Cultivation

Cultivation is a highly complicated and in-depth path of progression offered by the System, and one that is filled with many risks and dangers, but also just as many wondrous abilities and famous heights to make that risk worthwhile. There's a lot of caveats to how cultivation works, but one of the largest is that all it offers initially are its quite plentiful reservoir of attributes that it allows to be allocated; the distinct powers (such as Techniques and Aspects) come later on in the stages of cultivation, and most people never reach that point.

Cultivation is also completely detached from Core Levels, and only maintains an equivalence in that certain breakpoints of cultivation count for a certain number of Core Levels, so that the System can build a correlation between cultivators and other progression methods. These breakpoints are the Peak phases of each stage of cultivation - of which there are 10 - and they grant 10 Core Levels each. A Corewalker who specializes into cultivation is known as a Cultivator, rather than a Corewalker.

By far the most famous aspect of cultivation is that it functions differently to all other progression paths when it comes to attributes; the other paths dictate based on the specific option chosen what attributes get boosted - a Warrior Class might increase Strength and Endurance by 10 points each for example, or a magical Skill might increase Intellect and Wisdom by 2 points each - while cultivation... doesn't do that.

Instead, cultivation provides a pool of 100 Attribute Points upon entering a phase that can be freely assigned as the cultivator wishes, and while the paths do make suggestions as to which attributes should be increased as a priority, they're just that: suggestions. Of course, while a cultivator is free to assign their attributes as they wish, it's not that simple, and the system itself throws one simple, yet impactful curveball that must be considered: Attribute Cohesion, and the Imbalance that can result from a lack of cohesion.

While a cultivator can assign their attributes as they wish, the System does not encourage a min-max mindset - a mindset of investing in one or two attributes at the expense of all others - and it curtails the concept by implementing a pair of rules known as Attribute Cohesion, and Attribute Imbalance. Within Attribute Cohesion, the six core attributes are split into three pairs of complementary attributes; failing to adequately balance these pairs can cause adverse effects for the Cultivator. The pairs are as follows.

Attribute Imbalance is derived from the difference in value between these pairs, and specifically looks at the Base Attributes of a Cultivator (see the System's article for more information). There are three variants of Imbalance, and the System itself warns a cultivator when they approach any of them.

Lesser Imbalances occur when there is more than a 1.5x difference between the Base Attributes of a complementary pair; for example, if a Cultivator had 100 Strength, having more than 150 OR less than 66 Dexterity would trigger a lesser imbalance. While a lesser imbalance is in effect, it applies a -10% Temporary Reduction to all other attributes.

Greater Imbalances occur when there is more than a 2x difference between the Base Attributes of a complementary pair; for example, if a Cultivator had 100 Strength, having more than 200 OR less than 50 Dexterity would trigger a greater imbalance. While a greater imbalance is in effect, it applies a -25% Temporary Reduction to all other attributes.

Critical Imbalances are the most debilitating type, and occur when there is a difference in excess of 30% between the highest and lowest Base Attributes of a Cultivator. For example, if the highest Base Attribute was 135 and their lowest was 100, they'd run afoul of a critical imbalance. While a critical imbalance is in effect, its effects are brutal, applying a -25% Bonus Reduction to all attributes, including the ones that triggered it, and it makes all Stamina- and Magia-expending (or Qi-expending if Qi has been unlocked, see below) features cost twice as much of their resource to use, after applying all other modifiers.

Investing into Cultivation as a progression path - be it the primary or secondary one of a Corewalker - offers at least two very important secondary attributes to all adherents, while true Cultivators - those who take it as their primary path - also unlock Qi, which is a very special resource worthy of its own section (found below).

A true Cultivator who enters the Early Foundational phase of cultivation unlocks access to Qi, making it a resource unattainable to those who attempt to multi-path into cultivation. Qi is a very incredible resource, albeit one that starts off really weak. It replaces the Magia and Stamina of a Cultivator, unifying them into a single resource pool that begins as the average of the two pools - generally making it inferior to one and superior to the other - and has its own distinct Regeneration attribute called Qi Regeneration (QR) that also starts as the average of the Magia and Stamina Regeneration derived attributes, but regenerates at the same pace as Magia Regeneration. Without any outside alteration, this means that the baseline regeneration of Qi is 66 Qi per day, spread out over 1 hour intervals of 2.75 Qi (rounded to 3) regenerated.

Qi is used for all purposes that its origin resources would be used for, be they for cultivation Techniques, Class Abilities and Essences, Skills and so on, meaning with its lower starting point, it's objectively more painful to use, as it is smaller than the sum of the pools it replaces and replenishes much slower.

That being said, in the Early Trunk phase, the math already changes, with Qi increasing to be equal to the sum of Magia and Stamina, and the base Qi Regeneration rate increasing to 144 Qi per day, spread out over 1-hour intervals of 6 Qi regenerated, and things continue to get better from there, with Qi rapidly becoming an extremely potent resource that easily eclipses its origin resources.

As a form of progression, Cultivation - as noted - lacks Core Level support, and instead progression through it is done through advancing through the various phases and stages of cultivation; there are 10 total stages of Cultivation, which are, in order; Mortal, Foundational, Trunk, Formation, Heavenly, Immortal, Evolved, Ascended, Transcendent, and Eternal. Each of these has 3 phases, those being the Early phase, the Mid phase, and the Peak phase, representing the degree of mastery required for a Cultivator to truly master that phase of cultivation.

Experience is still used as a form of measuring progression here, but instead of awarding levels, Experience gained from cultivation relates specifically to the kinds of things that advance the current stage and phase a cultivator is on, and when they reach certain breakpoints - usually the total experience of 3 Core Levels of the appropriate range for the current stage and phase (in the early mortal phase, that would be the experience of levels 1-3, in the mid heavenly phase, that'd be the experience of levels 54-56) - they advance to the next phase of the stage they're currently in.

Things change, however, when a cultivator is in the Peak phase of their current stage, and gathers enough Experience to reach the Early phase of their next stage, or when they're in the Mid phase of the Eternal stage and about to reach the Peak Eternal phase. At this point, they reach one of the Ten Walls of Heaven, the Cultivation Core Limits, as noted in the Progression Paths article.

To most, the First Wall - the Mortal Wall - is the hardest to break through, as it requires them to show a mastery of mortality to begin their journey towards the immortal, and it often involves some kind of onerous personal goal that involves self-harm or injury, and most would-be Cultivators run into a brick wall there and quit, and even those that get through can often reach the next Wall of Heaven - the Foundational Wall - and fail there, and so on.

The Walls of Heaven are extremely brutal obstacles as there is no bypassing them, and the instructions are often personalised and vague. Still, even among the Walls of Heaven, one stands above the others as the most infamous - the Seventh Wall of Heaven. This wall is the same for all cultivators (like the Eighth Wall) but has an extremely brutal goal: earn the approval of the gods themselves, the Heavenly Principles.

The presence of so many seemingly insurmountable walls - that have been overcome by the exceptional few - is the main reason why Cultivation is so often dropped early on, as starry-eyed cultivators run face-first into the harsh reality of cultivation: it takes a very long time, and even with the longevity-boosting effects of cultivation, it can often take an entire lifetime and amount to never reaching the Immortal stage where age-related immortality comes into effect.

When it comes to progression down the field of cultivation, one of the most important decisions that must be made is to pick a cultivation path, which defines the three Techniques granted during the Mid Foundational phase, and has an associated set of themes. Choosing a path is a permanent investment that cannot be changed without a progression reset.

The process of choosing a path begins at the Early Foundational phase of cultivation, and as a result much of the mortal stage of a cultivator's progression is spent determining which path to take. Once a path is chosen, it defines the exact improvements offered at each phase of cultivation, and upon reaching the Peak Heavenly phase of cultivation, a second path can be chosen. The themes of this path must have some kind of overlap with the cultivator's chosen Aspects, if any have been chosen. This path cannot ever be in the same stage as the primary path, meaning if the primary path was at Early, Mid, or Peak Immortal, the highest the secondary path can go is Peak Heavenly.

The secondary path still has to be progressed with Experience as usual, and the Walls of Heaven apply to it as well, but they are far less dangerous for a secondary path. Secondary paths grant notably different benefits to the primary path at each phase, and as such each path will have entries for what it does as a primary and as a secondary path. Notably, a secondary path does not count towards the Core Level of a cultivator, allowing them to have - if they reach the pinnacle - a Peak Eternal primary path and a Peak Transcendent secondary path, while still being counted as Core Level 100, but they also don't grant any attribute points either.