Realms & Stages
Every player starts at Body Refinement, Early-Stage and climbs toward immortality through seven realms, each split into four sub-stages: Early, Middle, Late and Peak. Twenty-eight rungs in all.
The seven realms, in order
The Ladder
Within each realm you advance Early → Middle → Late → Peak, then break through into the next realm's Early-Stage. Higher realms and stages grant additive max health and a percentage damage bonus, both tuned in Config.json.
Since 0.8.0 the twenty-eighth rung is a door rather than a wall. Ascension is a capstone trial run from Void Refinement Peak — and the cultivator who survives it chooses between remaining at the summit and returning to Body Refinement to climb again, permanently stronger for every loop.
Advancements vs. Breakthroughs
Both are real, timed meditation rituals. Bank enough Qi, sit down in a chunk whose Spirit Vein holds enough energy, and the ritual progresses for as long as you keep meditating.
The chunk-Qi requirement is a presence check, not a drain — the vein is not consumed by the ritual — but a vein that falls below the bar will pause the ritual until it regenerates. v0.11.0 The same goes for your own banked Qi: see Low Qi pauses a ritual.
| Sub-Stage Advancement | Realm Breakthrough | |
|---|---|---|
| When | Early → Middle → Late → Peak | Peak → next realm's Early-Stage |
| Minimum chunk Qi | 200 Advancement-Min-Chunk-Qi | 750 Breakthrough-Min-Chunk-Qi |
| Base duration | 8s Advancement-Base-Seconds | 24s Breakthrough-Base-Seconds |
| Duration scaling | ×1.3 per realm reached | ×1.35 per realm reached |
| Tribulation lightning | off by default | on, and lethal |
| Skill points | +1 Points-Per-Advancement | +1, plus 2 more Points-Per-Breakthrough |
Cancelling a ritual — by drifting away from where you sat down, by standing up manually, or v0.11.0 by logging out on your own — demotes you one sub-stage, wipes your banked Qi, and revokes the skill points that stage originally granted. You are never demoted below Early-Stage of your current realm, so a failed breakthrough can never cost you a whole realm. Before the halfway point there is now a cheaper way out: withdrawing.
Withdrawing, Leaving and Dying
v0.11.0 There are four ways a breakthrough or advancement can end without finishing. They are priced so that none is a free escape.
Withdrawing from a ritual
Standing up costs a stage. If you realize early that you should not be sitting there, you can instead withdraw: pay Qi, keep your realm and stage.
/cultivation meditate abortchecks every rule and quotes the exact cost. It changes nothing./cultivation meditate abort confirmchecks them all again and withdraws.
A withdrawal scatters half of your banked Qi (Ritual-Abort-Qi-Loss-Percent, 50), ends the ritual, stands you up, clears the sky if a tribulation storm was gathering, and leaves your realm, stage and skill points exactly as they were. No demotion. You may withdraw again only after a cooldown (Ritual-Abort-Cooldown-Minutes, 60), kept per profile on the wall clock. A reminder appears once when a ritual begins, unless the cooldown would refuse you.
It applies to realm breakthroughs and sub-stage advancements only, and is refused when:
| Refusal | Rule | Key |
|---|---|---|
| Switched off | The whole feature can be disabled. | Ritual-Abort-Enabled (true) |
| Too late | The ritual is past this share of its duration. A withdrawal can never pre-empt the completion roll. | Ritual-Abort-Max-Progress-Percent (50) |
| Paused for low Qi | Restore your Qi first - see below. This closes "dump the Qi, then withdraw for half of nothing". | — |
| Shaken composure | An armed Heart-Devil composure has fallen under this share of its maximum. | Ritual-Abort-Min-Composure-Percent (50) |
| Doomed composure | Composure that has not fallen yet, but would reach zero before the ritual ends at your current lean (a banked Clear-Mind charge counts), is refused too - a fall already written cannot be dodged. | — |
| Cooldown | You withdrew too recently. | Ritual-Abort-Cooldown-Minutes (60) |
| A capstone or trial | Ascension, Reincarnation, the Inner Demon duel, the Dream Trial and the Cleanse Rite have their own walk-away prices. Rising from the seat abandons them at full cost. | — |
| Another mod runs progression | A mod that supplies its own progression ladder has no "remove progress" call, so a percentage cost cannot be charged. | — |
| An add-on says no | On a hardcore server running Cultivation: Hardcore Tribulation, withdrawing is refused outright - it would burn no life. | — |
All five keys live in the Breakthrough Config; see Cultivation Configs.
Logging out
A logout the player caused while a breakthrough, advancement, Ascension, Reincarnation, Inner Demon duel or Dream Trial is under way is settled at your next login, through that ritual's own walk-away or failure path: the same demotion, cooldown and penalty as standing up. You are told at login that the ritual was resolved against you while you were away.
What counts as the player's: quitting, a dropped connection, a timeout, and Siren's Commands' AFK kick. What does not: a server stop or crash, the world closing, a staff /kick or ban, and NineHeavens' Discord kick. Those leave the ritual unrecorded, and you suffer nothing.
Two long sits are gentler about the AFK kick, because timing it buys nothing there: a Closed-Door Retreat forfeits its payout if you quit, but holds its progress for a resume after the AFK kick and pays the completed share at a server stop, and a Dao Sermon you were giving pays what /cultivation sermon stop would have, where quitting forfeits the Merit. Nascent Soul Escape is covered on its own page.
Dying
Death ends the ritual. It stops your meditation and any breakthrough, advancement, refinement or Closed-Door Retreat in progress, ends the tribulation sky, and demotes nobody - the death is the price. Ascension and Reincarnation fail through their usual failure path (the demotion and cooldown they always cost). The Inner Demon duel and the Dream Trial fail on death, with the penalty and cooldown they are configured for. Before 0.11.0 a ritual could finish on a corpse.
Low Qi pauses a ritual
If your banked Qi falls below what the ritual demands partway through, the ritual pauses; it is not cancelled. Progress, Heart-Devil composure and the position in the bolt sequence are all kept, and it resumes by itself when your Qi is back above the bar. While it is paused, Qi refills only while you stay at your seat: wandering off gathers nothing, and standing up still abandons the ritual.
Ritual Flow
What a breakthrough attempt actually runs through
Breakthrough lightning is genuinely lethal — it can kill you outright at low health. A cultivator who has leaned far enough into Yin or Yang faces the Heart-Devil Trial instead, which tests composure rather than hit points. Both are tunable, and advancement tribulations are off by default.
v0.10.1 Surviving the ritual is only half the story now. Breakthrough Quality covers the six factors — Qi Purity, Difficulty, and four more — that decide how strong the realm you land in actually turns out to be.
Tuning the Curve
Nothing here is hardcoded. The realm/stage curve and its stat rewards live in Config.json; the ritual requirements above live in BreakthroughConfig.json. Both can be edited live in-game through /cultivation admin without touching a file or restarting the server.
| Command | Does |
|---|---|
/cultivation | Open the stats page — realm, stage, Qi progress |
/cultivation info | Print the same readout to chat |
/cultivation meditate | Begin the ritual (alias /cultivation cultivate) |
/cultivation meditate abort | v0.11.0 Quote the Qi cost of withdrawing from the breakthrough or advancement you are in; changes nothing |
/cultivation meditate abort confirm | v0.11.0 Withdraw, paying that Qi - no demotion |
/cultivation admin setrealm <player> <realm> | Set a realm directly admin |
/cultivation admin setstage <player> <stage> | Set a sub-stage directly admin |