Alchemy

Alchemy (丹道) turns Spirit Herbs into spirit pills — consumable one-shot advantages that make a stretch of cultivating, or a single dangerous ritual, go your way. Seven ship with the mod, and one more charm, the Waking Bell, works the same way without a cauldron.

Since v0.8.0 alchemy is a craft, not a recipe. You place a Pill Cauldron, you feed it herbs you grew, and you sit through a ritual that drains your Qi, can fail, and occasionally explodes. What comes out carries a grade, and the alchemist who has done it a hundred times rolls better grades than the cultivator who happens to own a cauldron.

The loop

Grow, refine, climb — and the climbing feeds back into the refining

The Pill Cauldron

Use a Pill Cauldron Flag to set down your personal cauldron. Using the flag again elsewhere moves the cauldron there rather than giving you a second one — one cauldron per cultivator.

The flag is crafted at a Workbench from one Profound Core and one Spirit Core.

Stand within 4 blocks of it (Cauldron-Interaction-Radius-Blocks) and begin:

/cultivation alchemy refine <qigain|ritualspeed|tribulationshield|clearmind|mending|tribulationsacrifice|longevity>

Each effect id makes one pill. The Pills table below lists which is which. The command is also reachable as /cultivation pill refine or /cultivation cauldron refine.

The herbs are spent the moment it starts. That is the cost of even a cancelled attempt, and it is what makes beginning a refine a decision.

Failing, and botching

A completed ritual rolls against a failure chance:

A veteran alchemist working perfect herbs sits at the 5% floor. A first-timer with poor herbs is failing better than a third of the time — which is why the first cauldron feels like a gamble and the hundredth does not.

Of every failure — not of every attempt — 30% botches the flame outright (Refine-Botch-Chance-Of-Failure). A botch costs the alchemist 12% of maximum health through the ordinary damage pipeline, the same path tribulation lightning takes, so everything that defends against a bolt defends against this. It is non-lethal unless Refine-Botch-Explosion-Lethal is turned on.

A plain failure, with no botch, only wastes the herbs.

A finished pill that has nowhere to go (a full inventory) is held for you rather than lost, and handed over once you make room.

Grades

Every pill out of a cauldron comes out at one of four grades.

The grade is rolled from a 0–1 quality score:

The two weights are normalized against each other, then the result is banded at 0.30 / 0.60 / 0.85 (Grade-Threshold-Mid, -High, -Perfect).

So both halves matter and neither is sufficient. Dragon-vein herbs in a novice's cauldron and ordinary herbs in a master's cauldron land in much the same place; Perfect wants both.

A good Fire Watch adds to that score, up to Grade-Tend-Bonus-Max (+0.22), and a bad one takes from it, up to Grade-Tend-Penalty-Max (−0.18). It also moves the failure chance above by a couple of points.

Alchemy mastery

丹道境界 — a ladder of its own, fifty levels, climbed only by refining and entirely separate from your realm. A Body Refinement cultivator can be a better alchemist than a Nascent Soul one.

It uses the same growth curve the fist-art ladder does. And it feeds straight back into both the grade roll and the failure chance — which is what makes a career alchemist genuinely better at this than a cultivator who owns a cauldron.

Failing still teaches you something. Botching does not.

Fire Watch

火候 — a refine is not purely a wait. While Tending-Enabled is on (it is by default), the cauldron calls for tending now and then during the ritual, and how well you answer nudges both the grade you roll and the chance the batch fails.

How a prompt works. The first prompt comes Tend-Prompt-Lead-In-Seconds (4) into the ritual and the rest follow every Tend-Prompt-Interval-Seconds (12). Each refine rolls somewhere between one and Tend-Prompts-Max (6) prompts, so a default 60-second ritual has room for five at most. A prompt names one of two gauges, Heat or Vapor, and you answer it with a hotbar key, no modifier needed:

Answering a prompt never swaps your held item, and the number keys behave normally whenever no prompt is open. On the HUD a Fire Watch cue shows a countdown and the four keys; with the HUD off, the same cue arrives in chat.

Until you are about 45% of the way up the mastery ladder (Tend-Reading-Mastery-Threshold, roughly level 24), a cue only names the gauge, which narrows your answer to two keys. Past that, the cue names the exact action.

Scoring. You have Tend-Window-Seconds-Novice (3) seconds to answer at the bottom of the ladder, growing to Tend-Window-Seconds-Master (6) at the top. Answering in the leading part of the window is a sharp answer, later but in time is steady, and a window that closes unanswered is missed. The wrong key while a window is open is a fumble: a small singe (Tend-Fumble-Singe-Percent-Of-Max-Health, 1.5% of your maximum health) on top of its score.

A veteran is forgiven more: the missed and fumble penalties shrink toward Tend-Miss-Penalty-At-Max-Mastery (0.40) and Tend-Fumble-Penalty-At-Max-Mastery (0.50) of their value at the top of the ladder, and the sharp part of the window grows from Tend-Sharp-Fraction-Novice (35%) to Tend-Sharp-Fraction-Master (60%).

What it does to the roll. When the ritual ends, your prompt scores are averaged. A good average adds up to Grade-Tend-Bonus-Max to the grade's quality score, a poor one subtracts up to Grade-Tend-Penalty-Max, and the same adjustment multiplied by Refine-Tend-Failure-Swing (0.12) moves the failure chance, still never below the 5% floor. A ritual that delivered no prompts, or a server with Fire Watch off, rolls exactly as it always did.

Spirit Herbs and Spirit Fields

Herbs are grown, in a Spirit Field plot inside your claimed Cave Abode — one plot per abode.

/cultivation abode field plant [variety]
/cultivation abode field harvest

It yields every real-world hour whether you are online or not, on the same terms as the abode's Spirit Spring: it accrues only while the abode's upkeep is sustained, and the plot is dropped if the abode ever lapses or is abandoned.

Quality

Each harvested herb is stamped with a quality read from the vein tier at harvest time, plus a formation bonus:

A Qi-Gathering formation covering the chunk lifts the plot's yield and its quality (Herb-Quality-Formation-Bonus-Scale) — since v0.8.0 a formation over a field is not merely a faster field, it is a better one.

That quality number feeds directly into the cauldron's grade roll, which is the whole chain: good ground → good herbs → good pills.

Herb Varieties

plant takes an optional variety — the plain Spirit Herb if you leave it off, or an elemental herb, each grown for a specific refine rather than for pills in general:

See Dao for what each element means. Ironleaf and Loamroot round the herb family out to one variety for every classic Wu Xing element — but unlike the original three, they are designed as wild herbs, scattered by the world itself; see Solar Terms & Wild Spirit Herbs for where they turn up and why. That is design intent rather than a lock: the plot command refuses only the plain Spirit Herb's name and anything it does not recognize, so /cultivation abode field plant ironleaf is accepted, and /cultivation abode field varieties lists every variety in this table.

Millennium Ginseng (千年参) is a second Wood herb, and the rarest wild herb of all: it is scattered at a twentieth of an ordinary herb's weight (Millennium-Ginseng-Weight, 0.05, in HerbScatterConfig), more often when the Solar Term calendar turns to Spring Quickening. It is gathered from a Wild Millennium Ginseng Bush, one herb per break, and it is the herb that favors the Longevity Pill. It is wild by design too, so the same plot-command note applies to it.

The favor is not flavor text. At the cauldron, a herb whose variety favors the effect you're refining toward weighs into the ritual's average quality at Herb-Affinity-Matched-Multiplier (×1.35) — a real bump over the plain Spirit Herb's steady ×1. Use an elemental herb for anything other than its favored effect and the weighting goes the other way, at Herb-Affinity-Mismatched-Multiplier (×0.9) — worse than just reaching for the base herb. An elemental herb is a bet on one specific pill, not a strict upgrade.

Which variety is worth planting also depends on the sky over your abode: an elemental herb grows faster under weather that shares its element. See Cave Abodes for the full mechanic — the abode's plot is the same one this page's yield and quality numbers describe.

The Pills

Every pill but the Waking Bell Charm below is refined at the cauldron the same way: three herbs, sixty seconds, the same Qi drain and the same roll. The effect id you pass to refine is the only thing that changes which pill comes out.

Grade multiplies the duration of the Qi Gathering and Clarity Pills and of the Sacrifice Pill's shield, the banked charges of the Ward and Clear-Mind Pills, the recovery time a Mending Pill takes off, and the hours a Longevity Pill banks. It never changes the strength of an effect.

Qi Gathering Pill

Applies to every source of cultivation Qi — meditation drain and absorbed cores alike — for five minutes. Re-consuming refreshes the timer rather than stacking a second copy. A pill that would weaken or shorten a dose still running is refused and kept for later. It multiplies alongside your race bonus, your skill tree's Insight branch, and everything else that touches Qi gain.

Clarity Pill

Multiplies the duration of a breakthrough, an advancement or a refinement ritual by 0.75 — a quarter faster — for five minutes. It stacks multiplicatively with the race and skill-tree ritual-speed bonuses, and the same 90% floor that clamps those applies to the total.

Shorter rituals also mean fewer tribulation bolts, since bolts fall on a fixed interval of ritual progress.

Tribulation Ward Pill

A banked charge fully negates the damage of one tribulation lightning strike. The bolt still falls, with all its noise and light — it simply does not hurt you. Charges persist until they are spent, so you can bank up to three before a dangerous breakthrough and walk into it knowing the first three bolts are free.

This is the direct counter to a heavy karma ledger, and the standard preparation for an Ascension attempt, which throws roughly forty-five bolts.

Clear-Mind Pill

The Heart-Devil Trial's answer to the Ward Pill, and it does two jobs.

A banked charge holds your composure through one pulse of the trial — the inner demon still appears, but that pulse drains no composure at all. Charges persist until used, up to three at a time.

The same pill also cures Qi Deviation outright — the lingering affliction a broken trial leaves behind. So it is worth carrying one going into a trial and one coming out of it.

A deeply Yin- or Yang-leaned cultivator faces the Heart-Devil Trial instead of lightning, so a Ward Pill does them no good and a Clear-Mind Pill is the only ward that helps. See Tribulations.

Meridian-Mending Pill

v0.9.1 The gentle answer to a Meridian Injury. It eases the deepest injury you carry, the one with the most recovery time left, by MendingPill-Seconds (900, so fifteen minutes) times the pill's grade. If that clears the injury, what is left spills into the next-deepest, up to MendingPill-Max-Injuries-Touched (2) injuries per pill. Both keys live in MeridianConfig.json, beside every other injury number.

It costs no Qi and carries no risk. Drink one while carrying no injury and nothing happens: the pill is refused and kept. Loamroot is the herb that favors it, and it also turns up in Heavenly Realm chests.

Tribulation Sacrifice Pill

v0.10.1 A gamble you take on purpose. It can only be drunk while a realm-breakthrough tribulation is running, and only once that ritual is actively making progress on ground that can sustain it (a rich or dragon vein it is drawing from). Anywhere else the pill is refused and kept.

Drunk in time, it wraps you in a Qi Barrier of SacrificePill-Shield-Amount (150) points for SacrificePill-Shield-Duration-Seconds (20) seconds times the pill's grade, noticeably larger than a Barrier Talisman's. Grade buys time here too, never the size of the shield.

The price is paid when the breakthrough finishes: each pill drunk in one ritual takes Sacrifice-Item-Penalty-Percent (−3%) off its final strength, adding up to a floor of Sacrifice-Item-Penalty-Max-Percent (−15%). Both keys are in CultivationConfig.json. See Breakthrough Quality for how it composes with the other modifiers. It does not count toward the potion tally described there, since it already has a price of its own.

Longevity Pill

v0.10.2 The pill for Lifespan (寿元), the optional system that gives every realm a budget of online hours and makes a cultivator who spends it all wither. Lifespan is off by default (Lifespan-Enabled), and while it is off the Longevity Pill does nothing and is not used up.

With Lifespan on, one pill banks Lifespan-Pill-Hours (20) hours times the pill's grade. The total bonus pills can ever add is capped at Lifespan-Pill-Bonus-Cap-Fraction (0.5) of your current realm's budget, so a pill can delay Withering but never replace climbing the ladder. At the cap the pill is refused and kept. Below it, a pill worth more hours than the headroom left still works and grants the headroom, rather than being refused. Both keys live in LifespanConfig.json.

Millennium Ginseng is the herb that favors it. The Longevity Pill adds no toxicity, though a toxic body still absorbs it less well. It is also rare loot in a continent's palace in the Heavenly Realm.

Waking Bell Charm

v0.9.1 Not an alchemy pill at all: it takes no herbs, has no grade and is never refined. It is the Dream Trial's escape hatch, the counterpart of the Clear-Mind Pill for the Hollow Mirror. Consume one to bank WakingBellCharm-Charges (1) charge, up to WakingBellCharm-Max-Stored-Charges (3). Both keys live in DreamTrialConfig.json.

Each charge cancels the composure drain of one Hollow Mirror pulse. The reflection still appears; only the drain is held off. A charm drunk at the cap is refused and kept. Banked charges show on the HUD.

The released mod has no recipe, loot table or shop entry for the charm, so a server has to hand them out itself.

Pill toxicity

v0.10.2 Pills are not free. Chain them and your body stops keeping up. Pill Toxicity is a gauge of its own, separate from Qi Purity, that every pill pushes up and that drains away by itself.

How it builds. Every pill that takes effect adds Toxicity-Per-Pill (18) to the gauge, which tops out at Toxicity-Cap (100). A pill that is refused and kept (the effect is already stronger, there is nothing to mend, the charges are full) adds nothing. The Clear-Mind Pill and the Longevity Pill add nothing either, because Toxicity-Exempt-Effects lists clearmind,longevity. Grade does not matter by default: Toxicity-Grade-Scale (0) is the dial between a flat add per pill and one that scales with the pill's grade, so at 1 a Perfect pill adds 2.2 times as much as a Low one. Administrators with the admin bypass on accrue none.

How it fades. It drains by Toxicity-Decay-Per-Hour (25) every real hour, whether you are online or not, so a full gauge is gone in four hours. It is saved with you, and neither Ascension, Reincarnation nor a Mortal Passing clears it.

What it does. Under Toxicity-Threshold (40) it does nothing at all. Above it, two things happen, both growing toward the cap:

• Weaker pills. Every pill you drink is scaled down, whether or not it adds toxicity itself: the multiplier slides from 1 at the threshold to 1 − Toxicity-Max-Potency-Loss (0.4) at the cap, along a line (Toxicity-Potency-Curve-Exponent, 1). It shortens durations, shrinks banked charges, hours and recovery time, and pulls the effect's own strength toward 1. At the cap a Qi Gathering Pill gives ×1.2 instead of ×1.5, for 40% as long.
• Riskier rank-ups. Rushing a rank-up on Qi that did not mostly come from meditation is more likely to end in Qi Deviation. Toxicity adds up to Toxicity-Max-Instability (0.45) of extra instability to that roll at the cap. The curve is squared (Toxicity-Instability-Curve-Exponent, 2), so it is gentle just past the threshold and bites near the top.

At the defaults the third pill in a row (18, 36, 54) is the one that crosses the threshold. That pill prints a warning in chat and a Pill Toxicity Rising notice, once per crossing, not again while you stay above it. While the gauge is above the threshold it also shows as a red tile on the HUD.

Check your own standing with /cultivation alchemy toxicity. It reports the gauge as a percent of your body's tolerance, with a line on how bad it is: beginning to strain in the lowest band, dangerous in the middle and saturated in the top quarter of the stretch between the threshold and the cap. Below the threshold it just says your body shows no meaningful sign of toxicity. There is no way to check another player.

Notes

• None of the pills, nor the Waking Bell Charm, drop on death.
• The Qi Gathering, Clarity, Tribulation Ward and Clear-Mind Pills are also valid spirit beast food, worth 25 Qi each when fed — a considerably worse use of a Perfect-grade pill than eating it yourself. The other three pills and the charm are not.
• You do not have to refine every pill. The Qi Gathering Pill is on sale from the wandering Traveling Merchant, and Heavenly Realm chests hold Qi Gathering, Clarity, Clear-Mind and Meridian-Mending Pills, and a continent's palace can hold a Longevity Pill. Pills found this way carry no grade and count as plain Low.
• Alchemy-Enabled is the master switch for the cauldron; Fields-Enabled for the plots. The cauldron command also answers to /cultivation pill and /cultivation cauldron, and bare /cultivation alchemy reports your mastery level, where your cauldron stands and any ritual in progress.

Every duration, multiplier, grade threshold and charge count lives in AlchemyConfig.json; the field tuning lives in DwellingConfig.json. See Config, and the related commands on the Commands page.