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Other Projects => Other Games => Topic started by: Aquillion on November 16, 2020, 02:27:19 pm

Title: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aquillion on November 16, 2020, 02:27:19 pm
For those who haven't heard about it, Amazing Cultivation Simulator (https://store.steampowered.com/app/955900/Amazing_Cultivation_Simulator/) is a Dwarf Fortress-like / Rimworld-like based on Chinese Cultivation novels (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xianxia_novel) (that is to say, Xianxia novels) - a genre where people try to cultivate their inner power using martial arts bullshit, pills and medicine, and daoist enlightenment in order to become immortal demigods.  For those unfamiliar with the genre, imagine a DF-alike where you run a Naruto village or something along those lines.

You run a sect that starts as just a few outer disciplines; ultimately your goal is to raise a bunch of immortal demigods.  The game has a huge amount of depth to it - you can send your cultivators off on adventures, or your sect can be attacked by massive multi-part screen-sized megabeasts that require a bunch of cultivators in formation to deal with.  (Formations are magical arrangements with various effects and powers, which you can customize to suit your needs.)  You can turn any object into a magical treasure, and your disciplines can learn a ton of magical techniques as part of the various paths they follow or by reading secret manuals.  The game also has a complete Feng Shui system, so in addition to a room's quality you have to consider the elemental auras of any objects you place in it and the requirements of whatever purpose you intend to put it to.  Basically if you want DF with a deep magic system, this game is worth looking at.

The official English release comes out shortly, but the translation is already available for people who own the game on Steam and want to test it by following the instructions here (https://drive.google.com/file/d/1in6BjcPLonUAoOeQt9eGAnsBh3GhHyij/view); it seems basically complete.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Mephansteras on November 16, 2020, 02:37:31 pm
Huh, interesting!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on November 16, 2020, 08:53:33 pm
I love how much of practical feng shui gets mysticized into oblivion... like the south-facing front door thing. (If you track it back, it mostly has to do with the amount of sunlight certain rooms and the front yard will get.)

And the sword-surfing. I... just... no.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 16, 2020, 09:11:48 pm
Sword surfing is like absolutely iconic for the cultivation novel genre, heh. Flying swords both as transport and other things is an incredibly pervasive thing for what this game is cribbing notes from.

... anyway, as much punch magic nonsense as I've read of the last handful of years, I'm absolutely interested in this game, ha. Probably going to wait for a sale, and I'm not huge on the rimworld-ish aesthetic, but it's in my steam wishlist now :P
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on November 16, 2020, 09:33:05 pm
Sword surfing is like absolutely iconic for the cultivation novel genre, heh. Flying swords both as transport and other things is an incredibly pervasive thing for what this game is cribbing notes from.

Yeah, but it's always struck me as ludicrous. Even more so than some of the genre. And I'm always reminded of this:

"It was made from this special metal from the heart of a dying star. And when I spun it really, really fast it gave me the ability to fly."
"You rode a hammer?"
"No, I didn’t ride the hammer"
"The hammer rode you on your back?"
"No, I would spin it really fast and it would pull me off the…"
"Oh my god, the hammer pulled you off!?"
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 16, 2020, 09:41:51 pm
I'unno, to me it was always basically the exact sort of absurdity the genre tries to (heh) cultivate. It's just part of the natural evolution of "lets do increasingly ridiculous magic martial arts". You throw geographic features, you punch people horny, you hop on a sword and fly around on it. It's just how these worlds are supposed to work, heh. When you reach the point melee weapons are turning into UAVs, also being stabby hoverboards is just par for the course :P

Pretty sure I've read at least one where someone or another flew around on smaller, paired sword/daggers. Sworderskates, more or less.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on November 16, 2020, 10:17:50 pm
Cultivation is kinda stupid.  But then I thought Naruto's ninjas, including the run, was cool.

Since I sometimes am an observer of translated comics that include cultivation in one form or another.  This has my interest.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on November 17, 2020, 04:41:36 am
Oooh this is relevant to my interests. I read a bunch of translated novels from this genre. If you want an entry point, I can recommend "I Shall Seal The Heavens" as a staple. I know that many would recommend "Coiling Dragon", "Stellar Transformations", "Swallowed Star" and "The Desolate Era" from the author "I eat tomatoes" but I personally didn't like his writing style.

Anyways, for me this genre was a breath of fresh air, having read a lot of fantasy as a teenager. The interesting points for me were :

-Morally ambiguous main characters.
-Long lived characters (centuries, millenia and more) and reaching for immortality in general.
-Scales of power that go from regular human to godlike, and everything in between. The pursuit of power is a central point in these novels and that appealed to me more than the typical "let's save the world from evil".

[Edit : I see that they'll release the english version on nov 25 so I guess I'll wait a bit]
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Cathar on November 17, 2020, 10:02:39 am
I love how much of practical feng shui gets mysticized into oblivion... like the south-facing front door thing. (If you track it back, it mostly has to do with the amount of sunlight certain rooms and the front yard will get.)

And the sword-surfing. I... just... no.

A lot of the spring and autumn era philosophy and thoughts are getting ridiculously mysticized, it's not a new phenomena. Partly due to the interpretative nature of chinese language, partly due to human stupidity and partly due to tradition, and partly due to the joking tone of some of the texts. Most of chinese fantasy based martial arts are due to that.
A master tells his disciple the secret to be immune to tigers and rhinos, which boils down to "stay in the city lol" - people take that seriously and go around telling people they can harden their skin and be immune to blades.

And yeah, Xianxia is ... a genra of its own.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on November 17, 2020, 10:24:22 am
Probably a buy once they release the English translation.  Bonus points if its as bad as 70s kung fu translations!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Rift on November 18, 2020, 10:37:06 pm
I've played this quite a bit in the last month or so, and would call it fairly fun and interesting. One of the biggest problems is the lack of well.. basically any way to figure out how things work besides experimentation. Technically there's a tutorial for like the first few simple things to get your sect 'up and running', and you get this golden-core(mid-game) protector to keep you safe for a bit at start (hes not, incidentally invincible or anything, just far stronger then anything that would attack your sect.... except perhaps the single strong beast that spawns in one of the lower corners on your randomly generator sect-map... Do not piss it off until your stronger then it, which likely means being in a cultivation tier above until you know what your doing).
Anyway, early-game is easy to figure out.. but then once you hit mid-game things get more complicated with little explanation.. The google doc from the fan wiki (https://amazing-cultivation-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/Amazing_Cultivation_Simulator_Wiki) is literally the only help you'll get, and they made it before the English translation so its terms are different for things). I donno how i would of figured anything out without it.
Some stuff is still pretty opaque to me, even 50hours in, but i think i'm finally getting the hang on some stuff.
It's definitely the type of game where you will likely restart a few times before you get the hang of it.
There is a great deal of depth here, and its nice to play with magic-ish that isn't  set in western fantasy.
I have read a bunch of xianxia though, so i am likely biased and find some stuff easier to understand.
Anyway, 50hrs in i'm more or less still late mid-game technically.. i do have a primordial soul(nascent soul) cultivator, with another soon to be, so things seem to be going well... I'll probly die if anything crazy that requires formations attacks me though.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on November 19, 2020, 09:30:14 pm
So, I caved in and I've been playing for a couple days, I have to say it's pretty good and you don't have to wait for the english release, the beta is already really polished and the worst thing I've seen is a missing space or maybe the use of the word "Law" where I'm more used to "Scripture" in translated Xianxia... nothing big.

And, according to their lastest steam announcement, if you buy it before the 24th, you'll get the panda DLC for free on the 25th.

Oh and maybe someone here can tell me : does it matter what element your tools are? And if it does, is it better to use a fire element pickaxe, since fire begets earth, or would the wood pickaxe be more effective, since wood overcomes earth? Similarly, should I build my well out of metal or wood? I could both imagine the metal boosting the water quality or the water boosting the wooden well quality, or maybe it doesnt matter.

Finally, something cool that I've discovered : you can use spirit stones (the currency) as a building/crafting/flooring material if you don't have much stone on hand. It's a tier 6 material and I think it looks nice, but the drawback is that it doesn't have an element so you won't get any feng shui from it. You can get spirit stones fairly easily when the travelling merchants come to visit you.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Rift on November 19, 2020, 10:33:16 pm
I'm not sure if the element of your tool matters at all tbh, as far as i noticed its too negligible to notice/care about. Artifact element definitely matters though, you should pick a element for your artifact that is fed by the element that your cultivators law is.
If you improve the feng-shui of your well by making sure the area around it the element that feeds it (or if its in a room, also the quality of the room), i think it performs better. I'm not sure you'll notice the difference on specifically a well... maybe if you have like really bad feng shui people will get injured on your well sometimes, pretty sure feng shui effects accident chances quite a bit, it should also increase/decrease chance of better quality stuff in most workshops, but i think water is one of the base-materials and thus, has the same quality regardless.   Oh, and peoples opinion go up when they are near attractive things and high feng shui things (and down from the inverse).
Uhh to be clear if your well was built in a area of high-earth, you should build it metal which feeds on it. once you get the observatory you can see specifically the fengshui of a object or location (which isn't JUST element, some stuff like what side of the room doors on matters a lot... or how crowded/empty a room is, or how nice the stuff in the room is)
Yeah spirit stones, useful, never have enough. For the record, in addition to buying/selling to the merchant that comes a few times a year, you can also trade directly with sects on the map once you 'talk' to them once, (which is just giving them a gift on the map scree, if you give them a shitty gift you don't get negative opinion or anything so dont worry). Finally if you buy a auction permit ONCE, you can visit the auction house that happens fairly often, as many times as you want. Tons of ways to use spirit stones.
Oh, and spirit stones are used in a lot of recipes, lots of structures use them, alchemy uses them for some stuff, like spirit crystals.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: delphonso on November 19, 2020, 10:38:42 pm
The name *chef kiss*

I'll definitely check it out. I'm honestly so satisfied to see more Chinese games trying to reach a wider audience, especially as it should pressure higher quality in the game market here.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on November 20, 2020, 05:21:30 pm
So, I caved in and I've been playing for a couple days, I have to say it's pretty good and you don't have to wait for the english release, the beta is already really polished and the worst thing I've seen is a missing space or maybe the use of the word "Law" where I'm more used to "Scripture" in translated Xianxia... nothing big.

And, according to their lastest steam announcement, if you buy it before the 24th, you'll get the panda DLC for free on the 25th.

Yeah, I did too.  Help them playtest their english version before release and get free Pandas!

EDIT: Sigh, and yet another developer can't even get their save system to work right.  They kinda need to fix that if I'm going to play it.
EDIT: I found a fix!  Change language to Chinese, close and reopen, change language back to English, close and reopen.  It works!

Also, how to I unlock the simple, ordinary furnace?  I think I've built everything, yet it remains hidden.
EDIT: Nevermind, just need to wait I guess.  Or maybe build a building, I dunno.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on November 20, 2020, 08:59:16 pm
So, I caved in and I've been playing for a couple days, I have to say it's pretty good and you don't have to wait for the english release, the beta is already really polished and the worst thing I've seen is a missing space or maybe the use of the word "Law" where I'm more used to "Scripture" in translated Xianxia... nothing big.

And, according to their lastest steam announcement, if you buy it before the 24th, you'll get the panda DLC for free on the 25th.

Yeah, I did too.  Help them playtest their english version before release and get free Pandas!

EDIT: Sigh, and yet another developer can't even get their save system to work right.  They kinda need to fix that if I'm going to play it.

Also, how to I unlock the simple, ordinary furnace?  I think I've built everything, yet it remains hidden.
EDIT: Nevermind, just need to wait I guess.  Or maybe build a building, I dunno.
I *think* building the stonecutter is what unlocks the next tier of buildings, although waiting might work as well?
If you improve the feng-shui of your well by making sure the area around it the element that feeds it (or if its in a room, also the quality of the room), i think it performs better. I'm not sure you'll notice the difference on specifically a well... maybe if you have like really bad feng shui people will get injured on your well sometimes, pretty sure feng shui effects accident chances quite a bit, it should also increase/decrease chance of better quality stuff in most workshops, but i think water is one of the base-materials and thus, has the same quality regardless.
The well description notes that it gives cleaner water than regular water you just find out in lakes or whatever, so I assume that bad fung shui quality might mean it has a chance to give you bad water.
Or maybe the fung shui for the well might not matter aside from the mood penalty, the game is pretty opaque about a lot of stuff.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Rift on November 21, 2020, 12:19:36 am
yeah thats possible i guess? i've never seen water that looked different but i've never tried making a cursed well.

EDIT: Sigh, and yet another developer can't even get their save system to work right.  They kinda need to fix that if I'm going to play it.
What problem were you having with the save system? It has some auto-saves and you can manually save.. i've never had it crash or fail to load a save?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 21, 2020, 01:46:23 am
... speaking of cursed wells, is there anything special you can do if you go about just absolutely ruining the general area's feng shui? Actually make like a cursed sect or somethin'?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on November 21, 2020, 02:16:58 am
I think the most obvious answer is "everyone is always unhappy, everything you make is bad, and all your luck is horrible".
I do think there is a sect feng shui score later on, but I think for that higher is pretty much just flat out better.
I *do* know that is at least one potential benefit of bad feng shui, notably if someone dies in a room with terrible feng shui they generate an item or cursed spirit of some kind (that I can't remember the name of or what exactly it is), which you can then sell or use for crafting or something.

Given how complex and opaque the game apparently is I would be surprised if there weren't more hidden or even not so hidden benefits of selective bad feng shui.
yeah thats possible i guess? i've never seen water that looked different but i've never tried making a cursed well.
I was thinking less cursed well and more "this well is just super crappy with a significantly increased chance of getting normal bad-well events, like ruining food or making your dudes sick cause the water was unhygenic".
But again, I don't really have the slightest clue, although making an *actual* cursed well would be awesome.

E: The game's discord channel seems to be pretty active, and is the place I would go if you have an actual question you want answered by people that actually know what they are talking about (eg. not me). I also grabbed this (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VgeRn1jiJnUlLl6Z4Bv-OM4L8Pz1ykTrKPOCCWdd5nc/edit) guide off it, which has been pretty darn helpful thus far.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Rift on November 21, 2020, 02:51:22 am
Yeah there is a 'sect feng shui" level, i think? it might just be the average of all the rooms feng shui (and possibly including feng-shui targets like beds/workshops/etc that arent in rooms). i think you can see it as soon as you put a observatory up (which is what lets you see feng shui levels and elements to begin with). I haven't seen any or heard of anything saying the entire sect feng shui does anything other then a onetime bonus to sect reputation and recruitment if you hit very auspicious.... but Who knows? games pretty freaken unclear, and some people seem to be saying it effects global breakthrough rate which may be possible? i donno. Ingame loretext implies it affects luck n stuff, so it MIGHT affect tons of stuff, or almost nothing.

you can definitely easily make your rooms 'cursed' if your trying just by putting doors on the wrong sides, and making the feng-shui target in the room be the feed element for everything else in the room, or uh.. making the room the element that beats it. I think its just called "very inauspicous". Also in general you can just place everything important the same way thats not in rooms as well, inverting the elements etc.. and make basically everything your people interact with, and every room they enter to be very inauspcious.. this will at the very least make them all very unhappy, very accident prone (omfg the stove at very inauspcious might as well be a flamethrower with how many fires it starts).. and make the quality of everything extremely low, or outright fail to make stuff.

I think i remember seeing something imply that very inauspicious + corpses/graves might make undead happen or something, but i never tried it.
Btw there IS a reason to make a single room really inauspicious, if you want to.. farm anguish soul gems by throwing dying people into it.. so that they suffer while they die and leave them behind potentially. (otherwise they leave behind different soul gems)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on November 21, 2020, 08:57:42 am
Good to know about soul gems, I never got one yet. One thing I noticed is that when killing random invaders (and I think even animals) with my sect leader, he got "Condemnation" from it (bad karma basically). I think it's because they were of a lower stage than him.

As for sect feng shui, I can definitely confirm that it gives a bonus (or malus) during breakthroughs, you can see it in the breakthrough window.

For wells, I can confirm that wooden wells get a bonus, because the building naturally generates water element, which feeds the wood and makes it auspiciuous.
Similarly, a stove, forge or furnace emits fire, so you get a bonus when making them from earth materials (stone basically).

Also, how to I unlock the simple, ordinary furnace?  I think I've built everything, yet it remains hidden.
EDIT: Nevermind, just need to wait I guess.  Or maybe build a building, I dunno.

About that, I think that you unlock pretty much everything as soon as you establish your sect, which can be right at the beginning of the game if you just give the free foundation pill to whoever you want as sect leader and make him breakthrough on the spot. The annoying part is that only outer disciples can do regular work, so you have to plan around that.

Another useful tip : you don't have to mark and haul everything you want to trade, to the trade area. Instead you can just check "available for sale" in any storage area, and everything in there will appear during trades.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Rift on November 21, 2020, 04:03:29 pm
well feng shui in the SPOT your standing in during breakthrough matters, i'm not sure if the global feng shui effects that rather then just the tile-by-tile fengshui.

You unlock more stuff as you go up in sect-level(rep 500?) as well, but that also brings stronger enemies. Some scrolls may contain some buildings for devine cultivaiton, and uhh i think you can also get some other decorations via other sects somehow.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: ChairmanPoo on November 21, 2020, 04:16:12 pm
This looks really neat and I bought it, though it also looks confusing at this point.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on November 21, 2020, 04:57:12 pm
As for sect feng shui, I can definitely confirm that it gives a bonus (or malus) during breakthroughs, you can see it in the breakthrough window.

well feng shui in the SPOT your standing in during breakthrough matters, i'm not sure if the global feng shui effects that rather then just the tile-by-tile fengshui.

Here's what I'm talking about

(https://snipboard.io/WLiDu9.jpg)

You can't see my mouse cursor but this is the tooltip when I'm on "feng shui". Note that these bonuses are all independent from location, and if you click the "breakthrough" button, you're then prompted to choose a spot, which has it's own bonuses, here's a side by side of a shitty spot and a good spot :

(https://snipboard.io/SVwjqg.jpg)

As you can see the feng shui bonus stays the same because it's the map-wide sect bonus. Interestingly, the room feng shui doesn't seem to have a role here, only the element compatibility and qi density of the chosen tile.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Rift on November 21, 2020, 08:50:42 pm
Interesting, your 100% right.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on November 21, 2020, 11:37:20 pm
So, I just found a use for the random attackers that keep pestering me : it turns out that their corpses make for great fertilizer!

I just tested this earlier and sure enough, the area where I dumped my last body went up to "rich" from "fertile".

[Edit :]
This is not the same as making fertile soil with feces though : fertile soil in this case is a green tile with a heavier wood element balance, whereas dumping a corpse will increase the fertility score without altering the tile otherwise.

Also as I was writing this I just found out that there's another type of soil called spirit soil, which I'm starting to guess is key in producing spiritwood more consistently...
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Rift on November 22, 2020, 12:15:26 am
Apparently people will sometimes just ignore the well and drink unpure water from the enivronment (assuming you have water around in your map).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on November 22, 2020, 07:04:46 am
Apparently people will sometimes just ignore the well and drink unpure water from the enivronment (assuming you have water around in your map).
Apparently if you *don't* have water around in the environment they just collapse from dehydration instead... which isn't really much better.

The (temporary) solution is you can just order your dudes to manually draw a bunch of water from your well so your idiots don't drink straight from the ground.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aquillion on November 22, 2020, 05:58:52 pm
... speaking of cursed wells, is there anything special you can do if you go about just absolutely ruining the general area's feng shui? Actually make like a cursed sect or somethin'?
There are some specific actions that benefit from bad feng shui (soulsearching enemies to rip out their secret techniques, in particular.)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on November 22, 2020, 06:44:47 pm
Anyone know how to heal the guy you get with the "Helping Hand" option?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Salmeuk on November 23, 2020, 02:58:30 am
My first map went horribly as I went in blind, and after the other two had die I sent my lizard boi to cut down the divine relic gingko tree, just to see what would happen. I had images of divine punishment or the wrath of some local god, but no, it was just a f*ckton of gingko fruit and wood. It left a gigantic stump though, which I enjoyed greatly.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

It doesn't seem like grass and trees regrow over time, can anyone confirm this? Maybe I just have played long enough.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aquillion on November 23, 2020, 03:46:14 am
Grass and trees do regrow over time (although I wouldn't be expecting to see another divine relic gingko tree, since lorewise they take more than the game's timeframe to grow.)

Smaller trees appear as tiny one-pixel sprouts and then grow to full-sized trees over time, though.  There's also miracles you can use to make them grow faster later on.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on November 23, 2020, 10:30:13 am
So apparently reincarnaters are generated based on their name.

Gave it a run last night.  Anyways, when generating new map/world, are there any more details to the map options?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on November 23, 2020, 01:00:47 pm
My first map went horribly as I went in blind, and after the other two had die I sent my lizard boi to cut down the divine relic gingko tree, just to see what would happen. I had images of divine punishment or the wrath of some local god, but no, it was just a f*ckton of gingko fruit and wood. It left a gigantic stump though, which I enjoyed greatly.

Yea I also ended up cutting down my giant ginkgos, for a very simple reason : they were in the way of my expansion. They spawned too close to my base, and although I was overjoyed at first to have 2 of them in close proximity of one another, moreso when I started with a fire law, I eventually got annoyed when I discovered that there was no spot covered by both trees (the 5 range is really 4 and diagonals count for 2), and by that point I was already sick of their giant sprites hiding so much terrain from view, so I went : f* it.

Besides, you get the same results with a bunch of spiritwood logs on display stands.

Right now what pisses me off is that I found out that if I breakthrough to golden core, I would get a low grade core due to various factors, yet much of the events seem to require a golden core to take part.

On the bright side, I got a fox spirit pet not long ago, he seems really nice.

Also I am doing experiments to see if I can propagate spirit soil, which I'm convinced is possible since some of my spirit soil receded this winter. I already know that you can use super expensive spirit seeds to make a new tile, or one of the pet fox miracles, but I think it's possible to do it manually, either with elements, qi concentration, fertility, or maybe some plants.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on November 23, 2020, 04:01:50 pm
So apparently reincarnaters are generated based on their name.

Gave it a run last night.  Anyways, when generating new map/world, are there any more details to the map options?
Totally. If you click the edit button next to "environment" on the top when you start off picking the difficulty settings you can change monsters that start on the map (?) the biome you start in, if you start with any unique features (I picked a giant tree that gives me like a bigass area of spirit soil in return for slowly giving my disciples inner spirit damage, which I can just cure with pills).
Oh, its also been *very* slowly been killing the super monster that starts on the bottom of my map, which is hilarious. Eventually I might not even have to kill it to get its loot and it might just flop over dead on its own.
Still at 80% health after about at 100 days though, so maybe after like 300 days it will fall unconscious?
Of course, I could just kill it dead by that point, probably even if it levels up to the next tier, but its the thought that counts.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on November 23, 2020, 04:14:42 pm
Right now what pisses me off is that I found out that if I breakthrough to golden core, I would get a low grade core due to various factors, yet much of the events seem to require a golden core to take part.

My general policy is to make a shitty first of something, then use that to make better second and third things.  I haven't fiddled with Golden Core much, but they have powers that you can use to make the next generation better.

Additionally, Golden Core from what I've read pretty much comes down to time of year, so it is perfectly natural to be stuck waiting all year for the ideal window.  You also need the weather manipulating spells, which some lower forms have but many Golden Cores grant.  Hence, create a sucky one to make a good one.

The guide makes a big deal about having high quality on everything, but look at the AI Golden Cores.  They mostly suck.

And in following standard Roguelike/RPGs, the best tactic is to kill the starting friend and take his stuff.  That starting Cultivator that is supposedly Golden Core can be beaten by 3 starting Inner Cultists.  Dunno why his Qi is soo low.  I guess he learned Super Sucky Cultivation Rule that gets him Golden Core without the Qi.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Rift on November 23, 2020, 05:34:10 pm
Yeah i wouldn't worry -That- much about following the guide and grinding for years just to make your first disciple a amazing golden core... I've managed to get some quality7 and 8 cores to primordial soul without too much difficulty, its just more time consuming. While my quality 2 golden core basically jumped through the golden core phase to primordial soul insanely fast, hes not really much faster at cultivating as a primordial soul anyway. The biggest difference is just the sheer amount of qi they have. Which is admittedly pretty huge, like 8x more, which makes tribulations way easier. Also for the purposes of crafting having a bunch of qi is pretty essential, since the higher tier artifacts require lots of qi to make... but you'll likely be on your 2-3rd primordial soul before you even need them.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on November 23, 2020, 10:56:37 pm
Palpitations.  Anyone else having outer disciples randomly die overnight?  In the first spring.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on November 23, 2020, 11:30:59 pm
Palpitations.  Anyone else having outer disciples randomly die overnight?  In the first spring.

I haven't had it, but from what I read on the steam forums, this is caused by ominous feng shui in your bedroom. You can read the basics of feng shui on the help section but the short of it for bedrooms is to have the exit to the south and have some space inside so that it isn't too cramped.

If you don't want to deal with matching elements (fire/wood/etc), I suggest using spirit stone blocks for building, it seems to make everything auspicious (++), which is good enough for me.

btw, for workshops you want the door to face east, and for kitchens, west. Try not to have more than 1 exit to the room, otherwise you'll likely get a massive feng shui malus (leakage).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on November 24, 2020, 01:49:17 pm
Unrelated: Disciples can overheat and die.  Most can survive the summer, but some of the Yaochin have fur, so they need a talisman to cool them off during the summer.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Knave on November 24, 2020, 03:52:21 pm
Anyone know a good mat (or element type?) to make Alchemy furnaces (tables?) out of?

The game states that my greystone version is ominous :p
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on November 24, 2020, 04:18:36 pm
Also I am doing experiments to see if I can propagate spirit soil, which I'm convinced is possible since some of my spirit soil receded this winter. I already know that you can use super expensive spirit seeds to make a new tile, or one of the pet fox miracles, but I think it's possible to do it manually, either with elements, qi concentration, fertility, or maybe some plants.

After extensive testing in the "land of illusion", I concluded that spirit soil does not in fact, propagate naturally. Earlier, when I found that it had "receded during winter", it was actually due to turning nearby tiles into "fertile soil" : I found out that when you change a tile, it can change nearby tiles as well.

On the bright side, in those tests I discovered two ways to artificially generate spirit soil, one through a special building that you probably unlock in late game, and the other is spirit seeds, which I already knew about, but I could confirm that they generate more than 1 tile, instead they generate a big square over 3 years (I did not have the patience to way for the full 3 years to see the final size of the patch, but it should be sizeable).

Anyone know a good mat (or element type?) to make Alchemy furnaces (tables?) out of?

The game states that my greystone version is ominous :p

Spirit stones blocks ! Using money as a building material feels really luxurious, but honestly it's more plentiful that stone and it makes everything auspicious and beautiful. One of the downsides is that you need twice the number of blocks to build with, so your disciples will have to spend more time carving.

Thinking about it, you could probably make your greystone alchemy furnace auspicious, but that would require changing at least the floor to something fire-attuned (which is doable with 1 igneocopper ore). If it's ominous, your room is probably made of wood, which is bad for earth materials.

Edit : since I was at it, I checked in the "land of illusion" (editor) and sure enough, igneocopper floor will do, but you'd need to change the walls too (greystone works). Alternatively you could build outside, and as long as there's nothing wood-attuned nearby, it could be auspicious.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Knave on November 24, 2020, 05:34:03 pm
Thank you for the reply and multiple options!

Really enjoying the game so far, but often feel like I'm wandering around in the dark :D

Next just got to figure out why my first inner disciple is so slow at getting... foundation? (Is it still called foundation once you reach Inner Disciple?)
I'm assuming it's because his stats and the starter law don't mess well at all (-5)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on November 24, 2020, 06:39:24 pm
Basically you want to get as many pluses on each square of the little box as humanly possible.

Stats is one of the biggest ones yeah. You can see he gets a -5 penalty to his law bonus, which means he probably has something like 50% compatibility. Ideally you want that number much higher to start off. You can improve this a bunch by having him learn a bunch of stuff to boost his base stats in the library, but even then the best option is just to either pick a law he is better at or pick someone else that is better to cultivate.
Similarly, you also want his mood to be high, which requires getting rid of all his negative thoughts (eg. no weapon, no artifact, my clothes are lame, my room is lame, I ate lame food).

Secondly you want him to be cultivating in an area with stuff that benefits his element. Your dude is fire, so you want him to be surrounded by as much high quality wood as possible.

It says qi is at +++++, but I'm pretty sure its actually lying. You want to surround your dude with as much stuff that gathers qi as you can cram within range. For fire element that means surrounding him with as much wood stuff that gathers qi as humanly possible (aka, spirit wood) on stands. This makes a pretty big difference in cultivating speed. Note that range refers to tiles away not counting diagonals and counts the tile it starts on, so 1 tile up 1 tile to the left is 3 tiles away.

For element you want to maximize the amount of wood element stuff within a two tile range. For him again, just stick spirit wood on stands there (because if its on the ground its useless). Also note that you want his cultivating spot to be of the same element he is, and not the feeding element like everything else, so make him a fire element bed.

Cozy seems to be a bit of mistranslation, and actually refers to the quality of the room he's in, so if he is in a good quality room he's gonna cultivate better.


And finally a big recommendation: Look through all the ingame tutorials when you have a big question and thny play it if its appropriate. They aren't perfect, but if you are having basic questions (like this one) there is a good chance they cover it to some degree via tutorial.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on November 24, 2020, 08:11:34 pm
Cozy seems to be a bit of mistranslation, and actually refers to the quality of the room he's in, so if he is in a good quality room he's gonna cultivate better.

I'm pretty sure that's not the case, from my experience it's related to the quality of the cushion, but only registers once you start cultivating.

For instance, my cozy stat is always at (--) but goes to (++) if I'm cultivating on a fabric cushion, even if I'm sitting outside in the open. I think that you can also unlock a better type of cushion later on, one that can use all sorts of materials, not just fabrics.

---
In other news, I just entered another map for the first time (first you have to camp there and then enter). For some reason I had completely overlooked it before.

I strongly recommend experimenting with it to anyone that hasn't done it yet, it's very useful.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Knave on November 24, 2020, 08:22:19 pm
Thanks again for the advice and explanations :)

I did go through the tutorials, but they can be pretty dense. Should have done a refresher once my people started hitting inner disciple!
Sounds like they just need a better/bigger room in general. Maybe a few more cushions. And chop one of those fancy spirit trees I've been avoiding since the start.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Rift on November 24, 2020, 10:04:45 pm
There isn't really a reason to make huge rooms that i can see, well not like bigger then 11x11 or something. For cultivation rooms you just want enough space to fill up with qi-gathering materials(ie, 2-3tiles around your cushion) on stands while having the highest quality you can without being too cramped or too empty. Oh and a bit of lighting, cause you do get a dim lighting negative to opinion. But yeah, bedrooms and everything else can be small as long as they meet quality/fengshui/crampness requirements.

You do unlock a qi-gathering cushion that is better, i think its when you become a proper sect (500rep).

Cozy really seems to be related to quality of the room to me, i'm pretty sure lemon10 is right.

Btw, even outside rooms the quality of the environment matters for opinion, theres like... 2 separate bonuses for like how amazing the area your disciples are walking through at any moment, in addition to the lighting negative if its dim. (so yeah, lights outside keep people happy).

Building materials may seem limited at first, but its not really hard to get them later on, you eventually control towns that literally produce brownstone/wood/spiritstones/wheat as like daily upkeep, and you can send adventures to certain locations and gather materials. it's actually pretty easy to just send a adventure 20 times do a certain location (that you dont see until you start exploring) and come back with like 400-800jade that can be made into like thousands of blocks, and then make your entire sect out of jade. (mine is). Likewise for most materials, there are places to adventure for the ores and the more advanced woods n stuff. I wouldn't leave your base defenseless though, soo make sure you have 2 inner disciples before you start going ham on adventureing. You can also just straight up buy a good chunk of the materials from the sects (once you talk to them on the map and give them their greeting gift that they will no doubt think is shitty)

My sect, which is a blessed holyland (has very auspicious in every room so sect-wide fengshui is maxed):  Image Link Cause its too big (https://i.imgur.com/eh2g7AH.jpg)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on November 24, 2020, 11:09:11 pm
Cozy really seems to be related to quality of the room to me, i'm pretty sure lemon10 is right.

From left to right, cozy bonuses :

great room, right before sitting down (-2) / after sitting down on a cushion (+2) / sitting down on the same cushion but outside in the middle of a pond (+2) / sitting down on a bed in a great room (-1).

(https://snipboard.io/QShUb8.jpg)

conclusion : what you sit down on is what matters for "cozy". Side note, the bed is made of spirit stone yet is still worse than a regular fabric cushion [Edit : a spiritwood bed gives +1, still less than a cushion].
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on November 24, 2020, 11:45:22 pm
So, I got an injured traveler come into my village. For reasons unknown, he decided that the best place to hang out was not on an unoccupied bed, but rather in my training room... which I had not previously realized that, due to the room being made out of wood, and the all the items inside the room being made out of fire-based items (it's auspicious, they said!), was basically a sauna at a sweltering 50 degrees.

This had never been a problem before, since my disciples are apparently smart enough to get out of the room when overheating. Dumbass, however, sits calmly in the oven until he passes out from heatstroke. Force feeding him water was insufficient to cool him down, and since I couldn't find the "move idiot traveler to a bed" command, he died.

Plus side, he had some decent quality clothing, which finally got my sect leader to calm down about his crappy clothes. 
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 25, 2020, 08:34:21 am
oh no

talisman drawing minigame

save me and my shaky hands D:
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on November 25, 2020, 09:11:36 am
oh no

talisman drawing minigame

save me and my shaky hands D:
Fact: Talisman don’t exist in this game.

(There supposedly is a QoL mod for auto drawing talismans somewhere.)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: ChairmanPoo on November 25, 2020, 10:56:05 am
I have this game and I really want to understand it 🤣🤣
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 25, 2020, 12:49:52 pm
welp, loner start has gone swimmingly

22 days in and my starter guy just died from a haunted house induced heart attack after I accidentally blocked off the one other critter I pressganged convinced to join into a building

I get the feeling this attempt isn't going to last much longer

maybe the eternally raining (fei infested) ancient battlefield with the spatial disruptions wasn't a good idea to start with? Nah, it'll work out :V

e: There's definitely something hilarious about the starter guy just keeling over dead only a day or two after the protector critter buggered off, though. That's some (reverse?) serendipity right there.

e2: damnit sheng at least move the corpse out of the bed before you sleep on it come on
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on November 25, 2020, 12:54:34 pm
The protector critter is absolute garbage.  He leaves before there is any real threats.  I'll continue to advocate for killing him and taking his stuff.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 25, 2020, 01:01:21 pm
welp, shortly after sheng finally managed to bury starter guy, map special effects kicked in and starter guy's corpse dug its way back out

its walking around now

go team

e: and by "go team" i mean starter guy's walking corpse promptly murdered sheng and now everyone's dead sheng's slowly dying to undead wounds

this has gone well!I

e2: starter guy has now murdered a passerby, too

this guy's corpse is like ten times as effective as they were alive holy shit
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on November 25, 2020, 01:33:47 pm
Just started this proper after slogging through the tutorials. Less than three weeks in, nothing particularly interesting happened yet, except for one of the wild animals being labeled as "Female Bull".
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: forsaken1111 on November 25, 2020, 03:34:46 pm
Don't assume the bull's gender.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aquillion on November 25, 2020, 03:46:28 pm
Thank you for the reply and multiple options!

Really enjoying the game so far, but often feel like I'm wandering around in the dark :D

Next just got to figure out why my first inner disciple is so slow at getting... foundation? (Is it still called foundation once you reach Inner Disciple?)
I'm assuming it's because his stats and the starter law don't mess well at all (-5)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Yeah, ----- for Law match is completely brutal.  You can make up for it a little bit by having him learn techniques that boost his stats - if you build a manual pavilion you can have people transcribe your laws into it and he can even learn techniques from other laws.  Look at his stats, figure out which are too low, and focus on boosting them.

That said, he's never going to be an amazing cultivator, so what you should also do is send him out to adventure and advance the plot so you can learn more laws to teach others.

More importantly, have him camp and enter areas with people, talk to them and learn / share information to raise their opinion of you to 60, then invite those people back to your sect so you can recruit them.  Target people with good stats, obviously, and Qi Sense is by far the most important skill for a cultivator (even more important than stats in the long term, though you want both), but beggars can't be choosers, and there's no real disadvantage to filling your sect out to the initial cap of 12.  That will give you more people to choose from and let you create a better second inner disciple once one of them builds their foundation.  Of course, you also want to recruit some people who will make good outer disciples.

In general your first few inner disciples are going to be throwaways meant to lay the foundation for making better people later on (your first Gold Core is probably going to suck too; same deal.  You use their power to pave the way for a better one later on.)

Eventually, if you want to cultivate fast, the thing to do is to build a Cultivation Room, which should look a bit like this.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

The outer ring of items should be Spirit Wood; there isn't really any replacement for it.  You can get spirit wood by cutting down the glowing trees.  The inner items should ideally be stuff that both feeds the element of your cultivator and has qi gathering, but if you don't have anything like that you can just put stuff that feeds their element there instead.  At the exact center you should place a cushion, and assign it to the cultivator who you want to use that room.  The lanterns and door position aren't important from a feng shui perspective, but it's good to keep the room lit to avoid bad thoughts.

Eventually, building a room like that is absolutely essential to getting a high-quality (or even decent-quality) gold core.  You don't strictly need it before then, but it helps, and it's good to have it ready in advance because when someone forms their gold core you will want to seize the perfect window of time when the season feeds their cultivation, which (for everyone but metal cultivators) only lasts a few days out of the year.

You can find other examples of cultivation rooms by visiting the big sects later on.

Quote
welp, shortly after sheng finally managed to bury starter guy, map special effects kicked in and starter guy's corpse dug its way back out
Unlike Dwarf Fortress this isn't a result of the map as a whole, but a result of choosing an inauspicious burial place.  Unless you want them to come back as a zombie, always bury people auspiciously.

22 days in and my starter guy just died from a haunted house induced heart attack after I accidentally blocked off the one other critter I pressganged convinced to join into a building
This is similar.  Never create inauspicious bedrooms (unless you're trying to kill someone for some reason); they cause heart attacks.  The key to an auspicious bedroom is to have only one door, facing southwards, and to have the material of the bed (and any other feng shui items you put in the room) be fed by the element of the surrounding room.  Most of the time your rooms will be made of stone or earth and, therefore, most of the time your beds should be made of metal, which is fed by earth.

Don't worry about bedrooms feeding a cultivator's element (it's a pain in the ass because the only materials that work for this for some elements will create uncomfortable temperatures for sleeping.)  Just give cultivators a cultivation room instead and they won't cultivate in their bedroom.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 25, 2020, 05:26:04 pm
I mean, that sect's dead now so I don't think I can double check, but I'm pretty sure the room was auspicious, or at least not mismatched material wise... didn't live long enough to get an inner disciple, so didn't have the feng shui checker, though. It might have been getting an extra penalty from an event or interaction with the ancient battlefield or somethin'?

... any case, anyone got recommendations for getting a physical cultivator's stamnia restored? After blowing through one's initial stock getting a handle on what remolding involved I'm having trouble getting it to regenerate at a rate that's something other than glacial. Critter's well fed and watered, but that doesn't seem to be doing the trick by itself.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on November 25, 2020, 08:17:38 pm
... any case, anyone got recommendations for getting a physical cultivator's stamnia restored? After blowing through one's initial stock getting a handle on what remolding involved I'm having trouble getting it to regenerate at a rate that's something other than glacial. Critter's well fed and watered, but that doesn't seem to be doing the trick by itself.

If you have glowing grass (found on spirit soil), you get spirit dew when you clear it, which can be eaten to recover stamina. Just be aware that it will decay very fast so you want to consume it immediately, and probably replant grass to keep producing it.

I think that you can also get stamina pills from alchemy. And some ingredients like ginseng and bear gall can recover stamina iirc.

Long term, you probably want to find ways to accelerate the food->stamina conversion process. From what I understand, body cultivators eat a lot.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 25, 2020, 08:53:29 pm
Injured wanderer needing help collapses! Check health screen, they're dying of thirst! Give them water, give them water!

Quote
Cause of Death: Bloating

wait no

itIf you have glowing grass (found on spirit soil), you get spirit dew when you clear it, which can be eaten to recover stamina. Just be aware that it will decay very fast so you want to consume it immediately, and probably replant grass to keep producing it.

I think that you can also get stamina pills from alchemy. And some ingredients like ginseng and bear gall can recover stamina iirc.

Long term, you probably want to find ways to accelerate the food->stamina conversion process. From what I understand, body cultivators eat a lot.
Ah, basically stuff I didn't/don't have, then :P

Good to have a short list of things to keep an eye out for, though, so cheers.

Least with the one I had, the biggest catch 22 I was seeing is its food->stamina acceleration seems to be locked behind the second or third breakthrough... which makes getting that far a pain if you don't have access to much else at the time. Got a better idea what I'm getting into with a new start, so hopefully it'll work out better this time (and I won't turn my sole critter into an inner disciple before having, y'know, someone else around to make food, this time :V). Game's uh, not lying when it says starting with a primordial unity body loner means you're in for a rough time, haha.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Nirur Torir on November 25, 2020, 09:49:03 pm
I've found that entering areas after adventuring to them is well worth it, even without breaking the sense of progression. Assuming you don't get close enough to aggro the Core Formation spirit beasts and have to spend 20 in-game hours kiting them to kill them, you can get hundreds of basic building materials from a trip in the starting region.

I don't know if you're supposed to deal with mortal attack with inner or outer disciples. The steam forums said an inner disciple will rack up crippling bad karma from killing mortals, but I had a mortal archer enemy crit and one-shot one of my swarming laborers.

Least with the one I had, the biggest catch 22 I was seeing is its food->stamina acceleration seems to be locked behind the second or third breakthrough... which makes getting that far a pain if you don't have access to much else at the time. Got a better idea what I'm getting into with a new start, so hopefully it'll work out better this time (and I won't turn my sole critter into an inner disciple before having, y'know, someone else around to make food, this time :V). Game's uh, not lying when it says starting with a primordial unity body loner means you're in for a rough time, haha.
Doesn't that soft-lock the game? I tried loner and raced for Foundation, but he refused to lower himself to accepting the new serfs he gathered from adventuring.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on November 26, 2020, 12:12:34 am
I've found that entering areas after adventuring to them is well worth it, even without breaking the sense of progression. Assuming you don't get close enough to aggro the Core Formation spirit beasts and have to spend 20 in-game hours kiting them to kill them, you can get hundreds of basic building materials from a trip in the starting region.

I don't know if you're supposed to deal with mortal attack with inner or outer disciples. The steam forums said an inner disciple will rack up crippling bad karma from killing mortals, but I had a mortal archer enemy crit and one-shot one of my swarming laborers.
Just kill them with your cultivator, it doesn't give any bad karma. If killing something will it warns you.

Killing or attacking non-hostile non-cultivator animals or humans gives you bad karma. This includes the dogs that bandits sometimes bring (until they attack you presumably), but does not include animals that spawn hostile from events.
If you aggro an animal and it attacks one of your dudes it then becomes hostile, and your cultivator can kill it without any problems.

Not that bad karma is really that big a deal for the most part. You don't start getting tribulations till pretty late on (unless you have an early peaking Yougai cultivator) and you can just have an evil cultivator that doesn't ever get to the level where tribulations are an issue.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 26, 2020, 12:40:15 am
Doesn't that soft-lock the game? I tried loner and raced for Foundation, but he refused to lower himself to accepting the new serfs he gathered from adventuring.
It might if you can't get anyone to join up. Least when I did it some critter that wandered in eventually jumped on board after I ticked the accept.

... that said, for a physical cultivator at a minimum it's not really a soft-lock, 'cause if you don't have someone fooding yer punch magician eventually starves and/or goes crazy from not having food/stamina. So it's not a lock, it's just a rather slow and pretty inevitable death... though I guess you could try adventuring for free food. Problem being your critter will go nuts if you feed them a steady diet of raw food. they won't starve, but it's a lose condition anyway :P
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on November 26, 2020, 03:40:51 am
Doesn't that soft-lock the game? I tried loner and raced for Foundation, but he refused to lower himself to accepting the new serfs he gathered from adventuring.
It might if you can't get anyone to join up. Least when I did it some critter that wandered in eventually jumped on board after I ticked the accept.

... that said, for a physical cultivator at a minimum it's not really a soft-lock, 'cause if you don't have someone fooding yer punch magician eventually starves and/or goes crazy from not having food/stamina. So it's not a lock, it's just a rather slow and pretty inevitable death... though I guess you could try adventuring for free food. Problem being your critter will go nuts if you feed them a steady diet of raw food. they won't starve, but it's a lose condition anyway :P

Eh, those losers wander by every few days begging to join up.  You can also Camp at several locations, then visit and invite the villagers back.  Its hard until you acquire enough Cultivator Who's Who to just impress them with all you know.  Might even have to gift someone to get the ball rolling.  Once the villagers return, your Inner is selectable on the Persuade screen, and it's 100%.  Draft a whole village if you have to!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Jopax on November 26, 2020, 10:19:47 am
The entirety of this thread is gibberish to me, but somehow compelling. It really reminds me of stumbling upon a DF thread for the first time all those years ago on the RelicNews forums, not having a clue just what the fuck was this game supposed to be but being incredibly intrigued by anything that let you construct artificial waterfalls to both water your farms and improve the mood of your people.

How's the tutorial on this, I've been in a power saving mode of sorts when it comes to games lately where I really liked the idea of a game and would want to play it but there's just so much learning the ropes to go trough that I get kinda discouraged and not bother.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 26, 2020, 01:05:48 pm
It's definitely enough to get you started (albeit pretty barebones and quite lengthy), and there's a fairly okay manual available in-game (and searchable!) on a lot of subjects. There's very much a learning curve, tho'. Helps if you're at least somewhat familiar with martial arts fantasy stuff as a genre, probably.

Pretty sure there's youtube vids out and about with fairly recent gameplay if you want to scope it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Knave on November 26, 2020, 01:16:01 pm
Yeah the tutorials are fairly extensive and go through a lot of what you need to know.

It's just some of the under the hood stuff and little details to optimise how your group is going that it sort of skims, but this thread has been super helpful for me :)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Salmeuk on November 26, 2020, 04:16:33 pm
Can anyone explain to me 'tribulation'? I know yaogai eventually face them, and apparently they can happen to inner disciples. . . but I have no clue what to prepare for. This game is very much you need this one specific item for this one specific interaction.

I'm enjoying the ease of which building occurs. Rimworld makes it a struggle early on, but in this game you can design and shape your town pretty much from the start.

Honestly, the influence from Rimworld is pretty huge in this game. The 2-d tilemap + AI character pawn system, with survival mechanics and invaders and disasters. However, from what I've read, a large amount of the 'game' at later stages is preparation, item acquisition and training a character through higher and higher states of being towards an eventual godhood - which is exactly the sort of late game crunch that vanilla Rimworld lacks. Arguably DF, too, though it will be seen how much changes over the next years.

Of course I haven't even gotten there yet so I dunno these are newb impressions honestly
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on November 26, 2020, 09:34:17 pm
I've found that entering areas after adventuring to them is well worth it, even without breaking the sense of progression. Assuming you don't get close enough to aggro the Core Formation spirit beasts and have to spend 20 in-game hours kiting them to kill them, you can get hundreds of basic building materials from a trip in the starting region.

I don't know if you're supposed to deal with mortal attack with inner or outer disciples. The steam forums said an inner disciple will rack up crippling bad karma from killing mortals, but I had a mortal archer enemy crit and one-shot one of my swarming laborers.
Just kill them with your cultivator, it doesn't give any bad karma. If killing something will it warns you.

Killing or attacking non-hostile non-cultivator animals or humans gives you bad karma. This includes the dogs that bandits sometimes bring (until they attack you presumably), but does not include animals that spawn hostile from events.
If you aggro an animal and it attacks one of your dudes it then becomes hostile, and your cultivator can kill it without any problems.

Not that bad karma is really that big a deal for the most part. You don't start getting tribulations till pretty late on (unless you have an early peaking Yougai cultivator) and you can just have an evil cultivator that doesn't ever get to the level where tribulations are an issue.

The workaround is to just use your Pet to kill mortal enemies.  And bulls/tigers/bears prior to your outers hunting them.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Rift on November 26, 2020, 10:38:01 pm
Tribulation is basically something that occurs because of one of many reasons: reaching high level cultivation bottlenecks(depending on law when), reaching old ages, divine cultivation upset followers, optional ones from reaching high attainment, and yeah ones from being a intelligent humanoid animal person trying to become a 'human'. If you want to be a catgirl(girl with catears) instead of a cat head on a human body then you gotta go through one.

Lore-wise they are the heavens striking you down for going against the natural order...
Practical in-game-wise they manifest as a lightning tornado thing that shoot lighting at your cultivator undergoing it and anything nearby the cultivatior. They have elements associated with them so can be weakened by taking them in elemental areas that are against them, or strengthened by elements that strengthen them. Some tribulations can have multiple elements, and thus have parts. As you undergo it it shows you the qi left in the tribulation and if you survive that, that part is over (assuming its a basic one-part one, just doing this once means its over). This is as far as i can tell, pretty much the same thing as fighting a enemy cultivator, the tribulation has qi, you have qi, you attack each other, it expends qi to attack you, and you decrease its qi by attacking it... your barrier skill therefore matters ALOT as does your qi repleshment, so taking a shield pill and something like spirit stones(and he improved versions preferably like spirit crystals) that give qi-repleshment rates help TONS.

The Animal-become-human tribulation is fairly difficult since its a 5part one, but get to gold core first, eat a shield pill and spirit crystal, maybe use something that offers '5 element protection' or increases qi protection/shield, and you CAN beat it, even with a shitty gold core cultivator, will cost you a lot of resources though.

Fair warning: DO NOT undergo tribulation anywhere that your people might walk by, as they will get hit by lightning and die... or near anything you don't want lit on fire by said lightning.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on November 27, 2020, 12:50:46 am
Doesn't that soft-lock the game? I tried loner and raced for Foundation, but he refused to lower himself to accepting the new serfs he gathered from adventuring.
It might if you can't get anyone to join up. Least when I did it some critter that wandered in eventually jumped on board after I ticked the accept.

... that said, for a physical cultivator at a minimum it's not really a soft-lock, 'cause if you don't have someone fooding yer punch magician eventually starves and/or goes crazy from not having food/stamina. So it's not a lock, it's just a rather slow and pretty inevitable death... though I guess you could try adventuring for free food. Problem being your critter will go nuts if you feed them a steady diet of raw food. they won't starve, but it's a lose condition anyway :P
I'm pretty sure you could manage it with a qi cultivator actually. I know one of the paths has the ability to create some kind of magical servants which you could then use to do all your grunt work. I don't know their exact limitations, but I could see if you get a good enough dude you might still be able to ascend, although it would probably be absurdly tough.
Fair warning: DO NOT undergo tribulation anywhere that your people might walk by, as they will get hit by lightning and die... or near anything you don't want lit on fire by said lightning.
Note that doing the tribulation next to qi-gathering stuff grants you bonus qi-regen, and doing it next to a full set of cultivating stuff while all pilled up is a pretty absurd difference from just doing it in the middle of the lake or whatever.
Of course if you try this then all your outer disciples swarm trying to put out the fires or repair your stands and stuff, which kills at least one of the idiots. If you just turn off firefighting+building or stick them in the bell room both of these problems go away though.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on November 27, 2020, 02:41:28 am
welp, shortly after sheng finally managed to bury starter guy, map special effects kicked in and starter guy's corpse dug its way back out

its walking around now

go team

e: and by "go team" i mean starter guy's walking corpse promptly murdered sheng and now everyone's dead sheng's slowly dying to undead wounds

this has gone well!I

e2: starter guy has now murdered a passerby, too

this guy's corpse is like ten times as effective as they were alive holy shit

Just figured out that you can revive your sect if everybody dies!

1: Give one of the other sects their favored item to start trade.  If unknown, I guess you'll have to give the useless crap to all the sects until you get lucky.
2: Make a trade area around everything on the map.  If you have storage, set to tradeable.
3: Trade for an awakened animal.
4: Go through the awakening to shapeshifting game for your new animal.
5: Congratulations, you have a new follower, and can continue your game!


Nevermind, you need someone to open the cage and let out the awakened animal.  Oh well.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: MCreeper on November 27, 2020, 08:20:59 am
I was just getting back to Rimworld, dammit.

Started as a lone tanky girl with a cool sword, basic sun something law.
Built a nice house with most of all available workshops and a wheat field.
Some dude wandered in, chatted with him for a bit, forgot to help and invite.
Rushed "foundation building", promoted her to inner disciple.
Girl lacks intelligence and charisma and therefore haves five minuses in attributes to law correlation, whatever that entails.
Without warning, inner disciple won't work for life.  >:( Guess i'll load a save and wait for another potential manservant.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 27, 2020, 08:55:47 am
For what it's worth, they'll work on some things (talismans are remarkably helpful, if you can stomach making them)... just not most of the essentials, heh. You can also use them as remarkably slow normal-ish workers by having them adventure for resources on the world map. It's not nearly as helpful as just having an outer disciple for a lot of things, but you can squeeze out some non-combat uses from 'em.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on November 27, 2020, 09:13:40 am
Probably want to go on 16 paths and build a vessel (in handcrafting building)before going inner if you want to start solo.  Or wait a very long time for some wandering mortal to stumble upon the place.

Damned cultivators can do a little magic and now think they are entirely above the mundane.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Rift on November 27, 2020, 03:55:21 pm
Divine cultivators (you dont get a divine method until after you build up your nearest town-thing to tier 2) can do a few tricks like spawn in resources too.. but yeah, you always need outersect disciples.
To be helpful, its actually not that hard to get more outer sect disciples, besides waiting for someone to wander in and asking them... you can also visit one of the cities and choose to look for new disciples. you can also mid-game build a recruitment building in a city, that lets you spend influence to get a bunch then pick which one you want. theres also a yearly event that you can adventure to that recruits a bunch (i suspect that might be the best single event to find good disciples but i could be wrong).
So literally just send your inner sect guy to a city and pick the recruit one.. Boom cheap labour.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 27, 2020, 08:56:35 pm
Today I learned catching frog people when you go fishing is apparently totally a thing.

Also they are very unhappy with that whole Face 99.0% [Hook Damage] thing >_>

e: poor frog fellow, though. Turns out trying to punch a sect master in the face can be... unwise :-\

E2: Though yeah, spirit vessels are... not that great? Sorta'? They're also kinda' great! The downside to them is they basically only do stuff under the peon workgroup (and maybe firefighting?), so, like. They're not particularly versatile, can't cook, can't finish buildings, etc.

The upside, though, is that, well, they're peons. Untiring, unsleeping peons that never eat and never stop working (until their durability conks out, anyway, which at least for spirit stone takes quite a long while). So your buildings will be cleaned, your storages organized, your worktables and constructions stocked with whatever materials they need, and so on.

The main other upside is, well. A spirit stone block vessel isn't hard to make. Costs 75 spirit stones to make a tier six vessel and those things, those things scoot. They move damn fast, talisman boosted max constitution fast, outrun some flying cultivators fast. Just one can manage the peon work of probably four or five or more outer disciples, who can go do... whatever else you want them to do.

Ultimately my "start loner and try vessel support" plan has mostly taught me spirit vessels are both disappointing (they can't sub for your outer disciples) and also remarkably helpful. Would recommend!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on November 28, 2020, 02:31:59 am
For what it's worth, they'll work on some things (talismans are remarkably helpful, if you can stomach making them)... just not most of the essentials, heh. You can also use them as remarkably slow normal-ish workers by having them adventure for resources on the world map. It's not nearly as helpful as just having an outer disciple for a lot of things, but you can squeeze out some non-combat uses from 'em.
Yeah, talismans are huge. Assuming you have a good artisan and get at least 1 talisman manual its pretty great.

Like just give everyone winter clothes and stick a heat talisman on them and you never have to worry about it again (or vise versa).
Or want to just flat out increase your farm yield by 50% with 0 extra work? well now you can!

Of course you do have to draw each talisman a single time, but uh... even if your drawing isn't all that good you can still get a basic talisman to like 100% quality if you get a good person to make them.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Finndibaenn on November 28, 2020, 04:33:59 am
i'm trying this game out, reached the point where i have my first inner disciple (True sun law).

Following https://docs.google.com/document/d/1VgeRn1jiJnUlLl6Z4Bv-OM4L8Pz1ykTrKPOCCWdd5nc/edit# i've made him a room attuned to fire (igneo fire bed, everything else wood).

However , that room is 65° now , and seems to keep raising, any hint on how to keep it livable ?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 28, 2020, 07:19:55 am
Supreme yang talisman, summer clothes... maybe.

I want to say it can help to make the room gigantic, too? I've noticed my storage rooms have a harder time getting cold when they're sizeable, so if that's actually what's going on increasing the size of the room might help dilute the heating effect.

Not something you can do anything about now, but it might also help to start the map off with Fei. Having that ticked off seems to make it much harder to see extreme temperatures.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Finndibaenn on November 28, 2020, 07:30:40 am
might be a good tip, going from 6 to 15 tiles brung down temp to 42, thanks for the tip
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on November 28, 2020, 08:18:53 am
Is that summer temperatures?  Cause 45 degrees + fire is probably going exponential.

Considering my freezer built to work in summer highs goes down to -200 during winter lows...

Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 28, 2020, 08:27:01 am
Another thing to consider is just getting better component clothing and a good crafter. Set of fei hide 100 quality thin clothes will drop your minimum ideal by a bit over 40 and bump the maximum by 33 or so, and only needs 22 fei hide. Dunno how hard it is to find those adventuring, but demon hide's pretty decent, too, iirc, and it's fairly easy to encounter demons.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Finndibaenn on November 28, 2020, 08:39:41 am
I'm in summer still yes, and temp seems to have stabilized (41.5 currently).
I have yet to encounter demons, i'm still in 1st year's summer
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 28, 2020, 08:47:36 am
You could probably encounter demons like... day three or something, if you were really gunning for it? You go camp somewhere with an inner disciple (formation pill'd) and enter the site, there's decent odds there's a demon critter somewhere around it. Dunno if any will actually come to you or not, though.

... 'course, you also have to be able to kill the demon when you find it, which can be sketchy :P
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on November 28, 2020, 09:32:41 am
You could probably encounter demons like... day three or something, if you were really gunning for it? You go camp somewhere with an inner disciple (formation pill'd) and enter the site, there's decent odds there's a demon critter somewhere around it. Dunno if any will actually come to you or not, though.

... 'course, you also have to be able to kill the demon when you find it, which can be sketchy :P

Actually, I'm pretty sure you can encounter a demon on day 2 if you follow that plan.  I usually pump up one of my starting with the formation pill, then go over to Mt. Copperhead for the Ore.  Almost end of summer and I still haven't smelted it all.  You actually have to be careful which paths you take or you'll be staring down a demon.

Alternatively,
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 28, 2020, 11:00:14 am
I have learned, and learned well. Game is not kidding when it says snake yaoguai make bad physical cultivators. It is extremely not kidding. At all.

Short form: Scaley little nuts don't have arms according to remold. Or legs. Or any special racial secret bodies. I.e. they're completely freaking defenseless. Even if you achieve breakthrough on one, well, tier two still ain't got no secret bodies. So you're still defenseless after first breakthrough, hahaha.

I'ma keep going, but I doubt this poor thing makes it through tribulation, heh.

E: In the continued adventures of the Worst Snake Cultivator, I've now noticed devour even applies to stuff you could otherwise just eat normally. So that wonderful +50 stamina red ginseng your outers can chomp down for 8k foundation? Lol no, it's tier 6 and baseline devour is 5.7. Nyet nommo snek hombre.

E2: Snek on pause, gonna try forest chicken this time. New thing learned this map: Protector guy cannot, in fact, take the map's starting demon.

The demon can, however, knock the protector guy out without killing them. Knock them out long enough for you to strip mr useless of his clothes.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on November 28, 2020, 01:50:54 pm
Which is kind of a waste, since Snake Yaoguai make great cultivators in other schools.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 28, 2020, 05:12:35 pm
Hell, of like the four or five physical cultivator starts I've tried, the snake was the first to actually make it to the breakthrough. They were collecting high tier essence pretty easy and pushing up the remold limit thing like a champ. Had the easiest time of hitting bone of the ones I've tried so far by a fair margin.

They were just utterly useless for anything beyond that :V
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aquillion on November 28, 2020, 07:08:49 pm
I was just getting back to Rimworld, dammit.

Started as a lone tanky girl with a cool sword, basic sun something law.
Built a nice house with most of all available workshops and a wheat field.
Some dude wandered in, chatted with him for a bit, forgot to help and invite.
Rushed "foundation building", promoted her to inner disciple.
Girl lacks intelligence and charisma and therefore haves five minuses in attributes to law correlation, whatever that entails.
Without warning, inner disciple won't work for life.  >:( Guess i'll load a save and wait for another potential manservant.

You can recruit someone else by camping at a nearby location, entering it, finding some mortals and inviting them back to your sect.  Then, when they arrive at your sect, your cultivator can invite them to join (mortals will always accept.)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on November 28, 2020, 10:08:12 pm
So how does one deal with prisoners in this game? I have an enemy who has now done the circle of unconscious -> wake up -> grab a weapon -> start fires -> get beat down four times now. To be honest, I'm really rather impressed by his resilience.

However I can't seem to order my guys to slit his throat, recruit him, or throw him out.

My current plans are to use the Blazing Feather I found to create a crematorium I can throw him in to kill him with heatstroke, but surely that can't be the 'official' way you're supposed to get rid of defeated intruders.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 28, 2020, 10:21:21 pm
I, uh. Usually just order someone to attack their unconscious body? Default hotkey is ` (the one that makes a ~), command is the little sword on their action panel whatsit. Never had any problems with dealing the final blow (especially not if it's the puppy, that thing's impressively murderous).

e: Though in other news, whooo boy if you get a physical cultivator up to tier 6 devouring and have a good ginseng garden or two. Suddenly 300+ stamina to remold with whoop whoop.

e2: uh

so when evil array seals the soul's option says "help out"

it apparently means help out the demonic cultivators that were hoovering up souls

whoops
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on November 28, 2020, 10:56:53 pm
So how does one deal with prisoners in this game? I have an enemy who has now done the circle of unconscious -> wake up -> grab a weapon -> start fires -> get beat down four times now. To be honest, I'm really rather impressed by his resilience.

However I can't seem to order my guys to slit his throat, recruit him, or throw him out.

My current plans are to use the Blazing Feather I found to create a crematorium I can throw him in to kill him with heatstroke, but surely that can't be the 'official' way you're supposed to get rid of defeated intruders.
As Frumple says you can just kill them via attacking them again.
Also if you right click on the attack icon you also turn it into the kill icon, so your dude kills whoever without you having to attack dudes twice which is probably what you want for the most part.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 28, 2020, 11:17:27 pm
welp, finally got to a tribulation! Quarter strength tribulation 'cause I wanted to try easy modo to start with.

turns out easy modo kicked my punch chicken's ass sideways

I was hoping to at least see some struggle or it take a bit but lol no tornado whooped my sect leader's butt in like two frames

not two seconds

two frames

now there's a giant angry demon chicken where my best cultivator used to be and it's eating my doggo

whee

e: huh

Missing limbs show on the characters. I just noticed.

... amusingly, though, it doesn't seem to register for doing stuff with said limbs? So this guy I got that lost a hand from fei baiting just kinda' levitates food when they eat :V
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on November 29, 2020, 06:49:56 am
Well, chickens kinda suck in general.  Also frogs suck for anything but alchemy, for which they seem to have an affinity.  Or maybe just the one that I recruited purely because of that.  Pretty sure rabbits suck too, cats can be pretty good.

Bulls, Wolves, Bears, and Pandas are pretty good, depending on what school.

So how does one deal with prisoners in this game? I have an enemy who has now done the circle of unconscious -> wake up -> grab a weapon -> start fires -> get beat down four times now. To be honest, I'm really rather impressed by his resilience.

However I can't seem to order my guys to slit his throat, recruit him, or throw him out.

My current plans are to use the Blazing Feather I found to create a crematorium I can throw him in to kill him with heatstroke, but surely that can't be the 'official' way you're supposed to get rid of defeated intruders.
As Frumple says you can just kill them via attacking them again.
Also if you right click on the attack icon you also turn it into the kill icon, so your dude kills whoever without you having to attack dudes twice which is probably what you want for the most part.
The "official" way of dealing with prisoners is to throw them in an Ominious room where they either die from hunger/starvation or future attack, so you can mind them for their soul gems or whatever.  I haven't had much luck with it, personally.  Maybe use heat/cold to kill as well?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on November 29, 2020, 07:15:48 am
The "official" way of dealing with prisoners is to throw them in an Ominious room where they either die from hunger/starvation or future attack, so you can mind them for their soul gems or whatever.  I haven't had much luck with it, personally.  Maybe use heat/cold to kill as well?
Nah, the official way to deal with them is to use soul inquiry to steal all their arts.
Lacking that (or assuming you already evilly stole it or its a monster) then you just kill them and then stick them in the ominus room since the dying timer is like 300 seconds and your dudes should be able to drag them all the way there before they technically die.

But yeah, if you want to stick them in the room and then have them naturally die putting some intense heat/cold in there is the way to go about it, although even that's risky cause they could wake up and run out like 10 seconds after you stick them in and annoyingly make you attack them to stop them stealing shit.

E: Also, fun fact, dead/dying monsters can still break through to the next stage, granting you precious better loot.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 29, 2020, 08:12:01 am
Well, chickens kinda suck in general.  Also frogs suck for anything but alchemy, for which they seem to have an affinity.  Or maybe just the one that I recruited purely because of that.  Pretty sure rabbits suck too, cats can be pretty good.
I mean... maybe? The chicken was doing remarkably well prior to tribulation. Walked all over the local demon weeks before, had a flat out max stage mixed element arm and actually managed to get the shinbone stuff up and running, combat wise they seemed to be going pretty solid. 'Bout two thirds of the way to second breakthrough, even, which seems to be pretty good for a sub-60 day tribulation from what I've seen so far?

The angry tornado just beat them like someone knocking dirt out of an old rug.

E: Though I can definitely vouch for bull yaoguai making stupidly good outer disciples, at a minimum. If I could find a decent way to just cut off their tribulation and not need to advance to inner disciple or functionally die, I'd be all over that. Blighters are like tier 6+ vessels except they actually do things... the chicken in question's map was a canyon, and by that day 40-50-ish tribulation a pair of bull yaoguai had managed to mine away something like half or better the minable tiles on the map. Shit was intense.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on November 29, 2020, 01:21:36 pm
Anyone know how to interact with the "Spring Festival Minion" (event name "Strange Little Elf") - I can't seem to attack it, talk to it... or even click on it.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 29, 2020, 06:17:27 pm
No clue, heh. Maybe trap it inside walls...?

In other news, today I've learned that disaster relief appears to have to come through the disaster relief policy. Game doesn't give two shits if you got the 1k brownstone to build the dam, you can't just shove it into the agency and call it a day.

Real unfortunate to learn that with seven days left before the disaster came to the unfortunate conclusion, though :-\

e: also, it's weird and possibly some sort of bug, but apparently winter/late autumn is like the best season for farming xp out of any of them, if you want to turn some outers into lean mean herb gardening machines. Just set out a few fields of poplar; the trees apparently will rapidly die off completely and get replanted.

e2:Ooh, nice. Confirmation Fei may occasionally show up again on Fei environment maps. This setting is the gift that keeps on giving (amazing furs and beast blood).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on November 29, 2020, 09:45:08 pm
Fei and lushu can show up on any map (as seen when they arrived in the middle of one of my dudes core formations and ruined the weather), although the odds are probably higher on a fei/lushu map.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 29, 2020, 09:47:48 pm
Well, hopefully. Does lushu make for great clothing, too?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on November 29, 2020, 11:03:18 pm
Well, hopefully. Does lushu make for great clothing, too?
Pretty sure lushu, fei, and demon skin all make identical clothing except for the color, which is a fairly big difference because Fei clothing looks like normal clothing, and demon clothing is super easy to differentiate cause its neon purple. Dunno about Lushu, think its bright orange or something?

In other news male cultivators are the best cultivators, cause you can make their wangs fall off then sell them for 300+ spirit stones and they don't even care.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 29, 2020, 11:09:55 pm
Yeah, I had a lushu foolishly show up at my sect. Tis indeed identical stat wise to fei. Color wise they just look like someone bleached a fei to my eyes, though with flux running that might not be entirely accurate. Seem to be more or less white, anyway.

Though money... I'm waiting for the next merchant to see if my plan will work out. Last one just flat wasn't paying for gear. If the next one is... I got an outer disciple (and another one soon to follow, they're grinding out their crafting XP on a huge pile of darksteel I found at copperton) that just sort of prints tier 9 weapons out of spirit stone blocks. Waiting to see how much they'll sell for, heh.

E: Last thing learned before calling it a night: Don't, I repeat, do not, fish with outer disciples. Don't do it. Fishing is apparently staggeringly deadly for folks without active qi. I was hoping the outers wouldn't also fish up angey yaoguai.

It was a misplaced hope. Misplaced like poor Luqi's spine soon after they started fishing.

E2: Though... anyone know of a really detailed breakdown in how crafting exactly works? I'm kinda' confused at this point, I got a critter with a crafting score a dozen-ish points higher than another of my outers (78 vs 63), nearly double the artisanry (if admittedly all of 15 vs 8 ), and they're producing weapons a solid 30-40 points lower in quality. The one with the lower crafting/artisanry score is printing out named spirit stone weapons, the other can't even hit full 100 quality.

I'm guessing it has to do with a difference in artifact crafting and/or magic, or something going on with the backgrounds (the higher is born craftsman + craftsman + ... something not related to crafting, the lower leader of men/broken meridians + spy), or maybe just a quirk of one having maxed 20/20 crafting level and the other not), but it'd be nice to be not guessing.

e3: though related to that, anyone know of a way to grind artisan? Only thing I've seen that even gives it experience at all so far is zithers, and it'd be nice if there's a better way than littering your sect with zithers and hoping.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on November 30, 2020, 01:19:53 am
Anyone know how to interact with the "Spring Festival Minion" (event name "Strange Little Elf") - I can't seem to attack it, talk to it... or even click on it.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

According to the second guide, you activate fireworks when they appear, they get scared and drop stuff.

Also, it appears that if you transcribe the Resurrection Law into the manual shelf, they you can pick up Lesser Possession at Qi Shaping (starting level) rather than at Golden Core.  Useful if your guy sucks, probably going to try it with the old geezer I modded.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 30, 2020, 01:35:30 am
Holy hell, I understand reincarnators now, particularly how to make them. So this is how you crack the early game over your knee, huh? Gods alive custom crafting your starting team changes things wildly, even if you don't go nuts with stuff like starstruck.

Especially if you build the background, too -- there's more than a little difference between a character that starts with maybe two or three traits and an average stat of like five, and one that starts with fifteen traits and an average stat of whatever the hell you feel like having :V
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on November 30, 2020, 02:37:07 am
So... wait, if you're trying to breakthrough on a fire-based law, do you want decor that supports or suppresses fire?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on November 30, 2020, 02:58:13 am
Supports, so far as I've noticed.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on November 30, 2020, 03:01:46 am
Supports fire.
So for a fire cultivator you want everything in feng shui range be nature stuff, except the cushion, which you (if you have access to the building) want to make out of fire.
Note that range 4 is out of feng shui range, but still in spiritwood range, so make stuff that far away out of spirit wood (note that of course fire don't care at all, since everything is gunna be spiritwood anyways).
In general you don't really want any decor in range if you can afford it (aside from the floor) cause you want as much qi gathering stuff stuffed in range as you can.
(E: Even if you don't have enough qi gathering stuff just stick your best bars or whatever on the stands cause they have a bunch of elemental impact).

For his fighting artifact you want it to be supported by his element, so make his artifact out of earth (although apparently it ain't that big a deal either way as long as you don't make it the opposing element).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on November 30, 2020, 10:34:59 am
So what's the best way to get my Qi up?

So far my best cultivator managed to get a little over 2,000... but almost immediately lost that when he did his second breakthrough (before creating any 2,000-qi level artifacts - Doh!). Everyone else has less than 1,000; which rather severely limits what they're able to do.

I've been picking paths that match my guy's skills as much as possible (usually around 75-80% match), doing breakthroughs with as many +'s as possible, and learning skills that say they improve Qi, but I'm not seeing much, if any, improvement.

edit: It's worth noting that so far my best cultivator is only on the second 'tier', and he's the one that's losing Qi with every other breakthrough, so it's possible that other paths will see significant Qi growth when they finally hit second tier, and I'm just not there yet.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Rift on November 30, 2020, 05:13:47 pm
Generally you want to pick cultivators with high qi sense to promote to inner disciples (40+ is ok, 50+ is good), as that makes them get more qi literally every breakthrough.
As to how you increase it further... Learn basically any manual/skill that says increase qi on it (make sure you transcribe all the major laws into your bookcases when you get them, also keep a eye out for any chance to get more manuals).
Eat the qi increasing medicines/herbs/flux, (you can eat the same one multiple times with diminishing returns based on its medicinal resistance).  Some have some bad effects (wicked flux hurts state of mind.. so don't take much of it if you do take some), or might require you to have a large max qi to not die (if it says it will provide more qi then your max qi, then it will cause spirit/qi injuries, if its a great deal higher it will instant-kill you). Earth Flux is good, and not too hard to acquire,, you can buy it from visiting merchants or at auction sometimes, and can adventure for it. Red ginseng and purple ganoderma aren't that hard to find via exploring/trading either, but have less effect.
Also right before your golden core breakthrough, in addition to getting as many +'s as possible in every category, make sure to take medicines to increase qi gain, as many different types as you can without killing yourself.
Once you get the body-changing techniques by having a primordial spirit cultivator you can mold mortals, you can just spend lifespan to take 'decent' stat cultivators and make them pretty good, which makes the base qi sense quite a bit more important then their base stats (also there are quite a few manuals to raise stats)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on November 30, 2020, 06:38:55 pm
Generally you want to pick cultivators with high qi sense to promote to inner disciples (40+ is ok, 50+ is good), as that makes them get more qi literally every breakthrough.
Hmm. 6... 3... 8... 11 (My Sect Leader)... 18... 5. Okay, starting to see what the problem might be.  :P
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on November 30, 2020, 11:34:09 pm
Generally you want to pick cultivators with high qi sense to promote to inner disciples (40+ is ok, 50+ is good), as that makes them get more qi literally every breakthrough.
Hmm. 6... 3... 8... 11 (My Sect Leader)... 18... 5. Okay, starting to see what the problem might be.  :P

I think my last sect leader was 0. It... didn't end well. Managed to get him up to Golden Core though.

This game makes me feel kind of sleazy though; accepted two turtlemen into my sect without thinking too much about it ("Hey, I've got 12 slots.") and... they're slo-o-o-o-o-o-w. And because they're so slow, they always end up in a bad mood because it takes them (literally) all day to walk around to places, so it's night time by the time they get back from wherever they are, and they're hungry, since lunch ended by the time they got to the food. Sooooo... I'm giving some serious thought as to giving one of my semi-kinda-maybe usable guys that Law that turns them into a soul-sucking monster just to kill them off in a useful way since I can't find an option to just banish them.

Edit: Sect->Disciple List, duh.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 01, 2020, 12:11:27 am
I forget what they are, but there's definitely multiple ways to get rid of a disciple. Most benign I'm aware of is to assign them as an extra to an agency (second tab, iirc, add disciple; they'll contribute a bit to the main agent's stats). Think if you check sect structure or somethin' like that, there's a way to just banish?

Then you start getting into less benign ways of removal. Bricking them into an oven/freezer room (bonus points there if it has the right sort of feng shui to generate items), feeding them deadly medicines, etc. Telling it to attack the local demon, using some of the murder magic miracles on them. That's a few off the top of my head, there's probably more, heh.

And yeah, turtle guys are unfortunately a joke. You might be able to get some work done if you stack up +movement talismans, but I haven't played around enough with them to try.

... also probably just don't let yaoguai stay, tbh. The tribulation is monstrous, unavoidable, and capable of eating your puppy (among other sorts of collateral). If you can't bootstrap one to golden core or preferably the tier after before the doomnado comes, you're likely better off if you just don't bother.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 01, 2020, 03:22:48 am
And yeah, turtle guys are unfortunately a joke. You might be able to get some work done if you stack up +movement talismans, but I haven't played around enough with them to try.

... also probably just don't let yaoguai stay, tbh. The tribulation is monstrous, unavoidable, and capable of eating your puppy (among other sorts of collateral). If you can't bootstrap one to golden core or preferably the tier after before the doomnado comes, you're likely better off if you just don't bother.
Pretty sure even movement talismans aren't going to save your outer disciple turtles. For reference my turtle had a movespeed of 0.4, while my second slowest dude had a movement speed of 2.8 (in comparison to 5.4 for a fast human). That's right, a random generic human was a literal 700% faster.

So even if you stack 3 75% move speed talismans on the dude they are still going to be half the speed of your slowest human, which doesn't mean they can get 1/2 the work done. No, it means they spend twice the time getting food and doing literally nothing, which means they still do way less then half.
Of course none of that matters (much) once they are a cultivator since they fly everywhere, but even getting them to be an inner takes like an extra month because instead of practicing they spend 8 hours a day moving to and from the kitchen/bedroom instead of training.
... also probably just don't let yaoguai stay, tbh. The tribulation is monstrous, unavoidable, and capable of eating your puppy (among other sorts of collateral). If you can't bootstrap one to golden core or preferably the tier after before the doomnado comes, you're likely better off if you just don't bother.
Ehh, I would disagree here. Most yaoguai are pretty much golden outer disciples. Even if they got no real skills or stats of note most of them still run like hypersonic jetplanes (aside from turtles, who are trash outers).
Obviously the whole "let them join and tell them you will help them transcend their tribulation but really you just use them for labor and let them die in a few months) is pretty sketchy but other then that...
I do agree that you have to be careful about turning them into inners though, because as you say, if you can't manage it properly they can just eat your whole sect. Of course, note that you can just kick them out the literal day beforehand so it isn't something you have to worry that much about.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 01, 2020, 03:34:45 am
Anyone have any luck with formations? I successfully made a very basic one (just the central pillar surrounded by three nodes), and immediately got my entire group of inner disciples nearly killed off when I tried to fight a demon rabbit. I don't know if it's related to my substandard Qi problems, or if it's because my formation got jumped from a blind corner, but we lasted literally about one second before the entire formation was KO'd all at once.

Thankfully, that didn't kill them outright - they all managed to limp home from the area they'd been exploring, although they collapsed as soon as they got back on the map; and they all had deadly spirit damage caused by the broken formation. If I hadn't had one other inner disciple back at base who was able to teach himself panacea and start the healing process (heal other disciple, then have both heal everyone else), things would have gotten grim.

So far, my most successful battle tactic has been to get my inner disciples to distract whatever I'm fighting with their artifacts and tank damage, while all my bow-armed outer disciples to wail away - fire enough arrows and you quickly whittle away defensive Qi and even start doing major damage.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 01, 2020, 08:11:43 pm
So what's the best way to get my Qi up?

So far my best cultivator managed to get a little over 2,000... but almost immediately lost that when he did his second breakthrough (before creating any 2,000-qi level artifacts - Doh!). Everyone else has less than 1,000; which rather severely limits what they're able to do.

I've been picking paths that match my guy's skills as much as possible (usually around 75-80% match), doing breakthroughs with as many +'s as possible, and learning skills that say they improve Qi, but I'm not seeing much, if any, improvement.

edit: It's worth noting that so far my best cultivator is only on the second 'tier', and he's the one that's losing Qi with every other breakthrough, so it's possible that other paths will see significant Qi growth when they finally hit second tier, and I'm just not there yet.

You probably also picked the Resurrection law.  As it says in its description, it makes you Qi go up and down, rather than the steady increase of all the other laws.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 01, 2020, 11:17:43 pm
I've started sucking the thoughts out of the very minds of my dying enemies - it's great!

All kinds of random things to learn. For instance, I learned an entirely new Law. It's pretty much garbage - it only goes up to the second tier of divinity, and pretty much all the skills only improve things 'subtly' - but it's a new law!

It does have a couple Qi attack skills that don't look entirely horrendous, so I might burn a talentless outer disciple to pick it up to transcribe everything then kick them out of my sect.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 01, 2020, 11:54:11 pm
Most of the random laws you find are pretty garbage, in general I would say 95% of each of them is garbage.

But pretty common for them to not be *entirely* garbage. For instance, they might have an extra max Qi skill, or a set of talisman/pill recipes, or a stat buffing skill that is slight more efficient then normal.
And all those little skills here and there? Over time they add up pretty significantly, especially the ones that give you bonus max qi.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: nenjin on December 02, 2020, 11:54:35 am
NGL, this thread is tempting me. It sounds quite deep and deliberately opaque.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: MCreeper on December 02, 2020, 01:06:50 pm
All this stupendous epic failing was totally worth it.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 02, 2020, 06:31:54 pm
I've started sucking the thoughts out of the very minds of my dying enemies - it's great!

All kinds of random things to learn. For instance, I learned an entirely new Law. It's pretty much garbage - it only goes up to the second tier of divinity, and pretty much all the skills only improve things 'subtly' - but it's a new law!

It does have a couple Qi attack skills that don't look entirely horrendous, so I might burn a talentless outer disciple to pick it up to transcribe everything then kick them out of my sect.

Inner Disciples can transcribe laws that they do not have, so you might not have to do that.

Also, turtles suck in that they are slow, can never seem to do anything, and are generally in a bad mood since they can't even get to bed to sleep because they are so slow.  Walking on maps with them as Inner Disciples is pure agony.  They only have one thing going for them:
They're practically indestructible.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 02, 2020, 07:57:56 pm
NGL, this thread is tempting me. It sounds quite deep and deliberately opaque.
Like, sorta' on the opaque? It's not so much deliberately opaque as very deliberately using tropes common to a genre that's not super common in english speaking areas, that lend themselves to fairly complicated (or at least complicateable) mechanics. A lot of what's going on with the game make very much obvious sense... if you're familiar with xianxia/martial arts fantasy. If you're not you're probably going to be wondering why your punch chicken just turned into a giant demon and ate your puppy.

E: Speaking of the puppy, this is the very first thing I ever noticed from a pet. It was... somewhat of a surprise. (https://i.imgur.com/szuX8Nb.png)

After rolling with pets for a bit, now, though, it takes a bit more to get a raised eyebrow.
Spoiler: a bit more (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 03, 2020, 12:09:06 am
The opacity, outside of some UI funkiness, or "Where on earth am I supposed to get flaming copper ore?" kind of stuff is largely cultural, like it's fairly common US-knowledge that you headshot the zombie, use silver on werewolves, and sunlight on vampiresdisputed. Then you run into SCP-953 and what on earth are you supposed to do with
Spoiler: that? (click to show/hide)

Also, I appear to be in the vast majorityminority here, but I actually find ACS a lot easier to work with than Rimworld.

Edit: Wow, that was quite a typo.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 03, 2020, 12:22:05 am
I've never actually played rimworld, but from what I've seen of vids, yeah, ACS generally seems to have a lot of the building/management/etc. stuff better implemented? Like making your buildings and managing your stuff is just pretty painless, and a lot of it gets even more painless when you get access to talismans and junk. Just from a UI et al implementation standpoint, it's largely been pretty solid compared to what I've seen in gaming over the years.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 03, 2020, 12:33:13 am
I've never actually played rimworld, but from what I've seen of vids, yeah, ACS generally seems to have a lot of the building/management/etc. stuff better implemented? Like making your buildings and managing your stuff is just pretty painless, and a lot of it gets even more painless when you get access to talismans and junk. Just from a UI et al implementation standpoint, it's largely been pretty solid compared to what I've seen in gaming over the years.

Just a heads-up for posterity, this was before I fixed my typo. From what I can tell, most people seem to prefer Rimworld over ACS, in terms of how easy it is to muddle past the UI.

And just saw the latest patch notes: Fixed that Eunuch character cannot castrate correctly.

Is there some way to auto un-forbid poop? It's kind of annoying to have to manually scan the map periodically to secure enough of it to manually craft fertile soil patches.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on December 03, 2020, 07:24:02 am
Is there some way to auto un-forbid poop? It's kind of annoying to have to manually scan the map periodically to secure enough of it to manually craft fertile soil patches.

From my experience, it's best to wait for winter, when poop decays super slow, and when it accumulates enough, you just zoom out, double clic a poop and un-ban a bunch of it. Then when spring comes around, you have your fresh fertile soil ready for new fields.

If poop wasn't banned by default, well, let's just say that demon beasts poop too. And all the other dangerous wildlife, for that matter.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 03, 2020, 07:53:08 am
So I discovered that you will get the game over screen, even if you have an awakened animal remaining (that you could turn into a character, eventually).

Also, possession can be a useful last-ditch save, but it can also kill your sect.  You get 300 rep and evil per cast.  One of those, "Is this guy really worth the negative attention?"  Still, nice to have, since you can't use it on your deathbed if you do not have it.

It also doesn't work once the Heavenly Tribulation has appeared.  Or maybe it does, but you don't have time to get over to the new person.  I'd also swear that the Heavenly tribulation came early.

When you go from a humanoid to an animal, that animal gets whatever possession brain problems you have, but they do not remain once you shapeshift.  Kind of a reset, if you aren't at the comatose level.

Once your guys start falling to the map's demon, they'll keep trying to recover the wounded and get wounded themselves.  Only solution I found was to kick the wounded out of the sect, then cancel the recover wounded order.  Pretty much a total party wipe on that one.  The one survivor wasn't able to hide from the next attack.  I had some red ginsing to boost him to an Inner, but it was right next to the demon that was my previously tribuled bodysnatcher.

Well, the demon is still alive and kicking, so I guess I had some sort of legacy...
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 03, 2020, 08:26:52 am
For what it's worth, I've been finding that jumping the demon with a core shaping inner (with artifact, of course) plus the puppy ASAP tends to kill it. Let the puppy attack first to tank and then send the disciple right behind it.

A physical cultivator also can probably take it with just a stage two or three elemental arm if they rush for it and then immediately jump the thing, in my experience. Probably good to nip that particular problem in the bud soonest, yeah.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: MCreeper on December 03, 2020, 11:19:56 am
When you go from a humanoid to an animal, that animal gets whatever possession brain problems you have, but they do not remain once you shapeshift.  Kind of a reset, if you aren't at the comatose level.
Which posessions work on animals? More specifically, are there any on golden core level? Yin god posession just makes them keel over dead in few seconds. And brain damage from multiple jumps stacks.  :-\
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 03, 2020, 12:12:00 pm
...
It does have a couple Qi attack skills that don't look entirely horrendous, so I might burn a talentless outer disciple to pick it up to transcribe everything then kick them out of my sect.

Inner Disciples can transcribe laws that they do not have, so you might not have to do that.
This worked perfectly, by the way - no need to train an inner in a cruddy law just to grab a couple of skills you want. It is, however, rather time-intensive even with a very smart disciple doing the transcribing, and it fills your library with a lot of junk.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 03, 2020, 07:11:59 pm
...
It does have a couple Qi attack skills that don't look entirely horrendous, so I might burn a talentless outer disciple to pick it up to transcribe everything then kick them out of my sect.

Inner Disciples can transcribe laws that they do not have, so you might not have to do that.
This worked perfectly, by the way - no need to train an inner in a cruddy law just to grab a couple of skills you want. It is, however, rather time-intensive even with a very smart disciple doing the transcribing, and it fills your library with a lot of junk.

Yeah, but just look at all that Inspiration that your disciple accumulated!  It's usually enough for the scribe to learn a new skill immediately.

When you go from a humanoid to an animal, that animal gets whatever possession brain problems you have, but they do not remain once you shapeshift.  Kind of a reset, if you aren't at the comatose level.
Which posessions work on animals? More specifically, are there any on golden core level? Yin god posession just makes them keel over dead in few seconds. And brain damage from multiple jumps stacks.  :-\
Yeah, you need to jump into the animal while your brain is still mostly intact.  It should be your second jump max, otherwise I'm not sure if the animal will be able to Awaken.  I theorize that the Panacea Pill may be able to cure it if you can get it before jumping to the point where the character starts as dying. Panacea Pill does nothing.  I know that the rebirth pill works on humanoid possessions, but probably not worth it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: nenjin on December 03, 2020, 07:17:02 pm
Yeah, it's opaque to me for the reasons you mentioned. Just sounds like it has characters you can build up and invest in thematically, which always gets my attention. Not knowing the genre or a lot of the principles in the game, seems tempting to get into to try and understand it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 03, 2020, 09:03:07 pm
Actually, I'd avoid investing in characters thematically.  It generally gets you worse characters with more reputation than you can handle.  :P

For example, I had my Snake Yaochin facing tribulation jump into the body of an extremely talented recruit.  Now I have 300 rep and an inner disciple that has just started down a completely incompatible path.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 03, 2020, 10:34:10 pm
You definitely can build pretty thematic critters, though. No question there, heh.

... though yeah, some of the sketchier stuff is probably best dealt with... carefully. Most of the possession/necromancy/life drain type stuff is likely easier to avoid than deal with, much of the time, from what I've noticed so far. Trying to build a demonic cultivator and going against the whole will of the heavens thing ain't exactly without its difficulties.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 03, 2020, 11:28:53 pm
Most of the possession/necromancy/life drain type stuff is likely easier to avoid than deal with, much of the time, from what I've noticed so far. Trying to build a demonic cultivator and going against the whole will of the heavens thing ain't exactly without its difficulties.

How about that suck-knowledge-out-of-dying-people skill? I've been trying to expand my bookshelf collection and using that seemed like a promising way to do it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Cruxador on December 03, 2020, 11:30:58 pm
Got this game this week. Did some tutorials, started a sect, made my first cultivator. Everything was going well. I did some missions and got some cool stuff, I was working on building new sect buildings for stuff that's not strictly necessary. I sent my cultivator on a few missions for secrets, dealt with various invaders, and then it was a good time for him to break through so I assigned him to do that. Then there was an attack, four dudes, the biggest yet. But my mortals could handle it. Then, another attack hot on its heals. Two qi formation cultivators! I only had one cultivator, but since he's core formation it should be fine, right? And he finished breaking through right on time. But he was completely out of qi! As a result, he was easily slain, and my sect crumbled to its end.
So it goes.

Anyway, posting to watch.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: MCreeper on December 04, 2020, 04:51:23 am
I'm kinda in x-piratez situation - i invested way too much time in this playtrough to start over, but i'm already screaming at own arse and it will only get worse from there. At day 150 i have:
True sun human dude. Not particularly notable except law -5.
Chariot bearly cripple. Absolutely crippled, absolutely useless for anything except adventuring.
Uh oh, thematic snake necromancer stuck in a body and mind of incompetent fool. Why didn't i found him someone better, again?
Shendao main character with 3 int. Nuff said.
The Doge. Effortlessly tanks everything. Wantonly killed 4 potential recruits in a row. Last one died from spine being ripped out, while understandably in a state of some confusion (-40), before reaching the gate. Welcome to the place you won't leave, delicious mortal! Don't teach your doge to kill people, people.
Human dude who really strugless with all the work.
Crafter dudette who does nothing but floods the map in common iron swords to grind up skill.

Soon to be cap of 36 suggests that i should have more people by now, at very least.  ::)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 04, 2020, 05:34:19 am
I'm kinda in x-piratez situation - i invested way too much time in this playtrough to start over, but i'm already screaming at own arse and it will only get worse from there. At day 150 i have:
True sun human dude. Not particularly notable except law -5.
Chariot bearly cripple. Absolutely crippled, absolutely useless for anything except adventuring.
Uh oh, thematic snake necromancer stuck in a body and mind of incompetent fool. Why didn't i found him someone better, again?
Shendao main character with 3 int. Nuff said.
The Doge. Effortlessly tanks everything. Wantonly killed 4 potential recruits in a row. Last one died from spine being ripped out, while understandably in a state of some confusion (-40), before reaching the gate. Welcome to the place you won't leave, delicious mortal! Don't teach your doge to kill people, people.
Human dude who really strugless with all the work.
Crafter dudette who does nothing but floods the map in common iron swords to grind up skill.

Soon to be cap of 36 suggests that i should have more people by now, at very least.  ::)
Fun fact: You can build a recruiter at any city, which lets you recruit like 10 people for 100 influence.
You can also send your charismatic dudes over to adventure there manually, but its a pain.

Or you can play in immortal mode, which nets you like 12 people by day 20.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: delphonso on December 04, 2020, 05:54:36 am
Just gotta say, as someone who hasn't cracked open this game yet, this thread is fucking nonsense.

Mega hyped.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 04, 2020, 07:18:56 am
Crafter dudette who does nothing but floods the map in common iron swords to grind up skill.
Small tip, but a much less painful way to do that is to go yoink the darksteel ore stack from copperton and have the crafter pump out darksteel bars for a while. Those things give like 900 crafting XP a pop and, y'know, stack, ha. Even just an 80 stack or somethin' of ore (and you'll probably find more like 150+) will jack a crafter up several levels... and provide you with a huge stack of darksteel going forward, heh.

e: well, I've figured out how to make a speedy turtle yaoguai. Reincarnate one with a custom intelligence that gives oodles of +move speed (and work efficiency). Got one with a move speed of the 100m/sec now :V

for context, a human with "just" 10 con has a move speed of 4.4m/sec, so, y'know. Turtle go vroom.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on December 04, 2020, 11:37:18 am
Crafting the halberd/spear type weapons is more high cost material efficient. 
Uses 2 iron and 3 timber as a base, but only costs 1 material of whatever you are actually making it out of.  1x dark steel for example.  Instead of 5x dark steel.
It would also be cheaper on iron usage, using a total of 3x instead of 5x.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 04, 2020, 12:41:39 pm
Speaking of weapons, is there any point to having high quality ones for anyone other than your outer disciples?
I've never seen my inners use their weapons as anything but transport.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 04, 2020, 09:54:25 pm
No clue, personally. Might as well, just in case, though, yeah?

In other news, with not so judicious use of a custom item, I've now learned the ballpark for "how much cinnabar is on a medium canyon map" is around twenty seven thousand. It is a wildly excessive amount of cinnabar, nearly triple the amount of brownstone. Bloody crazy. Also they sell for like one spirit stone a piece when the merchant will buy them, so, y'know. Gonna buy that critter out next time they show up.

... also cinnabar turns out to be super great for devouring. Tends to give pure life essence and can produce intrinsic life, two of the best essences for supercharging tempered flesh. Good stuff.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 04, 2020, 10:39:08 pm
No clue, personally. Might as well, just in case, though, yeah?

In other news, with not so judicious use of a custom item, I've now learned the ballpark for "how much cinnabar is on a medium canyon map" is around twenty seven thousand. It is a wildly excessive amount of cinnabar, nearly triple the amount of brownstone. Bloody crazy. Also they sell for like one spirit stone a piece when the merchant will buy them, so, y'know. Gonna buy that critter out next time they show up.

... also cinnabar turns out to be super great for devouring. Tends to give pure life essence and can produce intrinsic life, two of the best essences for supercharging tempered flesh. Good stuff.

You sometimes get a Sect mission to donate 200 cinnabar, so keep at least some for that.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Cruxador on December 04, 2020, 11:23:58 pm
... also cinnabar turns out to be super great for devouring.
I mean, you would think so. It was the main thing people were eating to try and become immortal prior to the advent of internal alchemy. That's why the literal translation of dantian is "cinnabar field".
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 04, 2020, 11:41:37 pm
Because, in retrospect, eating mercury seems like such a great idea..
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: MCreeper on December 05, 2020, 11:27:21 am
How exactly you fill up inner culdron? Just eating food seemingly gives no effect. Is it common for first two levels or you need to fill them separately?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 05, 2020, 11:44:07 am
How exactly you fill up inner culdron? Just eating food seemingly gives no effect. Is it common for first two levels or you need to fill them separately?

From this guide here (https://docs.google.com/document/u/2/d/e/2PACX-1vQ7BV9Pyt4TVv56U7fVAJaPYQAvbHzRJ6uyX-mxbE8fPceI9yFd5pT6kuWfOan-5YmYOLBKMnAiia4C/pub), you cultivate when you are at breaking point, it converts stamina into Qi max.  Should be ignored in early game.

I have an interesting situation.  I'm playing with all the Hard Times options, so humans suck.
I got a Snake Yaochan with slightly more than 30 days left before shapeshifting tribulation.  In the Resurrection path, has great compatibility and Qi skill. Can breakthrough immediately to Golden Core, but it's Autumn and the ideal season is Spring.  This character is GREAT. Reputation is around 390, so if I use possession to dodge the tribulation, I'm likely going to be fighting off nasty stuff in a lousy body.
Hm, there are some items that delay tribulation, not sure if they work on shapeshifting tribulation though.  With a bit more time, this character might just be able to handle it.
Eh, maybe I should just can the character now...
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 05, 2020, 11:45:54 am
How exactly you fill up inner culdron? Just eating food seemingly gives no effect. Is it common for first two levels or you need to fill them separately?

Far as I can tell, cauldron just fills up slooooowly over time when you're at breakthrough. Allegedly, you can speed it up somehow, to the point where it only takes 2-3 seasons to max out.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 05, 2020, 12:01:03 pm
How exactly you fill up inner culdron? Just eating food seemingly gives no effect. Is it common for first two levels or you need to fill them separately?

From this guide here (https://docs.google.com/document/u/2/d/e/2PACX-1vQ7BV9Pyt4TVv56U7fVAJaPYQAvbHzRJ6uyX-mxbE8fPceI9yFd5pT6kuWfOan-5YmYOLBKMnAiia4C/pub), you cultivate when you are at breaking point, it converts stamina into Qi max.  Should be ignored in early game.

I have an interesting situation.  I'm playing with all the Hard Times options, so humans suck.
I got a Snake Yaochan with slightly more than 30 days left before shapeshifting tribulation.  In the Resurrection path, has great compatibility and Qi skill. Can breakthrough immediately to Golden Core, but it's Autumn and the ideal season is Spring.  This character is GREAT. Reputation is around 390, so if I use possession to dodge the tribulation, I'm likely going to be fighting off nasty stuff in a lousy body.
Hm, there are some items that delay tribulation, not sure if they work on shapeshifting tribulation though.  With a bit more time, this character might just be able to handle it.
Eh, maybe I should just can the character now...
The pills are useless for the shapeshifting tribulation which makes them extremely lame.
That said, there are some stuff you can do.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 05, 2020, 06:27:38 pm
How exactly you fill up inner culdron? Just eating food seemingly gives no effect. Is it common for first two levels or you need to fill them separately?

From this guide here (https://docs.google.com/document/u/2/d/e/2PACX-1vQ7BV9Pyt4TVv56U7fVAJaPYQAvbHzRJ6uyX-mxbE8fPceI9yFd5pT6kuWfOan-5YmYOLBKMnAiia4C/pub), you cultivate when you are at breaking point, it converts stamina into Qi max.  Should be ignored in early game.

I have an interesting situation.  I'm playing with all the Hard Times options, so humans suck.
I got a Snake Yaochan with slightly more than 30 days left before shapeshifting tribulation.  In the Resurrection path, has great compatibility and Qi skill. Can breakthrough immediately to Golden Core, but it's Autumn and the ideal season is Spring.  This character is GREAT. Reputation is around 390, so if I use possession to dodge the tribulation, I'm likely going to be fighting off nasty stuff in a lousy body.
Hm, there are some items that delay tribulation, not sure if they work on shapeshifting tribulation though.  With a bit more time, this character might just be able to handle it.
Eh, maybe I should just can the character now...
The pills are useless for the shapeshifting tribulation which makes them extremely lame.
That said, there are some stuff you can do.

Thanks!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on December 05, 2020, 07:26:13 pm
Went into my first game blind. Lost two months in when my sect leader failed his shapeshifting tribulation.
Think I'll start with humans next time, and maybe invite some Yaoguai when I'm better prepared.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 05, 2020, 10:16:39 pm
demon chicken will eat your puppy, etc., etc., yes

probably good to avoid yaoguai until later, or at least kick them out before the tribulation hits

In mostly unrelated news, I just now figured out exactly what transcribing laws does, and what it entails for raising critters up (it entails jamming every single +qi manual you have access to into them). One neat trick and my golden core prospective went from looking at a quality six to getting a Q2. It ain't Q1 but it's definitely a lot more workable, ha.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 05, 2020, 10:55:58 pm
In mostly unrelated news, I just now figured out exactly what transcribing laws does, and what it entails for raising critters up (it entails jamming every single +qi manual you have access to into them). One neat trick and my golden core prospective went from looking at a quality six to getting a Q2. It ain't Q1 but it's definitely a lot more workable, ha.

Make sure you give all your men Lunar Form for the qi boost, because... uhm... try it, if you haven't.   ;D
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 05, 2020, 11:01:24 pm
Yeah, I knew about that one. Avoided it for my sect builder, but rando mc 50 qi sense I recruited later? They're straight up sunflower refining.

My future plan is to wait until sect leader maxes out myriad artifact law creation bonuses and turn their "treasure" into their new super relic :V

e: in other news, I've learned alchemy is a pretty impressive money maker if you go for it hard enough. Get sufficiently good and you can produce multiple spirit crystals per batch... and they sell for 60 per, i.e. just two nets you a twenty stone profit. Spirit stone printer goes brrr
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: MCreeper on December 06, 2020, 07:16:03 am
Physical cultivators in a shellnut:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Or so it would seem. My own just inhales stench from a pile of corpses my necromancer makes for greater power. Got to say, amount of grind that opens up on golden core (especially totally wrongful "massacre people for 1500 exp each" grind when your dog is trained to loot people) makes me want to... take a break for Rimworld, where progressing is, like, ten times faster. Or so it feels. And i thought Rimworld is a slow game.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 06, 2020, 09:02:43 am
Uh, if XP is your bottleneck, are you making sure to utilize the agencies? They're the primary/more-or-less-best source of XP/inspiration past the very early game. Get on those early, then send an inner in need of XP out to gather belief. Least from what I'm picking up, you're probably sorta' wasting their time if you have a GC tooling around the sect much (at least prior to the point the pet stops being able to murder anything hostile that shows up), especially for tiny bits of XP like a 1.5k blip...

Transcribing the starter laws is also a huge one-time glut of the stuff, not that helpful later but a tremendous, what seems to be about three quarters of a million, boost for your initial critter(s). Probably plenty of other things I just haven't noticed yet, too, heh.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 06, 2020, 12:08:55 pm
Possibly a stupid question, but how do I get a physical cultivator? Is it a law that you need to find in-game? If it's a starting option, I'm not seeing it.

Edit: Ah, found it - it's a starting option for beastpeople.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: MCreeper on December 06, 2020, 01:14:13 pm
Ah, don't mind me, my bottleneck is "i don't know what i'm doing and don't want to".  :P And not being able to do many things at same in-game time. Also i meant diffirent exp, cultivation one. May or may not be futile effort to max it from there anyways.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 06, 2020, 03:13:33 pm
Possibly a stupid question, but how do I get a physical cultivator? Is it a law that you need to find in-game? If it's a starting option, I'm not seeing it.

Edit: Ah, found it - it's a starting option for beastpeople.
You can also find the starter in-game, apparently. Special event somewhere in the day 100-115 range.

There's a few others related to daemonia temple, as well, near as I can tell... both the best human and best yaoguai ones, at that. Four total counting the starter law, it seems.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 06, 2020, 05:57:28 pm
Regarding the naming of the Yaoguai:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

...It might not be such a shock to everyone else, but it sure took me a while to get it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 06, 2020, 06:46:16 pm
Regarding the naming of the Yaoguai:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Most of them are actually just the literal name of the animal.

'Niu' is actually just 'cow', or perhaps more accurately 'bovine'; linguistic structure of Chinese makes fine-grained distinctions kind of awkward. Similarly, pig(boar) and Zhu, bear and Xiong, turtle and Gui (though it's more commonly used with Wu-), frog and Qin (-wa), tiger and Hu (Lao-), chicken and Ji, snake and She. My guess on rabbit is that they inverted the syllables and used an alternate romanization (Tu-zi to Si-tu).

Not sure what wolves are, and Cat is definitely the onomatopoeia for meow, and not the name of the animal (Mao).

(Note that none of these are really pronounced the way you'd read it in English either; straight off the top, they're all missing the tonal marks which indicate inflection.)

-----

How are you supposed to deal with a disaster in Mt. South? Based on the info, each sect in the area is supposed to help out with it, getting rewards based on contribution when it finishes... and a big penalty if it's left incomplete. Except your sect is the only one that operates there, and this earthquake event is lasting 20 days, generating 20 brownstone a day, and requires 1000 to safely resolve.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 06, 2020, 07:24:02 pm
If you turn on watch closely you contribute double the amount per day, so 40 per day over 20 days=800. That plus sending over a decent cultivator (the higher rank the better) will get you to 1000 without that much trouble.

Note that 1000 on its own doesn't even safely resolve it, the less time you have left on the timer the worse effects you get hit by.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 06, 2020, 07:37:21 pm
If you turn on watch closely you contribute double the amount per day, so 40 per day over 20 days=800. That plus sending over a decent cultivator (the higher rank the better) will get you to 1000 without that much trouble.

Note that 1000 on its own doesn't even safely resolve it, the less time you have left on the timer the worse effects you get hit by.

Ooooh, thanks. I read the 'Watch Closely' toggle to mean that it doubles the frequency of events, in the sense of those popups where you have to decide how to respond. The first guy I sent over immediately added 250 points, which puts me at 1010, assuming nothing else changes.

Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 07, 2020, 09:53:39 am
Building up an intelligent animal takes forever.

I love how you can (theoretically) shape a crazy-powerful beastman by putting all these individual building blocks together. But good god, getting three of the same thought - especially the level 3 thoughts? Ugh.

Although I've been saving as many level 3 thoughts as possible (especially blue ones, since I can't seem to cause those via the 'observe' command) in the hopes that they come up again... in the meantime, I've been just building any thoughts that happen to come up - and it still looks like it's going to be at least a year-long project to get up to 3 or 4 cores.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Cruxador on December 07, 2020, 10:13:28 am
Speaking of thoughts... I imagine you've all discovered that if you practice the sunflower art as a male, you become neutered. And the removed part is an item.

Now, the obvious thing to do here would be to make an artifact and beat your enemies with your dismembered schlong. But consider: Items can be sentient. Sentient items can eventually become people. So you can have a penis person hanging around the sect and cultivating.

You can even have the original cultivator possess and incarnate as his own penis. Hell, you could repeat the process, if the penis is a male.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 07, 2020, 10:35:29 am
Building up an intelligent animal takes forever.

I love how you can (theoretically) shape a crazy-powerful beastman by putting all these individual building blocks together. But good god, getting three of the same thought - especially the level 3 thoughts? Ugh.

Although I've been saving as many level 3 thoughts as possible (especially blue ones, since I can't seem to cause those via the 'observe' command) in the hopes that they come up again... in the meantime, I've been just building any thoughts that happen to come up - and it still looks like it's going to be at least a year-long project to get up to 3 or 4 cores.

I usually memorize whatever pair of what I don't have.  It really doesn't take that long, provided you're ok with good enough.  Plus, you can go up to 9 cores.  My biggest complaint is that the explanation/terms for making the intelligent beast uses the word "shards" to describe two different things.  The whole translation is just kinda awkward.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 07, 2020, 11:13:29 am
Sure, you can go up to 9 cores, but not only does that significantly reduce the timeline before fluffy gets smote by a lightning bolt, but I'd honestly be worried that the animal might die of old age before I managed to put together that many full shards.

Unless there's some trick to building up thoughts that I'm missing that significantly cuts down on how long it takes to get three of any given thought (note: there may well be, I'm certainly no expert), I'm currently aiming for the bare minimum to get my animal up on two legs.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 07, 2020, 02:06:11 pm
I... think there's some elixirs that delay tribulation? Not 100% there, 'cause I seem to recall there being some differences between shapeshifting tribulation and other sorts. But if there are, that can help out a lot with a high intelligence thingy yaoguai. Iirc if you max it out their tribulation comes in like ten days or somethin' (which you're going to have a hard time managing even if every possible duck is in its row), being able to extend that a bit (or a lot) helps more than a little, heh.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on December 07, 2020, 03:41:45 pm
Is there any way to encourage a tamed animal to start thinking? Or is it just a matter of letting it wander around camp until RNG triggers?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Salmeuk on December 07, 2020, 04:41:27 pm
Speaking of thoughts... I imagine you've all discovered that if you practice the sunflower art as a male, you become neutered. And the removed part is an item.

Now, the obvious thing to do here would be to make an artifact and beat your enemies with your dismembered schlong. But consider: Items can be sentient. Sentient items can eventually become people. So you can have a penis person hanging around the sect and cultivating.

You can even have the original cultivator possess and incarnate as his own penis. Hell, you could repeat the process, if the penis is a male.

This possibility gives Cyberpunk 2077 a run for it's money in the PPI (potential penis interaction) category of game awards.

Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 07, 2020, 05:51:20 pm
Is there any way to encourage a tamed animal to start thinking? Or is it just a matter of letting it wander around camp until RNG triggers?
There's specific miracles/elixirs that will straight up make them intelligent instantly. You can trade with one of the sects (though I forget which one) for them, too.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 07, 2020, 06:38:38 pm
Sure, you can go up to 9 cores, but not only does that significantly reduce the timeline before fluffy gets smote by a lightning bolt, but I'd honestly be worried that the animal might die of old age before I managed to put together that many full shards.

Unless there's some trick to building up thoughts that I'm missing that significantly cuts down on how long it takes to get three of any given thought (note: there may well be, I'm certainly no expert), I'm currently aiming for the bare minimum to get my animal up on two legs.
There are some elixers and skills you can use to help them think some thoughts faster, which combined with observing and making sure all their requirements are fulfilled helps a bunch.

But if you want to get a beast to 9 slots or whatever its still going to take you like an ingame year or whatever.
That all said, it seems like going up high is the way to go. A 3 slot beast isn't going to be meaningfully better than your average human, and their 1000 day tribulation is completely irrelevant. Same for a tier 6, which gives you 100 days, which is pretty easy by the time you can make and awaken one.
But since they are so much work already settling for "meh, this dude should be okay and maybe a bit better then an average human that just wanders into my base" is kind of pointless. If you're making them it seems to me you should either go big with them being 100% dedicated to a single purpose at a high level or not even bother at all.
I... think there's some elixirs that delay tribulation? Not 100% there, 'cause I seem to recall there being some differences between shapeshifting tribulation and other sorts. But if there are, that can help out a lot with a high intelligence thingy yaoguai. Iirc if you max it out their tribulation comes in like ten days or somethin' (which you're going to have a hard time managing even if every possible duck is in its row), being able to extend that a bit (or a lot) helps more than a little, heh.
None of the elixers help with youguai tribulation at all, which makes them like 80% useless and certainly 100% useless for what 95% of people want to use them for.
If you max it out all the way you get 4 days, which is completely impossible at start and very difficult if you don't have stuff prepared for it and the season correct, but definitely viable with the right setup and eventually with everything near perfect not even that much trouble.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 07, 2020, 06:54:45 pm
So evidently, living in a completely sealed mountain doesn't make you immune to invaders. A random 48-year-old guy just popped in through ~5 tiles of stone. Forget about being an outer disciple, that's a demi-god level trick...
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 07, 2020, 07:04:36 pm
So evidently, living in a completely sealed mountain doesn't make you immune to invaders. A random 48-year-old guy just popped in through ~5 tiles of stone. Forget about being an outer disciple, that's a demi-god level trick...
Walls don't even always stop your own outers, as seen when they just hop over walls into the restricted area (cause there's a demon beast in there they keep trying to pet) to put out a fire or them somehow phasing through a decorative statue into the tiny space behind it so they can play the fun game of "time to get stuck in the corner behind a statue and see if you can hide long enough to die of starvation".
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 07, 2020, 07:21:39 pm
So evidently, living in a completely sealed mountain doesn't make you immune to invaders. A random 48-year-old guy just popped in through ~5 tiles of stone. Forget about being an outer disciple, that's a demi-god level trick...
Walls don't even always stop your own outers, as seen when they just hop over walls into the restricted area (cause there's a demon beast in there they keep trying to pet) to put out a fire or them somehow phasing through a decorative statue into the tiny space behind it so they can play the fun game of "time to get stuck in the corner behind a statue and see if you can hide long enough to die of starvation".

I've seen that happen to myself with single-tile 'solid' objects, but not things that are multiple-tiles thick. This particular invader also didn't spawn in at the edge of the map and try to march in either; he showed up inside my LoS, inside a mountain where the thinnest wall right now is 3-tiles thick. I was avoiding cracking open my mountain to see what kind of weird shenanigans I could get up to by being entirely cloistered, but it looks like some tenacious robbers are going to have their way anyways.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on December 07, 2020, 08:44:17 pm
Apparently a random chicken near the base evolved into a demon after sensing one of my inners start to break through.

A pity it doesn't give much loot as a newborn demon.  But maybe I can knock it out, heal it, and move it over to a far off corner, to eventually grow big with more loot.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 08, 2020, 02:56:12 am
Two things on intelligent beasts:
1) They have preferences that increase their thinking.  They all want to be in Pasture areas.
2) Honestly, my policy with them is to just ignore them.  It's not something to actively work, you just stuff them somewhere and go about your day.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on December 08, 2020, 06:21:13 am
Hey so I just noticed, the skill values on the work schedule don't always properly reflect how good someone really is. I went digging in my outer's stats and sure enough, someone might have a lower mining skill but have higher mining yield (which is what I'm really interested in when picking my miner). Skill seems to raise speed first, and yield a distant second. Same with farming, crafting, butchering, etc..., and tools only seem to increase speed (except perhaps for the acupuncture needles).

Some traits might also mess with things further, for instance "Gifted Artist" seems to double the effect of "Artisanry", which itself gives a boost to the final quality of items. A "Meticulous" character on the other hand, had a boost to the initial quality range of crafted items, which is related to the "Crafting" skill. And I'm pretty sure that the "Craftsman" trait (not to confuse with the background story) also gives a substantial bonus.

This, on a tangent, made me curious about how each stat increased ability, and after some testing, most of them aren't straightforward, so here it is :

Mining 50% PER, 50% CON
Farming 70% PER, 30% CON
Construction 100% CON
Crafting 50% PER, 20% INT, 30% LUK
Social 100% CHA
Artisanry 40% PER, 60% INT
Cooking 60% PER, 40% CON
Medecine 60% PER, 40% INT
Battle 40% PER, 20% INT, 40% LUK
Qi sense 60% CON, 40% INT

As for Magic and Magic Crafting, it's 100% concentrated power of will... errr I mean they're only correlated to skill level, and cap at 50.

[Edit] Also stars (passionate/obsessed) increase the base skill level as if you had trained the skill, which is always a nice bonus on skills that you can't actually train, but won't help if you're at 20/20.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 08, 2020, 07:40:45 am
Yeah... I don't know how common it is outside the content creator, but it's maybe worth noting there are things able to break the skill caps beyond certain traits. Only seems to be sorta' useful so far as item production goes for everything except alchemy (alch yield will just keep scaling; I've got one critter with a stupid, probably normally impossible alchemy skill that reads 600 in the inspiration tab, that prints out about 30 spirit crystals per batch, ferex), though. 70-80-ish crafting skill is enough to start producing named items, which is, y'know, enough :P

It's also maybe worth noting passionate/obsessed seems to effect behavior, as well. If you have an obsessed crafter they seem remarkably likely to end up passing out on the floor besides a crafting station instead of actually going to bed, which can potentially be an issue, heh.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on December 08, 2020, 05:46:00 pm
So... crimson fruit, you can plant that to make a tree.

It requires 200 degree room to grow.  (The tree itself makes the room 500 degrees in a 5x5 setting.)  How to make fireproof room when igneo burns at 100 degrees? 
And... the solution might be Fire Essence Bars.  Maybe.


(Selling bread and fabrics for all the monies.)
10x wheat = 20x flour = 40x bread = 40x spirit stone
4x cotton = 20x fabric = 20x spirit stone

Herb Gardening
Spirit Leaf and Tranquility Grass tends to have high yield, so profit can be made there too, just not as much as the above.

(Obviously got a mod that lets you stack items more then 500.  Desperate need for that in this game.)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 08, 2020, 06:12:49 pm
So... crimson fruit, you can plant that to make a tree.

It requires 200 degree room to grow.  (The tree itself makes the room 500 degrees in a 5x5 setting.)  How to make fireproof room when igneo burns at 100 degrees? 
And... the solution might be Fire Essence Bars.  Maybe.


(Selling bread and fabrics for all the monies.)
10x wheat = 20x flour = 40x bread = 40x spirit stone
4x cotton = 20x fabric = 20x spirit stone

Herb Gardening
Spirit Leaf and Tranquility Grass tends to have high yield, so profit can be made there too, just not as much as the above.

(Obviously got a mod that lets you stack items more then 500.  Desperate need for that in this game.)
Mmmm there isn't really a big need for a stacking mod. Once you build the warehouse (unlock the scroll you get from the Taiyin sect pagoda with a GC cultivator) you can store an infinite amount of wheat, cotton and all other low tier materials in a single decent sized building, oh and nothing in there degrades over time either. Since its so useful you kinda want to rush it as soon as you get a GC if its at all possible despite the cost.
That's not all, that's not all, its even more useful than that! But I won't spoil exactly how.

Also, igneo doesn't ignite at 100 degrees. Assuming you didn't make stands out of wood or whatever (which is my typical stand material) I don't think it self-ignites at any temperature, certainly not below 500 degrees (and with a quick test, not below 2000 degrees either).
Fairly sure the same is true for simple brownstone or spirit crystal as well.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on December 08, 2020, 08:53:50 pm
Experience from my very ominous 'resting place' for 'visitors'.  It started lighting up around 100-120 degrees. 
Maybe the negative feng shui makes the igneo walls burn?


I actually havn't returned to the Taiyin place... guess I'll give that a try.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 10, 2020, 02:13:44 am
They really need to better mark the golden core breakthrough. Maybe something like a prompt that says "hey, are you sure that you want to do that, since you haven't taken any of the many pills or boosters you've got sitting around, just waiting to be used, that would help you level up to something better than a level VIII core?" 

Or, you know, if that's too much, maybe just a tooltip that pops up when you hover over that breakpoint, which mentions it's the golden core point.

Ah well, next one, for sure. :'(
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 10, 2020, 02:21:04 am
Or, you know, if that's too much, maybe just a tooltip that pops up when you hover over that breakpoint, which mentions it's the golden core point.

Last few times I did it, the popout window that shows the odds of breaking through also indicated the expected quality of the Golden Core.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 10, 2020, 02:33:32 am
They really need to better mark the golden core breakthrough. Maybe something like a prompt that says "hey, are you sure that you want to do that, since you haven't taken any of the many pills or boosters you've got sitting around, just waiting to be used, that would help you level up to something better than a level VIII core?" 

Or, you know, if that's too much, maybe just a tooltip that pops up when you hover over that breakpoint, which mentions it's the golden core point.

Ah well, next one, for sure. :'(
Not so much of an issue if you aren't playing immortal, since it flat out tells you what level core you're going to get and a second of looking will tell you that something is wrong and if you mess that up even then you can just load the previous save.
Of course if (like me) you are an idiot and playing on immortal then I will agree the game makes it very easy to accidentally forget to take your medicine or forget to equip your breakthrough talismans (EVEN THOUGH YOU PUT THEM ON YOUR GODAMN CHARACHTER) or have a lushu appear mid breakthrough in an act of terrorism to destroy your weather.

But that's more of an issue with immortal mode which makes an already annoyingly obtuse game even more obtuse, which certainly isn't limited to the GC breakthrough.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 10, 2020, 02:58:48 am
Ah - yeah, I'm a sucker for achievements; so I've been playing on Immortal.

Whelp, suck it up and keep moving forward - the curse (and blessing) of playing on Ironman. Never look back!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 10, 2020, 08:45:23 am
Huh. Immortal takes away the expected core quality indicator?

... yeah, I'm never going to play immortal. Glad to have fully established that before I got to that point and started trying to report a bug or somethin', ha.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Salmeuk on December 10, 2020, 12:49:37 pm
I think this thread amazes me most because sooo many of you see to have a wealth of experience and knowledge about this game. Where and how did you first find out about this game, those of you who would consider yourselves 'experienced'?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: ( Tchey ) on December 10, 2020, 02:09:36 pm
I think this thread amazes me most because sooo many of you see to have a wealth of experience and knowledge about this game. Where and how did you first find out about this game, those of you who would consider yourselves 'experienced'?

Can’t say i’m thatmuch "experienced", but i did play quite a lot in beta.
I found out about the game on the Scroll of Taiwu Discord for english translation.

Taiwu is another gem, go check it too.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 10, 2020, 02:22:40 pm
I'm not experienced at all, even with my steam thing clocking 120 hours; I still haven't gotten anyone to primordial spirit :P

Most I got is tooling around the early to mid game for, uh. A lot, at this point. Plus having some the discord guides bookmarked, heh. But there's apparently tons I just haven't touched on, yet.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 10, 2020, 02:30:05 pm
I think this thread amazes me most because sooo many of you see to have a wealth of experience and knowledge about this game. Where and how did you first find out about this game, those of you who would consider yourselves 'experienced'?

Wouldn't say I'm experienced, but I have a fairly long history of the basic concepts involved and I'm familiar with both the subject matter and game genre. Beyond that, it's mostly just looking at what it gives you and working it out from there. And when that fails, bashing your head against the wall until something clicks.

It showed up on my radar quite a while ago, though I largely dismissed it as 'yet another colony builder' until it cropped up here. It's taken a while, but I finally realized that despite its trappings... it isn't a colony builder, at least in the conventional sense. It's a pyramid scheme.  :D
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 10, 2020, 05:00:03 pm
I've read every single guild (I think) here (https://steamcommunity.com/app/955900/discussions/0/2967272318179202743/).

Also played through the first 30 days so many times I actually cringe when I think of starting a new game.  Still haven't made my first Golden Core, actually think I'm maybe behind everyone else? Kinda funny feeling when playing a single player, non-competitive game.  :P

This thread is what got me into the game.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 10, 2020, 05:16:31 pm
Why all the restarts? Aside from the one time that my starting map demon literally killed all but 3 people in my sect ( 3/4 inners, 6/8 outers, plus dog; the 3 remaining were all barely conscious due to snake venom), I haven't encountered any situations that had me rerolling.

So far the game seems fairly forgiving overall - losses hurt, sure, but there's an infinite number of new disciples to recruit to fill in the ranks of the fallen. (One good thing about Immortal - it turns up the encounter rate so high that you'd think your sect was in the middle of a trade route - constantly new potentials wandering onto the map.)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Cruxador on December 10, 2020, 05:49:15 pm
I think this thread amazes me most because sooo many of you see to have a wealth of experience and knowledge about this game. Where and how did you first find out about this game, those of you who would consider yourselves 'experienced'?
Nobody's experienced, you gotta explore the game and find stuff out and test things in the sandbox mode and talk to other people playing the game. That last one's the key, really.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 10, 2020, 07:09:47 pm
Why all the restarts? Aside from the one time that my starting map demon literally killed all but 3 people in my sect ( 3/4 inners, 6/8 outers, plus dog; the 3 remaining were all barely conscious due to snake venom), I haven't encountered any situations that had me rerolling.

So far the game seems fairly forgiving overall - losses hurt, sure, but there's an infinite number of new disciples to recruit to fill in the ranks of the fallen. (One good thing about Immortal - it turns up the encounter rate so high that you'd think your sect was in the middle of a trade route - constantly new potentials wandering onto the map.)
If you don't understand reputation its pretty easy to lose actually. Most notably taking artifact events, being evil/good and going to the opposite sects and winning kunlun can boost your rep above what you can actually survive without you ever understanding that any of its actually doing you any long term damage, as seen in my sect where I got my rep up to 5500 accidentally and PS elders that I couldn't beat with my dudes started coming out of the woodwork at the slightest provocation.
Of course this is going to take like 200 days or whatever and is more about the quests you take than about if you made a dozen mistakes with your dudes and it obviously isn't the reason for most restarts, but it is very very possible.

As for why all the restarts, it just feels painful to look at stuff go so horribly at be at like day 50 with no progress made or just be so obviously screwed up even if it doesn't really matter in any meaningful sense over the long term.
It showed up on my radar quite a while ago, though I largely dismissed it as 'yet another colony builder' until it cropped up here. It's taken a while, but I finally realized that despite its trappings... it isn't a colony builder, at least in the conventional sense. It's a pyramid scheme.  :D
Yeah, I thought it was a rimworld clone with a cheap "cultivator" focus the day before I bought it, but it totally isn't in any way and from the first minute I played it I was honestly impressed with how different and how unique it was.
The first real ingame indicator to me is that you have very little control over what tasks your dudes do. You can set them a task and a single focus, but beyond that you can't tell them what to do or where to focus on at all, which can be really frustrating when you want your dude to be more optimized and say, craft->tailor if no crafting is available while still having other stuff theoretically checked.
But I don't think that's a design or interface weakness as it might look at first glance, I think its a deliberate decision to minimize the importance of and interaction with your peons, because the game isn't about survival or their stories in the same way as DF or rimworld at all. Its about getting your main dudes really really buff, and just basically ignoring everyone who can't magic kung-fu stab people to death.
So you just set up something that works at the start of the game as far as they go, and then just ignore those dudes for the entire rest of the game and never have to really care about them unless they accidently die in a fire or whatever.
I think this thread amazes me most because sooo many of you see to have a wealth of experience and knowledge about this game. Where and how did you first find out about this game, those of you who would consider yourselves 'experienced'?
3 weeks ago, a disgusting amount of time played, and a lot of time spent lurking on and helping people on the discord (https://discord.gg/uSXsk2T).
The discord (https://discord.gg/uSXsk2T) is the big thing, because it has loads and loads of guides and information (more then the ones on the steam page EuchreJack linked) and a bunch of people willing and able to answer any question you might have outside the endgame in real time at any time of the day.

Even still, with over a hundred hours in the game I still haven't touched at all on at least 4 major systems (body cults, divine cults and at least two major endgame crafting systems) and still have a long way to go if I want to know everything about the game.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 10, 2020, 07:44:11 pm
I saw it mentioned somewhere that there're major difficulty jumps once you hit 500 and 4000 rep (specifically, I believe it said the rival factions will start throwing GC and PS-tier practitioners at you, respectively). As long as you don't push your rep up, you can sort of limp along at your own pace.

Also something I realized in the middle of my current round: Using the starting option that puts you in the middle of the mountains might be one of the better starts-- you start off with plentiful brownstone, iron, and ice crystals, at the cost of little wood and soil (the former of which is a fairly inexpensive purchase), but more importantly, a ton of caskets that you can go play RNG roulette on and hope for high-powered books. And once you dig out the place, you can spend a few hundred days turning the entire map into normal soil and go on like usual.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 11, 2020, 01:15:13 am
Why all the restarts?

I just wanted to see all the possible starting scenarios.  I've probably seen 90% of them.

Personally, my favorite start is the medical supplies start.  All that yummy Red Ginseng and Ganoderma means everyone can be an Inner Disciple!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 11, 2020, 07:56:48 am
... wait, starting scenarios? What?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 11, 2020, 08:29:32 am
... wait, starting scenarios? What?
I assume he's just talking about how you can have your dudes start with different things when you gen your characters (eg. what law you start with, how many uses you start with, etc).

I would disagree about the best start though. In my opinion the goal is to get stuff that's hard or exceedingly difficult to get at the start of the game. One or two things are basically useless (eg. starting with a sword that will take your first smith a hour to hammer out, a minor protection boost for just a single dude), and a few others are fairly useful at the start (eg. extra construction material, starting with an artifact, free food, extra medicine that is just worth a month of gathering from a good herb garden) but then quickly thereafter become irrelevant and within a month or two don't matter in the slightest.

There is quite a few stuff that is helpful over a longer time period as well, which is basically anything that gives you hard to find extra knowledge, most notably manual savior since it always gives you the super amazing soul inquiry as well as some pretty good books, although the advanced talismans aren't too shabby either. You can also start with a single advanced law, and getting to pick a free one of those can make a big difference early game since otherwise you probably aren't going to get one you want till PS.


But the best stuff is the people, which is why the +2 picks is probably the best of the bunch. Assuming you know what the law requirements are (or you have the view law requirement mod installed) you can gen what's equivalent to a years worth of non-agency recruitment in like 20 seconds and start out with 4 perfect inner disciples for 4 different laws (and your loyal outer crafter).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on December 11, 2020, 09:09:33 am
So, I'm embarrassed to say that I have waited this long before doing my first agency recruitment. In my defense, the thing costs 100 influence and I didn't think it would be any better than just the usual 1-2 disciples being sent your way. I also restarted recently and I had barely touched agencies in my previous games.

Turns out, even at my low reputation level I get a convenient list of 35 disciples to choose from, that I can sort by stat, age etc... This will be a tremendous help and I don't think I'll ever go back to other recruitment methods. (Also you can directly send them to your agencies, which helps a lot in filling the ranks)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 11, 2020, 01:33:41 pm
... wait, starting scenarios? What?
I would disagree about the best start though.

Just to clarify, I said Favorite start, not best start.  I know that the materials that you get with the medical supplies start are easily acquired via trade and exploration. 
It's just my Favorite start to goof around.  What other start can get you 3 inner disciples on day one?  It's not good necessarily, its just fun.

So, I'm embarrassed to say that I have waited this long before doing my first agency recruitment. In my defense, the thing costs 100 influence and I didn't think it would be any better than just the usual 1-2 disciples being sent your way. I also restarted recently and I had barely touched agencies in my previous games.

Turns out, even at my low reputation level I get a convenient list of 35 disciples to choose from, that I can sort by stat, age etc... This will be a tremendous help and I don't think I'll ever go back to other recruitment methods. (Also you can directly send them to your agencies, which helps a lot in filling the ranks)

Thanks for sharing, I had never used agency recruitment either.  I know what I'm doing later!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 11, 2020, 03:09:32 pm
100 influence is cheap later on; I open up all the non-city outposts ASAP since most of them can produce grain and be self-sufficient, and they give 10 influence each. Open all of them up, and you can get an army of disciples (5 minimum, I believe) every day.

I was referring to the starter terrain in the map options. You can pick stuff like extra mountains, more water, more plants but less rocks, etc. in addition to other features like a rift that pops random stuff out ranging from a few logs to an ARMY OF BEARS.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on December 11, 2020, 07:42:51 pm
I started a new game after playing this once and not playing it for a few weeks(and another new game, because I screwed up a bit during chargen). It's Day 16, and a Tiger Yaoguai showed up asking to join. His stats are showing that he's going to have a transformation tribulation in 85 days. Is this going to result in everyone's probable death, or just his?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 11, 2020, 07:48:09 pm
Eh, eighty five days is a decent buffer? Might be survivable. If it's not, puppy+something else (maybe even a bunch of outers with bows... especially hunting bows, in my experience) can probably kill it.

In any case, if it gets close and you don't think it'll work out, either banish them* or tell them to go to a distant corner of the map when the tribulation's about to happen (one time I've actually had a yaoguai tribulation happen so far, I assigned them a cushion far away from everything else when it about started), if you're looking to harvest some demon fur and beast blood.

But yeah, if you don't pop the thing off in the middle of your buildings there probably won't be much collateral damage.

e:*I think you can assign them to assist at an agency, too, if you haven't promoted them? Maybe not as the primary agent, but the helpers might work.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 12, 2020, 04:40:20 am
Here's a weird question, would anyone be interested in a Story Fort kinda thing for this game? I've been playing it since release and also learned as much as I can from all the guides and people to the point where I pretty much know most of anything for it (doesn't mean i'm good at it though ngl xD) and was thinking about doing a story fort kinda thing for it since I thought it'd be interesting.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 12, 2020, 05:18:12 am
Here's a weird question, would anyone be interested in a Story Fort kinda thing for this game? I've been playing it since release and also learned as much as I can from all the guides and people to the point where I pretty much know most of anything for it (doesn't mean i'm good at it though ngl xD) and was thinking about doing a story fort kinda thing for it since I thought it'd be interesting.

Sure.  Let's Play has been kinda quite lately anyways.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: MCreeper on December 12, 2020, 05:31:27 am
I proudly made my first GC3 on day 215, only to find out that GC3 is supposed to be the first, basic-disposable GC. Why it is basic-disposable? Because someone got to cast those 20k mana weather spells for perfect "stars are left". And maybe craft some pills. And that's, apparently, it.  :-\ Although with enough persistence GC7 six paths can do the same.

On the other end, perfectionist guy on other forum (i like him for useful and comprehensive guides) apparently spent all not sleeping or eating time since english release learning every single little thing in first half of the game, rolling the game to summer and then starting over (and over and over) because something went slightly wrong. For the last game he cycled trough more than 10 maps to find just perfect one. And got smote on day 12 by +300 rep from blessed sect status. *censored!* (c)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 12, 2020, 06:19:32 am
I proudly made my first GC3 on day 215, only to find out that GC3 is supposed to be the first, basic-disposable GC. Why it is basic-disposable? Because someone got to cast those 20k mana weather spells for perfect "stars are left". And maybe craft some pills. And that's, apparently, it.  :-\ Although with enough persistence GC7 six paths can do the same.

On the other end, perfectionist guy on other forum (i like him for useful and comprehensive guides) apparently spent all not sleeping or eating time since english release learning every single little thing in first half of the game, rolling the game to summer and then starting over (and over and over) because something went slightly wrong. For the last game he cycled trough more than 10 maps to find just perfect one. And got smote on day 12 by +300 rep from blessed sect status. *censored!* (c)

Yea I've found that a lot of the guides and players are kinda optimizers. Not that that's a bad thing, optimizing the game for the best result can be fun especially if you know what you're doing. But there's a lot of peeps like me that just like to learn and go without trying to optimize much of anything. Like I love to make my rooms look good, which is why I use the Altars of Magic from Kunlun (they're basically Cushions you can assign to cultivators, with the altars themselves having an insane Qi Gather of 600, but not fengshui and are 5x3 in size, so it's not the best you could make) but that's not the best setup possible you can get, since you can easily beat that with a good diamond design around a Qi Gather cushion you unlock at 500 rep.

Honestly, I've found if you manage your rep properly, you can do whatever the hell you want and progress as slow or as optimized as you want tbh. I have a 1000+ day game I finished the other night and in the end only had around 3400 rep, while others with high optimized runs are beating the game at 15000+ rep and cultivators that could stomp mine if we went into the PVP area in the game (though i've been avoiding the PVP, people put a lot of hacked/cheated characters into it).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 12, 2020, 06:24:43 am
I proudly made my first GC3 on day 215, only to find out that GC3 is supposed to be the first, basic-disposable GC. Why it is basic-disposable? Because someone got to cast those 20k mana weather spells for perfect "stars are left". And maybe craft some pills. And that's, apparently, it.  :-\ Although with enough persistence GC7 six paths can do the same.

On the other end, perfectionist guy on other forum (i like him for useful and comprehensive guides) apparently spent all not sleeping or eating time since english release learning every single little thing in first half of the game, rolling the game to summer and then starting over (and over and over) because something went slightly wrong. For the last game he cycled trough more than 10 maps to find just perfect one. And got smote on day 12 by +300 rep from blessed sect status. *censored!* (c)

LOL!

After reading this guide on Sub-Spirits (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FyMSWjjj4FK4e3OCP0X58Lczg0Vw4Dqf_Q2xmjDu1QI/edit#), I'm convinced that everyone who can be made a Primoridal Spirit should be made a Primordial Spirit.  The whole strategy is to take a subpar cultivator, dump their entire experience onto their stuff, then give said stuff to a decent cultivator to get an excellent cultivator.

Congrats on the GC3!  You can probably go front end with that thing.  Let some lesser GC be the expendable one.

I have a 1000+ day game I finished the other night and in the end only had around 3400 rep, while others with high optimized runs are beating the game at 15000+ rep and cultivators that could stomp mine if we went into the PVP area in the game (though i've been avoiding the PVP, people put a lot of hacked/cheated characters into it).

Finish game?  It was hinted, but you can actually finish the game?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 12, 2020, 06:32:06 am
There is an end-game victory condition type thing (maybe more than one?), yes. Dunno if it actually punts you to a victory screen, your-save-is-done-go-away, make new game to start playing again thing, tho'.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 12, 2020, 06:35:25 am
I proudly made my first GC3 on day 215, only to find out that GC3 is supposed to be the first, basic-disposable GC. Why it is basic-disposable? Because someone got to cast those 20k mana weather spells for perfect "stars are left". And maybe craft some pills. And that's, apparently, it.  :-\ Although with enough persistence GC7 six paths can do the same.

On the other end, perfectionist guy on other forum (i like him for useful and comprehensive guides) apparently spent all not sleeping or eating time since english release learning every single little thing in first half of the game, rolling the game to summer and then starting over (and over and over) because something went slightly wrong. For the last game he cycled trough more than 10 maps to find just perfect one. And got smote on day 12 by +300 rep from blessed sect status. *censored!* (c)

LOL!

After reading this guide on Sub-Spirits (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FyMSWjjj4FK4e3OCP0X58Lczg0Vw4Dqf_Q2xmjDu1QI/edit#), I'm convinced that everyone who can be made a Primoridal Spirit should be made a Primordial Spirit.  The whole strategy is to take a subpar cultivator, dump their entire experience onto their stuff, then give said stuff to a decent cultivator to get an excellent cultivator.

Congrats on the GC3!  You can probably go front end with that thing.  Let some lesser GC be the expendable one.

I have a 1000+ day game I finished the other night and in the end only had around 3400 rep, while others with high optimized runs are beating the game at 15000+ rep and cultivators that could stomp mine if we went into the PVP area in the game (though i've been avoiding the PVP, people put a lot of hacked/cheated characters into it).

Finish game?  It was hinted, but you can actually finish the game?


Yea, though it depends on what end game you give yourself. The Story, if you choose to pursue, has the last event happen on day 2000. Other then that it really depends on what you make your end game. Most of the time for myself my end game is just making a good looking, functional and strong sect xD. Some people make it their goal to conquer the other Sects, which considering the other sects have Elders with over 5 million Qi means you'll be playing for a long while. Others make it their goal to get one wonder from 1 sect, either by stealing it or by attacking them for it. Some go for the ancient formations which are easier to steal and all have unique effects that normal formations can't do. And even more so others just make it their end game to make the strongest cultivator with the strongest artifact (since artifacts get stronger if, before you turn them into an artifact, the more Qi you store into it the stronger it is).

A friend of mine is using the Marriage + Children mod (called Tie the Knot) to do a 2 Cultivators Only run and his end game is making a successful sect with only those 2 as his only cultivators. He got pretty incensed the other night because he was trying to do a whole "One Good, One Evil" theme and the characters got the "Death Spiritualist" and "Blood Spiritualist" titles xD.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 12, 2020, 06:36:10 am
There is an end-game victory condition type thing (maybe more than one?), yes. Dunno if it actually punts you to a victory screen, your-save-is-done-go-away, make new game to start playing again thing, tho'.

It doesn't have a specific victory screen. You can keep going once that last story event on day 2000 happens. Other then that, end game is just what you make it really.

I think the longest I've seen someone go was like, 3500 days I believe, which is around 29 years in game.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 12, 2020, 08:28:04 am
There is an end-game victory condition type thing (maybe more than one?), yes. Dunno if it actually punts you to a victory screen, your-save-is-done-go-away, make new game to start playing again thing, tho'.

It doesn't have a specific victory screen. You can keep going once that last story event on day 2000 happens. Other then that, end game is just what you make it really.

I think the longest I've seen someone go was like, 3500 days I believe, which is around 29 years in game.

I'm more curious how long it would be in realtime.  I mean, it takes about 8 hours for me to get through one in-game year.  Could maybe cut that down to 4 if I really didn't care what happened.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 12, 2020, 08:30:58 am
There is an end-game victory condition type thing (maybe more than one?), yes. Dunno if it actually punts you to a victory screen, your-save-is-done-go-away, make new game to start playing again thing, tho'.

It doesn't have a specific victory screen. You can keep going once that last story event on day 2000 happens. Other then that, end game is just what you make it really.

I think the longest I've seen someone go was like, 3500 days I believe, which is around 29 years in game.

I'm more curious how long it would be in realtime.  I mean, it takes about 8 hours for me to get through one in-game year.  Could maybe cut that down to 4 if I really didn't care what happened.

Honestly really depends on what you set the highest speed option to, cause you can change it from x3 to up to like x10 in the settings menu, there's a chinese mod people have been wanting to get translated that bumps that further up to x20. So could be any time from 1 month irl to like, 2 weeks xD.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 12, 2020, 10:05:14 am
So I have a relic with the requirement of Narrow Storage.  WTF is Narrow Storage?!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 12, 2020, 10:12:26 am
So I have a relic with the requirement of Narrow Storage.  WTF is Narrow Storage?!

Huh, i've never actually seen anyone have that before? No-one on the discord seems to know either. Maybe just a very small storage room?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on December 12, 2020, 11:34:35 am
Not sure if I'm reading the Feng Shui compass right. I've got an inner disciple with the Sunflower Refining Law(an Earth law), so I built her a room out of igneocopper walls, floor, and furniture, with a graystone bed, and a few lanterns and displays made of ice crystal to keep her from burning to death. She's got full ++++ on Element. The compass however shows that the room is mostly Fire(obviously), Water, and... Metal? And no Earth anywhere in the room.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 12, 2020, 11:38:32 am
Not sure if I'm reading the Feng Shui compass right. I've got an inner disciple with the Sunflower Refining Law(an Earth law), so I built her a room out of igneocopper walls, floor, and furniture, with a graystone bed, and a few lanterns and displays made of ice crystal to keep her from burning to death. She's got full ++++ on Element. The compass however shows that the room is mostly Fire(obviously), Water, and... Metal? And no Earth anywhere in the room.

For bedrooms you generally don't need to make the materials out of their element or begetting element unless they're cultivating in them. I've found making room items, flooring and walls out of Earth material and the bed out Metal the best, gives very auspicious fengshui and has no temperature stuff messing with it. Course that's just me, you can do whatever you want tbh.

Are you mousing over the bed when you're checking? Make sure the game didn't auto-select a different material for some other items as well, it's done that to me a few times, was making housing out of Spirit stone walls and flooring, and found it made some walls out of Jade instead for some reason.



Oh right, for all of you not on the discord and the like, but want the guides, here they are!

(spoilered for those who want to learn themselves, not to make the post super long, and as some of them have spoilery names)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on December 12, 2020, 12:16:28 pm
Not sure if I'm reading the Feng Shui compass right. I've got an inner disciple with the Sunflower Refining Law(an Earth law), so I built her a room out of igneocopper walls, floor, and furniture, with a graystone bed, and a few lanterns and displays made of ice crystal to keep her from burning to death. She's got full ++++ on Element. The compass however shows that the room is mostly Fire(obviously), Water, and... Metal? And no Earth anywhere in the room.

For bedrooms you generally don't need to make the materials out of their element or begetting element unless they're cultivating in them. I've found making room items, flooring and walls out of Earth material and the bed out Metal the best, gives very auspicious fengshui and has no temperature stuff messing with it. Course that's just me, you can do whatever you want tbh.

I am mousing directly over the bed. It gives a slight Metal reading. The bed is placed with head in the NE corner. The tile to the left of the foot of the bed gives the strongest Metal readings, and curiously one of the weakest Fire readings. A few of the tiles surrounding the lanterns and displays, but not the tiles they're on, give the strongest Water readings. Is it because of the underlying terrain? I built in on a patch of rocky terrain, rather than dirt.

She is cultivating in there. Last I checked, you're supposed to make their cultivation spot(defaults to their bed) out of their Law's element, and the surrounding room from the element that feeds their Law's element. In this case, Fire feeds Earth.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 12, 2020, 12:22:15 pm
Not sure if I'm reading the Feng Shui compass right. I've got an inner disciple with the Sunflower Refining Law(an Earth law), so I built her a room out of igneocopper walls, floor, and furniture, with a graystone bed, and a few lanterns and displays made of ice crystal to keep her from burning to death. She's got full ++++ on Element. The compass however shows that the room is mostly Fire(obviously), Water, and... Metal? And no Earth anywhere in the room.

For bedrooms you generally don't need to make the materials out of their element or begetting element unless they're cultivating in them. I've found making room items, flooring and walls out of Earth material and the bed out Metal the best, gives very auspicious fengshui and has no temperature stuff messing with it. Course that's just me, you can do whatever you want tbh.

I am mousing directly over the bed. It gives a slight Metal reading. The bed is placed with head in the NE corner. The tile to the left of the foot of the bed gives the strongest Metal readings, and curiously one of the weakest Fire readings. A few of the tiles surrounding the lanterns and displays, but not the tiles they're on, give the strongest Water readings. Is it because of the underlying terrain? I built in on a patch of rocky terrain, rather than dirt.

She is cultivating in there. Last I checked, you're supposed to make their cultivation spot(defaults to their bed) out of their Law's element, and the surrounding room from the element that feeds their Law's element. In this case, Fire feeds Earth.

Yea you're correct on the latter, I just wasn't aware you were having them cultivate in their rooms. If you don't have the materials or Qi Gather items for proper cultivation rooms then yea you're on the right track. Once you build flooring over something it replaces the element it's placed over, so that's generally not the problem. Some items radiate an element irregardless of what it's made of but only slightly (Like Furnaces radiate Fire when in use for example) so that could be it. Honestly so long as their Element is at 5 +'s, or at the least 3, and the room has Auspicious of any kind, then you're fine. If you're alright with it, could you send a screenshot?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on December 12, 2020, 01:52:29 pm
Spoiler: Yar. (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 12, 2020, 02:00:33 pm
Spoiler: Yar. (click to show/hide)

Yea that's really weird, you shouldn't be getting metal in there at all. It might be due to some bug or something. Though element spread you see from the Feng Shui menu ala the Observatory is always a bit wonky. As a heads up, wherever you mouse takes into account everything 3 tiles (including the tile it's on) in it's radius. So it could be grabbing some element outside of the wall. It's why the optimal design for cultivation rooms is a diamond of 3 tiles with appropriate Qi gathering materials, and then a diamond outside that one (aka 4 tiles) of spirit wood, since it no longer affects the middle tile where the cultivator is at.

Here's some examples (as posted by swb)

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 12, 2020, 02:29:26 pm
Once you build flooring over something it replaces the element it's placed over,
It does not replace it, it merely makes it less relevant as it adds some extra element of a different type.
If you floor over water and stick a cultivation room there its guna have a lot of water no matter what you do. If you stick enough of a different element there the water gets overpowered and seems to go away, but it never really goes away and just gets kinda overshadowed. Despite being overshadowed its always relevant no matter what, so you want to be careful to build your cultivation rooms on the right type of land.

I strongly recommend the more grid info mod (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2231551842) because it quantifies this kinda stuff in a way that lets you understand how fung shei works personally.
Yea that's really weird, you shouldn't be getting metal in there at all.
He built it on rocky terrain, which is the only type of land that has metal in it by default. It is thus one of the best places to stick cultivation rooms that want metal, or fire (since it has no nature element), but kinda the worst if you *don't* want metal.
Though element spread you see from the Feng Shui menu ala the Observatory is always a bit wonky. As a heads up, wherever you mouse takes into account everything 3 tiles (including the tile it's on) in it's radius. So it could be grabbing some element outside of the wall. It's why the optimal design for cultivation rooms is a diamond of 3 tiles with appropriate Qi gathering materials, and then a diamond outside that one (aka 4 tiles) of spirit wood, since it no longer affects the middle tile where the cultivator is at.
*Waggles hand*
Not quite actually. Despite nearly every guide saying that fung shei has a range of 3 it actually doesn't and they are all wrong.
What it does have is a range that is dependent on the item in question, with a general (but not absolute) rule of higher tier=longer fung shei range.

Some stuff has no fung shei at all (eg. iron ingots (but not iron walls or floors)) others have a fung shei range of 1 (floors of any kind), others have 2 (walls of any kind, igneocopper/ice crystal ingots, stone/jade essense), or 3 (spiritwood, pretty much everything with 4 qi gather range regardless of tier), or 4 (Ice/fire essence ingots, darksteel ingots) or even 5 (spirit seeds like crimson fruit, or the giant ginko trees, which is why you never want to use them for non-fire cultivation). Some decorations are even variable such as flags, which have a range that depends on the material they are made out of.
You can tell the size of their aura a little if you mouse over them cause they have a glow that's stronger the larger the aura (or you can just use the observatory), but in general you really want more grid info to figure this kind of stuff out.
So I have a relic with the requirement of Narrow Storage.  WTF is Narrow Storage?!
Narrow is a room size which is smaller then normal. When you select a room it tells you the room size. Storage is a room with presumably a stockpile in it but without anything else that would define a room otherwise (eg. no production facilities).
On the other end, perfectionist guy on other forum (i like him for useful and comprehensive guides) apparently spent all not sleeping or eating time since english release learning every single little thing in first half of the game, rolling the game to summer and then starting over (and over and over) because something went slightly wrong. For the last game he cycled trough more than 10 maps to find just perfect one. And got smote on day 12 by +300 rep from blessed sect status. *censored!* (c)
Yeah, the game is a huge pain in the butt. Either you do things horribly sub-optimal cause the game never even implies what you really need to do and doesn't give you the tools to find out, or you read a guide which explains it but rips away all the mystery of the game and just tells you exactly what to do.  :(
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 12, 2020, 04:29:32 pm
So here I am playing a save that I don't care much about because I didn't pick up the puppy pet.  Lousy Inners, demon still wandering around the bottom right part of the screen.

Finally, the fox pet appears.  RIGHT NEXT TO THE DEMON.  Nobody can get to the fox to adopt it.

I'm probably just going to shoot the fox with a bow and delete the save...
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 12, 2020, 04:33:48 pm
So here I am playing a save that I don't care much about because I didn't pick up the puppy pet.  Lousy Inners, demon still wandering around the bottom right part of the screen.

Finally, the fox pet appears.  RIGHT NEXT TO THE DEMON.  Nobody can get to the fox to adopt it.

I'm probably just going to shoot the fox with a bow and delete the save...
Well, if you had adopted the dog you could use it as a meat shield so that you could get someone to go over and adopt the fox.  :P
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 12, 2020, 04:35:08 pm
Once you build flooring over something it replaces the element it's placed over,
It does not replace it, it merely makes it less relevant as it adds some extra element of a different type.
If you flooring over water and stick a cultivation room there its gunna have a lot of water no matter what you do. If you stick enough of a different element there the water gets overpowered and seems to go away, but it never really goes away and just gets kinda overshadowed. Despite being overshadowed its always relevant no matter what, so you want to be careful to build your cultivation rooms on the right type of land.

I strongly recommend the more grid info mod (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2231551842) because it quantifies this kinda stuff in a way that lets you understand how fung shei works personally.
Yea that's really weird, you shouldn't be getting metal in there at all.
He built it on rocky terrain, which is the only type of land that has metal in it by default. It is thus one of the best places to stick cultivation rooms that want metal, or fire (since it has no nature element, but kinda the worst if you *don't* want metal.
Though element spread you see from the Feng Shui menu ala the Observatory is always a bit wonky. As a heads up, wherever you mouse takes into account everything 3 tiles (including the tile it's on) in it's radius. So it could be grabbing some element outside of the wall. It's why the optimal design for cultivation rooms is a diamond of 3 tiles with appropriate Qi gathering materials, and then a diamond outside that one (aka 4 tiles) of spirit wood, since it no longer affects the middle tile where the cultivator is at.
*Waggles hand*
Not quite actually. Despite nearly every guide saying that fung shei has a range of 3 it actually doesn't and they are all wrong.
What it does have is a range that is dependent on the item in question, with a general (but not absolute) rule of higher tier=longer fung shei range.

Some stuff has no fung shei at all (eg. iron ingots (but not iron walls or floors)) others have a fung shei range of 1 (floors of any kind), others have 2 (walls of any kind, igneocopper/ice crystal ingots, stone/jade essense), or 3 (spiritwood, pretty much everything with 4 qi gather range regardless of tier), or 4 (Ice/fire essence ingots, darksteel ingots) or even 5 (spirit seeds like crimson fruit, or the giant ginko trees, which is why you never want to use them for non-fire cultivation). Some decorations are even variable such as flags, which have a range that depends on the material they are made out of.
You can tell the size of their aura a little if you mouse over them cause they have a glow that's stronger the larger the aura (or you can just use the observatory), but in general you really want more grid info to figure this kind of stuff out.
So I have a relic with the requirement of Narrow Storage.  WTF is Narrow Storage?!
Narrow is a room size which is smaller then normal. When you select a room it tells you the room size. Storage is a room with presumably a stockpile in it but without anything else that would define a room otherwise (eg. no production facilities).
On the other end, perfectionist guy on other forum (i like him for useful and comprehensive guides) apparently spent all not sleeping or eating time since english release learning every single little thing in first half of the game, rolling the game to summer and then starting over (and over and over) because something went slightly wrong. For the last game he cycled trough more than 10 maps to find just perfect one. And got smote on day 12 by +300 rep from blessed sect status. *censored!* (c)
Yeah, the game is a huge pain in the butt. Either you do things horribly sub-optimal cause the game never even implies what you really need to do and doesn't give you the tools to find out, or you read a guide which explains it but rips away all the mystery of the game and just tells you exactly what to do.  :(

Goddamn, and I thought I knew a lot about the game. I bow to your wisdom sir. Some of this I didn't even think about cause well, I just never saw it. Like different items having different ranges. I do have More Grid Info but I mainly just focus on destroying other sects and building my god one, so generally I just go with diamond design cultivator rooms or Kunlun Altars of Magic and go on my way. Thanks for teaching me a thing or 2!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Chiefwaffles on December 12, 2020, 11:49:43 pm
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 12, 2020, 11:53:59 pm

Lol, feces are always a hilarious artifact to see. Especially since once your character gets hit by it they have Body Odor for a few hours xD. Makes me want to try a "shitty" sect where everyone uses feces and dragon feces for artifacts, and I make my worst cultivator take a laxative then turn that feces sentient and then into a human and make them a god xD
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on December 13, 2020, 12:24:58 am
And even more so others just make it their end game to make the strongest cultivator with the strongest artifact (since artifacts get stronger if, before you turn them into an artifact, the more Qi you store into it the stronger it is).
Alright, didn't know that, guess I'll craft some weapons and let them sit around awhile.


(Collecting cultivator enemies that lose their spine.  They do not require food or water and they can't move.  Bonus points if they are conscious. 
Now, just like us, they are a part of this place.)


I am fairly dumb, how do you unlock the dimensional storage stuff again?  I thought it was opening the box at the Taiyi place, but I already did that.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 13, 2020, 12:41:38 am
You get a orb from the Taiyin box that you need a GC cultivator to unlock.
(Collecting cultivator enemies that lose their spine.  They do not require food or water and they can't move.  Bonus points if they are conscious. 
Now, just like us, they are a part of this place.)
Sadly this doesn't work for demon beasts, as they are mean and just starve to death if unable to move.
Although amusing fact, they can evolve even while they have the dying status, which is how I killed my first "Primordial Spirit" beast.

But yeah, in my first sect I had a youguai enemy I realized was conscious after he'd been lying on the floor for like 3 months with no spine. Sadly he had a tribulation so I couldn't keep him.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 13, 2020, 12:43:43 am
(Collecting cultivator enemies that lose their spine.  They do not require food or water and they can't move.  Bonus points if they are conscious. 
Now, just like us, they are a part of this place.)

...Wait, er, uhm, ah, uh, what?

You basically attacked them, left them prone, didn't check up on them, and then you finally did... they were just stuck there, disabled, unable to move, and effectively undying of natural causes?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on December 13, 2020, 01:03:00 am
(Collecting cultivator enemies that lose their spine.  They do not require food or water and they can't move.  Bonus points if they are conscious. 
Now, just like us, they are a part of this place.)

...Wait, er, uhm, ah, uh, what?

You basically attacked them, left them prone, didn't check up on them, and then you finally did... they were just stuck there, disabled, unable to move, and effectively undying of natural causes?
They attacked me first.  Important distinction.  But yes.  Not considered a corpse or unconscious, so doggo never took em to the sect gate room.
EDIT: I decided to leave them in my recreational room.

You get a orb from the Taiyin box that you need a GC cultivator to unlock.
That is the thing, I already opened the orb with a GC and it has been a few hours of gameplay since.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 13, 2020, 01:23:22 am
(Collecting cultivator enemies that lose their spine.  They do not require food or water and they can't move.  Bonus points if they are conscious. 
Now, just like us, they are a part of this place.)

...Wait, er, uhm, ah, uh, what?

You basically attacked them, left them prone, didn't check up on them, and then you finally did... they were just stuck there, disabled, unable to move, and effectively undying of natural causes?
They attacked me first.  Important distinction.  But yes.  Not considered a corpse or unconscious, so doggo never took em to the sect gate room.
EDIT: I decided to leave them in my recreational room.

You get a orb from the Taiyin box that you need a GC cultivator to unlock.
That is the thing, I already opened the orb with a GC and it has been a few hours of gameplay since.

Did you read the scroll it dropped? That's what gives it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 13, 2020, 01:46:38 am
Once you do it'll give you a new building to construct... takes some fairly fancy resources, too, iirc.

Anyway, might need to check through your available building tabs for something that wasn't there before, remember it being fairly quiet about it, took me a bit to figure out where the thing was even aware the orb et al was going to provide it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Chiefwaffles on December 13, 2020, 06:25:09 am
Y'know, I gotta say, the weird comment-sharing-mini-social-media thing the game has for every item/panel/concept is actually a really cool and helpful idea. Sure, not everything has a super helpful array of comments attached to it, but there's been a lot of times the comments on some specific thing really helped or juts offered nice tips relevant to the topic at hand.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 13, 2020, 09:01:49 am
Can't recall so figured I'd ask here. For making my community/story fort type of thing for this game would I put it here in the Other Games section or in the Forum Games section?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: MCreeper on December 13, 2020, 10:14:30 am
That would be "play with your buddies"
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 13, 2020, 10:48:58 am
That would be "play with your buddies"

Edit: If you saw what I said previously, ignore it, I thought you said "Let's Plays" (which doesn't actually exist) not "Play with your buddies", that's my bad.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on December 13, 2020, 02:47:47 pm
Did you read the scroll it dropped? That's what gives it.

Alright, that was the final step I missed.  Thanks.



Anyone else wonder why iron hunting bow is the recommended weapon, when timber hunting bow does slightly less damage, but has nearly double the attack speed?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 13, 2020, 03:50:00 pm
Did you read the scroll it dropped? That's what gives it.

Alright, that was the final step I missed.  Thanks.



Anyone else wonder why iron hunting bow is the recommended weapon, when timber hunting bow does slightly less damage, but has nearly double the attack speed?

Is it? From what I've seen Spears of any kind are the recommended weapon, higher DPS and costs less materials then any other weapon.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 13, 2020, 04:08:38 pm
Spears are the recommended artifact.

Hunting bows are the recommended weapon, since only outers really care about weapons and having them able to attack from a distance is kinda crucial.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 13, 2020, 04:16:54 pm
Spears are the recommended artifact.

Hunting bows are the recommended weapon, since only outers really care about weapons and having them able to attack from a distance is kinda crucial.

Ah gotcha, guess I confused "weapon" with "artifact" even though they're entirely different cause I almost always just use inners with artifacts to fight lol. Hunting bows are the ones that knock people unconscious right? I know there's 2 kinds of bows and one only knocks things out, really useful for taming animals when you want to.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 13, 2020, 05:29:58 pm
The other important reason to arm your outers with bows is that most of the high-level enemies fly or hover, and melee-wielding outers straight-up can't even target them.

Not that you want your outers getting close enough to most of those threats to attack them (most likely they'll be one-shot if they draw aggro), but early game having a half-dozen outers helping out against the starting map demon (or similar-level threat) can make the difference in draining its Qi and causing damage before your weak inners start dropping.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 13, 2020, 05:31:13 pm
Hunting bows do knock folks out, with a brain iniury that stacks itself up. Beyond animals, the incrementing debuff makes it one of the better ways for outers to contribute to an inner fight or something that's got stuck in trying to eat the puppy, since as far as I can recall the debuff stacks up even through qi.

Near as I've noticed, though, as long as it's a decent weapon the exact form is actually kinda' whatever in practice. Bows get recommended because they're mono-material and ranged, spears because they're the most efficient for the primary material.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 13, 2020, 05:43:28 pm
Near as I've noticed, though, as long as it's a decent weapon the exact form is actually kinda' whatever in practice. Bows get recommended because they're mono-material and ranged, spears because they're the most efficient for the primary material.
Nah, each material and item type used to make artifact give different stats, eg. some are better in attack damage, some are better in attack speed, etc. Since some stats are more valuable (eg. more max artifact qi isn't very helpful and at times actively harmful, while more speed or damage are both exceedingly useful) it stands to reason that some items are just better to make artifacts out of.
I don't have any clue about the actual breakdown by item type/material, but I'm fairly sure that there are stat reason spears are picked and it isn't just them being cheaper as the same post also recommended some non-weapon items to make artiacts out of as well.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 13, 2020, 05:52:49 pm
Yea, I haven't seen someone write up a guide/table for materials for weapons but the materials do affect stats. I've looked around on both the official discord and the discussions on the steam page, seems Spears are chosen as recommended because no matter the materials it's typically at the least decent overall, depending on whether you want Damage or Attack Speed the most, alongside taking the least materials out of all of the weapon types to make, making them more cost efficient.

Edit: also apparently spears mechanic on delivering damage is the best overall? Like for example Chakrams mainly just give cuts, so having high damage low attack speed on a chakram makes it crap, but high attack speed with any kind of damage makes it good. That's an interesting tidbit someone posted about.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 13, 2020, 06:07:56 pm
Ah, yeah, artifacts matter more. Outer disciple weapons, though, from what I've seen actually playing, just... aren't actually particularly different so long as you hit the named stage of things.

Material matters a little (though you probably don't want to go beyond maybe spirit stone or whatever, in practice), but an outer'll kill something about as quick with a bow as they will a chakram as they will a mace or spear or sword or blade, if the quality is about the same. So that doesn't seem to be particularly important to worry about, heh.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 13, 2020, 06:16:59 pm
Yea that sounds about right, once you have enough Inners that are a decent level you'd typically not want your outers fighting anything except when hunting anyway. Especially considering since at that level you'd be fighting, at the least, core forming disciples and beasts.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 13, 2020, 06:34:21 pm
Yea that sounds about right, once you have enough Inners that are a decent level you'd typically not want your outers fighting anything except when hunting anyway. Especially considering since at that level you'd be fighting, at the least, core forming disciples and beasts.

But, when non-cultivator level enemies attack, you don't want your inners to kill them or they'll get Condemnation.  So you still need your outers to at least be able to fight off trash raiders.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 13, 2020, 06:51:00 pm
Nah, that's what the puppy's for. Murderous little fluffball can kill whatever with impunity, heh.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Chiefwaffles on December 13, 2020, 06:53:40 pm
Is there any law in particular that's good for a cultivator that I want to specialize in artifact crafting?

Also how relevant is passion for inner disciple skills? It seems like the only way to improve them is via inspiration XP and it doesn't seem like passion for the skill affects inspiration cost. I have a disciple with 2 stars in magic crafting & magic but 50% match for every law I currently have. Pretty frustrating.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 13, 2020, 07:00:59 pm
Is there any law in particular that's good for a cultivator that I want to specialize in artifact crafting?

Also how relevant is passion for inner disciple skills? It seems like the only way to improve them is via inspiration XP and it doesn't seem like passion for the skill affects inspiration cost. I have a disciple with 2 stars in magic crafting & magic but 50% match for every law I currently have. Pretty frustrating.

Myriad Artifact Law, it's the Supreme Law for Artifacts and you can start with it for 5 points, it's really good.

Dunno bout passions, only that the higher Magic Crafting = Higher Artifact + Alchemy Skill, Higher Magic = High Spell and Protection, etc.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 13, 2020, 08:25:45 pm
Is there any law in particular that's good for a cultivator that I want to specialize in artifact crafting?

Also how relevant is passion for inner disciple skills? It seems like the only way to improve them is via inspiration XP and it doesn't seem like passion for the skill affects inspiration cost. I have a disciple with 2 stars in magic crafting & magic but 50% match for every law I currently have. Pretty frustrating.
As unknown says Myriad Artifact Law is the king for artifact crafting. Eventually once you brain suck enough people a neutral law like Jade Purity or Primordial Talismans would probably be better.

Passion doesn't really matter at all. It 1) Makes them learn the skill faster, 2) Increases their initial skill in it as a outer by a few ranks, 3) Makes them happier while doing the task.

1 and 2 help, but if you just stick them tailoring a bunch or making a million things of medicine as an outer they get to 20 anyways eventually.
The main thing for 2 is it helps for stuff you can't rank up like qi sense... but it isn't any more helpful then just getting a decent roll on the skill anyways.

For medicine or alchemy I've come to the opinion that the starting skill ranks don't really matter that much and you just want to get a dude with good stats and qi sensing (and artisan for crafting) then just pay to rank the stuff up to 20 once they become an inner.
But if you want to start with a decent alchemy/artifact crafting skill then you want the dude to have a good magic crafting+medicine/craftubg skill.

E: Note that while the starting alchemy skill doesn't matter that much, their compatibility for crafting does, which means you want to either have certain stats high at the start or push them high using cultivation. A maxed out perception+int skill is the difference between 110 alchemy at rank 20 and 40 alchemy at rank 20.
Crafting 50% PER, 20% INT, 30% LUK
Medecine 60% PER, 40% INT
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 13, 2020, 10:18:04 pm
And throwaway game became more throwaway...

Finally pushed someone to Golden Core!  And they died to a Qi Shaper.  Damn Resurrection Law and it's negative Qi breakthroughs.
What really killed my Golden Core is that I had them cast Firestorm without enough reserve Qi, so instead of draining the enemy's Qi, their Qi dropped to zero.
Nobody else was in the fight (remember, this play through I've gotten no pets), so a lucky hit by the enemy's artifact pulverized my Golden.

The character that had kept my interest, Liu Bei, also died.  This was after having gone Nirvana Pill, and being rerolled from the Reincarnator's default.

One outer is laying in the ground as the only survivor onsite.  I expect an artifact hit to kill them off, as the raider is hitting the buildings nearby.

My remaining sect member is one Inner that I was hoping to Golden Core in the Summer (Earth, Heaven Stealing Law).  Great stats, horrible Qi sense skill, Yaochin with tribulation in 22 days.  Actually had zero Qi sense, I basically made them an inner because their stats were good and I was curious how much Qi sense they would get with the Earthmother +5.  Not bad actually due to having such high starting Constitution (10!).  I guess Qi Sense total of 20 isn't awful.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Chiefwaffles on December 13, 2020, 11:49:28 pm
Myriad Artifact Law, it's the Supreme Law for Artifacts and you can start with it for 5 points, it's really good.
Is there any way to get this without starting with it?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 14, 2020, 12:08:48 am
Myriad Artifact Law, it's the Supreme Law for Artifacts and you can start with it for 5 points, it's really good.
Is there any way to get this without starting with it?
Yes, three ways; the same for pretty much all the advanced laws.
1) Be very lucky and get one when you open a stone casket (or save scum).
2) Win the crafting competition at Kunlun. Note that if you win with a GC cultivator you get 3000!!! rep, and 800 for a win with a PS, which certainly isn't with it for a GC cultivator.
3) Get lucky and get a "Manifesting mandate event" (only 1/7 chance it will be MAL though, but every single one is very helpful) and send someone with at least 100% law compatability.
Note that you can force method 3.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 14, 2020, 12:54:06 am
For Lifespan increasing skills Heaven Stealing works as a good starter law overall. All of its breakthroughs are 100% but require small amounts of Lifespan, of which if you take the lifespan skills in it you typically have around 100-300 years to spare, and one of its Golden Core skills multiplies your base lifespan by 5, typically pushing you into the thousands. I've found this to be one of the best starting advanced laws as a result, due to how easy it is to breakthrough and let's you spam Derivative Calculation and other lifespan costing miracles. Though it's good as a base Advanced Law, its not really that good at anything else, it doesn't have anything for crafting and alchemy, nor barely anything for spell power and Max Qi, it's pretty much a generic All Rounder Advanced Law that needs to use skills from other Laws to specialize. So you'd be supplementing your Heaven Stealing Cultivator with skills from the other 5 Basic Laws once you unlock them from the Taiyi event, which can bump up your Inspiration costs by quite a bit.

Course that's just all my opinion, I've just found it to be the best as a good starting Advanced Law.

On an unrelated note I recently discovered a cultivator clothing mod but it's not really well written and seems a bit OP, so I've been thinking about making my own similar mod but more balanced and much higher variety.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 14, 2020, 01:06:06 am
In case anyone was curious, I fixed my play through up a bit.  Recruited the Panda Brothers for some base defense, and used Agency Recruitment to refill the sect roster.  The only thing I had done right was spamming Agencies.

One thing I'm not sure about is who would be ideal for Shendao Cultivation.  Maybe someone that isn't great for normal Cultivation?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 14, 2020, 01:08:45 am
Note to self: watch the hell out when you're picking options that involve another sect.

Had the options of 'sneak around' or 'leave' - figured "hell, seems like a waste to just leave after travelling here for one and a half days; what's the worst that could happen?"

The answer is: the other sect finds you, pokes out your eyes and rips off all your limbs, allowing the remaining torso to make its way back to your sect. Oh, and your reputation with them goes down by -200, so they're probably going to retaliate against you.

Currently debating between kicking the torso out of the sect or scrounging up the 100k inspiration needed to learn regeneration (and hoping that my cruddy level VIII golden cores actually have enough Qi to cast it).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 14, 2020, 01:25:02 am
Note to self: watch the hell out when you're picking options that involve another sect.

Had the options of 'sneak around' or 'leave' - figured "hell, seems like a waste to just leave after travelling here for one and a half days; what's the worst that could happen?"

The answer is: the other sect finds you, pokes out your eyes and rips off all your limbs, allowing the remaining torso to make its way back to your sect. Oh, and your reputation with them goes down by -200, so they're probably going to retaliate against you.

Currently debating between kicking the torso out of the sect or scrounging up the 100k inspiration needed to learn regeneration (and hoping that my cruddy level VIII golden cores actually have enough Qi to cast it).

Yea, gotta be really careful with other sects, they're all stupid strong and highly perceptive. That's why if you're gonna steal or sneak you gotta make sure your cultivator has a really good sneak skill. Outright attacking other sects to destroy/subjugate them is generally not worth either imo.

Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 14, 2020, 02:21:53 am
Sneak skill? Never seen that one.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 14, 2020, 02:32:49 am
Yea there's an actual Stealth skill but I haven't seen much of anything use it aside from making an item with the effect in the mod maker content in the game itself.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 14, 2020, 08:02:44 am
In case anyone was curious, I fixed my play through up a bit.  Recruited the Panda Brothers for some base defense, and used Agency Recruitment to refill the sect roster.  The only thing I had done right was spamming Agencies.

One thing I'm not sure about is who would be ideal for Shendao Cultivation.  Maybe someone that isn't great for normal Cultivation?
About the only recommendation I'm seeing is an int in the 5-7 range (you need 8 at some point, but want it lower later on, so high enough to boost to 8 for a bit but not too high is ideal), high luck, and decent social/qi sense/magic, particularly the social. So they're probably not going to be amazing at normal cultivation, no, heh.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 14, 2020, 11:45:18 am
Tip for anyone else who finds their sect unintentionally going evil:

If you leave all decisions on "user picks", and your sect has passed whatever the line in the sand is for the game to consider you at least somewhat evil (it happened to me right around when the game gave me the "Shady" achievement), the game will only show you evil choices going forward.

If you'd like to turn your sect around, go to the sect page and switch the interactions to "good". Bam - suddenly your cultivators are no longer roasting the spirits of babies in front of their parents for their sweet, sweet Qi before burning the town to the ground; opting instead to give the townsfolk some food and a good word.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 14, 2020, 11:58:23 am
Burying enemies can help steer back to goodness.

Although much like picking the good events, it's going to up your Rep, and you can't use a talisman to lower the rep gains.  Takes a while, I think its 20 good rep per buried enemy.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 14, 2020, 12:09:21 pm
Burying enemies can help steer back to goodness.
Does it still count if I'm burying them in ominous graves in the hopes that their corpses rise again as foul, undead abominations that I can kill for gems of suffering?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 14, 2020, 12:21:45 pm
Burying enemies can help steer back to goodness.
Does it still count if I'm burying them in ominous graves in the hopes that their corpses rise again as foul, undead abominations that I can kill for gems of suffering?
Pretty sure it does.  Killing the almost dying so you can bury them, the burial still counts.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on December 14, 2020, 08:50:31 pm
Yea, I often use my outers to knockdown enemy inners that try to flee on their sword, instead of bothering my inners about it.  Inners with no Qi get rekt like any others.

Also, still have plenty of deaths caused by hunting bow spam versus humanoids.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 14, 2020, 09:26:42 pm
Yea, I often use my outers to knockdown enemy inners that try to flee on their sword, instead of bothering my inners about it.  Inners with no Qi get rekt like any others.

Also, still have plenty of deaths caused by hunting bow spam versus humanoids.
That's actually a really good idea, especially since your actual inners seem to think its more important to target flying swords instead of actually finishing off the dude with no qi stealing a 10k spirit stone item.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 14, 2020, 10:31:49 pm
Yea, I often use my outers to knockdown enemy inners that try to flee on their sword, instead of bothering my inners about it.  Inners with no Qi get rekt like any others.

Also, still have plenty of deaths caused by hunting bow spam versus humanoids.
That's actually a really good idea, especially since your actual inners seem to think its more important to target flying swords instead of actually finishing off the dude with no qi stealing a 10k spirit stone item.

Yeah, I have found that sending an expendable Outer to attack the Qi-less while my Inner(s) continue the fight versus enemies still with Qi is a pretty good technique.  Just remember that your Outer has a pretty good chance of getting Artifact smashed, as even the Bow has relatively short range compared to artifacts.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Vector on December 15, 2020, 12:11:45 am
PTW. My Windows-box isn't here but I'm interested in trying this out someday.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 15, 2020, 01:23:56 am
Think I'm gonna make the community/story fort kind of thing for this tomorrow. Have been meaning to but I've been sick on and off xD
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Chiefwaffles on December 15, 2020, 05:58:50 am
Just a bit.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 15, 2020, 01:39:15 pm
Was reading through old ACS news posts and found the conditions for getting an ending.

12 sects
Ascend 50 characters
Xian Cultivators pass tribulation 9 times
Game time reached 2000 days
Unlock secret "First Emperor"
Hidden situations

Once these are achieved, you take the Secret Codex of Taiyi and go into the Palace of Desolation in the Mini Universe.

Edit: I got really sick s o I've had to hold for today on making the community/story sect, sorry fellas. Maybe tomorrow if I don't feel like armok is trying to burst through my frontal lobe.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 16, 2020, 12:55:28 am
I've been feeling similar lately, especially with Armok trying to burst through my frontal lobe.  Antihistamines and Tylenol and Advil help.

So, uh, my Sect Leader is a Yaochin Golden Core 5 with 19 days left before tribulation, only got 18,000 Qi after breaking through.  I didn't realize that you needed to stash Qi items in the area where you plan to breakthrough to Golden Core, or get a -5.  Any chance of surviving the transformation tribulation at that level?  She is in the Heaven Stealing, so dunno if she will be getting any boosts on the breakthroughs.  I'm trying to push to Primordial Spirit and hope that will boost her to a more survivable level.

On the game completion, am I correct that 12 sects means you have to dominate all the other sects?  Would an alliance due to being bestest buddies be ok?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 16, 2020, 01:47:46 am
So, uh, my Sect Leader is a Yaochin Golden Core 5 with 19 days left before tribulation, only got 18,000 Qi after breaking through.  I didn't realize that you needed to stash Qi items in the area where you plan to breakthrough to Golden Core, or get a -5.  Any chance of surviving the transformation tribulation at that level?  She is in the Heaven Stealing, so dunno if she will be getting any boosts on the breakthroughs.  I'm trying to push to Primordial Spirit and hope that will boost her to a more survivable level.
As a PS it should be fairly easy to survive provided you take the right precautions.

In general you want to get stuff that will help your dude last longer or be more powerful in a battle, such as more qi, a stronger artifact, a higher protect skill, useful drugs, etc.

Of course, as it is this game the actual mechanics are far more complex and there are a ton of stuff (some easy to realize, some much harder) that you can do to help your dude survive.

If you want more advice on surviving just ask and I'll post more tips or the extensive (spoilery) tribulation guide.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on December 16, 2020, 02:15:57 am
I've been feeling similar lately, especially with Armok trying to burst through my frontal lobe.  Antihistamines and Tylenol and Advil help.

So, uh, my Sect Leader is a Yaochin Golden Core 5 with 19 days left before tribulation, only got 18,000 Qi after breaking through.  I didn't realize that you needed to stash Qi items in the area where you plan to breakthrough to Golden Core, or get a -5.  Any chance of surviving the transformation tribulation at that level?  She is in the Heaven Stealing, so dunno if she will be getting any boosts on the breakthroughs.  I'm trying to push to Primordial Spirit and hope that will boost her to a more survivable level.

On the game completion, am I correct that 12 sects means you have to dominate all the other sects?  Would an alliance due to being bestest buddies be ok?

1) Stack Max Qi, Qi Regen, and Qi Barrier stuff/skills.

2) You could pop a Qi Regen Pill and a Spirit Stone or Crystal to raise survival chances.

3) Since you got a GC, you can go back to Taiyi sect and grab the special orb from there.  Send anyone else there if you can't send your GC.  The special orb can be opened with your GC.  One of those items can be equipped to boost Qi Barrier.

4) You can supercharge Qi Regen by using the GC breakthrough rooms that you didn't set-up for your Sect Leader.  Just remember to turn off firefighting and building on your outers, unless you are fine with random losses.  You may have to manually tell em to screw off if they wander into the vicinity regardless.

5) There probably is a whole thing somewhere about artifacts attacking Tribulations, so buffing artifact Qi stuff and power probably doesn't hurt if you got everything else down.

I play an easiest settings and I don't use 2, 3 and 4. I just only today learned what spirit stones can do.  I assume you will need those if you are any higher.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on December 16, 2020, 03:14:59 am
So, uh, my Sect Leader is a Yaochin Golden Core 5 with 19 days left before tribulation, only got 18,000 Qi after breaking through.  I didn't realize that you needed to stash Qi items in the area where you plan to breakthrough to Golden Core, or get a -5.  Any chance of surviving the transformation tribulation at that level?  She is in the Heaven Stealing, so dunno if she will be getting any boosts on the breakthroughs.  I'm trying to push to Primordial Spirit and hope that will boost her to a more survivable level.

If you want to weaken the tribulation, you can set up a place with the element that suppresses the tribulation element.

You'll be attacking the tribulation with your artifact, so make sure you have a good one.

There's also a turtle shell equipable item that's supposed to boost your defenses. And you can pop a shield pill.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 16, 2020, 05:19:25 am
How are you supposed to deal with an overflow of qi, caused by demonic possession? Or is that the game's way of saying 'Hey, you really should do something about that beast on the map already, you know?'
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 16, 2020, 05:33:04 am
Just use the panacea miracle or spirit powder on them to cure them. It's random and there isn't any way to stop it from happening.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 16, 2020, 05:35:56 am
How are you supposed to deal with an overflow of qi, caused by demonic possession? Or is that the game's way of saying 'Hey, you really should do something about that beast on the map already, you know?'

Panacea or Spirit Powder. Though if they have demonic posession then you have bigger problems on your hands lol.

I've been feeling similar lately, especially with Armok trying to burst through my frontal lobe.  Antihistamines and Tylenol and Advil help.

So, uh, my Sect Leader is a Yaochin Golden Core 5 with 19 days left before tribulation, only got 18,000 Qi after breaking through.  I didn't realize that you needed to stash Qi items in the area where you plan to breakthrough to Golden Core, or get a -5.  Any chance of surviving the transformation tribulation at that level?  She is in the Heaven Stealing, so dunno if she will be getting any boosts on the breakthroughs.  I'm trying to push to Primordial Spirit and hope that will boost her to a more survivable level.

On the game completion, am I correct that 12 sects means you have to dominate all the other sects?  Would an alliance due to being bestest buddies be ok?

Yea I took some Tylenol and got some rest which helped a bit, though still have a pretty bad headache. Really hoping it's not Covid cause my mom and step dad also have it and have been quarantined in their room.

On the 12 sects thing, I think it's one of 3 things

1. Max Positive/Negative Relations with all 12 Sects.

2. Subjugate/Destroy all 12 sects.

3. Have Access with all 12 sects.

Could be any or possibly all/none of these. According to some people there's different kinds of endings as well, which I guess you can kind of see in the Epilogues section on the main menu, which you can see the randomly generated endings people get (banishing people is one of the confirmed ways to get random gen endings for said banished people.)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on December 16, 2020, 10:20:45 am
How are you supposed to deal with an overflow of qi, caused by demonic possession? Or is that the game's way of saying 'Hey, you really should do something about that beast on the map already, you know?'

I've never had that, did you let your guy cultivate with a low mental state maybe ? "Demonic" might be referring to inner demons here. You should make sure that your inner disciples are on "mind" by default and only switch them to "practice" or "train" if their mental state is high enough (above 50 should be ok but I'd wait for at least 75+).

I ignored the beast until my dog could solo it and never had any issues. But it could be random.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on December 16, 2020, 10:28:29 am
Pretty sure someone else mentioned this earlier in the thread, but just to re-state it:

If you come across evil cultivators doing evil shit in a town, the option of "pretend to help them" is - if you can believe it - actually MORE evil than just helping them. Instead of just causing regular evil mayhem, your cultivator follows that up by backstabbing the evil sect and stealing their shit.

Evil points galore and hatred from the sect you just screwed over.

In related news, my evil reputation just got high enough to trigger the next achievement: 'Notorious'.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on December 16, 2020, 11:02:05 am
How are you supposed to deal with an overflow of qi, caused by demonic possession? Or is that the game's way of saying 'Hey, you really should do something about that beast on the map already, you know?'

I've never had that, did you let your guy cultivate with a low mental state maybe ? "Demonic" might be referring to inner demons here. You should make sure that your inner disciples are on "mind" by default and only switch them to "practice" or "train" if their mental state is high enough (above 50 should be ok but I'd wait for at least 75+).

I ignored the beast until my dog could solo it and never had any issues. But it could be random.
Random Qi backfire events happen every now and then.  Well, it is part of those random +cultivation/ +inspiration/ found talisman events you get.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 16, 2020, 11:09:32 am
Pretty sure someone else mentioned this earlier in the thread, but just to re-state it:

If you come across evil cultivators doing evil shit in a town, the option of "pretend to help them" is - if you can believe it - actually MORE evil than just helping them. Instead of just causing regular evil mayhem, your cultivator follows that up by backstabbing the evil sect and stealing their shit.

Evil points galore and hatred from the sect you just screwed over.

In related news, my evil reputation just got high enough to trigger the next achievement: 'Notorious'.

Gods yes this, it actually ruined my first playthrough because I had a Core Shaping go out and do it, the option says "insincerely help them" and I thought that meant help the village, and suddenly I have accidentally slaughtered an entire village, evil sect members, and now have a ton of evil rep. I BARELY managed to survive the backlash of suddenly much stronger cultivators attacking me due to have my Dog tank everything while my inners and outers focused fire. And then later I tried Help and it got worse and my only options were evil options.

That run ended when I got 3-fold attacked. Some Golden Core cultivators attacked so i did the routine of sending my inners + outers while dog tanked. Right after killing them 4 Golden Core Demon Bulls arrived, rampaged all the way through the middle of my sect while my other people were recurperating, but halfway through their stampede I was attacked AGAIN but 4 more Golden Cores that split my attention.

I got destroyed in all of about 5-10 minutes, was a nightmare.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 16, 2020, 03:07:00 pm
How are you supposed to deal with an overflow of qi, caused by demonic possession? Or is that the game's way of saying 'Hey, you really should do something about that beast on the map already, you know?'

I've never had that, did you let your guy cultivate with a low mental state maybe ? "Demonic" might be referring to inner demons here. You should make sure that your inner disciples are on "mind" by default and only switch them to "practice" or "train" if their mental state is high enough (above 50 should be ok but I'd wait for at least 75+).

I ignored the beast until my dog could solo it and never had any issues. But it could be random.
Random Qi backfire events happen every now and then.  Well, it is part of those random +cultivation/ +inspiration/ found talisman events you get.

Definitely not mental state/mood related; I keep my mental state at 80+ and mood, even now, while they're passed out, is at 180. I did get a random talisman event, so that's probably it.

I've mostly ignored the qi damage events since they were evidently harmless until now... but now my main guy (who is rocking a beautiful 82 qi sense) is just stuck lying around in bed all day, passed out, with... evidently nothing else happening.

Aha: PANACEA!! Even a total newbie Inner managed to fix everything.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 16, 2020, 04:13:08 pm
Went ahead and made the forum game community fort thing for this, feel free to do whatever: http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=177691.0
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aquillion on December 21, 2020, 02:19:59 pm
Pretty sure someone else mentioned this earlier in the thread, but just to re-state it:

If you come across evil cultivators doing evil shit in a town, the option of "pretend to help them" is - if you can believe it - actually MORE evil than just helping them. Instead of just causing regular evil mayhem, your cultivator follows that up by backstabbing the evil sect and stealing their shit.

Evil points galore and hatred from the sect you just screwed over.

In related news, my evil reputation just got high enough to trigger the next achievement: 'Notorious'.
Also, it bears repeating that the entire event is worded like "you see some evil cultivators slaughtering innocent people for power" and one of the options is "help them."

This option means you will help the evil cultivators with their slaughtering.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on December 21, 2020, 02:41:20 pm
Hell, all the options in that event leads to innocent people getting slaughtered, iirc. There's just "help with the murder", "help with the murder but also backstab", and "walk away from the ongoing murder". If there's an option that didn't lead to the mortals getting cultivator'd I don't recall seeing it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on December 21, 2020, 02:51:51 pm
I've seen it mentioned somewhere that once you start accruing beyond a certain amount of evil rep, the good options disappear, which makes it really hard to get good again, but you can gimmick it by setting it to auto-attempt 'good' options. Not sure if it's valid for that particular encounter, but it might be worth a shot if you're aiming to be positive.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 21, 2020, 08:04:42 pm
Hell, all the options in that event leads to innocent people getting slaughtered, iirc. There's just "help with the murder", "help with the murder but also backstab", and "walk away from the ongoing murder". If there's an option that didn't lead to the mortals getting cultivator'd I don't recall seeing it.
Eventually you get the option to actually stop the murdering, but I'm not quite sure what triggers it. I'm fairly sure it isn't actually tied with you being good or bad though, maybe its your total reputation amount or possibly even the strength of the cultivator you send?
I've seen it mentioned somewhere that once you start accruing beyond a certain amount of evil rep, the good options disappear, which makes it really hard to get good again, but you can gimmick it by setting it to auto-attempt 'good' options. Not sure if it's valid for that particular encounter, but it might be worth a shot if you're aiming to be positive.
Yeah, if you go too far either way options disappear, which locks you out of stuff which is pretty annoying (eg. if you go to an opposite sect to explore they attack you no matter what you try, you can't do disaster relief missions with your dude if you are evil, etc).
The whole reputation thing is super easy to game though if you know the right things to do. Honestly, that's a big part of the reason I'm not really fond of how the system works.

Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 22, 2020, 10:58:34 am
Hell, all the options in that event leads to innocent people getting slaughtered, iirc. There's just "help with the murder", "help with the murder but also backstab", and "walk away from the ongoing murder". If there's an option that didn't lead to the mortals getting cultivator'd I don't recall seeing it.
Eventually you get the option to actually stop the murdering, but I'm not quite sure what triggers it. I'm fairly sure it isn't actually tied with you being good or bad though, maybe its your total reputation amount or possibly even the strength of the cultivator you send?
I've seen it mentioned somewhere that once you start accruing beyond a certain amount of evil rep, the good options disappear, which makes it really hard to get good again, but you can gimmick it by setting it to auto-attempt 'good' options. Not sure if it's valid for that particular encounter, but it might be worth a shot if you're aiming to be positive.
Yeah, if you go too far either way options disappear, which locks you out of stuff which is pretty annoying (eg. if you go to an opposite sect to explore they attack you no matter what you try, you can't do disaster relief missions with your dude if you are evil, etc).
The whole reputation thing is super easy to game though if you know the right things to do. Honestly, that's a big part of the reason I'm not really fond of how the system works.


I can't help but think that disaster relief part isn't fully true, because I ran an evil sect and was still able to do disaster relief, especially considering that's a major thing for agencies and not doing them makes agencies useless cause you'll eventually lose all your followers there as a result.

On a side note, I wasn't aware of
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on December 22, 2020, 03:03:16 pm
Hm, so the best way to lower your rep is to send Inners out to die.  Suddenly, I understand what to do with those low talent hacks that manage to build foundation!

So maybe when Purple Lotus sect sends their old useless Qi Cultivators against me, they're just trying to lower their rep?  ;D
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on December 22, 2020, 05:26:17 pm
Hell, all the options in that event leads to innocent people getting slaughtered, iirc. There's just "help with the murder", "help with the murder but also backstab", and "walk away from the ongoing murder". If there's an option that didn't lead to the mortals getting cultivator'd I don't recall seeing it.
Eventually you get the option to actually stop the murdering, but I'm not quite sure what triggers it. I'm fairly sure it isn't actually tied with you being good or bad though, maybe its your total reputation amount or possibly even the strength of the cultivator you send?
I've seen it mentioned somewhere that once you start accruing beyond a certain amount of evil rep, the good options disappear, which makes it really hard to get good again, but you can gimmick it by setting it to auto-attempt 'good' options. Not sure if it's valid for that particular encounter, but it might be worth a shot if you're aiming to be positive.
Yeah, if you go too far either way options disappear, which locks you out of stuff which is pretty annoying (eg. if you go to an opposite sect to explore they attack you no matter what you try, you can't do disaster relief missions with your dude if you are evil, etc).
The whole reputation thing is super easy to game though if you know the right things to do. Honestly, that's a big part of the reason I'm not really fond of how the system works.


I can't help but think that disaster relief part isn't fully true, because I ran an evil sect and was still able to do disaster relief, especially considering that's a major thing for agencies and not doing them makes agencies useless cause you'll eventually lose all your followers there as a result.
To be clear I mean from sending your dudes out on missions for disaster relief, not from your agency policy, which you can still get +800 from if you use watch closely+diaster relief policy. For what its worth it doesn't actually matter for any agency aside from Mt. South since you get other dudes helping everywhere else, but its a big enough pain that I've been careful to avoid becoming evil.

And it is possible that something other than being evil was blocking me from sending relief missions to help dudes, but uh... it would be a really big coincidence that as soon as I turn evil my dudes are like "Whelp, can't do anything other than just make the disaster worse, sorry".
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Unknown72 on December 22, 2020, 06:01:08 pm
Hell, all the options in that event leads to innocent people getting slaughtered, iirc. There's just "help with the murder", "help with the murder but also backstab", and "walk away from the ongoing murder". If there's an option that didn't lead to the mortals getting cultivator'd I don't recall seeing it.
Eventually you get the option to actually stop the murdering, but I'm not quite sure what triggers it. I'm fairly sure it isn't actually tied with you being good or bad though, maybe its your total reputation amount or possibly even the strength of the cultivator you send?
I've seen it mentioned somewhere that once you start accruing beyond a certain amount of evil rep, the good options disappear, which makes it really hard to get good again, but you can gimmick it by setting it to auto-attempt 'good' options. Not sure if it's valid for that particular encounter, but it might be worth a shot if you're aiming to be positive.
Yeah, if you go too far either way options disappear, which locks you out of stuff which is pretty annoying (eg. if you go to an opposite sect to explore they attack you no matter what you try, you can't do disaster relief missions with your dude if you are evil, etc).
The whole reputation thing is super easy to game though if you know the right things to do. Honestly, that's a big part of the reason I'm not really fond of how the system works.


I can't help but think that disaster relief part isn't fully true, because I ran an evil sect and was still able to do disaster relief, especially considering that's a major thing for agencies and not doing them makes agencies useless cause you'll eventually lose all your followers there as a result.
To be clear I mean from sending your dudes out on missions for disaster relief, not from your agency policy, which you can still get +800 from if you use watch closely+diaster relief policy. For what its worth it doesn't actually matter for any agency aside from Mt. South since you get other dudes helping everywhere else, but its a big enough pain that I've been careful to avoid becoming evil.

And it is possible that something other than being evil was blocking me from sending relief missions to help dudes, but uh... it would be a really big coincidence that as soon as I turn evil my dudes are like "Whelp, can't do anything other than just make the disaster worse, sorry".

Ah okay, I thought you were talking about outright doing disaster relief in the first place, that's my bad. I never really sent people out to help with disaster relief during my evil run, mainly cause it was stupidly easy for me to pass them without doing so, so I never had to. Spent that time having them go out and do fucked up shit for the sake of cultivation xD.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aquillion on December 23, 2020, 06:44:42 am
So maybe when Purple Lotus sect sends their old useless Qi Cultivators against me, they're just trying to lower their rep?  ;D
Have you looked at the procedurally-generated Laws some of those people follow?  If I was locked into a Law like that, I'd want to die, too.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 12, 2021, 06:29:52 pm
I just bought the game and it's fun, but wow do the things about breakthrough not make sense... I have someone cultivating a water art, so I try to have them breakthrough in winter. Winter arrives and their season tooltip says "- 1". I'm like "ok, I just need to wait until it's in the middle of winter. Nope. As winter goes on the negatives just get higher and higher. Negative 5 at the end of winter. I'm not crazy, water = winter, right?

Also, I remember that earth cultivator's seasons are best at the end of each season. As I wait for the last few days of the season to be reached, the "+2" turns into a "+1".... why??? It's closer to the end of the season so it should be increasing, if not already 4-5, right?


Pretty sure someone else mentioned this earlier in the thread, but just to re-state it:

If you come across evil cultivators doing evil shit in a town, the option of "pretend to help them" is - if you can believe it - actually MORE evil than just helping them. Instead of just causing regular evil mayhem, your cultivator follows that up by backstabbing the evil sect and stealing their shit.

Evil points galore and hatred from the sect you just screwed over.

In related news, my evil reputation just got high enough to trigger the next achievement: 'Notorious'.
Also, it bears repeating that the entire event is worded like "you see some evil cultivators slaughtering innocent people for power" and one of the options is "help them."

This option means you will help the evil cultivators with their slaughtering.

If I remember correctly it was "bad things are happening because someone might be practicing the dark arts". So you didn't even identify who was the one practicing. Just that there may have been someone. I had to load an autosave because of that vagueness.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 12, 2021, 07:06:22 pm
I just bought the game and it's fun, but wow do the things about breakthrough not make sense... I have someone cultivating a water art, so I try to have them breakthrough in winter. Winter arrives and their season tooltip says "- 1". I'm like "ok, I just need to wait until it's in the middle of winter. Nope. As winter goes on the negatives just get higher and higher. Negative 5 at the end of winter. I'm not crazy, water = winter, right?

If I'm recalling my seasonal attributes right, winter IS water, which means it feeds wood. You want the season that feeds water, which would be... early autumn (metal), before it turns to earth and feeds metal instead.

If you're water, you want (almost) everything around you to be metal. Think of it as you wanting to leech the energy of your surroundings, whereas if you're surrounded by water, you exist in equilibrium so you don't get stronger.

Edit: And the closer you get to the end of Winter, the stronger Spring is, which is Wood, which sucks up Water, so you'll be weaker in that period.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 12, 2021, 08:18:20 pm
Ah that makes sense.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 12, 2021, 09:19:05 pm
Ah that makes sense.
This (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gcZdBr36Xokzj2O8hUvbIjSw50lFaN3tbhkpDCOpC5Y/edit#gid=0) is the resource I've been using to keep track of breakthrough seasons, having an exact timetable for when you need your breakthrough ready by makes it much easier to plan and much easier to avoid accidentally missing it by a few days and then having your breakthrough ruined.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 13, 2021, 12:15:14 am
Anyone know how to stop multiple piles of 1 item appearing in your stockpiles? They take up quite a bit of space. I don't get why your guys don't just stack them.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on January 13, 2021, 02:59:11 am
Anyone know how to stop multiple piles of 1 item appearing in your stockpiles? They take up quite a bit of space. I don't get why your guys don't just stack them.
Probably happens when multiple people are moving the same exact item.  (And some items are naturally not stackable.)
You could consolidate by either...
1.Making the offending item in question ineligible for the storehouse, waiting a few seconds then changing it back
2.Deleting most of the storehouse and rebuilding the storehouse back to full afterwards.
2a.  Make sure to leave some of the storehouse alone, so you don't have to set everything up again.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 13, 2021, 04:11:04 am
I've resorted to sending them to the trading area, then telling the person who picked them up to drop them, then cancel the sending. It mostly works.

Now I'm wondering how everyone deals with training for your generic cultivator. Balanced seems to let them drop down into breaking mood, which seems very very bad. Practice does the same. Mood has them enjoying life and says that it's until they reach pristine, but they never seem to go back to actual training. And having high mood seems the most efficient, so I just keep going back and forth between balanced and mood, and frankly, it's going to be unbearable once I get like, 20 more people doing this, especially since there is no warning when they are maxed out on mood.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 13, 2021, 04:39:21 am
Anyone know how to stop multiple piles of 1 item appearing in your stockpiles? They take up quite a bit of space. I don't get why your guys don't just stack them.
The reason for this is twofold. The first is that the game tries to keep items with very different amounts of qi separate (which is cool, except the qi amount of an item is 100% useless and doesn't matter at all), the end result of which is that when you make new stuff they just get their own stack for no real reason and then later on new new stuff gets yet another stack. This can mostly be fixed by hitting the "sort" button when you have a stockpile selected.
The second is that sometimes items secretly turn into spirit relics and just gain a 1 size stack of their own and then never stack back together with other items of their type. The solution to this is to make a separate spirit relic storage (tick everything, set the priority to max, and then tick the "relics only" option on the very bottom).
I've resorted to sending them to the trading area, then telling the person who picked them up to drop them, then cancel the sending. It mostly works.

Now I'm wondering how everyone deals with training for your generic cultivator. Balanced seems to let them drop down into breaking mood, which seems very very bad. Practice does the same. Mood has them enjoying life and says that it's until they reach pristine, but they never seem to go back to actual training. And having high mood seems the most efficient, so I just keep going back and forth between balanced and mood, and frankly, it's going to be unbearable once I get like, 20 more people doing this, especially since there is no warning when they are maxed out on mood.
Use the elysium mod, which manages their mood so that they don't have a breakdown every wekk. Playing without it makes the game tedious in the extreme.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on January 13, 2021, 10:10:26 am
Recently got my first Gold Core attack, and it was 3 at once. Half of my inners were out adventuring, and all of those at home were critically low on qi.
I managed to avoid any permanent losses, but it was close. Doggo fell in battle for the first time, and one of my inners got badly bloodied, but not maimed.
Fortunately I had just unloaded my stockpile of fabric on a passing trader a few weeks earlier, so I had plenty of spirit stones. It took a few days to craft them into blocks, but I got the Doggo statue built and he's now resurrecting. But I really need to figure out a way to power up for future encounters.
I just recruited a magic crafter, but fear it may be awhile before she's able to break through and start making me decent artifacts. I may have to get spellcasting figured out and hope that's potent enough to keep me alive, and possibly look into formations as well.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Shadowgandor on January 14, 2021, 05:02:23 am
So I stumbled upon an issue which I'm not sure is a bug or not. I've customized my starting location to be a large battlefield with the illutree (or something) as a special and the mythical being which causes sunny day.

Twice now, my sect didn't unlock anything extra after promoting someone to an inner disciple. I have two inner disciples on my latest run, but I haven't unlocked anything from the Sect tab yet except for "Training Spot". Does anyone know if this is a bug? I thought you'd unlock extra buildings once you've promoted your first disciple

Edit: Ah, I have to create a Sect before the buildings get unlocked. I forgot about that part.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 14, 2021, 02:21:03 pm
I installed some mods but none of them seem to be working.... Do I have to start a new game to use them? Might not be a bad idea as I don't think I was efficient at all with my first sect, but wow is that a lot of time thrown away.

Also, if I end up with a good cultivation spot like a giant ginko tree (you aren't guaranteed to have one, right?), is it a good idea to only train people with fire elemental arts? Or is mixing it up good? I get the feeling that having a wood master teaching a fire disciple is a good idea.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 14, 2021, 03:47:48 pm
I installed some mods but none of them seem to be working.... Do I have to start a new game to use them? Might not be a bad idea as I don't think I was efficient at all with my first sect, but wow is that a lot of time thrown away.

Also, if I end up with a good cultivation spot like a giant ginko tree (you aren't guaranteed to have one, right?), is it a good idea to only train people with fire elemental arts? Or is mixing it up good? I get the feeling that having a wood master teaching a fire disciple is a good idea.

You have to install and activate them. Generally speaking, you can activate mods in the middle of a game, but deactivating can be messy if they're anything other than UI. (And, for obvious reasons, they have to be mods that would affect a game in progress, not mapgen mods or something.)

The giant gingko trees aren't guaranteed, though the default map has a pretty good chance of getting one (I've heard people getting five on unmodded maps). If I recall correctly, barring some very costly and finicky endgame setups, it's one of the best 'objects' for a fire cultivation room as it exudes a monstrous amount of wood energy. For the same reason, don't stick your water practitioners near it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 14, 2021, 04:12:22 pm
Ah, it seems the Elysium mod had a special hotkey needed to access it, and the other mod I installed (show law requirements on character sheet) doesn't work because it's outdated or something.

EDIT: Anyone know if there is a way to speed up inner cauldron Qi collecting? Something feels off when I can reach golden core stage while only having 20/2000 inner cauldron stats. Like it's going to take 500 times the time to get that cauldron Qi as it does to get all the way from foundation to that golden core breakthrough. Even with super high cultivation conditions, it's like I'm only getting 1-2 inner cauldron Qi a day.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on January 14, 2021, 08:14:07 pm
I'll just reiterate what this guide (https://docs.google.com/document/u/2/d/e/2PACX-1vQ7BV9Pyt4TVv56U7fVAJaPYQAvbHzRJ6uyX-mxbE8fPceI9yFd5pT6kuWfOan-5YmYOLBKMnAiia4C/pub) says about inner cauldron: DON'T worry about it until late game.

It is the leftover cultivation juice from when you cultivate and you are at breakthrough, so you need a massive cultivation speed boost in order to really get anything out it.  And a Heavenly Cultivator with working Heavenly Realm in order to fix the status affliction that your cultivators will be getting because they're spending days and weeks at breakthrough without breaking through.  With all that, your 20 inner cauldron is actually quite good, my Golden Cores have more like 15.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 14, 2021, 08:44:59 pm
Also, if I end up with a good cultivation spot like a giant ginko tree (you aren't guaranteed to have one, right?), is it a good idea to only train people with fire elemental arts? Or is mixing it up good? I get the feeling that having a wood master teaching a fire disciple is a good idea.
You want your dudes mentors to have the same law (+++++)/element (++++?) as them since it gives them a bigger boost.
Also the tree has an element range of 5 (as well as qi range) so you never want to use it for anything other than fire cultivators as the element penalty outweighs the qi boost.

For everything else you ideally stick it on spirit soil since it has a secret 40 qi gather boost.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: ChairmanPoo on January 14, 2021, 08:53:33 pm
I still dont get this: according to the beginners guide I need a character with a minimum of 5 but all I roll is pure shit. Am I missing something?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 14, 2021, 09:03:35 pm
I still dont get this: according to the beginners guide I need a character with a minimum of 5 but all I roll is pure shit. Am I missing something?
You mean a minimum of 5 luck? Yeah, the majority of dudes have shit luck. If you really want high luck you just have to reroll for it a lot, especially if you want the other stuff to be good as well.

Note however that your dude can get along with low luck 100% fine, although having high luck does make a huge difference in adventure loot.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 14, 2021, 09:57:30 pm
Also, if I end up with a good cultivation spot like a giant ginko tree (you aren't guaranteed to have one, right?), is it a good idea to only train people with fire elemental arts? Or is mixing it up good? I get the feeling that having a wood master teaching a fire disciple is a good idea.
You want your dudes mentors to have the same law (+++++)/element (++++?) as them since it gives them a bigger boost.
Also the tree has an element range of 5 (as well as qi range) so you never want to use it for anything other than fire cultivators as the element penalty outweighs the qi boost.

For everything else you ideally stick it on spirit soil since it has a secret 40 qi gather boost.

I don't have spirit soil :(

I did however have some on my test world when I was trying to work out mods and rolled a guy with such high attributes piled on top of the "carefree cultivator" background (for some reason I was still able to immediately pick the wood law as if I selected that as the background) that I immediately had their cultivation rising as fast as my current golden core using their meditation miracle to cultivate. That grass alone makes me feel like I can overtake all my progress if I just restart on that save. No giant ginko tree though.


EDIT: Anyone know what it means when an item gets a tiny little asterisk mark to the left of it's name while on the map? Not in the tooltip when you hover over it, but the name that pops up when you zoom in.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on January 14, 2021, 11:21:24 pm
I still dont get this: according to the beginners guide I need a character with a minimum of 5 but all I roll is pure shit. Am I missing something?

You're supposed to cheat with overpowered reincarnators.

Speaking of which, I created reincarnators on the opposite end of the spectrum:
Children of EJ: Instead of reincarnators that are overpowered, these folks are weak but interesting. Some are old, some are crippled, some are just cursed. (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2362115391)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 14, 2021, 11:32:15 pm
I'd just wing it, because a lot of the game is using your initial guys to make the next generation way stronger. My first character got golden core 9 (the worst rank of golden core), but gave my next talented person a smooth transition to golden core rank 4. And my next guy is going to be even stronger because I've even more tricks up my sleeve now. It feels very natural.

But then again, I'm addicted to learning new mechanics.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on January 14, 2021, 11:56:14 pm
Also, as per this guide on Sub-Spirits (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FyMSWjjj4FK4e3OCP0X58Lczg0Vw4Dqf_Q2xmjDu1QI/edit) you're supposed to strip away everything from your more useless cultivators at Primodial Spirit via Sub-Spirits and give items imbued with their skills to the next class so they can develop quicker.  As I've said previously, after reading that guide, I realized that everybody should become a cultivator that can become a cultivator, just to act as fodder for the Sub-Spirit mill.

Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 15, 2021, 01:23:52 am
EDIT: Anyone know what it means when an item gets a tiny little asterisk mark to the left of it's name while on the map? Not in the tooltip when you hover over it, but the name that pops up when you zoom in.
It means that there is something unique about the item.
Typically it means A) You specter refined it, or B) It randomly turned into a spirit relic, which gives it unique properties that you can find out if you use fung shei identifying on it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 15, 2021, 01:25:27 am
Is that really the only indication an item has become a spirit relic?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 15, 2021, 02:44:25 am
Is that really the only indication an item has become a spirit relic?
No.
You can tell by: It almost certainly making any room it's in V ominous (since the odds of failing to fulfill its requirements is like 95%), anyone in said room getting a little spirit relic status working/not working symbol in their active effects area, it refusing to stack with anything else, and by a single line of text near the top where it says that it indeed a spirit relic that you will 100% miss every time if you don't already know about it existing.

The single best way to tell is to set a single storage area to accept all+max priority+relics only, which should grab all the items from elsewhere as soon as they become spirit relics.
The fact that there isn't a better way to tell/search for them is indeed quite stupid though since its easily a feature you can miss for the first fifty hours of your game even if you have a dozen relics in your base.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: ChairmanPoo on January 15, 2021, 02:48:52 am
Dont you supposedly need 5 of everything for law of the sun
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 15, 2021, 03:26:28 am
Also, as per this guide on Sub-Spirits (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FyMSWjjj4FK4e3OCP0X58Lczg0Vw4Dqf_Q2xmjDu1QI/edit)...

...Wait, have Sub-Spirits been a thing for a while, or were they only added in the last month or so? Because I've somehow totally missed that layer of mechanics if they were.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 15, 2021, 03:27:21 am
Dont you supposedly need 5 of everything for law of the sun
Not quite. Cultivators can get pretty substantial stat boosts out of manuals after you make them, its fairly trivial to get them +30% all stats from just the 5 basic laws, so your dude could be all 4's and cultivate it just fine. Even a 3 would be tolerable if all the other stats are good enough.
Obviously its better if you get more in every stat (eg someone with all 7's at start for fire law is better then someone with all 5's), but the higher you want everything the harder it is to get.
For reference this is the base stats of my fire cult (and sect leader thanks to their high natural charisma+social), and is what I would consider 100% acceptable for a fire cult. It isn't anywhere near optimal, but you won't get truly optimal without rerolling ten thousand times or using a reincarnator someone else found/designed.
Spoiler: Fire cult (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on January 15, 2021, 08:50:09 am
Also, as per this guide on Sub-Spirits (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FyMSWjjj4FK4e3OCP0X58Lczg0Vw4Dqf_Q2xmjDu1QI/edit)...

...Wait, have Sub-Spirits been a thing for a while, or were they only added in the last month or so? Because I've somehow totally missed that layer of mechanics if they were.
They've been there since at least when the game officially released to english. You can't really do anything with them until you hit primordial spirit, tho'.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 15, 2021, 02:27:50 pm
Is that really the only indication an item has become a spirit relic?
No.
You can tell by: It almost certainly making any room it's in V ominous (since the odds of failing to fulfill its requirements is like 95%), anyone in said room getting a little spirit relic status working/not working symbol in their active effects area, it refusing to stack with anything else, and by a single line of text near the top where it says that it indeed a spirit relic that you will 100% miss every time if you don't already know about it existing.

The single best way to tell is to set a single storage area to accept all+max priority+relics only, which should grab all the items from elsewhere as soon as they become spirit relics.
The fact that there isn't a better way to tell/search for them is indeed quite stupid though since its easily a feature you can miss for the first fifty hours of your game even if you have a dozen relics in your base.

Well it doesn't have any text about spirit relics, I can't identify it, and the room isn't auspicious so I guess it's not a spirit relic, and I didn't do anything to said item to make it unique, so I have no idea why it's like that.

EDIT: Anyone know why sometimes my characters sleep outside? I know they have beds but they still get the negative moods because of sleeping in the wilderness
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 15, 2021, 03:57:24 pm
EDIT: Anyone know why sometimes my characters sleep outside? I know they have beds but they still get the negative moods because of sleeping in the wilderness

They can't get to a bed in time? I never take any Turtle guys (other than for sending out to outposts) because their movement penalty makes it such that they're always wandering around at weird hours, skipping meals (or maybe just taking them at off-times), and generally just making a nuisance of themselves because they can never get anywhere in a reasonable amount of time... and then they get angry and don't do their job because of that.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on January 15, 2021, 04:11:18 pm
I've also heard that crafters who love what they do will sometimes work themselves to exhaustion, passing out next to (or near) their crafting station. Not 100% sure if it's true, but it lines up with my casual observations when I find my outers randomly asleep in strange places.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 15, 2021, 04:18:17 pm
I tried making a second breakthrough room because breaking through next to a giant tree isn't very good for earth law cultivators.

A make a fire-type Qi gathering cushion. I surround it with displays of the 4 fire essence bars I have. The result? The Qi Bonus is -4. A random spot outside in the wilderness is -3. I try adding more Qi gathering items (I know spirit wood works for the Qi bonus so anything should work, right?) like lumina core bars, ice essence bars, and stone essence. Nothing changes. I would figure that surrounding a spot with Qi gathering items would increase the Qi bonus, like it did with my other spot surrounded by spirit wood, but it doesn't. I'm at a loss.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 15, 2021, 04:55:12 pm
I tried making a second breakthrough room because breaking through next to a giant tree isn't very good for earth law cultivators.

A make a fire-type Qi gathering cushion. I surround it with displays of the 4 fire essence bars I have. The result? The Qi Bonus is -4. A random spot outside in the wilderness is -3. I try adding more Qi gathering items (I know spirit wood works for the Qi bonus so anything should work, right?) like lumina core bars, ice essence bars, and stone essence. Nothing changes. I would figure that surrounding a spot with Qi gathering items would increase the Qi bonus, like it did with my other spot surrounded by spirit wood, but it doesn't. I'm at a loss.

You want a cushion of your type and surround it by things weak against you. So if you're earth law, you basic room would want an earth cushion, surrounded by 12 fire essence bars, surrounded by 16 spirit wood logs.

You want the highest qi gathering possible of the correct element. Check the item ranges-- 1 is the tile itself, 2 is 4-way adjacent, 3 (bars and essences) is two-tiles away, or adjacent-diagonal, and 4 (spiritwood) is three-tiles away, or a 'knight move', and so forth.

It also takes something like 3 days for qi gathering to reach max effect, so you can't just pop up a room and try to breakthrough.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on January 15, 2021, 05:00:45 pm
So if you're earth law, you basic room would want an earth cushion, surrounded by 12 fire essence bars, surrounded by 16 spirit wood logs.
Just note that if you do that, unless your cultivator is wearing temperature-proof dragonscale (or similar), you're going to cook them in short order.

Best advice I've seen to avoid that is to make each of the 'fire' Qi rooms connect with a 'water' Qi room, so the +heat and -heat elements balance out.

Edit: one thing I've wondered - why don't we have AC units in this game? In a world that has magic materials that can produce endless heat and cold, it should be simple to just make a box with two windows, one with fire essence, one with ice,  that can be adjusted to always produce a temperate room.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 15, 2021, 05:06:07 pm
So if you're earth law, you basic room would want an earth cushion, surrounded by 12 fire essence bars, surrounded by 16 spirit wood logs.
Just note that if you do that, unless your cultivator is wearing temperature-proof dragonscale (or similar), you're going to cook them in short order.

Best advice I've seen to avoid that is to make each of the 'fire' Qi rooms connect with a 'water' Qi room, so the +heat and -heat elements balance out.

Nonono, the rosy flush to their cheeks means they're healthy! Just ignore sizzling sound of bacon whenever you check in on them.

...Yeah, the thermal impact of those bars kind of slipped my mind since all of my inner disciples that stay at home tend to be running around with a massive temperature tolerance ASAP so I don't have to fiddle with that.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 15, 2021, 05:06:23 pm
So how does this work exactly? Would the spirit logs gather wood Qi, which then powers the fire essence bars to make extra fire Qi? Why would you want a Qi cushion that has a Qi gathering trait be of an element who's Qi you wouldn't want? Isn't the fire Qi that the cushion gathers better than the Earth Qi for an earth cultivator?

As for the Qi gathering delay, that makes sense. Must not have been enough time for it to build up. But that means I can't just switch out items whenever I need a different element. Does this mean it's a good idea to build 5 separate breakthrough rooms?

So if you're earth law, you basic room would want an earth cushion, surrounded by 12 fire essence bars, surrounded by 16 spirit wood logs.
Just note that if you do that, unless your cultivator is wearing temperature-proof dragonscale (or similar), you're going to cook them in short order.

Best advice I've seen to avoid that is to make each of the 'fire' Qi rooms connect with a 'water' Qi room, so the +heat and -heat elements balance out.

Edit: one thing I've wondered - why don't we have AC units in this game? In a world that has magic materials that can produce endless heat and cold, it should be simple to just make a box with two windows, one with fire essence, one with ice,  that can be adjusted to always produce a temperate room.

Can't you just place a bunch of water Qi items away from the fire Qi items? They cool the entire room after all.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on January 15, 2021, 05:14:43 pm
Most bases I've seen (and all the ones I've made) have a separate breakthrough room for each element.

You could, of course, just use ice-items in the room, but if you're making multiple breakthrough rooms anyway, you might as well make the fire and water ones in the same room.

The reason that the spirit logs work is because they provide Qi further out than they pollute the elemental balance. So your cultivator is basking in the Fire Qi of the nearby bars, while the wood is too far to kill the mood.

Not sure about the cushions - I've been doing cushions the same element as the bars around them - don't know if that's correct or not.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 15, 2021, 05:19:34 pm
So how does this work exactly? Would the spirit logs gather wood Qi, which then powers the fire essence bars to make extra fire Qi? Why would you want a Qi cushion that has a Qi gathering trait be of an element who's Qi you wouldn't want? Isn't the fire Qi that the cushion gathers better than the Earth Qi for an earth cultivator?

As for the Qi gathering delay, that makes sense. Must not have been enough time for it to build up. But that means I can't just switch out items whenever I need a different element. Does this mean it's a good idea to build 5 separate breakthrough rooms?

So if you're earth law, you basic room would want an earth cushion, surrounded by 12 fire essence bars, surrounded by 16 spirit wood logs.
Just note that if you do that, unless your cultivator is wearing temperature-proof dragonscale (or similar), you're going to cook them in short order.

Best advice I've seen to avoid that is to make each of the 'fire' Qi rooms connect with a 'water' Qi room, so the +heat and -heat elements balance out.

Can't you just place a bunch of water Qi items away from the fire Qi items? They cool the entire room after all.

In the case of game mechanics, it's because the qi gathering effect of spiritwood logs has a longer range than their elemental effect.

When you can afford it, you'll definitely want different rooms for each element... the best rooms are allegedly pretty finicky, though I've never gotten to them yet.

Yeah, but if you're going to put a bunch of water items in the room, then you might as well just make a second cultivation setup there anyways.

Edit: I've never personally tested the elemental qi gathering cushion thing, but it was explicitly mentioned as something you want to do in a speed run guide that looks fairly well researched (if a bit old), so I've just always gone with it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on January 15, 2021, 07:08:35 pm
I'll just reiterate what this guide (https://docs.google.com/document/u/2/d/e/2PACX-1vQ7BV9Pyt4TVv56U7fVAJaPYQAvbHzRJ6uyX-mxbE8fPceI9yFd5pT6kuWfOan-5YmYOLBKMnAiia4C/pub) says about inner cauldron: DON'T worry about it until late game.

It is the leftover cultivation juice from when you cultivate and you are at breakthrough, so you need a massive cultivation speed boost in order to really get anything out it.  And a Heavenly Cultivator with working Heavenly Realm in order to fix the status affliction that your cultivators will be getting because they're spending days and weeks at breakthrough without breaking through.  With all that, your 20 inner cauldron is actually quite good, my Golden Cores have more like 15.

You don't need a Heavenly cultivator for that, when you're on "Mind" focus (which should be the default), your obsessions will go down naturally.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 15, 2021, 09:16:15 pm
When you can afford it, you'll definitely want different rooms for each element... the best rooms are allegedly pretty finicky, though I've never gotten to them yet.
Yeah, you really want a breakout room for every element. The right/wrong element penalty is basically always larger then the extra qi gather bonus.
For the non GC breakthrough it doesn't really matter cause you can just do it a few times in a row, but for the GC breakthrough it makes a very significant difference.
If you really lack enough spiritwood or whatever you can just swap the spiritwood around to the breakthrough room just before the gold core breakthrough.
Edit: one thing I've wondered - why don't we have AC units in this game? In a world that has magic materials that can produce endless heat and cold, it should be simple to just make a box with two windows, one with fire essence, one with ice,  that can be adjusted to always produce a temperate room.
Like a decent number of problems with this game, this one is just fixed with what amounts to an AC mod. Its uh... fairly cheaty (aka, a tiny 2 spirit stone building lets you keep a 400 tiles room the exact same temperature the whole year), but it removes lots of micro so its worth it.
It also takes something like 3 days for qi gathering to reach max effect, so you can't just pop up a room and try to breakthrough.
It takes 5 days on a linear scale (eg. 1 day is 20%, 3 days is 60%). Again, for the non-GC breakthrough it isn't *that* important to have it get to max, but if you stick everything there then break through right away all that fancy qi gather stuff you stuck there is 100% useless.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 15, 2021, 09:20:48 pm
When you can afford it, you'll definitely want different rooms for each element... the best rooms are allegedly pretty finicky, though I've never gotten to them yet.
Yeah, you really want a breakout room for every element. The right/wrong element penalty is basically always larger then the extra qi gather bonus.
For the non GC breakthrough it doesn't really matter cause you can just do it a few times in a row, but for the GC breakthrough it makes a very significant difference.
If you really lack enough spiritwood or whatever you can just swap the spiritwood around to the breakthrough room just before the gold core breakthrough.

Which really shouldn't be the case, considering you can just buy practically infinite amounts from your neighbor. (If you haven't figured out your economy yet... that's a different story.)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 16, 2021, 01:11:55 am
I've entered the "avoid the game because it's time to remodel the entire damned base to make room for everything I want" phase.

Help.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 16, 2021, 06:31:21 am
So this one has me scratching my head here-- why on earth is the left room 'Very Auspicious' and the right room is merely 'Auspicious'? They have the exact same materials, layout, and even ground type underneath. (The middle rooms are also auspicious, but the ground underneath is different.) Specifically, spirit stone light, walls and floor, marble door, iron bed. There's nothing other than SS lights for three tiles in any direction.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 16, 2021, 12:47:48 pm
If you click on the room and hover over the "auspicious" symbol, a tooltip will come up displaying plus signs for items. Find out what has less plus signs.

It could be that one spot's natural ground just for some reason or another has slightly more wood element, conflicting with a rock furniture. Or perhaps it's like a bug I got where simply deconstructing and reconstructing the furniture fixes it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 16, 2021, 01:37:35 pm
So this one has me scratching my head here-- why on earth is the left room 'Very Auspicious' and the right room is merely 'Auspicious'? They have the exact same materials, layout, and even ground type underneath. (The middle rooms are also auspicious, but the ground underneath is different.) Specifically, spirit stone light, walls and floor, marble door, iron bed. There's nothing other than SS lights for three tiles in any direction.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
No clue. Assuming there isn't a divine jade or something chilling just offscreen (which has a element range of 5 tiles) those should all be just auspicious.

It being a bug as Micro says is probably the most likely answer, since the far left and far right rooms seem to be identical.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 16, 2021, 02:54:48 pm
So this one has me scratching my head here-- why on earth is the left room 'Very Auspicious' and the right room is merely 'Auspicious'? They have the exact same materials, layout, and even ground type underneath. (The middle rooms are also auspicious, but the ground underneath is different.) Specifically, spirit stone light, walls and floor, marble door, iron bed. There's nothing other than SS lights for three tiles in any direction.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
No clue. Assuming there isn't a divine jade or something chilling just offscreen (which has a element range of 5 tiles) those should all be just auspicious.

It being a bug as Micro says is probably the most likely answer, since the far left and far right rooms seem to be identical.

Well... it seemed to have more or less resolved itself in the wrong direction. I tried reloading four times and ran it a few seconds each time... once, the V.Auspicious room stayed VA, and three times it dropped to A. Oh well. It'll do for now.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: ChairmanPoo on January 16, 2021, 02:56:11 pm
Jesus fuck, I just dont get this game. I really want to get into it, but between the confusing interface, the weird rules, etc... I just... can´t. I dont know what I´m doing when I load it up.

Maybe my expectations for it to be rimworld like are confusing me further, and maybe I am not in the right mindset to learn new rules due to daily stress (TBH I tend to skip early rimworld game these days.... even though I *do* get it, just to avoid the boring parts). I don´t have the patience to sit through a let´s play either.

I think I´m going to shelve it for a while, maybe I´ll feel more receptive at some point. Go back to some of my usual haunts in basebuilding like rimworld and oxygen not included (and btw I´m not too sure about ONI´s expansion either). I just dont want to be caught in a drudge. Daily work is bad enough.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on January 16, 2021, 03:12:59 pm
You want the highest qi gathering possible of the correct element. Check the item ranges-- 1 is the tile itself, 2 is 4-way adjacent, 3 (bars and essences) is two-tiles away, or adjacent-diagonal, and 4 (spiritwood) is three-tiles away, or a 'knight move', and so forth.

Qi ranges use some mathematical wizardry on the diagonals, which comes into play from 4-range onwards. Common practice, especially early on, is to use Spiritwood for that layer because it's qi gather range is long enough to influence the center but it's feng shui range will not reach that far. Also spiritwood is cheap and readily available.

(https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/782443275029184532/796511886765326407/091d4a32c895d1432c21a75a64f082025baf07ab.png)


So how does this work exactly? Would the spirit logs gather wood Qi, which then powers the fire essence bars to make extra fire Qi? Why would you want a Qi cushion that has a Qi gathering trait be of an element who's Qi you wouldn't want? Isn't the fire Qi that the cushion gathers better than the Earth Qi for an earth cultivator?

Qi does not have element. Feng Shui has elements. They're two seperate systems.
A cultivator benefits from being surrounded by the feng shui element which feeds their own. They also benefit from sitting on a Very Auspicious bed/qi cushion. Since the area has to be flooded with the element that feeds the cultivator, the way to make your seat Very Auspicious is by making it the same element as the cultivator. Other than that, there is no direct benefit from having the cultivator sitting on their own element.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 16, 2021, 05:29:53 pm
Jesus fuck, I just dont get this game. I really want to get into it, but between the confusing interface, the weird rules, etc... I just... can´t. I dont know what I´m doing when I load it up.

Maybe my expectations for it to be rimworld like are confusing me further, and maybe I am not in the right mindset to learn new rules due to daily stress (TBH I tend to skip early rimworld game these days.... even though I *do* get it, just to avoid the boring parts). I don´t have the patience to sit through a let´s play either.

I think I´m going to shelve it for a while, maybe I´ll feel more receptive at some point. Go back to some of my usual haunts in basebuilding like rimworld and oxygen not included (and btw I´m not too sure about ONI´s expansion either). I just dont want to be caught in a drudge. Daily work is bad enough.

It will help a bit if you read some of the novels from wuxiaworld or the manga (manhua?) adaptions. They are just enjoyable to read and you will start to grasp the general atmosphere.

I don't think you even need to know what you are doing. As long as you make sure to keep your reputation low with those invisibility talismans, the attacks will never get harder, and you can take all the time you want messing around.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 16, 2021, 10:14:00 pm
The roofs bother me. It's like they are there because they prevent temperature change, but at the same time aren't there because sunlight and giant ginkgo trees seem to get though them just fine. Cultivators also sometimes fly in through the inner doors.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 17, 2021, 06:27:35 am
Did some testing with tribulations.

Never do them inside. The tribulation will light the building on fire, causing a horde of your outer disciples to try to put the fires out, and subsequently be killed by the tribulation.

Also, for some reason the tribulation was less effective when outside, as opposed to being in my breakthrough room. Maybe the tribulation gathers Qi from the room? Note it was a fire element room and the tribulation was wood, so I guess the element environment doesn't matter either.

Which begs the question.... What if there is a way to drain Qi from an area, and would that help against tribulations???
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 17, 2021, 08:23:22 am
You want as much qi as possible, since it continues to regen you while fighting it off. So, ideally in a breakthrough room, though you'll have to keep your guys away... Or out in the middle of nowhere so you don't lure people over.

I recall element type also being a factor, but I don't remember if you want it to support you or suppress the tribulation.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 17, 2021, 01:59:12 pm
Well by breakthrough room did all that. Gave me tons of Qi, and both supported my element, and suppressed the tribulation's.

But when I reloaded the save and did it outside in the middle of nowhere, the tribulation had a couple thousand less Qi. It didn't feel like my cultivator was fighting it any more efficiently inside the breakthrough room either.

So unless tribulation Qi is randomized, I don't see a pattern.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 17, 2021, 03:59:49 pm
Double checked the reference docs I use. They suggest the same thing for where to challenge it, but with an interesting note about how to challenge it: Unless you're using high quality artifacts, you have better odds by removing your artifact, boosting your defenses, and just try to outlast it, than beating it up.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 17, 2021, 04:30:07 pm
So this one has me scratching my head here-- why on earth is the left room 'Very Auspicious' and the right room is merely 'Auspicious'? They have the exact same materials, layout, and even ground type underneath. (The middle rooms are also auspicious, but the ground underneath is different.) Specifically, spirit stone light, walls and floor, marble door, iron bed. There's nothing other than SS lights for three tiles in any direction.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
No clue. Assuming there isn't a divine jade or something chilling just offscreen (which has a element range of 5 tiles) those should all be just auspicious.

It being a bug as Micro says is probably the most likely answer, since the far left and far right rooms seem to be identical.

Well... it seemed to have more or less resolved itself in the wrong direction. I tried reloading four times and ran it a few seconds each time... once, the V.Auspicious room stayed VA, and three times it dropped to A. Oh well. It'll do for now.

Oooookay, and now the entire row of rooms is showing up as Ominous, despite nothing of note changing other than maybe three days and the weather.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 17, 2021, 06:16:09 pm
Again.... hover over the room's "auspicious" icon and tell us what the +'s and -'s are.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 17, 2021, 06:47:44 pm
...I'm not really sure what you can glean out of that wasn't covered textually, but oh well:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Those two readouts are from the same room, approximately half an hour apart, from ~1AM to ~1:30AM. No weather changes, everybody's asleep so no items have moved around, and no events occurred in the meantime. The obvious culprit is that the amount of earth influence in the area has decreased, except there's no obvious cause (and even if it's related to the ying yang of time, it should be the same at this time or rising).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 17, 2021, 08:31:35 pm
Well I checked to see if characters carrying soul pearls spreads water element and they don't. I don't know if vessels spread element around ( you don't happen to have any fire vessels running around, right?

My only reasonable guess would be that the spirit stone walls/floor/light are so neutral that the door and the ground (which looks like metal element) are the only things influencing the elements, and since it's so small an amount, it means if there is indeed a tiny change in element based on the time, it could swing things. I'd just drop down an earth light instead of a spirit stone one and call it a day.

Also, when exactly is earth yin-yang at it's peak? It would be good to know.


EDIT: Ok, wow. Shapshifting tribulations are ridiculous. 36000 Qi of all elements. Tell me what I need to shove into my character's mouth to either delay this tribulation or suddenly give him 10000 Max Qi. I'm contemplating collecting all my belief and just maxing out his barrier skill.

Anyone know if activating the sword artifact building would help? Like, would the artifacts attack the tribulation?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 17, 2021, 09:13:20 pm
Also, when exactly is earth yin-yang at it's peak? It would be good to know.

EDIT: Ok, wow. Shapshifting tribulations are ridiculous. 36000 Qi of all elements. Tell me what I need to shove into my character's mouth to either delay this tribulation or suddenly give him 10000 Max Qi. I'm contemplating collecting all my belief and just maxing out his barrier skill.

Anyone know if activating the sword artifact building would help? Like, would the artifacts attack the tribulation?

Approximately 3-6AM and 7-8PM... I'd expect it to be symmetrical, but there's a wider window in the morning. This is also during the time that wood and metal flipflops.

Can't delay it (though I've heard that sending them out on adventures pauses the timer, so you can use that to get extra time).

Give them a Taiyi Scroll and Turtle Shell, and feed them Shield Pill, Spirit Stone, Spirit Crystal, and Qi Regen Pills. I also toss on a rabbit's foot, but I don't know if luck actually does anything here. There're also probably more exotic pills to use that are good, but that combo is probably enough.

Edit: That's when earth law breakthroughs are best, which I suppose technically means that's fire-o'clock, not earth-o'clock.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 18, 2021, 02:46:27 pm
I keep seeing "comprehension intelligence" bonuses when gathering thoughts in an animal. What exactly does this mean? Learning speed? But then why is there a talisman that gives a bonus to "learning speed"? It seems like they are two different things.

What does it do?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 18, 2021, 04:54:51 pm
Ok, just survived my first shapeshifting tribulation barely.

It wasn't just a 36000 Qi tribulation. O no, that was just the first element of the five element ones. So an 180,000 Qi tribulation.

As Aoi said, I shoved a spirit stone, spirit crystal, Qi regen pill, and shield pill which made me immune to the tribulation (until they wore off because this thing takes over a day to complete). I also maxed out my protect skill, learned every Max-Qi book I could, dumped the rest into artifact mastery (because your artifact fights the tribulation) and wore the Taiyi scroll, no turtle shell though. I had ~13000 Qi and barely made it. The Qi gathering cushion broke due to the lightning, but I managed to suicide 4 outer disciples into the tribulation to get it back up, and honestly that may have been the deciding factor as my guy looked seconds away from running out of Qi.

Also, a tip to anyone else who has trouble stopping their outer disciples from running into tribulations. Turn off all building work in the "work" tab. Maybe all fire fighting too.

I also happened to look at the "heavenly Pancea" skill, and it says it restores Qi..... Could I perhaps just spam this around the tribulation fighter???
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 18, 2021, 05:35:34 pm
Try doing it without the artifact. It's powered by your qi and things I've read basically say that you're better off not using artifacts unless you have a REALLY good one, or you've unlocked the ability to use multiples.

Though it sounds like it's a loss at this point. Just send them off to a branch office for their stats and avoid them going nuclear in your base.

Allegedly, it's possible to pass at default difficulty at 50-60 days if you know exactly what you're doing, but.... Ehhh.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 18, 2021, 05:55:53 pm
I considered sending them to a town, but they had such high stats and made a really good sect leader so here I am.

As for the artifact, I luckily had a purple tier one. So no reloading all my work to hopefully not kill 4 of my guys.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on January 18, 2021, 06:43:41 pm
You survived, good job, dunno if you would have if anything changed.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Zangi on January 18, 2021, 07:53:56 pm
Your equipped artifact does attack the tribulation and shortens the time in relation to the damage, so there is that.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 18, 2021, 08:05:02 pm
Just remembered. I also got my hands on some element damage resistance talismans. Since the tribulation goes through all elements, the more the better. I think you can get them from doodling randomly when drawing on a blank talisman.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 18, 2021, 09:05:19 pm
Just remembered. I also got my hands on some element damage resistance talismans. Since the tribulation goes through all elements, the more the better. I think you can get them from doodling randomly when drawing on a blank talisman.
If those are all the relevant talismans you have then yes, they are significantly better then nothing. If you have other relevant talismans though the element resist ones are woefully sub-par for the yaoguai tribulation since it goes through all five elements compared to talismans that help your defense in general (or attack if you are using an artifact).
That said, they are very good for the single element tribulations.
I also happened to look at the "heavenly Pancea" skill, and it says it restores Qi..... Could I perhaps just spam this around the tribulation fighter???
No. Miracles from other people can't interfere with a tribulation. You could have the dude doing the tribulation learn a qi restoring skill and use it on himself though.
Try doing it without the artifact. It's powered by your qi and things I've read basically say that you're better off not using artifacts unless you have a REALLY good one, or you've unlocked the ability to use multiples.
Having multiple artifacts doesn't really help with tribulations much since it doesn't impact the fundamental issue.
The issue is that artifacts have no protection skill, while your dude does. So if your artifact is hit with a 1000 qi damage attack it takes 1000 damage then goes back to you and drains it all out (aka, 1000 damage taken). If you get hit by 1000 qi damage your protection skill can reduce it a bunch (eg. to 750 or 500 or even less then 100).
Eventually with high enough artifact power the fact that the artifact takes a bunch more damage and thus drains your qi way faster is less relevant then the fact that it deals like a million damage and kills the tribulation way faster.

Also note that the lower your artifact qi the better since any extra damage it takes just disappears (eg. if a artifact with 100 max qi is hit by a 10k damage attack it blocks the whole attack but is drained then goes to fill up 100 qi from you and the extra 9.9k damage doesn't matter).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on January 18, 2021, 09:26:39 pm
Hm, if the tribulation attacks the artifact rather than the character, and the artifact max damage that it can take is less than the attack's damage, then maybe its very good to have artifacts to take the damage.  Of course, if the tribulation can attack both the artifact and the player the same as attacking just the player, then it doesn't work.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 18, 2021, 11:59:25 pm
Quote
No. Miracles from other people can't interfere with a tribulation. You could have the dude doing the tribulation learn a qi restoring skill and use it on himself though.

If they can activate skills, is it possible for them to eat another shield pill from their inventory while the tribulation is going? Because that sure would make this easier.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 19, 2021, 06:41:27 am
If they can activate skills, is it possible for them to eat another shield pill from their inventory while the tribulation is going? Because that sure would make this easier.
Nope, you can't eat or equip or change anything in your inventory at all during a tribulation/breakthrough. No eating that spirit crystal for extra qi, no realizing you have 3x mood talismans active instead of the 3x T12 combat talismans you stuck in your inventory, and no dropping that utter trash artifact that will make your dude fail a surprise tribulation.
Hm, if the tribulation attacks the artifact rather than the character, and the artifact max damage that it can take is less than the attack's damage, then maybe its very good to have artifacts to take the damage.  Of course, if the tribulation can attack both the artifact and the player the same as attacking just the player, then it doesn't work.
I think the artifact can block the whole hit, but if the artifact is so weak that a single hit knocks it out most of the damage is going to get through on subsequent hits.
But yeah, that's roughly how it works, although its a bit more complicated since you have to take into account your dudes artifact skill and protection skill and all his modifiers.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 20, 2021, 04:07:03 am
I've been keeping an eye on inner cauldron and stamina use, and it just seems insanely slow. Like, I couldn't get them to use all their stamina even if I tried, and that's without any sort of stamina regen items.

What am I missing? How do I increase the conversion of stamina into cultivation?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 20, 2021, 04:19:11 am
Cultivation speed, which can be done via talismans, drugs, skills, and probably a few other ways that've slipped my mind.

Don't bother with it for your first guy though. It literally takes years to max out without boosts.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on January 20, 2021, 10:36:20 am
I've been keeping an eye on inner cauldron and stamina use, and it just seems insanely slow. Like, I couldn't get them to use all their stamina even if I tried, and that's without any sort of stamina regen items.
What am I missing? How do I increase the conversion of stamina into cultivation?

Haven't messed around with it myself, but every time someone brings up the subject of Inner Cauldron in the discord, response is always that it's a late-midgame mechanic that is impossible to do anything with before then.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on January 21, 2021, 04:03:20 pm
They say that because mid-late game, you can get like 200x cultivation speed, so that instead of taking years it takes months.

Inner caldron is the conversion of stamina into cultivation by cultivating at the breakthrough point without breaking through.  I'm not sure of the calculations, but at normal cultivation speed you get something like one Qi caldron conversion for each day of cultivation.  So 20 days of solid cultivation (not counting the days that you have to relax so that your mood returns to high) gives about 20 Qi.

The inner caldron does also reduce in effectiveness as it gets filled up.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Ygdrad on January 21, 2021, 09:44:47 pm
So I'm extremely noobish at this game. I'm really not sure what to do about trying to break through after I get my first inner or how to make them stronger. I haven't touched alchemy or talismans yet and have yet to unlock any of the blocked locations. Not sure what the best early course of action is to improve my first inner.

At least I've learned the art of abusing the room/fengshui system so there's that.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 21, 2021, 09:58:35 pm
Definitely start making talismans. The basic ones are practically free and supply really useful buffs like runspeed or temperature resistance. In addition to more specific things like crafting speed or mood bonuses.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on January 21, 2021, 11:22:10 pm
If you're not already doing so, start investing in branches asap. They cost only a little bit of common materials to get set up, and they will provide you with massive amounts of inspiration and tons of easy recruits.

Also, if you're not already doing so, get some herb gardens planted. You'll want some herbs to nom when you're ready to start breaking through to gold core.

Build a Manual Pavilion room, and start training cultivators from all the laws you have available. Have them transcribe the skills they learn at the pavilion, and other cultivators from the other laws will be able to study those skills. Learn skills that boost cultivation speed, and skills that boost attributes associated with your law, as these things will help you cultivate more quickly.

When you get time, try to visit Kunlun and learn how to make their Magic Altars. They're a huge boost to your cultivation rooms early on.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on January 22, 2021, 01:47:57 am
At least I've learned the art of abusing the room/fengshui system so there's that.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Doesn't the Feng Shui system only count exterior doors?  So that your layout with many interior doors does not in fact respect Feng Shui?

Plant some grain: It'll help with branch expansion.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 22, 2021, 03:18:00 am
If you're not already doing so, start investing in branches asap. They cost only a little bit of common materials to get set up, and they will provide you with massive amounts of inspiration and tons of easy recruits.


Are you talking about branches, or shrines? Because they are two different things and I haven't tried making a branch yet.

At least I've learned the art of abusing the room/fengshui system so there's that.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Doesn't the Feng Shui system only count exterior doors?  So that your layout with many interior doors does not in fact respect Feng Shui?

The way I understand it. It counts the door closest to the outside as the door to the outside. And if there are two doors, and one door leads to a fengshui room while the other leads outside, it won't cause leakage.

I can't really see how this can be abused though.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 22, 2021, 04:35:40 am
Are you talking about branches, or shrines? Because they are two different things and I haven't tried making
He means agencies (which may be the same thing as shrines?), which is where you build a little extra settlement and get permanent bonus resources from it. Its important to start them as early as possible cause they take *ages* to grow to max and there isn't really any way to speed it up.

Branches (especially the cultivation branch which you should set up as soon as you can) are very helpful as well, but you need to get to 2k reputation for those, so they certainly aren't starting material.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 22, 2021, 06:18:21 am
But making a branch seems like it requires leeching talent from my main sect. I don't want to lose decent characters, but I also don't want to fill a branch with weak characters. Like.... isn't an alchemy branch best when filled with people skilled in alchemy?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on January 22, 2021, 10:01:57 am
Send your inner out to camp and enter any map that looks like it would have some people in it. Spend a little bit of time playing the social mini-game, just enough to get them up to the 60% affinity soft-cap; at that point you can invite them back to your sect. Check the stats of everyone on the map, take note of people with high Qi Sense and attributes, and earmark them to be your new inner cultivators. Also, if you don't already have them, pick out a skilled crafter, a chef, and a couple of farmers, and make them permanent outer disciples. And grab a few people with useless stats whom you can send off to populate the shrines. Once you get shrines set up in a city, you'll be able to instantly recruit from large pools of disciples without needing to bother with the social mini-game.

You can replace the shrine members at any time, so there's no harm in getting them started with useless people. Once you're able to mass-recruit you'll have a much easier time replacing them with suitable staff.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Ygdrad on January 22, 2021, 11:03:00 am
At least I've learned the art of abusing the room/fengshui system so there's that.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Doesn't the Feng Shui system only count exterior doors?  So that your layout with many interior doors does not in fact respect Feng Shui?

Plant some grain: It'll help with branch expansion.

The above base is all very auspacious and leading to blessed fengshui(this bit me in the ass and got me blessed with reputation leading to two magic guys attacking me on day 26 which I only won against because a tiger yaoguai was targetted and he could kite their artifacts). Basically only doors leading outdoors or a room without fengshui count as potentially problematic. There are buildings that make the room have fengshui without giving a room type, like the observatory, training dummies, or water jars. I abused this to interconnect everything without causing any issues or needing a specific layout

For branches and agencies don't I need to dedicate an inner or outer to running them? I'm pretty low on manpower right now and not sure how to get more people outside of random events.

Edit: Also, for creating artifacts it seems I need an object with a rather ludicrous amount of Qi. How is this achieved? With a room just like the cultivation one but with a display at its center for the item of choice?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on January 22, 2021, 11:44:50 am
Edit: Also, for creating artifacts it seems I need an object with a rather ludicrous amount of Qi. How is this achieved? With a room just like the cultivation one but with a display at its center for the item of choice?
The item doesn't need the Qi, the crafter does.

Edit: The amount of Qi depends on the materials of whatever you're trying to turn into an artifact, btw. The very first artifacts made by a brand-new inner are going to be shitty (possibly literally - poop is a valid artifact), but only require a couple hundred Qi. As you get stronger and stronger inners, you can move up to more exotic materials.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on January 22, 2021, 02:44:53 pm
The item doesn't need the Qi, the crafter does.

Edit: The amount of Qi depends on the materials of whatever you're trying to turn into an artifact, btw. The very first artifacts made by a brand-new inner are going to be shitty (possibly literally - poop is a valid artifact), but only require a couple hundred Qi. As you get stronger and stronger inners, you can move up to more exotic materials.

More specifically, the Qi cost depends upon the tier of the item you are crafting.
Offcut is a common tier-1 item that can be obtained in any element easily early on, making it a popular choice for first artifacts.

The Qi within the material does actually impact the final result, and yes the method for building it up is just to put a pedestal in the middle of a cultivation room. However, you need a LOT of Qi just to get small returns, making it not at all worthwhile early on. Also, the stat affected is the Max Qi of the final artifact, which some people prefer to keep low to take advantage of the negated excess damage when an artifact gets drained.


For branches and agencies don't I need to dedicate an inner or outer to running them? I'm pretty low on manpower right now and not sure how to get more people outside of random events.

Edit: Also, for creating artifacts it seems I need an object with a rather ludicrous amount of Qi. How is this achieved? With a room just like the cultivation one but with a display at its center for the item of choice?

You need to send an outer disciple. See my post directly above yours, recruiting people is fairly easy once you get the social minigame figured out. You can try to learn the favorites of various sect leaders while your at it, which will allow you to gain access to their areas.

Herbs, abilities from other laws, and breaking through are the ways to boost your cultivator's Qi pool. Another reason to get started on that herb garden asap!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 22, 2021, 03:12:44 pm
Anyone know if surrounding herb gardens with spirit wood does anything? The herb descriptions say "only grows in a place with a certain amount of Qi". And when I grow a patch of spirit grass near a giant ginko, it glows blue at night.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on January 22, 2021, 03:42:58 pm
People in the Discord usually say that Qi Gathering items help herbs. I placed several spirit woods next to my herb garden when I first planted them, and saw absolutely no difference in growth rate between the herbs next to the wood and the herbs away from the wood.
It may be that because I planted my herb garden on spirit soil, they were already in optimal Qi and couldn't get any better. Or maybe Qi concentration items only affect chance of rare harvests, and not growth rate. Needs further testing.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on January 23, 2021, 05:11:08 am
Started a new game, after my last one got wiped by big snek. This map has a pretty good start: two large patches of spirit soil(last map had none at all) right near the start, one of which has two giant ginkoes next to each other. A mountain in the west has two massive veins, one of iron, the other igneocopper. Decent amounts of everything else.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Ygdrad on January 24, 2021, 11:46:28 am
Started a new game, after my last one got wiped by big snek. This map has a pretty good start: two large patches of spirit soil(last map had none at all) right near the start, one of which has two giant ginkoes next to each other. A mountain in the west has two massive veins, one of iron, the other igneocopper. Decent amounts of everything else.

I wish there was a way or a mod like in rimworld to reroll your starting map or at least save your characters so you don't have to spend ages rerolling your characters right if you get a bad map :/

Edit: Anyone know where one can get renewable ice crystal ore? Some place you can get it form adventures or entering a zone? the ever increasing need for a bigger or better fridge ate all of my starting supply.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on January 24, 2021, 12:10:09 pm
You can buy it from one sect or another, iirc (though I think there's also one or two that'll trade soul pearls if you get on their good side, which is several times better at cooling stuff). There's an easy few hundred in one or two of the northern areas, too, off the top of my head.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Ygdrad on January 24, 2021, 12:15:02 pm
You can buy it from one sect or another, iirc (though I think there's also one or two that'll trade soul pearls if you get on their good side, which is several times better at cooling stuff). There's an easy few hundred in one or two of the northern areas, too, off the top of my head.

trading has been iffy, ive got no idea what to make for good money, so far I've been buying goldwood and turning it into bows for some slow profit. Also wondering if anyone has spiritstones for sale/trade aside form the merchant who randomly shows up.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on January 24, 2021, 12:18:48 pm
Definitely look at entering maps to gather resources early on. It's one time only, but you can collect several hundreds of most basic resources that way.

The agency in the far north has ice crystal ore. When adventuring for resources, it helps a lot if you can send a cultivator with an element that feeds the resource you are trying to gather. So a metal cultivator to gather the water-element ice crystal.

Camp and Enter Resources - Google Doc (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AuIiJer21OTWGwldM03yXhic8I6mibOOgOg8t76ysU4/edit)


trading has been iffy, ive got no idea what to make for good money, so far I've been buying goldwood and turning it into bows for some slow profit.

Goldwood bows do seem to be the best available direct trading loop.
If a merchant comes and you're able to sell some wares for spirit stones, then crafting spirit stone spears/bows will multiply the value of your assets very rapidly. But of course that is dependant upon a trader showing up first, and him actually wanting to buy whatever you've been stockpiling.
I absolutely recommend planting a few fields of cotton and setting a loom with an infinite job weaving cotton into fabric. When a trader shows up wanting to buy that fabric, you'll be set on spirit stones for years to come.

Also, side-note on that goldwood loop, start using that surplus goldwood as your default material for all walls and lamps and decorations. It's about 6x more attractive than regular timber.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on January 24, 2021, 12:21:20 pm
You can buy it from one sect or another, iirc (though I think there's also one or two that'll trade soul pearls if you get on their good side, which is several times better at cooling stuff). There's an easy few hundred in one or two of the northern areas, too, off the top of my head.

trading has been iffy, ive got no idea what to make for good money, so far I've been buying goldwood and turning it into bows for some slow profit. Also wondering if anyone has spiritstones for sale/trade aside form the merchant who randomly shows up.
If you want stupid money early on just make giant cotton farms and turn them into cloth, mostly. Cloth trades 1:1 with spiritstone and easily comes in amounts that get silly, heh.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on January 24, 2021, 01:37:18 pm
Also viable - spirit stone spears - turn 2 spirit stone and 3 wood into a weapon that sells for (IIRC) 35 or 40 spirit stones.

My question - what am I supposed to do with all these transcribed manuals I've got sitting around? They appear to be worthless for trading, and they take up a lot of room. Just burn them?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on January 24, 2021, 04:18:51 pm
Killed my first demon beast today. Not the one that appeared on my starting map - it achieved a breakthrough(doubling its qi) too quickly after the puppy appeared and I couldn't kill it. I was exploring Mt. Fullmoon and very close to the village I get jumped by a demon wolf. Luckily, it was weaker and they lack a ranged attack; my gal has a 70-80 quality agility talisman and spirit traveler(or something, I forget the exact name), so she can simply outfly it and let the artifact do the work. 1 beast blood and 150 demon hide.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Ygdrad on January 24, 2021, 04:28:27 pm
Killed my first demon beast today. Not the one that appeared on my starting map - it achieved a breakthrough(doubling its qi) too quickly after the puppy appeared and I couldn't kill it. I was exploring Mt. Fullmoon and very close to the village I get jumped by a demon wolf. Luckily, it was weaker and they lack a ranged attack; my gal has a 70-80 quality agility talisman and spirit traveler(or something, I forget the exact name), so she can simply outfly it and let the artifact do the work. 1 beast blood and 150 demon hide.

Be very careful where you store that beast blood :P

Edit: Speaking of being careful with storage. Anyone know if there's a way or a mod to filter storage areas so they don't contain certain items? My fridge gets cinnabar which doesn't expire added to it because of item type overlap and Beast Blood also ends up in the fridge which is... counterproductive.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on January 24, 2021, 05:07:56 pm
Eh... you can filter elements, or do stuff like assign the whatever to a (out of the way, non-flammable) trade area. I tend to do the latter with beast blood. Not sure if there's something more specific than that, though...
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on January 24, 2021, 07:27:12 pm
For my beast blood I just made a storage area off a safe distance from anything flammable, set it to specifically match the item type and rarity of beast blood, and made it high priority. Haven't had any issues since.

But yeah, a mod to filter out specific items, or filter items by perishable status, would be helpful for keeping the freezer free of clutter.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 24, 2021, 09:18:21 pm
My question - what am I supposed to do with all these transcribed manuals I've got sitting around? They appear to be worthless for trading, and they take up a lot of room. Just burn them?
Yeah, just trash them, which you typically do by using the smelt option since its the easiest and most hassle-free way to destroy things.
Edit: Speaking of being careful with storage. Anyone know if there's a way or a mod to filter storage areas so they don't contain certain items? My fridge gets cinnabar which doesn't expire added to it because of item type overlap and Beast Blood also ends up in the fridge which is... counterproductive.
You can specify restrict by type and tier and element which does allow you to put beast blood and phoenix feathers and crimson fruits in separate stockpiles, but... in general its just a pain in the butt.
I do really wish it was possible to restrict stuff better though; most notably I want to be able to break up talisman by type of talisman rather then having 100 talismans in a giant pile with long hard to read names.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 24, 2021, 09:49:40 pm
My question - what am I supposed to do with all these transcribed manuals I've got sitting around? They appear to be worthless for trading, and they take up a lot of room. Just burn them?
Yeah, just trash them, which you typically do by using the smelt option since its the easiest and most hassle-free way to destroy things.

Or if you really want to squeeze out every ounce of value, just let them sit around until they absorb more qi, then smelt when you're out of space? Yegads, qi gathering landfill areas...
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Ygdrad on January 25, 2021, 03:45:54 pm
What's a reasonable expectation for a first golden core? It's the first time I'll be making one and right now on day 57 best I could achieve is tier 5. Not sure if I should hold on or just go with it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on January 25, 2021, 04:45:39 pm
5 is way better than my first attempt (I think I managed an 8). Mind, playing on hardcore, so I couldn't actually see what I'd get until I actually hit the button.

However, even that level 8 managed to majorly improve my sect - between training skills at a discount, providing +'s to inners cultivating under them, and faster map movement for adventures, the next generation improved drastically.

Long story short - 5th tier is good, especially for your first one.

IMO, getting an early first golden core is more useful than getting a strong first core.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Ygdrad on January 25, 2021, 05:11:42 pm
Right now the season has 2 red circles for golden core creation, not sure if I should wait for winter to be done before I do it. Don't know if I risk the game difficulty creeping up and outpacing my progress. Still a total noob at this :P
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on January 25, 2021, 05:17:05 pm
With just herbs, skills from your own law, 95+ mental state, ideal element, ideal season, good room quality, and qi regen pill/spiritstone, you should be looking at around 4th quality. You can probably push that up to 3rd with just shared passives from the other taiyi sect laws. If you can't wait for the proper season then 5th quality is a reasonable expectation. Doing any better will require help from existing highly ascended and trained characters.

You can always reincarnate later if you really want a do-over.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on January 25, 2021, 06:26:30 pm
As long as you don't boost sect reputation, there's not really a difficulty jump over time. I would say to do those events in the world that pop up though-- I'm pretty sure that some of them that timeout are one-time-only or at least operate on a cycle longer than a realistic playthrough.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on January 26, 2021, 05:32:59 am
Learned just now that even if the game shows you a 100% chance of breakthrough success, you can still fail.


EDIT: Could be a bug, it's still showing 100% even though they just broke through, despite not-quite-good time of day and mental state. And yes, they can actually attempt the next breakthrough that fast; my cultivation room is such that not only does their qi recover fully(granted, it's <1000 qi) before the breakthrough is even finished, but actual cultivation is fast enough that it took just a few hours between their previous breakthrough and hitting the limit for this one.

Might be because I stuck the beast blood in there to add (a lot?) more Fire to the room.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Ygdrad on January 26, 2021, 12:33:29 pm
Anyone know what's up with inner combat? Even if I give an inner a bow, if they have an artifact they'll go in melee and seemingly proceed to dance in the enemy's face while the artifact does its thing. Not sure what's up with this. Enemy inners are smart enough to stay away while their artifacts do their thing, why can't mine not rush in melee with a monster that has no ranged attacks? Also, could it be that a shitty artifact is worse for combat than a good weapon?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on January 26, 2021, 12:47:25 pm
Learned just now that even if the game shows you a 100% chance of breakthrough success, you can still fail.

The breakthrough is a process which takes time, and is continuously influenced by all relative factors over the entire course of the breakthrough process. The chance shown is only based on the relevant factors at the moment that you are looking at it. So, if the factors change during the course of the breakthrough, then your final chances will change as well.

One of the most noteworthy factors early on is Feng Shui, which is constantly changing throughout the day. This is why it's best to start breaking through just as Feng Shui begins to improve, so that it will peak in the middle of your breakthrough.
And of course you should avoid making any changes to the decor of the room which might negatively impact the cultivator's compatibility during breakthrough.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on January 26, 2021, 04:24:35 pm
Yin-Yang is what changes throughout the day. I think It's water/metal at night, and wood/fire at day, with earth being highest as these two change over. The season could also go down a pip if your breakthrough goes into the next day. Or maybe your guy's mental state dropped a pip.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 26, 2021, 08:05:03 pm
Anyone know what's up with inner combat? Even if I give an inner a bow, if they have an artifact they'll go in melee and seemingly proceed to dance in the enemy's face while the artifact does its thing. Not sure what's up with this. Enemy inners are smart enough to stay away while their artifacts do their thing, why can't mine not rush in melee with a monster that has no ranged attacks? Also, could it be that a shitty artifact is worse for combat than a good weapon?
Yes, good weapons are better then sufficiently lame artifacts, especially on dudes that are themselves trash at using artifacts.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on January 26, 2021, 08:34:27 pm
Inner should fight with their artifacts as long as they have qi, and only use their regular weapon when qi runs out. They need line of sight, so that may be why they move in close. They also need to be close enough for their artifact to reach the opponent artifact, so if your artifact has very short range they may have to move in close.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on January 27, 2021, 11:44:16 am
I'd rather have outers use weapons.  It makes them highly vulnerable, but its an additive effect on the battlefield.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 01, 2021, 05:09:18 pm
After spending some time in the Land of Illusions, I demolished my old guest rooms and built new ones. Each is Medium/Refined/Normal/Magnificent, costs just 10 spiritwood timber, 15 igneocopper bars, and a bit of Goldwood. Been getting +30-70 faction rep from each person I invite to visit my sect~

(https://i.imgur.com/dd1Tneo.png)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Mookzen on February 03, 2021, 02:30:28 pm
Naturally I have to start my first sects on immortal with basically all additional difficulty sliders maxed. Being essentially a noob at this I fully expect to be wiped in due course, of course, probably many times. Losing is, indeed, fun. Much to learn, basically no max (or at least near-max) difficulty lets plays on youtube seems like, very much looking forward to those as seeing how people approach the challenge would be quite entertaining.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on February 03, 2021, 06:03:24 pm
Naturally I have to start my first sects on immortal with basically all additional difficulty sliders maxed. Being essentially a noob at this I fully expect to be wiped in due course, of course, probably many times. Losing is, indeed, fun. Much to learn, basically no max (or at least near-max) difficulty lets plays on youtube seems like, very much looking forward to those as seeing how people approach the challenge would be quite entertaining.

Protip: Your Inner Disciples can't die if they're not home.  You can go the way of the cockroach by routinely sending at least one Inner Disciple out to camp, so that they can recruit and rebuild the sect each time your home base and its residents get wiped out.  The game generally has a 3 day attack cycle, where you'll have about 3 days between each wave of attacks, give or take a few intermittent invasions.  You can probably limp along for several seasons using that.

Create summer clothing in spring and winter clothing in fall.  Basic survival priorities are very much realistic in that you first need shelter (enclosed room with beds) then water, then food.  While nobody will probably die from a lack of shelter unlike the other two things, they also won't do any work because they're miserable all the time, hence why its priority one.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 03, 2021, 06:57:09 pm
Random visitor showed up. Visitor had a random garbage Law, the description of which explicitly stated you can only achieve the Core Forming stage with it. Yet the visitor was a Golden Core... quality 7.

Not sure if that's a colossal failure or impressive success.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on February 03, 2021, 08:17:31 pm
Don't the vast majority of Golden Cores have that?  But yes, makes no sense.  I'd call it impressive success even if they had a quality 12 core.
Only way that I'd expect it to be possible is if one of those potions/scrolls that assist with breakthrough "pushed" the person past the barrier of understanding of their limited law into Golden Core.

...then again, if there are the rare "Doctors" practicing medicine without having gone to medical school, and "Lawyers" that never went to law school, then I guess its possible.  They're just didn't follow the Law.  :P
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on February 03, 2021, 08:39:38 pm
...then again, if there are the rare "Doctors" practicing medicine without having gone to medical school, and "Lawyers" that never went to law school, then I guess its possible.  They're just didn't follow the Law.  :P

...I don't know if it's a pie or a pie in the face, but whatever you have coming, you deserve it. ._.

GC goes as far down as Q12? Even the first guy I ever made, before I learned how GC worked, was a Q8 (alllllmost Q7).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on February 04, 2021, 12:42:42 am
GC goes as far down as Q12? Even the first guy I ever made, before I learned how GC worked, was a Q8 (alllllmost Q7).

No, the lowest possible is Q9
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 04, 2021, 02:33:20 am
I just survived a shapeshifting tribulation for the first time, and OMG! This big, brute of a wolf turned into an absolutely adorable little girl with wolf ears.
And to think, I almost turned her away when she first arrived at my sect just because of how she looked.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Mookzen on February 04, 2021, 02:48:12 am
I just survived a shapeshifting tribulation for the first time, and OMG! This big, brute of a wolf turned into an absolutely adorable little girl with wolf ears.
And to think, I almost turned her away when she first arrived at my sect just because of how she looked.

Wonderful :D
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 04, 2021, 05:23:07 am
I'm on the cusp of getting my first GC. Right now, without any other preparations, it's giving me an estimate of a Q7 or 8. Hopefully, I can get that up(down?) to Q4 or even Q3. I have some ganoderma stocked, but not enough as winter has come and it's getting very hard to grow lingzhi.

I also have a bunny girl with 20 days before her tribulation, so I'm going to need to double my efforts on gathering GC-boosting items. Right now I have her repeatedly gathering meat from Nanping, both to delay the tribulation and because I did not realize just how fast food gets used in winter.


I also discovered 10 bottles of beast blood in my food/medicine storage. Oddly, this has caused the temperature in the fridge to drop to -110° rather than increase. I also have no idea where it came from, it certainly wasn't the (now GC with 19k of 12k qi somehow) demon bull that my map started with. It woke up, but it's far enough away to ignore. I am digging a lot(my agency in South Mt. has flood requiring 1000 brownstone), so maybe it was dug up.

EDIT: Nevermind, I figured out the beast blood: I killed a fei a short while ago.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on February 04, 2021, 07:34:12 am
Yeah, if you have new beast blood but storage temperature dropped, that usually means you got a soul pearl* in the process, which happens occasionally. I'd check to make sure, heh. They're super useful for making (gigantic) fridge rooms.

*it is consistently and tremendously difficult to avoid calling those yin pearls, incidentally
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 04, 2021, 07:50:46 am
I'm on the cusp of getting my first GC. Right now, without any other preparations, it's giving me an estimate of a Q7 or 8. Hopefully, I can get that up(down?) to Q4 or even Q3. I have some ganoderma stocked, but not enough as winter has come and it's getting very hard to grow lingzhi.

I also have a bunny girl with 20 days before her tribulation, so I'm going to need to double my efforts on gathering GC-boosting items. Right now I have her repeatedly gathering meat from Nanping, both to delay the tribulation and because I did not realize just how fast food gets used in winter.


I also discovered 10 bottles of beast blood in my food/medicine storage. Oddly, this has caused the temperature in the fridge to drop to -110° rather than increase. I also have no idea where it came from, it certainly wasn't the (now GC with 19k of 12k qi somehow) demon bull that my map started with. It woke up, but it's far enough away to ignore. I am digging a lot(my agency in South Mt. has flood requiring 1000 brownstone), so maybe it was dug up.

EDIT: Nevermind, I figured out the beast blood: I killed a fei a short while ago.

Calling it now. Bunny girl is dead.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on February 04, 2021, 09:04:39 am
Oh. Yeah, almost certainly dead as a doornail. 20 days left and not even a GC available to train them up? Dey gonna' have a bad time :-\

Just, uh. Make sure to either kick them out, send them on an indefinite adventure/camping trip, or put their training cushion way the hell away from anything else prior to tribulation day, haha.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on February 04, 2021, 10:52:44 am
Have your bunny girl stand next to your map's demon during the tribulation.  Then when she transforms into a demon, she'll have a playmate!*

*Pretty sure your bunny girl would die from the demon if you actually did that, but at least you'd have one less demon on your map trying to eat everyone.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Mookzen on February 04, 2021, 11:12:19 am
Well, maybe you can at least get some high quality hide from the bunny girl.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 04, 2021, 02:55:23 pm
20 days is plenty of time to prepare a pre-GC YaoGuai, with the proper setup. Doesn't sound like you have that, so it's all about how effectively you can keep delaying that tribulation. Also, I hope bunny has good law matching, since that's the one thing you cannot boost without a lot of late-game setup.

A simple cultivation room with magic altar and element-feeding items should be enough to push compatible cultivators through each breakthrough phase in under a day, up to Primordial Spirit, which should give a healthy qi pool even if the core is not ideal. After that you need a good weapon to fight the tribulation, which is either a matter of luck on your adventures or else recruiting a good magic crafter and making your own. Then a few good fighting talents, which if you can't get from your own law then you may need another cultivator to learn and transcribe them. And lastly you may need a good agency to feed your bunny inspiration so she can learn all those talents. If it's still close after all that, just make bunny swallow some pills to give her that last push.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 04, 2021, 03:44:45 pm
Yeah, if you follow some min-max guides and look up the locations of all the good stuff, you can save the bunny girl, but I don't find a character worth spoiling all that discovery. That's the fun part.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 04, 2021, 04:01:14 pm
Yeah, well, bunny girl is getting close to her GC breakthrough herself. She does have good law matching. She did arrive with a 45-day timer. I'm a bit worried she won't be able to grind enough inspiration to boost her Protection skill. From what I've read, that's the second most important thing for fighting a tribulation, after qi. I do intend to put her on a long-term camping trip, since repeated adventures still have her come home for an hour or so. I have read that there are location you can camp at to cultivate, but I'm guessing those are all gated behind diplomacy with other sects?

And yes, I did get a soul pearl from that fei. I put it on a pedestal in the middle of a lake; a few frogs and rabbits in the surrounding area froze to death within minutes.


And I screwed up that flood event at my agency. It turns out you need to set the policy to Disaster Relief for which the upkeep goes to clearing the event, which wasn't immediately apparent. Also, it was a 20-day event, but even with toggling Watch Closely(which doubles upkeep), it'd still take 25 days to spend 1000 brownstone. I guess you'd have to attach disciples to the agency, but that's a permanent loss of outers to do that.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on February 04, 2021, 04:35:56 pm
And I screwed up that flood event at my agency. It turns out you need to set the policy to Disaster Relief for which the upkeep goes to clearing the event, which wasn't immediately apparent. Also, it was a 20-day event, but even with toggling Watch Closely(which doubles upkeep), it'd still take 25 days to spend 1000 brownstone. I guess you'd have to attach disciples to the agency, but that's a permanent loss of outers to do that.

Also dispatch an Inner to check it out; you can get a few hundred progress from that, depending on their attributes. Only Mt. South tends to have this problem though, as a disaster anywhere else is supposed to have other sects helping out, with the rewards being split between them, but I've seen them do next to nothing a few times. Allegedly, making progress on it and failing results in a smaller penalty than a massive failure though, so doing what you can is still useful.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 04, 2021, 05:06:21 pm
Regarding disasters, counterintuitively you cannot actually send them any resources from your stockpile, so there's no point mining stones at home or whatever they are needing.

Disaster progress is made in three ways.

-Adventure.
This can only be done ONCE, and the amount of progress gained is based on the breakthrough tier of your cultivator. So send your most enlightened cultivator.

-Policy
Disaster Relief policy will give a small boost each day.

-Events
If you set that agency to be watched, you should get 2 events before the disaster concludes, each giving a large boost to progress if you choose the correct response. Without watching you are only likely to get 1 event.

Also other sects may occasionally send relief, but this is unreliable.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 04, 2021, 09:40:00 pm
To give some reference for fighting the shapeshifting tribulation, my yaoguai had a little over 13000 Qi, a great artifact, a spoiler treasure, 20 barrier skill, shield pill, Qi regen pill, and I suicided 4 guys into the tribulation to rebuild the Qi collecting cushion that got broken and he just *barely* made it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 04, 2021, 10:45:50 pm
The wolf I recently passed with had 25,000 Qi, 2x tier7 q50ish artifacts, 18 Artifact Mastery 10 Protect, no qi cushion or pills. Had a bit less than half her qi remaining at the end.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirian on February 04, 2021, 11:18:17 pm
Regarding disasters, counterintuitively you cannot actually send them any resources from your stockpile, so there's no point mining stones at home or whatever they are needing.

Disaster progress is made in three ways.

-Adventure.
This can only be done ONCE, and the amount of progress gained is based on the breakthrough tier of your cultivator. So send your most enlightened cultivator.

-Policy
Disaster Relief policy will give a small boost each day.

-Events
If you set that agency to be watched, you should get 2 events before the disaster concludes, each giving a large boost to progress if you choose the correct response. Without watching you are only likely to get 1 event.

Also other sects may occasionally send relief, but this is unreliable.

To say that there's no point mining stone at home for disaster relief is misleading : the disaster relief policy WILL pull stone from your base if the agency's own stockpile of stone is empty. And if you don't have enough stone to cover the daily upkeep from the policy, mining is certainly helpful.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on February 05, 2021, 01:42:35 am
I just survived a shapeshifting tribulation for the first time, and OMG! This big, brute of a wolf turned into an absolutely adorable little girl with wolf ears.
And to think, I almost turned her away when she first arrived at my sect just because of how she looked.

Can we get a shot of this lil' cutie? :D

(And: How do turtles that pass tribulation look? I don't think I could tolerate raising one up, no matter how good its stats are...)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 05, 2021, 02:18:30 am
Can we get a shot of this lil' cutie? :D

(https://i.imgur.com/sPBP0Ki.png)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 05, 2021, 05:30:04 am
...She has four ears.

To give some reference for fighting the shapeshifting tribulation, my yaoguai had a little over 13000 Qi, a great artifact, a spoiler treasure, 20 barrier skill, shield pill, Qi regen pill, and I suicided 4 guys into the tribulation to rebuild the Qi collecting cushion that got broken and he just *barely* made it.
The wolf I recently passed with had 25,000 Qi, 2x tier7 q50ish artifacts, 18 Artifact Mastery 10 Protect, no qi cushion or pills. Had a bit less than half her qi remaining at the end.

The calculation I read for Protect skill is that every point adds a 0.5x multiplier to your effective qi in regards to how much damage you can take. Example, with 2000qi and a Protect skill of 3, you'd be able to effectively take 5000qi of damage with that(2000 x (1 + 0.5 x 3)), of course not counting other factors. Of which there are probably many. So for 13,000qi and 20 Protect, it's 26,000qi for tanking damage. For 25,000qi and 10 Protect, you can tank 125,000qi of damage.

I've also read that you should probably ditch artifacts, especially defensively poor ones with high qi pools, for tribulations. This being that the artifact will bleed the user's qi to recharge. Low qi artifacts are apparently better because overflow damage to the artifact is lost, so an artifact with, say, 50qi, takes 250qi of damage from the tribulation, the extra 200qi is wasted. The artifact will only pull 50qi from its owner to recover.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on February 05, 2021, 05:57:54 am
Poor little Wolf Inner... Someday, she'll deserve an actual name, like Pochi or Fido. Unlike my guys, "Junk", "Toss", "Maybe Abbot", "Fodder", or my favorite, "Double Zerostat".

...She has four ears.

It's always fun to see how they resolve that issue.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 05, 2021, 06:52:02 am
I've also read that you should probably ditch artifacts, especially defensively poor ones with high qi pools, for tribulations. This being that the artifact will bleed the user's qi to recharge. Low qi artifacts are apparently better because overflow damage to the artifact is lost, so an artifact with, say, 50qi, takes 250qi of damage from the tribulation, the extra 200qi is wasted. The artifact will only pull 50qi from its owner to recover.

Several people have been very vocal in espousing these strategies, but I feel like it's probably something that only works in the late-game, when you can pour resources into inflating the tier of your artifact so that it ends up with high attack power despite it's low qi pool.
I've done a bit of savescumming to experiment around this, and at least at the point I am with the game, using whatever has the highest attack power and fastest speed yields far better results than any of the low-qi-pool artifacts I've tried.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on February 05, 2021, 11:12:53 am
...She has four ears.
All the better to hear you with, dearie *old lady cackles*
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 05, 2021, 02:44:17 pm
I've also read that you should probably ditch artifacts, especially defensively poor ones with high qi pools, for tribulations. This being that the artifact will bleed the user's qi to recharge. Low qi artifacts are apparently better because overflow damage to the artifact is lost, so an artifact with, say, 50qi, takes 250qi of damage from the tribulation, the extra 200qi is wasted. The artifact will only pull 50qi from its owner to recover.

I think it's accurate, but I really don't like how exploitative that is. There needs to be a consequence for just making thousands of Qi in an attack disappear. Maybe the artifact wears down. Maybe it breaks. Maybe the owner get's hurt. Something.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 06, 2021, 03:25:02 am
Poor little Wolf Inner... Someday, she'll deserve an actual name, like Pochi or Fido. Unlike my guys, "Junk", "Toss", "Maybe Abbot", "Fodder", or my favorite, "Double Zerostat".

Wolf should count herself lucky that she didn't qualify for a water law, else she might have ended up among the ranks of "Wet Cultivator", "Damp Cultivator", and "Moist Cultivator".
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 09, 2021, 06:01:37 am
Spring Festival thing is active. This allows you to access the Otherworld Rift.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Sent bunny girl there and got a book and decent amount of much-needed inspiration. Presumably, since she isn't back yet, the book unlocks festive decoration buildings.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 11, 2021, 04:59:34 am
About a week ago, I was savescumming to reroll Primordial Spirit attackers until they turned into Golden Core attackers, which I was just barely able to endure. But I invested in four Grand Chariot Wisdom cultivators, as well as an artifact crafter to make some decent weapons for them.

My efforts paid off a couple days ago, when I got attacked by 2 Primordial Spirits, each with over 150k qi reserves and 3 weapons apiece, with each of the weapons holding an additional 100k+ qi. I thought for sure I would have to scum them, but I threw my cultivators at them just to see how far I would get, and was pleasantly surprised when my Grand Chariot's managed to defeat the enemies without a single injury, and only one close call! I've not had any defeats since then.

Still, I know that greater challenges lay ahead, so I need to keep getting stronger. To that end I've been dumping huge amounts of influence into attempting to recruit a Talisman Cultivator. Unfortunately they require extremely high perception and intelligence, which is a rare combo. Far more rare still when I'm insisting that they have good Qi Sense as well.
Finally, running low on inspiration reserves and growing tired of wasting valuable time, I promoted one of my outers with only a 70% law match. But after I had her gather inspiration and learn some stat-boosting manuals, she jumped up to 130% law match, which I was able to further boost to 145% by equipping some rare trinkets I purchased from the other sects. Enough for a decent IV Golden Core.

And the talismans she makes are soooo good. My Grand Chariots have more than doubled their previous Artifact Power, and I'm working on a spellcaster who should be able to burst for over 300k damage at a time! Kinda disappointed that this law does not contain the talismans for artifact crafting and alchemy, but I'll work towards those next.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 11, 2021, 05:33:18 am
I've learned how to make spirit crystals.

Should I build a room out of them? Gaining spirit stones as material isn't too hard, as I've been milling them into bows already.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 11, 2021, 07:02:57 am
I've learned how to make spirit crystals.

Should I build a room out of them?

Probably start by building some Magic Altar's from them. But after that, sure, make super fancy rooms.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 11, 2021, 01:41:28 pm
I've never seen anyone talk about making stuff out of spirit crystal blocks. Always spirit stone blocks. So I assume that there isn't much , if any, benefit. I only use them to boost cultivation speed of primordial spirit guys.

Also, waiting until you get crazy yield bonuses on an alchemy guy might end up giving you more crystals, saving you a lot of spirit stones.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on February 11, 2021, 02:12:16 pm
Eh, it's fancier than spirit stone, somewhat? Other than that their effectiveness as building material is pretty identical, from what I could tell experimenting with it.

But yeah, you can money print with them if you can get three or more crystals to the batch, iirc. Makes for easy trading if you can get to that point.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 11, 2021, 06:53:52 pm
Eh, it's fancier than spirit stone, somewhat? Other than that their effectiveness as building material is pretty identical, from what I could tell experimenting with it.

But yeah, you can money print with them if you can get three or more crystals to the batch, iirc. Makes for easy trading if you can get to that point.
Spirit crystal is fancier, both more beautiful and of higher refinement, which means that buildings you make out of it are higher quality.

Obviously its not as important as making sure that all your buildings are V auspicious, but in theory you want basically every wall that isn't directly next to a node and every floor that isn't directly under one to be made of spirit crystal.
As spirit crystal is crazy expensive making stuff out of spirit stone instead is basically the way to go since its like 100 times cheaper.

That said, aside from inner bedrooms building quality kinda just doesn't really matter as long as its all V ausp, and even for inner bedrooms all making them having amazing rooms (which give like a +30->+50 mood buff depending on how great the room is) is likely to do is make them gain the hedonist trait faster.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 11, 2021, 08:43:03 pm
Killed the demon bull on my map. It had reached Golden Core since I last scouted it. Sent puppers(now at 30% growth) out first, then my sect leader, and then three outers armed with spiritstone bows. Huajuan had about 40k-45k qi, finished with 10k qi. The beast had 19k.


EDIT: I feel like an idiot. You can adventure in locations owned by other sects, for example to gather resources. The only thing lacking access prevents you from doing is merely entering the map. If I had known this earlier, I'd probably have my two inners at Golden Core already. I just picked up 10 Ganoderma from Mt. Nelumbo in one run, which is roughly how much I've grown total my entire playthrough. I've got 50 total tiles for Lingzhi, on spirit soil and currently in hot-houses to grow.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on February 12, 2021, 08:30:01 am
Oh. Yeah, remember if you haven't managed to actively piss them off, it only takes 1 spirit stone to open the door to gifts then 200 stone worth of whatever to gain access. S'pretty helpful to take a moment to open everyone up once you have enough loot to afford it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 14, 2021, 09:19:23 am
Getting very close to my sect leader reaching Golden Core. Made a few save-scummed attempts at it, in fact. Can't get any higher than a tier 7 core though. Unfortunately, I missed the highest point of the season(Earth law, so "end of season"). The breakthrough preview is showing the cultivation room having one minus to room qi, but the cultivation page shows five pluses for room qi. Not sure what's going on there.

Said room is a 5x5 square with igneocopper floor. A cushion in the center has three displays with beast blood surrounding it, and several displays 3 tiles away with spiritwood. The corners of the room have ice bars to keep the room survivable, especially for any outers who might be doing chores in there. Not sure what else I can change to make it better.

Sect leader's max qi is 3962, and was fed a spirit stone, qi regen pill, and purity pill just before the attempt, which took place around midday to maximize yin/yang bonus. Got about 2/3rds of the way through tier 7 before her qi ran out. Wasn't able to score any Earth Flux beforehand, despite numerous save-scums just before the adventure event at the place you can harvest it. I suspect the game rolls the adventure event shortly before it pops up, or else there's some other anti-scum method in place. I saved just seconds before the popup, and after a few, different(and useless) events, it just kept giving me the "enjoy mortal realm/wreak havoc in mortal realm" event.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on February 14, 2021, 03:04:25 pm
Only certain types of cultivators can get Earth Flux, if I recall.  Usually I just trade for it for my first few Inners.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 14, 2021, 03:18:10 pm
Getting very close to my sect leader reaching Golden Core. Made a few save-scummed attempts at it, in fact. Can't get any higher than a tier 7 core though. Unfortunately, I missed the highest point of the season(Earth law, so "end of season"). The breakthrough preview is showing the cultivation room having one minus to room qi, but the cultivation page shows five pluses for room qi. Not sure what's going on there.

Said room is a 5x5 square with igneocopper floor. A cushion in the center has three displays with beast blood surrounding it, and several displays 3 tiles away with spiritwood. The corners of the room have ice bars to keep the room survivable, especially for any outers who might be doing chores in there. Not sure what else I can change to make it better.

Sect leader's max qi is 3962, and was fed a spirit stone, qi regen pill, and purity pill just before the attempt, which took place around midday to maximize yin/yang bonus. Got about 2/3rds of the way through tier 7 before her qi ran out. Wasn't able to score any Earth Flux beforehand, despite numerous save-scums just before the adventure event at the place you can harvest it. I suspect the game rolls the adventure event shortly before it pops up, or else there's some other anti-scum method in place. I saved just seconds before the popup, and after a few, different(and useless) events, it just kept giving me the "enjoy mortal realm/wreak havoc in mortal realm" event.

I'm not sure how many spoilers you want so I will try to stick to mechanics that aren't really explained. You want to look for Qi gathering items and place them on displays (beast blood doesn't gather Qi).  A range of 1 means that tile, a range of 2 means it reached all adjacent (not diagonal) tiles. This makes spirit wood great because it has a Qi range long enough to support your breakthrough, without affecting the wood element of the tile the cultivator is on. So you want a bunch of high Qi gathering items within range of wherever you are having your cultivator breakthrough (maybe take a look at a giant ginko if you have one). Fengshui helps. Qi takes a few days to build up. Only the element on the specific tile the breakthrough is taking place on matters.

Qi regen pills don't help as regen is disabled during GC breakthrough.

Ganoderma and red ginseng boost max Qi, so grow some fields of ginseng and Lingzhi early and shove a few of those in their face before they breakthrough, and max Qi is super important so just learn all the max Qi manuals. Constitution and intelligence affect the Qi sense skill, which in turn affects Max Qi, so if you have the inspiration, might as well learn manuals for those too.

Only certain types of cultivators can get Earth Flux, if I recall.  Usually I just trade for it for my first few Inners.

I learned this recently. You need a cultivator who's law feeds the object they are trying to get. So you would need a fire cultivator to search for earth flux (I assume it's of earth element, can't remember)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 14, 2021, 04:52:10 pm
Sect leader's max qi is 3962, and was fed a spirit stone, qi regen pill, and purity pill just before the attempt, which took place around midday to maximize yin/yang bonus. Got about 2/3rds of the way through tier 7 before her qi ran out. Wasn't able to score any Earth Flux beforehand, despite numerous save-scums just before the adventure event at the place you can harvest it. I suspect the game rolls the adventure event shortly before it pops up, or else there's some other anti-scum method in place. I saved just seconds before the popup, and after a few, different(and useless) events, it just kept giving me the "enjoy mortal realm/wreak havoc in mortal realm" event.
Events are decided ~3 days beforehand, so if you want to save scum you need to go at least 4 days back. Parts of the events are determined when you actually do them (eg. what roll you get on it, what rewards you get for some, what exact enemies pop up to murder you), but the type of event is determined long beforehand.
I think its different for dudes you send on adventure (as obviously adventures don't last 3 days), and save scumming should typically work there, although as EuchreJack points out you flat out can't succeed at getting earth flux without a Fire/Earth cultivator.
Said room is a 5x5 square with igneocopper floor. A cushion in the center has three displays with beast blood surrounding it, and several displays 3 tiles away with spiritwood. The corners of the room have ice bars to keep the room survivable, especially for any outers who might be doing chores in there. Not sure what else I can change to make it better.
As Micro says, not sure how much spoilers you want... but basically you want to stuff as much element appropriate qi gather in the room as possible, the more the better. Also as Micro says you need to wait for 5 full days after dropping the last thing with qi gather down for your cultivation room if you want to get the proper bonus for it.
Note that it being element appropriate is more important than the qi gather. If you stick a wrong element thing too close it messes up the element which is worse then the qi bonus it gives.
(maybe take a look at a giant ginko if you have one).
All range 4 stuff only has a element range of 3, which means you can stick them at range 4 and they still help a great deal. Similarly, most range 5 stuff has element range 4, which means you can stick them at range 5 and they still help.
However this notably does *not* apply to giant ginko, which has both a qi and element range of 5 and is thus useless for anything besides fire cultivating (which needs wood element).
Unfortunately, I missed the highest point of the season(Earth law, so "end of season").
I'll just throw this (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1gcZdBr36Xokzj2O8hUvbIjSw50lFaN3tbhkpDCOpC5Y/edit#gid=0) super hand season breakthrough guide out there so you can just know ahead of time when to watch for breakthrough so you don't accidently miss it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 14, 2021, 05:15:51 pm
One huge factor I did not see Akura or anyone else mention is Mental State. Getting your cultivator past that 95% mental state threshold is usually worth one or two GC tiers. You can use a Story Talisman to help boost this early on; Story is bad for cultivation speed, but won't negatively impact breakthrough.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Law Match is another big factor, though a bit more difficult to manipulate. Whatever attributes your law uses, learn any skills available to boost those attributes. If you need Charisma, you can craft bracelets and equip them to boost charisma, with scaling based on the attractiveness of the bracelet; spiritwood timber makes a very attractive bracelet! For other stat-boosting tools, check the trade menu at any friendly sects every few weeks; they occasionally stock tools which you cannot craft, and usually sell them cheap!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: martinuzz on February 15, 2021, 06:18:40 am
Okay this thread got me so confused I had to get the game.

I know nothing at all about Chinese martial arts literature, so I am preparing to not understand a thing about what's happening.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 15, 2021, 02:52:10 pm
Search for "wuxia world" and just read anything. There are novels and many of said novels have been turned into manga/manhwua.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: martinuzz on February 15, 2021, 03:29:59 pm
Thanks, I should probably have a look at that, this is pretty alien.

What I understand so far from the tutorials, this is like rock, paper, scissor with isometric 3d graphics and giant trees.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 15, 2021, 04:46:30 pm
You should use the discord. It's well organized and the people are very friendly. I've gotten tons of help there.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on February 15, 2021, 10:12:09 pm
Eh... the caveat I'd put on going out and reading wuxia/xianxia is that, well. A lot of the major/main characters in those things are just colossally terrible people.

It's not a genre you want to wade into without being aware you're going to run into wildly unethical MCs and secondary characters -- mass murder/genocide and torture, rape and various sorts of mind control or slavery, murderously rampant theft, the list just kinda'... goes. There's a lot of interesting ideas (that, obviously enough, are particularly relevant to ACS), but as a genre there's a lot of literary sewage (even relative to general fiction) to swim through and some commonly repeating themes that are pretty damn nasty.

So, like. Tread careful if you're going to tread, and don't hesitate to just drop something like it's a poisoned cow patty and move on. One unabashedly good thing about punch magic fantasy stuff is there's oodles -- millions upon millions of words -- of the junk out there these days, even if they're not a major print genre outside their home countries. If you run into something unpleasant just go find something else.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 16, 2021, 12:44:17 am
Huh.... All the manga versions I've read had the MCs be generally decent. Maybe the artists took some creative liberties?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 16, 2021, 05:27:14 am
My Talisman Cultivator is now up to 25k Artifact Battle Power, significantly outclassing my old team of Grand Chariot's who each have around 10k ABP. And I was pleasantly surprised to see my Sunflower Cultivator leap to 15k after learning Unus. I'm strongly considering retiring a couple of the Chariot's soon, to make room for more promising cultivators. Though I may just set them to permanent adventuring instead.

I recently made my first Body Cultivator. Definitely a learning curve here, but figuring out all these new systems is what I love about this game. She's currently busy breathing in a room full of animals, tombs, and a rainbow of qi gathering items.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on February 16, 2021, 05:40:07 am
It's not as though we're all that great in ACS either though-- we have skills that brainwash people, suck the life out of them, and treat pretty much everybody as disposable tools.

Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 16, 2021, 07:22:25 am
It's not as though we're all that great in ACS either though-- we have skills that brainwash people, suck the life out of them, and treat pretty much everybody as disposable tools.

Also "Hell Gates" are a thing.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on February 16, 2021, 08:01:03 am
Huh.... All the manga versions I've read had the MCs be generally decent. Maybe the artists took some creative liberties?
From what I've seen of manga/manwha adaptations, that tends to be what happens, yeah. Mix of that, the particularly odious ones just not getting adapted, and the medium leaving out (unfortunate) details just due to the nature of the format.

It's not as though we're all that great in ACS either though-- we have skills that brainwash people, suck the life out of them, and treat pretty much everybody as disposable tools.
And yeah, ACS is quite true to common punch magic fantasy tropes, so... you can be a pretty horrible person. Nature of the presentation abstracts exactly what's going on more than writing does, though, and there's more freedom to not be a genocidal asshole if you don't want to be instead of just being along for the murder/etc. ride.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Vector on February 16, 2021, 12:08:44 pm
Huh.... All the manga versions I've read had the MCs be generally decent. Maybe the artists took some creative liberties?
From what I've seen of manga/manwha adaptations, that tends to be what happens, yeah. Mix of that, the particularly odious ones just not getting adapted, and the medium leaving out (unfortunate) details just due to the nature of the format.

This. There tends to be a similar cutback in odiousness from manga to anime, and from there to live action. Ratings boards are more strict the more "lifelike" the depiction is.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 17, 2021, 08:52:00 pm
Got a love triangle happening in my sect. First is a catboy, Miao Hongsheng; who currently has a permanent "Damaged Organs" effect on his head(brain damage?). I was originally going to put him through Sunflower Refining Law(neuter the damn cat), but he has 96% compatibility with True Sun Refining instead(and I can still neuter him by teaching him Lunar Form). He fell in love with Du Mengxiang, the sect's best crafter. And since the rest of her stats are terrible(except maxed charisma), she's staying that way unless an even better crafter comes along in which case she's being shipped off to an agency somewhere. A few days later, Guo Qian, who is great at construction, decent at magic and medicine, 133% compatibility with Six Paths Reincarnation, and, according to her bio, used to go topless in the snow, fell in love with the catboy. According to the social logs, Guo was being a bit tsundere to him.


In less worldly news, the bunny girl has 15 days left before tribulation, and only 400 points of cultivation before she can attempt her Golden Core breakthrough. I'm going to ship her off on another camping trip to Mt. South and collect the inspiration there. She needs to learn a lot of skills. The advices from before were helpful, thank you. Sect leader's cultivation room now has four bars of Fire Essence, and bunny girl's cultivation room has four bars of lumina. Much higher qi bonuses in those rooms now. A third inner has been inducted, a tigerboy taking Grand Chariot Wisdom.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 26, 2021, 07:22:55 pm
Sect leader is finally at Golden Core. Had to settle on a GC4. Granted, it was my original goal to hit at least that, but there was nothing I could do to bump it up any further. Wasn't able to find any Earth Flux whatsoever, even though I do have a cultivator supposedly able to find it(catboy, a decently lucky True Sun). Then again, I don't have access to Gemspring Cave, only Exultant Isle. Guess I can just throw my sect leader at Mt. Shu until Gemspring Cave appears.

Sect leader now has a little over 19k qi. High enough to turn some peculiar items into artifacts, such as low-end magic drugs and darksteel weapons. Or even spirit stones.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 26, 2021, 08:20:20 pm
Might want to send your fire law cultivator to alchemist peak *wink wink*.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on August 12, 2021, 06:48:27 pm
Anyone else experiencing frequent bugs and crashes on Adventure Mode?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on August 13, 2021, 08:26:08 am
Anyone else experiencing frequent bugs and crashes on Adventure Mode?
I haven't, but I've only just started a new playthrough, so my adventure mode shenanigans are currently limited to just my founder and the surrounding sites.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on August 13, 2021, 07:40:59 pm
Anyone else experiencing frequent bugs and crashes on Adventure Mode?
I haven't, but I've only just started a new playthrough, so my adventure mode shenanigans are currently limited to just my founder and the surrounding sites.

Hm, that is where I'm getting the crashes.  Going into the sites either locks up my keyboard or crashes the computer.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on August 13, 2021, 09:42:51 pm
It might just be my machine, I've had similar issues with some other games.

More exciting news, I started with an Otherworld Rift, and a cultivator came to visit. One of my Outer Disciples convinced them to stay!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirus on August 14, 2021, 08:29:57 pm
So people were talking about how terrible a lot of wuxia/cultivation writings are. Apparently there's a lot of garbage in the genre with unlikable protagonists and so on.

What are some good examples? Are there any? I keep wanting to get into ACS but almost every concept is completely alien and/or poorly explained. I understand the basic gameplay loop (train warrior monks, ascend to higher power levels, keep training and growing stronger) but that's about it. If there's a decent crash course on the genre I wouldn't mind reading it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on August 14, 2021, 10:02:29 pm
My Disciple Died Yet Again is one of the few I found tolerable... mostly because it's intentionally kind of off the wall (one of the sub-realms is a nigh endless Plants vs Zombies field...) and effectively acts as a criticism of the genre. If you prefer something more visual over textual, My Sect's Senior Disciple Has a Hole in His Head makes for a decent and semi-readable... thing. Though, like the former, partly because it's intentionally crazy and self-aware with weird but generally well-meaning main characters.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirus on August 14, 2021, 11:53:32 pm
That's um, not an especially auspicious take on the genre, if the two most tolerable recommendations are parodies :P
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on August 15, 2021, 03:15:38 am
That's um, not an especially auspicious take on the genre, if the two most tolerable recommendations are parodies :P

Well, the former is basically about a woman
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I admit, I'm not really a fan of the genre when played straight, because it just seems utterly ludicrous to me to begin with, so the ones I enjoy are pointing out the oddities and playing with them.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on August 15, 2021, 04:22:46 am
That's um, not an especially auspicious take on the genre, if the two most tolerable recommendations are parodies :P
Coming at it from a western perspective Xianxia is completely unique. Your first Xianxia novel will contain a vast amount of world-building and mechanical systems you have never seen before, a huge amount of new tropes and an entirely different cultural feel from any English novel.

The thing is though that once you actually get into the genre in any real depth all you see that pretty much all of them are the exact same novel reskinned with only very minor differences.

The MC's are mostly interchangeable (someone completely ruthless willing to do nearly anything while also being the most talented and luckiest person in the history of the universe), the fundamental plot is the same (eg. cultivate to become the most powerful dude in the multiverse just because) and in large part the cultivation systems are at a fundamental level the same even if the specifics differ (eg. use energy to cultivate and eat rare stuff to become more powerful).

The best comedy/parody novels always change things up significantly from the standard Xianxia formula, which is why they are preferred by many long-time readers.

Still, for your first Xianxia the fact that 99% of the genre is a homogeneous trash heap doesn't matter.

So people were talking about how terrible a lot of wuxia/cultivation writings are. Apparently there's a lot of garbage in the genre with unlikable protagonists and so on.
If there's a decent crash course on the genre I wouldn't mind reading it.
Just to be clear, there is no crash course. Its pretty typical for completed Xianxia novels to be over a thousand chapters and a million words long since authors get paid by the word and typically are on a tight schedule of multiple chapters per week (which obviously lowers the quality of pretty much every published Xianxia work).


I would personally recommend Desolate Era (https://www.novelupdates.com/series/the-desolate-era/) as A) A good Xianxia, B) with a fairly traditional cultivation system while C) having a fairly moral protagonist.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirus on August 15, 2021, 08:22:53 am
I'm sure the parodies are fun stories, it's just that parodies usually require that the audience be familiar with the source material that is being parodied. For someone like myself, unfamiliar with xianxia in general, most of it would likely go over my head.

Thanks for the recommendation though, I'll check it out.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: JimboM12 on August 15, 2021, 12:56:11 pm
a simple manhua, i think thats the term for the manga/comic/visual novel version of that xianxia genre (again im not too sure about the terminology), is this one called Tales of Demons and Gods.

its almost exactly that plot but the mc is a good guy based a bit off of naruto, if i may guess, and its got isekai elements merged into it because he gets sent back in time and wants to protect his home city from demon invasions and politically rival clans from fucking it over. so using his knowledge of future events and historical techniques that would only be discovered in the aftermath of his cities destruction, he begins cultivating using the best techs with his low quality spiritual core (which ofc he'd have) until he's the strongest. he also uses this knowledge to pick out those who can be trusted (i.e. those who didn't backstab and run away during the destruction) and helps them also become more powerful and influential.

all in all, its worth at least a look.

i read quite a bit of it before my favorite site ran out of chapters a while ago, and it may be the only reason i even looked at this game. sseth's video on it tipped me over as well.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: nenjin on August 15, 2021, 05:06:15 pm
This is on my wishlist but I feel like it's going to take Dwarf Fortress levels of focus to play. (i.e. pushing aside everything else I'm playing.)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on August 15, 2021, 05:11:57 pm
Tales of demons and gods is one of the few "manga" (the different words like manhua is based off the language, like Korean or Chinese, but I'm just going to stick with manga) that I really look forwards to constantly reading. The problem is that all these various Xianxia comics differ in how the worlds works, and don't really match up with the game, or each other. I know that at least some of them will feel pretty close to this game though.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on August 16, 2021, 09:13:05 am
I mostly listen to audiobooks. There's two books in this genre that I've listened to fairly recently that were pretty good, and didn't involve protagonists that kick puppies and drown kittens to up their Ki.

Street Cultivation by Sarah Lin
(Description Blurbs from Amazon)
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Unsouled by Will Wight
Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I enjoyed both, although if I had to recommend one over the other, I'd probably go with Street Cultivation, since it's got a good length to it (13 hrs and 38 mins) and has a satisfying arc to the story. Unsouled is only 8 hrs and 45 mins, which is on the short side for my spent credit, and it heavily encourages you to keep going with the (similarly short) sequels.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on August 16, 2021, 04:37:10 pm
I have heard that the light novels have shitty main characters, but the manga versions tend to remove those shitty parts. Plus a picture is worth a thousand words and it will take far less time to read the manga and get the same story.

And Street Cultivation reminds me of another one of my favorites, "Cultivation Chat Group".
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on August 16, 2021, 07:49:27 pm
So, anyone up for a Let's Play?  Pictures + Text?

Some "recommendations" by the game. (https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/955900/view/2928995526084933684)  I liked Birth of the Demonic Sword.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Vector on August 19, 2021, 01:37:14 pm
@Sirus: I think something else to think about is that xianxia + wuxia play a role fundamentally like the western fantasy genre. Most of western fantasy novels partake from a few key ingredients:

a. Tension between old pagan religion and centralized religion (reskinned Christianity)
b. Someone of low or otherwise unusual birth saves the realm
c. Fracturing within and without (e.g. invaders from beyond the ocean cause trouble at the same time as a famine)
d. Magicks

To an extent, in a certain sense, all of those books are exactly the same. They are about the crises of Christianity and what Europe lost in the process of gaining ability in science.

So what you might not notice is that there are old-old novels with xianxia or fantasy elements (Journey to the West, Mallory's King Arthur) but most modern novels with fantasy elements will partake. For example, Dragonball has significant Xianxia elements, because Dragonball draws from the "Ur" xianxia story as its source material. Especially old-school Dragonball has scenes with "drink the magic water to become stronger," for example.

My point is: my recommendation would be to read not a book designated specifically as xianxia. This would be like telling someone just jumping to read . . . IDK, whatever you think the "king" western fantasy book is. Maybe Lord of the Rings? It has a good reputation but believe you me it isn't easy to read without the entire rest of the cultural context. "Why do we keep talking about this guy's lineage? The language in this book sounds weird . . ." Let alone understanding the context of what each of the characters is supposed to represent. There's just too much baggage to decode it for a first-time reader.

To be clear: I personally no longer consider myself a fan of the fantasy genre for similar reasons to what has been cited about xianxia. I love certain elements of the genre, and do read it some, but I don't read piles and piles of it as I do e.g. science fiction or other forms of speculative fiction.

So the point is, I think you should read a xianxia book with other enjoyable elements that you find easier to wrap your mind around. I really liked the novella by Zen Cho, The Order of the Pure Moon Reflected in Water. It has xianxia elements without screaming "I am a Book About Cultivation!!!"
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirus on August 19, 2021, 04:49:21 pm
Funnily enough I just read the Lord of the Rings for the first time not too long ago, and I was in fact wondering why Tolkien spent so much time on ancestors and mythical figures and so on, particularly when they had no real relevance to whatever was going on in the story. Also wondering about other things, but that's outside the scope of this thread :P

Alright, fair enough. Xianxia/wuxia are basically Chinese Fantasy Novels, and in a lot of cases the stories will assume that the reader is familiar enough with the cultural background to understand why they're doing things the way they do. That makes sense.

As a side note: thanks to everyone leaving suggestions. I have been looking at them! There's just a lot to look at and never enough time in the day.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: nenjin on August 19, 2021, 05:23:45 pm
Funnily enough I just read the Lord of the Rings for the first time not too long ago, and I was in fact wondering why Tolkien spent so much time on ancestors and mythical figures and so on, particularly when they had no real relevance to whatever was going on in the story. Also wondering about other things, but that's outside the scope of this thread :P

There is vastly more to Middle Earth than the Hobbit and LotR. There's several ages of the world prior to those books which set up all the things the books are about.

It just doesn't make for very engrossing reading unless you enjoy the equivalent of a dry history text. (See: The Silmarillion.)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on August 25, 2021, 08:25:05 am
Alright, fair enough. Xianxia/wuxia are basically Chinese Fantasy Novels, and in a lot of cases the stories will assume that the reader is familiar enough with the cultural background to understand why they're doing things the way they do. That makes sense.
It's probably easier to think of them as Martial Arts/Punch Magic Fantasy rather than chinese specifically, at this point -- the genre's spread out a bit, and while a lot of it still originates from china and leans heavily on its cultural trappings, a fair bit doesn't, too. There's also lots of Chinese fantasy works that are nothing like xianxia or wuxia, heh.

So far as recommendations go, in no particular order the ones I've RRS'd from Royal Road trawls are
Molting the Mortal Coil
Beware of Chicken
The Path of Ascension (Sorta'; it's a litrpg running off a xianxia engine)
Cultivation Anomaly
Fighting to be Kind in a Cultivation World
Breaker of Horizons
Long Fang - Cultivator vs System (Again sorta', it's a xianxia critter transposed into a litrpg setting)

Other stuff I can remember... I liked 40 Millenniums of Cultivation, though it has its problems, especially later on. If the name isn't hint enough, it's basically someone doing a Warhammer 40k inspired sci-fi xianxia deal.

Haven't gotten around to reading through it again (last time I did, it wasn't finished being translated into english), and it's a subtly different genre (xuanhuan instead of xianxia, so basically folklore-y fantasy instead of punch magic, this one with a mystery tilt), but what I had read of Lord of the Mysteries was super solid.

Think I remember liking World of Cultivation quite a lot... title's kinda' generic, so you'd know it by the zombie face.

Pretty sure lots of folks would recommend Library of Heaven's Path, though from what I remember it's another one of those "Starts pretty interesting, gets less so as it goes" deals.

I'd second Desolate Era, heh.

There's... well, bunches more, many I'm forgetting. Some good, plenty kinda' bad. If you ever see someone starting to talk about pulling up roots, you'd probably be best served just ditching it before the genocide starts... if you're not really into people throwing geographic features at each other, a lot of the trappings common to punch magic fantasy are goddamn odious, heh.

If you want legit access to english ones, Royal Road has a pile, and big bonus there over the more traditional sources is many of them tend to be, well... shorter. Which can be nice for testing the waters, so to speak. One thing about xianxia/wuxia fiction is it's not uncommon for them to go long, like holy shit long. That lord of the mysteries mentioned clocks in at 1400 chapters on completion, coming up on something like 2.7 million words. 40M isn't even done and it's up to 2700 (it's something like 10 million words, and I didn't accidentally add a 0).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Aoi on August 25, 2021, 11:20:55 am
One thing about xianxia/wuxia fiction is it's not uncommon for them to go long, like holy shit long. That lord of the mysteries mentioned clocks in at 1400 chapters on completion, coming up on something like 2.7 million words. 40M isn't even done and it's up to 2700 (it's something like 10 million words, and I didn't accidentally add a 0).

A point of reference:

Quote from: Google
Word counts of the books in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings series:
The Hobbit – 95,356 words.
The Fellowship of the Ring – 187,790 words.
The Two Towers – 156,198 words.
The Return of the King – 137,115 words.
The entire Lord of the Rings series (including The Hobbit) – 576,459 words.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on August 25, 2021, 12:07:15 pm
Good point, but I think the difference is that most fantasy novels aren't trying to be the Lord of the Rings. At least not in one book.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on August 25, 2021, 09:17:49 pm
Eh... from what I understand, a decent chunk of what's going on there is that a fair amount of the monetization options surrounding the common modern platforms for xianxia stuff is based somewhat on word count. Add on that the format in question makes pumping out chapters easy (they're largely web based nowadays, so there's no need for discrete publishing or formatting anything as a "book") and, y'know. Word count go brrrrr.

There's other stuff going on there, too, but imagine for a moment if tolkien could have made an episodic webnovel of the Silmarillion instead of actually having to make some kind of deal with publishers to get it on the market. If he could have just chucked out a worldbuilding myth thing every couple months for years/decades and it would have been a viable production strategy that would have seen wide availability. Maybe it would have been the same size, maybe it would have ended up thick enough to sink a small ship if printed out.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on August 26, 2021, 09:23:53 am
maybe it would have ended up thick enough to sink a small ship if printed out.

My guess is that one would have happened.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on August 31, 2021, 03:14:06 pm
They just released a sizable update, along with a new DLC: The Immortal Tales of Wudang. ~$4 gets you a pretty sizable chunk of extra content, including the possibility of getting a giant tortoise+snake pet that apparently poops spirit stones.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: sephiroth on September 01, 2021, 10:57:57 am
Can we grow our own spirit dew? I'm trying to grew normal grass using a field on a patch of spirit soil, but no luck so far.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on September 01, 2021, 12:21:57 pm
Can we grow our own spirit dew? I'm trying to grew normal grass using a field on a patch of spirit soil, but no luck so far.

One of the DLC crops seems to basically replace Spirit Dew as just plainly better.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on September 01, 2021, 11:15:54 pm
Can we grow our own spirit dew? I'm trying to grew normal grass using a field on a patch of spirit soil, but no luck so far.
My (very limited and possibly wrong) understanding is that regular grass being grown on spirit soil has a very small chance per day to turn into spirit dew. So you basically just have to designate a large chunk of spirit soil as grass then cut individual tiles when it turns into spirit grass and you want to consume it. This of course takes ages so you can't just try growing some the day/week/season you actually need a good amount.

Note that although spirit dew rots within hours (and still rots eventually even if you stick it in a -273 celcius room) you can just stick it (and any other object in the game) on a stand to stop it rotting till the moment you need it.
---
From what Euchre just said though it seems like spirit dew is now largely irrelevant.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on September 02, 2021, 12:35:45 pm
Can we grow our own spirit dew? I'm trying to grew normal grass using a field on a patch of spirit soil, but no luck so far.

One of the DLC crops seems to basically replace Spirit Dew as just plainly better.

Quote
New Items:
Soil Essence:
A sweet and refreshing herb that can not only reduce hunger but also replenish nutrients. Thought to be Ganoderma by immortals, the herb is known as Soil Essence because it absorbs the essence of the earth.

The item that I thought of as a better replacement of Spirit Dew.  Dunno if accurate, I haven't gotten far into Spirit Dew harvesting.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: sephiroth on September 06, 2021, 11:53:04 am
My Prism Lotus isn't splitting, even though it's been at 100% maturity for around 300+ days. Meanwhile, my fire tree has split twice in that time. The lotus is surrounded on all sides by spirit water, around 10x10, and the temperature is below -120, all conditions for the lotus to grow is set. I even recently added several light sources in the corners in case dim light/darkness is an issue. The plant IS heavily cursed, so I can't keep enough qi in it 24/7, which I think may be the culprit, but I've also tried feeding it a bunch of soul pearls one after another, and that didn't seem to do anything either, though the qi did tend to vanish pretty fast.

Is there something I'm missing? Or do Prism Lotus not split right? Maybe I should harvest the lotus and just wait for the next batch, in case there's some sort of bug? Any insight would be helpful.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on September 06, 2021, 03:36:06 pm
This guide (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1n3A-8UnyQda_Ffy1JYL7igG1CX8Jk-G5jnnjvDMPD74/edit#) on spirit trees by Kurt goes over a bunch of stuff for spirit trees, including the requirements for them to split.

I uh... can't copy from the document directly cause it's disabled, but you are probably missing the fact that a split tree needs to go on water.

The split range is anywhere in range randomly from 2-16 tiles. If anything besides water is in that tile (for prism lotus) it fails.
Thus you would want to have water all the way out to 16 tiles(!) in every direction just to make sure splitting doesn't fail. If it does fail presumably you just have to wait ages for it to try again.
Since all the other trees just require normal land tiles without a plant or floor its much easier to split them without doing anything.

Note that even if it fails the timer restarts from the beginning (with the timer being half of the maturity time of the plant), so its entirely possible that your tree *has* tried to split like 3 times and just failed over and over.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on September 07, 2021, 09:53:08 am
I recall the only method of getting info from a withdrawn person being a specific skill from the dog. I was wondering if that has changed as it really turned me off this game.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: sephiroth on September 25, 2021, 04:40:44 pm
How do I start the phoenix battle? I've found the Dragon Platform location at the top left of the map, I even have a Phoenix Fire Jade, but there doesn't seem to be any information on how to actually find the phoenix itself or start a fight with it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on September 25, 2021, 07:01:09 pm
According to Wiki (https://amazing-cultivation-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/Phoenix), you need to have your cultivator interact with the Jade, which will start 10 days of fun time. After those 10 days you can invoke a Rain Dance miracle to summon the Phoenix.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: axiomsofdominion on December 31, 2021, 09:33:19 pm
...
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on December 31, 2021, 10:55:00 pm
Now that ACS2 has been announced, I think it is unlikely that we will see any more major updates to ACS1. So the time is not going to get much more optimal than now.

As for criticisms, the biggest would be that some game mechanics are unintuitive. Simply surviving without foreknowledge of the game is fairly difficult, and thriving is almost impossible.
I'm not saying that you have to follow an external step-by-step guide...but at least browsing a 'Tips for Beginners' is strongly recommended. Or ask here or in Discord when you run into something you're uncertain about.

Beyond that, one major criticism I have is that descriptions are often vague. You might by looking at investing in a buff that says it 'slightly increases power', which could mean a 2% or 20% increase, and you have no way to know. There is a mod called Numeric Descriptions (https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2406803873) which explicitly tells you what these things will do, and I strongly recommend this mod.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on January 03, 2022, 02:35:33 pm
Really looking for the optimal time to get into this game. Can I get a strong and detailed criticism to see if any of the major problems would put me off?

Do you have 2+weeks to figure it out, then 2+weeks to actually play it?  If not, might want to pass on this one.  It's a slow grind all the way.
Optimal time is when you've got a LOT of free time.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: nenjin on January 03, 2022, 02:41:30 pm
Yeah. I feel like this game has DF levels of starting and failing multiple times until you know what you're doing.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: axiomsofdominion on January 03, 2022, 02:57:23 pm
A lot of the indie games, even the less complex ones with tutorials, seem to have this issue. Wonder what the most major common causes are.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on January 03, 2022, 06:33:37 pm
ACS is a systems game, in that as you proceed you gradually add new systems onto the existing game, and your previous choices make the current game play easier/harder.  Eventually, you reach the point where its quicker to start over "properly" than wait for the next system to complete inefficiently/suboptimally.
Or at least it can feel like that, although there are (marginal) rewards for going the long route as well.

The lack of information comes from the lack of people that have gone through all the systems.  So like everyone has made a Golden Core.  But only some have created a Primordial Spirit.  And so forth, until its Undiscovered Territory where few have gone before and its different because they all got there in different ways.

DF has an advantage in its Wiki and its lack of an end state.  You can play DF as a game inspired by the systems, and there is less of a direct progression between them.  Don't care about learning to make soap?  Eh, some dwarves will die, but your fortress can go on.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: nenjin on January 03, 2022, 06:46:19 pm
Half agree. If you don't figure out how fortress defense and combat work eventually, you're gonna die on a vanilla world. And simply learning to feed a growing fortress is in itself a learning process. Dwarves may not care about washing by and large, but if you don't figure out the processing train of plump farming --> booze, your fortress will go down.

Like if digging a well was an actual requirement to survival...shit I think I flooded at least 3 fortresses before I really figured out what I was doing.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Il Palazzo on January 04, 2022, 05:33:52 am
The one thing that eventually makes me put down ACS each time I get to playing, is that there's just no such thing as designing defences. If the invading AI decides to path to your defenceless peons, as it is sometimes prone to do in spite of being in a fight with your inner disciples, then they're toast. Can't do anything about it. It's just a random fuck you the game occasionally throws at you.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 04, 2022, 06:33:50 am
The one thing that eventually makes me put down ACS each time I get to playing, is that there's just no such thing as designing defences. If the invading AI decides to path to your defenceless peons, as it is sometimes prone to do in spite of being in a fight with your inner disciples, then they're toast. Can't do anything about it. It's just a random fuck you the game occasionally throws at you.
I mean, assuming you throw your dudes into a bell room the instant enemies come on the map they usually get there safe before the enemies actually aggro and are then immune to being targeted as they are indoors and not attacking right?*
At least that's what I remember from when I was actually playing the game.

*Outside of the actual boss battles that can randomly just kill your dudes if you get bad luck.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Il Palazzo on January 04, 2022, 07:49:11 am
I haven't seen that immunity you speak of.
And boss fights are just complete bullshit in this regard.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on January 04, 2022, 03:38:36 pm
Ah, but that is only because every disciple is so loveable, that you can't help but want them all to survive.  I even want to bandits to convert and join me.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on January 04, 2022, 11:17:49 pm
I haven't seen that immunity you speak of.
And boss fights are just complete bullshit in this regard.
You are probably right, it's been ages since I've actually played the game.

That said, I do 100% agree that the lack of defenses is really sad. Not just cause it lets your people die and it lets bosses randomly destroy your wonders, but because having them is just so fundamental to this type of game and the Xianxia genre as a whole that its complete lack of inclusion is a massive oversight.

Give me my magical walls or giant AOE forcefields, I know you got em Xianxia.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Il Palazzo on January 05, 2022, 01:29:06 am
Word. I was so happy when I realised carving out an ersatz dwarf fortress in the living wall of a mountain was a possibility. But then it turned out to not even not make any difference defence-wise, but actively inhibit your ability to react to danger (because cultivators, but only yours, will end up getting stuck on terrain).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: unauthorized on January 10, 2022, 08:39:40 am
If the invading AI decides to path to your defenceless peons, as it is sometimes prone to do in spite of being in a fight with your inner disciples, then they're toast. Can't do anything about it. It's just a random fuck you the game occasionally throws at you.

It's not random. Enemy AI is kinda wonky but it follows a predictable pattern:

1. Invaders show up, they are idle and wait around for a bit. If engaged, they'll retaliate but otherwise they aren't going to do anything.
2. After some time, invaders enter active mode and attack anyone who has attacked them directly (closest to furthest).
3. If they don't have aggro, invaders start attacking buildings and people (or only people if already in combat) until someone seizes aggro on them.
4. Once a certain time elapses, invaders reconsider their choices and drop their previous actions if they don't have aggro or are losing the fight. This causes them to either steal something and leave or just run away in the latter case.

Now, the problem, the AI will only consider itself actively attacked if you've targeted that enemy specifically (this means having an explicit attack order on them) and inflicted damage (except with multiple artifacts which can draw aggro indirectly with a joint attack and move command in addition to this). Being in the area while you're killing their buddies sometimes causes passive invaders to retaliate, but doesn't set them in phase two nor does it draw aggro. Once they enter phase two, they start attacking at random until you draw aggro normally. If you take a moment to specifically target every invader until artifacts clash once at the start of a wave you won't have to worry about aggro unless your guy goes down. I've found that very rarely they can lose aggro at stage 4 somehow, but it happens maybe once every 100 invasions and they don't proactively attack at that point so at worst you lose something valuable.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: IronyOwl on February 01, 2023, 05:04:27 pm
Amazing Cultivator 2 got its first devlog. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pqvqQrjXCl0) As expected, they just kinda talk about how it's bigger and better.

They also mention it's much more RPG-like, but also mention "sect building." Hopefully that means it's a colony builder with possession mode, not a single player RPG where you recruit thralls for your base.


Been getting back into the first one in the meantime, and every guide or piece of advice I can find is either a basic explanation of terms or some kind of weirdly high-end checklist.

Quote from: Youtube Comment
For the Yaoguai tribulation, it really isn't that hard to overcome. Here's a pretty beginner's friendly checklist.

1.) You need a good golden core, around T3 should do. Here's a short guide to T1 Golden Core even at 1st generation:

-Cultivator should have, at base (no cultivation) around 40+ Qi Sense

...

After Golden Core, breakthrough 1 time and you should have around 40k-80k+ max qi.
The thing that gets me about this isn't just that a T3 golden core is "beginner friendly." It's that you need 40+ Qi Sense. What if you do not have 40+ Qi Sense? When he says "it's easy," does he mean the game is totally unplayable with anyone who doesn't start with perfect stats, and anyone wondering how their 1500 Qi 0-stat rabbit is going to handle a tribulation in 20 days has made the critical error of not tossing her in a trash can to begin with?

Every guide I find is like this. You should have perfect stats and every manual in the game from every law, make sure to use your primordial spirit level weather miracles and T12 specter refined medicines you can only acquire with a high-luck cultivator of the right element triggering the right event at the right place, and 400,000 Qi should be plenty to handle your first tribulation once you factor in the legendary clothing and talismans you've equipped just for this purpose.

Thanks guys.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Mephansteras on February 01, 2023, 05:34:24 pm
I should give this a go again. I bounced off it the first time, but I was sick and I think it requires a bit more focus to get into than I had available at the time.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 01, 2023, 05:44:30 pm
Every guide I find is like this. You should have perfect stats and every manual in the game from every law, make sure to use your primordial spirit level weather miracles and T12 specter refined medicines you can only acquire with a high-luck cultivator of the right element triggering the right event at the right place, and 400,000 Qi should be plenty to handle your first tribulation once you factor in the legendary clothing and talismans you've equipped just for this purpose.

Thanks guys.
I agree, that irritates me to no end as well. "It's so easy! Just do this*! Boom! You win!" "This" being something that relies heavily on obscure mechanics and RNG.


Also, I think I was lucky that I got a T3 for my first GC this run. I'm not even sure how the hell you're supposed to try for a T1 core, given that some of the things you need almost certainly do require a GC cultivator to find in the first place. I think I saw a speedrun guide that used absolute cheese for it, as well as random bits(like a giant gingko on the map). As for Specter Refining(which requires GC to learn), my main cultivator did not initially have enough max Qi to even use it, plus the only Anguish Gem I found was due to hilariously random and unlikely circumstance(random village had a heart attack in her home right after I tried recruiting her).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: IronyOwl on February 01, 2023, 06:39:45 pm
At least anguish gems are easy to get once you know how. People who die in very ominous rooms drop them, so build a very ominous room and drag defeated invaders in there before they fully kick it. It's not something you'd do unless you very specifically knew you were supposed to, but it doesn't require anything weird to pull off.

As for whether that gets you enough of them to bother with, well...
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on February 01, 2023, 08:34:14 pm
I feel like there is a more relaxed way to play this game.  And while accurate, it's a rather long journey if you are not min-maxing.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 01, 2023, 08:41:57 pm
and anyone wondering how their 1500 Qi 0-stat rabbit is going to handle a tribulation in 20 days has made the critical error of not tossing her in a trash can to begin with?
Yup!
Qi sense is the single most important stat in the game because there is a hard limit on how much you can improve it and because it controls your total qi which is the single most important stat in tribulations, combat, and needed for all of the most fancy miracles.

Outside of some niche uses never make someone with 0 Qi stat a cultivator since making a good cultivator requires a lot of resources being pumped into them, and if you do have a yaoguai cultivator with stats like that just accept that they are going to die and turn into a monster that you either harvest for their body parts or destroys your entire sect when their tribulation arrives.
A 40+ minimum for qi sense is a pretty reasonable guideline actually, although I do feel that qi sense *rank* (the amount you have out of 20) is more important to look at then the skill.
"beginner friendly."
Basically nothing about the game is beginner friendly, and yaoguai are even less beginner friendly then a bunch of other stuff due to how they just flat out die if your stuff isn't good enough. If the guide is saying they are beginner friendly they are simply wrong, likely because they have played the game for like 500 hours and are going "well all that is pretty basic stuff right?" (Well no).
Yaogui tribulations are tricky if you don't know how to handle them and even though (if you are cheesy enough) its totally possible to start with a 10 day Yaogui and have them pass it I would highly recommend that you don't pick one with a timer anywhere under 100 days. Hell, even 200 days can end up with failure.

There is a reason that guides for them suggest a bunch of tough stuff, because passing their tribulation requires a well put together dude.

Now, you can do it without any of the truly tough stuff, but even then you should do all the relatively easy stuff (eg. starting with good stats) that you can, and if you miss enough of the easy stuff it can totally be impossible.
Every guide I find is like this. You should have perfect stats and every manual in the game from every law, make sure to use your primordial spirit level weather miracles and T12 specter refined medicines you can only acquire with a high-luck cultivator of the right element triggering the right event at the right place, and 400,000 Qi should be plenty to handle your first tribulation once you factor in the legendary clothing and talismans you've equipped just for this purpose.
Stuff in game range from easy (eg. having all the basic starter laws) to absurd (make sure your dude has twenty of each medicine refined to T12).
You really want to get as much stuff in there as you can for pretty much everything since it makes the resulting cultivator stronger for every additional thing you do right.
I feel like there is a more relaxed way to play this game.  And while accurate, it's a rather long journey if you are not min-maxing.
Ehh, kinda?
You can totally chill for like 80% of the content and go through literally thousands of ingame days of game play, but if you want to do the real tough stuff (eg. conquering rival sects, beating the bosses) you need to go pretty hard.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on February 01, 2023, 09:34:57 pm
Well, go pretty hard or cheat wildly. It's pretty trivial to add in some items that give you just... all sorts of helpful things, like maxed out movement speed and jacked up mood and etc., if you want to play with the big stuff but don't want to put in quite so much effort on the fiddly bits.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 02, 2023, 03:02:40 am
I should give this a go again. I bounced off it the first time, but I was sick and I think it requires a bit more focus to get into than I had available at the time.
Just to make sure you know: The discord (https://discord.com/channels/608499065071861761/782443275029184532) is an amazing resource, and (for me at least) playing without it would have been impossible.

I also highly recommend a couple of mods which you can find info on on this page (https://amazing-cultivation-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/Mods?so=search#Quality_of_Life). The game is obnoxious enough that some of the QOL range from basically needed to simply very convenient (elysium, multiple operation, auto operation, auction speedup, one click interrogate), some of the info mods are also super helpful in helping you understand how the game actually works or are simply very useful (more grid info, numeric descriptions, city event helper, skill level in recruitment)  and even some of the gameplay mods (such as great painter, one click favor, undying vessels, open other world rift (which lets you do the special "lol, only open on chinese new years" events at any time of year)) simply remove some of the more tedious gameplay elements.

I would recommend all of the ones I named above, even if its your first game.

Some mods however range from simply overpowered (call the merchant, Farmer Fa, a mod that lets you have unlimited points at the start screen and start with like 8 dudes, mods that let you start with dudes with every single skill perfect), to flat out wild cheating (some mods that just add pills that give you +999999 max qi or whatever, mod modifier). I wouldn't recommend any of these for your first game of course, but I can certainly see how some of them make it more fun.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on February 02, 2023, 10:10:15 am
Can you play in the hardcore/ironman mode (forget what they call it) and earn achievements while running mods?

It's stupid, I know, but I get a little thrill when that achievement window pops up; and as silly as it is, I'd probably take being able to earn achievements over UI improvements (even as much as they'd help.)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Mephansteras on February 02, 2023, 10:26:00 am
I should give this a go again. I bounced off it the first time, but I was sick and I think it requires a bit more focus to get into than I had available at the time.
Just to make sure you know: The discord (https://discord.com/channels/608499065071861761/782443275029184532) is an amazing resource, and (for me at least) playing without it would have been impossible.

I also highly recommend a couple of mods which you can find info on on this page (https://amazing-cultivation-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/Mods?so=search#Quality_of_Life). The game is obnoxious enough that some of the QOL range from basically needed to simply very convenient (elysium, multiple operation, auto operation, auction speedup, one click interrogate), some of the info mods are also super helpful in helping you understand how the game actually works or are simply very useful (more grid info, numeric descriptions, city event helper, skill level in recruitment)  and even some of the gameplay mods (such as great painter, one click favor, undying vessels, open other world rift (which lets you do the special "lol, only open on chinese new years" events at any time of year)) simply remove some of the more tedious gameplay elements.

Good to know, thanks!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 02, 2023, 02:42:52 pm
Can you play in the hardcore/ironman mode (forget what they call it) and earn achievements while running mods?

It's stupid, I know, but I get a little thrill when that achievement window pops up; and as silly as it is, I'd probably take being able to earn achievements over UI improvements (even as much as they'd help.)
Yup, totally compatable! Its the only reason I have any achievements at all.
Quote from: From the wiki
While playing on "Immortal" difficulty Achievements are unlocked
You are locked to the highest "difficulty" setting options of Classic
New difficulty menu gets unlocked. Going up to Tribulation IX with all difficulty settings enabled
Many in-game indicators disappear. Your knowledge of the game is tested to its limits

In Practice:

You need to enable Immortal for even the most basic achievements, like "1 creature killed". ie: a farm animal.
Immortal locks you out of multiple saves, though you can manually bypass this by backing up the save folder.
You cannot save manually in-game without exiting.
You cannot exit the game without saving (unless you use task manager to force close). If your game is autosaving, you have to wait for it to finish, then save and exit.
You cannot change the frequency of saves from every 20 minutes.
The already confusing Feng Shui system has some of its variables re-hidden.
Chances of success, eg: Breakthrough, Artifact Crafting, or GC Quality predictions are all gone. Easy to accidentally initiate a GC breakthrough instead of a normal one, panic, cancel it, and end up with a Tier 9 Golden Core Cultivator.
If you use the Developer Console during an Immortal game, you can no longer save as Immortal. Your old save is kept, but a new "effectively classic" one is branched off from it.
You can still use Mods, including cheat/admin mods like MODModifier (Mod), which is arguably easier than using the console.
Its important to know though that immortal mode is *more* then ironman though, notably it removes a ton of info that is critical for your first time playing the game.
If you don't already know how feng shui works then making working buildings is a big problem.
If you don't know what you need to have 100% breakthrough chance then its easy to mess up and fail your breakthroughs.
If you don't know exactly how strong your GC is and everything you need to do will be its easy to accidently get a trash one cause you forget crucial stuff.

I would very much not recommend it if you are just starting out as the game is already enough of a pain in the butt when you get all the info and can use saves, but achievements are indeed very shiny.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 02, 2023, 03:49:10 pm
I also highly recommend a couple of mods which you can find info on on this page (https://amazing-cultivation-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/Mods?so=search#Quality_of_Life).

Lots of mods on that page. By far the most essential imo is Numeric Descriptions.
ACS will often throw you into a situation where you have, for example, three available 'Slightly Increases Strength' upgrades and only enough resources to take one. Numeric Descriptions will reveal that one of the upgrades is +5%, another is +15%, and the last is +50%. Really huge difference that you would have no way of knowing about without the mod.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 02, 2023, 03:55:42 pm
Is there a mod that disables the incessant invasions?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 02, 2023, 05:01:25 pm
I'm not sure, but if you want to not have to worry about invasions again, train a body cultivator. They basically instantly destroy anyone else who is not also a body cultivator.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 02, 2023, 05:07:24 pm
That doesn't help with the tedium.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 03, 2023, 01:05:38 am
Is there a mod that disables the incessant invasions?
There is probably some chinese mod that does it, but a very quick search didn't show any results. You could try asking on the discord, but I suspect they won't be any help there either.
That doesn't help with the tedium.
Honestly I never found the raids themselves that tedious. Some of the surrounding stuff was quite annoying (eg. having to soul search everyone and dump them into the hell gate), but not the raids themselves.

E: You could totally use modmodifier to just kill everyone, but it probably wouldn't be any easier then instantly killing everyone with a OP body cultivator so you are probably just stuck with the tedium.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on February 03, 2023, 07:14:11 pm
Invasions are controlled by the Event Frequency setting for your initial start. On Immortal, that is 3 days, so you'll get invaded every 3 days.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 03, 2023, 08:58:13 pm
A Bear Yaoguai joined my sect. Plenty of time(I hope) to prep him for tribulation, and his skills show a very high Qi Sense and Artifact Crafting. The latter is important, because I currently have no artifact crafters. The two cultivators I do have(both a T3 GC now), both have zero skill in artifact crafting. This is bad.

It only warrants mentioning because, multiple times, he's woken himself up in the middle of the night because of hunger, before chowing down in bed on some braised bear meat or stir-fried bear that he apparently kept in his pocket.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirus on February 03, 2023, 10:25:05 pm
Does that count as cannibalism?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 03, 2023, 11:10:26 pm
Invasions are controlled by the Event Frequency setting for your initial start. On Immortal, that is 3 days, so you'll get invaded every 3 days.
Not quite, you get an event (or possibly two or three) every three days, but that event could be weather, a visitor, something far away happening, ect.
It's entirely possible to go a long time without any invasions at all.
Does that count as cannibalism?
Ehh, no more then a human eating monkey meat would count methinks.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on February 03, 2023, 11:15:00 pm
I... don't remember ACS's specific metaphysics, but it's fairly common in punch magic settings for similar critters to explicitly be versions of their species that had managed to obtain greater sentience and a human form -- it's less human vs monkey and more monkey learned the hand jive and found a nice tux and lives here now.

It's fairly likely that was pretty explicitly cannibalism, and more specifically what amounts to cannibalistic veal eating :V

E: Though I do remember ACS has it so pretty much anything can eventually become a full fledged sophont, so cannibalistic veal eating is in a sense basically everything you do in this setting. Lean into it, eat children before they can run away fast enough.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 03, 2023, 11:47:26 pm
Lots of people talking about T3 golden cores so I'll just throw out a little checklist for squeezing out every bit of qi.

1) have any current Golden cores use Stat boosting spells on potential recruits.

2) make them learn every manual that increases max qi or stats.

3) feed them at least 3 red ginseng and 3 of that purple stuff (ganoderm? forgot the name), and ONE purple junk pill (with some cure powder ready) if you found or made any. There are other things to consume but these are the ones you are likely to see.

4) visit the Kunlun sect and copy their magic altar building. It makes up for a lot of rare treasures you won't have for a while (and the middle top square is the tile you have to base your qi items around).

5) make sure to use spirit wood on the outermost ring of display tables because their qi range is long enough to contribute without changing the element of the tile your cultivator sits on. Also, it's not just a diamond shape, the game's math allows for 4 more display tables so there is a 5x5 square around the seat for qi collection.

6) Get a golden core as a master if possible.

7) wait for the perfect season and time and cast a weather spell (rain for wood cultivators)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 04, 2023, 12:38:18 am
8) Make sure your dude is as happy as possible going into the tribulation. Make sure not to cultivate for a few days beforehand and (if you have any) then stick some happiness talismans on at the last second to boost mood above 100.

9) Make sure you set up the cultivation room and qi gathering array at least 5 days previously. This is because it takes 5 days for the items to reach full power. If you move even a single item right before the whole array is reset and it does literally nothing (and 1 day is 20% power ect).

As micro says there are other stuff you can do (mostly better drugs), but those are generally later game (specter refining, hall master) or less important.
E: 3b) More drugs! Foundation pill gives massive temporary stat bonuses (but are rare and hard to get after your first free one) which significantly increases law compatibility. A Earth flux is super important as well, the first one is probably worth a whole core rank on its own. Eat the happy pills for the mood boost!
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 04, 2023, 05:53:32 am
Well, it turns out the bear guy isn't a good artifact crafter at all.

I do have two other outers with high crafting skills, one has terrible stats, the other has pretty decent stats but has also been consistently making 100-quality everything.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 05, 2023, 02:06:39 am
I knew I forgot something. Yep, talismans for mood are super important.

Also did not know that even moving 1 item resets EVERYTHING...

This makes me want to play again.

Well, it turns out the bear guy isn't a good artifact crafter at all.

I do have two other outers with high crafting skills, one has terrible stats, the other has pretty decent stats but has also been consistently making 100-quality everything.

I think alchemy and artifact crafting are a mix of the crafting/medicine Stat and the magic Stat. So if you don't have good magic, you don't get good either of those.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 05, 2023, 08:23:15 am
Turns out I had to actually put points into his artifact crafting skill. After 9 points, his skill is 32. Probably could be better, but I don't have better available.

On the plus side, a random manual from a dug-up casket gave me the locations for everywhere on Mt. Shu, including Gemspring Cave - I now have a semi-reliable source of Earth Flux. My main cultivator(True Sun, Luck a little over 5.0) seems to be getting one about 50% of the time.

What's a good way to recharge Qi? I don't have an alchemist(yet, working on it), so other than cramming down spirit stones, I don't see a way to easily recharge cultivators with >30k qi.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 05, 2023, 08:50:56 am
There is a breathing manual and some Qi regen pills. Also, I just remembered that there is a mod out there somewhere that makes the skill levels displayed in a more reasonable way. Before the mod it just shows how skilled your character is at something, however that skill is based off stats like INT and PER. The mod shows the innate talent, which is much harder to raise. So it's best to pick people with high talent in magic and crafting, so they give high artifact crafting skill after becoming cultivators, and then you can boost your stats to ramp up the skill.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 05, 2023, 10:24:39 pm
Well, it turns out the bear guy isn't a good artifact crafter at all.

I do have two other outers with high crafting skills, one has terrible stats, the other has pretty decent stats but has also been consistently making 100-quality everything.
You need two things for a good crafter: 1) Good magic crafting, 2) Good artisan.
Your crafting skill determines your success chance (and quality to some degree?) and artisan is a large part of the end quality.
Thus any good crafter needs both.
Magic crafting power is based entirely off the skill *rank* (aka, ???/20) instead of skill level. This means that stats (con, perception, ect) don't matter, so if you just look at skill a crafter with 30 skill (and like 6 ranks) can end up having worse magic crafting then one with 10 skill (and like 15 ranks) but trash stats.

You can also raise crafting rank by having them craft a bunch of stuff. For cultivators this doesn't really work because you aren't going to have them pump out thousands of artifacts, but you can raise mortal medicine (aka, alchemy)/or crafting (magic crafting) skills by grinding a ton.

Of course (as always with this godamn game) there are other stuff that matter.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 05, 2023, 11:56:04 pm
Hmmmm, I probably shouldn't be trying to give detailed advice based off 2 year old memories.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 06, 2023, 01:39:37 am
Hmmmm, I probably shouldn't be trying to give detailed advice based off 2 year old memories.
I could be wrong on how crafting converts to artifact crafting btw, its been a few years for me as well.

And there has even been new info found out in that time, for instance nobody knew the exact mechanics behind the artifact crafting stuff (eg. they thought luck was just flat out good) or that some of them existed at all (eg. nobody was making V. Ominous crafting rooms).

The wiki is also a hell of a lot better then it used to be, you could probably get enough info off it to play the game without ever having to go to the discord even (although you should probably go there anyways).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: IronyOwl on February 06, 2023, 03:58:23 pm
What's a good way to recharge Qi? I don't have an alchemist(yet, working on it), so other than cramming down spirit stones, I don't see a way to easily recharge cultivators with >30k qi.
Spirit stones, spirit crystals, and qi regen pills are all cheap if you can make them (IIRC spirit crystals require 10 ranks in alchemy, so...). I believe qi gather items boost qi regen, so if you can persuade your cultivators to sit in a cultivation room or put a stand with some spirit wood/stone essence next to their bed/recreation spot that should help. IIRC there's a specific miracle to "go gather qi at target location," but I've never tried it out. There's also a miracle to slurp the qi out of an item, but I can't imagine that being all that useful for large numbers.

What I want to know about is stamina. A few of my cultivators keep running out and nothing I do seems to help. I had one on both stamina and ginseng pills and still couldn't tell if it was working, spirit dew is way too rare to rely on (there's like four tiles of spirit soil on my map total), and stamina boosting food seems to be pretty rare.


You can also raise crafting rank by having them craft a bunch of stuff. For cultivators this doesn't really work because you aren't going to have them pump out thousands of artifacts, but you can raise mortal medicine (aka, alchemy)/or crafting (magic crafting) skills by grinding a ton.
You're not supposed to be able to gain levels in alchemy/magic crafting stats through experience post-ascension, but I swear I got a message about it happening once. Maybe it's still tracking medicine/crafting xp behind the scenes and incrementing accordingly?

Speaking of which, as far as I can tell existing skill levels count for attainment costs. That is, a cultivator with 18 artifact crafting skill fresh out the gate gained +4 attainment per point (IIRC), as if he had purchased rather than inherited those ranks.


Of course (as always with this godamn game) there are other stuff that matter.
I've been obsessing over artifact crafting mechanics on the wiki and goddamn is it weird.

Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on February 06, 2023, 04:33:12 pm
IIRC there's a specific miracle to "go gather qi at target location," but I've never tried it out.

Meditation.
This Miracle can be scary, because the description says it consumes lifespan. However, it consumes at an extremely slow rate. A single low-ranking lifespan-extending consumable will add more years than you're likely to consume in an entire playthrough using Meditate constantly, so don't worry about it too much.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 06, 2023, 04:53:18 pm
What's a good way to recharge Qi? I don't have an alchemist(yet, working on it), so other than cramming down spirit stones, I don't see a way to easily recharge cultivators with >30k qi.
Spirit stones, spirit crystals, and qi regen pills are all cheap if you can make them (IIRC spirit crystals require 10 ranks in alchemy, so...). I believe qi gather items boost qi regen, so if you can persuade your cultivators to sit in a cultivation room or put a stand with some spirit wood/stone essence next to their bed/recreation spot that should help. IIRC there's a specific miracle to "go gather qi at target location," but I've never tried it out. There's also a miracle to slurp the qi out of an item, but I can't imagine that being all that useful for large numbers.
The spiritual breath chant (the "go to area and suck up qi") miracle is super fast and basically *the* way to do it. You can regenerate like 8k per second without putting a lot of work into it.

It multiplies your qi regen rate by a massive amount based on the amount of qi in the tile, so it works better in areas with lots of qi (middle of qi arrays) or if you are taking qi regen pills.

It also sucks up qi from the local tile, so after a while the amount you get goes down. Even with that though, its by far the best way to regain qi. Although note that since it sucks up qi from the tile you probably don't want to do a GC breakthrough there or anything.
You're not supposed to be able to gain levels in alchemy/magic crafting stats through experience post-ascension, but I swear I got a message about it happening once. Maybe it's still tracking medicine/crafting xp behind the scenes and incrementing accordingly?
Ah. Yeah, you can't increase it as a inner, thats how it works. (Aside from a loophole where if a cultivator is temporarily mortal they can increase their skill levels).
Speaking of which, as far as I can tell existing skill levels count for attainment costs. That is, a cultivator with 18 artifact crafting skill fresh out the gate gained +4 attainment per point (IIRC), as if he had purchased rather than inherited those ranks.
Ugh. Annoying if true.

I might have to do some searching to figure out if that's true.
What I want to know about is stamina. A few of my cultivators keep running out and nothing I do seems to help. I had one on both stamina and ginseng pills and still couldn't tell if it was working, spirit dew is way too rare to rely on (there's like four tiles of spirit soil on my map total), and stamina boosting food seems to be pretty rare.
Eat resin powder too (you can just buy it off the SSS sect).
Also note that high equilibrium (which I think you get from qi absorbtion efficency) is bad since it slows down the rate at which they gain stamina and consume food. So if your dude has it at max then they will gain stamina really slow.
Meditation.
This Miracle can be scary, because the description says it consumes lifespan. However, it consumes at an extremely slow rate. A single low-ranking lifespan-extending consumable will add more years than you're likely to consume in an entire playthrough using Meditate constantly, so don't worry about it too much.
Nah, meditation is to increase cultivation speed and gain max qi, not to increase qi regen speed.
Mostly its unneeded since cultivation speed is super fast with a good amount of boosts.

The only time its really needed would be for stuff like cauldron filling or bizzare stuff like intentionally increasing your age.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 06, 2023, 08:25:20 pm
Yep, I decided started to play again, and saw my mod list so i decided to post it here as I'm someone who tends to try and stick to the vanilla game but I find these to be indispensable.

Elysium: Automates cultivation based on mood so you don't have to check ally our cultivators every 5 minutes.

Skill level in recruitment: because it's bullshit that you can't know what they are good at

Numeric Descriptions: Gives more details to the rather vague descriptions of manuals.

Show law stats: to avoid having to go back and forth between the law screen and the character screen when looking for what stats are missing.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: IronyOwl on February 06, 2023, 09:43:03 pm
Also note that high equilibrium (which I think you get from qi absorbtion efficency) is bad since it slows down the rate at which they gain stamina and consume food. So if your dude has it at max then they will gain stamina really slow.
GAH, I was intentionally increasing that hoping it'd boost stamina gain! What's the point if it doesn't, let alone at the cost of making things worse?

Clearing out SSS's larders it is.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 06, 2023, 10:37:56 pm
I think the point was that it was supposed to be a good thing in that it meant that your dudes didn't need to eat as often and would use less food resources. It probably is also supposed to represent immortals that never need to eat and can meditate for ten thousand years without moving, ect.

In practice its a trap that can effectively ruin your cults by slowing their cultivation speed down by a literal order of magnitude, being worse the better your cultivation stuff for them is.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 07, 2023, 07:58:25 pm
Slightly odd occurrence just now. Got attacked by a bear. Battle music and everything. Except it was just a normal bear. Quickly shot down by a normal guy, and the music stopped.

Then the merchant showed up. Then almost immediately after, three demon tigers showed up. At least I had two inners and the dog to fight them, the only damage they did was chew a bit of the guest room up.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 07, 2023, 09:17:29 pm
Yeah, you can get three events really close to each other (due to the triple event setting), that's just how it works.

It can end really poor where like three squads of dudes drop out one after the other.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 10, 2023, 08:10:14 pm
Just started Physical cultivation. Picked a random guy of little importance(other than the love triangle he was involved in).

I have no idea what I'm doing. Sort of. After a day or two, I've gotten a few points of Tempered Flesh, and Ancestral Throwback on his left arm. I also semi-followed a guide to build a breathing room, but I don't know how to work that. I've got his schedule to breathe for most of the day at scattered intervals, but I don't think he's acquired any essence from that. The room isn't entirely finished, as well, I need more qi-gathering stuff and a corpse to bury.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 11, 2023, 05:33:00 am
O yeah I remember taking way too long figuring out Body cultivators. Let me try and break it down.

You are either going to be breathing or remolding. Breathing is sucking up Qi and I guess other stuff from your surroundings to get essences. If you have fire Qi items nearby you will get more fire essence, breath at night and you are more likely to get lunar essence. A tomb with a corpse in it is a good way to get wraith essence. (and for some essences you need to devour things)

Remolding is where you consume the essences to roll random modifiers for a body part, like Ancestral Throwback.

When you press the remold button in the cultivation tab, you will see at the top different tabs depending on which law your character knows. The goal here is to get the modifiers listed in the bottom right for that body part filled out so you can equip it as a "secret body". Since you can only add 6 different types of modifiers, try to stick to the ones listed (unless they are really good ones like Ancestral throwback, or if you know for sure that no new requirements will appear as you complete the secret body). Also note that modifiers that say "increases secret body X" means those increases only apply when the body part they are applied to is part of an equipped "secret body", and defenses stats will only work when a secret body is equipped in a defensive slot (same with offensive and utility). So when boosting body parts that aren't part of a secret body, choose modifiers that say that it boosts "the physical cultivator's X".

So to sum it up:

1) Breath stuff in
2) Remold secret bodies
3) Remold everything else
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 11, 2023, 04:38:09 pm
Yeah, I'm discovering that the Xianxia equivalent of Kirby is actually not as complicated as it looks. It just looks intimidating, there's some RNG involved, and Physical cultivators are some hongry bois.

A group of the Qi-shapers attacked, and my basic bodybuilder probably could have soloed all three, but I needed to keep them from moving around and attacking or stealing from other parts of the map, and therefor had the dog and another cultivator help. The one he was fighting actually tried to sneak away from the fight, and managed to pocket a stack of 30 beast bloods before she got put down. After dragging her to the Hellgate to finish the process of committing die, I buried her in the Physical cultivator's breathing room. Now he's going to be standing over her remains, inhaling the vapors.


Oh there's one important thing to remember about Physical cultivators that sets them apart from Xiandao and Shendao: they have no shield. They don't block damage with their Qi. They simply take the damage and regenerate. It probably not that hard to build a cultivator that can regenerate faster than they take damage.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 11, 2023, 06:04:45 pm
When having one character tank multiple people, I just have them attack once, tell them to stop and attack another, and the aggro just stays on them.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 12, 2023, 08:20:42 am
May have made an oof with my bear guy, by giving him Six Paths Reincarnation and trying to push for Primordial Spirit. The first step of Six Paths' PS stage resets them to being an outer. Progress seems to be random, but it's looking like it takes between 15-20 days to finish. From what I hear, though, it takes a lot of cultivation to reach the next step, where they can actually be as powerful as a Primordial Spirit-level cultivator is supposed to be. I'm at 41% of the outer stage, but have 24 days before tribulation. He still does have a little over 41k qi, but I don't know if he can actually use that to defend himself in this state. Not that would be enough.

EDIT: Broke through at 16 days left... and dropped in power dramatically. Good news, I unlocked Supreme Clarity Cave. I can just camp him there quasi-permanently.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 21, 2023, 09:00:35 am
Still playing this.(can't stop. help)


Started doing a the main quest, and ran into a brick wall when my current interrogation target, possibly the last one I need for the first mystery, has a Withdrawn personality. That means you cannot break their emotional guard(limits favor to 60, need 100 to get their secrets) with anything except the dog's 100 Intelligence ability. Except that my dog's Intelligence was nowhere 100 and I hadn't seen them training for some time.

Did some testing and research, and found some things about how to manage your pet. They'll only train if their leisure stat is full, and training is seemingly only effective if you do not interrupt the session(despite the dog saying otherwise). At 100 nutrition, a training session seems to take 20 nutrition and increase Intelligence by about 6. Might be variable.

Increasing leisure is a bit tricky. Obviously, your dog can't be doing work around the sect. I may have screwed myself a bit by having the dog's labor training set to maximum for most tasks. Even if minimized, the dog will stand there talking about the work. You can interrupt that until the dog takes an action to restore leisure or train. So far, I've found that "(Playing) Take a Rest" restores leisure, but "(Playing) Take a look around" and "Follow *disciple*" do not. "Missing", where you have a cultivator on an adventure and the dog is asking about them, restores a lot of leisure, almost enough to fill it in one action.


I also just started the Thousand-year Tide events. Some fun will be heading my way soon.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on February 21, 2023, 10:27:28 am
I had one (fairly decent ~100%) initiate in each of the starting schools. Then one of my disciples (I want to say the water one) managed to take a bunch of enchanted bricks to the face in a really pathetic show of strength against two shit-tier attackers (3-on-2 fight, in our favor). Then my fire disciple literally boiled his brain trying to reduce his training costs with a high-level fire pill (I'd never seen it before - got it as a reward for helping out a sect) whoops.

Now, all my remaining outer disciples are useless twats (no better than 50% attunement to any element, let alone the two that I need to replace). I've been sending the worst of the lot to found new settlements, but it's slim pickings. Might need to try the trick I saw in the other thread of actually flying over to a village and talking up the NPCs there.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 21, 2023, 01:01:55 pm
Yeah, the dog is one of the most disappointing aspects of the game. So much of a grind if you want to do things the "good" way, and it's the only good way. I think you can also find them outside their sect and beat them up and interrogate them, but I've never tried it. It makes me want to install the mod that just lets you skip the social minigame.

As for talking to people in towns, I've never even thought about doing that before. I always had trouble finding people early game.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 21, 2023, 02:01:26 pm
As for talking to people in towns, I've never even thought about doing that before. I always had trouble finding people early game.
Apparently it works pretty well, but it *also* requires the social minigame and a good social cultivator soooo...

Of course I also obsessively reroll at the start for perfect people so its not like I really need people that much. And also getting proper high quality cults is so *tedious* in this game (especially before you get big agencies) that if all my good cults die off I would just restart.

E:
I had one (fairly decent ~100%) initiate in each of the starting schools. Then one of my disciples (I want to say the water one) managed to take a bunch of enchanted bricks to the face in a really pathetic show of strength against two shit-tier attackers (3-on-2 fight, in our favor). Then my fire disciple literally boiled his brain trying to reduce his training costs with a high-level fire pill (I'd never seen it before - got it as a reward for helping out a sect) whoops.
Yeah, game is brutal with hidden mechanics.
For the Sun Pill you need like 77k max qi to survive (and unless you have like 100k you want to have a magic healer on hand right away so they don't die moments later).
If it was the Crimson Fruit then uh... don't?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirus on February 21, 2023, 03:04:12 pm
Can any of you folks recommend a decent tutorial playlist on Youtube? Someone who can explain all this stuff as it happens in game, maybe answers questions in the comments? I don't know why I keep bouncing off of this but the in-game tutorials aren't great and there's so much crap to keep track off (even without counting the literal crap).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on February 21, 2023, 03:31:20 pm
Yeah, game is brutal with hidden mechanics.
For the Sun Pill you need like 77k max qi to survive (and unless you have like 100k you want to have a magic healer on hand right away so they don't die moments later).
If it was the Crimson Fruit then uh... don't?
I decided to look it up just now on the wiki - it was an Origin: Fire - like I said, I'd never seen or heard of it before.

Hmm, well - lookit that:
Quote
The Cultivator must practice a Law of the same Element as the Origin, and must have reached the final Cultivation Level of Primordial Spirit or Demigod (12th Cultivation Level), or the Cultivator will be immediately killed.

I feel like the warning on the item description could have been a little less vague on that one.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on February 21, 2023, 06:37:52 pm
It's one of the bits about the game where if you have a background familiarity with xianxia/martial arts fantasy, you'd probably realize ahead of time eating something called Origin: Fire would probably make your head asplode. It's like thinking it's a good idea to nibble on the core of a star or a somehow solidified fragment of the big bang or somethin', heh.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 21, 2023, 07:03:22 pm
I feel like the warning on the item description could have been a little less vague on that one.
Oh sure. And the warning on the sun pill could have been less vague as well. Pretty sure in the distant past I had one of my cults chow down on one after reaching GC, only for them to just fall over dead.

And the tutorial on how cultivation spots work could have been less vague.

And how much exactly bedroom materials for different cultivator elements matter could have been less vague too. (Note the answer is not one tiny bit, don't torture your cults with freezing or boiling rooms).

And so could like half the mechanics in the game.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 22, 2023, 05:56:11 am
Bedroom element only matters if you're cultivating in bed. Which you shouldn't be doing anyway. Otherwise, jade rooms with darksteel beds for the win.

Finished the first mystery last night, started working on the second. Had to make repeat visits to Mt. Hundred Insects because I missed a clue there.

Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 22, 2023, 04:10:37 pm
Bedroom element only matters if you're cultivating in bed. Which you shouldn't be doing anyway. Otherwise, jade rooms with darksteel beds for the win.
Not even then does the bedroom element matter, all that matters is the element of 1) The bed, and 2) The floor directly underneath, and 3) The walls within a single tile of the bed.

Of course you also need to make sure its not a V. Ominous room so they don't die in their sleep, but that's fairly easy to manage as spirit stone walls never mess up your feng shui.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 23, 2023, 03:44:42 am
Doesn't the fengshui of the room affect cultivation? So you would want the fengshui of the bed to be good which means it should match your cultivators element.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on February 23, 2023, 11:21:06 am
While I'm far from an expert at this, as far as I know / can tell, the only thing your cultivators care about regarding bedrooms is how fancy they are.

So you want a bed made out of the most expensive substance you have available - probably sprit stone, marble, or jade.

edit: unless, like Akura says, they're doing their cultivation there... which they shouldn't, since you should have a specialized cultivation room for that.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 23, 2023, 11:40:32 am
I think I had always made my physicals cultivate in their bedrooms. There's no reason to make a separate room for these guys.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 23, 2023, 04:15:59 pm
I think I had always made my physicals cultivate in their bedrooms. There's no reason to make a separate room for these guys.

This is: Cursed Feng Shui essence. So far I haven't seen it as required, as the remold labels that state they come from that essence can be gotten(presumably less often) from other essences, but since I haven't remolded using Cursed Feng Shui essence I don't know if there are any labels exclusive to it.

Also, all my guys are sleeping in 3x4 rooms, so there's little room to put essence items.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirus on February 26, 2023, 02:30:59 am
Fired this up again, I've got a small sect slowly getting off the ground with a single inner disciple. Well, before I called it a night I got a visiting cat yaoguai that I'm tempted to take on as a second inner. She's got maxed Charisma, high Intelligence, middling Perception, but most importantly better Potential than all of my sect members. Even better, she has a little over 200 days before tribulation hits, which feels like it ought to be long enough to give her a decent shot at survival.

The only downsides are sub-20 Qi Sense and pretty poor numbers in other cultivation stats. Really good medicine and crafting, but I don't think those transfer to inner tasks unfortunately.

Worth an inner slot? Keep her an outer? Kick her out? I'm terribly unsure.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on February 26, 2023, 02:52:51 am
...I usually want to accept everyone, so I'm not the best at making those decisions.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 26, 2023, 05:56:57 am
Yaoguai are almost always worth it as an outer due to the move speed bonus. It sounds like she is double worth it due to her good crafting.

As for an inner.. maybe? If she has good artisan she would be a good crafter, and if you pump points into con (to raise effective qi sense) and get all the qi sense skills she might end up pretty decent.
For me it would probably depend on if she has good compatibility with a law that you don't already have someone studying, in which case I would probably make her a crafter or alchemist if you need one since the stats translate a little.
I dunno about pumping a bunch of resources into her though. 200 days is probably enough to pass the tribulation, but if she fails it ain't that big a deal.

Worst case (assuming you don't waste your good drugs all on her) is you have a crafter/social dude for 200 days to do errands, cast random miracles, and fight poorly at the cost of a cultivation room.
---
Potential doesn't matter at all btw barring extreme endgame stuff.
I also feel like it's better to look at starting qi sense rank (aka out of 20) since that tells you how high you can get the actual skill after you pump your dude full of drugs and manuals.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 26, 2023, 06:04:38 am
The Mysterious Cavern popped up on my map at day 301. The only damage its initial appearance was the area I paved with spirit stones to serve as an elementally-neutral tribulation ground. Quickly put an auspicious room around it, along with the Morality Seal. Unfortunately, my cultivators are no way close to ready to fight it. None have a max qi of over 250k, and I don't really know how to use formations. Nowhere near enough holy stone to make artifacts. Artifact crafters cannot craft holy stone artifacts anyway. Working on sun pills, but I don't have many anguish gems left to refine them further.

Fired this up again, I've got a small sect slowly getting off the ground with a single inner disciple. Well, before I called it a night I got a visiting cat yaoguai that I'm tempted to take on as a second inner. She's got maxed Charisma, high Intelligence, middling Perception, but most importantly better Potential than all of my sect members. Even better, she has a little over 200 days before tribulation hits, which feels like it ought to be long enough to give her a decent shot at survival.

The only downsides are sub-20 Qi Sense and pretty poor numbers in other cultivation stats. Really good medicine and crafting, but I don't think those transfer to inner tasks unfortunately.

Worth an inner slot? Keep her an outer? Kick her out? I'm terribly unsure.

I think Medicine translates to better Alchemy once promoted. Crafting probably has some influence on Alchemy and/or Artifact Crafting. Might explain why my alchemist is becoming better at Artifact Crafting than my artifact crafter.
PRE-EDIT: According to the wiki: They do. The formulas for Xiandao and Shendao are:

Skill caps for Medicine and Crafting transfer to Alchemy and Artifact Crafting, respectively.
4% of Medicine per level of Magic Crafting(that is, if MC is 12, 48% of the level of Medicine) is transferred to Alchemy. Same with Crafting->Artifact Crafting.
Every point in Magic randomly becomes a point in Artifact Mastery, Spell, and Protect.

If you want better Qi Sense, bump up your catgirl's Constitution if you can, as that has more of an effect than Intelligence. High Charisma, Intelligence, and Perception would make her a decent choice for Sunflower Refining Law.

I'm not sure what you mean by "inner slot". Your population cap is total population, inners and outers, possibly including guests but not zombies and vessels.


EDIT: I'm trying to raise a Shendao cultivator, which is much more complicated than Xiandao or Physical. She currently has a mood buff(which is bad) for witnessing a miracle. Despite the fact that no miracles were performed near her shack, and the person the miracle was cast was actually somebody whose corpse was fed to a spirit root on the other side of the map.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 26, 2023, 07:32:11 am
Ancient cultivators will pop up along with that mysterious cavern. Maybe go talk to them with Primordial spirits with high charisma...

Also, if you can't make an earth artifact, take a look around at sects to see if any have one available for lending, and start working on relations with them.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirus on February 26, 2023, 10:12:07 am
Any advice on how to raise constitution for the catgirl? I imagine there must be some sort of herb or elixir that will do the trick, or maybe a cultivation technique. I just don't know which ones (and just as importantly, how to acquire them).

My first inner is doing True Sun Refining, or whatever that newbie-friendly starting fire law is. She's got a simple cultivation setup with spiritwood on display stands surrounding a cushion, and is currently trying to reach golden core. The catgirl looks like she'd be a pretty natural fit for the Sunflower law, though I'm not at all sure what I'd use for her cultivation; I'm somewhat lacking in fire element items.

Also forgive my imprecise terminology. When I asked if she'd be worth an inner slot what I meant was "could she be worth the expenditure of resources making her own room and a place to cultivate?", but it was after 11:00 and I was tired.

Whoops, still tired and forgot to ask. Which version of Elysium do you folks use? I checked the Steam workshop and there's at least three different versions by different people. The one with the most subscriptions also says it's no longer being worked on and might not work any longer.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 26, 2023, 12:23:37 pm
Oh, if you're still early game, you probably aren't going to have access to the miracles I was thinking of, which boosts an outer's stats by at least 20% one time, as those are Primordial Spirit-level. Other than that, there are several other skills that can increase various stats. If you haven't already, build a dozen or two Manual Pavilions and transcribe every law you have available. Better still, have the catgirl do that, as that gives a decent chunk of inspiration points.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirus on February 26, 2023, 01:58:11 pm
So apparently for earth cultivators, they want fire essence bars. To make fire essence bars they need tons of igneocopper ore and demon blood. Where do I find demon blood? Who knows, but I assume you're supposed to get it from demons. So for now my catgirl is just kinda, not getting much done. I may have made a mistake here.

Also my fire cultivator failed to break through at 100% and got injured. She had high mood and stable mental state, sitting in her cultivation room, but I guess something went wrong somehow. Now I'm not sure how to improve her odds.

The dog showed up, I'm trying to keep up with his training. So far I've got him peeing on herbs and shitting on farm plots, so that's helpful.

ETA: Breakthrough successful! Still a ways to go before golden core becomes a thing but at least she's progressing. Now, if only I could figure out how to get my catgirl going...
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 26, 2023, 03:00:51 pm
IIRC demon blood was easy to come by. Either dropped by demon invaders, or by killing the demons in the corner of the map, or in one of the first locations on the overland map - killing those should be doable even with a weak cultivator if you use the dog to tank the damage. Might take some kiting though.
I don't remember if the map-corner demons were somehow particularly stronger than those in the adventure locations, but maybe go for the latter - seems safer without your outers to worry about.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on February 26, 2023, 03:40:03 pm
Where do I find demon blood? Who knows, but I assume you're supposed to get it from demons. So for now my catgirl is just kinda, not getting much done. I may have made a mistake here.
Oh, if things go poorly with your catgirl cultivator, you'll at least have a source for some demon blood... :P
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 26, 2023, 04:05:42 pm
IIRC you can stick 4 igneocopper bars *right* next to her at range 1 for the elemental influence (but no qi gathering) and a full ring of spirit wood at range 5 for a pretty decent cultivation array.
I wouldn't do a GC breakthrough with it, but it should be enough to get her ready for her GC breakthrough.
Whoops, still tired and forgot to ask. Which version of Elysium do you folks use? I checked the Steam workshop and there's at least three different versions by different people. The one with the most subscriptions also says it's no longer being worked on and might not work any longer.
You probably want to use elesium obsession (https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=2402517675) since it stops your dudes from getting the happiness obsession. It probably isn't an issue for you, but the extra functionality is useful to have if you do actually need it.
Other then that though pretty sure they all work just fine.
Also my fire cultivator failed to break through at 100% and got injured. She had high mood and stable mental state, sitting in her cultivation room, but I guess something went wrong somehow. Now I'm not sure how to improve her odds.
Pretty sure the actual check comes at the end, so either her mental state went down, the time of day changed, or the weather changed dropping her down from 100%.
Nowhere near enough holy stone to make artifacts.
Wait. Stop. Why?
Quickly put an auspicious room around it
The difference between auspicious and V auspicious can be very significant there. Stick a feng shui building in the room to act as a node and give it the appropriate walls and flags to make it properly happy.
IIRC demon blood was easy to come by. Either dropped by demon invaders, or by killing the demons in the corner of the map, or in one of the first locations on the overland map - killing those should be doable even with a weak cultivator if you use the dog to tank the damage. Might take some kiting though.
I don't remember if the map-corner demons were somehow particularly stronger than those in the adventure locations, but maybe go for the latter - seems safer without your outers to worry about.
There are weaker ones on some maps then your starting one.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirus on February 26, 2023, 04:13:45 pm
Well, either I have no idea how combat works (entirely possible) or my fire cultivator is weaker than I thought. I went to Mt Barren and found a rabbit demon with less max Qi than my cultivator, and no regen.

"Great! I'll be able to outlast it!"

Oh the fool I was. The rabbit proceeded to take virtually no damage at all while my fire chick lost like a sixth of her Qi bar per hit. Had to have her retreat with minor injuries. I think I'll just nab some of the gathered resources and have her go home to recharge.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 26, 2023, 04:30:28 pm
Use the dog! Seriously.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirus on February 26, 2023, 04:32:48 pm
The dog is just a puppy. Can it actually help at all?

Also I have my first ever golden core! Only a grade 8, but it's a start, and I'll be able to open up that Taiyi sphere thing.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 26, 2023, 04:55:18 pm
Yeah it makes a pretty huge difference. Plus since you are just summoning a copy of it it doesn't matter if it dies.
Well, either I have no idea how combat works (entirely possible) or my fire cultivator is weaker than I thought. I went to Mt Barren and found a rabbit demon with less max Qi than my cultivator, and no regen.
Demonic beasts are pretty significantly superior based on qi and stage to cultivators that don't have stuff pumped into their combat stats (eg. protection, artifact mastery) especially if they lack good artifacts.
A pet tanking goes a long way to helping with that.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 26, 2023, 05:14:36 pm
Nowhere near enough holy stone to make artifacts.
Wait. Stop. Why?

Sent 2 Fire cultivators with decent luck to Drake Cave for 10 adventures each, and found one piece of holy stone. In total. I'm not wanting for jade or jade essence anymore... which is good, because I just promoted two Seven-Slaughtering Sword law users.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 26, 2023, 05:18:16 pm
Something I think this game should hint to you is that you can learn how to build buildings at other sects when you camp at them (and there is one particular one that is insanely good, try and find it).

I think adventuring and camping would solve a lot of your problems Sirus.

Also note, when adventuring for certain items, you want the cultivator searching for them to be of the feeding element (if you are looking for a wood item, send a water cultivator) and have high luck. The higher the better. Which is one of the reasons why my plans for a fire-only sect failed. It's just too efficient to have every law learned.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 26, 2023, 05:36:15 pm
Nowhere near enough holy stone to make artifacts.
Wait. Stop. Why?

Sent 2 Fire cultivators with decent luck to Drake Cave for 10 adventures each, and found one piece of holy stone. In total. I'm not wanting for jade or jade essence anymore... which is good, because I just promoted two Seven-Slaughtering Sword law users.
A quick check on the wiki shows that holy stone is quite a bit easier to get now thanks to the final DLC, but (just in case my incredulous warning wasn't clear) its still rare enough and one of the best earth qi items, so you don't want to waste any making generic artifacts out of it.
Note that the blocks have 30 qi gather (vs 35 for the stone) and you get 4 blocks for 1 stone. So it *might* be worth it do turn 1->4 depending on your priorities.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirus on February 26, 2023, 05:45:46 pm
I guess I'm not sure how to adventure or camp either.

I mean, I can do adventure if something pops up. I've visited a few locations and walked around two of them. But as far getting resources from these locations or finding new locations to explore, I have no idea. And unfortunately I can't seem to keep an inner hanging out at one location; if they enter the map in order to chat up the locals or steal gather items lying on the ground they fly back home automatically.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on February 26, 2023, 06:00:45 pm
The dog is just a puppy. Can it actually help at all?
The puppy could probably murder your entire sect at the point you get it, iirc. Folks have already noted it, but it's a significant force multiplier early in the game, and can largely handle most invasions you'll encounter for a... while. Don't underestimate the bowwow.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 26, 2023, 07:01:14 pm
Won my first no-nonsense fight against a Primordial Soul-level opponent. Asked to kill a traitor for Mystic Unity Sect. Sent one of my oldest and most experienced fighters, who is in fact, my second disciple promoted this entire run. Unfortunately, since he was promoted so early in the run, he never got the piles of drugs or advanced skills that later cultivators got. As such, he only has a little over 50k qi as a Grand Chariot practitioner at the Mizar state. He does have two quality artifacts: an ice bracelet and ice spear.

His opponent was a woman with a random law, 3 low-grade artifacts, and 5 times as much qi. I summoned the dog, which made it close to even. Her major weakness was the fact her artifacts had tens of thousands of qi, with one being over 100k. Although her stats showed she had I higher artifact power than mine, that's distributed across more artifacts, and doesn't account for the dog's core(which fights like an artifact - he's been training it like a good boy). As a result, my artifacts quickly out-fenced hers, which massively drained her when they went to recharge.

By the end of the fight, both cultivators were completely run out of qi and resorted to mortal weapons. At least one of the traitor's artifacts still had some power, but it was held in check by the dog's core. First blood was shed when the dog bit her several times in the face, then tore her up like one of those horror stories about aggressive breeds of dogs.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 26, 2023, 08:17:34 pm
I guess I'm not sure how to adventure or camp either.

I mean, I can do adventure if something pops up. I've visited a few locations and walked around two of them. But as far getting resources from these locations or finding new locations to explore, I have no idea. And unfortunately I can't seem to keep an inner hanging out at one location; if they enter the map in order to chat up the locals or steal gather items lying on the ground they fly back home automatically.

Camping lets you enter the location with whoever is camped there, and the secret to getting items is to send someone of the feeding element (if you want an earth item, send a fire cultivator) with the highest luck you can.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Sirus on February 26, 2023, 09:45:34 pm
But how do I get those items? Do I just leave them camping there for a while and let the cultivator slowly gather goodies? Do I have to explore the map and see what if anything RNG spawned for me? I've already noticed that the stuff listed in the Produces box isn't necessarily what will turn up on the map (like jade at Mt. Barren, when it looks like all they normally produce is cotton).
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 26, 2023, 10:02:04 pm
The camping map usually has pre-generated items in stacks, and you can pick them up and they won't respawn. Outside of camping, just spam adventures. It's faster to repeatedly adventure to a location than camp there, and then you will choose from a list of options.

Camp everywhere at least once. Just to see what's up.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Il Palazzo on February 27, 2023, 12:26:31 am
I think it worked like, if you leave them camping and don't enter, they'll periodically trigger some resource collecting event or something. Takes a while of sitting idly there. Never seemed like a good way to spend the inners' time. But then again, I've always had but few inners that I liked to micromanage - maybe it makes more sense when you're running a large sect.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on February 27, 2023, 12:01:30 pm
I think it's best used when you're (for whatever reason) going somewhere all the way on the other side of the map. If it takes multiple days just to get there, then it makes sense for them to just sit and collect, rather than waste time travelling back and forth.

Of course, the real answer to that is to advance your core and always carry the highest quality +travel speed talisman that you can make, so that you can go just about anywhere in no more than a day.

[...] But as far getting resources from these locations or finding new locations to explore, I have no idea.  [...]
To get new locations, you need to send your inners to any location that's below 100% explored (it'll show up in the lower corner of the info panel when you click on it). I don't know if new locations show up based on % explored, or if it's a random chance that's affected by % explored, but it ends up being the same thing - just keep going somewhere and new stuff will start popping up.

There's also some scrolls that you can find which will have locations in them. Just have an inner read the scroll and they'll show up on the map... I don't think this costs any inspiration to do.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 27, 2023, 12:10:56 pm
Finding new locations is a mix of percentage explored and random chance. For percentage explored, the moment your inner arrives at the location, before they do the adventure task, the percentage goes up and at a certain point an event will fire saying that they found a new location; they'll continue with the adventure task at this point. Randomly, the adventure event will be "Search for secluded spots", which can reveal a new site. Even if it fails, or there's no sites left to uncover through exploration, they'll still get a small chunk of Inspiration.

You can also find locations via manuals. Early in my current run, I found a manual that revealed every location in Mt. Shu, which is great because that opened up a source of Earth Flux, one of the most useful max qi boosters.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 27, 2023, 04:03:33 pm
Starting the game up again with the goal of actually beating the sects this time.
No funny business here, no siree. You can totally start with 7 dudes and basically every single one of the perks normally.
(https://i.imgur.com/wZKvPyE.png)

E: Messed up the first time in forgetting to set the map settings (aka, map size and starting relic) so took some time figuring it out and transferred the dudes I spent half a hour rolling to a proper size map.
(https://i.imgur.com/Ol4LG48.jpg)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 27, 2023, 06:18:21 pm
Pro-tip for talismans: set the graphics settings to low before you draw. It's smoother and the game doesn't judge the result as harshly. A T12 Talisman of Divine Concealment that I couldn't get up past 89% quality became a 99% quality, going from -8.8 Divinity to -12.5. That should be enough to prevent a Shendao from ascending accidentally. Similarly, a T6 Divine Authority at 99% quality is +24 Divinity, helping my Shendao fast-track to a 48 State Divine Realm. Doesn't even really need to mind fast for distress, but I'm going to anyway.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on February 27, 2023, 07:00:41 pm
I mean.... at that point just install the perfect talismans mod.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 27, 2023, 08:14:47 pm
I mean.... at that point just install the perfect talismans mod.
Ehh, there is quite a lot to be said for doing something without "cheating", even if you do it a very cheesy way.

That said, yeah, just install the mod. The talisman drawing mini-game is interesting the first or second time, but its much less fun the twentieth time doing the exact same talisman.
Of course some of the stuff it can do is flat out cheating (cough, perfect talismans you don't have the manual for), but mostly its just to reduce the very annoying repetitive tedium.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: EuchreJack on February 27, 2023, 10:42:56 pm
I mean.... at that point just install the perfect talismans mod.
Ehh, there is quite a lot to be said for doing something without "cheating", even if you do it a very cheesy way.

That said, yeah, just install the mod. The talisman drawing mini-game is interesting the first or second time, but its much less fun the twentieth time doing the exact same talisman.
Of course some of the stuff it can do is flat out cheating (cough, perfect talismans you don't have the manual for), but mostly its just to reduce the very annoying repetitive tedium.
Can't you just use the last talisman that you drew?
I mean, yes you have to draw each talisman once, but afterwards you're good.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 28, 2023, 12:21:59 am
You get a -5% penalty on auto-drawn mods compared to your best drawing. Which of course doesn't sound like much, and honestly isn't much at all, but in this type of game even 5% is a meaningful difference. Plus, its also annoying on a deeper level as you know that every single one of those talismans is sub-par.
Finally you have to draw every single talisman not once, but once per game, which if you end up playing a significant amount of games is a pretty significant amount of drawing time and adds up quickly.

If I used the mod to give a mechanical advantage that would be one thing, but all I use it (and many other mods) for is to reduce tedium, which (to me at least) feels completely fine.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on February 28, 2023, 05:36:22 pm
Had to go back a couple of autosaves. A wild bull smashed open the Mysterious Cavern's room, which in turn pissed off the now unsuppressed Flood Dragon. Who in turn created a couple of small ponds across the map before I could restore the wall. It wasn't until much later(granted, about 2 days in game) that I noticed one of those ponds popped up right under my crimson fruit tree.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on February 28, 2023, 05:50:53 pm
Fun Fact: So, of course you know that tools (pickaxe, axe, ect) are super useful to the point of even being nessassary.
What you may not know is that tool material matters as well.

Tools made of iron are 50% better (1.2 vs 0.8) then those made of wood, and tools made of darksteel or spiritwood are 66% better (2 vs 1.2) then those made of iron.
If you are crazy enough to make a tool out of lumina core or parasol timber then you get even better tools (3 vs 2).

For most non-crazy people though darksteel tools are what you want.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on March 03, 2023, 05:13:03 pm
What makes a good first Natal Talisman for a Primordial Symbols cultivator? I'm kind of disappointed with myself that I didn't get this law earlier. Apparently it's more (over)powerful than a physical cultivator.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on March 03, 2023, 05:22:15 pm
I just got the primordial symbols law for the first time too. Had to look up a guide. Does every character give you their stuff if you gift them their favorites at 100 favor? Because wow have I missed out on stuff if that's so.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on March 03, 2023, 06:45:41 pm
What makes a good first Natal Talisman for a Primordial Symbols cultivator? I'm kind of disappointed with myself that I didn't get this law earlier. Apparently it's more (over)powerful than a physical cultivator.
Nah, a properly designed physical cult can have 100% qi shield penetration, which means that it doesn't matter if the other cult has literally max 100m qi, its all useless and they die pointlessly without any real chance to fight back.

I haven't really messed around with optimizing a PS cult before though, so I can't say for sure what you want to get for them to be absurd.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on March 04, 2023, 11:41:20 am
Had a funny fight the other day.

I took on a sect mission to take down a golden core renegade - figured that I had a golden core myself (albeit a pretty crappy one), plus three supporting inners at core shaping, plus the dog, who had just turned into an adolescent.

Turned out to be way, way easier than expected because, due to the interaction of weapon speed and turn radius, the enemy's weapon just kept going in little circles around one of my guy's weapons (neither being able to hit the other), while all the rest of the fighters (plus dog) just wailed on him.

Ended up winning the fight without losing even a single point of qi.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on March 06, 2023, 08:26:16 am
Made two save-scummed attempts to fight the Flood Dragon. First attempt, I tried to use a formation, but I have no idea how to use a formation and it fell apart within seconds. The Flood Dragon may or may not have an attack that hits the entire formation at once. I may also have had the the elements reversed. I think the auxiliaries are supposed to feed the pillar; I had it the other way around.

Second attempt went much better, but still not great. Managed to take off one of its arms before eventually collapsing to accumulated damage.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on March 07, 2023, 02:13:16 am
Yeah, some of (all of??? its been a while) the bosses have AOE attacks, which basically means they hit everyone in the formation at once.
The flood dragon has a couple, but it has one in particular has one thats a doozy.
Quote
The Flood Dragon targets all of a single cultivator's Artifacts for 15 seconds[10]. It then consumes a portion of the Artifacts' Max Qi (100% Fire, 25% Earth, 50% all other elements). and causes an explosion of radius 5 (11x11 tiles) surrounding the cultivator, with the damage dealt equal to 1.5% of the Qi consumed and capped to 10% of the cultivator's Max Qi[11]. This means that low Max Qi Artifacts of the Earth element, such as those made with Marble and Jade Bracelets that have been Specter Refined to Tier 12, are preferable during a fight with the Flood Dragon.
Its one of those "Did you specifically look this up? No? Fuck You!" things this game seems to love. (There might be some ingame clue that tells you to avoid hi qi artifacts, but I don't remember for sure if there is).

Since AOE attacks hit everyone that means it bypasses the formation protection bonuses on the formation head, and since its likely a bunch of those dude just have crappy protection themselves, so they take multiple times as much damage as the formation head.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on March 07, 2023, 05:00:37 am
Probably wasn't that. What happened was, when a formation falls apart, every in the formation is left near-dead with "Formation Tremors" as a Spirit-based injury.

It happened when I challenged an Ancient Cultivator with 9 million qi. I might have actually won that fight if my main fighters didn't all go near dead at once. I did manage to knock off 5 million of his qi, so it wasn't a total stomp.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on March 07, 2023, 09:42:40 am
How useful are formations?

I've fooled around with them a little bit in the past, but my experience mirrors Akura's - my cultivators are all almost instantly KO'd, usually with disastrous consequences.

I suspect I'm either:
1) Setting them up wrong.
2) Need to invest major points in formations on some (all?) of the cultivators involved.
3) Need to find the second-tier formation books, because the basic ones you start the game with are trash.
4) Some / all of the above.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on March 07, 2023, 05:33:49 pm
#2 is the big one. Your formation pillar needs to have a good formation score or else the formation instantly collapses and everyone dies.

I typically put the skill way up so I can make big formations without worrying about them collapsing under stress (ideally max it, but of course that's expensive), but if you have a small (eg. 2-5 people) formation you don't need to get to the max at all.
How useful are formations?
Extremely. They allow your high level but combat weak (aka, anyone you haven't invested millions of inspiration points in to max out their protection and artifact mastery skill and that lacks the combat buff items in their inventory) to contribute to the battle both as Qi batteries and as a direct amp to combat strength.

Its been a while, but I remember mine multiplying combat damage by like 3-4 times. Since the bosses have some super moves that take a super long time to charge this speedup can be huge in avoiding people or your base dying.
Formations have weaknesses, notably your dudes can't drop out of combat to grab items to recharge their qi or for any other reason, one low qi dude can be enough to screw your formation over, and AOE attacks are a big threat to them.

At times its meant that I've had to split up my formation so that people can recharge or to avoid AOE attacks that I knew would kill it, but in general they have been both helpful and key in beating bosses.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on March 08, 2023, 01:14:43 am
Question - anyone know if an outer's initial stats make any difference when choosing a path?

I mean, I know that a higher compatibility rating is directly connected to having good stats that match the path you choose. But does having the stats specifically when you're making the choice change anything?

The reason I ask is that I just found a spirit relic that gives anyone in the room +40% PER, which seems pretty huge. Unfortunately, due to its restrictions, I don't think I can actually place it in a cultivation room (will probably play around with this more later). I can, however, place it in my outer disciple dining room.

It boosts one of my outer's compatibility with a law from 96% to 147% ... but does that matter outside of the dining hall the relic is sitting inside?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on March 08, 2023, 02:31:41 am
Question - anyone know if an outer's initial stats make any difference when choosing a path?

I mean, I know that a higher compatibility rating is directly connected to having good stats that match the path you choose. But does having the stats specifically when you're making the choice change anything?

The reason I ask is that I just found a spirit relic that gives anyone in the room +40% PER, which seems pretty huge. Unfortunately, due to its restrictions, I don't think I can actually place it in a cultivation room (will probably play around with this more later). I can, however, place it in my outer disciple dining room.

It boosts one of my outer's compatibility with a law from 96% to 147% ... but does that matter outside of the dining hall the relic is sitting inside?
No, the starting compatibility doesn't really matter. Nor does that artifact do anything when your dude is out of the room.


However stat spirit relics are actually super good (evenually). See, it turns out that the stat boosting miracles don't give a 20% boost like they say they do, they actually give a bigger boost the lower your stats are (IIRC someone with 1 in a stat gets something like a 40% boost).
If you don't fulfill the requirements of a relic they work in reverse (lowering your stats instead of raising them) so if you do the stat boosting miracles in a room with one then leave your dude gets free stats.

What are the exact requirements for the relic BTW?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: AlStar on March 08, 2023, 08:16:24 am
Spirit Relic:
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on March 08, 2023, 07:38:21 pm
That's totally doable actually.
It needs a medium room, which is 25-49 tiles. This is enough space to fit a full size cultivation array (29 tiles) with 20 tiles to spare.
You would use those 20 tiles to make a long narrow extension, with 4 to make sure its out of range of the spirit wood, 6 for the Ancestral Shrine, and a final one space to put the relic on. This should leave you 9 spare tiles if you want a bit of free space for the room or to make it a little less ugly.

The spirit wood has a pretty strong element power you need to overcome to make it "slightly beneficial for wood element" but that should be solvable by sticking some water walls or stuff on stands just next to the shrine

It will look funky, but a 40% boost is pretty huge for if you can't get your dude up to 10 perception for the GC breakthrough. Or, even if you can you can save quite a few inspiration points by just not having to get all those perception boosts instead.

Something like this should work, although you probably need to stick some water stuff on stands just outside to make sure the water element is strong enough.
Spoiler (click to show/hide)
The only issue is that some qi gather materials might count as light sources, which would mean it wouldn't work for some elements.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on March 09, 2023, 06:50:17 pm
Raised an animal to a Yaoguai for the first time; a snake, with 6 shards. Hella fast, but his stats suck. Not sure what to do with him. I was planning on making him a spell-focused cultivator, but that's probably not going to work now. And if I remember correctly, snakes make poor physical cultivators, nor do I have any Yaoguai-focused physical laws. Shendao? Snekgod could be pretty powerful, but is it possible to reach tribulation-survival levels of power within 100 days?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Frumple on March 09, 2023, 08:27:12 pm
Snakes make pretty terrible physical cultivators, yeah, unless something's changed since I last played or there's a mod or something that adjusts it. Basically they don't have arms so far as the cultivation is concerned, which is a tremendous disadvantage. Iirc they're best at social-fu and crafting, so whatever leans into that should be okay.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Folly on March 10, 2023, 12:02:56 am
Snake Yaoguai are somewhat famous as having the highest potential for max Qi of any unit in the game.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on March 10, 2023, 12:29:34 am
Snake Yaoguai are generally great qi cults due to their high max qi, as well as often having simply great stat scores/skills.
They don't excel at anything else in particular, but those base advantages end up being very significant.

However poorly designed (aka, what I end up getting when I tried one) shard Yaoguai are often quite trash in general.

If its stats/skills are good though its worth keeping even if just an dude for an outer cult till tribulation.
Snekgod could be pretty powerful, but is it possible to reach tribulation-survival levels of power within 100 days?
Its possible, but depending on how well you know the game it might not be viable and just result in them dying.
However there is a very cheesy method you can use to delay tribulations basically forever and let a cult with a mere 9 days to live from game start do their tribulation at like day 100 with a trivial success.
Spoiler: Cheese (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Il Palazzo on March 10, 2023, 01:00:00 am
I never tried that cheese, but always wondered how it works in details. Does the time stop only when they're en route to the destination? Or can you just camp them at a place and forget all about them until you've prepared everything?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on March 10, 2023, 01:25:45 am
Spoiler: Cheese info (click to show/hide)
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on March 11, 2023, 06:38:55 pm
Definitely hit a wall with my Shendao cultivator, particularly increase Mental State at the Wise level. It's increasing 0.02 a day... and my stupid ass forgot to remove her MS boosts before breaking through to Wise. I'm literally a fraction of a point away from being able to turn off one of the talismans - kind of important since all three active talismans are MS boosters, and I therefore cannot turn on Divine Concealment to prevent her ascension(not that it's an immediate problem, it's only at 54%).

This of course presents another problem, as Mental State level also sets the safe limit of Divine Residents... which is currently maxed out. Alternatively, I could just go over the limit and eat the Belief Tribulations, since my experience with Detachment Tribulations shows that she can just sit there with heavenly lightning going up her ass all day and still have max qi through it. I just don't know how fast Hatred builds up, or how long it's going to take to resolve the tribulation - a literal god-tier cultivator is no good if trouble shows up during her regular thunderbolt enema. On the other hand, I've seen screenshots of Shendao with over 5 million artifact power. If I can achieve something close to that, tribulations would only take a short time to defeat even at the maximum possible(about 1 billion, according to the wiki).

Getting Belief isn't an issue, even at her current amount of Divine Residents she receives tens of thousands of Belief points per second.

EDIT: It seems that just turning off the talismans, dropping Mental State level to Sagely, then edging up my Divinity, does vastly accelerate MS gain. Hatred gain from having 500,000 Divine Residents with a limit of 200,000 is about 0.025-0.03% per second. Just gotta watch that Divinity.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on March 12, 2023, 04:20:50 am
Definitely hit a wall with my Shendao cultivator, particularly increase Mental State at the Wise level. It's increasing 0.02 a day... and my stupid ass forgot to remove her MS boosts before breaking through to Wise. I'm literally a fraction of a point away from being able to turn off one of the talismans - kind of important since all three active talismans are MS boosters, and I therefore cannot turn on Divine Concealment to prevent her ascension(not that it's an immediate problem, it's only at 54%).

This of course presents another problem, as Mental State level also sets the safe limit of Divine Residents... which is currently maxed out. Alternatively, I could just go over the limit and eat the Belief Tribulations, since my experience with Detachment Tribulations shows that she can just sit there with heavenly lightning going up her ass all day and still have max qi through it. I just don't know how fast Hatred builds up, or how long it's going to take to resolve the tribulation - a literal god-tier cultivator is no good if trouble shows up during her regular thunderbolt enema. On the other hand, I've seen screenshots of Shendao with over 5 million artifact power. If I can achieve something close to that, tribulations would only take a short time to defeat even at the maximum possible(about 1 billion, according to the wiki).

Getting Belief isn't an issue, even at her current amount of Divine Residents she receives tens of thousands of Belief points per second.

EDIT: It seems that just turning off the talismans, dropping Mental State level to Sagely, then edging up my Divinity, does vastly accelerate MS gain. Hatred gain from having 500,000 Divine Residents with a limit of 200,000 is about 0.025-0.03% per second. Just gotta watch that Divinity.

I was gonna mention that scented satchels give a base 5 mental state boost and purity pills give 15.

Also, there is a talisman from the talisman law you get from He Zhudao (I may have the name wrong, but everyone keeps mentioning them) that reduces divinity. It's a good idea to tier up talisman paper and make it and at some point it makes it impossible for them to ascend, meaning you can set and forget.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on March 12, 2023, 07:16:45 am
I did mention that. Also, my goal is to reduce Mental State with penalties to a point where the base increase is much faster than the high Mental State rate and float back up. To that point, I'm trying to stack as many Obsessions as I can; unfortunately, I've already locked out Giving Up, and both Hedonistic and Depression both require several hours of real time to build up. The good news is, Anxious still appears to be building up despite the fact she is at the highest cultivation state - the Shendao guide from the wiki states that Anxious can't build up at the highest state because there are no more breakthroughs, this appears not to be the case.

I hope that I can blow up to the limit for Wise and breakthrough without using my MS talismans and other boosts, so I can subsequently blow up to the final mental level using them. In the meantime, I'm just letting divine hatred build up, I'm not worried about the tribulation. Once I do all that, I can just turn on Divine Concealment and maybe Sharpsword or other battle talismans and wreck everything. She's already literally immune to any kind of damage that I've been able to expose her to, including having her engage half a dozen demon beasts, or a small squad of random GC/PS-level cultivators solo.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on March 12, 2023, 05:44:14 pm
I just remembered that the cultivation branch area gives a mental state boost too.... Could you assign a branch manager so bad it gives a negative modifier?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Arcvasti on March 12, 2023, 06:32:38 pm
I just remembered that the cultivation branch area gives a mental state boost too.... Could you assign a branch manager so bad it gives a negative modifier?

Probably not, but one thing you can do is assign your incredibly unqualified Shendao to be the leader of a large branch, which will give them an absolutely enormous mental state penalty from the stress. It takes some tight planning to turn this into a useful breakthrough, but it's not impossible. Just make sure to work out the math beforehand instead of just winging it.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on March 13, 2023, 04:57:53 pm
Went through three detachment tribulations, but only got Mental State back from two of them. Is there any situation where something like that can legitimately happen or did it bug out? Because that really screwed over my breakthrough strategy.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: lemon10 on March 13, 2023, 08:00:48 pm
I've been getting back into the game and there is just so many things to do/remember every single time.

You have to find the favorites of all the sect leaders for gifts, you have to adventure to every major location like 50 times (bit less with talismans), you have to enter each map at least once, you have to remember all the basic secrets (eg, special locations). And a bunch of more minor stuff that you have to do as well.

Still, its not like time really matters in the game, so the fact that I didn't have anyone break through to golden core due to missing breakthrough times in year 1 won't matter in the slightest.
In other news:
(https://i.imgur.com/hoGKxUU.png]https://i.imgur.com/hoGKxUU.png)
Looks like one of my catboy cultivators has himself some big fans.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Il Palazzo on March 13, 2023, 08:08:21 pm
Still, its not like time really matters in the game
It doesn't, unless you want to complete the story line. But then again, why would anyone want to go through the pain. Better watch a summary on youtube or something.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on March 14, 2023, 03:39:10 pm
Did some more testing, and it appears the Killing obsession does not return mental state when cleared. Is this normal?
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on March 19, 2023, 05:48:24 pm
Still trying to tweak a Shendao. I can't figure out how to promote a core follower into a guard. The follower does have 100% Extent of Belief and 5/5 Wishes Fulfilled(had it at 4, but I did another), but I can't find any option or button to convert them into a guard.

She's already irritating me with the fact that it's going to require 25 days to breakthrough to the final mental state level... after doing 25+ days of Mind Fasting because it also requires her to do indulgence to bring her Divinity down. And I basically have to use a cheat mod because more than once she's broken her Mind Fast(losing the buff) to complain about boredom. Yes, during a period where she's supposed to stop thinking she stops because she's bored. Restraining would stop her breaking her Fast, but that would ascend her. Also, fun fact, while set to indulgence, my Shendao eats more than my physical cultivator.

EDIT: Literally minutes after posting this, one of the walls to the library/leisure room became sentient.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Micro102 on March 19, 2023, 07:45:42 pm
I'd ask the discord (https://discord.gg/jktEFNuX (https://discord.gg/jktEFNuX)). The help section is very active. I haven't gotten to shendao guards.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Arcvasti on March 19, 2023, 09:30:31 pm
She's already irritating me with the fact that it's going to require 25 days to breakthrough to the final mental state level... after doing 25+ days of Mind Fasting because it also requires her to do indulgence to bring her Divinity down. And I basically have to use a cheat mod because more than once she's broken her Mind Fast(losing the buff) to complain about boredom. Yes, during a period where she's supposed to stop thinking she stops because she's bored. Restraining would stop her breaking her Fast, but that would ascend her. Also, fun fact, while set to indulgence, my Shendao eats more than my physical cultivator.

This is an intended part of the Shendao challenge unfortunately. The best solution is to use a high level talisman to reduce recreation(and another one for hunger/thirst) decay to almost nothing, so they can handle mind fasting in non-restrained mode for 25 days. You can also manually toggle between Restraint and normal mode, making sure not to ascend, but this is exactly as annoying as it sounds.

Hitting the final mental state breakthrough on a Shendao is really hard. Even a slightly scuffed Shendao is still pretty good though, and if you do ascend them(either by accident or just to make room) then they'll be usable as a Guard by later generations of Shendao.
Title: Re: Amazing Cultivation Simulator
Post by: Akura on April 01, 2023, 05:52:43 pm
Been working with a spell-based cultivator a bit. True Sun cultivator, boar Yaoguai with pretty mediocre stats all in all. Took as many spell power manuals and actual spells as I could: Innate Qi, Firestorm, Divine Bolt, Chaos Void, Vitality Chant, Reversa Cycle, and Spirit Shield. Tried to max out Spell, but only got Protect to 10. Equipped a Giant Turtle Shell, Flood Dragon Scale, and Taiyi Codex, ate a Shield Pill, and she's wearing Demon Hide clothing. Artifact is weak, total power 651 with 7k qi capacity.

She blew through 3 attainment tribulations pretty quickly with little difficulty. She probably could last almost indefinitely, especially if I get some bonuses to cooldown. One tribulation was difficult for my Grand Chariot and 7SS guys. But that's probably because tribulations have no protection value; they take full damage from everything. Against a PS-level cultivator with 60k qi but 20 Protect, Firestorm, stated to do over 128k qi damage, did less than a tenth of that and has a long cooldown. On the other hand, my best Grand Chariot fighter killed that enemy and his two buddies within seconds.


One thing I also discovered, Heaven's Breath, though very difficult to acquire, makes awesome artifacts. It's naturally T12, so you just need a really good Myriad Artifact Law user and to set the item in a qi array until it have at least 1500 qi.