Parson is already Attuned to the 4th Arkentool

[Sollaira]

I'm assuming this has been brought up but haven't seen anything like this mentioned, but isn't the calc sleave Parson have the 4th Arkentool?

We know it's an artifact and not a magic item from book 1, and from the summer updates we know how powerful it is.

Since in this world the future is not predetermined (we know this because there was a chance other than 0% or 100% that giving up calculations for knowledge about what happened and the final seige of GK) it's not a perfect predictamancer tool - it doesn't give a definite future, only probabilities of futures, the calculator still knows all possible futures and make make decisions based on that.

Parson can calculate every time he makes any tactical decision whether or not it will turn out to be a good one - how is this not imba to the point of it having to be a 4th arkentool?

[drachefly]

Because it's not rendered in 3d, it's not an arkentool.

[Berserkas]

...huh.

[Wayne]

Parson is the 4th Arkentool.

Whoa.

I really have no idea. I've been wondering if the hammer would be attuned to Parson. A warlord-leader who commanded the dragons of the sky...and a lot more, given how much better tools work when you're attuned.

I see the pages and pages of discussion on this board, I prefer to just sit back and enjoy. Well, and be frustrated there aren't 10 new pages up every day.

[wrecan]

[speculation]The Arkentool is the Arkensword buried beneath the ruins of old FAQ, where King Banhammer beat it into a plowshare. In this form, the Arkentool grants game-breaking benefits for resource management. It also allows the Ruler to pop casters by choice, which is why FAQ had so many casters. Jillian will find it, attune to it, and beat it back into a sword. In sword-form, it allows the ruler to pop warlords at reduced cost, and as a weapon it can cut through almost anything, including city walls, fortifications, hex barriers, and g-strings. Parson never attunes to an Arkentool, but in the final book of the series, manages to defeat all four Arkentool wielders (Jillian, Wanda, Stanley, and Charlie), who have improbably teamed up together. To do so, Janis provides him another copy of the Summon Perfect Warlord spell, which Jack and Maggie link up to use to summon his friends from stupid-world.[/speculation]

[Smoker]

The bracer cant actually do anything on its own.

Remember that the bracer needs Parsons Earth calculator watch slotted in for it to fuction. All the bracer brings to the party is some extra mathamancy which interfaces with the existing device.

And unless all batteries refresh at dawn...

[the_tick_rules]

Parson and his bracer weren't made by the titans.

[TokraZeno]

[speculation]The Arkentool is the Arkensword buried beneath the ruins of old FAQ, where King Banhammer beat it into a plowshare. In this form, the Arkentool grants game-breaking benefits for resource management. It also allows the Ruler to pop casters by choice, which is why FAQ had so many casters. Jillian will find it, attune to it, and beat it back into a sword. In sword-form, it allows the ruler to pop warlords at reduced cost, and as a weapon it can cut through almost anything, including city walls, fortifications, hex barriers, and g-strings. Parson never attunes to an Arkentool, but in the final book of the series, manages to defeat all four Arkentool wielders (Jillian, Wanda, Stanley, and Charlie), who have improbably teamed up together. To do so, Janis provides him another copy of the Summon Perfect Warlord spell, which Jack and Maggie link up to use to summon his friends from stupid-world.[/speculation]

I like the resource management part. If banhammer truely thought that it could be a bubble kingdom then they must have used something like the self sufficiency hacks parson keeps looking into. Although, if that were the case chances are Jillian, Jack, Wanda or the Predictamancer (whose name I've forgotten) would know about it.

[Thunder]

well it wasn't completely successful hack, they did have to send out Jillian to raise funds every once in a while.

although im still unsure as to why its considered a hack of any sort. a city generates schmuckers on its own or with the aid of farms etc. so as long as a side has a greater net generation in all its cities than its total unit upkeep then its sustainable. any side could become self sustainable it just needs not produce units above this limit.

i know sides dont because they prefer to be stronger then the rest of the sides, but my point is just that if they wanted to they could

[Sixty]

I thought Sizemore said he wasn't sure whether it was an artifact or a magic item?

[Beeskee]

although im still unsure as to why its considered a hack of any sort. a city generates schmuckers on its own or with the aid of farms etc. so as long as a side has a greater net generation in all its cities than its total unit upkeep then its sustainable. any side could become self sustainable it just needs not produce units above this limit.

The problem is, if one side gets aggressive, then that plan fails. From what we've seen, to "properly" defend a city takes at least as much schmuckers as it generates, possibly more, in unit upkeep. So you either end up with a bunch of reasonably well-defended cities and can't spare many units for an attack force, or a bunch of poorly defended interior cities which are still vulnerable to attack from a mostly-flying force and a few well-defended cities which any smart opponent will go around to reach the weak spots. Also it isn't just about the cities, there's a perimeter that needs to be maintained and defended too, which takes more units even if it's just "token stacks" like Jetstone had around their capital.

You can form alliances and direct your strongest defenses towards the non-members, but the alliance may occasionally need to form a big army like the RCC, which probably ends up costing whatever you were saving with that strategy.

All the sides where we've seen the financial aspect of them, except for GK, seem to be poor. GK had half a mil spare at the start of the comic, spent 350k on the Summon Perfect Warlord scroll, and then Parson's Volcano Plan refreshed the mines for GK. Jetstone and Transylvito are broke. FAQ was broke but got funding from Transylvito and perhaps Charlie. We don't know the state of Charlie's finances, but it seems like he spends almost as much as he makes.



Back on topic, I think the bracer is an artifact (not made by mortals) but I don't think it's an Arkentool. I'm not 100% sure on that though, but we didn't see a sparkly attunement thingy when Parson got it, and we saw that for Wanda's attunement, and possibly Stanley's in a flashback.

[the_tick_rules]

I looked it up on the wiki and the comic it refrenced. He said it might be. The bracer appeared via the stupid meals through the summoning spell but the magic item or artifact depends on where did they come from? If it was a spell effect from the summoning spell or a gift from magic kingdom or something like that it's a magic item. If the titans sent it it's an artifact. It's certianly powerful and rare enough to possibly be an artifact, but we don't know for sure.

[Beeskee]

I thought whether something is a magic item or artifact depends on who made it, if it's made by mortals then it's a magic item, otherwise it's an artifact.

The glossary says there are ruins which occasionally pop magical items that get classified as artifacts due to not being made by mortals. It's assumed they are made by the Titans, like almost everything else in Erfworld everything just gets attributed to them. But they're not Arkentools, just artifacts.

I don't know how it works when it's an item indirectly made though. If a caster makes a scroll that somehow summons or creates an item, is that a magic item or an artifact? I guess it depends. Probably a simple "make an item" scroll would make something classified as a magic item, while something more complex like the Summon Perfect Warlord (with battle accessories that really light up!) might be a bit more vague.


Regardless of whether it's a magic item or artifact, I don't think the bracer is an Arkentool.


The difference between magic item and artifact may be largely immaterial. It only stands out at all because Sizemore corrects Parson about it when they're talking about magic items and artifacts way back in the beginning of book 1. Parson wants to learn about magic, so presumably Sizemore wants to make sure he learns the correct way to describe magical items. But then they get the bracer dumped in their lap and it confuses them both.

[sleepymancer]

Parson and his bracer weren't made by the titans.

Are you sure... I mean, yeah, fair enough the bracer may have popped itself, but how can we be sure about Parson? I mean, he's from out reality and really all our arguments for where are reality came from are a) teleological (they begin with what we have and proceed from there) and b) are faith-based (I include faith in empirical methodology and rationalism as being appropriate tools in that).

So, if the Titans needed Parson as the perfect warlord and needed him to have training in an earth-like situation, did the Titan's create our universe, galaxy, solar-system, Earth and geopolitical histories and cultures to fulfil that requirement? (The existence of dinosaur fossils would be the Titan's way of testing us to see if we can design cool mounts for units).

From a narrative-process analysis that is patently true as Rob = Titan, and the "earth" in book 1 that Parson comes from is a literary representation of the one we live on. But what if the whole thing were just really true, lol. Imagine, Rob thinks he's making a story, but really he's subconsciously tapping into the titanic nature of reality.

Someone better call the pope - we need his hat!

Spoiler: show

Sorry, I don't actually believe this. (What do you mean, you already realised?). I'm just putting a lot of energy into not writing the conclusion for a presentation...