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.

"Oh, it's a good thing I checked, Capacity is actually mana pool and regen, it's Ananemsis that I should be improving for more spell slots. I'm glad I resolved that before I bought anything."

Sable blushes faintly and smiles sheepishly. "Oops. I should've caught that, I had to invest in those for the witch side of my swordwitch build. It's just too entrancing watching a cute girl nerd out about spell design."

She blushes. "You think I'm cute?"

All her thoughts about spell design have suddenly been knocked out of her head.

"Either you're adorably oblivious or I was subtler than I expected, at least one of the two. You spend several minutes geeking out adorably on spell design, you're incredibly pretty in a very cute and petite way, and you've just rolled with all the chaos since landing here. Yes, I think you're cute."

She eats a bit of stew to keep some semblance of composure after saying that.

"I mean, I absolutely noticed, I'm just... really unused to anyone being interested in me." She ducks her head. "I mean, it's been hardly an hour since I got my new body and already someone's hitting on me. That's fast!"

She grins and giggles. "I do move kinda fast on occasion. I'm just objectively correct here, though. It's not just the body, either. Everything about you is cute; the body just brings the rest into alignment as a whole."

"Awwwww, thank you. It's - a little hard to take it seriously - but I really do appreciate the sentiment." 

... It is an 18+ game, she supposes, so maybe she shouldn't be surprised... 

"So I was saying! Before I got totally distracted by the flirting. Probably it would be smart to take some Anamnesis improvements soon to slot more spells, and then once I feel I have enough to load a proper toolset we can focus more in on Intricacy. Self Tree has an Anamnesis passive, I just checked, so that can maybe be one of my next three nodes... Or I could just spend my new ability points there, not sure which is more efficient. Rapidity and Power will probably come in later too, but for now I want utility over raw strength."

She nods. "Yeah, a flexible foundation works better, in my opinion. Moving in the direction of more options is rarely a bad idea. Anamnesis is going to be key to early survivability, I think, so you can keep enough things available to be able to respond to a wide enough variety of circumstances."

Then, with a tilt of her head and a thoughtful hum, she wonders aloud, "What sort of crowd control is reachable just with these early nodes, though? Maybe one that makes flames sticky and persistent? That would let you modify any fire spell for area denial, or to ruin a whole group of beasties' days at once."

"Held Spell with Ranged Burst Fire would let me sustain a big patch of fire, but I bet it would suck mana like nobody's business. I could beeline for Minor Lingering Spell in the Persistent tree but it'd take all my points. It's a really good ability though, since it'd apply to buffs too, so it might be worth beelining to." 

She flicks through nodes. "Splash spell in the Ranged tree - it's a variant of Burst - comes with a minor lingering effect at a lower intensity around the main target. It might be better to take than the direct more explosive Burst. The tradeoff is less AOE effect, but for longer. More of a damage over time thing."

"Hmmm. In your shoes, I think I'd lean for Splash over Burst, at least early on? Oh, did you get a passive fire resistance ability? Might be worth having one, just so you're not closing off territory to yourself as well."

"It is my affinity, so it's possible I already have some of it as a passive..."

She checks her passives, just in case.

She does in fact have a minor passive resistance to fire damage that will improve as she levels up!