What Nicky wrote about Qi Cultivators and Body Refining:
"Body Refiners have to raise 3 (well, even 4 with per/vit) attributes, while qi cultivators only need one (qi power)"
"they (Body Refiners) have 'stars'
their qi cultivation will eventually completely collapse
if they don't use it
well to be more precise
they wouldn't have it in the first place
if they weren't intending to duo-cultivate"
Thats interesting but kinda vague ngl lmao I'm trying to work out how its translated into the game mechanically
Spell power is not set tho for MA's. Advancing increases their spell power, but you're right. MA rely on body refining to innately strengthen themself. Increasing your physical attributes seems to increase the odds of advancing. So 'cultivation' in poma is basically a self destructive mix of regular cultivation and body refining. MA's destroy their body to cultivate their innate qi and subconciously use it all to increase their body stats. This would imply that body refining influences spell power too allbeit in a minimal way. Or maybe its not the case and MA's cultivate their innate qi, strengthen their meridians and refine their body side by side? meaing MA's do both cultivation and body refining in a smaller scale.
Right, I meant set in the sense that it doesn't vary in the same stage. A peak houtian will have like 40 spell power for example. We don't ever get to change our spell power until we become a proper cultivator too.
I think it's been mentioned before that POMA MAs are kind of special in how they handle their body in this thread. They have a stronger body at the same stage than the average off-world cultivator.
But the main thing is that without qi you can't as easily surpass your limits like the MC does with proper body refining.
It's just the natural extension of what's in the game already. Each breakthrough you get a little health and the qi power limit is boosted by 10.
While a sole Body Refiner has to like increase vit a tad to reach the same HP boost, and can't increase Qi power past the initial amount.
It depends tho. Is qi required to strengthen meridians more than qi required to refine body? Are they both same? At what point do you say a body refiner has advanced? Both process requires qi but the qi is used for different aspects. Does that mean cultivating a certain amount of qi means you're ready for advancement? Does advancement grant you the same stat boost for those who do one of spell cultivation and body cultivation or both? does advancing via spell cultivation lead the cultivator to get better spell stats and advancing via body cultivation means the cultivator gets better body stats? Both stats for those who do both body and spell? Or a common stat for both of them? Im getting more and more confused as im typing this lmao.
We don't know for sure. I'm trying to speculate what this all means mechanically, based on what we've already seen.
What we do know about Body Refining is that:
- Body Refinement takes more qi and xp past a certain point (currently past the 60 stat mark, you need like 15k xp to advance 1 in one stat)
- Tang Wei says that you shouldn't walk the path of the body refiner if you don't have the confidence, the manuals and treasures to do so, which would explain the previous barrier
- Tang Wei says (paraphrasing) that you should advance to the last stage of each realm before advancing, or not. I don't remember the exact words he used, but it seems you can advance realms without doing that, and it has some negative effect on your potential.