Cultivation: Xianxia Leveling & Realm Progression

v0.10.0 - A World That Remembers

The world stopped resetting itself. A rival you beat once now remembers losing, and comes back angrier. Ascension gained a third ending that leaves something behind on purpose. Three wandering NPCs and a four-chapter campaign give the world people in it, with names, routes and things to ask of you. Dungeons became plural. Sects can now be enemies as well as allies. And a run of smaller systems - a rite that actually cures a backslide, a beast that helps everyone nearby instead of just you, forged relics out of the vaults you already raid, a market that finally tells you what things are worth - fill in gaps the mod has had since launch.

Beta disclaimer: Worlds, progress, sects, abodes, beasts, arts and Life-Bound Treasures all carry over, and your config files are left exactly as they are - every new setting appears with a working default the first time the file is written. Nothing an existing cultivator has earned is taken away.

Server compatibility notice: v0.10.0 targets a Hytale Update 6 pre-release server (ServerVersion: >=0.6.0-pre.0 <0.7.0), not the older release-channel build earlier versions supported. Check your server's own version before upgrading.

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Dungeons, Plural

• /cultivation dungeon list and /cultivation dungeon enter <id> replace the old bare enter command. Sunken Foundry is joined by a second instance, the volcanic Ember Wastes, capped by its own boss, the Ashen Colossus.

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Wandering NPC Quest Lines, and the Roots of Ruin Campaign

• Three wandering quest-givers spawn periodically near populated ground and open a themed dialog page when spoken to. The Ash-Robed Hermit asks for Spirit Herb and Sunpetal Herb, then a vigil kept at his side, before teaching a technique outright - or its manual and a Qi bonus, if you already know it. The Grave-Warden - the gentlest of the three, open from Body Refinement - asks for talisman paper and cinnabar ink, then sends you to a grave site rolled fresh from his own position at the moment you accept, for a vigil and a piece of lore for your Codex. The Cloud-Ferry Merchant is repeatable: pay the fare in Spirit Stones, clear a set number of threats along his route, and collect Qi, Spirit Stones, and a chance at a manual.
• Alongside them, a fixed four-chapter campaign - Roots of Ruin - introduces three named characters with their own stories: Elder Shen, Lin Qingzhu, and Duan Heiyan. A server owner points each chapter at the world and coordinates they want it to run in.
• Every chain runs through a full 8-state dialog page - offer, in progress, ready to turn in, a dialog choice, complete - with its own quest log, a HUD line for what is active, and world-map pins for both the giver and the site.

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Rival Cultivators: Nemesis Escalation, and a Real Offer Menu

• Lose to a Wandering Rival Cultivator for the first time and the mod names your Nemesis - one of ten flavored rivals, from Blackfrost the Wanderer to the Ashen Reiver. From then on, roughly 1 in 3 rival encounters are that same Nemesis instead of a stranger. Beat them three times and they retire for good; lose to them again and they climb, up to five tiers of health and reward. /cultivation rival nemesis reports where things stand. A cultivator who never loses to a rival never sees any of this.
• Right-clicking a Wandering Rival now opens a real menu instead of an instant duel: Spar (the original 1v1 challenge, unchanged), up to three purchase offers rolled fresh per encounter (a Barter, a Manual, or a piece of Insight), and Leave.

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Sect Diplomacy: Trade, Alliance, and Rivalry

• Standing between two sects is now a real three-rung ladder. Non-Aggression simply rules out war. Trade adds a discounted Auction House cut between the two sects' members. Alliance - /sect ally propose | accept | decline | break - adds shared land and trust access, plus a tribulation-assist buff: an allied member standing within 32 blocks and online cuts 25% off one lightning strike's damage for you. It is a buff, not a shared or split hit.
• /sect rival declare | withdraw is the opposite gesture - a unilateral feud, no acceptance required, cooldown-gated to walk back. Two sects rivaling each other simultaneously locks out any further escalation between that pair until it is withdrawn.

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Ascension: A Third Ending - Legacy

• /ascend legacy stands beside staying at the summit and /ascend prestige. The reset is the same as prestige - back to Body Refinement, 0 Qi - but you choose who the sacrifice is for. /ascend legacy sect carves it into your current sect's permanent Legacy count. /ascend legacy self banks a Legacy Mote for you to spend later. Nothing about staying at the summit, or resetting for your own permanent bonus, changed.

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The Marrow-Cleansing Rite (洗髓)

• /cultivation cleanse is the first real cure for a Meridian Injury rather than just waiting it out. Pay Qi up front, hold your composure through a scaling drain for the ritual's full duration, and on success your deepest carried injury is cured outright. Break early or fail the hold, and it deepens instead - this is a real risk, not a free undo.

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Beast Familiars

• A fourth spirit beast kind, beside Guardian, Warden and Spirit-Gatherer. A Familiar never fights - it can be stationed instead of made to follow, and while summoned it shares a passive Qi-gain aura with every nearby cultivator, not only its own owner. The first beast kind built to help a crowd rather than one person.

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Ruin Vault Relics

• A Ruin Vault (Treasure and Ruin Exploration, v0.9.1) now always rolls one of three named relics on completion, on top of the manuals, materials and Qi it already handed out: the Wardstone Shard, the Hollowed Token, and the rarer Voidglass Shard.
• Fixed: a Ruin Vault's exit could leave a player stuck inside the instance. Closed.

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Tribulation Storm Omen

• An optional fifth tribulation tier, layered on top of the existing White, Blue, Gold and Crimson bands. Opt in, and if the sky already happens to be running storm weather the moment your breakthrough ritual begins, you draw one harder, better-rewarded bolt at whatever tier you're actually at. The roll happens once, at the start - never re-checked or re-rolled mid-ritual.

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Spirit Cooking

• A gentler, parallel track to Alchemy. Four wild ingredients - Dewroot Berry, Ember Cap, Moonpetal Greens, Wild Yam - scatter periodically near players and can be gathered by hand. Place a personal Spirit Hearth and cook one of four dishes with them; unlike a pill, a dish never fails or botches, and its grade only ever affects how long the buff lasts.

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The Cultivator's Exchange

• A new themed market page showing a live price guide sourced from recent real Auction House sales, so you know roughly what something is worth before you list it or buy it. Purely a reference - it never moves an item or a Spirit Stone itself.

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And the smaller things

• Every one of the mod's 34 technique manuals now uses a real, hand-made 3D book model and texture with Cultivation's own branding, instead of reusing the generic Essence item they shared before.
• A new Meditation Aura dropdown in Settings lets you pick a personal particle look for your meditation ticks, breakthroughs and advancements - independent of your UI theme. The base mod ships the registry and the original look; add-ons can contribute more.
• The Identity page gained a third tab: a Gallery of every cosmetic title you have ever earned, locked ones shown dimmed, your current one marked.
• The Common Forging Material moved from the Workbench's Crafting tab to Tools, and Talisman Paper and the eight ritual/formation flags moved from Crafting to Tinkering - a straight organizational cleanup, no recipe changed.

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Fixes

• 22 items - formation flags, forging materials, and ritual blocks - shipped with no bench requirement at all and could not be crafted anywhere. Fixed with the correct vanilla bench categories.
• On a fresh server, the Grand Tournament manager could read a Universe resource before the engine finished loading, crashing the mod's own setup outright and taking every installed add-on down with it. Fixed by deferring that read to the manager's own tick instead of running it at boot.
• The Wandering Rival Cultivator's new offer menu left its own interaction state machine invalid, which could silently fail the challenge flow for some players. Fixed and confirmed against a real server boot.
• The Auction House could report "insufficient funds" on a purchase you could actually afford, when your Spirit Stones were split between your hotbar and your storage. Charging and granting now pool both instead of checking them separately.
• Closed a Qi-duration exploit in the alchemy and talisman rituals where a crafted NaN value could bypass the clamp meant to cap a botch's duration.

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A cultivator is not only what they have broken through. They are also what they have practiced. Feedback welcome!

Want to see all of this running on a live server? Nine Heavens is the official Cultivation server - play.xianxia.dev:9120.

Cultivation is free and always will be. Add-ons like Cultivation: Jade Slip and Cultivation: Sacred Bodies are what pay for the free half - they live in the Treasure Pavilion at https://xianxia.dev/store, and supporters can also find them at https://patreon.mermaids.dev/. Guides, the full API reference and the wiki are at https://xianxia.dev/.