This guide is still in progress. PLEASE ask questions about the game in the comments and either I or someone else will try to answer your questions in the comments as well as update the guide to clear up confusion for the next guy in line.
Guide status update
Last updated 9:39 am EST, 9/24/2023. (updated the skill needed to increase hp and acupoints screenshot)
What do you guys want to see or need more explanation on? I’ll try to focus on the systems that people need explainations for and branch out from there.
What to expect
When this project of a guide is over, expect an in-depth look at this game and its mechanics.
As this guide grows, expect information to get edited and become clearer over time. There is still a LOT to cover about this game, so bear with me.
This guide may also one day become redundant when the game is finally fully translated properly.
Note: as of the latest patch, many of the screenshots I’ve taken and parts of the guide have outdated language. Furthermore, there seems to be a bug with caged NPCs that doesn’t allow for interrogation.
I will update the guide when I’m able.
Watch out for spoilers 🙂
Basic Stats and Their Function
Personal Character Stats
Health: The amount of Meridians you have that aren’t damaged. The more meridian damage you take, the less health you’ll have. When your health reaches 0, your character dies, and you have to make a new one or reload a save. You can gradually take health damage from debuff stacks such as poison, heat, or cold.
Load: This is your carry weight. You can carry above your maximum load, but this slows you down.
Vigor: Acts as combat health. when this reaches 0, you’ll take damage to your Health
Energy: This allows you to sprint, swim underwater, jump across water, and climb mountains.
Spirits: This is how happy your character is. You can keep Spirits high by doing activities that make your character happy. This includes sleeping, playing music, drinking at a bar, or taking a bath.
If spirits get too low, you’ll take damage to your meridians. This can also happen to npcs.
Titles and Reputation
Player Titles (some of them, still gathering data)
Treacherous NPCs have no loyalty and will attempt to backstab you regardless of how high your relations are. Generally speaking, feuding with these guys isn’t the worst thing in the world.
The translations in the heavenly scrolls are a little wonky so I’ve done a bare bones translation for clarity’s sake. This section will become redundant once the game gets fully translated.
Eroding Bone Rune comes from a skill called “Ordeal Sigil”.
[This Section Needs Updating]
Basic Combat Mechanics
Moves: Punches, Kicks, Thrown Weapon, Held Weapon, Palm attacks are all called MOVES.
Moves can also be augmented with status effects
By themselves, Moves can only be chained together with moves of the same type. Palm chains to palm, fist chains to fist, etc. However, the game has ways of stringing different combos together such as Omni Moves and Changeable Moves.
Omni Moves: Omni Moves allow you to chain from one type of Move to a different type of Move. These are an expendable resource in the combo, and you need to be wise with how you use it.
Changeable Moves: Changeable Moves allow you to turn one type of Move into the type of Move Listed on the Changeable Move. After Turning one type of move into another [Example: using a Sword Changeable Move on a Palm Move] You will then start a chain of the Changed Move. [Palm is now Sword, will chain with other Swords]
Defensive Moves: Defensive Moves allow you to take one Move currently available to you and save it for next round.
Move Counter: Each Move can Counter and Be Countered by at least one other Move.
If your Move Counters the Opponent’s Move, you do damage.
If neither of your moves counter each other, you both take no damage.
If you Counter 3 of their moves in a row, any moves after those three will be completely ignored.
If you have More Moves than your opponent, all extra moves will do damage.
Move Combo and Surprise Moves.
If you link 4 of the same move in a combo, you’ll get extra Moves to use. They do not have to be in a row, you only need to play 4 in the same chain. You can even do 4 of one move and 4 of another.
Surprise Moves are from linking 3 different types of Move. You can only Trigger this once per chain due to there being only 5 different types of Moves.
Skills: Skills, as mentioned earlier, are 6 Special Attacks that can Damage the enemy, Debuff the Enemy, or Buff/Heal Yourself. Each Skill has a number of needed Moves before it can be used in combat. There are some Skills that do not require any move inputs, but are limited in how many times you can use them in battle. Having Skills equipped changes the number of Moves of a certain type in your Move Pool. Skill Damage can be augmented by gear or breathing patterns created through the Meridian System.
Skills can also be leveled up using Martial Arts Experience earned in fights.
Advanced Combat Mechanics
The difference is night and day. Go to any sect and use their training dummy (or build your own) for the final level of technique.
ABILITIES
Abilities can be Earned by completing tasks or asking NPCs to Teach you.
TRAINERS ARE BUGGED IN THE ENGLISH VERSION OF THE GAME.
THANK YOU TO VIVI FOR DOING THE DEEP DIVE INTO THIS.
In order to earn the final tier of abilities that require you to know the secret knowledge of whichever family, you can actually just talk to npcs proficient in those skills about their interests.
For sneak and geomancy, you can talk to bandits about their interest.
For production and forging, you can talk to any npc that runs a forge or has the “blacksmith” job.
This will likely get patched later, however, this is the only way currently to do so in the english version of the game.
Meridians
1 chi = 1 hex worth of movement.
The meridian flows one way and has to connect back into the core when you’re done, otherwise you get no passive boost. I highly recommend you make your character go to sleep so you can learn your first meridian pattern.The patterns are learned from npcs and skill books.
Damage and Debuffs to Meridians can be cured by linking your chi through every damaged node.
If you do not have enough chi for every damaged node, try match nodes of the same type first.
you need to wait a brief duration after all damage is linked so the debuff can be cured.
If the debuff is one that you cannot deal with normally, you cannot heal it without either a doctor’s help, or with the breathing technique GOLDEN ACUPUNCTURE. This skill can be learned from a doctor after meeting the leechcraft and NPC affinity requirements or by reading a skill book (Active Karma Bonuses will make even an early game character able to earn this skill without needing leechcraft)
Golden Acupuncture instantly clears all debuffs next to one of the square/tri/circle nodes in your meridians when you channel chi through it. It does not, however, allow you to clear a debuff instantly if it is not next to one of these nodes. If your broken leg is not directly next to a square/tri/circle, you’ll still need to go to a doctor to fix it.
Unlike the example above, merdians don’t have to just have one flow out. As long as it links back into your core, you can have as many flows connect to different nodes.
EXAMPLE:
The red and blue complete one full loop. The orange and green feed into the blue and red loops.
The orange circle shows one node that is completely useless for making any sort of pattern in this example BUT you should still loop through as each acupoint node still provides a passive benefit.
Experiment. Customize. Don’t just blindly follow the path I made. (but also, if you find a better meridian build pls share cuz am stupid)
YOU CAN INCREASE THE SIZE OF YOUR HEALTH POOL AND ADD ACUPOINTS WITH A LEARNED NPC BREATHING TECHNIQUE
You can permanently increase your inner chi for a character by consuming Chi increasing items such as the ones that can sometimes be purchased on merchant ships
Bio
I could not figure out how to get the “secrets” tab to display anything.
NPC Interaction Menu Explaination
I generally recommend being nice to NPCs since learning more abilities and breathing techniques will be a huge boost to your power. Or you could just rob their storehouses.
Looting knocked out animals kills them.
NPCs have many different ways you can interact with them, so I’ll go over the npc chat menu and its options.
[Interact]
Follow: You follow the NPC
Spar: A battle to half health that doesn’t piss off the npc
Battle: A fight to knockout or death that causes your relationship with the npc to plummet
Mark as [ENEMY]: you announce that you hate this NPC in particular, which drops your relationship with this person
Use Skill: Use an attacking skill on an NPC for high damage out of combat
Follow Life: use 200 gold to find out more about an NPC
[EXCHANGE] trade with an npc.
[Give Gifts] Increase your reputation with this NPC. Giving an NPC 500 coins at a time is optimal and increases your relationship with that npc by 50.
Hire: Hire an NPC to do a task for you. TEACH A LESSON means you ask that npc to go beat someone up. You can tell an npc to go beat you up too, so don’t accidentally do that.
Learn: Learn an NPC’s Skill, Meridian Patterns, or Abilities.
Follow Me: makes the npc follow you. you can invite this NPC out for drinks and activities, or bring them to a secluded place on the map to kick their ass.
Teach: Teach an NPC one of your skills, meridian patterns, or abilities for positive rep.
Quest: take a quest for money and rep with this npc. I recommend getting the materials BEFORE you start the quest, because it seems like quest timers are a *little* bugged.
Cure Ailment: Cure an npc’s meridians by making their chi flow through their debuffs. *seems* to improve relations sometimes.
[CHECK RELATIONSHIP] shows you who this npc is friendly with, family with, enemies with etc
[TALK] lets you introduce yourself to an npc, learn more about them
Introducing yourself has a seemingly random chance of either improving or worsening your relationship by 10 points.
Introducing yourself through acquaintances will increase or decrease your relationship based on how the NPC feels about that other NPC.
Talk about topics…can increase your skill/reputation with an npc IF the npc thinks you know what you’re talking about. If you talk about a crafting skill without knowing much about it, the npc thinks you’re full of it and your reputation will decrease. you can only take this option every 2 in game hours.
Praise each other. Can increase or decrease your relation with an NPC depending on the option you choose. calling a beggar rich, or calling someone weaker than you “strong” will probably decrease your relationship.
Persuade the other party… [I’ve never used this option so I have no clue. I’ll try it on a bandit later and see what happens]
Chopsticks: Play rock paper scissors with an npc for money.
Couple/Brothers: take your relationship to the next level. [I’ve only ever done this for a tile quest, so I’m not sure how intricate the sworn brother system is]
Know each others identity: ask what he does for a job, basically.
(Going off of memory, this section will be edited to be more accurate later)
Carry: Pick up and carry a knocked-out npc.
Feeding: can forcefeed an npc something, even monkey poo or poison.
Loot: take their items
Take Relic: kill an NPC and take their head. Covers you in blood, so beware.
[This is another one that y’all should just ask questions for.]
Sects, Retainers, Sworn Brothers, Lovers, and Tamed Animals
[Another planned section, temporary bare bones info in the meantime. If these systems are too complex, I’ll divide each of these up into their own sections.]
Establishing a sect and planting a sect banner on an unclaimed tile both cost 2000 coins.
This can be done by pressing H by default to bring up the build | sect options.
After establishing a sect, you can set sect rules, taboos, and requirements to join your sect.
Being a sect leader gives you passive income from members in your sect.
You also need to pay your sect members a monthly wage.
Sworn Brothers and Lovers require at least 300 reputation with an NPC. You cannot normally become sworn brothers with someone who is opposite of you in moral alignment. Be sure to look at your positive and negative titles.
[Hey guess what, another screenshot in this space]
You can send retainers and lower level sect members out on quests. This system is a tad clunky though, and I’m not entirely positive if the resource gathering quest works. However, sending npcs to build your house for you definitely saves on your own personal resources.
You can also commission random npcs in the world to do the same things, but you need to pay them first. If your house is small enough, you can get npcs to build your house for free.
Tamed Animals can assist you in combat and other tasks.
Snakes can lockpick and poison
Monkeys can beg for money and transport materials
Martens can find treasure
Horses can be ridden and equipped with carriages
Eagles can track people and be used to view the map
Chickens can lay eggs
Stealth, Theft, Murder, and Crime.
This section will need some testing and some updating.
[THIS SECTION IS BARE BONES, I’VE BEEN PLAYING A MOSTLY GOOD BOY, SO CRIME AND NEGATIVE REPUTATION HAVEN’T BEEN A FACTOR]
To activate stealth, Press G.
You’ll see two rings around your character. One large ring and one smaller ring. The larger ring is how far away enemies can hear you from while moving. The smaller ring makes enemies instantly detect you while inside it.
Here you can see the chicken’s Sight and Sound detection markers. The sound detection only goes up when you’re moving or pick pocketing while the enemy is within your larger detection ring (or a little bit further than that if they’re blind)
Sight goes up while you’re in direct line of sight to an npc. You can hide behind obstacles such as bookshelves and training dummies to break line of sight.
While in stealth, you’ll be given the option to do new actions.
Steal allows you to pickpocket characters that are awake. It also allows you to take items from containers up to a certain value. Each level of geomancy increases the max value you can take in one go.
Poison adds 5 stacks of poison debuff to your enemy at the cost of one of the poison in your inventory, HOWEVER, if you tamed a snake, you can poison someone for free. Poisoning is incredibly weak and may take poisoning someone up to 20 times (200 stacks) to see any significant result on someone even as low as 900 vigor. NPCs will often heal off any poison damage by going to sleep before you see any real payoff.
CAGES AND JAIL
When you knock out an enemy, or they’re otherwise incapacitated, you can throw them in jail
While they’re jailed, you get access to the “interrogation” option in the “talk” menu.
Back: go back to the previous menu.
Inquire about their skills: Makes the NPC show you their skills (dependent on relationship with captured npc)
Inquire about their inner KungFu: Forces NPC to teach you Inner cultivation techniques (dependent on relationship with captured npc)
Subject to Torture: Harm the NPC (blinds, breaks leg, damages health)
Accept as my retainer: attempts to convert NPC to your side. Must have Positive relations with the captured NPC.
[Work in Progress, I work for a living dudes ;v;]
Building, Jobs, and Crafting
[This section is in the works. I *MIGHT* be interested in getting screenshot contributions from anyone who has a good eye for building]
The building menu can be opened with H by default.
Building requires a foundation first, then you can place facilities on or around that foundation, followed by choosing an entrace to your building, the type of wall you’d like to use as well as window location, and then you may select a rooftop style. Walls, windows, and roofs have no affect on gameplay.
You can also commission or order npcs to help build your home. If it’s tiny enough, npcs will currently do it for free.
You cannot build production facilities for your buildings until you’ve gained a certain level of proficiency in that ability
Karma
Permanent upgrades/tweaks for future descendants.
That’s basically it, even I don’t know exactly what each of these nodes wants. I’ve murdered people left right and center and it didn’t unlock the random murder one, so hey, your guess is as good as mine.
These only kick in when you return to karma. (die/have that character become unplayable)
Of the 3 body types you can have (Fire, Ice, and Poison)
ICE is the best. Ice is quite possibly one of the best debuffs to use against enemies and one of the worst debuffs to have in the game simply due to how much it does to you without warning. After 15 stacks of ice, your character can suddenly freeze solid and become incapacitiated. In this state, bandits can steal all of your items, poison you, and imprison you without you being able to do anything. Furthermore, in combat, the more stacks of ice you have, the fewer moves you can use in a turn. The fewer moves you can use, the more damage you take and the less damage you deal. With Ice body, not only can you randomly inflict this debuff on enemies, but with any gear that increases your resistence to cold by 5 or more, you’ll never have to worry about randomly being frozen solid while walking on land unless you’re in a snowstorm or underwater in a cold area.
Tips and Tricks
1: Poo can be used to fertilize farmland to cut down on the time it takes for plants to grow
2: Talk to people about the topics they’re interested in. If you succeed the ability check, it’s +5% exp towards the next level in that ability. Use this to level up Stealth and Geomancy (it’s called thaumaturgy when the bandits talk about it. Oh by the way, bandits talk about stealth and geomancy.)
This also helps leveling up production skills without wasting a LOT of resources.
3: The quickest way to level Iron Bone is to find some brambles in the world that you can damage yourself with. Place a shack down nearby to heal back up.
4: The best use for lineage points should be on the abilities that take the longest or require the most resources to level up. Weaving, Forging, Sneak, and Geomancy are my preferred first picks. From there, I like to max technique and Iron Bone. Quingong max tier requires an enlightenment stone, so perhaps you may want this one as well.
5: on the opposite side, do NOT waste your points on Establishment (can be leveled up by placing sect banners on unclaimed squares)
Wine arts (make wine, drink wine, get 50 stacks of drunk at a doctor and lay down on a sick bed before you pass out)
Fly on snow (you’ll be overencumbered with money for 95% of the game)
Fly on water (literally just jump on water)
Any of the Move Skills ( it really does not take that long to level these up if you build the move you want to level up)
Music (it takes like 2 in game days of playing on the zhuge to max it out, this one’s easy)
6: You can copy mastered skills and breathing techniques into manuals on shelves that you own. This can be used to quickly allow your next character to have easy access to previously learned skills/techniques. This can also be a great way to earn money.
7: You can grab buckets of water from wells to put out fires with
I decided this needed special attention. A requirement to unlocking the final karma is to earn 1,000,000 coins and then return to karma. You do NOT need all 1,000,000 coins in your inventory when you return to karma, so stash it away for your next character. (Stash a few chi increasing items too since you’ll need it)
1: Steal. Just steal from everyone and everything. Steal experience scrolls, steal martial arts techniques, steal resources. Just steal. This will earn you enough money for the next way to earn money which is ;
2: You can copy your mastered martial arts skills and inner cultivation techniques into a bookshelf by paying 1000 coins for each copy you make. If you copy techniques worth 2000 coins, you double your money when you resell. You can sell these hundreds of copies to merchant boats. Use coins to make more copies, use copies to make more coins. I recommend setting up an autoclicker for making copies.
3: (I haven’t tested this myself, this was a commented suggestion) Buy houses, stock them full of monkey wine and resell them. Also, sometimes when you buy a house, the contents of the chests inside are worth more than you spent.
Thanks to InuAres for his great guide, all credit to his effort. you can also read the original guide from Steam Community. enjoy the game.
