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[Il Palazzo]

The one thing that eventually makes me put down ACS each time I get to playing, is that there's just no such thing as designing defences. If the invading AI decides to path to your defenceless peons, as it is sometimes prone to do in spite of being in a fight with your inner disciples, then they're toast. Can't do anything about it. It's just a random fuck you the game occasionally throws at you.

[lemon10]

The one thing that eventually makes me put down ACS each time I get to playing, is that there's just no such thing as designing defences. If the invading AI decides to path to your defenceless peons, as it is sometimes prone to do in spite of being in a fight with your inner disciples, then they're toast. Can't do anything about it. It's just a random fuck you the game occasionally throws at you.

I mean, assuming you throw your dudes into a bell room the instant enemies come on the map they usually get there safe before the enemies actually aggro and are then immune to being targeted as they are indoors and not attacking right?*
At least that's what I remember from when I was actually playing the game.

*Outside of the actual boss battles that can randomly just kill your dudes if you get bad luck.

[Il Palazzo]

I haven't seen that immunity you speak of.
And boss fights are just complete bullshit in this regard.

[EuchreJack]

Ah, but that is only because every disciple is so loveable, that you can't help but want them all to survive.  I even want to bandits to convert and join me.

[lemon10]

I haven't seen that immunity you speak of.
And boss fights are just complete bullshit in this regard.

You are probably right, it's been ages since I've actually played the game.

That said, I do 100% agree that the lack of defenses is really sad. Not just cause it lets your people die and it lets bosses randomly destroy your wonders, but because having them is just so fundamental to this type of game and the Xianxia genre as a whole that its complete lack of inclusion is a massive oversight.

Give me my magical walls or giant AOE forcefields, I know you got em Xianxia.

[Il Palazzo]

Word. I was so happy when I realised carving out an ersatz dwarf fortress in the living wall of a mountain was a possibility. But then it turned out to not even not make any difference defence-wise, but actively inhibit your ability to react to danger (because cultivators, but only yours, will end up getting stuck on terrain).

[unauthorized]

If the invading AI decides to path to your defenceless peons, as it is sometimes prone to do in spite of being in a fight with your inner disciples, then they're toast. Can't do anything about it. It's just a random fuck you the game occasionally throws at you.

It's not random. Enemy AI is kinda wonky but it follows a predictable pattern:

1. Invaders show up, they are idle and wait around for a bit. If engaged, they'll retaliate but otherwise they aren't going to do anything.
2. After some time, invaders enter active mode and attack anyone who has attacked them directly (closest to furthest).
3. If they don't have aggro, invaders start attacking buildings and people (or only people if already in combat) until someone seizes aggro on them.
4. Once a certain time elapses, invaders reconsider their choices and drop their previous actions if they don't have aggro or are losing the fight. This causes them to either steal something and leave or just run away in the latter case.

Now, the problem, the AI will only consider itself actively attacked if you've targeted that enemy specifically (this means having an explicit attack order on them) and inflicted damage (except with multiple artifacts which can draw aggro indirectly with a joint attack and move command in addition to this). Being in the area while you're killing their buddies sometimes causes passive invaders to retaliate, but doesn't set them in phase two nor does it draw aggro. Once they enter phase two, they start attacking at random until you draw aggro normally. If you take a moment to specifically target every invader until artifacts clash once at the start of a wave you won't have to worry about aggro unless your guy goes down. I've found that very rarely they can lose aggro at stage 4 somehow, but it happens maybe once every 100 invasions and they don't proactively attack at that point so at worst you lose something valuable.

[IronyOwl]

Amazing Cultivator 2 got its first devlog. As expected, they just kinda talk about how it's bigger and better.

They also mention it's much more RPG-like, but also mention "sect building." Hopefully that means it's a colony builder with possession mode, not a single player RPG where you recruit thralls for your base.


Been getting back into the first one in the meantime, and every guide or piece of advice I can find is either a basic explanation of terms or some kind of weirdly high-end checklist.

For the Yaoguai tribulation, it really isn't that hard to overcome. Here's a pretty beginner's friendly checklist.

1.) You need a good golden core, around T3 should do. Here's a short guide to T1 Golden Core even at 1st generation:

-Cultivator should have, at base (no cultivation) around 40+ Qi Sense

...

After Golden Core, breakthrough 1 time and you should have around 40k-80k+ max qi.

The thing that gets me about this isn't just that a T3 golden core is "beginner friendly." It's that you need 40+ Qi Sense. What if you do not have 40+ Qi Sense? When he says "it's easy," does he mean the game is totally unplayable with anyone who doesn't start with perfect stats, and anyone wondering how their 1500 Qi 0-stat rabbit is going to handle a tribulation in 20 days has made the critical error of not tossing her in a trash can to begin with?

Every guide I find is like this. You should have perfect stats and every manual in the game from every law, make sure to use your primordial spirit level weather miracles and T12 specter refined medicines you can only acquire with a high-luck cultivator of the right element triggering the right event at the right place, and 400,000 Qi should be plenty to handle your first tribulation once you factor in the legendary clothing and talismans you've equipped just for this purpose.

Thanks guys.

[Mephansteras]

I should give this a go again. I bounced off it the first time, but I was sick and I think it requires a bit more focus to get into than I had available at the time.

[Akura]

Every guide I find is like this. You should have perfect stats and every manual in the game from every law, make sure to use your primordial spirit level weather miracles and T12 specter refined medicines you can only acquire with a high-luck cultivator of the right element triggering the right event at the right place, and 400,000 Qi should be plenty to handle your first tribulation once you factor in the legendary clothing and talismans you've equipped just for this purpose.

Thanks guys.

I agree, that irritates me to no end as well. "It's so easy! Just do this*! Boom! You win!" "This" being something that relies heavily on obscure mechanics and RNG.


Also, I think I was lucky that I got a T3 for my first GC this run. I'm not even sure how the hell you're supposed to try for a T1 core, given that some of the things you need almost certainly do require a GC cultivator to find in the first place. I think I saw a speedrun guide that used absolute cheese for it, as well as random bits(like a giant gingko on the map). As for Specter Refining(which requires GC to learn), my main cultivator did not initially have enough max Qi to even use it, plus the only Anguish Gem I found was due to hilariously random and unlikely circumstance(random village had a heart attack in her home right after I tried recruiting her).

[IronyOwl]

At least anguish gems are easy to get once you know how. People who die in very ominous rooms drop them, so build a very ominous room and drag defeated invaders in there before they fully kick it. It's not something you'd do unless you very specifically knew you were supposed to, but it doesn't require anything weird to pull off.

As for whether that gets you enough of them to bother with, well...

[EuchreJack]

I feel like there is a more relaxed way to play this game.  And while accurate, it's a rather long journey if you are not min-maxing.

[lemon10]

and anyone wondering how their 1500 Qi 0-stat rabbit is going to handle a tribulation in 20 days has made the critical error of not tossing her in a trash can to begin with?

Yup!
Qi sense is the single most important stat in the game because there is a hard limit on how much you can improve it and because it controls your total qi which is the single most important stat in tribulations, combat, and needed for all of the most fancy miracles.

Outside of some niche uses never make someone with 0 Qi stat a cultivator since making a good cultivator requires a lot of resources being pumped into them, and if you do have a yaoguai cultivator with stats like that just accept that they are going to die and turn into a monster that you either harvest for their body parts or destroys your entire sect when their tribulation arrives.
A 40+ minimum for qi sense is a pretty reasonable guideline actually, although I do feel that qi sense *rank* (the amount you have out of 20) is more important to look at then the skill.

"beginner friendly."

Basically nothing about the game is beginner friendly, and yaoguai are even less beginner friendly then a bunch of other stuff due to how they just flat out die if your stuff isn't good enough. If the guide is saying they are beginner friendly they are simply wrong, likely because they have played the game for like 500 hours and are going "well all that is pretty basic stuff right?" (Well no).
Yaogui tribulations are tricky if you don't know how to handle them and even though (if you are cheesy enough) its totally possible to start with a 10 day Yaogui and have them pass it I would highly recommend that you don't pick one with a timer anywhere under 100 days. Hell, even 200 days can end up with failure.

There is a reason that guides for them suggest a bunch of tough stuff, because passing their tribulation requires a well put together dude.

Now, you can do it without any of the truly tough stuff, but even then you should do all the relatively easy stuff (eg. starting with good stats) that you can, and if you miss enough of the easy stuff it can totally be impossible.

Every guide I find is like this. You should have perfect stats and every manual in the game from every law, make sure to use your primordial spirit level weather miracles and T12 specter refined medicines you can only acquire with a high-luck cultivator of the right element triggering the right event at the right place, and 400,000 Qi should be plenty to handle your first tribulation once you factor in the legendary clothing and talismans you've equipped just for this purpose.

Stuff in game range from easy (eg. having all the basic starter laws) to absurd (make sure your dude has twenty of each medicine refined to T12).
You really want to get as much stuff in there as you can for pretty much everything since it makes the resulting cultivator stronger for every additional thing you do right.

I feel like there is a more relaxed way to play this game.  And while accurate, it's a rather long journey if you are not min-maxing.

Ehh, kinda?
You can totally chill for like 80% of the content and go through literally thousands of ingame days of game play, but if you want to do the real tough stuff (eg. conquering rival sects, beating the bosses) you need to go pretty hard.

[Frumple]

Well, go pretty hard or cheat wildly. It's pretty trivial to add in some items that give you just... all sorts of helpful things, like maxed out movement speed and jacked up mood and etc., if you want to play with the big stuff but don't want to put in quite so much effort on the fiddly bits.

[lemon10]

I should give this a go again. I bounced off it the first time, but I was sick and I think it requires a bit more focus to get into than I had available at the time.

Just to make sure you know: The discord is an amazing resource, and (for me at least) playing without it would have been impossible.

I also highly recommend a couple of mods which you can find info on on this page. The game is obnoxious enough that some of the QOL range from basically needed to simply very convenient (elysium, multiple operation, auto operation, auction speedup, one click interrogate), some of the info mods are also super helpful in helping you understand how the game actually works or are simply very useful (more grid info, numeric descriptions, city event helper, skill level in recruitment)  and even some of the gameplay mods (such as great painter, one click favor, undying vessels, open other world rift (which lets you do the special "lol, only open on chinese new years" events at any time of year)) simply remove some of the more tedious gameplay elements.

I would recommend all of the ones I named above, even if its your first game.

Some mods however range from simply overpowered (call the merchant, Farmer Fa, a mod that lets you have unlimited points at the start screen and start with like 8 dudes, mods that let you start with dudes with every single skill perfect), to flat out wild cheating (some mods that just add pills that give you +999999 max qi or whatever, mod modifier). I wouldn't recommend any of these for your first game of course, but I can certainly see how some of them make it more fun.