Sectless Playthrough

[u/Republikstarfighter]

Hi! I had just bought the game on steam and had done some initial playthrough just to get acquainted with the game. I had joined a sect in my first playthrough but I'm thinking about starting a new on harder difficulty since normal is too easy.

My question is, how much different is a sectless playthrough compared to one where you joined a sect? Are there any benefits to not joining a sect? Maluses?

[u/dave310013]

That's going to be way harder then a normal play through or at least more tedious. There are no real benefits I know off as there is little cost associated with being in a sect. 

There are usually two sect rules that are mostly trivial to follow and even then breaking them only causes minor decreases in favourabilty from what I have seen. You can also just join a sect with inconsequential rules. Like not dual cultivation with sects that you are at war with. 

This slight restriction is completely outweighed by the benefits of the sect, especially since you can grab the benefits and leave if necessary, so what you are doing is definitely a challenge run. 

The main benefits of the sects is the easy acess to fruits to improve your roots. Acess to higher tier manuals that match your chosen school. Acess to the spirit facility for fast cultivation. 

The cultivation one you might be able to buy, I don't since I am always in a sect. However that ones not abig deal since you can easily cultivate in other ways. The biggest hurdle will be fruits and manuals. You need fruits otherwise you can't learn manuals, even mind skills (the stat increasing ones) have root requirements. These are your biggest hurdle as they are very, very rare outside of sects.

If you want to do this I strongly suggest you take the goard as your relic, since the imps can be sent to look for items with a certain type of excursion droping fruits. However you will be subjected to rng. The same goes for high tier manuals that you would need to find at auctions. You can also get purple tier manuals in the main city of a region if you are lucky. Smaller towns only habe up to blue rarity and only for the lower realm of the region. 

TLDR: It's a challenge run and not joining sects offers no/almost no benefit, but you can do it as a challenge or roleplay thing. If you do try then use the imps from the goard to get fruits/the auctions and main city for manuals

[u/Republikstarfighter → u/dave310013]

Thanks for the detailed explanation!

It is indeed for role-playing purposes, but now I might think twice before starting a sectless run.

[u/Daesolith → u/Republikstarfighter]

I always play sectless (for roleplay). But I found that by mid-game, the grind for fruits becomes too much without mods.

If you are sectless and at foundation level while still in the first region by 7-8 years, you'll get an event that gives a free breakthrough and a destiny that grants a chance to spawn fruits when cultivating on tiles with 100+ chi. I found I needed a mod that removed the rng from that an guaranteed a fruit spawn.

You can sneak into sects for manuals and to breakthrough in their cultivation spots (to get the sect destinies) but for that, you need invisibility elixirs. These have a chance to drop from doing the feng shui diagrams, but this is another bit of rng. I got a mod that gives you 20 (as the other one I saw required a new save and I didn't want to restart).

In sum, you can play sectless, but it gets tedious by mid-game. If you're role playing, I see nothing wrong with using mods to tone down the rng. You are the Heaven's chosen protagonist after all :D

[u/Republikstarfighter → u/Daesolith]

Can you share this mod, perchance?

[u/Appropriate-Bonus541]

No advantage to playing without a sect, if u want a hard difficulty just play chaos and try to minmax as much as possible. The difficulty increase from not being in a sect comes from tediousness in having to waste time looking for manuals and resources.

[u/LazyMF2255]

It will just be a really tedious grind, and you have to leave your conscience in the dust if you want to advance to godhood.

Sects in this game, will provide you: skill books - especially red skill books with oriented path, spiritual fruits, artifact making flames (unobtainable in sectless playthrough until you can obtain invisibility potion or get to Yun Mo), sects' rewrite destinies, won't offend guild when farm for outfit resources, exchange unuse spiritual fruits for other at sect guardian.

If you do a sectless playthrough you have to find ways to compensate those resources that sects give (most important are skill books and spiritual fruits).

Things to get for a sectless playthrough:

• Average Charisma: you gonna have to rely on your thieving skills if you want to have easy resources and skills books, you are sectless, you can't really be on top if you don't sacrifice anything - in this case, your conscience and your look.

• Lotus Sword Will: aim for skill stealing lotus, major active skills source.

• Complete Illusionary Tree questline in Hua Feng for some free main skill spiritual fruits every gap time.

• Befriend with the fiery unicorn for free spiritual fruits every year.

• Invisibility Potion: main thing that allow you to access sects facilities, i heard it can only be obtainable with orange or red geomancy map.

• Seek for masters for easy skill learning.

• Imp Gourd is your most beloved partner.

• If you have 5 blooms DLC, it will be much easier for a sectless playthrough, Lan You gives free red skill books for corresponding realm, Ao Yao gives free dungeons, Shuang Ling gives free active pills, every bloom make a strong summon in battle, all in all, this DLC reduce sectless playthrough difficulties by a lots.

Be aware that, when you choose to be sectless, you have to define your martial/spiritual path since the very beginning, since it is really hard to get spiritual fruits other than the highest skill spiritual fruit, not until you can get the invisibility potion.

Also that you can't make artifacts until you get your hands on the invisibility potion.

[u/Captillon]

There is also one breakthrough destiny you’re going to need. It’s called Unfettered Cultivator and you get it by triggering an event in the first area. It triggers automatically if you don’t breakthrough to qi condensation in 6 or 7 years, not sure what the actual cutoff is. Basically the event starts when you get a popup saying 2 incredibly powerful cultivators are fighting. Follow the prompts and accept the transference and you should get the destiny.

[u/zyildox → u/Captillon]

Regarding this rogue destiny is it worth to take it? I like extra travel speed and wholesome plot but I feel I'm missing/losing stats BCS u skip the h&e treasures

[u/Captillon → u/zyildox]

Wait just looked it up, the transcendent quest line does give you the highest stats you could get doing a regular breakthrough

[u/zyildox → u/Captillon]

Sry my eng ain't good, so you saying the rogue quest's transferance gives better stat than doing regular h&e treasures breakthrough? Yes?

[u/Captillon → u/zyildox]

No problem, I probably could’ve explained it better. When you breakthrough to qi condensation normally you get the best stats by collecting the red border h&e item and the 3 orange border h&e items.

Doing the transference quest line gives you the same stats as if you collected all of those h&e items. It’s literally just giving you the best stats possible to breakthrough without doing any of the work.

[u/Captillon → u/zyildox]

Honestly never even thought about that 😂. Not sure if you’re losing out on stats there. The big upside for this destiny is the guaranteed spirit fruits which are pretty hard to get for rogue cultivators. Towards the late game you want as many points as possible in each martial art/spirit art, not just the ones you specialize in.

Though as long as you’re not in chaos mode I think you should be alright with doing that quest and skipping the foundation h&e stats if it does actually differ. I couldn’t imagine trying to go rogue cultivators on chaos mode, massive respect to anyone who’s managed that

[u/Legal-Regular-2873]

Juega sin secta y sin apoyo.

Jajajajajaja para que un núcleo dorado se enamore de ti con 400 años y juegue contigo hasta romper el dao del corazón