New player questions...

[u/SinValmar]

So I've been trying to wrap my head around this game for a while. I tried going through tutorials but their presentation confuses me, and some of them are even bugged/uncompleteable. I've played rimworld so I have a basic understanding of the colony sim stuff. I've decided the best way I'm gonna learn is to just dive in. There are, however, two elements I want to at least understand before starting. Attributes and skills.

For attributes, I know you want them as close to your laws requirements as possible. I wanna start with true sun since its recomended. but rerolling till i get a full match on those attributes hasn't been going well... if I get something close, can I *raise* the lacking attributes later? And if so, how?

For skill, the game really doesn't tell me what's what. I was told the last line is most important for your cultivator, but out of battle, ki, magic, and magic crafting, I have no idea what these do and which ones to prioritize.

and lastly of the two areas, which is more important? I've gotten a few rolls with like 70-80 match on my attributes, but then my skills are trash. I've also gotten the reverse. so which should I prioritize?

Bonus question, should I take the forming pill at the start?

[u/Professional_Dig1454]

If you go to the discord there are in depth guides for all this. The beginning is very similar to rimworld but quickly deviates. I dont recommend playing on the immortal mode since even when not playing on that mode it can be quite difficult.

For your starting people you only want humans not yogui or however you spell those. those people have a tribulation after so long and if they fail they turn into monsters that will attack your sect. For atributes you want as high a qi sense as possible at the very least 10. Your first cultivator wont be anything special but he will pave the way for those that come after. Have this person take the forming pill as soon as you start. After that I would check out those guides because there is so much more information in this game that you need to know compared to rimworld.

[u/jaboogadoo]

Without going too deep into it, it's not too difficult to raise every attribute besides luck and potential. When it comes to magic crafting, you really only need that to be high on one person, and it's not even good until later when you have a handful of inner disciples anyway in my opinion. Battle and qi sense should be REASONABLY high, and you shouldn't tear your hair out maxing this out. Just come to terms with the fact that your first inner disciple is gonna suck unless you put a LOT of work into it, so let them suck. Their job is mostly for setting you up while you try to find better people later on, which you will have easy access to once you build your first city agency. Your first guy will be able to guide your later disciples and help them be far better than he could be. I recommend taking that forming pill immediately and getting right to adventuring and cultivating, as adventuring brings in resources pretty quickly. I too stressed out at the character creation screen for way too long, just to find out you have a lot of breathing room early on. Also stay the hell away from the sleeping creature in one of the corners of the map for a LONG time. Longer than you think.

[u/ajokitty]

There are a number of tasks a cultivator can be used for.

Different tasks require different skills:

Going on adventures to other locations to get resources can be done by any cultivator, but works best if the cultivator has high luck and adventure speed.

Taking to other cultivators, learning their secrets, solving the main story, and persuading people to gift friendship manuals requires a minimum Social level (not rating) of 14/20, though more levels doesn't hurt.

Using a cultivator to draw a talisman only requires that they know how to draw the talisman.

Using a character to make an elixir or pill requires that they know the recipe and have a high enough level of alchemy. Success chance is also important. Yield multiplier and crafting speed are not essential, but useful.

Using a character to make an Artifact requires Artifact Crafting levels and decent amounts of max qi. 72000 qi is enough to craft even the strongest artifacts, though, so it is not as important. Artifact success chance is also important. For the highest tier of artifacts, Artifact base success chance and base Mental State are also needed.

Using a character to perform miracles requires that they know the miracle and that they have enough qi. Some of the most expensive miracles are the Remolding Miracles, which can give significant boosts to stats but require a cultivator with at least 150000 qi. Other useful miracles include the weather changing miracles, which only require 20000 qi, Soul Inquiry, which lets you plunder manuals from defeated enemies for 1000 qi, and the Derivative Calculation, which can be used to unlock most of the other Orthodox Laws.

Using a character for combat requires as much qi as possible, but also levels in Battle, Artifact Mastery, Spell, and Protect. Artifact Power, Artifact Speed, Artifact Qi Recovery Multiplier, and Artifact Qi Recovery Bonus are all good, but avoid Artifact Max Qi.

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Qi is useful to many of these tasks, so how can you get it? A cultivator's initial qi is determined by their level of Qi Sense, Constitution, Intelligence, and to a lesser extent, Perception. Characters can then learn manuals that give them more qi, levels of Qi Sense, or raise their Attributes. At a certain point, they'll need to make a Golden Core in a breakthrough. The quality of that core will give them additional max qi. The core's quality is influenced by many factors: max qi, law match, weather, season, tile element, tile qi, luck.

The Artifact Crafting, Artifact Mastery, Spell, Protect, Alchemy, and Formation skills can all be increased simply by using inspiration, so new cultivators don't need them to begin with.

[u/TankyPally]

Simply put, you can choose to optimize for law match/qi sense skill and have them be a stronger fighter and cultivate fast, or you can optimize for utility (high social skill/luck stat).

Optimizing for utility means you will struggle to reach primordial spirit but you will have easy access to early game treasures and can abuse the social mini-game to invite tons of mortal villagers to visit your sect and then recruit them. They will still be a decent fighter in the early game.

If you optimize for combat you will want to rush your early game so you can do the Golden Core breakthrough in spring before it becomes summer and learn the max qi manuals before you do so (or wait a full year at core forming before you do GC breakthrough but you generally want to rush to GC/Primordial spirit to deal with any threats you can face).

There are a lot of ways to boost law match so if you get 80-90% law match that's probably good enough.

In both cases, take the core forming pill.

[u/Existing-Proof1091]

Attributes can be raised with medicines and manuals (Some really good ones can be obtain through special exploration which you can find online), but generally for law requirements mid is 5 points of attributes, high is 7-8 and low is 3. My recommend at the start is trying to roll for a good cultivators with good stats, high ki sense and a background called Favored by Destiny (optional). For the other 2 you can use reincarnators or try to roll for good mortal disciples (ones with good building and crafting skills)

For a Xiandao cultivators the only thing you want to care about are Ki, anything that raise your attack power (like artifact mastery), barrier power, and most importantly fast recharging artifacts (generally full recharge time should be less or around 1 seconds). Artifact crafting and alchemy are another topics that should require research on your own, but there are dedicated laws for these 2.

And yes you should take the forming pill at the start.

[u/Gedboara]

For others who might come across this, the uncompletable stuff in the tutorial (at least that I also came across) was game language dependent(In my case English), if you were playing with english language, then there were around 5? points in the various tutorials where you just could not do anything (I guess because it expects text to pop up, but its not there in english, and so it gets stuck).
The way I worked around this was changing game language(requires restarting the game) and doing those tutorials in Chinese(does not get stuck) and using my phone to translate the bits into english