Closed-Door Retreat

A Closed-Door Retreat (闭关苦修) is a ritual you choose to begin: you sit down, seal yourself off from the world, and commit to seeing it through. Thirty minutes later you are paid a large lump of Qi, a measure of Heavenly Dao insight, and a chance to comprehend a technique outright. Get interrupted at any point and you are paid nothing at all.

It is on by default (Retreat-Enabled), and unlike a breakthrough or advancement it asks nothing of the ground beneath you - there is no Spirit Vein requirement, so you can start one anywhere.

It is not the same thing as Seclusion, the passive Qi that quietly builds in a claimed Cave Abode while you are offline. A retreat is active: you sit through all of it, awake, and it can go wrong while you do.

Starting One

Run /cultivation retreat. If you were not already meditating, you are seated where you stand. You are told how many minutes it will take.

A retreat is refused if:

• Closed-Door Retreat is switched off on the server;
• you are already partway through another ritual - a breakthrough, an advancement, a weapon refinement, a beast's evolution, Ascension or Reincarnation;
• you are in a Dream Trial, an Inner Demon duel or a Marrow-Cleansing Rite;
• you are inside a Sea of Consciousness - it has nothing that can hurt you, so a retreat there would pay with no risk;
• you completed a retreat less than 30 minutes ago (Retreat-Cooldown-Seconds-After-Success). An interrupted attempt carries no cooldown.

While it runs, the state chip beside your orb reads Closed-Door Retreat - see Reading Your HUD. The retreat has its own timer, which takes the place of ordinary meditation: you are not drawing Qi from the vein as you sit. The reward comes at the end.

Walking off does not end a retreat, because retreats are exempt from the movement check that ends ordinary meditation. But everything listed under What Ends It does.

The Payout

Finish the full sit and you receive:

• Qi: Retreat-Qi-Payout-Base (400) times Retreat-Qi-Payout-Realm-Multiplier (1.3) to the power of your realm number, counting Body Refinement as 0.
• Heavenly Dao insight: 5 points of Heavenly Dao comprehension (Retreat-Heavenly-Dao-Insight-Gain).
• A guaranteed roll at comprehending a technique: a 15% chance (Retreat-Guaranteed-Enlightenment-Chance) that one random technique you are eligible for, and do not yet know, is simply taught to you. It is a rare second road to a technique, alongside the manuals and the Heart-Devil Trial.

Those are the base figures. The Qi goes in through the normal gain pipeline, so your race, skill tree, pills, sect hall bonus and Dao balance all apply on top, and the completion line in chat reports the base figure. A cultivator at the very top of the ladder cannot bank Qi at all, so for them the Qi part pays nothing; the insight and the technique roll still apply.

Until you have completed your first retreat, the Progression Compass suggests trying one.

The Trial

Partway through, the stillness can turn on you. At the halfway mark (Retreat-Trial-Check-Fraction, 0.5 - fifteen minutes in) a Trial Stirs title appears, and a one-shot roll is made (Retreat-Trial-Chance, 35%).

The roll only bites cultivators the Heart-Devil Trial applies to: Heart-Devil enabled, your Yin-Yang balance leaned at least as far as HeartDevil-Lean-Threshold (0.5). For everyone else the title is all there is. On a hit, a single Heart-Devil pulse lands: you are stunned for 1.5 seconds and your composure takes a drain of 34 times (0.5 plus your lean), out of 100.

• A banked Clear-Mind charge holds the pulse off - and is spent doing so, even though the pulse could not have broken you.
• If composure reached zero, the retreat would fail and forfeit its payout, exactly like any interruption (no Qi Deviation follows).

At the shipped Heart-Devil settings a single pulse takes 34 to 51 of your 100 composure, so it cannot end a retreat by itself. It matters if the server owner has raised the Heart-Devil drain.

The trial rolls once per retreat. A retreat the server pauses and you resume remembers whether it already fired.

What Ends It

There is no partial credit. Any of these forfeits the whole payout - the Qi, the insight and the technique roll:

• taking damage from any source;
• standing up before the ritual completes (/cultivation meditate, or any other stand-up);
• dying;
• logging out, or losing your connection, on your own - a timeout counts as your own;
• a Heart-Devil pulse that breaks your composure (see above).

A failed or abandoned retreat costs you nothing beyond the time already spent: it does not touch the Qi you have banked, and no cooldown follows it. It is also not a breakthrough, so nothing is demoted. Dying or logging out are covered with the other rituals on Realms & Stages.

When the server is to blame

A disconnect you did not cause costs you nothing:

• A staff kick or ban, or Siren's Commands' AFK kick: your progress is held. The next /cultivation retreat resumes it exactly where it stopped - you are told how many minutes are already behind you - and still makes you sit every remaining minute. Sitting still is the retreat, so an AFK kick is treated as the server's doing here.
• A server stop: you are paid the share you completed, in proportion - that share of the Qi, of the insight, and of the technique roll's chance. It does not count as a completed retreat and sets no cooldown.

Held progress is kept in memory, so a restart between a kick and your resume loses it (a stop, however, pays instead).

If the server owner switches Retreat off while you are mid-retreat, it ends without penalty.

For Server Owners

Every value on this page lives in mods/Siren_Cultivation/Cultivation/RetreatConfig.json; see also the Retreat Config section of the Cultivation config page. The in-game admin editor has a Closed-Door Retreat section covering all ten.

The trial's strength comes from the Heart-Devil settings on the Cultivation config page, not from this file.

Related: Realms & Stages, Tribulations, Cave Abode, Reading Your HUD, Commands.