Tale of Immortal: How To Create A Good Starting Character (鬼谷八荒)

So, you’re wanting to start out, but aren’t sure how to create a good character? Well, let me give you some advice for building a solid character without having to spend ten hours rerolling.

First off, there’s character appearance. Now, in this game, how your character looks is going to directly impact their charisma, and by that metric how they’re interacted with by others. There are benefits to both high and low charisma. High Charisma means you’ll be the center of attention, people will casually go up to you and invite you to join sects, give you gifts, and ask to spar or train with you. Low Charisma, however, means that people don’t like you, but also don’t pay attention to you, so you can use your lack of social presence to pickpocket items from others.

You don’t have to max or min your charisma. However, you do need to be aware of it, as it will impact how well you can use certain features of the game. If you plan on being a social butterfly, you’re going to have a hard time of it with extremely low charisma. If you plan on being a thief and pickpocket, you’ll have problems doing so if you’re so radiantly beautiful that people just follow you around all the time and rain gifts on you in the hope of getting your attention.

Once you get past appearance, it’s time to roll your stats, and here’s where you can make mistakes.

First things first, ignore the stats at the bottom of the screen, barring one. They’re unimportant. Only five of them really matter at character creation. Nearly all of the stats you see can be increased as you improve your cultivation, from items you get as you move through the game, and far more than you can do at the start of the game. What are these stats, how can they be changed, and what can they do?

Luck: Odds of good things happening to you.
Default, does not change from rerolling, never permanently increases beyond character creation.

Perception: How quickly your character learns new skills, upgrades them, and comprehends them.
Variable, changes when rerolled, never permanently increases beyond character creation.

Charisma: How much people like or notice you.
Variable, based on character appearance, does not change from rerolling, can increase from equipment to a small degree.

Agility: Combat movement speed.
Default, does not change from rerolling, can increase from cultivation and some skills.

Travel Speed: World map movement speed.
Default, does not change from rerolling. Can increase from equipment and cultivation

With the exception of Perception, none of the above stats will change when you reroll. What will change them here and now, however, are your destinies.

This is the longest section of this guide, and that’s because this is the most important part of creating your character. You are allowed to pick three at character creation from a list of nine, but you can reroll the list of destinies infinitely. However, there is an easy trap to fall into, rerolling over and over again in the hopes of making the perfect character.

This is like waiting for an alignment of the planets to happen. Yes, you could spend ten hours rerolling and hoping for the perfect character to pop up, or you could spend those ten hours playing the game instead and having fun.

Let me say this first and foremost: You will never roll the perfect character, as the perfect character does not exist in character creation, but rather it is what you spend the game building. What you want is a good character, one that you can play the game with. 90% of making a good character is going to be based on what you choose for their destinies.

Desitinies have a rarity ranking. This is how often they pop up, and how strong the benefits they give are.

Grey: Common.
Green: Uncommon
Blue: Rare
Purple: Epic
Red: Legendary.

While not all Destinies are created equal, do not choose Destinies based only on Rarity, since most of them are not going to give you what you need. Instead, choose them based on what they actually give you and what they’ll contribute to your character and the five vital stats I listed earlier, and overall their usefulness.

I won’t tell you which ones to pick, as I don’t know what character you’ll want to play. What I will do is give you guidance that will help you in understanding what to look out for. Some Destinies will have benefits and drawbacks, but you may not realize just how good those benefits are and how inconsequential the drawbacks are until you’ve played the game a bit/

For example, the Destiny “Sick Genius” removes twenty years from your maximum lifespan, but gives bonuses to how quickly you cultivate and learn new skills, based on a percentage rather than a flat rate. You start with a default 80 years, so that will leave you with 60. However, you can expect to make your first major Breakthrough to Foundation before your character turns 25 (Even if you pursue Heaven Foundation, the one with the highest prerequisites), which will add around 40 years to your maxiumum lifespan. Each major breakthrough adds more time. So, unless you spend decades doing nothing productive, you’re very unlikely to die of old age, even if you take both Sick Genius and Falling Star and reduce your lifepan to around 40. So, Sick Genius gives a solid bonus that becomes better over time with a drawback that is absolutely meaningless in the long run.

You will want to reroll you destinies until you get Destinies that give you good, solid benefits. Here’s some pointers:

Do not try for three great destinies, as you’ll never get them without spending hours rolling for them. Instead, aim for a one great destiny that gives you what you something that you want, combined with a solid second one that can be useful, and a midway decent third. In a pinch, just one great destiny and two others that are kinda meh. If you reroll for a bit, a specific destiny will always pop up, but a specific combo might not pop for hours.

Anything that gives you Righteous or Demonic with no other useful benefit can be ignored, as that can be changed over time and has little impact on gameplay at current.

Anything that raises or lowers Martial Skills or Spiritual Roots can also be ignored, as part of the game will be increasing those over time. One of the first things you’ll be doing is finding and joining a sect that will sell items that raise one of those stats, so don’t waste a good destiny that could be better applied elsewhere

Anything that raises Alchemy, Feng Shui, Forge, or other production and gathering skills? Ignore them, as you can get texts from mini-bosses that raise those significantly. Forge especially, since you won’t be forging artifacts for a long time, and when you do reach that point, the texts that raise it will boost it by +10 at a time. While you will want to spend time later to boost these stats, they’re meaningless near the start of the game and won’t give give good returns until many hours in.

There are skills like Bald Genius and Intelligent that will give strong boosts to Perception, but they have drawbacks. Bald Genius has a massive Charisma debuff, while Intelligent sets your perception at a high level that nothing can impact, but has a major impact on your character’s maximum Mood. Mood goes down when you use texts, and is a stat that few destinies can impact (Only Optimist and Disciple of Three Pure Ones, and not enough on their own to counteract the Intelligent debuff on their own. So, if you want a low charisma character, or are willing to put up with more mood management, you can use them. Otherwise, steer clear.

Destinies that give items do have uses, but they won’t be as great as you think. Descendant of a Hero and Grandchild of a Demonic One both grant you a random legendary mind tome, but the focus on that is the word “RANDOM”. There are six martial skills, six elemental roots, and non-aligned arts that only rely on any stat being up to a certain level. So, your tome has only a 2/13 chance of being something that could go with the character you plan to create. Furthermore, Legendary skills have a very high minimum skill requirement, as well as a Skill Point requirement that will take a long time to reach. Further, they don’t give the massive bonuses you might expect. In addition, a Legendary Qi Gathering or Foundation level text will quickly get outshined by higher ranked skills from Golden Core upwards. Odds are, by the time you can learn and equip the skill in the tome, you’re going to have better things you can use. However, Legendary tomes will generally go for thousands at auction in the city, so they can be extremely useful on that front. In particular, an unaligned legendary time will go the tens of thousands at auction. Just remember to stick the tome in a Tree Vault the moment you reach the first town and don’t take it out until you’re ready to use it or auction it, else someone will likely try to pickpocket it.

Do not expect anything gamebreakingly powerful from your destinies. If you think a Destiny at character creation is somehow going to make you an unstoppable god, you are wrong. While there can be some strong benefits to some Destinies, many of them become less relevant or even irrelevant by the mid-to-late game.

Finally, there are a number of Legendary Destinies that are locked behind achievements, so there’s plenty of incentive to experiment with multiple new characters until you figure out the build that works for you, and build a new character for a more serious run.