Realms & Stages

Every player starts at Body Refinement, Early-Stage and climbs toward immortality through seven realms, each split into four sub-stages: Early, Middle, Late and Peak. Twenty-eight rungs in all.

The seven realms, in order

The Ladder

Within each realm you advance Early → Middle → Late → Peak, then break through into the next realm's Early-Stage. Higher realms and stages grant additive max health and a percentage damage bonus, both tuned in Config.json.

Advancements vs. Breakthroughs

Both are real, timed meditation rituals. Bank enough Qi, sit down in a chunk whose Spirit Vein holds enough energy, and the ritual progresses for as long as you keep meditating. By default it begins by itself the moment your Qi is full; v0.11.2 you can turn that off and start it yourself, see Holding your breakthrough.

The chunk-Qi requirement is a presence check, not a drain — the vein is not consumed by the ritual — but a vein that falls below the bar will pause the ritual until it regenerates. v0.11.0 The same goes for your own banked Qi: see Low Qi pauses a ritual.

v0.11.1 The breakthrough bar is the one ordinary ground can never meet. A common vein holds 500 Qi at most, against 750 for a breakthrough, so a breakthrough needs a rich or dragon vein. If you sit on ground that is too shallow, the ritual says so and now names the Vein-Seeking Sinan, a compass you craft at a Workbench that points to the nearest rich or dragon vein. See Spirit Vein Compass.

Holding Your Breakthrough

v0.11.2 By default, meditating with full Qi starts the breakthrough or stage advancement on its own. Some cultivators would rather pick the moment: to finish a quest first, gather a Tribulation Ward Pill, stand on a rich vein, or bring friends to watch. Two things now let you.

• The settings page (/cultivation settings) has a new switch in its Breakthrough section, Start breakthroughs automatically at full Qi. It is on for everyone who has not touched it. /cultivation autobreakthrough flips the same switch from chat.
• /cultivation breakthrough starts the pending breakthrough or advancement on demand.

With the switch off, a meditation that reaches full Qi simply waits. You are told once, "Your Qi is full and your breakthrough is ready, but Auto-Breakthrough is off", and nothing else happens: the ritual does not begin, and the sit banks no further Qi and draws nothing from the vein. You can keep sitting, stand up, or go and prepare, and your Qi stays at the bar. If your Qi drops back under it and fills again, you are told again.

Starting it. /cultivation breakthrough checks that you are ready, sits you down if you are standing, and starts the ritual on your next breath of meditation. Everything the ritual normally asks still applies, because it is the same ritual: the chunk's vein must hold enough Qi (see the table above), your Heart-Devil Trial and tribulation come as they would have, and Breakthrough Quality is judged the same. The command turns you away, and says why, if:

• you are not at full Qi yet (it tells you how much you hold against what you need);
• a breakthrough or advancement is already underway;
• you are in the middle of a refinement, a beast evolution or a Closed-Door Retreat;
• you are already at the top and have no breakthrough left (Ascension is a separate rite).

The request lasts two minutes. If the ground cannot meet the vein requirement in that time, or your Qi falls below the bar, it lapses and you run the command again.

For server owners. Both keys live in BreakthroughConfig.json.

Withdrawing, Leaving and Dying

v0.11.0 There are four ways a breakthrough or advancement can end without finishing. They are priced so that none is a free escape.

Withdrawing from a ritual

Standing up costs a stage. If you realize early that you should not be sitting there, you can instead withdraw: pay Qi, keep your realm and stage.

1. /cultivation meditate abort checks every rule and quotes the exact cost. It changes nothing.
2. /cultivation meditate abort confirm checks them all again and withdraws.

A withdrawal scatters half of your banked Qi (Ritual-Abort-Qi-Loss-Percent, 50), ends the ritual, stands you up, clears the sky if a tribulation storm was gathering, and leaves your realm, stage and skill points exactly as they were. No demotion. You may withdraw again only after a cooldown (Ritual-Abort-Cooldown-Minutes, 60), kept per profile on the wall clock. A reminder appears once when a ritual begins, unless the cooldown would refuse you.

It applies to realm breakthroughs and sub-stage advancements only, and is refused when:

All five keys live in the Breakthrough Config; see Cultivation Configs.

Logging out

A logout the player caused while a breakthrough, advancement, Ascension, Reincarnation, Inner Demon duel or Dream Trial is under way is settled at your next login, through that ritual's own walk-away or failure path: the same demotion, cooldown and penalty as standing up. You are told at login that the ritual was resolved against you while you were away.

What counts as the player's: quitting, a dropped connection, a timeout, and Siren's Commands' AFK kick. What does not: a server stop or crash, the world closing, a staff /kick or ban, and NineHeavens' Discord kick. Those leave the ritual unrecorded, and you suffer nothing.

Two long sits are gentler about the AFK kick, because timing it buys nothing there: a Closed-Door Retreat forfeits its payout if you quit, but holds its progress for a resume after the AFK kick and pays the completed share at a server stop, and a Dao Sermon you were giving pays what /cultivation sermon stop would have, where quitting forfeits the Merit. Nascent Soul Escape is covered on its own page.

Dying

Death ends the ritual. It stops your meditation and any breakthrough, advancement, refinement or Closed-Door Retreat in progress, ends the tribulation sky, and demotes nobody - the death is the price. Ascension and Reincarnation fail through their usual failure path (the demotion and cooldown they always cost). The Inner Demon duel and the Dream Trial fail on death, with the penalty and cooldown they are configured for. Before 0.11.0 a ritual could finish on a corpse. v0.11.2 Dying also has its own price, separate from the ritual: see the Death Penalty.

Low Qi pauses a ritual

If your banked Qi falls below what the ritual demands partway through, the ritual pauses; it is not cancelled. Progress, Heart-Devil composure and the position in the bolt sequence are all kept, and it resumes by itself when your Qi is back above the bar. While it is paused, Qi refills only while you stay at your seat: wandering off gathers nothing, and standing up still abandons the ritual.

If something goes wrong

v0.11.1 A breakthrough or advancement that has reached its end keeps its result. If any later step of the ceremony fails on the server (the art it grants, the notices, the HUD refresh and the rest), your new realm or stage still stands and the remaining steps carry on.

If a fault hits during a ritual instead, the ritual is ended safely: nothing is lost, no stage is taken, and you are told "Something went wrong mid-ritual, so it was ended safely". Meditate to try again, and tell an admin if it keeps happening. This also closes a rare fault that could advance a realm twice.

Ritual Flow

What a breakthrough attempt actually runs through

Tuning the Curve

Nothing here is hardcoded. The realm/stage curve and its stat rewards live in Config.json; the ritual requirements above live in BreakthroughConfig.json. Both can be edited live in-game through /cultivation admin without touching a file or restarting the server.