Cultivation is the refinement of qi through disciplined breath, sworn forms, and herbal pills distilled from rare mountain flora. A practiced cultivator can shatter stone with an open palm, stride across water, and deflect blade-strikes that would kill any unblooded soldier. It is understood throughout the Àolǎng Empire that only those of noble blood walk this path. When a commoner appears to show the gift, inquiry quickly uncovers hidden noble lineage.
The mechanics of cultivation are practical: pills to advance your style rank, active practice to reduce the cost of those pills, and the qi die system to amplify your performance in any high-stakes moment.
The Cultivation Interface
Open the cultivation panel at any time with cultivate (alias: cult). The interface shows three panels in one:
- Known styles with your current rank (1-9) and the recipe needed to reach the next rank.
- Available styles you have not yet learned.
- Shop where you purchase ingredients.
Rank 9 is the mastery ceiling for any given style.
Buying Ingredients
Ingredients are purchased directly through the cultivation interface. There are two currencies at play.
Gold Dollar ingredients are the cheaper base-tier materials, sold at a price scaled to your energy work-rate. You buy these with coin from your wallet.
Influence ingredients are rarer materials purchased with accumulated social influence rather than coin. They range from modest (Red Vein Tuber, value 9) to extraordinarily rare (Lacquer Tear, value 100). Influence ingredients carry the bulk of the cost at higher ranks.
The recipe displayed in the cultivation interface shows exactly what you need before you commit to a purchase.
What the Costs Mean
The base recipe cost for a given level is level × 100, scaled by a multiplier based on how many styles you already know. Your first and second style share a cost multiplier of 1×. Every additional style costs exponentially more: a third style costs 2×, a fourth 4×, and so on.
Boosts (described below) reduce the ingredient cost for your next pill by up to 50%.
Brewing a Pill
Once your inventory matches the recipe, return to the cultivation interface and select the style you want to advance. The system consumes the ingredients and either grants you rank 1 in a new style or advances your existing rank by one.
There is no separate brew command. The crafting is handled entirely through the cultivate interface.
Cultivating Faster: Boosts
Practice earns you boost points. When you craft a pill, accumulated boosts automatically reduce the ingredient cost for the following level’s recipe by up to 50%. The reduction is consumed at the moment of crafting, so there is no stockpiling across multiple levels.
All boost sources are capped on a rolling weekly basis. Once you hit the weekly cap for a source, further practice in that vein earns nothing until the week resets.
Sparring
spar <target> initiates a friendly sparring match. Sparring uses the full combat engine but tracks touches rather than lethal damage. It is exempt from most zone combat restrictions.
Each round of a spar earns boosts across three channels:
- Spar-style (+5 per round, capped at 50/week): awarded for the specific style you are fighting in. These are applied only to that style’s next-level recipe.
- Spar-general (+2 per round, capped at 50/week): a general cultivation bonus not tied to any single style. You receive an additional +1 per round if any opponent has a higher style rank than you.
- Master spar (+10 per round, capped at 50/week, shared pool): if your opponent holds rank 7 or higher in their style and outranks you in that same style and you already know that style (rank ≥ 1), you gain accelerated boosts toward it. This counts against the shared master pool (see below).
The practical takeaway: spar regularly, fight opponents who are stronger than you, and focus your active style on the one you want to advance.
Combat
Real combat also earns boost points. Each combat round where you fight using a style earns +4 toward that style (capped at 100/week). Combat accrues more total points than sparring allows, but the danger is real.
Master Lessons
If you find a cultivator who holds rank 7 or higher in a style and outranks you in it, ask them to teach you with teach <student> <style>. The teacher begins a lesson session that captures the transcript of everything said in the room. When the teacher ends the session with teach stop, an evaluation scores the lesson on five criteria: how well it embodied the style’s themes, its wuxia master-student quality, creativity, interactivity, and the degree of tension or conflict between teacher and student.
A genuinely good lesson can award up to 200 boost points toward the student’s next pill in that style. Rote drills at a training dummy score poorly; unusual, contested, interactive lessons score well.
Master spar and master lesson boosts draw from a shared weekly pool capped at 200 points. Once that pool is full, neither source adds more until the week resets.
Intimate Chemistry
At chemistry level 5 or higher with another character (tier: Blaze), being intimate together converts a fraction of that chemistry into general cultivation boosts. The boost scales with how many chemistry points are consumed in the process. These general boosts are not tied to any one style and reduce the cost of whichever pill you craft next.
Qi Dice
Qi dice are a separate pool from the regular dice you roll for skill checks. They represent surges of refined qi channeled in the heat of the moment, and they follow their own rules entirely.
The Pool
Your qi dice pool is a floating-point value between 0.0 and 3.0. You start each fight, delve, or activity with 1.0 qi die. Only whole dice can be spent; fractions accumulate toward your next die.
- In combat: you gain 0.5 qi per HP you lose. Taking two solid hits can push you from 1.0 to 2.0. The maximum cap is 3.0. Between sessions your pool resets to 1.0.
- Regeneration: you recover 0.34 qi per combat round passively. Choosing the Qi Aura or Qi Lightness tactical options suppresses this regen for that round.
- In delves: use the
focusaction (30 seconds) to gain 1 qi die manually, up to the 3.0 cap.
Your pool is shared across context. A die spent in a delve is gone for the duration of that delve; your pool carries over between sessions if you remain in an active engagement.
How to Spend Qi Dice in Combat
In the combat quickmenu, select Use Qi. You can allocate up to 2 dice per round (total, not per slot). Each die you allocate is spent permanently for that round:
| Allocation | Effect |
|---|---|
| Attack | Each die adds one exploding qi die to your damage roll |
| Defense | Each die adds one exploding qi die of armor (subtracts from incoming damage) |
| Ability | Each die adds one exploding qi die to your active ability roll |
| Movement | Each die is rolled as your qi die; half the total (rounded down) becomes bonus hexes |
All qi dice explode on their maximum face. A roll of the max face is re-rolled and added, repeatedly if you keep rolling max faces. This means qi spends can produce dramatic bursts of damage, protection, or speed in a single round.
You can skip qi allocation to save dice for a later round.
How to Spend Qi Dice in Activities
During a mission or group activity, use activity qi <0-2> to declare how many dice you are spending before the round resolves. Each die adds an extra qi die (exploding) to your check roll for that round.
How to Spend Qi Dice in Delves
Delve obstacles can be crossed with the qi option. If you have dice available, the cross <direction> qi variant gives a bonus to your skill check when forcing a passage.
Grading Your Qi Die
The base qi die is a d4 (sides: 4, explodes on 4) for characters with no chemistry relationships. This is not fixed. The face count of your qi die rises with your romantic chemistry.
Chemistry is a measure of the depth of your connection with another character. It accrues through roleplay, through conflict, through presence, and through intimacy. Chemistry tiers run from None through Spark, Kindling, Flame, Blaze, Inferno, and Transcendent (tiers 0-6). The tier of your strongest chemistry relationship determines a bonus that is added to your base d4 to give your personal qi die its face count:
| Chemistry Tier | Bonus Faces | Resulting Die |
|---|---|---|
| None (0) | 0 | d4 |
| Spark (1) | +1 | d5 |
| Kindling (2) | +2 | d6 |
| Flame (3) | +3 | d7 |
| Blaze (4) | +5 | d9 |
| Inferno (5) | +7 | d11 |
| Transcendent (6) | +8 | d12 |
The die can climb as high as d20 at the absolute upper limit. Proximity matters too: the bonus is multiplied by how close you are to the person. Being in the same room gives full value; the same building gives 80%; the same city 50%; distance reduces it further with a recency decay over 48 hours.
Fighting alongside or against someone you have deep chemistry with amplifies the multiplier further. A 1v1 duel against a rival at chemistry tier 4 applies a 2× conflict multiplier to the bonus, potentially pushing your die far above what passive proximity achieves. This is the engine behind the lore observation that rivals often advance faster than friends.
At d10 or higher, your qi becomes visible. Observers in the same room see that you look radiantly healthy, your skin all but glowing.
If your chemistry relationship fades, your die downgrades.
Chemistry criteria
Positive criteria (0.0-1.0, higher = better):
- wit - flirtatious banter, innuendo, double entendre.
- rivalry - friction, one-upmanship, enjoyable competition
- vulnerability - risking embarrassment publicly
- actions - gestures (gifts, dates, letters)
- appearance - varied outfits, alluring-but-not-cheap
- caring - non-performative concern, especially costly; protecting without patronizing
- visible_attraction - staring, being flustered
- ill_concealed_attraction - trying and failing to hide it
- specificity - complimenting particulars, not generics
Negative criteria (0.0-1.0, higher = worse):
- ironic_distance - over-the-top compliments for deniability
- crudeness - blunt sexual comments without wit
- non_commitment - avoiding affection around others, keeping options open
- patronizing - unwanted protection, treating partner as lesser
- meanness - unpleasant in a non-teasing way
- passivity - only replying, never initiating
- narcissism - RPing your character as innately more attractive than others
- entitlement - acting owed others’ interest
- shallow - generic compliments that fit anyone
Quick Reference
| Goal | Command |
|---|---|
| Open cultivation / buy ingredients / brew a pill | cultivate |
| Start a sparring match | spar <target> |
| Teach a style to a student | teach <student> <style> |
| End a teaching session | teach stop |
| Gain qi in a delve | focus |
| Spend qi in combat | Combat quickmenu: Use Qi |
| Spend qi in activities | activity qi <0-2> |
A last note: your qi die grade, the pill cost you face, and the boosts you accumulate are all intertwined with the relationships you build. Cultivation in the Àolǎng Empire has always been as much a social discipline as a physical one.