Intro and some Terminology
Hi, welcome to my guide for Tale of the Immortal. This is a guide I wrote partially for myself and I figured I might as well share it with others. I apologize that this guide is a disorganized mess, this is my first time writing something to share with other people. I’ve tried to make it easy to navigate at least by using the section headers. In case I need to define some terms I use, I’ll put a section here explaining those.
Path - Just a fancy name for a build. I’m taking the terminology from Cradle

For your first character, it’s my opinion you should go with whatever appearance you think is cool, and don’t stress the destinies. It’s fine to spend a couple minutes rerolling, but rolling for a ‘perfect roll’ is a waste of time even on Chaos and complete overkill for the lower difficulties. Be aware there are some stats you can get during character creation which are not easily (or impossible) to increase during the game. Specifically Luck and Insight. Agility and Travel Speed are more difficult to increase but would form the next ‘tier’ of preferable destiny stats. In what is a very poor decision I hope they get rid of later, your appearance choices do have an actual mechanical effect on Charisma - That is, there is from a gameplay perspective an optimal mechanical choice to what you look like. The spreadsheet that display these values can be found here[docs.google.com]. If you roll the Destiny Stunning Beauty, your Charisma is locked to 900 and you can look like whatever you want with no downside. Charisma DOES make your life easier - As a high Charisma character, other cultivators will seek you out for debates, sparring, and dual cultivation, which saves a lot of time wandering around looking for chi, or hunting down cultivators of your own to develop your Mind skill points (when they debate/spar/dual cultivate with you, it eats up none of your time). This can get pretty irritating however, particularly if you’re just trying to learn and skill up some new techniques as 20 people who want to be your friend and/or lover show up every month to talk to you. But these same people will also be very likely to give the person they’ve said “Seeing one’s Lord is pleasant as a spring breeze” to one time a thousand G3 Skill Materials of their current realm with no hesitation so it tends to work out.
ATK, DEF and all other stats are easy enough to increase later. Somewhat counter intuitively, it may actually be a good idea to pick at least one Destiny that increases these on higher difficulties, as the Jagu can be rough on Chaos as you have very few options for increasing your power prior to beating her. Your highest root stat (Spiritual/Martial) will determine your initial technique, but this has absolutely no mechanical difference. The Aether <element> techniques universally suck and will be replaced 5 minutes into the game.
Righteousness/Demonic largely doesn’t matter - If you want to swap sides you can unless you are very deep in one or hte other, and it largely doesn’t affect anything.

For each of these, it’s important to note that your starting destinies should focus on things that can’t be raised later rather than the stats like +ATK, or + to a particular root. In my personal order of priority - Luck, Insight, Travel Speed, and Agility. Generally I try and get The Chosen One destiny because it’s fantastic and at least one other solid destiny. That being said, I don’t consider it worth the time to reroll for hours looking for that perfect outcome. If you care that much, download a save editor.

Path of Seven Thunders - Lightning/Wind
This was the first build I played through the game with. Early on, it sucks. Until you get to Origin Soul or so and get access to the Purple Lightning skill for main cast, it’s awkward to control. Since it is easy to change elements in the first area, starting off with Sword or Blade might be a better idea, and then transition to Lightning after you breakthrough to Qi Condensation. The Lightning Whip is an acceptable alternative if you want to stick with Lightning all the way through, but Voltshot is absolute garbage.
The Wind element is just for movement, but I did have an easier time using Wind element skills through Foundation. I would recommend the Chasing Lightning technique until Thundercloud and Dark Lightning are available. Like most builds, the free cast-ultimate destiny is a must have for this build. In my playthrough I wound up picking up all 3 ranks of the lifesteal destiny. This works well with the Lightning Retribution ultimate - You can stand ontop of your target, turn invincible with wind movement, and watch your lightning cloud/dark lightning and lightning retribution melt into them (while your HP shoots back up).
Look for effects to increase the number and frequency of lightning strikes, the damage of those strikes, and number of enemies that can be affected (especially if you’re using the array ultimate instead of the Retribution one).

Path of the Slicing Wind - Sword/Wind
Slicing Wind is a popular meta build because it is good for fighting at long distances, giving you plenty of time to react to bosses. It’s not the best for wave clear (especially if you are having trouble rolling a Breeze Sword with the Piercing attribute), but it is great for boss fighting. For this build, I use Breeze Sword as my Martial technique and Shadowless sword for my Special. The Divinity Sword ultimate is strongly preferred over Skyfall sword but you’ll have to make do with Skyfall until you get to Qi Condensation. Wind is used for movement - the Invincibility is just too good, and the ability to draw in enemies and temporarily cripple their Agility can work well with Divine Phantom to make sure they stay in the line of fire. As you progress, you want to pick up Mind skills which extend the duration of your movement skills. Around the third area, you may begin finding skills that can boost this significantly. Once you have more than 10 seconds on your move skill, you look for a Shadowless Sword with “For each stack of bleed detonated, reduce Movement CD by x”. While the CD on your move does not start ticking down until it ends, this affix can lower the CD before the skill ends. Even early on, this can quickly get you to a point where you are only vulnerable for a few seconds at a time. I believe you can get this down to 0 with the right combination of CD reduction and higher realm movement techniques which have a lower base CD. The primary limitation you will run into is Energy - Make sure to get a Energy skill with the “Below 20% energy, regenerate x per second” to solve this.
Destiny’s to look for: Martial instant ultimate, for obvious reasons. Particularly if you get this early when you haven’t really committed to a build yet, it allows you to transition to Blades if need or preference be. Martial Expertise 1-3 again for obvious reasons.


Path of the Closed Fist
The Shield detonation build[tale-of-immortal.fandom.com]. The linked guide refers to the breakthrough as Valkyrie, but it’s called Warlord’s Phantom in the current build of the game as of Oct 9 2021.

Beyond the build specific, there are a few technique modifiers I’ve found generally useful. Their criticality is dependent on your build and your difficulty settings, but they do make me more inclined to take the technique. If a modifier can appear on multiple techniques, I’ll try and mention it assuming it’s useful to each technique.
Mind Skills
Move - ATK - Few special ones here. There are a decent chunk of useless affixes for this stat for most builds. Try and aim for raw stats or build specific
Technique - DEF - Like the ATK stat, many of the affixes are useless for many builds. A common affix is one where a particular element generates a field effect, such as a Whirlwind or a Fiery Flame, and standing in it gives you some bonus. Even if the effect is a type you generate, this is generally useless as taking less damage when you get hit is not as good as moving out of the way of the hit.
Secret - Spiritual RES - For sword arts, the most useful ones I’ve seen have been ones that trigger off stacks of Bleed or Sword Slash, once you have a high enough cap on the amount you can inflict.
Divine Power - Martial RES - Unlike it’s spiritual cousin, Martial resistance can have some VERY handy affixes. Abilities that have scaling increase (For every X your Y will increase by Z) can be useful far past their advancement realm.
Mastery - CRIT - For the Slicing Wind and Seven Thunders build, Crit is key not to your damage, but your survivability. You're looking for Duration of Motion Skills primarily, and any other "If Legendary or Mythic x Skill is equipped" bonuses.
Sutra - HP - As you might expect, the most useful affixes here are survivability ones. As is the case with the Energy skill up next, there are affixes which will restore vitality when low. Unlike the Energy one, this will not single handedly keep you vitality up almost by itself. It will however, be extremely helpful in not getting worn down, either on extended farming runs through the border zones or just in a prolonged fight. It won’t save you if you eat a full combo from a boss, but it will help you not die to impossible to dodge mechanics like Hatuibwari’s lightning DoT. For builds relying on Wind movement, the "regenerate x health during Movement skill" are probably better than the "below 25%" regen as they kick in earlier, and by Nascent Soul you should be nearly continually in that form.
Guide - Energy - The most useful affix by far is the regenerate energy when under 20%. The second most useful would probably be the “if there is an elite monster on the field, regenerate energy” as between the two, you practically can’t run out of energy during farming runs period, and the first alone should keep you operational in boss fights.

Sword Techniques
Breeze Sword - The most useful ones are reduced CD and piercing (especially at lower realms where Sword’s lack of good AOE is the most painful).
Shadowless Sword - Sword Auras released by Shadowless Sword is basically just a straight + damage (or more targets). For every Stack of Bleed Detonated, reduce CD of Movements is the key to the entire Slicing Wind build. The Agility increase after cast is useful until you reach the near-permanent Wind state, you can time your Special with enemy attacks to get that extra burst of speed to get clear.
Divinity Sword - I’m rarely overwhelmed with choices on Ultimate skills, but I try and look for either direct damage increases on this skill, Agility reduction on targets (to reduce their ability to move out of it - Less necessary later when you can just trap them in your Tornado), or CD reductions of other skills for extra DPS for a short time. Unlike Skyfall Sword, the duration of this skill is fixed, so you can’t try and use it for a massive buff and incidental damage.

Wind
Tornado - The Wind Motion skill that basically is the only Wind technique people care about. You are looking for CD reduction, at least 2 +Agility bonuses, and Duration bonuses. +damage is nice when the technique is at your current realm, but falls off noticeably when facing opponents of later realms.

For reference, I’ll refer to Soul Stone/Crystals/Jade as ‘Skill Materials’; Comprehension Sand and similar materials as ‘Comprehension Materials’.

Artisan Skillbooks - If you want to raise your various crafting skills, the only way to do so currently is to slay the various bosses which will spawn periodically. In Region 1, the will drop a book worth 5 points, in region 2, 10 points, region 3, 15 points, region 4, 20 points.
Blood Puppet - Feng Shui (Geomancy)
Treasure Mask - Forging (Artifact Crafting)
Crystal Golem - Ore (Mining)
Mushroom Man - Herb (Herb Gathering)
Qi Deviated Alchemist - Alchemy
??? - Talismans (In the current build, there is no way to raise or use this skill).

Skill Materials - G3 drop from the normal mobs of any region. G2 from elite mobs, and G1 from Mythic beasts. Lower grade can be combined into higher grade but this can get exorbitantly expensive in terms of how much you need (5 to 1 ratio, so 1 grade 1 stone takes 25 grade 3). If you have good Charisma, make a habit of regular looking through local cultivators and asking them for their stacks of skill materials, they’ll usually part with them. The Qi Deviated Cultivators from the Sect missions also always drop manuals (usually blue-purple quality) and 20-30 G1 skill material.

Comprehension Materials -
G5 Sand - Monsters in the elemental lands of Region 1
G4 Sand - Monsters in Lei Ze
G3 Sand - Monsters in the elemental lands of Region 2
G2 Sand - Monsters in Thousand Hills
G1 Sand - Land of Origin/Beginning in Region 3.
G5 Glass - Monsters in Everfrost
G4 Glass - Tao Dungeons

Artifact and Artifact Spirit materials
If you see something with Impurity in the tooltip, it’s related to artifacts somehow. Generally, I got plenty of artifact material farming my Artifact spirits to realm 5, but you can also get them by mining the Ore spots around the map if you keep up with Crystal golem spawns. That said, it is very easy to fall behind the curve on Ore, as unlike Alchemy/Herb you don’t actually need it for anything story or advancement critical. More important to making high quality artifacts is the Special Materials. These drop from Mythic Beasts in different regions.
Green Quality Ore Artifact Material - Region 2 mining, Crystal Golems, and Spirit Valley
Blue Quality Ore Artifact Material - Region 3, Crystal Golems, and Spirit Valley
Purple Quality Ore Artifact Material - Region 4, Crystal Golems, and Spirit Valley
Silicon - Horn of Desolation - Elemental Lands in Hua Feng
Levitrium - Lightning Smasher - Elemental Lands in Hua Feng
Cathodian - Imperial Sword - Elemental Lands in Hua Feng
Thermite - Cerulean Bell - Elemental Lands in Hua Feng
Crystallinum - Bloodwoven Mask - Land of Beginning/Origin in Yun Mo
Lusterian - Solar Banner - Land of Beginning/Origin in Yun Mo, Heavenly Guardians in Everfrost.

In this section I will go over the requirements for optimum breakthroughs for each realms. Frankly, through Nascent Soul, this is extremely simple, and I’ll just kind of explain the mechanics. Soul Formation and Enlightenment are more complicated breakthroughs and I intend to dedicate more space to discussing those.

Foundation
The Foundation breakthrough is your first realm advancement. You will need to gather 6 Qi orbs, 1 of each element. In lower difficulties, I general advise just waiting for the bosses to spawn in the various elemental lands and killing them when they show up - You will get a 90%+ purity orb, and a minimal amount of time. On Chaos, I advise the opposite - Farm the elemental lands random monster encounters for 100 of each shard, then combine them. The reasoning here is that you need to Comprehend your skills on Chaos in a way that’s frankly just not necessary in Normal. For this, you will need the Comprehension sand, thus the advice above. Plus, the bosses are of course more difficult on Chaos, meaning they may just not be worth the time and effort. The other part of the Foundation breakthrough is the Land of Spirits - There are 3 Land of Spirits found throughout the first region. Each will require 500 spirit stones to enter, and will consist of a series of rooms culminating in a battle with a Mythic Beast. Each Land will drop a treasure (the same treasure every time, you can’t just farm the same one three times). The 6 orbs and the 3 treasures will allow you to make a Foundation - Heaven breakthrough. The purity of the Essences affects the success chance, but save scumming or just surviving the lightning tribulation will allow you to proceed regardless. You do not need the Foundation Elixir at all unless you are doing a mortal breakthrough, which is garbage.

Qi Condensation
Breakthrough to the third realm again requires treasures. This time, 3 of the 4 will come from the Land of the Arcane. 2 Lands of the Arcane are found in the first region, but the third will be found in the Lei Ze border region. You can take the Psychic Charms with you to help locate it. I’ve seen it spawn at both ends of the region - either just inside the border with Yong Ning or just inside the border with Hua Fe, so it can really be anywhere in the space. The 4th treasure comes from the World boss, Hellish Danking, who should appear shortly after you breakthrough to Foundation. He’s just like the Danking you fought in the Land of Spirits, but stronger. Once you have all 4 treasures, you’re not quite done. You will need to gather the materials for a Qi Refining Elixir. These drop from the mobs in Lei Ze. On Chaos, you’ll probably be farming them for Comprehension Sand anyway, but this can be an annoying side grind on lower difficulties where comprehending skills this early is largely a waste. 50 Silk Grass and 50 Yams are required to make the elixir. This is where the requirement to keep up your alchemy first comes in - It may theoretically be that another cultivator will put one of these pills up for auction at some point, but I’ve never seen one.

Golden Core
Oh boy, you’re almost ready to be a real cultivator now. Golden Core is much like Foundation - You will need 6 elemental orbs again, and the same rules apply as applied to that breakthrough. This time, you will need 5 treasures. 4 of them will come from the Spiritlock Circles. The Spiritlock circle is a single room with a non-combatant turtle. The turtle will ask for 3 G4 spirit fruits. When provided, he will ‘search for treasure’, which means he pulls into his shell and monsters start spawning. You need to keep him alive for about 2 minutes to win the encounter. AoE abilities are preferred here - I had some trouble with my Slicing Wind build until I went and grabbed a Moonshadow Sword and a Thundercloud technique (because my sect was Sword/Lightning and that’s what they had at the time) to help keep the mobs off the turtle. Generally, however, these encounters are not very hard as long as you have anything that can hit multiple targets. The last treasure you need will come from the Hatuibwari world boss who will appear in Lei Ze after you break through to Qi Condensation.

Origin Spirit
More of the same - This time you need treasures from the Demonlock Circles found in the Thousand Hills region, and those turtles want 4 of the fruits. The world boss is a Coeurl this time, but he’s quite easy compared to Leviathan, who you are intended to defeat before this breakthrough. That said… on Chaos I found it easier to save scum my way across the East Sea to fight the Coeurl and then walk up to a town in Yun Mo so I could teleport back if needed; then farm the Demonlock circles to breakthrough to Origin and then fight Leviathan, as his damage on Chaos is very high while also having a huge amount of HP for the realm.

Nascent Soul
Nascent Soul is probably my least favorite breakthrough in the entire game. Once again, we need a set of treasures, 6 this time. 1 will come from a world boss, as you should expect by now, and the other 5 come from maps. Maps are obtained by going to the Land of Beyond, and killing the Array there, which is pretty much a straight DPS race - the array deals a % of your HP that seems unaffected by defenses, so a lower vitality may actually be helpful to you here if you’re having trouble, as it will hit for less per tick. Lifesteal makes these encounters trivial. Otherwise, on Chaos, bring some decent healing elixirs and consider some of the ATK boosting pills, especially if your single target damage is not that high.Once you have the map, you must infuse it with 5000 spirit stones, and it will reveal a location to you. Go to that location and use Geomancy to reveal the lair of a Nine Tails. Here’s where things get frustrating - The Nine Tails can drop any of 11 treasures, only 5 of which are the ones you actually want. There is no duplication protection, and no way to guarantee which will drop - map quality may or may not actually matter for this. Further, the Northern Yun Mo map may actually spawn in Everfrost, which you are absolutely not ready to go into until after your breakthrough, which can be a further nuisance. My advice is that you should save before entering the Nine Tails cave, and if she drops one of the 5 Legendary treasures you need, great, continue. If not, reload. While I don’t generally like to advise exploiting meta mechanics, I think on average it takes between 15-30 kills to get the treasures you need, and the Nine Tails and the arrays over and over are just not that fun. Maybe just do it without reloading once on your Normal playthrough, then save scum the drop after that.

Soul Formation
The first change in the pattern. To breakthrough, you theoretically need 6 things, but it’s a bit more complicated than that. First is the 5 souls of the heavenly guardians, and second is the Breath of Soul Formation. You cannot obtain the Breath without obtaining all 5 Souls, so let’s discuss that part first.
In Everfrost, there are 5 locations, each guarded by a priest. First, you must defeat the priest, each of who will utilize the element primarily associated with their Heavenly Guardian. On lower difficulties, this tends to be a smackdown from you, and even on Chaos, they are not particularly challenging, though like most Chaos bosses, quite capable of ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ your day up if you mess around. Afterwords, each will provide you with something you must do prior to facing the Heavenly Guardian.
Jialong (Lightning Dragon - Panglong Mountain) - I hope you liked fighting bosses, because to face Jiaolong, you will need to defeat the local world boss Leonid. A Mythic item he drops will be necessary to get permission to face Jiaolong. This permission lasts 1 year once granted.
Gouchen (Red Dragon - Secluded Valley) - You will need to obtain the Soul Reforming pill. Grade is irrelevant. Materials are gathered from mobs around Everfrost.
Xuangui (Earth Turtle - Rocky Valley) - Oh boy, more maps. You must get 3 maps from the Land of No Return, and then kill the bosses from these maps. Fortunately, here, you don’t care as long as you get 3 (duplicates are fine). There’s no reason to farm the Legendary treasures specifically, though they can be sold on the Auction House.
Luwu (White Tiger - Moonfall Mountains) - You will get a direct path to another boss to fight for an artifact. This will contain 2 bosses, a Coeurl and a Harpy.
Chongming (Bird - Exorcism Peak) - You must retrieve the artifact stolen using Geomancy, but it is basically a map just like the ones you’ve been used to. The encounter will be a survival one where you are swarmed by mobs. Hilariously easy even on Chaos
Note that you can get permission for, and defeat each Guardian independent of the others, and it may be helpful to do so, as each Guardian Soul provides a noticeable buff. Specifics on the Guardian fights will be in the boss section. Next we head to the Stairway to Heaven. You will climb a set of stairs which I believe will always reduce your HP to 1 by the time you reach the top - You can heal to full hp and energy after you’ve climbed the whole staircase. If you’ve been carting around a whole bunch of low grade elixirs, this is a perfect time to use them.
The Stairway encounter is a series of rooms - Theoretically you only have to do about half of them, but you’ll want to do them all. Each room drops 3 Soul Fragments, which you will choose one of. On lower difficulties, I’d just go with the best ATK, but on Chaos you may not want to ignore DEF. I’ve never had a problem with Focus and rarely with Energy, so I wouldn’t worry about those. At the end, you will have to defeat the Heavenly Gatekeeper, after which you get a Breath of Soul Formation with a stat set based on what you earned.
Once you get into the breakthrough, you’ll notice things are a bit different from before - You will consume the Breath of Soul Formation, and then you must choose 4 of the Guardian Souls to consume. The unconsumed one will provide a buff to stats, and a special skill. Current meta is to keep either Xuangui or Jialong (the turtle or the storm dragon).

On lower difficulties, artifacts are just not worth the time. You can overwhelm bosses with straight firepower in the first 2 difficulties, so unless you just feel like it, don’t worry about them.
So What are Artifacts?
Artifacts are relics made from a boss drop and several supplementary materials. They are predefined, in that the Horn of Desolation will always summon boars, the Bell will always create a boundary field, etc. They do, however, have a lot of variation beyond that primary power. Like technique comprehension, artifacts can have various modifiers which can be rerolled with Tempering Resin of the appropriate grade. Unlike techniques, the reroll is all or nothing. You can also upgrade an artifact to a higher realm - This is basically mandatory if you want to keep using it. The other, and frankly, more useful part of artifacts, is Artifact Spirits.

Okay, so what are Artifact Spirits?
Artifact Spirits are spirits that come with a variety of abilities, which you can power up. They are bound to a particular artifact and provide benefits to you while the artifact is equipped. They also each have a Life Skill, which is basically a non-combat skill which can provide a variety of low key benefits on a CD. They also have their own Ultimate ability which typically requires them to perform their attacks and fulfill some kind of condition. There is a breakthrough Destiny which allows them to instantly ult on summon and it RADICALLY improves the usefulness of Artifact Spirits and Artifacts.

How do I get Artifact Spirits?
Artifact Spirits are gained in the Spirit Valley. Starting in region 2, you there will be 2 Spirit Valley’s in each region. I don’t think it makes a difference which you go to. Entry requires an Ultima Sand, purchasable in every town, and 5 days of time. Each time you go in, you will be in the center of 3x3 grid of rooms. There is an array on the ground where you come in - This can be used to buff/summon a boss. Each room will be filled with weak mobs and 1 elite mobs. Purple fire and explosions will pop periodically around various rooms - These deal defense ignoring % based damage, so don’t ignore them.
Kill everything in every room - You are looking for Soul Lures. The more you have, the better your chances of getting useful spirits when you turn the Lures into the big purple crystal (DON’T click the crystal prior to clearing the map, or you’ve wasted your trip). You will get between 1 and 7 (that’s the most I’ve gotten) Artifact Spirits, and some amount of artifact materials - Heavenly and Earthly Materials, used to upgrade or repair artifacts respectively. There are basically 2 spirits in each region you actually want. However, just finding them once isn’t the whole deal - we’re gacha gamers now boys. The first time you get a spirit they will be Spirit Realm 1 - You will need to find 2 more copies to reach Spirit Realm 2. 3 more to get to Realm 3, and so on. The more powerful talents and abilities for each spirit are locked to their higher Spirit Realm. If you have found a Remnant of Artifact Spirit, you can gift it to an Artifact Spirit and it will boost their realm level. I have not yet tested if it is a fixed +1 realm (meaning best saved for realms 4 and 5) or if it just counts as a flat number of copies found. Once you have maxed the spirits realm level, any additional copies will give you a Nether Breath. These are used at the altar at the entrance of the valley to buff and summon a boss (drops the material required to make the Imperial Sword).
Even if you don’t intend to heavily buff the boss, summoning him can be profitable, as he will also drop soul crystals when summoned at the entry and killed.
Some encounters of note in the Valley: If you find a purple pool, it’s a double or nothing gamble. Generally, I only attempt it on a run where I’ve found less than 10 lures after a full clear, as I’m gambling averse. But you could theoretically get 50-60 lures if you got lucky on a good run. If your cultivator has high luck, I presume that improves your odds.
There are 2 things which can be a danger to you regardless of your cultivation level - As mentioned, the purple fire/explosions deal % health, so these can wear you down over time if you’re farming for spirits repeatedly (or if you’re just really careless); and the other is your Inner Demon. In each room there is a random chance for the dark energy of the Valley to cause your Inner Demon to go berserk. This is basically a mirror fight vs yourself. Now, depending on your build, this may be more or less challenging, but on my Slicing Wind character it was extremely common for me and the spirit to mutual KO eachother.

These things are useless, they don’t die anything but die
Yep. Remember when I said upgrading their realm was basically mandatory? If the artifact isn’t your CURRENT realm, it’s going to die basically on contact with anything. Depending on the specific artifact, sometimes you can get away with lower realm if the enemy might ignore it - Horn of Desolation for example can be dropped in a corner and usually enemies won’t focus it too much. But yes - if you don’t upgrade the artifacts, they’re basically garbage. Which is a problem, because usually the bosses that drop the artifact components are the ones you’re killing for breakthroughs, meaning that artifacts are generally a realm behind you at best, until you start farming the Soul Pagoda.

Making the most of Artifacts
I will restate this again: I don’t think artifacts are worth the time commitment below Nightmare. It took a decent amount of work and investment to get to a point where I was able to make my artifacts actually effective tools in my kit. To upgrade an artifact to a higher realm, you will need an additional copy of the artifact core (boss drop) to create it, materials (what materials are acceptable varies by artifact and can be seen in the Forge menu tooltips), and material from the Soul Pagoda. The Soul Pagoda is a very ominous looking tower that can only be accessed using a drop from the Spirit Valley. If you’re farming Artifact Spirit Realm 5, you’ll pick up plenty. Inside the tower you have 5 boss fights back to back on a timer. The bosses are somewhat escalating difficulty - the 4th boss will often be a boss from late game, where as the early bosses tend to be early-mid game bosses. The farther in you go, the more material drops, as you might expect. The first boss might drop 20, the second 30, the 3rd 40 and so on, netting around 250 per full clear. The first clear of the regions Soul Pagoda will also award a Mythic Mount that will easily hold you through the next region. The other drop from the Pagoda will be gems used to upgrade the talents of your Artifact Spirits from the region. These are region specific - you can’t use them for spirits from a different region.
Artifact Spirits have a stat called Spirit Power. This is a limitation on what Artifacts they can be bound to - The more talents they have unlocked the higher the Spirit Power stat will go. This is another element that forces you to continue to upgrade your artifacts to make use of the higher tier talents.

Horn of Desolation - Pretty much garbage. Maybe if you’re playing a summoning build this could be useful, but I never got anything useful out of it other than throwing it out to distract a boss for a hit.
Lightning Smasher - A minor damage booster. I would consider using it with Lightning based builds, as some of it’s affixes can help you rack up more DPS with lightning specific effects.
Imperial Sword - Sort of a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ Divine Sword that can be killed. I haven’t actually used this, but NPCs using it haven’t impressed.
Cerulean Bell - You will DEFINITELY notice this one. Around the time you get to Qi Condensation, you’ll start running into Golden Core cultivators in spars and sect tournaments who will immediately drop this on you. Depending on the affixes, this may just stun and then trap you, or it may taunt you, seal your skills, radiate damage on you everytime you attack it, etc. Used on a lower realm cultivator, this is basically an IWIN button because they don’t have the damage to break it and the CC is crippling. Against higher level cultivators, it will get smacked apart the moment you spawn it, but on equal level it is still a useful tool. Also, it can be used against bosses defensively as well as offensively. Some boss attacks cannot cross the barrier field, which let’s you drop the bell on yourself and sit there safe from charging opponents.
Bloodwoven Mask - The artifact effect is theoretically useful, but I haven’t tested it’s viability against high damage threat bosses like Jiaolong yet as I’ve been trying to gather the materials to make a Legendary or Mythic grade version in Chaos.
Solar Banner - It drops a fire field that gets bigger as you or opponents use energy. Maybe useful for a fire cultivator, like the Smasher for Lightning? I haven’t tried it. Actually, if you have a Defensive skill with a really strong modifier based on standing in fire this might make that actually good, since you can control exactly where the fire is and make it larger. Have not tested.

Mengyi - Or as she’s sometimes called, Snow Fox Waifu. One of the two good spirits from the 2nd region, Mengyi is a CC powerhouse. Once she has the appropriate talents unlocked, she will unleash spirit foxes that provide a noticeable charm on targets (bosses are not immune). This charm also increases the targets damage taken. Her ultimate is a map wide charm that lasts 10 seconds base. Mengyi has been my go to spirit, partially because I got her to Realm 5 ahead of the other spirit from her region, but also just because her CC is amazingly useful. When bound to an artifact, she grants the cultivator +30 to all Spiritual roots. Her Life skill is a vision of the future, which seems to have a variety of effects ranging from buffs to items.

Evergreen
One of the earliest bosses. On lower difficulties he’s a cake walk - he’ll barely get to attack between summoning up his shield, having you immediately break it and getting stunned, then you pushing him to his next shield. You rarely encounter him at higher realms, but he will occasionally pop up in herb gardens or the like. He only has 2 attacks - A circle wave (usually cast in bunches with slight variation so that there is no fully clear gap in the circle) and a line continual damage stream, also usually cast repeatedly. Dodging the line is easy enough. The circle can be tricky but on lower difficulties he’ll rarely get to cast much because of the afore mentioned stunning. Chaos comments: Evergreen at the lower realms isn’t much more difficult than his lower difficulty version, just with the usual increases in damage. Where I actually found him more frustrating was encountering him in higher realms (Origin and later). At this point he has enough HP relative to your damage that he will actually get to execute his attack patterns. If your defensive stats aren’t high enough, these can actually be fairly dangerous, as on Chaos, he will frequently combine a wave of the circle pellets with the line AOEs, and like most Chaos bosses, these can’t be ignored unless you have a realm advantage.


Blood Puppet
The Blood Puppet is an annoying boss at any difficulty due to his CC abilities. He has 3 attacks, 2 of which are very similar and all of which have CC effects. He’ll usually open by summoning adds like most bosses. The next attack will be a blood array which deals damage inside it’s aoe and makes it hard to move. This will be a double cast on higher difficulties, generally necessitating a movement skill to escape unless fighting a lower realm version. The next move will be a long charge - Juking movement can evade it but if your agility isn’t high enough, getting out of the way is nearly impossible. It hits hard and silences you, preventing you from using items or techniques. And he usually follows it up multiple times (The amount of charges seems to increase with realm). Following this, he does a series of short hopping charges that are much easier to evade but have the same CC effect, then reset to add summoning and repeat. Chaos comments: While the Blood Puppet’s pattern is easy enough, it requires high agility to dodge, and saving your movement to escape the blood array. The blood array does plenty of damage, and worse, you can’t dodge his charge while it’s restricting your movement, meaning you’ll get stunned into a series of hard hitting attacks while taking damage from the array. I don’t advise taking on Blood puppets until you’re able to consistently dodge the charge without a movement skill - Special technique affixes which increase your agility on cast can be very helpful for this.

Crystal Golem
The crystal golem has only 2 attacks - A easily dodged line smash, and a rain of meteors that create quicksand. At lower difficulties, these aren’t much of a threat, and the smash is easy to dodge. Chaos comments: This and the Bloodfire Mask are easily the two most annoying Artisan skill bosses on Chaos. The damage from the meteor rain is very high on Chaos - A few seconds of exposure as an equal realm cultivator is fatal (Unless perhaps you are an Earth cultivator and neutralize it). This can make raising your Ore skill very difficult - I generally had to wait until the second realm of each tier to consistently kill the golem on Chaos.

Bloodfire Mask
The other half of the Artifact artisan skill bosses. Darkfire mask is basically stationary, with a damage aoe field around it. At lower difficulties, this is negligible. He has two attacks. A series of bursting explosions which have two safe zones in a bullseye target pattern (standing just outside his damage aoe field is fairly safe spot), and a stream of damaging shots which can be dodged by side to side movement if you have some distance. Chaos comments: Like the Crystal Golem, the Bloodfire mask is a nightmare to fight at the first realm of each tier. He has extremely high damage and can easily 100-0 your cultivator in one attack if you fail to dodge. If you fight up close, dodging his damage stream is almost impossible without a move skill, and until you have several move CD reduction skills, he will use it more often than your move skill is up. If you fight at long range, the battle can be frustratingly slow, as his bullseye explosion fills nearly the entire screen centered on him, necessitating maximum range - Which may not even be possible with lower realm techniques which have lower ranges. Like the golem, I generally just waited until the second realm of the tier before attempting these fights - it just wasn’t worth the time and effort to raise my artifact crafting skills as you generally need materials you can’t easily farm until the end of the tier to make good artifacts anyway.

Qi Deviated Alchemist
Essentially a high HP random cultivator. They will have a basic, movement, and special skill, which is randomized when the fight starts. The same strategies for cultivators apply to them.

Mushroom Man
A support boss, basically an overgrown Elite monster. He puts down mushrooms which buff (or maybe debuff? It’s hard to tell sometimes) other mobs. His only direct attack is a rapid fire stream of mushrooms. Save your movement skill to dodge this unless your agility is good enough to straight outrun it. Even on lower difficulties, it can be quite damaging to take the brunt of. Chaos comments: Nothing different here - In terms of technical execution the Mushroom Man is laughably easy - Either you have the agility to outrun his mushroom stream, or you don’t, in which case you have you use your movement technique. The main issues are the large amount of HP of bosses on Chaos affords you a lot of time to make a mistake, and that stream HURTS. But in generally, I’d rank the Mushroom Man as possibly the easiest boss in the game.

Goliath Crab
Only encountered in the low realms, the Goliath crab is the water elemental land boss. He has 3 moves - A charge and slash, which he will chain repeatedly, a poison aoe field, and a self heal/buff. Nothing complicated here, just try and avoid the charges via movement skill (unlikely that you’ll have enough agility to fully dodge him in the first realm), stay out of the poison, and keep damage on. Chaos comments: Nothing new here, just the usual less room for error.

Mountain Specter
Earth elemental lands boss, and a world boss version later at Origin. Two attacks - a simple earth cone projectile which you can dodge between, and what I’ll call a rampage mode - Tornados appear all over the field and the specter charges around after you. Dodging this perfectly is tricky, as you must juke his charge while also avoiding the tornados. If you have to, dodge through the tornados to avoid his charge - They hurt less than he does. The main advice I have for dodging during the Tornado+Charge phase is that while the Spectar is fast and seems to be constantly coming after you, he has to move a fixed distance before he can change direction. If you have sufficient Agility, you can sidestep his charge and move behind him. Frequent changes of direction will help you build distance as he’ll charge off in the direction you were in when he started moving, and won’t be able to change more than once a second. CC abilities like Mengyi’s charm are also very helpful in mitigating this phase. Chaos comments: The lower realm version in the elemental lands is reasonably dangerous, but if you’re having trouble with him, he isn’t mandatory for a perfect breakthrough. The world boss version on the other hand, is rough. Since you need to kill him for a perfect Nascent breakthrough, you can’t just come back later (or, rather, you can, but you need to kill him pre-breakthrough at least once). Even if you’re not a wind cultivator, I’d strongly suggest raising your wind root just to reduce the damage you’ll inevitably take from the tornados when you have to run through them to dodge his charge.

Six Tails
The Nine Tails lower realm sibling. The Six Tails generally appears in the fire elemental lands. There are only 2 attacks - A set of 3 orbs which will move in an hourglass criss crossing pattern - You can dodge near the convergence or with enough agility sidestep the attack entirely; and a fire stream - easily dodged with enough agility or save your movement skill for this. The Six Tails is a largely immobile boss, so small persistent damage fields with good DPS are ideal on them. Chaos comments: Probably the easiest elemental lands boss in Chaos.

Danking
Giant pig man and wind elemental lands boss, as well as the first world boss. His 3 attacks are a 3 way split smash which he will usually cast in rapid succession; a set of wind tornados with long range; and a rapid charge which briefly stuns. The 3 way smash is easy to dodge by only moving a little each time - he will adjust to recenter it on you between casts, and you only need to be between the lines. The tornados are usually used when you’re at long range, and it’s pretty easy to dodge between them via the same principle. The real danger of the Danking is the charge. Juke dodging is basically mandatory and it is recommended you fight him at long range to give you more time to react. Chaos comments: Saving your movement, particularly an invincibility frame movement for his charges is recommended. His charge can easily 2 shot you and the stun means it’s very hard to get out of the way of the follow up if you get hit.

Coeurl
Lightning realm boss. Frankly one of the easiest bosses, even in the world boss version at Golden Core. He does have 4 attacks: A 3 way lightning spit. A surprisingly easy to dodge charge which is usually chained, a somewhat slow cast PBAoE, and a also usually chain cast chasing lightning. Save your movement technique for this last - It will not reverse directions so once you’re past it, you’re safe. Chaos comments: The only real danger from the Coeurl is the chasing lightning. If your movement technique is down, you are likely dead. Do not use it for any other move. If you screw up and it is down when he begans casting chasing lightning, your best hope is to try and get behind the lightning.

Harpy
Wind element boss. A expanding circle of rotating tornadoes which you can either outrange or try and move between; waves of tornados; and somewhat oddly, rocks falling from the sky. These rocks stun you. On higher difficulties that can lead to death, but they are fairly easy to evade as his attack pattern is not particularly high pressure.

Liger
The man tiger is a largely stationary boss. You’ll generally start encountering him in the second region, and he’ll be a regular feature in Subduing Monsters missions in the third. Most of his attacks are simple to dodge - A single line ranged attack; a set of spinning axes he’ll throw out and leave; and then his actual dangerous mechanic - a set of different colored small lights that will chase you down relentlessly. I have not determined exactly how he decides which light he uses, though I think it has something to do with the ring of faces/expressions behind him. Green and Red are similar, both doing damage over time to you. The white one immobilizes both you and the boss (not that he cares) for several seconds. This usually gets followed by him throwing a spinning axe ontop of you, which is a fatal combination unless you’re punching down a realm.

Hatuibwari
Lightning element mythic beast, encountered regularly from the 2nd tier onwards and also the second world boss. The bosses primary attack is a series of ball lightning attacks which will stun you if hit, a large cloud on the ground around him that deals damage if you are inside it (it takes up most of the screen), and a unavoidable dot which deals minor damage, but can add up over long fights especially if you have no regeneration techniques or lifesteal. Chaos comments: Long range is strongly recommended - Dodging the ball lightning at close range is much harder, the PBAoE attack is up probably about a 3rd of the fight and can’t be ignored on Chaos like it can on lower difficulties. If you get hit by the first ball in a sequence, the rest will probably kill you as they hit fairly hard.

Nine TailsThe Nine Tails only has 3 attacks - A series of blue orbs, a charm projectile arc attack, and a mass of foxes that will run from left to right. Generally you can dodge the blue orbs just be staying moving. The charm arc can be blocked by terrain, or if you’re far enough away, you can slip in between the projectiles (Though this can be tricky if she’s firing several arcs back to back, or if she has several orbs following a wave - Better to eat the orbs than the charm, as it stuns you for 2 seconds). I usually save my Wind motion technique to get through the fox wave - I don’t think it’s possible to dodge through it without a motion technique of some kind (most any of them other than Sword and Water should be workable). You will probably have to fight this boss a lot - The Nascent Soul breakthrough involves farming maps, which give you a Nine Tails location, who drops a random treasure (with no duplication protection) until you get the ones you need. Chaos comments: Funny enough, this was one of the easiest bosses to fight in Chaos. Her patterns are simple, and as long as you don’t eat a charm, very easy to dodge. Most of the caves you fight them in for the map farming have at least one or two pillars which can block her charm projectiles - If you have to stand behind the pillar and eat a blue orb to avoid a charm, do it.


Panlong Priest
Lightning technique pre-boss for Panlong mountain. Uses a spreading circle lightning, a triple lightning cone, and leaves orbs of lightning on the ground. These last HURT, do not walk on them.

Rocky Valley Priest
The preboss for Xuangui, this priest is an earth element user. He’s honestly pretty easy. His 3 attacks are a short range rock toss, easily dodged, an earth golem summon which I never dodged without a movement technique, and a side to side rolling set of boulders which aren’t that fast and you can probably just move out of the way of. He is fairly durable - It took me longer to kill him than the Leonid world boss despite the Leonid having about 500k HP on him (in Chaos).

Secluded Valley Priest
The preboss for Gouchen. Very easy for Sword and other long range attackers. He throws a slow moving three-wheel of fire; a cascade of raining meteors that leave a burn on the ground that is frankly the most dangerous part of the encounter, a circle of fire foxes that also leave a burn on the ground at their destination, and a fire pinwheel. Fighting up close is dangerous, but at long range, all his attacks are slow moving and easily dodged.

Moonfall Mountain Priest
Surprisingly one of the more dangerous priest bosses. He has a wind cone which hits rapidly, which can hurt you badly if your agility somehow still poor this late in the game (on Chaos, anyway). He also drops 2 rings of rapidly spinning tornados which again, hit rapidly if you don’t immediately move out. He also lays down small whirlwind effects which are easily dodged and has a large point blank tornado.

Exorcism Peak Priest
The water priest is fairly simple, though he does have one move that can be surprising. The priest uses slow moving bubble arcs which are easily evaded, water tornados which are easy to dodge at range, and spawns several clones of himself who will use a continual hitscan water beam. Individually these beams do not hurt much - maybe 220 damage a tick to me on Chaos. However, there are about 8 clones + the priest and if you are in range they will hit - no outrunning this attack. This can be 1800 damage a second and if you’re already in the middle of their formation, you might easily get caught in his water tornados as well. That said, this priest wasn’t that hard as a Sword cultivator. Stay at range so no more than 2 or 3 clones could hit you at a time and giving you plenty of time to get out of the way of his tornados and bubbles. The clones will despawn on their own eventually so you don’t need to clear them out, just the ones in the way of you attacking the priest.

Carpia
Some kind of ice fish lady. You’ll fight at least 3 of her during your Nascent Soul breakthrough in order to obtain the treasures for Xuangui. Her moves are a mass of ice tornados, a chasing spike of ice which will freeze you, almost certainly killing you on Chaos, and a rain of ice which will also freeze you, but unless you get caught right at the end and she follows it with her chasing ice spike, you’ll probably be fine.

Xuangui - The Black Tortoise
The easiest of the 5 Heavenly Guardians. There is a spot of relative safety by his back right leg, shown in this screenshot:

He can still hit you with his tail smash and the rain of rocks, but I found it personally a lot easier to deal with just timing those versus my Wind movement than dodging all the stuff he throws out front. The rain of rocks can wipe you out pretty easily - Most of the damage I took in this fight was from one time I came out of Wind right as a rock dropped and got stunned into taking several more rock hits.

Luwu - The White Tiger
Luwu was the first fight in a while that forced me to actually think more strategically than just “be wind, ignore mechanics”. His charge phase he is untargetable, meaning if your defensive measures rely on you hitting the enemy (say to stack up bleeds and pop them, or shields from fist or lifesteal from blades) this phase is extremely dangerous. I was not able to consistently dodge his charges without Wind movement. His line aoe attack is his least dangerous move, and can be side strafed safely. His chained charges however can be ruinous - I had one crit me for 29k. He also has a point black aoe, where he will leap on an area, then pop an aoe around himself. Mengyi and a Nascent Soul grade Cerulean Bell were actually very key for me here. The bell forces him to attack it, and properly upgraded it can endure several hits. Further, if the tiger is on the outside of the bells field, he can’t actually hit it with his charge. Mengyi’s charm effects add further CC utility.

Gouchen - The Red Dragon
Gouchen takes second place in the surprisingly easy bosses category. If you keep moving, almost nothing he does will connect. He will create fields on the ground that will seal you inside (this can be fatal if you happen to be next to him when that happens), slam the ground around himself, create a chasing line of fire(?), and periodically create large circle AoE that look like chains. As long as you don’t get caught by the sealing formations, just keep circling around him pelting him with attacks and this will be fine.

Tier appropriate means that you will get an item based on which region you’re in. The Border regions seem to count as the next region, IE you will get G2 fruits in Everfrost.

Monkey and the Fruit Tree
Help the Monkey - Fight a single elite flower-lady. Gain spirit stones and artifact material
Protect the Tree - Fight a single elite lightning monkey. The tree will give you a spiritual fruit
Leave - Event ends
Black Cow and the Dates
Spirit Stones - Cow gives you a disgusted look, you still get the stones
Dates - Spiritual Fruit
A lone Spirit Fruit
Harvest the fruit - Fight a single elite lightning monkey. Gain a tier appropriate spirit fruit.
Leave - You leave.
Weird Fish
Capture the fish - Outcome 1: You catch and cook the fish. Restore Mood Outcome 2: Fish bites you - lose vitality
Leave - You leave
Column of Ominous Light
Investigate - Fight a Sword Cultivator. Don’t underestimate his damage, he can hit very hard. Drops Broken Heavenly Sword Stone, a 3 time destiny that buffs your ultimate.
Stay to Observe -
Ominous Omen - Leave
A present for Chickadee
You decide your name is Chickadee - +demonic points, spirit stones
Greed does not control you - +Righteous Points
Haphazard Array
Try to breakthrough - Usually another cultivator attacks you. Beat them and get some spirit stones and some elixirs
Leave - Leave
Weasel and the Fox
Help the Fox - Fox’s blessing (+luck, 6 months)
Help the Weasel - Spirit Stones