Tribulations

The heavens do not let you ascend quietly. A realm breakthrough calls down tribulation lightning on the cultivator sitting through it - and a cultivator whose soul has leaned too far into darkness or light faces something worse instead.

Tribulation is on by default (Tribulation-Enabled) and is lethal by default (Tribulation-Lethal). A breakthrough can kill you.

Tribulation Lightning

Variable Name:	Default Value:	Description:
`Tribulation-Strike-Interval-Seconds`	6	Seconds of ritual progress between bolts.
`Tribulation-Damage-Percent-Of-Max-Health`	15	Damage per bolt, as a percentage of your max health.
`Tribulation-Damage-Realm-Multiplier`	1.12	Multiplied per realm reached.
`Tribulation-Lethal`	true	When false, a bolt always leaves at least a sliver of health instead of killing.

Bolts land on ritual progress, not wall-clock time - a ritual paused because the chunk’s Spirit Vein ran below the minimum is never struck. A 24-second first breakthrough at the defaults draws four bolts; a longer, higher-realm one draws proportionally more.

The damage is queued through the ordinary damage pipeline, so everything you have defends against it: Life-Bound armor, the skill tree’s Damage Reduction, Iron Body, a Qi Barrier, a Warden beast.

Surviving a bolt pays. Each strike you live through rolls for a cultivation manual (Manual-Tribulation-Drop-Chance, 4%) and for a Spirit Stone, and burns off some of your karma. Survival is judged on the following meditation tick, once the damage has fully resolved, so the survivor is simply the one still standing.

The Advancement Variant

Sub-stage advancements can call lightning too, but the feature is off by default:

Variable Name:	Default Value:	Description:
`Advancement-Tribulation-Enabled`	false	Turn on to make sub-stage advancements dangerous as well.
`Advancement-Tribulation-Damage-Percent-Of-Max-Health`	6	Damage per bolt, a fraction of the breakthrough figure.

The interval, realm scaling and lethality rule are shared with breakthroughs - only the damage percentage differs.

Karma Makes It Worse

A cultivator carrying karma faces deeper bolts and more of them, both scaled linearly by how heavy the ledger is. The extra bolts are packed into the same ritual duration by compressing the interval between them, so a karma-laden breakthrough is not longer, just far busier.

The Tribulation Ward Pill

A banked charge from a Tribulation Ward Pill fully negates one bolt’s damage. The bolt still falls - the light and the thunder are unchanged - it simply does not touch you. Up to three charges can be held at once, and they persist until spent.

The Heart-Devil Trial (心魔劫)

A cultivator whose stronger Yin or Yang lean fraction reaches HeartDevil-Lean-Threshold (0.5) does not face lightning at all. The heavens send an inner demon instead. It is enabled by default (HeartDevil-Enabled), and applies to breakthroughs only unless HeartDevil-On-Advancement is turned on.

flowchart TD;
    Start["Breakthrough ritual begins"];
    Start --> Check{"Yin/Yang lean<br/>at or past 0.5?"};
    Check -->|"No"| Bolt["Tribulation lightning<br/>15% max health per bolt"];
    Check -->|"Yes"| Devil["Heart-Devil Trial<br/>composure drains per pulse"];
    Devil --> Broke{"Composure<br/>reaches zero?"};
    Broke -->|"No"| Done["Ritual completes"];
    Broke -->|"Yes"| Deviation["Qi Deviation<br/>ritual fails"];
    Bolt --> Done;

    click Bolt "/cultivation/dao/" "View The Dao page";
    click Deviation "/cultivation/alchemy/" "View the Alchemy page";

Instead of health, the trial attacks your composure (道心) - a pool armed fresh at the start of each attempt and shown on the HUD while the trial runs.

Variable Name:	Default Value:	Description:
`HeartDevil-Lean-Threshold`	0.5	The lean fraction at which lightning is replaced by the trial.
`HeartDevil-Max-Composure`	100	The per-attempt pool.
`HeartDevil-Composure-Drain-Per-Pulse`	34	Drained per pulse, scaled by `0.5 + leanFraction`.
`HeartDevil-Debuff-Effect`	Stun	The entity effect applied on each pulse.
`HeartDevil-Debuff-Duration-Seconds`	1.5	How long that effect lasts.

Pulses arrive on the same interval as lightning would. The drain scales with how far you have leaned, so a cultivator right at the threshold loses about 34 composure per pulse while one at a total lean loses about 51 - the deeper the soul is stained, the fewer pulses it can bear. The composure pool is per-attempt, so a failed ritual does not carry damage into the next one.

Qi Deviation (走火入魔)

If composure reaches zero, the ritual fails and you suffer Qi Deviation, announced with an on-screen title.

Variable Name:	Default Value:	Description:
`HeartDevil-Deviation-Demotes`	true	You drop a sub-stage.
`HeartDevil-Deviation-Qi-Loss-Percent`	100	Used instead when demotion is off - the percentage of banked Qi lost.

Either way, the ritual ends. At the defaults a broken cultivator is demoted a stage, exactly as if they had walked away from the ritual.

The Clear-Mind Pill

A banked charge from a Clear-Mind Pill holds your composure through one pulse: the inner demon still manifests, but that pulse drains nothing. Up to three charges, persisting until used. It is the only ward that helps here - a Tribulation Ward Pill wards lightning, and a leaned cultivator never faces lightning.

Surviving One

The obvious answers are the right ones: bank a ward, shorten the ritual with a Clarity Pill or Ritual Speed nodes so fewer pulses land, stack incoming-damage reduction, and settle your karma before you sit down. Pulling your Yin-Yang balance back toward the middle takes you off the Heart-Devil track entirely - see The Dao.

Weapon refinement runs its own tribulation on the same interval, at a gentler 10% of max health, and it is still lethal if Tribulation-Lethal is on.

Every value on this page lives in the breakthrough config, alongside the ritual durations - see Config - and the related commands are on the Commands page.