Posted by Persona59523 1 year ago Report

For the stat boosts, I'm gonna vote for health and stamina, and attribute boost will be all going to int. Give ourselves more spellcasting powers, assuming int is our spellcasting stat.

Now, assuming that the 75 gold, 9 silvers, and 1 copper is literally everything, not just the gold we earned via time-skip, and also assuming that we're working in 10s(nope, 100s actually, maybe), time for some shopping. First upgrades to equipment. Going to buy the silver garnet bracers as while they've don't give as much mana as the previous option, it still gives us a boost in mana, not to mention a boost in strength. And selling our old bracer(aka what we stole in the first place, if memories are correct), would result in us having 58 gold, 4 silvers, and 1 copper.

Now to replace our old robe with the rough manaweave robe, which would leave us with 48 gold, 9 silvers, and one copper. Now we're selling our staff and wand in order to buy the rimeround staff. Yes, we already know Ice-wall, but the reduced cost and the ability to make circles with it are very good. And after all the money exchange, we're left with 30 gold, 24 silvers, and 1 copper.

Now selling the rest of our items, we have 30 gold, 36 silvers, and 31 coppers to buy items with. And not overspend and saved 10 gold after buying what we want for future rent, costs, and goods we may want to buy. Of course, it limits what we can buy now. Now, let consider the free spells. The two that I would pick are Icicle Spears and Summon Lesser succubus. The first one is that I wanna try out some ice magic, and get spells that offers multihit. Aka, get ourselves some magic missles. The summon lesser succubus is an attempt to get ourselve a frontliner. Cause partywise, Miram and Adrea are squishy people who very much needs someone to be in front in order to protect us. And Illris ain't taking the roll anytime soon. So gotta roll the gacha to see if we get a good tank or not.

Now for the spells that we'll be paying for are Firetrap, Infernal Darts, Slow, Mud-trap, Waterbolt, repelling Wave, Spark and Static Trap, Energize, Magic Arrow, Haste, Gust, Freezing Snare, Ring of Fire, Ignite, and Heat object. For some of the spells, they can serve as trap spells, other may help us boost ourselves or weaken our enemies, while others are more as a way to try out other fields of magic. With all that, if my math is correct we now have 12 gold, 79 silvers, and 92 coppers.

Now, we're going to buy 5 of healing, mana, and stamina potions, 3 potions of frost and fire resistence. Finally, 4 firebombs. That leaves us with 10 gold, 89 silvers, and 92 copper. Feel free to check my math.

Posted by OsmiumOrchid 1 year ago Report

Ah, sorry, I managed to forget to include the currency conversion for reference initially, it's 10:1 for each step up, not 100 ^^; . You're correct that the amount listed is *all* the money Adrea would have at the end of the timeskip if she didn't spend anything other than on food and the room and the inn.

Also, the Intelligence attribute doesn't affect spell power or anything, everything in that category is purely for skill checks (detailed in the project overview linked at the top of every description)

Posted by Persona59523 1 year ago Report

Oooohhhhhhh, hey Os, what the final money count if we went with what I've suggested? Asking if I've spent more money then we have. As for the attritube thing, given that I've suggested to buy silver garnet, which boost our strength by one, why not go to round out perception and resilence.

Posted by OsmiumOrchid 1 year ago Report

I'm afraid you're definitely over budget, purchasing everything you suggested would come out to over 100 gold, which is more than we have total even if we sell everything we can ^^;

Posted by Persona59523 1 year ago Report

fuck. Anything that we can cute back? I'm down to just have the fire=trap, infernal darts, ring of fire, heat object, and static trap

Posted by sqrt1 1 year ago Report

Timeskip time! So much to consider here; there’s a ton of options.

We have 75 Gold, 9 Silver, and 1 Copper (7591). Saving some of it would probably be a good idea, so I’m looking at our budget to be somewhere around two thirds of all the money we have.

I believe there are 4 major ‘builds’ that we can consider.
1. Summoner build – Use of summoned creatures for battle and or scouting/reconnaissance.
Pros: can be unpredictable, each creature can have different uses, lots of map control when fighting
Cons: Adrea herself is more susceptible in direct combat, summons may have mind of their own, requires summons to work together to get maximum value, mana drain to sustain summons if fight goes long
While this build seems entertaining, I think practically, it is not ideal. If we do choose to go for this, I would recommend the Commune With Banshee.

2. Trap build – Use of erected constructs/traps and AoE spells to win fights by forcing enemy into disadvantageous positions.
Pros: Potentially very strong if enemies fall for the traps, synergizes with current staff (longer spell duration)
Cons: Requires setup to get full use, may not work on some enemies (harpies that can fly for example), oftentimes enemies may just not fall for it, once they get trapped in one, they’re more wary to future traps
Again, while this build seems entertaining, I think practically, it is not ideal to rely solely on having the time to setup. If we do go for this, Gust would be absolutely critical, and Tremor would probably similarly useful.

3. Standard mage build – Fight at a distance with ranged spells
Pros: standard, strong
Cons: predictable, bad if close combat
I think this is probably the ideal build we want to choose. While it is very vanilla, there is a reason it is the standard, it works. Will need some spells to deal with close combat such as Ring of Fire, Blazing Lash, Immolation Burst, Pyre Shroud, Cascade, Scythe of Kireyn, Petrified Guard, Repelling Wave.

4. Vore build – Eat them all up!
Pros: fun
Cons: probably not viable, requires you to get into melee range, by the time you’re able to swallow an enemy, you’ve probably already won the fight
Fun, but I don’t think it’s viable. You would probably get Inner Furnace, Passion Flare, Protection From Acid, Endofrost, Tenderize, Neutralize Acid. Also you would pick up the Arcane Orb of Minor Gluttony.


As boring as it is, I think the standard mage build is the best. The Dragonbone Staff seems like a very potent staff, and since we are primarily a fire type mage, it would be a great idea. Of course, we would need to keep in mind that we’re weak to water, and ensure that we diversify at least a little bit to not get hard countered.

For the highlighted/free spells, I think it’s probably best if we choose the ones that we want that are the most expensive. (I’m excluding the summoning/commune spells) I think the 3 potential free spell options are Blazing Lash (350), Icicle Spears (410), and Shard Burst (350). I particularly like Shard Burst because of its synergy with Ice Wall.

Selling all of the misc items gives us 350, and bumps up our total to 7941.

Gear upgrades seem to be crazily expensive. For example, replacing our current robe with the Rough Manaweave Robe costs 950 (1600 – 650), which is very expensive for only 5% less mana cost. Replacing our bracers with the Malachite Inlaid Brass Bracers gives us 25 more max mana (which is about a 23% increase) but costs us 1530 (2330 – 800).

Anyways, I think here’s what I would do:
Learn Icicle Spears and Shard Burst for free.
Buy Dragonbone Staff, selling our Carved Birch Wood Staff. Costs 4010 (4350 – 340). Now at 3931.
Buy Blazing Lash. Costs 350. Now at 3581.
Buy Pyrokinesis. Costs 480. Now at 3101.
Buy Heat Object. Costs 2. Now at 3009.
Buy Chill Object. Costs 2. Now at 3007.
Buy Active Ward. Costs 80. Now at 2927. (Good reactive defensive spell)
Buy Earth Sense. Costs 320. Now at 2607.
Buy Waterbolt. Costs 2. Now at 2605.
Buy Spark. Costs 3. Now at 2602.
Buy Magic Arrow. Costs 2. Now at 2600.
Buy 1 Mana Potion. Costs 50. Now at 2550.
Buy 1 Stamina Potion. Costs 60. Now at 2490.
Buy 1 Healing Potion. Costs 70. Now at 2420.

Maybe with the remaining money, we can buy some gear for Miram as well.

For stat boosts, I'd say +10 to Mana and Stamina.
For attribute boosts, I'd say +1 to Perception and Dexterity.

Posted by sqrt1 1 year ago Report

Oh also I guess since it's so cheap at 3 copper apiece, taking all of the Summon Wisp spells would be nice I guess. So -18 that total (Fire, Water, Frost, Earth, Air, Storm).

Posted by sqrt1 1 year ago Report

Oh also I just realized that taking Tenderize might be a good idea just to do capacity training. Fill ourselves up with rocks before we sleep to stretch out our stomach? I wonder if they last long enough for it to be useful.

Posted by OsmiumOrchid 1 year ago Report

Hypothetically possible, but the mana cost for stuffing enough to stretch up to or over capacity using *only* the spell would probably be too high to be practical. Filling Adrea to capacity would take 6 casts, and I think we'd probably need to reapply the effect at least once for it to last long enough to see results

Posted by sqrt1 1 year ago Report

Hmm yeah that makes sense. Perhaps not worth it then.

Posted by VigorousJazzHands 1 year ago Report

I think your analysis of the spells and possible build paths here is the one I most agree with, and I agree if we had to just pick one build a "standard" one would be the way to go. In my suggestion I instead suggested we use that as the core of our build while also incorporating elements of all the others at the same time for variety/versatility.

Aside from that I agree with pretty much everything you suggest here, aside from the potions, some spell choices (you've suggested more ice and less fire spells than me) and the Dragonbone Staff. While the Dragonbone Staff is really good, it's a huge chunk of our gold that I think could be better spent on getting a lot more powerful spells.

Posted by sqrt1 1 year ago Report

Hm fair point. I guess 40 gold is a lot for a staff upgrade especially if we're not only going for fire spells.

What's your reasoning for not getting potions? I think it's always good to have one of each in case of emergencies. And they're not too expensive either.

Posted by VigorousJazzHands 1 year ago Report

You're right about them being reasonably cheap and good to have for emergencies, it's just that we've already got a couple and have never really *needed* them. I think we can get by with just the Ichor of Rava & Mana potion we've got at the moment, but you're right that the cost is low enough that picking up one more of each type of stat-restoring potion probably couldn't hurt and isn't going to break the bank.

Posted by sqrt1 1 year ago Report

Will Miram be upgrading her gear by herself? Because so far I don't think we've gotten her any gear upgrades.

Also, is my understanding of elemental rps correct?
Fire < Water < Frost < Fire
AND
Earth < Frost < Storm < Earth
AND
Air being just alone

Posted by OsmiumOrchid 1 year ago Report

Yes, Miram will be earning her own money and handling herself alongside Adrea! Though we could buy something for her if we wanted I suppose.

Especially after training with the guild, Adrea has enough knowledge to be familiar with elemental interactions. It isn't as neat and clean of a rock/paper/scissors setup as you might be thinking:
Fire is vulnerable to Water, and resistant to Frost
Frost is vulnerable to Fire, and resistant to Water
Water is vulnerable to Storm, and resistant to Fire
Earth is vulnerable to Frost, and resistant to Storm
Storm is vulnerable to Earth, and resistant to Air
Air has no vulnerabilities or resistances, other than being weak against storm it serves as a neutral element that makes it very useful for potioncraft.

Posted by OsmiumOrchid 1 year ago Report

(Pulling back the curtain a little... I wish I had taken a second pass on this before any of it came up in the story, because looking back at the full list now I'm realizing there was definitely room to break things into two neat rock/paper/scissors loops in a way that at least somewhat made sense(the fire/water/frost one that almost exists already, and earth/storm/air could be made to work), but at this point earth being vulnerable to frost has already specifically come up twice for Adrea ^^; . Honestly might consider retconning it when we move on to another character, but at least for the rest of Adrea's run the above is true.)

Posted by ReubenMedik 1 year ago Report

When it comes to free spells, I'd like Inner Furnace and Commune with Lesser Succubus. When we are that Dark Elf, she was wearing metal armour, and that gave us some difficulties, so Inner Furnace should help with that. Adrea and Miram are kind of squishy, and having a front line fighter will only be helpful, provided she doesn't slack off

I'd also like to buy the spell Mud Trap (6s). During Combat, if someone is charging us or trying to flee, Mud Trap may be able to keep them in place, and might also help us with getting a snack.

Now, getting a Rough Manaweave Robe (16gp) is somewhat expensive, but I think it'd be a worthy investment, same as the Malachite Inlaid Copper Bracers (23gp 3sp). So far, all these purchases amount to 39gp.

We can minimise that amount by selling stuff, like our Wooden Wand (2gp), our gemstones (1gp 2sp 7cp), our Patchwork Manaweave Robe (6gp 5sp) and our Jade Inlaid Copper Bracers (8gp) though we may want to be sneaky about who we sell that one to in case someone is chasing us for it.

That'll save us 17gp 7sp 7cp, bringing our new total to 21gp 2sp 3sp spent

Another purchase I'd like that isn't necessary is the Ring of Endurance (15gp 7sp) or Necklace of Swiftness (20gp) as a gift to Miram, maybe both. Though if we have to choose one, I'd go for the Necklace, brining our grand total to 41gp 2sp 3cp, leaving us with 34gp 6sp 8cp. Feel free to correct my math if I'm wrong

Posted by ReubenMedik 1 year ago Report

Oh yes, for the level up, an extra point to Resilience wouldn't be remiss and neither would Perception. I feel like in every chapter we have a higher and higher chance to be swallowed by someone, and more Resilience would help us last longer, so that maybe someone could save us

A +10 to both Health and Mana would be wise, but due to my degeneracy, I'm also going to suggest Capacity so we can swallow people up to 8ft tall without issue, and 10ft if we want to push out capacity to the limit. I know we can only add two bonuses here, so the Health and Mana boost is definitely the better option, as we might be able to train our Capacity anyway

Posted by VigorousJazzHands 1 year ago Report

Super hot stuff in this chapter, loved it.

The plan we settled on with Miriam of staying in Laridan over the time skip for us both to train some more before setting out and returning to travelling is great, seems like getting the best of both worlds and I'm glad it's something Miriam is happy with.

Sorry for the wall of text to follow, but I wanted to be thorough lol.

Questions:
- What tier is Summon Leser Fire Beast?
- Can we cast spells we don't have proficiency in for an elevated mana cost? I assume that's the case but if we just can't cast them at all, obviously disregard all the spells I reccomend buying that we aren't proficient in.
- Is there any risk to us selling the gemstones we swiped here in Laridan? Like could they be regognised as stolen and/or traced back to where we took them from? Cause if so we obviously shouldn't sell them as I suggest we do below, and instead sell them off later on elsewhere.

Spells to buy:
- Ring of Fire (Fairly expensive but also potentially very useful for crowd control & mainipulating positioning, I'm thinking similarly to Wall of Ice which we've gotten a ton of great use out of.)
- Heat Object (Only very situationally useful but extremely cheap, might as well learn it.)
- Fire Trap (Similar throught process to Ring of Fire. Lets us prepare powerful ambushes while being quite mana efficient.)
- Inner Furnace (If we're going to be eating other characters more often (which I think we should) I see this being useful enough to justify the cost.)
- Fireball (Just like in D&D, you always take Fireball as soon as you can. High damage and AOE make it a good choice for our big heavy hitting damage spell to round out our fire lineup).
- Freeze Water (Situationally useful, but we can do some fun things with it if we get inventive, and it's fairly cheap.)
- Chill Object (Same justification as Heat Object.)
- Protection From Acid (A bit expensive for what it is but a good last resort spell we can use in a stomach in the event it comes to that. Not something we'll use often but could save our life.)
- Scythe of Kireyn (Extremely expensive but VERY powerful and versatile single target frost damage spell. Worth the cost as our top-end for frost damage.)
- Mud Trap (Very situational, but cheap enough to be worth picking up.)
- Tremor (Cheap & versatile, could be good for when we want to non-lethally stun an opponent or interrupt channeling.)
- Active Ward (Cheap, powerful, efficient and versatile defensive spell, we'd be nuts not to grab this.)
- Waterbolt (Super cheap and efficient way of dipping our toes into water magic, and enhances what we can do with Freeze Water.)
- Serenity (Even though we have no water proficiency, this is a really good way to mitigate mind effecting spells and fairly cheap for what it is.)
- Spark (Like Waterbolt, extremely cheap and options up our options for other effects that could interact with lightning.)
- Energize (A reasonably priced, unique and versatile effect. Could be quite useful even outside of combat.)
- Magic Arrow (Same as all the other extremely cheap entry level spells, might as well get it for how low the cost is.)
- Minor Concealment Illusion (Even though we don't have air proficiency, this is useful enough to justify the cost. Especially with our history of stealing things.)
- Summon Fox (A nice cheap summon, who doesn't like the idea of being able to summon a cute fox freind?)

I think the free spells we learn should be:
- Protection From Fire (Game changer in a potential matchup against another fire mage, and possibly useful to cast on companions to allow them to avoid getting blasted by our spells like Fireball.)
- Commune With Lesser Succubus (A good versatile summoning spell. I also just really like succubi and would love to see them show up more in our adventures lol.)

Spells to maybe buy?
- Immolation Burst (Expensive, but a good emergency "Fuck off" spell for if we're surrounded or threatened in Melee)
- Berserk (Extremely fun effect, possibly also very useful though unpredicatable, but SUPER expensive. Big maybe if we've got the money to spend)
- Slow (Cheap, but a lot of questions about how the effect works in practice. Slowing just movement speed isn't super useful, but if it also effects the targets attack speed then it is probably worth getting.)
- Hoarfrost (Fairly expensive for a non-damaging spell but possibly quite game changing against other mages not skilled in Frost or Fire. Still, probably not since it has no significant effect on natural weapon users like monsters or melee fighters who still have access to a frozen club to beat us with.)
- Freezing Snare (Only take it if we don't get Fire Trap. It's significantly more expensive in exchange for not dealing damage and instead immobillizing the target. Situationally prefereable to Fire trap but fills close enough to the same purpose and we don't need both.)
- Shard Burst (Only worth getting if we invested more heavily in frost than I suggest we should. Combos well with many other ice spells, but not very good alone.)
- Summon Wisp (Super cheap to pick up even for every element, but so limited in what they can do that I don't see it being worthwhile. Still if other suggest get them, the cost is low enough that it's not a big deal if we do.)
- Commune With Banshee (A very fun summon with unique abilities others don't have,but just too expensive. If we had more gold maybe.)

Spells to NOT buy:
Passion Flare has some extremely fun use cases but is a bit too expensive for how practically useful I see the effect being.
Pyrokensis is potentially useful but just too expensive to justify buying. It seems to mostly just give us fine control with a significant cost for what we can already inelegantly accomplish with out other spells, namely starting and extinguishing fires.
Blazing Lash has a cool but not particularly useful or effecient effect. There are better spells for just dealing direct damage.
Infernal Darts is cool, but we only need one powerful direct damage fire spell and Fireball does it better.
Pyre Shroud is cool, but not enough to justify the cost when we aren't a melee fighter and don't have a dedicated one as a companion. Possibly worth revisiting when/if we do though.
Ice Spikes is interesting but just not as good or efficent at crowd control as the other spells we have to do that job.
Protection From Frost isn't worth taking since we're not really doing AOE damage that we need to protect others from with our Ice spells, they're most single target focused.
Icicle Spears is again cool, but not worth the gold cost for what isn't really a significant upgrade to a normal ice bolt in terms of damage or mana effeciency. We're basically just using it to cast many ice bolts at once.
Cascade seems quite good and powerful, but we've got Fireball to fill the role it does.
Frost Totem is an interesting way of deal with large crouds and long term area denial, but we've got enough other ways of doing that, that we probably don't need it.
Endofrost is cool, but not worth the high gold cost for the effect. Inner Furnace is a cheaper and better if more lethal way of dealing with troublesome meals.
All Tier 2 Earth Spells are not worth getting, due to being over-tiered for our proficiency and at best situationally useful like Earth Sense/Petrified Guard or done better by our other spells like Rupture/Tenderize.
Repelling Wave is done better by Tremor which we actually have proficiency in.
Neutralize Acid... why would we eat someone if we didn't want to digest them?
Static Trap is cool, but unessecary when we have Fire Trap. Maybe if we get Storm proficency 1 down the line.
Gust & Haste are both just not unique or useful enough to justify getting for a magic school we have no proficency in.
Summon Hellhound is cool, but there are better fire summons.
Commune With Fire/Frost/Earth Nymph could be fun, but I think Commune with Lesser Succubus is more versatile.
Summon Fire Scion would be a strong addition to our combat spell roster, but I don't really think we need it and sapient summons are more fun anyhow.
Summon Lesser Frost Beast isn't super interesting to me. Similar to Summon Hellhound.
Summon Ghoul is potentially interesting, but I don't think we need it if we have Commune with Succubus for our versatile humanoid summoning needs.
All Tier 2 Earth Summons are not worth picking up due to having mainly only non-combat utility.
Summon Eel I just don't see enough of a use case for.

I don't think we need any more potions tbh. Better off spending our gold on spells we can re-use.

Gear to sell:
- Patchwork Manaweave Robe (ONLY IF we buy a new robe to replace it.)
- Jade Inlaid Copper Bracers (ONLY IF we buy new bracers to replace them.)
- Small Garnet Gemstone (As mentioned we don't have much use for them.)
- Small Jade Gemstone
- Wooden Wand (We don't need it since we have our staff.)
- Runic Circles: An Examination of The Foundation of Magic, Vol I (Not much point keeping it after reading it.)

Gear to buy:
- Rough Manaweave Robe (ONLY IF we sell our current robe, since it's pretty much a direct upgrade.)
- Silver Garnet Bracers of Grappling (ONLY IF we sell our current bracers, since it's pretty much a direct upgrade. As Persona points out the Strength boost is also nice.)

By my calculations after all that shopping is done (Assuming we don't buy any spells in the "maybe" category) we should be left with: 7 gold, 9 silver & 5 copper. Seems like a comfortable amount to set off on our next adventure with.

LEVEL UP:
+10 Mana, +10 Stamina
+1 Intelligence, +1 Charisma

Posted by OsmiumOrchid 1 year ago Report

1. Summon Lesser Fire Beast is a tier 2 spell, same as the other elemental beasts listed
2. Yes, we can cast spells 1 level above our current proficiency(including first level spells from elements we have no proficiency with, of course), but it costs twice as much mana as normal to do so. That can be pretty debilitating depending on the spell (ex casting Scythe of Kireyn underleveled would use up a majority of our mana on its own), though it is also worth keeping in mind that scrolls for spells above tier 2 tend to be fairly rare so picking up higher tier spells that it might not be practical to actually use *yet* could still be worthwhile if its one that seems particularly interesting/useful. Also worth noting, which I maybe should have mentioned at the start of the shopping section, that even though she hasn't quite reached it Adrea will be quite close to fire proficiency 3 by the end of the timeskip.
3. Not really any risk on selling the gems, unless maybe we were dumb enough to sell them to the jeweler that they were likely stolen from in the first place. It's not like many video games where people just intrinsically know something was stolen somehow, if it isn't something very unique/high profile or something that aligns with recent thefts merchants would be aware of we're unlikely to run into trouble selling it off.

And Slow, at least at our proficiency, only affects movement speed(walking/running/crawling/etc. are magically slowed, but anything that can be done from a stationary position like swinging a sword or shooting an arrow is unaffected)

Posted by sqrt1 1 year ago Report

I agree with most of this, the one thing I hard disagree with is probably Scythe of Kireyn. I think it's too expensive in both gold cost (18 gold) and mana cost (Very High Initial Mana Cost) to be fully justified.

Posted by VigorousJazzHands 1 year ago Report

You're not wrong about it being super expensive both in terms of gold and mana, but like I said I think it's worth it. We lack any high damage single target frost spells, and this fills that role better than any other spell on the list. Of course the huge initial mana cost for it being a spell that exceeds our current proficiency is rough, but in fights where it's what we need I think we'd be fine to spend basically all our mana on it for the damage output it provides.

Os also points out that we may not get the opportunity to pick it up again later when we do have ice proficiency 3, and at that point I think the spell goes from iffy to incredible as the mana cost is no longer cripplingly high. Consider it an investment in our future lol.

Posted by Alphabetacappa 1 year ago Report

Great chapter!! Hopefully Adrea is looking twice at Miram now given her height~ Sorry to be late but I'm glad that I had time to review.

I think we should up Intelligence twice, mana once and health once. Does resilience help us survive as prey btw? I wasn't sure.

We should take ice spikes and inner furnace. We should buy hoarfrost now! It will leave us with 5 gold or so, but it seems really strong. I think we should go ahead and buy any spells that cost less than 2 silver as well just to have them (ignite, heat object, summon wisp etc).

Would Petrified Guard work with, say, a jar of dirt? If so, that might be a great failsafe for... Ehem. Sticky situations.

Later, we should buy protection from frost and protection from fire as soon as we can too since we might fight more mages. We should buy endofrost too, once we can (it sounds fun).

We desperately need to upgrade our wardrobe I don't know if we have the money though. Layaway? Black Friday? Thrift stores? For now, lets just sell our gemstones to someone who won't ask any questions and save up for later.

Posted by OsmiumOrchid 1 year ago Report

Hey, glad you liked the chapter! Sorry, despite what it says in the message I almost always forget to add that "CLOSED" message to the description of these until the next chapter is out, I was already too far along to take your reply into consideration ^^;

Yes, Resilience does help us survive longer as prey! The jar of dirt idea is clever and would likely work, but is almost overthinking it--just holding a decent size rock would probably qualify as "being in contact with earth"