Basic Formation Guide Amazing Cultivation Simulator Tutorial

[@GerhardLake]

Nice, some remarks: Ruins of Taiyi are unnecessary, the corpse is there from the beginning, so you can get those two manuals on Day 1. Those parts are Nodes. The symbols themselves are auxiliary links. The effect from the pillar (30% increase in Artifact Mastery, a percentage bonus) is only for the auxiliary connections with the Pillar, auxiliary nodes provide a flat bonus. Formation Size and Load are both affected by the pillars Formation skill. Learning Formation manuals with the Pillar cultivator also increases both Size and Load. The formation cooldown is 24H, the buff is added when the formation is disbanded, while they have that buff they can't be in another formation (as pillars or auxiliaries both). An advanced guide on formations is available at the discord for the game, for anyone wanting to go into more depth.

[@Ic0nGaming]

Thanks for pointing out these parts - I really tried to keep this video as basic as possible so that everybody is able to do a simple formation. I put the Link to the detailed guide from the Discord now also in the descriptions, thanks for reminding me!

[@tenks360]

I know this is three years old and you've probably learned a lot more and I'm not even sure if I'm right. But both Formation Size and Formation Load are stats that show up under your cultivators battle stats. So wouldn't it make more sense if this is dependent on your pillars stats, which are likely effected by his formation skill mastery?

[@GerhardLake]

@@tenks360 That's pretty much the point I was making. Near 5:50, the 6/4 and 20/14, the first number is the Diagram attribute, which is mostly influenced by the Nodes themselves. The second number is the Pillar Cultivator attribute, which is a combination of their Formation Skill Level and the manuals they have learned. Or to be precise, they are dependent on your Pillar Cultivator properties. And those two properties are influenced by the Formation Skill Level, and some Manuals that the Pillar Cultivator can learn through the Manual Pavilion. The wiki pages on the properties (as well as the general Formation page) has been updated since this video came out, you can find more information there. The Pillar Cultivator Attributes are not influenced by just having manuals in your manual pavilion, if that was unclear.

[@sg9128]

Thanks to videos like these, and also comments from the community, I've learned more about the game than through the in-game tutorial. I had started playing with formations, but none were ever complete - now I know why, so thank you. Knowing that feng shui principles are also related makes for endless possibilities.

[@Paolini_18]

Funny to see a comment so recent since there're only 20 and all are +2yo lmao

[@Ic0nGaming]

Thanks for your comment! I do actually plan a big scale re-work of these videos. I have learned so much more about the game by now. And I sadly recorded all these with a pretty crappy microphone and I'm therefore not too happy with my production quality there.

[@ddonkules4874]

Hey Icon! Love the guide and just wanted to mention a funny story/ cautionary tale to anyone trying to form a formation. Finish watching the video first!!! Got too excited when I thought I knew it all and made a formation that killed 7 of my inners. It may not sound funny, but for me at the moment it was lololol.

[@bunnyrabi]

Loool same here. One thing I learned is the only time you should put most if not all your cultivators into one formation is when fighting ancient cultivators. But for almost every other fight in game you shouldn't put everyone in one formation, you can have multiple small ones with a big one formation. Or one small one and everyone else fighting individually. The way I view formations is now is like a single tank. But just like in most games you need dps and other support.

[@kevin0117rc]

The basic way to increase formation load is to level up the formation skill until it reaches 20. After that, i think the only way would be to find and read more formation books. iirc, each of those formation skills boost formation load. However there are some key points that are not mentioned in regards to formation. 1) First is that the red hexs on the formation represents a weak point that can be targeted directly. Usually when attacking a formation the qi dmg is spread throughout everyone in the formation. But if there are red hexs, those hexs will take more/isolated qi dmg (which is more relevant when fighting NPC sect formation, idk about enemies targeting your weak point). And when you lose members in your formation, the stability of the formation will drop drastically which leads to more holes or red hexs appearing. And when the formation stability drops past a certain point, the formation will be destroyed. Everyone within that formation will get knocked out and suffer formation tremors. Thus this leads to key point two. 2) It is not wise to mix characters with drastically different qi pools in formation. I.e. primordial spirit pillar with core shapers as support. This is because I "think" the qi dmg is spread out as flat instead of percentage; thus the core shapers with their vastly inferior qi pool might get knocked out fairly easily. This will probably lead to formation collapse and knock out your primordial spirit cultivator, even though s/he might still have a bunch of qi remaining. 3) Sometimes fighting individually is better than fighting in a formation. This is case by case, as sometimes you might get more mileage when fighting individually versus in a mashed up formation. I tested this when facing the flood dragon where I formed a formation versus fighting individually. What i noticed was that the formation might do more dmg, since i had everyone boosting my grand chariot in a similar sword formation that you showed. However their survivability was much worse, as often times the formation crumbles and knocks out everyone. In that fight i was actually relying on my Physical cultivator to tank and deal dmg; the formation was just extra fluff i was testing.

[@wander1027]

Great guide. There is really little coverage about this great game. I especially like how you are really mindfull of not just saying away everything becuase part of the fun is discovering and figuring things out, despite this game having lots of complex mechanics with little to no explanation which kind of forces you to follow a guide.

[@PeterRudesindus]

A suggestion, make a video about Spiritual trees and their uses. If all 5 plants are positioned correctly you can easily give 9x of your cultivators a 1.700% - 2.200% cultivation speed boost (if you add talismans), by having 3 out of 5 plants become cursed while also using 2 blessed plants for GC breakthroughs. The way you set this up is by arranging 4 plants (all but water) in a plus formation surrounded by walls and in such a way that all plants are at max range from each other so they don't curse each other. The easiest way to do this is by starting from the center and counting the distance of 5 tiles (North/East/South/West) which is where you plant them, then make a room of 3x3 surrounding the center (which is the cultivation speed boost room), followed by also making large rooms around each plant for temperature control. After you have done all that you have to counter the elements of each plant with the exception of the steel plant. The counter to fire is water, the counter to wood is metal and so on. The steel plant is the easiest to make blessed and the hardest to make cursed (I would say it's almost impossible) and it is also the only plant you can have in the same room as the Water plant which you can use to have 2x blessed spirit plants for 150 and more Qi gathering boost at a 9 tile distance from each other. Though for the GC set up you will have to drop and ban your phoenix feathers or spirit woods at 4 tiles distance manually as you can't place pedestals on top of the plants. (all of this has to be done on top of spirit soil and water of course, at least if you want it to be usable all year round as fertility drops seasonally) You also can't use the Auto cultivator mod in this set up, as the mental debuff the plants give prevent cultivation with high mentality. You also can't use all 5 plants for the cultivation speed boost without having them curse each other and if they are below the required fertility or temperature the plants don't buff anymore.

[@Ic0nGaming]

I really really need to check out this topic. I haven't played with these yet but it sounds like a really awesome thing to discover!

[@PeterRudesindus]

@@Ic0nGaming "Inner cauldron" is a topic I have found almost nothing about other then that one needs insanely high cultivation speed buffs which is why I came up with this in the first place. Also a heads up, if you try this out, you will need stamina food as your cultivators iwll be able to cultivate forever without rest so long as you regularly feed them stamina. So a medium spirit plant farm for red ginseng or purple lingzhi could help. Another thing I found out about spirit trees is that you can feed them a Fortune Seed to get multiple spirit sand and I am speculating that you can also get other things from this depending on the degree of curse/buff or type of the tree. Haven't tested that yet. Also If you feed a blessed metal plant a holy stone block you almost 100% get spirit tree resin out of it. Corpses feed to the trees gives different soul gems.

[@corpsekin]

thank you for this, I want to start conquering other sects and an understanding of formations is needed because they are all crazy strong

[@rangergreen1935]

6:17 is that a formation or are you happy to see me

[@OneRedKraken]

The only thing I'm confused about. Is that my 2 cultivators both have 0 in Formation skill. Is that normal? I read somewhere that if a character has 0 in some skill it means it can't be leveled up. How do you level up the Formation skill?

[@AsaelTheBeast]

OK so, Formation skills starting at 0 is normal. You need to put inspiration points into it. It's like picking up any other ability- just be mindful that it costs inspiration and gives you attainment.

[@OneRedKraken]

@@AsaelTheBeast God damn, lol. Yeah, I see it now. Jesus. Oh well! Easier than learning EU4 but it's got it's quirks.

[@jvj11]

Somehow i lost???? the books? I know i picked them up but they arent in my pavilons or storage. Anything that can be done when this happens?

[@AsaelTheBeast]

Did any of your guys read the books? If so, they can transcribe them to the pavilion. If not, you better figure out what you did with those books.

[@Ruler_in_Yellow]

In another tutorial of yours you said that the more qi you have the better the breakthough of the golden core, so can the formations be used to have a higher quality core?

[@Ic0nGaming]

No, Golden Core breakthrough only measures the power of the cultivator doing it. Also I think it's not possible to breakthrough during a Formation is activated

[@tamarsh6614]

HOW TO UNLOCK FORMATION?

[@Ic0nGaming]

Mt. Coppertomb has those books on a dead guy. Pick them up, put them into the sect's book storage and you should be able to use the Formation menu then

[@rushi5638]

To add to what Ic0n said, there's a secret you get after exploring the Taiyi Ruins about a dude with long arms (?) who was obsessed with shapeshifting. It directs you to Mt. Coppertomb or whatever, and you have to adventure there/camp and enter. Explore the caves, find the guy's body (rest in piece, fellow Taiyi bro), and loot the books which teach you about formations.