Ascension
Void Refinement Peak used to be the end of the road. It is now a door.
Ascension (飛升) is the longest and hardest ritual in the mod — fifteen minutes of unbroken meditation on ground almost nowhere in the world can provide, under lightning that gets heavier the longer you last. The cultivator who survives it then chooses whether to stand at the summit, or come back down to Body Refinement and climb the whole ladder again carrying a permanent gift.
Standing at the door
| Requirement | Value | Key |
|---|---|---|
| Realm and stage | Void Refinement, Peak — the last rung of the realm ladder | — |
| Chunk Qi | 4,500 in the Spirit Vein you sit on | Ascension-Min-Chunk-Qi |
| Permission | cultivation.ascend | — |
| Not on cooldown | one hour after a failed attempt | Ascension-Cooldown-Seconds-On-Failure |
The chunk-Qi bar is the real gate. It is a presence check, not a drain — the same mechanism breakthroughs use — but 4,500 is set deliberately out of reach of ordinary ground.
A common vein caps at 500 Qi and a rich vein does not come close either. In practice only a Dragon vein can host an Ascension, and a vein that dips below the bar mid-attempt pauses the ritual until it regenerates. Find your ground with Spirit Sense before you commit fifteen minutes to it.
The trial
/ascend begin (or /ascend prestige) starts a timed meditation ritual, exactly like a breakthrough — and then the heavens spend the whole of it trying to end you.
| Value | Key | |
|---|---|---|
| Base duration | 900s — fifteen minutes | Ascension-Base-Seconds |
| Duration growth | ×1.2 per Ascension already completed | Ascension-Duration-Per-Ascension-Multiplier |
| Strike interval | every 20s — about 45 bolts in a first attempt | Ascension-Strike-Interval-Seconds |
| First bolt | 8% of your maximum health | Ascension-Damage-Percent-Of-Max-Health |
| Escalation | ×1.015 per bolt, compounding | Ascension-Damage-Escalation-Per-Strike |
| Lethal | yes, by default | Ascension-Lethal |
The escalation is what makes it a trial rather than a long wait. The first bolt is a breakthrough bolt; the forty-fifth lands for roughly twice that, because 1.015 compounds across the whole attempt. An Ascension begins survivable and ends fearsome, and the cultivator who walks in on a half-empty health bar does not reach the end of it.
Total duration is Ascension-Base-Seconds × Ascension-Duration-Per-Ascension-Multiplier ^ (Ascensions already completed), before any race, skill tree or prestige ritual-speed bonus is applied. Repeating the loop is deliberately, and increasingly, harder.
The sky goes crimson
An attempt raises a crimson tribulation storm for Ascension-Storm-Radius (160 blocks) in every direction — the same per-player sky override the realm-band tribulation storms use, just with a much wider reach, because this one is meant to be seen from across a valley. It rides the same Tribulation-Storm-Enabled switch and the same transition blend; Ascension-Storm-Weather-Crimson names the Weather asset, and blank falls back to the shipped crimson sky.
The server is told when someone begins an Ascension and when someone lands one. This is a public event by design.
Failing
Walking away from an attempt — drifting off your mark, standing up, or dying to the lightning — costs the same as a failed breakthrough, plus a cooldown:
- One sub-stage demoted, and the banked Qi that stage held is gone.
- One hour (
Ascension-Cooldown-Seconds-On-Failure) before another attempt may begin. - A Tribulation Ward Pill still negates a bolt outright, and banked charges are the standard preparation for an attempt.
Setting Ascension-Lethal to false leaves a sliver of health instead of killing outright — the same rule Tribulation-Lethal follows for ordinary breakthroughs. The demotion and the cooldown still apply.
The two endings
The capstone, and the three forks inside it
Remaining at the summit
/ascend begin aims for the plain ending: survive, stay exactly where you are, and keep the Ascended title permanently. Nothing is reset and nothing is given up. On a server that leaves prestige switched off, this is the whole of the capstone — a one-time summit with a title on it.
Prestige — climbing again
/ascend prestige aims for the other ending: on success you return to Body Refinement, Early Stage with 0 Qi, and keep everything that is not Qi.
| Kept | Reset |
|---|---|
| Skill tree and spent points | Realm and stage |
| Known techniques and their mastery | Banked Qi |
| Dao, element and Yin-Yang | |
| Sect membership and rank | |
| Equipment, Life-Bound treasure, beasts | |
| Titles |
Every completed loop raises your Ascension count by one, and each count permanently grants:
| Per completed loop | Value | Key |
|---|---|---|
| Qi from every source | +4% | Ascension-Prestige-Qi-Gain-Percent-Per-Stack |
| Every timed ritual eased — shorter, and its bolts softer | −2% | Ascension-Prestige-Ritual-Ease-Percent-Per-Stack |
| Stacking limit | 10 loops | Ascension-Prestige-Max-Stacks |
The count itself may climb past ten — it still names your title tier — but the bonus stops growing there.
Ascension-Prestige-Enabled ships false. Whether a world has a prestige loop at all is the server owner's call, not a default. With it off, /ascend prestige refuses and the capstone is the single summit described above.
Legacy — sacrificing for another
v0.10.0 /ascend legacy aims for a third ending: the same reset as prestige — back to Body Refinement, Early Stage, 0 Qi — but you choose who the sacrifice is for, up front.
| Command | The sacrifice goes to |
|---|---|
/ascend legacy sect | Your current sect's permanent Legacy count |
/ascend legacy self | A Legacy Mote, banked for you to spend later |
Nothing about the trial itself changes — it is the same fifteen minutes under the same crimson storm, and the same demotion-plus-cooldown on failure. Legacy is purely a choice of ending, made before you sit down, standing beside remaining at the summit and prestiging for your own permanent bonus.
Legacy shares its own enable switch with the rest of the reset-and-climb-again options. A server owner decides whether a world has a second or third ending at all — see Tuning.
The titles
All four sit in the Legendary section of the Titles page.
| Title | Earned by |
|---|---|
| Ascended | Completing an Ascension and remaining at the peak |
| Reborn Ascendant | 1 completed prestige loop |
| Undying Ascendant | 5 completed prestige loops |
| Eternal Ascendant | 10 completed prestige loops |
| Transcendent | 15 completed prestige loops — see Transcendent |
Transcendent — Beyond the Ascension
v0.10.1 Ascending once was already a rare, rewarded achievement. Cross 15 completed prestige loops and something rarer still opens up: Transcendent status, permanent from the moment you cross it.
| Value | Key | |
|---|---|---|
| Threshold | 15 completed prestige loops | Transcendent-Ascension-Threshold |
| Aura | a quiet aura, toggleable on its own | Transcendent-Aura-Enabled |
A quiet aura marks you from then on, visible to others the same way a realm aura is, and toggleable independently of both the realm aura and the Dao Mastery flex. Its own capstone title sits alongside the existing Ascendant tiers, and this page carries a standing line of its own once you have earned it.
Crossing the threshold grants Transcendent Reckoning, a signature void-flavored art obtainable no other way — not comprehended, not looted, not inscribed by a sect — that hits harder the further past that threshold you keep climbing.
Status is read live off your existing Ascension count. There is nothing to migrate on an existing save — a cultivator who already sits at or past 15 completed loops is Transcendent the moment this version boots.
Transcendent Court
Reaching Transcendent status unlocks a deeper vein inside the Immortal Court itself:
| Bonus | Key |
|---|---|
| Better manual-drop rate, on already the mod's rarest ground | Court-Transcendent-Manual-Bonus-Drop-Chance |
| Exclusive bonus roll at a Realm Map Fragment, on top of the world-wide chance every kill already carries | Court-Transcendent-Fragment-Drop-Chance |
| Richer Qi than even the Court's already-elevated ground pays everyone else | Court-Transcendent-Qi-Bonus-Percent |
None of it touches what a non-Transcendent ascended cultivator already earns inside the Court — every bonus here is additive, on top of what Ascension itself already unlocked. Documented in the in-game Codex alongside the rest of the Immortal Court's own entry.
Tuning
Every field above lives in BreakthroughConfig.json, beside the breakthrough and Heart-Devil tuning it borrows its mechanisms from. Ascension is also one of the two sections wired into the in-game editor at /cultivation admin — see Configuration.
| Command | Does |
|---|---|
/ascend | Where you stand: ready, mid-attempt, on cooldown, or not yet at the summit — now also opens a themed dashboard with the same view; the bare command still works in chat exactly as before |
/ascend begin | Face the trial, aiming to remain Ascended at the peak |
/ascend prestige | Face the trial, aiming to reset and climb again with a permanent gift |
/ascend legacy sect|self | Face the trial, aiming to reset and hand the sacrifice to your sect's Legacy count or bank it as a Legacy Mote |