She settles into her chair with a small blush. 

"Thank you," she says. Even this small courtesy is... More than she's really used to getting.

"Gladly, Sin," she replies with a grin, sitting down across from her. "So let's talk builds. I hit level three with the quest completion, did you?"

"Yes, I did as well. I spent a node on Heal Wounds, so I guess I have five remaining if it's three per level?"

She nods, smiling curiously. "And I've still got all six of mine. So what sort of build are you aiming for? Maybe we can try to build for synergy."

"Well, my usual methods of consulting build guides and handbooks aren't super applicable given the incredibly flexible node system of CORA..."

"So for right now I'm hoping for a generalist wizard build. Blasting is good and worthy but I'd like to get into something of a controller role as well. I've always found crowd control to be very useful in these kinds of games. And I'd like to pursue some noncombat applications of magic too - item crafting systems are fun!"

"Crafting systems are so fun," she agrees with a grin. "W—I'm mostly aiming at a sort of swordwitch build, agile as fuck and channeling magic and abilities through the sword. Also, I've got shapeshifting as a racial ability. Infiltrator variant of Darkling. We can probably do decently on our own if you lean into the crowd control and herding, and I bounce between targets being highly mobile DPS."

"We might want a tank, though. And eventually we need to find a dedicated healer, just so we don't eat your whole damned mana pool for it."

She shakes her head. "But yeah. Swordwitch. Currently I have a lightning charge I can apply to my saber, and a couple enhanced strikes and parries. Need to come up with a few better magically empowered attacks, I think, and definitely want to make a deflecting parry that can handle ranged attacks or even spells eventually."

"I considered taking Light affinity, but I was a fire mage last game and couldn't resist. I regret it a little now."

Sable shakes her head. "Nah, a good party needs more than one DPS. Plus, your crowd control idea is pretty great. And who knows, maybe you'll manage some great enchanted healing artifacts, eventually?"

Jorem shows up with two large bowls of stew, and fresh-baked rolls on the side. "Here you go, lasses. Anything to drink?"

"Not for me, thank you."

She looks back at Sable. "Yeah, maybe I will. I hope so."

She picks up her spoon and tries the soup.

The stew is rich and hearty, made from venison and potato and carrot with some lovely spices rounding it out that she can't quite recognize.

Sable tilts her head for a brief moment, barely a fraction of a second, then shakes her head. "None for me either, thanks."

"Enjoy!"

After Jorem heads off, Sable nods. "So hmm. If you're leaning into fire, I could build a fire resistance passive perhaps, make it easier to dance through your crowd control unburnt. That and a few shadow-enhanced strikes, perhaps? Maybe a supernaturally fast attack of some kind?"

This is actually quite good. She's never had venison before. 

"Yeah, that makes sense. Given how realistic this game is I'm worried I might actually start a fire with my blasting, so some nodes to supress fire would probably be useful. And would let me get rid of my own crowd control."

"Yeah, they would do that," she replies, nodding. "Sensible of you."

"I wonder if there's such a thing as pyrokinesis in my trees. We'll see."

She smiles and flips through some nodes, eating a few more spoonfuls of stew. "Oh this is useful. Life drain node. Could make a vampiric slash. It's not strong, but every bit counts. And then here's an elemental cut node, which could be combined with shadow — my affinity — and a couple others to make a shadow cutter. And... ah, there's a basic resistance node. Okay, I think I know what I'm building: a shadow cutter for breaking basic armor, a vampiric strike to minimize how much you need to use that healing spell, and a passive fire resistance ability."

"That makes a lot of sense. Let me see what I've got in my trees..."

She flicks through her nodes, selecting out nodes.

"So what I'm thinking is... I want the Extinguish node from Persistent, and the Ranged Burst node from Ranged... And then I have three more left. I want to do my best to exploit my high Intricacy, so goodstuff utility nodes are probably my best bet, especially because my Capacity is low. So mixins and passives. 

"Mixins... Held Spell looks good, it'd let me hold a firebolt for light or create an extended repulsion field... I could take a misc buff from the Ranged tree like less mana expenditure or more power, but that seems boring. Ranged could give me curving or chaining or bouncing shots with some more investment, which would play nicely with Held Spell... I think Held Spell is just an obvious pick, it chains into better persistent effects later.

"I feel like a mana regeneration buff would be nice out of combat utility. I could take a Passive from the Self tree, but the buff percentage is really low. Is there a way to get higher efficiency... Ooh, Meditation! "Dramatically increases the effects of a passive buff while you concentrate on it as an active ability." And it's actually pretty effective. That'd be like Evocation in Realms of Dragons, super handy out of combat."

Void. She's so cute when she nerds out about spell design. "Those sound like some impressive options, and some very solid ways to build for future growth. I like it."

Sable just grins at Sin for a moment, clearly intrigued and delighted, before adding, "I wonder if the meditation will be built on actual meditation techniques."

"Heh, stealth mindfulness therapy. That'd be fun."

She flicks through her trees some more. 

"Looking later into the trees, there's eventually a "chain effects" node in the deeper persistent tree. Which I think is core to a high-intricacy blaster build with persist because it lets you build more versatile and powerful anyspells. Anything that gets you more action and capacity economy from intricacy is good for my build. 

"Also in the persist tree a little closer is "minor lingering buff", which would let me trade mana and time for stats. There's an old meme about a powerful wizard who'd cast a dozen buffs at the start of every day - I maybe don't want to go that far, but again, anything that gives better action and capacity economy is good. 

"Under Self Cast Magic there's passive buffs for all the casting stats. I hate to say it, but I might have to season my Intricacy build with some Capacity simply because only having three spell slots is going to get awfully narrow in practice. We'll see how it goes with Intricacy buffs and so on, but part of me wants more options."

"Looking for crowd control... Extinguish Force could potentially provide some fun effects, I don't know what it'd do precisely but making someone or something unable to walk easily seems like a possible outcome."

She takes another spoonful of her stew and thinks for a bit. 

"I should really have a look at all the caster stats again and refresh myself on what they all do."

Stats, briefly explained:

Strength

Your physical strength and ability to move powerfully.

Power

Strength's magical counterpart, and the might of your spells.

Speed

How swiftly and precisely you can physically move.

Urgency

Your casting speed, the ability to throw spells quickly and smoothly.

Endurance

Your physical stamina, your ability to keep running or fighting longer.

Capacity

Your magical stamina, determines the size (and to a lesser extent the regeneration) of your mana pool.

Constitution

Your resistance to status effects.

Toughness

Your resistance to damage.

Anamnesis

Your capacity for "spell slots".

Intricacy

The complexity of spells and abilities you're allowed to construct in the ability builder.