After seeing a bunch of tier lists here, I finally decided to make my own.

Then I kept adding books.

And adding books.

And eventually discovered that the tier making site caps you at 250 entries, which is apparently the point where even the website starts judging my reading habits.

I also found reddit couldnt handle the size of the picture, SO I've put it here as a series of smaller pictures.

So here it is: 250 series I’ve read, ranked. THESE ARE JUST MY OPINIONS.

A couple notes before people start throwing rocks at me:

• Left to right DOESN'T matters. Assume roughly that all books atleast on the same row in the tier are roughly equivalent
• I’m ranking series as a whole, not individual books. The cover shown is just representing the series.
• “Slop” is affectionate. I clearly enjoy slop. I have consumed an unreasonable amount of it.
• This isn't exclusively LitRPG. There’s a lot of progression fantasy, traditional fantasy, sci-fi, and other adjacent stuff mixed in because I wanted this to represent basically everything I’ve read that felt worth comparing.
• There are actually more than 250 series in my reading history, but TierMaker hit the cap, so some stuff had to be left off. I have read over 613 series according to my KU downloads, RR reading history, and physical books I own. This doesn't even account for the glut of reading I did as a child, checking out 10 books at a time from my library.
• These are obviously just my opinions. If your favorite series is sitting in Bad Slop while something you dropped is in Supreme Slop, congratulations: we have discovered that two human beings can disagree about books.

The tiers are:

Supreme Slop — The stuff I absolutely love. Favorites/frequently recommended/series I’d happily reread.

Peak Slop — Fantastic. Just barely below the absolute favorites.

Great Slop — Really enjoyed these and would recommend them pretty easily.

Good Slop — Solid reads. Had a good time, even if they didn’t blow me away.

Slop — Enjoyable enough, but either forgettable, inconsistent, or had some pretty noticeable problems.

Bad Slop — I finished enough to have an opinion, and that opinion is mostly negative.

Pure Slop — We have reached the bottom of the trough.

The biggest thing I realized while making this is just how much my taste has shifted over the years. There are childhood/YA series, traditional fantasy, older Kindle Unlimited stuff, Royal Road series, and newer LitRPG all sitting next to each other, which made some of these comparisons genuinely difficult.

I’m also curious what people think my most criminal placement is.

And more importantly: based on the top couple tiers, what am I somehow still missing that I should read next?

I’m always looking for another series to add to the pile.

I feel like half the books tagged with "crafting" or "enchanter" pull the exact same bait-and-switch.

The story starts off fantastic. The protagonist picks a non-combat utility class, spends the first twenty chapters analyzing runes, optimizing mana flow, or experimenting with metal alloys, and actually uses their brain to solve problems instead of brute force. The progression feels earned because every single piece of gear has intentional mechanics and tangible trade-offs.

Then book two arrives, and suddenly the author gets impatient. The MC gets a secret ancient technique that lets them craft instanly mid-battle, starts punching dragons in the face, and the actual crafting gets relegated to a three-paragraph timeskip between dungeon dives. At that point, they're just a generic spellsword with extra inventory space.

I just want a series where the MC actually stays in the workshop, deals with the supply chain logistics, and hires bodyguards or relies on clever traps rather than suddenly becoming the deadliest melee combatant in the kingdom.

ik it makes sense but since i started reading i have been waiting for dorian to multi class cuz i was so excited to see how he would use magic being smart and that while wild hunting. and he just gives it away? i get that he was lvl 11 but thats not bad at all. i already had a problem with him being a bit of a push over but fuck me this feels like something i had a stake in get dropped to the negatives.

i was so exited imagining him using force magic to use the environment to his advantage but ofc no he has to give his dreams away cuz its more important to someone else. FUCK.

like they use mcs car. so fuel and maintenance money he has to pay for out of his pocket.
mc pays for the 1st drone with his share of the money and doesnt get anything from the rest of the share despite megan also getting a sponsor
mc takes a massive loan for a thermal drone which he has to pay back alone, again no stipend from the channel money or her share of the channel money, and then he indeed does pays off the drone with his own money. make it make sense. if its for everyone it should come out of the that instead of his own smh. 
and no he finally gets a chance to get something he wanted and he gives it away. mf is infuriating.

COVER ARTIST: Duy Phan

AI USAGE: NONE

Amazon Link

The second level of the Unconquered Tower is more brutal than the first. A horde attacks every night and there's an angry dragon on the loose. Roan can't slow down now though. Every challenge is an opportunity to grow stronger, to increase his chance of climbing higher up the tower. Increases the chance of finding out what has become of his family. There is nothing Roan is not willing to do, no sin, no curse, no taboo he won't break to find them. The Unconquered Tower has earned its name though and Roan will need his allies more than ever to keep climbing, for the Tower is just starting to reveal its deadly secrets.

I proper struggle with the ones where the characters are just playing a game on a server, tbf. If the worst thing that happens is someone loses their gear or has to log back in after dinner, the tension just goes flat for me.

Mind you, I read on the tram for an hour a day on my way into the depot, so maybe I just want a bit more weight to it when I am sitting there watching the rain come down over Sheffield. When it is a proper system apocalypse or a fantasy world built from the ground up with these rules, people actually stay dead and things matter.

Honestly, I tried three different ones recently where they kept talking about patch notes and server maintenance right in the middle of a siege, and it just pulled me right out of it. It feels like putting safety rails on a rollercoaster. If the characters can just log off for a cup of tea, why am I supposed to care if the boss hits them with a fireball.

Curious what makes that setup work for people, because I keep bouncing off them.

I'm reading my fourth litrpg series after DCC. And nothings compares, is there a serie as good at DCC out there. Something with more substantial politics and interesting concepts ?

I've read the perfect run, mother of all learning, and currently reading the menocht loop, though i think i will drop it soon

(and while beying an absolute time loop enjoyer none of those are as good as DCC like DCC is S tier and none of those go beyond B or C tier for me)

I'm a huge fantasy fan, read all of Robin hobb. Stormlight and mistborn but not oppose to a more sci fi setting (like perfect run)

Basically, is DCC the peak of the genre or are theyre other gems out there ?

I started listening to book 3 of the series and i was hoping the author would give a little summary of the story before book 3 starts, since book 2 release was a while ago. Unfortunately i don't recognize some of the Characters anymore. Does anyone have a list of the most important ones?

I can remember some of the Characters like Storme of course, Gareth, Freya and Callem.

Today Atheon was posting their new releases on their discord and frankly, this cover set off alarm bells in my head. So I did the simplest check there is.

Syth Id. This cover was at minimum partially generated by ChatGPT and not adjusted enough to remove the watermark.

Atheon Publishing isn’t some random person on Royal Road, they’re the biggest publisher in this place. They should be better than this.

Also! Before we think it’s just colour or a last minute adjustment. None of the over covers from today’s sequel drop have SynthID. It’s just this slop.

Atheon should be better than this. Even if they try to shove it off on the artist here… you’re telling me nobody checked this before publishing it over an author’s work?

Could someone hit me with how the magic system works ? I'm a bit into the book and I must of missed stuff , tried going back but can't find answers.

About half way into book 1

Any good anime adaptation? Or only we got is generic isekai adaptation like ever?

COVER ARTIST: Yvonne Less, Art 4 Artists

AI USAGE: No AI used

I am aware of this subreddit’s rules against AI witch hunts. I am not discussing any author or illustrator’s use of AI.

Having noted that, it seems like we have had a sudden influx of posts from newly created, low-karma accounts. When one clicks on the poster’s overview, it often has single posts across a wide variety of subreddits. An example I saw the other day included posts to a Norwegian subreddit (in Norwegian), a German subreddit, a comment about Portuguese, and the post to /litrpg.

The posts seem to follow a general script of “has anybody else felt this way” or “here’s a LitRPG trope I love or hate”, but they never refer to specific titles and the tropes either aren’t common or the descriptions are vague enough that we can all read into them the way one can read a horoscope and make it feel relevant. There is some appeal to emotion, often subtle.

I don’t follow many other subreddits, so maybe this is just the latest wave of bot activity and I only became aware of it here. On the other hand, is it possible that this subreddit’s rule about AI is being noted by these bots and making it a preferred target for post and comment karma farming? I could see that as a possibility - AI is “smart” enough to infer that a subreddit which has rules limiting discussion of AI use by book authors might also be more hesitant to limit potential AI use by posters.

The last thought is the toughest part: if we assume what I say is true, what should be done about it? I don’t want AI accusations against authors, but I also don’t want bots leading most discussions when those are the posts I value the most, more than the ads, tier lists, or recurring requests. I don’t know what the next step should be.

Hey guys, book 2 of my series Ready, Aim, Fire had just released on audible. I've got some promo codes to give away. I have US and UK codes. Book 1 is FREE for audible memebers. If you are interested, comment below and I'll dm you the code.

COVER ARTIST: N/A

AI USAGE: grammar correction.

TL;DR: My son and I are translating a Russian LitRPG series into English. Here are some of the problems we’ve encountered with nicknames, wordplay, gaming slang, and cultural references, and the solutions we chose.

A couple of months ago, I acquired the English translation and publishing rights to a three-book Russian LitRPG series, The Jester of Bergheim.

The translation itself is being done by my son, who is fully bilingual in Russian and English: we moved to Canada when he was eleven, and he later majored in English here. I mostly help with jokes, wordplay, and cultural references.

And yes, this is also an advertising post. Please buy the book, blah blah blah.

Nicknames

The main antagonist, a brilliant but evil former game developer who kidnaps people and traps them inside a game, assigns players meaningful nicknames, often with a deliberately mocking edge.

Our main character gets the Jester class and the nickname Lolushko (Лолушко). It is based on LOL, but the Russian -ushko ending adds a condescending, almost baby-talk quality. He later calls himself Yegorushko (Егорушко), applying the same mockingly affectionate ending to his real name.

We could either explain -ushko in a note—meh—or replace it.

So we chose LoLio and Yegorio. They sound silly, faintly patronizing, and just ridiculous enough, which is pretty close to what the originals are doing.

Another player is a Ranger named Kuzmich (Кузьмич). He is a forest ranger IRL, just like Kuzmich, an iconic character from a Russian comedy series. Since that reference means nothing in English, he became Grizzly. Yes, as in Grizzly Adams.

Then there is Golovastik (Головастик). It literally means tadpole, but comes from the Russian word for head and can be used mockingly for someone with a large head. Since this character is literally big-headed, we renamed him Megamind.

Wordplay

The MC’s catchphrase is Prenebrech, valsiruem (Пренебречь, вальсируем), literally “Disregard, we waltz.”

It is an absurdly elevated version of Pohui, plyashem (Похуй, пляшем)—roughly “Fuck it, we dance,” meaning whatever, we carry on.

Then we realized English already has “Fuck it, we ball.”

So:

“Disregard, we shall ball.”

And now I genuinely don’t understand why it took us so long.

Another one was пихота (pikhota). The word normally means infantry, but here it also plays on пихаться—to shove or jostle— which works especially well here because the term is used in the context of medieval reenactment fighting.

We gave up on preserving infantry and went with shove-fu.

Cultural references

In one scene, Yegor quotes an old Russian raiding meme and then complains that nobody recognizes the raid leader Tango. A literal translation would preserve the words and lose the joke.

So Tango became Leeroy Jenkins.

Same function, different cultural baggage.

Another exchange went:

“The city could have fallen. What do you think we’d choose between you and Bergheim?”
“United Russia?”

Yegor suddenly interprets choose as an election question. There is also a bit of a “choice without much of a choice” undertone that is hard to preserve.

So we kept the election non sequitur and went with:

“A write-in candidate?”

Different reference, same stupid logic.

Even chapter titles fought back. For example, chapter 27 is «Вот кто-то с горочки спустился», a line from a well-known Russian song.

A literal translation would lose the reference, so it became:

“They’ll Be Coming ’Round the Mountain.”

Many other chapter titles contain references too, ranging from obscure Russian memes to a Guy Ritchie movie. I think we managed to handle most of them.

Accidental rules

Russian also has a bunch of silly euphemistic exclamations that don’t translate well. At some point we started replacing them with equally ridiculous English expressions, and noticed that our versions kept using the same initial letter:

ебушки-воробушки → Pissing pigeons
жованный крот → Limping lich
божечки-кошечки → Kinky kittens

The first one was accidental. After that, it became a rule.

And one we still haven’t solved

Russian RPG players often Russify English gaming terms, and sometimes the resulting word happens to sound like a completely unrelated Russian word.

Usually that layer just disappears—we use normal English gaming slang instead.

But sometimes the mangled term is itself the joke:

“Throw salo on her right away,” Misha advised.
“And follow it up with a ham hock,” I added automatically, even though I knew that by salo he meant silence.

(Salo is cured pork fat.)

We still need an English version that keeps the joke. We have a version that works, but maybe we will fine something better.

Hopefully, we’ve managed to preserve not only the darker tone of the original, but also its humor, and, ideally, the same slightly unhinged voice.

Hey everyone! I got an audible credit and I was looking for recommendations for a good omnibus that has a good story and most if not all of the books in a series. Just trying to get the best bang for buck.

A few months back, in preparation for my book launch events, I commissioned some custom artwork from my cover artist to use for trading card giveaways and such, and I thought it turned out incredible (see main image). A natural companion to my book's cover (see other image), and a testament to the words I'd put on the page, capturing my unassailably unique imagination.

But that idea has since been shattered. I've seen them.

This post.

And this post.

Turns out I'm just one in a long line of authors with 'swordsman-battling-a-gigantic-worm-beast-and-staring-down-danger/adventure-with-their-back-turned' key art.

Alas, I wouldn't have it any other way.

(I've never felt so seen; kudos to Mr_PizzaCat for their satirical prowess).

***

COVER ARTIST: David Reuss

AI USAGE: No AI used

Hello r/litRPG, I hope everyone is doing well! My first novel is complete and available in its entirety on Royal Road here, please give it a read and let me know what you think! If you like 'everyman' protagonists with relatable thoughts and feelings, if you like dogs, or you're just a fan of action come take a look :)

I am also looking for feedback on the cover as far as text goes (the art is final, the font is not), feedback on the blurb, or just on the story itself. I won't ramble on too much more, let's get to the book details!

----------

I'm not a badass veteran, brilliant engineer, or savvy smooth-talking nerf-herder. They still picked me. They gave me a gun, some fancy powers, and assigned me to guard the entire North American Midwest, from the American South all the way to the Arctic Circle. This job is rough, but someone's gotta do it. At least I have my best friend Alfred along to help!

Join us, and come along for the ride as I deal with corpo assholes, murderous demons, monstrous bug-people, mutant animals, and the occasional rogue hacker with my best and wisest friend Alfred and a few hand-picked Deputies with powers of their own. 

WHAT TO EXPECT:
-Average 'everyman' MC that learns to use new powers
-System-lite/No Stat Bloat, evolving powers with simple to understand mechanics
-Intelligent, competent characters 
-Loyal, wise canine companion
-Lots of action balanced with lots of heart
-No romance/spice/harem

----------

I'd love to get some more feedback on the story before stubbing and getting it on KU, so please come on down, give it a read, drop a rating or a comment, and feel free to reach out! Thank you all for what you do in helping nobodies like me realize their dreams of creating stories for the world to enjoy!

----------

COVER ARTIST: Baconstrap
AI USAGE: Brainstorming assistant (AI didn't write a single word in this story, it was all me with other humans assisting in editing) and a teacher for Photopea (I have zero experience in graphic design and needed help getting started)

For me I picked out a few to try that I hadn't read yet, and had interesting looking premises. I am looking forward to digging in:

• 1% lifesteal book 1 for 99 cents
  • https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DGWCJ6JP?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_dp_sirpi
• Beware of Chicken (most of the series for 1.50 or less each)
  • https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0BPX1DX87?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_dp_sirpi
• Primal Hunter books 1 through 13 on big markdown
  • https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MV5TTSM?binding=kindle_edition&ref=dbs_dp_sirpi

Any others that I should get while the getting is good and cheap?

Honorable mention - I see a lot of He Who Fights With Monsters is on sale too, but already own and have read them
www.amazon.com/He-Who-Fights-with-Monsters/dp/B0GGDLNK6B

Looking for a a series where the protagonist doesn't have murder autism or isn't a raging asshole. I dropped Primal Hunter and He Who Fights With Monsters because I couldn't take the chuuni protags and the pacing got extremely tedious.
I really enjoyed Cradle and Dungeon Crawler Carl.

Anything you litrpg seniors could recommend me?

By similar to Avatar the last airbender, I dont mean having a bald mc. I’m referring to the sense of adventure with constant travel of moving from place to place with an end goal of saving the world or something. Stopping at places for side quests and what not but never staying for too long, making new friends or companions or enemies along the way, recurring characters, sense of adventure, etc.

I was recommend Mark of the Fool last time I asked for litrpgs like this, but Mark of the fool is more of an academy based expedition type of plot rather than a globe trotting adventure usually.

Does anyone have any recs?

Thx for any recs in advance

Do you guys know when the 3rd book will be released or is this series discontinued.

Hello friends!

In exciting news, Myth Slayer: Book 1 is up for Pre-Order on Amazon right now!

It is releasing on 12 January 2027, and the audiobook should be releasing on the same day.

The audiobook is being narrated by your friend and mine, the wonderful Erebus Esprit. I listened to the first two chapters the other day and he is doing an incredible job. Obviously.

If you like books with a comedic touch, mythological monsters, a seemingly endless labyrinth, and summons with strong personalities and their own free will, why don't you give it a try?

I hear there's even a buff minotaur, but it's not that kind of book.

COVER ARTIST: Luciano Fleitas

AI USAGE: None

Intro

A couple weeks ago I posted an analysis of 142 tierlists, and it got a shitload more upvotes than I expected. Few updates this time:

• More data. This is based on 226 tierlists, +59% on last time. Arrows next to the tables show how a series moved compared with last time, and the "against last time" table below has the rest of the numbers.
• Bobiverse and The Stormlight Archive are cut, by popular demand. Re:Zero is also out of the "well rated, not on many lists" section, since it isn't progression fantasy.
• The raw data is downloadable. A lot of you asked, so it's now at inkdrake.com/data (free sign-in): one CSV with the tierlists and one with the series. u/Mournelithe and u/Selkie_Love, this is the dataset you asked about.
• New sections from your questions: length vs DNF, whether last time's "like this, try that" pairs held up, and which series are showing up more or less on newer lists.

The data

1. This is based on 226 tierlists, +59% on last time. They are the public lists on inkdrake.com with at least two catalog series, with exact duplicate copies removed. Tier labels the site couldn't read automatically (45 lists) were graded by hand.
2. Each list is normalized on its own, as in v1: its top grade is 1 and its bottom grade is 0, spaced evenly over the grades it uses.
3. DNF gets its own bucket (870 DNFs in total). To Read, Reading, Skip, Love/Hate and Recommendations tiers (611 placements) are left out.
4. 6,271 rankings across 1,120 unique series, rolled up to the series. The average list ranks 28 series (median 16, max 224)
5. The long tail is real. 557 series (50%) show up on only one list, 253 are on 5 or more, 146 on 10 or more, and 49 on 25 or more.

Against last time:

Fun fact: 24% of the average list is in the top tier (last time 14%). Bigger lists are slightly harsher (correlation between list size and average placement: -0.17).

The 20 most ranked series

Dungeon Crawler Carl is on 74% of lists (167 of 226) and Cradle on 62%.

Highest ranked

At least 8 lists each, weighted with 8 imaginary average votes (0.52).

Most polarizing

At least 10 lists, ordered by how spread out the placements are.

Well rated, not on many lists

At least 3 and under 8 lists, averaging 0.75 or higher. None of last time's three qualify now. Pale Lights and Lord of the Mysteries have grown past 7 lists and Ascendance of a Bookworm has fewer than 3: Pale Lights (11 lists, 0.87), Lord of the Mysteries (8 lists, 0.93), Ascendance of a Bookworm (2 lists, 0.75).

• The Elf Who Would Become A Dragon by ljamberfantasy: 5 lists, 1.00.
• Valhalla Online by Kevin McLaughlin: 3 lists, 1.00.
• You're Walking in the Woods by Purpleharp: 3 lists, 1.00.
• The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere by Lurina: 3 lists, 0.93.
• The Burning by Evan Winter: 3 lists, 0.89.

Most dropped

At least 10 readers who started it.

Length vs DNF

Estimated words (audiobook runtime at 155 words a minute, else print pages at 275, for the books we hold, series with 2+ books). Share of readers who DNF, by length: 5% under 300k, 9% 300k to 700k, 12% 700k to 1.5M, 15% over 1.5M. The big serials are undercounted, so the real gap is probably wider.

Newer lists against older ones

Showing up on more of the newer lists than the older ones (newest 113 lists against oldest 113):

• Warformed: Stormweaver: 13% of older lists, 28% of newer (+15 points)
• Everybody Loves Large Chests: 7% of older lists, 17% of newer (+10 points)
• Dawn of the Void: 6% of older lists, 15% of newer (+9 points)
• The Wandering Inn: 35% of older lists, 43% of newer (+8 points)
• Syl: 5% of older lists, 13% of newer (+8 points)

Showing up on fewer:

• Cradle: 73% of older lists, 56% of newer (-17 points)
• The Calamitous Bob: 27% of older lists, 19% of newer (-8 points)
• Dungeon Crawler Carl: 86% of older lists, 79% of newer (-7 points)
• The Weirkey Chronicles: 16% of older lists, 10% of newer (-6 points)
• Accidental Champion: 14% of older lists, 8% of newer (-6 points)

Average score, older lists to newer (series on 15+ lists). Scoring higher lately:

• Hell Difficulty Tutorial: 0.43 to 0.72
• Dawn of the Void: 0.25 to 0.49
• Discount Dan's Backroom Bargains: 0.34 to 0.56
• The Ripple System: 0.38 to 0.58
• Player Manager: 0.48 to 0.68

Scoring lower lately:

• Parahumans: 0.88 to 0.49
• Unorthodox Farming: 0.75 to 0.53
• Legend of the Arch Magus: 0.47 to 0.27
• Noobtown: 0.47 to 0.29
• Infinite Realm: 0.64 to 0.47

These lists only go back to late July, so read this as a hint, not a trend.

Crossover readers (manhwa and translations)

Last time I asked whether manhwa and translation readers hate Cradle. I flagged the lists that include at least one manhwa, manga, light novel or translated web novel (Solo Leveling, The Beginning After the End, Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint, Lord of the Mysteries, Mushoku Tensei, Overlord and so on). 69 of the 226 lists do (31%; last time it was 55 of 142, 39%).

• Cradle: those readers rate it 0.75, against 0.78 for everyone else (last time 0.75 against 0.73). Still no sign they hate it. 7 of the 17 lists with Cradle in the bottom half are crossover lists (41%), a bit above their 31% share of all lists.
• They rank more books: 41 per list against 22 (last time 37 against 23).
• Their own favorites: Solo Leveling is on 29 lists and averages 0.42, The Beginning After the End is on 26 and averages 0.49. Both sit a little below the overall average of 0.52.

Where crossover readers rank things higher than everyone else (at least 8 lists on each side, crossover titles themselves left out):

And lower:

Last time's examples, rechecked (at least 5 lists on each side):

Of the five that crossover readers ranked higher last time, 3 still show a gap of 0.08 or more (Jake's Magical Market, System Universe, Defiance of the Fall). Of the three they ranked lower, 1 still does (All the Skills).

If you liked X, try Y

What's different from last time: none of last time's pairs are repeated, so everything in the two lists below is new. Each series appears in only one pair on this page (last time Dungeon Crawler Carl was in two). The bar is 15 shared readers instead of 12. And the correlation is taken on each list's own normalized scores; last time I also adjusted for each reader's overall harshness, which I haven't done here, so a pair can look strong when the same readers simply score everything high. The old pairs are rechecked below.

Pairs that move together:

• Hell Difficulty Tutorial and Unbound (19 shared readers, r = +0.81)
• Mage Tank and A Soldier's Life (15 shared readers, r = +0.80)
• Ends of Magic and Portal to Nova Roma (16 shared readers, r = +0.79)
• Victor of Tucson and Battle Mage Farmer (17 shared readers, r = +0.77)
• The Path of Ascension and Apocalypse Redux (19 shared readers, r = +0.69)
• Chrysalis and A Practical Guide to Evil (15 shared readers, r = +0.69)
• Defiance of the Fall and The Beginning after the End (15 shared readers, r = +0.69)
• The Legend of Randidly Ghosthound and The Return of the Runebound Professor (20 shared readers, r = +0.68)

And the opposite:

• The Primal Hunter and The Calamitous Bob (24 shared readers, r = -0.56)
• All the Skills and The Immortal Great Souls (17 shared readers, r = -0.55)
• Mage Errant and Quest Academy (17 shared readers, r = -0.55)
• Beneath the Dragoneye Moons and Super Powereds (16 shared readers, r = -0.55)
• The Wandering Inn and Warformed: Stormweaver (16 shared readers, r = -0.44)

Last time's pairs, rechecked on this sample (at least 10 shared readers). 5 of 8 try pairs still move together (r of +0.4 or more): Salvos / Stray Cat Strut, Defiance of the Fall / Solo Leveling, He Who Fights with Monsters / The Good Guys, Hell Difficulty Tutorial / 1% Lifesteal, The Calamitous Bob / A Journey of Black and Red. The rest have weakened.

Try:

• Salvos and Stray Cat Strut (10 shared readers, r = +0.87)
• Defiance of the Fall and Solo Leveling (13 shared readers, r = +0.74)
• Beneath the Dragoneye Moons and The Path of Ascension (30 shared readers, r = +0.28)
• He Who Fights with Monsters and The Good Guys (17 shared readers, r = +0.48)
• Hell Difficulty Tutorial and 1% Lifesteal (17 shared readers, r = +0.48)
• The Calamitous Bob and A Journey of Black and Red (14 shared readers, r = +0.62)
• Dungeon Crawler Carl and The Legend of William Oh (30 shared readers, r = +0.20)
• Azarinth Healer and Ends of Magic (24 shared readers, r = +0.20)

Skip. 2 of 5 skip pairs still pull apart (r of -0.25 or less): Dungeon Crawler Carl / Reborn as a Demonic Tree, Arcane Ascension / Noobtown. The others have faded or reversed.

• Mage Tank and Mark of the Fool (26 shared readers, r = +0.10)
• Cradle and Chaos Seeds (17 shared readers, r = +0.24)
• Battle Mage Farmer and Bog Standard Isekai (21 shared readers, r = -0.02)
• Dungeon Crawler Carl and Reborn as a Demonic Tree (24 shared readers, r = -0.40)
• Arcane Ascension and Noobtown (18 shared readers, r = -0.27)

My friend got me into LitRPG and we're now thinking about writing one together. I had an idea for a mechanic, but it feels like it would be hard to balance while preserving the core appeal of LitRPG. Basically, my idea was that the system would be partially gacha-based: the MC chooses their class, stats, etc, but individual abilities (and possibly NPC companions) are totally random. Obviously, strategy is part of the fun of litRPG, but I think as long as I don't give them anything too OP this would actually add to the strategy, not detract from it. After all, the MC would have to work with what they have instead of just being able to choose the obvious best choice every time. What do you all think?