Solar Terms

The heavens now run a calendar of their own. Five Solar Terms cycle forever, each favoring one Wu Xing element:

Derived, Not Saved

The current term is derived purely from the clock, rather than saved anywhere. Every server that shares the same clock agrees on which term is active without a byte of coordination — nothing to persist, nothing that can desync between a restart and the world it describes.

/cultivation solarterm

Names the current term and element from anywhere. Standing on your own Spirit Field adds that plot's own resonance to the readout, and the command nudges you toward a nearby wild bush if you have neither a Spirit Field nor a gathered herb on hand yet.

Wild Spirit Herb Bushes

Wild Spirit Herb bushes now scatter through the world on their own, independent of anything grown in a Cave Abode. They anchor near players the same way Spirit Cooking's own wild forage already works, capped per world so a server never drowns in them.

Which herb turns up

A bush is more likely to be the variety whose element matches:

1. The current Solar Term — the base case.
2. And the current weather, on top of that — the strongest case.

Breaking a bush right as its element lines up with the season stamps the harvested herb with a visibly better quality. The whole point is a reason to notice what season it is, not just what weather is overhead.

Harvesting

• A wild bush yields exactly one herb per harvest.
• A full inventory or too-recent a harvest refuses the break outright rather than quietly voiding the herb — you never lose one to a mistimed swing.

The Two New Herbs

Ironleaf and Loamroot round the herb family out to one variety for every classic Wu Xing element — Sunpetal, Mistcap and Bramblewort no longer have the field to themselves. See Alchemy for the full herb-affinity table these two now sit in.

Wild-only is design intent, not a rule the plot command enforces. The command that starts a Spirit Field plot, /cultivation abode field plant <variety>, refuses only the plain Spirit Herb's name (that herb has its own bare plant) and anything it does not recognize. So /cultivation abode field plant ironleaf is accepted and grows an Ironleaf plot like any other variety, and /cultivation abode field varieties lists Ironleaf, Loamroot and Millennium Ginseng alongside the rest. Their item text still describes them as found growing wild rather than planted, and the wild bush is how the world scatters them.

A third wild herb followed in v0.10.2: Millennium Ginseng (千年参), Wood-aligned, favoring the Longevity Pill. It is scattered by the very same system under the very same Solar Term and weather weights, then multiplied by Millennium-Ginseng-Weight (0.05, in HerbScatterConfig), which makes it by far the rarest wild herb. Being Wood, it turns up more often while Spring Quickening is the current term. You find it as a Wild Millennium Ginseng Bush and break it by hand for one herb, under the same harvest rules as every other wild bush. See Alchemy for what it does at the cauldron.

Cultivated Fields Feel It Too

A Spirit Field plot in your Cave Abode gets a quieter version of the same seasonal favor a wild bush enjoys — baked into the existing weather-resonance bonus rather than stacking as a separate multiplier. Standing on your own plot, the HUD names the current term and how strongly it is resonating with what you planted.

The Codex

The in-game Codex covers the full five-term cycle in its own article, cross-linked from Alchemy, Cave Abode and Spirit Fields.