- Cultivation
- The path
- Aura Sight & Pressure
Aura Sight & Pressure
Two arts that turn the ladder of realms into something you can feel. Aura Sight (神识探查) lets you look at someone and read how strong they are, as far as your own strength allows. Pressure (威压) is the other side of it: you let your aura fall as weight, and everything weaker near you slows, buckles and finally kneels.
Both are toggles with no learning step. Neither needs a manual or a Dao. They are decided by one thing, the gap between two ranks.
Rank
Every reading and every tier below is a comparison of two ranks. A rank is the built-in ladder flattened into one number: realm times 4, plus the stage. Body Refinement Early is 0, Qi Condensation Early is 4, and Void Refinement Peak is 27. A player who has not begun cultivating is a mortal, and counts as rank -4 (Pressure-Mortal-Rank), one realm below the bottom of the ladder.
| Realm | Early | Middle | Late | Peak |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Body Refinement | 0 | 1 | 2 | 3 |
| Qi Condensation | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 |
| Foundation Establishment | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| Golden Core Formation | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 |
| Nascent Soul | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 |
| Soul Formation | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 |
| Void Refinement | 24 | 25 | 26 | 27 |
Players use their effective realm and stage. What else has a rank:
- A Retainer, a Rogue Cultivator, a spirit beast companion, and a creature that wields a Dao Domain (Calamity Beasts, event bosses, the Void Rift Warden) each count as the Late stage of their own realm. A spirit beast uses its own level.
- Any other creature is ranked by its maximum health only for Pressure, never for Aura Sight. See creatures.
- Sect guardians, trial-pagoda opponents, beast-tide and Secret Realm beasts, sword spirits, dungeon and world bosses, rift guards, rival cultivators and quest givers have no rank at all. Aura Sight reads nothing from them and Pressure never touches them.
Aura Sight
Look at a cultivator and the HUD tells you what you can make of them. Turn it on with /cultivation sight, the Aura Sight checkbox in Settings (next to your aura switches), or a keybind. It is off until you turn it on, and it opens at Body Refinement (Aura-Sight-Min-Realm); below that the toggle tells you which realm you need. A fleeing soul cannot toggle it.
It reads whatever is under your crosshair, twice a second, out to 16 blocks plus 4 for every realm you have reached (Aura-Sight-Range-Base, Aura-Sight-Range-Per-Realm; never more than 96). That is 16 at Body Refinement, 28 at Golden Core Formation and 40 at Void Refinement. A solid block between your eyes and the target blocks the reading; grass, water and the like do not, and a target standing right in a doorway still reads.
What you read
What you get depends only on the target's rank against yours.
| The target is | You read | The HUD line |
|---|---|---|
| Lower in rank than you | Their exact realm and stage | Name - Foundation Establishment, Middle-Stage |
| In your realm, at your stage or above | Their realm, and that they are your equal | Name - Qi Condensation, your equal |
| Fewer than 2 realms above you | Only that they are stronger | Name - stronger than you, its depth eludes you |
| 2 or more realms above you | Nothing: they read as a mortal | Name - a mortal |
| 2 or more realms above you, and pressing you | An unfathomable pressure | Name - an unfathomable pressure |
The two-realm gap is Aura-Sight-Unfathomable-Gap-Realms. A player is named by username and a Retainer by its name. A creature is only ever a cultivating creature. On a server running a replacement progression, which has a ladder of its own, you read the realm and never the stage.
The line is colored by what it says: green for someone weaker, gold for an equal, amber for someone stronger, red for a pressing cultivator, gray for a mortal. A mortal who has not begun cultivating can never use the sight, since it needs a cultivation of your own.
What it can read
Players, Retainers, Rogue Cultivators, spirit beast companions, and the creatures that wield a Dao Domain: Calamity Beasts, event bosses and the Void Rift Warden. Everything else shows nothing, and the line simply disappears. Being readable is not the same as being pressable: bosses can be read, and are never pressed.
What you see
The visible realm aura follows the same rule, viewer by viewer. Someone weaker than you or in your realm shows their true aura. A cultivator one realm above you shows a faint dark haze with no realm color in it. A cultivator two or more realms above you shows no aura at all, unless they are pressing, when you see the haze. It needs no Aura Sight: it is how the world looks to everyone, and Aura-Sight-Particle-Perception-Enabled turns it off for the whole server. A cultivator always sees their own true aura.
Concealing your aura
Switch your own aura off (/cultivation aura) and you are concealed. Anyone who is not at least a realm above you reads you as a mortal; a cultivator who is, sees through it and reads you normally, with Concealing printed in front of your name so they know you tried. The distance that counts is Aura-Sight-Conceal-See-Through-Realms, 1 by default.
- The disguise ends the moment you press: releasing Pressure forces your aura out whatever the switch says, and you stop reading as concealed.
- It only means anything while the server's auras are on (
Aura-Enabled). Creatures never conceal. - Concealing hides your rank from the weak. It does not hide you from someone a realm above.
Pressure
Pressure is your aura let fall as weight. While you hold it, once a second, everything weaker within reach feels it in one of four tiers. Turn it on and off with /cultivation pressure (alias /cultivation weiya), or bind it to a key.
| Default | |
|---|---|
| Opens at | Qi Condensation (Pressure-Min-Realm) |
| Cost to hold | 0.25% of the Qi your current stage needs, every second (Pressure-Qi-Per-Second-Percent-Of-Stage) |
| Reach | 6 blocks plus 3 for every realm, capped at 32 (Pressure-Radius-Base, Pressure-Radius-Per-Realm, Pressure-Radius-Max) |
| Most it presses at once | 48 targets, players first (Pressure-Max-Targets) |
The reach is 9 blocks at Qi Condensation, 15 at Golden Core Formation and 24 at Void Refinement, so the cap of 32 only matters on a server that raises the per-realm figure. You cannot start it with no Qi, or while you are meditating or in a ritual, breakthrough, advancement or retreat. A Crushed or Kneeling cultivator cannot start it either, though anyone can always withdraw it.
The four tiers
The tier is how far the target's rank sits below yours, less any falloff. The tiers do not stack: a target feels the heaviest one it earns, and nothing at all below the first.
| Tier | From a gap of | What it does to the target |
|---|---|---|
| Uneasy | 1 rank | 10% slower |
| Oppressed | 4 ranks | 30% slower, no sprinting, 15% less damage dealt |
| Crushed | 8 ranks | 60% slower, no sprinting or jumping, 35% less damage dealt, abilities locked, and no techniques |
| Kneeling | 12 ranks | Cannot move, attack, use abilities or cast |
The gaps are Pressure-Gap-Uneasy, Pressure-Gap-Oppressed, Pressure-Gap-Crushed and Pressure-Gap-Kneeling (1, 4, 8, 12); a tier can never be set below the one under it. A rank is a stage, so 4 ranks is one full realm, and 12 is three. That makes Kneeling three realms, or a mortal under a Foundation Establishment cultivator (rank 8 against -4). The effects last 1.6 seconds and are renewed every second, so they lift within a moment of the pressure ending. A creature only honors the speed change.
Techniques are blocked for a Crushed or Kneeling target on every path: the command, a keybind, and the interaction itself. The target is told so.
Falloff, and pressing back
- Toward the edge. Past 60% of the reach (
Pressure-Outer-Band-Fraction) the weight thins, and the target counts 4 ranks higher (Pressure-Outer-Band-Rank-Penalty). - Pressing back. A target that is itself releasing Pressure counts 2 ranks higher (
Pressure-Counter-Bonus-Ranks). - Two at once. When several cultivators press the same target, the heaviest tier laid in the last second holds; a lighter one does not push it down.
A worked case: a Golden Core Formation Early cultivator (rank 12, reach 15) pressing a Qi Condensation Early one (rank 4). Inside 9 blocks the gap is 8, so Crushed. Out past 9 blocks it is 4, so Oppressed. If the Qi Condensation cultivator presses back, the gap inside drops to 6 (Oppressed) and the outer band to 2 (Uneasy).
What the target is told
The first time a tier rises under an emitter, the target gets a message naming how it feels. It is worded by what the target can read of the emitter, with the same ladder as Aura Sight: Name, a cultivator of Golden Core Formation if they read their realm, Name, a cultivator stronger than you if they only read that, and An unfathomable pressure falls on you from beyond your sight if they read nothing. From Crushed up, the target's camera also shakes. The expanding ring the emitter draws on the ground is scaled to the real reach only for viewers who can read the emitter's realm; for everyone else it is a fixed-size ring, so it never gives the realm away.
Creatures
Pressure presses creatures as well (Pressure-Affects-Npcs), by rank. A Rogue Cultivator or a Retainer uses its own realm. Any other creature is ranked by its maximum health through Pressure-Npc-Health-Rank-Steps, a list of health:rank pairs, 0:-4,150:0,400:4,1000:8 by default: under 150 health counts as a mortal, from 150 as Body Refinement Early, from 400 as Qi Condensation Early, from 1000 as Foundation Establishment Early. Aura Sight has no reading for those.
When it ends
The release ends when you toggle it off, run out of Qi, die, log out or change world, become a fleeing soul, sit down to meditate or begin a ritual, breakthrough, advancement or retreat, or fall below its realm (a demotion). An administrator can end one with /cultivation admin endpressure <player>. Whatever it laid on others lapses within about a second and a half.
Releasing Pressure forces your aura into the open for as long as it lasts, even if you had switched it off, and you stop reading as concealed. A cultivator two or more realms above you, who would otherwise read you as a mortal, reads an unfathomable pressure instead. Weight is meant to be seen.
The Burst
/cultivation pressure burst looses your aura in one shout: everything Pressure would press is thrown back, and the heavier tiers are staggered where they stand. It needs no release first.
| Default | |
|---|---|
| Cost | 5% of the Qi your current stage needs (Pressure-Burst-Qi-Percent-Of-Stage) |
| Cooldown | 30 seconds (Pressure-Burst-Cooldown-Seconds), saved with your technique cooldowns so it survives a relog |
| Knockback | 8 blocks per second sideways at Oppressed (Pressure-Burst-Knockback-Strength), half that for Uneasy, 1.4 times for Crushed, 1.8 times for Kneeling, with a lift |
| Stagger | Oppressed 0.6 s, Crushed 1.2 s, Kneeling 2.0 s; none for Uneasy |
Staggered means unable to move or act. The tier a target earns is worked out exactly as for the pulse, falloff and counter-pressure included, so a burst reaches the same people. The cooldown can never be set shorter than the longest stagger plus one second, so a burst cannot chain into a permanent stun. The bound key and the command are the same art. An admin under the bypass waives the Qi, not the cooldown.
Who Is Spared
Pressure and the burst share one list of refusals.
Players, never pressed:
- your party, your sect and allied sects, and yourself
- anyone in Creative or otherwise invulnerable, or under spawn protection
- anyone dead, or fleeing as a soul, or standing in the Heavenly Realm's sanctuary
- anyone in a world where player damage is switched off
- an admin under the bypass
- a duelist, unless you are their opponent. While you are in a duel, you press your opponent and no one else
Creatures, never pressed:
- anything with no rank (guardians, trial-pagoda opponents, quest givers and the rest, listed under Rank)
- Calamity Beasts, event bosses and the Void Rift Warden, which can be read but are never pressed
- any other creature with
Pressure-Npc-Immune-Min-Healthhealth or more (1500), and any role named inPressure-Npc-Exempt-Roles(EL_ULC_Boss_*by default; a trailing*matches a prefix), so other mods' bosses are left alone - a shielded creature
- a Retainer or spirit beast belonging to you or your allies, or to someone who is dueling
Two server switches change the players list. Pressure-Affects-Players (on) turns player pressure off altogether. Pressure-Requires-Pvp (off) limits it to players you could attack, and with it off pressure works where PvP does not.
In the Game
- The HUD shows the Aura Sight line and your own Pressure line.
- The Codex has an Aura Sight and a Pressure entry under Self, carrying your server's own numbers.
- Each toggle and the burst can be bound to a key; see Keybinds.
Server Owners
Everything is in Arts/AuraPressureConfig.json, read live, and clamped on read so a bad edit never reaches the engine. Every key and default is on the Arts config page, and the same section is in the in-game admin menu, bar the realm gates and the creature health list.
The three arts are also technique rules (aura_sight, pressure_release, pressure_burst), so a server can switch one off there. They carry no Qi cost of their own; the real costs are above. /cultivation admin endpressure <player> needs cultivation.admin. The other commands need only cultivation.