The Path/Hardcore Tribulation·道

Cultivation: Hardcore Tribulation

Nine Deaths, One Life (九死一生). For servers running a Hytale hardcore universe that want a failed tribulation to actually cost something. Fail a breakthrough in the wrong way and the heavens can take one of your hardcore lives. Run out of lives and your Dao foundation cracks, or you are cast down a full realm. Gold and patience bring you back.

Hardcore Tribulation is a paid add-on for Cultivation, available with a Cultivation subscription or bought outright; Cultivation itself is free and always will be.

It needs a hardcore universe

The add-on reads the engine's own hardcore mode from your server's config.json (Defaults.HardcoreMode, with Defaults.HardcoreLives for the lives) and acts on it. In Per-Player mode every cultivator has their own lives and the full system runs. In Global mode the whole server shares one pool, so Judgment burns nothing from it unless you switch on Global-Pool-Burn-Enabled — one player's failed tribulation would then end the run for everyone. With hardcore mode None there are no lives to burn and Judgment does nothing at all. The add-on can read your mode but never change it.

Judgment

When a tribulation ritual goes wrong, the failure is queued and resolved a moment later as Judgment. A chargeable failure burns Lives-Per-Failure hardcore lives (one by default). Four things can raise one:

Failure	When it is charged
A Heart-Devil deviation during a breakthrough	If `Charge-Breakthrough-Failures` is on (the default).
Abandoning a ritual	Only if `Abandonment-Costs-A-Life` is on (off by default), and the ritual's own kind is charged.
A failed ascension	If `Charge-Ascension-Failures` is on (the default).
Dying to the lightning itself	Within `Judgment-Window-Seconds` of a breakthrough strike. The engine's hardcore death already burns a life, so by default no extra life is taken — the failure is only recorded. With `Slain-By-Tribulation-Costs-Extra-Life` on, one more is taken.

Early cultivators are never at risk: Judgment never fires at or below Realm-Floor (Foundation Establishment by default, so it starts at Golden Core Formation). It also skips cultivators outside Adventure mode and anyone using the admin bypass.

While Judgment is live for a ritual kind, there is no walking away: /cultivation meditate abort confirm is refused with Hardcore cultivation allows no withdrawing, so the fair exit does not become a free one. Only rituals the config charges are affected.

When the lives run out

Exhausting a cultivator's lives triggers one of two consequences, whichever Exhaustion-Consequence names.

Severed Foundation (`SCARRED`, the default)

Your Dao foundation cracks. It is a persistent but recoverable debuff:

Qi gain is multiplied by Severed-Qi-Multiplier (half pace by default).
Tribulation lightning damage is multiplied by Severed-Tribulation-Damage-Multiplier (1.5 by default).
With Severed-Inflicts-Meridian-Injury on (the default), you also suffer one specific Meridian Injury, Ribs That Never Set.

Realm Cast Down (`DEMOTE_REALM`)

You drop a full realm and every wisp of banked Qi scatters. It never drops below the first realm. If another mod has replaced Cultivation's progression ladder, a realm drop would be meaningless, so the add-on falls back to Severed Foundation and says so in the console.

With Announce-To-Server on (the default), either consequence is broadcast to everyone. The sufferer sees a title on screen: Foundation Severed or Realm Cast Down.

Reforging — the way back

/reforge pays Spirit Stones (30 by default, counted across hotbar and storage) to clear a Severed Foundation, no more often than once per cooldown (24 hours by default). The cooldown is wall-clock, survives logout and restart, and belongs to each profile on its own — switching profiles neither dodges nor resets it.

It is offered when your active profile is Severed or your account's own hardcore lives are exhausted, even if this profile was never Severed. That second case matters: your lives belong to the account, while the scar belongs to the profile, so a profile switch or a realm cast-down can leave you with no lives and nothing marked broken. In that case a successful /reforge guarantees at least one life back.

When your foundation was Severed, a reforge clears it and restores Reforge-Restores-Lives lives (none by default, so reforging mends the debuff without handing back what was burned to reach it). Restored lives are capped at the server's configured lives and never lower what you hold.

Every refusal says why and charges nothing: nothing to reforge, reforging disabled, still cooling down, your Nascent Soul is fleeing your body, or too few Spirit Stones.

Staff have a Severed Foundation row on the Players tab of /cultivation admin with Keep and Clear choices, which clears it with no cost or cooldown and carries the same exhausted-lives rescue.

Commands

Command	Who	What
`/reforge`	anyone	Pay Spirit Stones to clear a Severed Foundation and/or recover exhausted lives.

/reforge needs no permission node; it only ever acts on your own foundation and lives. The Players-tab row follows Cultivation's admin permission, cultivation.admin.

For server owners

Every key lives in mods/Siren_CultivationHardcoreTribulation/Config.json. The add-on adds no section to the in-game admin config editor, so edit the file and restart. The file carries its own Description-* documentation.

Key	Default	What it does
`Enabled`	`true`	Master switch for Judgment.
`Charge-Breakthrough-Failures`	`true`	Whether a failed breakthrough ritual is chargeable. Also gates the Heart-Devil deviation case.
`Charge-Advancement-Failures`	`false`	Whether a failed advancement ritual is chargeable. Off, since advancement is the forgiving tier.
`Charge-Ascension-Failures`	`true`	Whether a failed ascension is chargeable.
`Abandonment-Costs-A-Life`	`false`	Whether walking away from a live ritual counts the same as failing it.
`Lives-Per-Failure`	`1`	Hardcore lives one chargeable failure burns.
`Judgment-Window-Seconds`	`12`	How long after a strike a death still counts as part of that attempt.
`Slain-By-Tribulation-Costs-Extra-Life`	`false`	Take one further life when the lightning itself kills.
`Realm-Floor`	`FOUNDATION_ESTABLISHMENT`	Realm name at or below which Judgment never fires.
`Global-Pool-Burn-Enabled`	`false`	Whether Judgment may burn from a Global shared pool. Off by default; opt in deliberately.
`Fallback-Without-Hardcore`	`false`	Meant to let a universe with hardcore mode None still track failures. In this build it only affects the abort block: with it on, withdrawing from a charged ritual is refused even on such a universe, while no lives are burned.
`Exhaustion-Consequence`	`SCARRED`	`SCARRED` or `DEMOTE_REALM`.
`Severed-Qi-Multiplier`	`0.5`	Qi gain multiplier while Severed.
`Severed-Tribulation-Damage-Multiplier`	`1.5`	Tribulation damage multiplier while Severed.
`Severed-Inflicts-Meridian-Injury`	`true`	Whether going Severed also inflicts a Meridian Injury.
`Announce-To-Server`	`true`	Broadcast an exhaustion to everyone online.
`Reforge-Enabled`	`true`	Master switch for `/reforge`.
`Reforge-Spirit-Stone-Cost`	`30`	Spirit Stones one reforge costs.
`Reforge-Cooldown-Hours`	`24`	Real-world hours between reforges, per profile.
`Reforge-Restores-Lives`	`0`	Lives a successful reforge of a Severed foundation gives back.

The scar ledger — failures, lives burned, Severed state and reforge cooldown — is stored per cultivation profile and follows profile switching, creating and deleting.

Getting it

Hardcore Tribulation is available in the Pavilion — included with a Cultivation subscription, or bought once. It is server-side only: drop the jar beside Cultivation and restart, and your players install nothing.

The current build is v0.2.0. It requires Cultivation 0.11.0 or newer and a Hytale Update 7 server (Server API 0.7.0-pre.5.1), and will not load on an Update 6 server; the previous version is the one to keep there. Release 0.2.0 moved the Severed and cast-down screen titles to Update 7's supported title calls; they look the same. If a pairing with Cultivation is later published as incompatible, the add-on stands down without taking any cultivator's scar ledger or lives.