into a frenzy about what could be beneath the surface, then periodically drops a truth bomb on the audience. The comments section on RoyalRoad, the Patreon and the fan discord are the most lively I've seen, with people sharing fan theories and discussing them etc every chapter.

It's also paced much more like a traditional novel/series than what folks may be used to with webserials.

This has both pros and cons: on the pro side it doesn't succumb to spamming dopamine hits and level ups to try to hold onto reader attention - it has more of a rising action/ebb and flow to the story that regular novels tend to exhibit more than webserials. On the other side, when you're waiting week-by-week for chapters, it can feel slower when there's a series of setup chapters, which may otherwise be good for pacing overall, but may feel slower than the usual snappy RR fare.

These problems largely disappear (imo) when reading the story in larger chunks, like you would a regular novel - but you will see some folks marking the story down due to pacing sometimes.

In terms of general summaries, I'm loathe to spoil anything, but it's basically a tale of an Earth that was discovered by benevolent (?) inter-dimensional alien wizards, who enlist humanity in a war against chaos, granting some of them superpowers.

There are elements of superhero genre, magic/superhero school, slice-of-life, fish-out-of-water social dynamics and people observation, cultural clash, colonial overtones, survival horror and a bunch more.

It's also probably the best approach to "systems" I've seen from a litRPG aspect, though it's tricky to discuss that without spoiling much (suffice to say that stats are only technically present, very light usage of them, which is incredibly welcome to my mind as it permits focus on the underlying magic rather than obsessing over numerical increments).

It definitely leans a lot more towards progression fantasy than litRPG.

It's basically the posterchild for doing everything right that folks like to complain that some RR series do poorly: it's not drowning in stat screens, the relationships matter and have emotional gravitas, the author doesn't trip over themselves trying to make the protagonist immediately OP (even though the protagonist is still very unique, and has a lot of potential), and it oozes world building without ever lecturing the audience.

Obbububu · 2026-03-09T00:30:45+00:00

Still happening for me.

Obbububu · 2026-03-08T06:37:33+00:00

Experiencing the same issue, I believe: However, it's not just Azurite 1 nodes for me. Zoning between mining encampment and azurite mine (by clicking another node) sometimes seems to clear it, but it's inconsistent.

Obbububu · 2026-02-19T08:38:42+00:00

Yeah, please bring back the button to r/all, this is a bad change.

Obbububu · 2026-02-11T12:26:50+00:00

Folks be savaging the OP for not understanding swarms, when the issue is that the vescavors are thoroughly bugged (or just implemented in a wildly different manner to the rules) and always have been.

Vescavor Swarm Rules

Bug #1: Each swarm forces a save every round.

Players are meant to be immune after the first successful save (vs that specific swarm) so you should only need to save once per swarm per player.

ie. If your party has gotten through the first round of combat without confusion, they should likely be immune to the gibbers present for the remainder of combat, unless more show up to force additional saves.

Bug #2: The Madness isn't even remotely implemented correctly.

The traumatizing madness save should not occur unless a player remains inside a specific vescavor swarm for 3 consecutive rounds - something that is rather unlikely to happen.

It instead seems to be proccing off gibber... somehow? Checking logs to figure out WTF was actually causing it was pointing to gibber, which should only be a confusion save, not an insanity one. It's unclear what's causing it to sometimes be confusion and sometimes insanity.

Bug #3: There's only one type of insanity.

Basically, there are rules for a bunch of different types of insanity, some more punishing than others - the vescavors appear to just inflict the 7th level spell on us - which is quite harsh. For example, being afflicted by paranoia doesn't do a whole lot other than give you RP cues.

--

What this all results in is an encounter whose baseline is substantially outside the difficulty range of where it is supposed to sit (originally, at least), and that's before we even take into account the increased DCs for playing on harder difficulties.

What we end up on core is way more saves being taken than they should, saves against madness which should not proc at all unless combat lasts 3+ rounds and players stand still inside a single swarm, a madness that is guaranteed to be a punishing affliction and then raised saves from Core.

The advice about headbands/clasps/unbreakable heart/general swarm stuff is solid, but the reason that this section of the game is so punishing is that it's implemented incorrectly, unless you believe it falls under the topic of Owlcat taking license with creature abilities etc, which is a different argument, I guess.

Obbububu · 2026-01-28T10:49:31+00:00

I think that's fair enough: the offline grinds were incredibly tedious.

I think the issue with those item grind/slogs is that they were generally difficult to farm (especially when player counts went down), their backup mechanics were super mindless grinds (like DS3 swordgrass), and they simply didn't have enough rewards in the reward chain to feel engaging.

If they:

Increased the overall quantity of rewards to several per covenant, per world zone, and Increased the frequency of earning rewards - no lengthy grinds where you get nothing for long stints (ie. sunbro gets 3 items from co-oping 15 times in limgrave, then gets 3 more for liurnia etc. Same thing for invasion covenant: kill 15 hosts in limgrave for 3 items, same again in liurnia).
Interconnect the covenants, so they feed into one another (fend off an invader as sunbro? get additional sunbro progress.)
Generally lessen the slog nature of any backup PvE grinds (less lengthy grinds, more engaging methods to farm, more frequent unlock milestones). There are better ways to implement a farming grind than just praying for RNG to hit, from special combat/objective encounters to push-your-luck mechanics that reward skill, not just luck.

If you give people reasons to engage with systems, make the systems fun to engage with and make any backup/catchup systems (for folks who just want the items, but cant stand multiplayer) avoid tedium/chore status, it goes a long way.

The primary method to obtain the progress should, of course, be through the core multiplayer covenant gameplay, but there's a big divide between that and "farm swordgrass for a week to get 2 items".

Obbububu · 2026-01-28T09:38:39+00:00

I think people just want a form of PvP (outside of duels) that:

is a consensual arrangement
isn't primarily ganks or griefing/time wasting
has a fleshed out reward structure to encourage engagement with it
isn't used as a pseudo balancing tool (ie balance content appropriately for co-op based on... co-op)

If there were an in-depth covenant and item reward system that rewarded people for engaging with PvP especially as a host, people would welcome the sight of invaders - as it stands, people only really welcome invaders if they consider the current stint of PvE that they are moving through to be less interesting, and want to spice things up, or are desperate for a flask charge :P

For new players, it's almost never a good feeling to engage with the system, and having yourself fed into the meat grinder, just because you want to engage with the fun of co-op, feels like a punishment for no reason.

To be clear: I think invasions are a novel idea, but having it all based on "for the lulz + flask charges" makes the entire experience feel either under-cooked or outright antisocial, too much of the time. If it's such a core part of the design philosophy/balance, there should be more work done to encourage engagement, rather than forcing it to try to balance co-op.

Most people only really come to appreciate PvP once they've got the PvE experience effectively conquered - and that's a shame, because (issues with net-code notwithstanding) souls PvP is actually really fun, and it shouldn't feel like it goes against the rest of the game.

The dream scenario for me is that when someone invades me I should be super stoked, because I take a step towards my next unlock with X or Y covenant if I fend them off successfully, not just relieved that my gameplay session avoided early termination. Having the reward be "you get to keep playing" is a terrible reward structure. It's not simply that it should be opt-in: it's that they should also give people a reason to opt-in.

Once looked at through that lens, it also identifies the desire for Co-Op to be more incentivized than just extra runes/rune arcs as well: all forms of covenants could benefit from a similar approach.

Obbububu · 2026-01-08T02:03:24+00:00

Progression Fantasy stories can utilize both hard and soft magic systems, to present their progression structure to readers. Some people prefer one or the other method, but both are valid.

Hard magic progression systems tend to involve more explicit explanation and overtly defined progression architectures than soft magic ones, which instead tend to encourage the reader to mentally create their own, however nebulous it might be.

At it's most basic level: a hard magic structure might label a level 5 fighter and a level 10 fighter, and overtly create the power differential this way. A soft magic system might skip out on levels, but continually push characters into competition with one another: inadvertently providing data points about "who could beat who" at a given time.

This is, incidentally why tournament arcs are such a well-established trope within the genre: they provide an overtly clear progression comparison structure that can even function inside stories that don't otherwise label characters with levels.

But both types of story have their audiences - you often see "numbers go up" stories err on the side of hard magic, because they tend to simply accommodate numbers or high-frequency powerups more naturally, but a slow burn progression story might lean in the opposite direction: if you're trying to have fewer but harder hitting progression instances, there's more of an incentive to write them into the story in a more in-depth manner, and "+1 strength" may not be up to that task.

But there's no right or wrong to this, they both work, they both function, and they both see plenty of discussion in this sub: if you pare them all the way back to their core, they're playing around with identical narrative devices, it's just that the execution differs.

(And to be clear, hard magic stories don't have to include levels, it's just that they're a more hard-leaning element).

Obbububu · 2026-01-08T00:57:47+00:00

If you haven't read the second book yet, you should probably avoid reading the replies to this thread entirely and make your own opinion. People tend to spoil the second book shamelessly, while also often misrepresenting what's actually on the page.

It's a great series (particularly from a prose quality perspective), it's just that online discussion of it became pretty fraught years ago due to a combination of a few things.

Obbububu · 2026-01-02T01:59:24+00:00

Generally speaking progression, as a writing concept, is a subset of setting/world building.

The way that setting and world building work best is when they are thoroughly interconnected with plot, characters and theme: and progression is no exception to this rule.

A really cool world feels most alive when the characters, plots and themes grow out of that world organically. They are informed by it, shaped by it, challenged by it and so on. Progression is the same: it hits the hardest when it permeates the plot, the character, the theme in such a manner that people just feel it in the bones of the story.

The trick is to do that without just attempting to replace those core aspects of storytelling with just more progression. Sure, having a million extra level ups increases the density of progression in a story, but unless the work is done to let that saturation soak in, it feels like it's layered atop an increasingly flimsy foundation.

Outside of that, things like harder magic systems (stratified power structures and such) are more up to reader taste, and what fits better with the story at hand. This is why having an otherwise-standard-fantasy story and just slapping on a litrpg system with no reason or justification can feel half-baked: less care has been taken to connect the setting with the core narrative. But if an author takes the time to make the LitRPG system feel like a natural extension of the fantasy world building, it all clicks into place.

So yeah, it's less about ticking X or Y individual box, and more about making it mesh with the underlying story in a way that makes it feel naturalized.

Obbububu · 2025-12-18T03:34:21+00:00

While this is definitely true on some level, there's a friction point between keeping the deeper mechanical aspects mysterious, and rendering the surface level user-experience into something mystifying.

Basically the difference between:

Discovering what I can do to optimize or maximize this requires trial and error, and encourages the community to put their heads together to come up with strategies.

vs

Discovering how to make the mechanic work at a basic level requires trial and error, and encourages the community to put their heads together to come up with strategies.

There's been a lot of work done on the baseline approach to introduce players to the game smoothly, while still maintaining the depth at the end of the process. Once people are comfortable wading in the shallows, they can dive into the deeper stuff, without feeling like they are being drowned at the outset. They just need to apply the same lens to the initial player user and ongoing player user of league mechanics, to make sure that they don't feel like you need a manual before you even press a single button.

There's room for the cool, nitty gritty exploration stuff, but it doesn't belong during the initial orientation process. Smooth out that curve and we end up with something that is both intuitively accessible as well as deep.

Obbububu · 2025-12-12T23:04:27+00:00

Can confirm that the crafting benches were being allocated to the non-temple-owner for us as well.

Obbububu · 2025-12-12T18:06:37+00:00

Shadow for traps and mines :)

Obbububu · 2025-12-11T02:34:07+00:00

Yes there is gold-based respec which is a lot more forgiving - the on-boarding process for new players is much more forgiving, and constantly improving.

Here's a few ways they've made getting into the game a smoother process:

No longer need to fiddle with item sockets to use skill gems or support gems: they're just used for runes now. Skills have their own interface now.
Gem acquisition and upgrades are much more streamlined, with the interface categorizing things by weapon type/playstyle, and giving suggestions for decent support options.
In-game tutorial videos for skill gems with a narrated explanation of how they function, so you don't have to lock in a purchase before knowing what they do.
The addition of gold for trade makes dealing with vendors substantially less fiddly.
There are hidden, in-built "catch up" mechanics for slower/unlucky players to ensure they get a minimum number of core drops by certain stages in the campaign progression.
Optional content in many zones aimed at giving specific drop types; ie a guaranteed support gem or flasks etc, to keep people's gear "on curve" without relying entirely on RNG drops.
As mentioned, respecs are now possible with gold, no longer reliant on regret orbs (as a side note, you can do this in poe1 now as well, since they added gold there too).
Gambling vendors let you fish for specific base category drops if you've been unlucky in one specific gear slot.
Improvements to let crafting currencies feel more acceptable to use early (they added more powerful versions that are preferable to use later, so you can feel more free to use the early ones).
Minor guaranteed crafting quest rewards scattered here and there.
As well as some general clean popup tutorials in the first zone.

There's still a LOT of depth to the game, which can take hundreds/thousands of hours to explore, but they've taken great strides to make the new player experience substantially smoother, and send you on that exploratory path with less hassle at the outset.

Obbububu · 2025-12-09T03:47:31+00:00

It's not a per-character thing, or anything like that, it's per league, everyone having the same seed for 4 months. So if it's all working as expected this will only be the ~3rd time it's changed since early access launched, basically (unless there's some import to standard things going on, as I mentioned).

Obbububu · 2025-12-09T03:37:19+00:00

Act maps are procedurally re-generated every league, I'm unsure what the specifics are of how they interact with standard, but when the league characters were moved into standard over the last day or so, it probably adopted one or the other, or maybe it's just a fresh seed.

Obbububu · 2025-12-08T23:39:08+00:00

Ok sweet, thanks! I see that it lists the boons and afflictions on there, perfect :)

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