I have created this guide because I couldn't find one in English on the steam guides page, and both the wiki and basic steam guides leave a lot of information about physical cultivation out. I can't promise you that all information about physical cultivation will be in this guide, but I will do my best to outline in detail the processes behind it in ACS.

If this guide is missing any information, please leave a comment and I will try to explore that part of physical cultivation and add the resulting information here. Thank you for reading my guide and I hope it helps you understand physical cultivation better.

Physical cultivators have a few distinct traits that make them different from Shendao and Xiandao cultivators. I will list these here so that the rest of this guide and the strategies within have context:

1. Physical cultivators suck the essence out of pills, bypassing their effects. If you are going to use pills on a physical cultivator, use them before you promote them. Especially consider this if you want to use life-extending pills or stat-increasing pills on your cultivators.

2. Physical cultivators use no weapons, artifacts, or talismans. They can't even pick up artifacts or talismans, so don't expect to make use of these with your physical cultivator. While they can pick up weapons, they will drop them at the first sign of combat.

3. Physical cultivators will destroy clothes they are wearing. If you plan to have physical cultivators, keep in mind that you may need to create cheap, replaceable clothes for them to wear, or find a way to overcome the debuff they get from being naked. Don't put them in expensive outfits, or you won't have expensive outfits for very long.

3. Physical cultivators are terrible at finding rare resources. Due to their lack of element, they will have an exceptionally hard time finding anything that relies on elemental synergy. They will also be quickly outpaced by Xiandao cultivator's quickness on the adventure map, so while they can be sent out to gather, they are best used as guards.

4. Physical cultivators with rare or min-maxed builds will consume far more rare resources than a Xiandao. This is made up for by the fact that a cheap and easy physical cultivator can be as strong as a mid to high tier Xiandao cultivator. The ones with the insanely expensive builds will outclass just about everything.

5. Physical cultivators increase lifespan and appetite by remolding. A stronger physical cultivator will as a result require more to upkeep than a weaker one. On the bright side, since physical cultivators don't trade lifespan for power or miracles the extra 300+ years they'll get through remolding will last them a very long time.

6. Turning a snake yaoguai into a physical cultivator is a bad idea. Why? They don't even have *head* muscles. To my knowledge there is not a single useful secret body they are capable of remolding. Believe me, I have tried, and been consequentially humbled. Twice.

7. *Some* people might give you crap for using physical cultivators. Ironically, these are often the same people that use exploits like Qi bursting and Hellgates. Physical cultivation is an intentional strategy in ACS. You're not the weirdo, they are.

So we know physical/body cultivation is one of the three forms of cultivation in ACS, but aside from that, information from the tutorials is pretty vague. Physical/body cultivation (BC for short) is a method of cultivation that focuses on remolding and gathering body parts into 'secret bodies' that can be used in combat.

This section will familiarize you with the menus involved with BC.



Clicking on the cultivation button will bring up the cultivation panel.


Here we see that most of the options are thankfully the same or at least similar to the other forms of cultivation. However even if we don't know what all those are, the most important parts are the four marked in hot pink.

1. The remold menu button. Clicking on this button will take you to the remold menu. You will spend most of your time here. It also has a flashing yellow plus icon when you can make a label selection.

2. Gathered essences. The essences a cultivator has gathered and taken into themselves either by breathing them in or eating will be displayed in this box. You can scroll from side to side if you put your cursor here to see the entire list. More on these in the essences section.

3. Battle stats. This is a simplified list of basic metrics like how often your character hits, their damage output, and how much energy they're using. You can scroll up and down in this box if you place your cursor over it.

4. Breathing modifiers. These modifiers show the efficiency of your cultivator's ability to breathe in essence. Breathing is where you get most of your essences.


Clicking the remold menu button brings up this screen. Thankfully whoever designed it did a good job of making it flow, and as you'll see the location of options and information becomes intuitive after a while.

1. Body tab. This tab brings up all the parts in the entire body of your cultivator. Usually used to remold parts for passive effects (more on that later).

2. Secret body tabs. Each of these tabs following the body tab are individual secret bodies that can be attained. Secret bodies are your main weapons.

3. Part list. A list of all the body parts included in the selected secret body. All labels applied to parts in this list contribute to the secret body this part list belongs to. This includes labels on the same part shared by multiple secret bodies.

4. Label list. This is a list of labels added to the selected body part (not secret body), including how many labels there have been of that type. At the top there is a number X/N, with X representing the number of different labels you have selected for this part, and N representing the maximum number of different labels for a single part your cultivator is capable of. Beside each label in the list is a similar number that displays how many labels of that type you've selected out of how many you can have of that type on the part.

5. Secret body layers. Secret bodies come in layers, with a higher number layer containing more labels than a lower number layer. Higher number layers also come with added bonuses that stack the more layers you have. Clicking on a layer will show its label requirements.

6. Layer label requirements. To achieve this layer, you have to have at least the number and type of labels in this list. The list is inclusive, not exclusive. You won't lock yourself out of a secret body layer because you have an incompatible label; as long as you have the required labels in the right amounts, and none of them are mutually exclusive with the ones you need, you get the layer.


1. Remold spell. The type of remold you are doing. Some options use more or less stamina, or more or less essence; others do multiple remolds at a time and present them in batches. If this seems like too much information, it's fine to just stick to the default 'acupoint remold' option.

2. Remold cost. On the left is the amount of stamina required for a remold of this type on the selected part. On the right is a slot where you can add essences or leave it blank. You can select the kind of essence used by clicking on the empty slot and selecting from the box that pops up.

3. Repeat checkbox. Checking this box will cause the remold to be repeatedly performed with the same essence or lack thereof until the box is unchecked, the cancel button that appears during active remolding is clicked, or 50 remold cycles have accumulated without label selection. Unchecking this box mid-remold will allow the active remold to finish, while clicking cancel will not.

4. Start remold button. Starts the remold with the given parameters. Will be replaced during active remolding by a cancel button that immediately stops remolds on that part. Cancelling a remold does *not* refund stamina or essences.

5. Active remolds list. Shows all active remolds and their percentage completion. Does not show whether they are set to repeat, or the number that have been performed. Remolding may not occur in order from top to bottom, nor at the same rate across all remolding parts.

6. Remold results menu. Unchecking a circle will cause the game to disregard labels of that color rarity and apply the basic label instead, if all resulting color rarities have been unchecked. Allows you to save time by filtering out color rarities you don't want.


1. Layer number. Displays the layer number of the secret body on its tab so you can see at a glance how developed it is. In roman numerals.

2. Part type icon. Shows whether the body part is a bone, flesh, or organ. Important for knowing what kinds of labels are available.

3. Part level. Corresponds to the number of times the part has been remolded. Each individual remold adds one level, increasing stamina and essence costs for future remolds. Added before label selection.

4. Secret body stats. Displays basic battle stats of the secret body part, taking into account all its labels. The yellow percentage bar at the top is the secret body's health.

5. Hide unremoldable parts. Checking this box will hide any parts your BC cultivator is unable to remold. Generally a result of what phase they are in.




There are also a couple of options on the main character and equipment panels

1. Remold completion bar. Displays the seconds until completion of the current remold. Will update for new remolds if multiple are being done or remolding is put on repeat.

2. Breathing schedule button. Brings up a list of two-hour segments throughout the day that can be check-marked to automatically send a cultivator to their assigned cushion at that time for breathing exercise. Good for keeping up reserves of essence and spacing out remolding so cultivators don't run out of stamina.

3. Secret body slots. Clicking on a slot will bring up a list of unused secret bodies you can slot there. Secret bodies can sometimes be slotted in places they aren't fit for.

These options comprise the majority of everything you need to worry about with physical cultivation. If you know what these are, you should be able to follow along with the rest of this guide.

Like Xiandao cultivators, and I'm *assuming* Shendao cultivators too (I don't know, my Shendao cultivator just finished his sixth bottle of whiskey, vaporized a dude, and complained his room isn't dull enough; send help), physical cultivators require an environment with certain features to succeed and thrive.

This section will cover the facilities and supplies you need to accommodate physical cultivators, as well as the four physical laws available with the base game.

Now, out of all the things BC requires, one sticks out as being the most vital:


Food.

The average physical cultivator can fit more than four meals in their stomach at a time, and will return to eat at least that much two or three times a day. That is at a minimum eight large meals a day, or twice as many small meals like bread or dried meat. They can and will eat you out of house and home if you aren't prepared for their daily intake, and their dietary needs will only grow over time. Take note that unlike the other two types of cultivator, BC cultivators *can* and will starve to death, given the opportunity.

I'm not saying cover the northern quarter of the map in pear and ginko, and starting from the bottom of that orchard plant a wheat field that takes up another quarter of the map... but I also can't complain about a lack of surplus food; and it would be disingenuous to claim that buying the merchants entire stock every season for nothing but flour loses its novelty.


Less necessary but still helpful is a reserve of stamina-restoring ingredients (not pills) for your BC cultivators on a time limit. If you need to develop a cultivator quickly, its good to have some reserves of bile or spirit dew so you don't need to wait for stamina to regenerate. Red ginseng and Ganoderma also work, but require a higher devour level than the other two. Not having these can result in a yaoguai cultivator being condemned to an untimely death. Passing merchants will sometimes carry bile at a low price, which can be stockpiled in a freezer for just this kind of occasion. Ganoderma and Red ginseng can be found at Mt. Cassia and Blossomfall respectively, or if you dont want to travel so far for the ganoderma, you can also adventure repeatedly to Mt. Nelumbo.


Another thing you will need is one or more designated essence gathering spots. While breathing efficiency depends on an individual staying in one spot and not a group, essences are likely to be gatherable next to an object or location, and you'll want your BC cultivators topping off their essences if they're remolding constantly. These spots can be developed over time, once you decide which essences you like most. We'll use essences gained here for remolding later, Check the essences section for details.


Lastly, you'll need to set your tables close to your kitchen and freezer. While this is far less necessary once you have obtained the mini universe, in the event it is destroyed or you temporarily run low on food for a while, you want your tables close so your physical cultivators can spend as little time running to wherever the cooks store the food as possible. Also important but not necessary is providing a source of water and entertainment close by as well. The less time a BC cultivator spends running around, the more they can spend remolding or breathing.


You will also need a physical cultivation law for your BC to follow. There are four in the base game to choose from:

Primordial Unity Body: Easily the most accessible, this law is available either when starting as a yaoguai, or on day 100 at the dragon cliff inscription ruins at the great desert. This law has parts that work best with humans, but can be used with either humans or yaoguai.

Ancestral Yaoguai Body: The second most accessible, this law is available by using soul inquiry on an invader from Daemonia Temple. If you have trouble getting one to attack, send inner disciples to Daemonia Temple until they get the option to 'taunt' a group of Daemonia disciples on the road; an attack will follow shortly after. This law best suits yaoguai, providing a range of different secret bodies depending on the type of yaoguai following it. Except snakes. Snakes get no respect and all the sadness.

Barbarous Forging Body: A tedious but useful physical cultivation law. This is obtained by raising the relations between your sect and Daemonia Temple to 1000 or higher. Doing this grants you the option during the 'visit school' adventure to speak with the head of their sect, who will reward you with this law. If you don't get it immediately dont panic, its wrapped in a blue scroll somewhere on your sect map. Works best with humans, and is considered the best physical cultivation law *for* humans. Not a good fit for yaoguai.

Fallen Obliteration Body: The hardest physical cultivation law to get ahold of. For this one you have to enter the Daemonia Temple map and literally steal it from inside of their school. It's ok if you don't feel like having your teeth bashed in by a conga line of 20 swole animal gymbros, no one will judge you. Because of its difficulty to obtain, this law has not been thoroughly tested by anyone I've talked to. Despite this, I have heard it meshes well with human cultivators, but doesn't work well at all for yaoguai.

Like with other kinds of cultivators, the skills and abilities of an individual will impact how they will perform as a physical cultivator.

This section will cover selecting an ideal candidate for BC.


As with Xiandao cultivators, your characters original stats will end up being compressed down into a series of cultivator skills. Consider a combined ability score (the small number inside the yellow/black bar) of 30 to be about average, and 60+ to be high.

Battle is pretty straightforward, it tells you how well your character can fight. Specifically, this adds a bonus to your hit and dodge chance. Carries over from an individual's original battle skill (governed by perception, luck, and intelligence). As a result of *very* scientific research, I can confirm that having someone with a low combat score in a fight is a good way to give your casualty-carriers some uneeded excercise.

Social is for talking to npcs and convincing people to join your sect. Social can be increased at the dinner table while your disciple talks to other disciples, or at the bird cage leisure item. Carries over from an individual's original social skill (governed by charisma). Otherwise not much use for BC.

Artisanry influences how often rare labels are offered while remolding. Carries over from an individual's original artisanry skill (governed by intelligence and perception). Artisanry can be increased artificially through epiphanies; an easy way to do this is by assigning the prospective cultivator to fish for long periods of time. Artisanry can also be increased through the automatic use of the zither leisure item. Very helpful to have in a BC cultivator.

Qi sense is for cultivators who punch through Qi shields and play keep-away with enemy artifacts. Good if you build towards that kind of ability, otherwise kind of useless. Carries over from an individual's original Qi sense skill (governed by constitution and intelligence).

Comprehension determines how much essence you get from essence-gathering actions like eating and breathing. Carries over from crafting skill (governed by perception, luck, and intelligence). Crafting skill can be increased before promotion by assigning a prospective BC cultivator to do smithing, tailoring, and crafting tasks. Almost a must-have if you intend to use rarer essences for remolding.

Inner-sight affects how fast remolds occur and the likelihood of label options that increase secret body layers occuring. Carries over from medicine skill (governed by perception and intelligence). Medicine skill can be increased before promotion by assigning a prospective BC cultivator to craft medicines or powders at a medicine bench. Very helpful to have in a BC cultivator.

I usually prefer someone with high Artisanry or Medicine, Crafting, and Battle in that order. However I have heard some people prefer Medicine over all other stats, and even some who prefer Crafting and Artisanry with no need for battle. Qi Sense presents a special case which you may choose to build around if it is available, but it shouldn't be selected for instead of the other stats. In the event you have a case with low medicine and crafting skill, you can always assign them as an outer disciple for a while making medicines and flour or stone blocks.

There is also some use for different attributes:

Constitution: increases rate of wound recovery. Good for when your cultivator can't block the full effects of attacks, and accumulates wounds over time.

Luck: Reduces the difficulty of tribulations and increases the likelihood of finding treasure during adventures. BC cultivators aren't very good at adventuring due to their low adventure speed anyway, so this is only sometimes useful.

Intelligence: Increases the rate at which the BC cultivator learns and reaches the next breakthrough. Only really useful for BC early on, before reaching incubation stage.

Feel free to pick stats in the order you think they'll be helpful, because while I've heard people say there's a *correct* way to choose, I've heard of many different *correct* ways. So do what seems best for you.

Also note that males have a distinct advantage in BC against females in that they have an additional organ they can remold. As unfortunate as this discrepancy is, it should be kept in mind if you intend to min-max your BC cultivator.



This lady could be a pretty good option for physical cultivation. She has the necessary Battle skill to not get stomped into cream-paste, and has a high enough artisanry skill we can expect a decent amount of rare remolds from her.



... or we could send her to one of our cities and take this poor shmuck, with none of the useful stats except for the optional Qi sense. Why would I do this? Because taking the good option would be uneventful, and I'm going to show you how to do this so well that even this pubescent pipsqueak can become a powerful weapon.

Remolding is the process used to strengthen and match parts to secret bodies to create a competent physical cultivator. We'll be using this to turn our new cultivator into a formidable warrior.

This section covers how remolds work, and what to look for during the remold process.


Once your BC candidate has laid their basic foundation and you've given them a suitably formidable warrior name, it's time to promote them and get to remolding. Any red-diamond icon law with a P in the center has the basics for BC, but some laws match better to certain races than others. I'll be working with 'Primordial Unity Body' just because its the easiest to get.


Open up the remold menu and select one of the secret bodies. Mixed element arm is usually best to start with; even though its not initially very accurate, you can use labels to fix that, and the damage potential is staggering. Heavenly shield leg is good for defense, but does nowhere near as much damage on offense (despite what the tooltip says), and you won't be able to switch secret bodies around in combat anyways.

I usually set up multiple remolds to occur at once, so I can leave them alone for longer without having to worry about them over-molding a body part and having too many labels to assign effectively. You can have your physical cultivator gather essences to mold with first if you want, but it isn't necessary. Cancelling a remold will not refund stamina or essence.


Once you've let your cultivator remold for a while (or have gotten a message that your cultivator has run out of stamina like a pansy), reopen the remolding menu, click on the secret body, then the body part, and then on the flashing yellow plus sign right above where the start remold button usually is. Don't worry if this feels like a lot of steps, this will eventually feel like second nature.


You're going to get a screen that looks like this. The options presented on the large panel are the possible labels that were rolled for one remolding cycle. These cycles are presented to you in the order they were completed, and any label option of the same name is equal. One 'blessed flesh' upgrade is as good as another in other words. Upgrade rarity is affected by artisanry and what essences are used. The part will receive the label you select, as well as one count of the white color rarity upgrade, 'tempered flesh/bone/organ', which gives passive bonuses and debuffs. Don't underestimate these, some of these benefits extend to the cultivator, not just the secret body, and can increase a cultivators staying power, recovery rate, or true Qi economy.

As a general rule, don't take labels you don't think you can repeat to the maximum number of that kind of label on a part, and don't take labels that serve no purpose to the specific function of a part. This is because you only have a limited number of slots, you'll probably find something more useful that you want eventually, and full stacks of the same label are usually stronger than only a few of a rare label.


Except *this* one.

This is the gold standard. Ancestral throwback gives a huge buff to whatever part its added to, and only takes up one of your slots. It appears most frequently during remolding without essences, probably because its not being overridden by essence-specific labels. Ideally, you should have this on every single part that's a part of a secret body, and sometimes even ones that aren't. It takes precedence over other labels, unless the essence you're remolding with is exceptionally rare. Except in *very* rare cases, always leave room for this label, even if you're tempted to fill that last label slot with another rare label.

If you do select the wrong labels and want to remold the body part differently, you can select 'destruction remold' from the remold spell drop-down menu and spend immortal essence to erase the old part and redo all the levels and labels. I like to think the cultivator sucks the body part back into their being like they're slurping a noodle before growing a fresh new part and unhinging their jaw to inhale another week's worth of food.



Now what was all that about running out of stamina? I'll tell you. Early on in their cultivation, people practicing BC will tend to run out of stamina due to the costs of remolding. For this reason, especially if you regularly take yaoguai past tribulation using BC, you'll want to keep some stamina restoring medicine on hand. Pills don't seem to work for BC cultivators, they just suck the essence out and walk away as if they didnt just ingest Dr. Deathy's certain demise pill for the sake of experimentation. No, you'll need to use basic medicines like bile and spirit dew.

It helps to space out remolding by setting half the day to breathing exercise and half to remolding. Your cultivators will develop half as fast, but early on you won't have to micromanage their loss of stamina as much. Only do this if they aren't on a narrow time limit though. Later on, your cultivators will have developed enough of an appetite and stamina gain that they could wrestle a bull, quarter it, and cook it using only the pressure from squeezing it between their pecs without breaking a sweat... all the while remolding their abs into Vulcan's washboard.

Now it's one thing to know how to select a label, but it's another thing to know what the label means. What do those tooltips mean? Will this label actually benefit the secret body I'm putting it on?

This section covers label stats and rarity.


Your typical label has a bunch of text about what it supposedly does, but a lot of it is flavor text. What you're looking for is the text at the very bottom in gold. This actually tells you what to expect from the label.

Labels have a variety of effects, but some of the most common are:

1. Endurance: Affects the "defense endurance" stat. This stat controls how much damage a secret body can deflect without taken damage when used in a defensive slot.

2. Power: Affects the "attack power" stat. This stat controls how much damage a secret body can do when used in an offensive slot.

3. Defense Success: Affects the "defense success chance" stat. This stat controls the percentage chance the secret body will actually defend against an attack when it is placed in a defensive slot.

4. Attack Accuracy: Affects the "attack accuracy" stat. This stat controls the percentage chance the secret body will connect with an attack when it is placed in an offensive slot.

5. Qi Barrier Penetration: Affects the "attack penetration" stat. Controls the likelihood that an attack made with this part will bypass the Qi barrier conversion rate and directly damage the Qi shield. Transforms into a percentage chance. Most effective against skilled enemies with Qi barrier upgrades.

6. Artifact Suppression: Affects the "artifact suppression" stat. Controls the likelihood that an attack 'locks' an enemy artifact, draining its Qi and prohibiting its use for a time. Transforms into a percentage chance. Drains true Qi during use, best used only on specialized BC builds.

7. True Qi Recovery/Consumption/Cap: These affect the true Qi rate of recovery, rate of consumption, and true Qi maximum value respectively. True Qi cap affecting labels will typically be specific to the BC cultivator, rate of consumption labels will typically be specific to the secret body they are on, and true Qi rate of recovery can be either.


Labels will also affect either a secret body or the entire BC cultivator, including the secret body. To tell which is affected by the label, see if the gold text at the bottom references the 'physical cultivator', or 'secret body'. If it mentions neither, it probably affects the entire BC cultivator.

Labels that affect only the secret body they are attached to will not spread their effects to other secret bodies, even if they are of the same type. The labels on one mixed element arm wont transfer to the other, nor to a heavenly shield leg, or any other part. Labels that affect the entire BC cultivator will share their effects with all secret bodies however. This can be used to provide flat bonuses to accuracy or damage to all secret bodies that are in use by the BC cultivator. The exception to this rule is Qi recovery; applying an accuracy bonus to the physical cultivator will provide all equipped secret bodies with an accuracy bonus, but applying a true Qi recovery bonus will not apply that recovery bonus to all equipped secret bodies. Rather, it will apply this Qi recovery bonus to the physical cultivator as a whole, providing a flat increase instead of an increase for every secret body equipped.

Generally it is a good idea to choose secret bodies that don't overlap in order to increase the number of label types you can add to a part for the sake of increasing a secret body's potency. If you have a part shared between two secret bodies, you'll need the labels for both those secret bodies on one part, leaving less room for extra labels that can increase a secret body's stats. Plan for this ahead of time, and also keep in mind that the more parts there are in a secret body, the more labels you can apply past the minimum required for the secret body. This is necessary in order to craft a truly powerful BC cultivator.


You can also increase the number of labels available on a part by remolding some key body parts. Remolding the spine, heart, and brain to have 100/100 tempered labels will add two extra slots to all bone, muscle, and organ body parts respectively. Destruction remolding these parts after adding the extra allowed labels for a part will not undo the labels for that part, but it will disable them until the corresponding part is given enough tempered labels to unlock the extra slot again.


Other organs also have special effects when tempered labels are added:

Nose, Neck, Lungs, and Kidneys: adding tempered labels increases true Qi recovery rate for the cultivator.

Brain: adding tempered labels also increases the number of negative memories that can be accessed by up to three, and also increases berserk duration.

Heart: adding tempered labels increases the furious berserk duration.

Liver, Intestines, Mouth, and Stomach: adding tempered labels increases the efficiency of essence gathering in varying ways. The stomach and mouth also increase the tier of items that can be devoured.

Spleen: adding tempered label increases the BC cultivator's healing rate.

Eyes and Ears: adding tempered labels provides bonuses to a lot of percent-based stats, like accuracy, global dodge, and artifact suppression.

Bones and Muscles: adding tempered labels increases the BC cultivator's overall strength, lifespan, and true Qi cap by a small amount.


For rarity, you have five levels. In ascending order you have white, green, blue, pink, and orange.

White rarity always has at least one possible label, that label always being the 'tempered' label. This serves as both a basic way of powering up a secret body, and also limiting it with its increasing true Qi cost. Depending on the part it can stack between 100 and 999 of the same type on a part.

Green rarity is the second most common, and is the rarity of a lot of weak essence labels. With high artisanry, green and blue rarity labels tend to appear at the same rate. Green labels can stack up to 16 of the same type on a part.

Blue rarity is around the midline in rarity, and is the most rare label type to be commonly available. Some blue labels are the result of using essence. Blue labels can stack up to 9 of the same type on a part.

Pink rarity is the second most rare, and is the rarity of most powerful essence labels. These are rare enough you may need to use special remolds to get these frequently, and can burn through your essences quickly. Pink labels can stack up to 4 of the same type on a part.

Orange rarity is the most rare label type. Its labels include 'ancestral throwback' and several extremely rare essence-specific labels. These labels are generally found on the most powerful secret bodies, and can stack only up to 1 of the same type on a given part.

Aside from this, actual rarity of a given label is decided by a combination of color rarity, cultivator stats, the individual cultivator, and the part they're remolding. Sometimes for no real reason a given part will return much higher or lower rarity labels than you would expect on a given cultivator. This is uncommon, but you will generally have at least a part or two on each cultivator that behaves strangely.

So what are essences? How do you get them? What kinds are there? And most importantly, what do they do?

This section covers essences, including their types, uses, and methods of acquisition.



Obtaining essences has two methods. One is to breathe them in at an area filled with them, the other is to eat them. Almost everything contains essences; from water, to feces, to artifacts, to the roofing tiles that Little Brucey is eating in this picture. That makes eating an important part of a BC cultivator's training. They'll get plenty of earth and water essence from all the food and water they ingest, but to get more unconventional essences they may have to absorb some less tasty meals, or spend time doing breathing exercises in some weird places.

For example, offcut can be used to refine chunks of ore into smaller pieces, providing essence for all five elements (not the innate kind). Breathing near a graveyard provides wraith essence, while breathing at midnight provides lunar and aqualuna essences. Eating feces provides filth essence, which is needed for many advanced secret body labels.

For rarer essences however, you'll need to go even further. Remolding certain organs like the mouth and the liver can increase the essence gains from breathing and eating. To make the most of eaten items with rare items especially, you'll want to develop both of these organs and possibly more to get the most out of your rare ingredients. A full explanation of this is in the Breathing and Devouring section.


Once you have essences, they can be used to influence or change the offered labels during a cycle. Certain essences might be used to obtain one upgrade, multiple kinds of upgrades, or even to just change the likelihood of rare vs. common upgrades available. Advanced secret bodies usually need at least one label that encourages or requires the use of a specific type of essence. Even if that weren't the case, essences can be used to gain access to some very strong labels, potentially even doubling the output of a secret body if used correctly.

You can tell what kind of essence will provide more of a type of label by mousing over it, but you can't tell what kinds of upgrades you can get by mousing over the essence. Because of this, finding a use for a certain essence may require experimentation. There's also an essence labels guide by Sovrin in the ACS discord, which I have linked in the external sources section.

Generally speaking it is best to use rare essences first in order to avoid the added essence penalty for remolding high leveled parts. For this reason it is best to think ahead before you begin remolding a part in order to maximize efficiency. Determine ahead of time what labels you want on a given part, then remold with your rarest essences first.


Here is a list of some exceptionally useful essences, where to find them, what they're useful for, and their approximate rarity:

- Wraith essence: Found by breathing near corpses or filled graves. Provide extra labels that increase power, defense, defense success, and accuracy. Very common.

- Intrinsic life essence: Found by breathing near living animals, or by devouring spirit leaf and ginko fruit. Increase the number of tempered labels available per remold. Commonly available, especially through spirit leaf.

- Solar essence: Found by breathing during daylight hours. Provides three labels, one on each part type, that increase some combination of power, accuracy, remold rate, and berserk power. Somewhat common.

- Lunar essence: Found by breathing during night hours. Provides three labels, one on each part type, that increase some combination of endurance, defense success, and global dodge. Uncommon due to night's limited hours.

- Filth essence: Found by devouring feces or wicked flux. Provides its most useful label 'demonic patterns' on bones, which can slightly increase berserk time. Putting this label on all bones can significantly increase time spent in berserk. Can also apply 'devouring bone', which increases qi penetration. Uncommon, but can be farmed en masse by directing all outer disciples to take laxitives every 2-3 days during the winter, then having your BC cultivator eat it all.

- Ethereal essence: Found by devouring soul games. Provides global dodge chance when applied to organs, and some useless labels on flesh and bone. As common as your access to soul gems.

- Yaoguai essence: Found by devouring soul pearls, primordial spirit beast parts like horns, teeth, fur, and shells, and also demon pig meat. Required for many yaoguai-specific secret bodies, and has labels that can provide an edge to power at the cost of accuracy and defense success. Uncommon to rare, depending on your access to soul pearls from the areas around Mt. Hundred Insects.

To get the rarest essences, we'll want to know the fine details of breathing and devouring.

This section covers the factors involved in breathing and devouring.


It's one thing to have a BC cultivator getting essences in their off-time, it's another to turn them into an essence gathering machine. The first thing we want to do is fully remold all 100 tempered labels onto the mouth, liver, intestines, and stomach. Don't bother putting any good labels or essences on the stomach, in order to save food we'll destruction remold it in between essence gathering periods. This is because remolding the stomach also greatly increases the appetite.

For devouring essences, we're pretty much done with the upgrades we need. Between all the essence gain increases on the remolded organs, we'll be getting essences more often, and in bigger numbers. If you have one, place a functioning feng shui relic with an essence consumption bonus in a room with all the ingredients your BC cultivator is going to devour. Eat all the essences you intend to make use of in bulk, destruction remold the stomach, and get back to remolding other parts.

While devouring things for essences, your BC cultivator may suddenly collapse. This is perfectly normal. Every time a BC cultivator eats something that isn't considered edible by a normal disciple, they have a chance to obtain the 'abdominal pain' wound, which can stack up to four times. This wound will temporarily increase pain, and decrease will. This in turn decreases sense, move, and action temporarily for the BC cultivator. These stats will all return over a short period of time, but if will reaches zero or pain reaches max then the BC cultivator will become unconscious for a while. This will not kill them, but can decrease the speed at which they devour items.

To minimize time lost because of unconsciousness, declare a trade zone near the BC cultivator's bed, and temporarily remove other trade zones. Have the stack of items you want to be devoured delivered to a trade pile (the BC cultivator's room is now *the* only trade pile), and then remove the trade pile and re-ban the stack once it arrives there. Now when your cultivator passes out they'll only have to be carried a short distance to their bed, and they will only have to travel a short distance to get back to their devouring pile.


Breathing will require a bit more preparation. Remold all the organs like you would for devouring essences, and then take note of these four stats:

Qi: The Qi density of the area. This refers to regular Qi density, like with Xiandao cultivation. Surround your BC cultivator with 'Gather Qi' objects. The cap for this bonus is pretty high. This may be difficult to achieve if you need to gather essences from specific sources placed around your cultivator, so try to balance the use of Gather Qi objects with essence sources so that you can still gain essences from multiple different sources quickly.

Mental State: Mental state refers to the mental state listen on the cultivation panel. Mental state for a BC is Mood / 2, so fairly easy to compute. The mental state cap is pretty easy to hit late game, keeping mood around 150 gets you most of the way there.

Liberated: A buff that accumulates the longer you breathe in a single spot. this resets if you move to a different spot, different seat, or don't have the BC cultivator breathe for a full day.\

Extra: This stat is governed by organ remolds. Remolding your BC cultivator's mouth, liver, intestines, and stomach will cap this number. Extra bonuses from feng shui relics may also be added here.

Getting these bonuses as high as possible and remolding for days, months, or even years is the best way to net you the rarest breathing essences. While you may get some of these rare essences by chance following a regular breathing routine, increasing your breathing efficiency is vital for getting enough to remold more advanced secret bodies. When setting up a more advanced breathing location with multiple essence sources keep in mind that BC cultivators breathing can reach up to an 11x11 square centered on themselves. And thats a *square* square, not a diagonal diamond like with xiandao cultivators and their cultivation rooms.


To take advantage of this, you can construct a 'breathing room' for use by your physical cultivators. This room should have a qi gathering array of whatever base element you want to passively gather (to boost the qi density), good feng shui to increase mood (or bad feng shui if you want to gather cursed feng shui essence), a filled grave or two for wraith essence, and a pasture for livestock. The livestock allow your BC cultivator to gather intrinsic life essence. Feel free to make the room larger than 11x11 to remove the crampedness feng shui debuff, but keep all breathing related objects in the 11x11 square. It is also advised to use awakened animals in your breathing room, to avoid livestock suddenly turning into demon beasts and wrecking the room.

BC cultivators have cultivation levels like Xiandao and Shendao cultivators. Unlike other cultivators though, they aren't directly cultivated.

This section will address cultivation levels, attaining them, and the consequences for doing so.



BC has four phases: remolding phase, marrow-cleansing phase, incubation phase, and chaos phase. Each of these phases provide a stacking increase to healing rate, temperature resistance, stamina regeneration, eating speed, true Qi recovery, and global accuracy. BC particularly shines in providing adventure speed and temperature resistance in each phase.

You will also unlock the ability to remold bones at marrow-cleansing phase, and then organs at incubation phase. New possible secret bodies and remolding spells are provided at each new phase too, influenced by which BC law your cultivator is studying.


To gain cultivation experience, you won't need to try very hard. BC cultivators naturally gain cultivation experience from each label placed on a part. Any part will do, but labels on high level parts will provide more experience than ones on low level parts. As a result, gaining cultivation experience becomes directly linked to making your cultivator stronger.



This results in danger breaking through to chaos phase. While chaos phase provides some of the best and most complex secret bodies, it also has an automatically-activating breakthrough at the top of the cultivation meter called 'paramount penalty'. This breakthrough will set a thirty day timer until tribulation as soon as it is reached. This doesn't sound bad at first, but if you do manage to beat that tribulation, you'll notice the timer resets again to thirty days. Furthermore, you'll be unable to adventure on the adventure map. This is because chaos phase is the equivalent of demigod phase in Xiandao cultivation.

From this point on, every thirty days, your cultivator will undergo tribulation. Even worse, the tribulation doubles in strength each time your cultivator survives. You also can't pause the tribulation timer by camping at a map location, because chaos/demigod phase prevents you from doing anything on the adventure map other than immediately descending on a location to visit in-person. Either find another way to indefinitely stave it off, or use your BC cultivator's limited time to achieve something great and ascend.

One possible way to stave it off without the use of lengthening the tribulation timer is by remolding your BC cultivator into a war machine, breaking through to chaos phase, and then never remolding again. Your BC cultivator will stagnate, but if you are content with their power level, and really want that added +400% adventure speed phase bonus, then it might be worth it. Just make sure to remold the correct labels for the strongest secret bodies before you breakthrough. You can also just keep your physical cultivator in incubation phase until you are ready to say goodbye.

Now for the reason we've been doing all this: combat. It's an open secret that while physical cultivators have the least utility of all the cultivators, they have some of the highest combat viability. Why is that? And what can we do to take full advantage of it?

This section covers BC combat mechanics, and how to manage them.



BC cultivators differ from Xiandao and Shendao cultivators in that their combat is based not on a slowly recharging Qi bar, but a rapidly recharging 'true Qi' bar. True Qi is not regenerated in relation to the time of day or the environment, and cannot be obtained from outside of the cultivator. As a result, true Qi functions less like an energy bar and more like a reverse heat meter. The more parts you have equipped at once, the more true Qi it uses per second. This slows true Qi recharge, and eventually causes a deficit that will begin to drain the bar.

A drained BC cultivator is worse than a regular outer disciple when this happens, not just because their stats are reduced to 1/10 of their value for a time, but because your BC cultivator will still think he's superman, and try to fight accordingly. They will fly at enemies, striking them with all the efficacy of a feather duster booping a kitten.


To see your BC cultivator's true Qi recovery and consumption, scroll down on the stats menu located on the cultivation tab. A visual representation of your BC cutlivator's true Qi bar can also be found under their health bar on their icon at the top of the screen.

True Qi can and frequently will also be drained completely when a BC cultivator grabs an artifact and locks it down so the enemy cultivator can't use it. This can be very effective with a BC cultivator designed to do this, but otherwise will result in your cultivator quickly draining, dropping his guard, and being defenseless long enough for the enemy cultivator to turn them into a sack of perforated meat. The likelihood of this occurring is linked to the artifact suppression stat of whatever secret body is being used.


To avoid this, a good strategy is setting aside most internal organs, particularly the nose, neck, lungs, and kidneys for remolding with cultivator-wide labels that increase true Qi recovery, max true Qi, and also reduce the time a BC cultivator spends at 1/10th strength after they run out of true Qi. These organs are good especially because their 'tempered' label increases true Qi recovery slightly.

BC cultivators also fight with their bare hands, unlike Xiandao and Shendao cultivators who fight with artifacts and spells (and sometimes broken liquor bottles if they're drunk and swearing about feng shui again). If you hand a weapon to a BC cultivator, they'll hold it until the first combat they get into and then drop it as soon as the fight starts. On the bright side this means they don't need expensive equipment at the highest quality and tier.


A BC cultivator fights and defends with their secret bodies in the order they're placed on the equipment screen. If the first slot fails, they'll try the next, and the next, until either something connects or they run out of equipped secret bodies. This goes for offensive and defensive secret bodies, while all passive secret bodies in the third row provide a constant effect.

As a result, its most efficient to put secret bodies with the highest offensive or defensive value first, and ones with the lowest values last. Mathematically speaking, the probability of all secret bodies missing is the product of all of their miss chances, whereas the probability of them hitting is their hit chance multiplied with the miss chances of all secret bodies before them in the equipment list. So if you put your strongest secret bodies first, you'll maximize the average output of your BC cultivator(if you want to see the math you can ask for it; if I'm going to bore people to death with math I at least want a comment to point to as an excuse).


There's also an ability called 'berserk'. The berserk ability increases stats by a huge margin for a short period of time when activated. The margin is dependent on the largest debuffs a BC cultivator has experienced. There's a list of these debuffs under the cultivator's mood tab. A value of -40 can be attained by pretty much any physical cultivator, but to achieve debuffs of -200 or more you may need to expose your cultivator to bad situations before they are promoted to an inner disciple. A BC cultivator can typically only make use of between 3 and 6 of these negative debuffs each time they berserk, making the strength of the negative debuffs far more important than the number they have. Thankfully, these debuffs aren't used up during berserk, meaning you don't have to reacquire them. Prepared correctly, this ability can increase your BC cultivator's offensive and defensive power by more than 10 times for a few minutes.



BC cultivators are also incredibly hardy. Their limiter is not how much damage they can take, but how fast they can regenerate from it. In only a couple minutes a physical cultivator can recover from grievous bodily harm (sometimes scoring a label in the process). This is important because BC cultivators don't have a Qi shield. This changes battles from being about outlasting the enemy to out-dodging, out-deflecting, and out-regenerating attrition caused during the course of a fight.

Even with regenerating, taking damage also has an added consequence: part damage. As your BC cultivator continues to fight parts can be damaged, resulting in reduced stats for the secret body it is a part of. Parts rendered inoperable will result in the entire secret body being put temporarily out of commission. For this reason, it is sometimes a good idea to increase stats like accuracy and defense success over the cap, so that when a part begins to take damage it still functions. It is also a good idea to have backup secret bodies installed, that way if the enemy does disable a part, your BC cultivator isn't out of the fight.

There can also be another lose condition for a BC cultivator: hunger. Their food bar will continue to deteriorate as they fight, and if they run out of food they can collapse from starvation. While this outcome is unlikely except in the case of very long fights such as with ancient beasts, the outcome can be devastating. Since they absorb the essence from pills, they can't have their hunger locked that way either. They also do in fact have a food cap, so you can't overfill your BC cultivators before a long fight either. As such, the best way to fight is either to burst the enemy down, or micromanage your BC cultivators taking turns to eat. I recommend quick foods like bread, fruit, and dried meat. Take these out and stock them in your freezer ahead of time so you have food for the big fight.

While a BC cultivator can achieve stats that are powerful in their own right, it is their berserk ability that really takes their power to the next level.

This section will cover how to get the most out of your BC cultivator's furious berserk ability.


Furious Berserk takes advantage of negative moodlet memories to increase your BC cultivator's damage and endurance percentages for a moderate period of time. This increase is dependant upon the strength of a handful of the worst negative moodlets your cultivator has experienced.

Strengthening your furious berserk ability requires gathering the memory of negative moodlets. A list of these can be found on your BC cultivator's mood tab, and they'll be sorted in descending order. The highest common negative moodlets have an effect of -40, a decent foundation for the berserk ability. There are six main -40 moodlets that are achievable, and they can be obtained in these ways:

1. Extreme pain. Have your other physical cultivators unequip their offensive secret bodies and pound your phsyical cultivator into the dirt until their pain bar reaches maximum. This imparts a -40 'grave pain' moodlet. Make sure to assign your cultivators to incapacitate, not kill, otherwise they can and will kill the new guy. You can also leave offensive secret bodies equipped, but they might get knocked unconscious before their pain bar hits the limit. This doesn't work after the remolding phase because pain resistance becomes too high.

2. Extreme cold. Drop a room's temperature to -273C and tell your BC cultivator to breathe there. This imparts a -40 'freezing moodlet'. Don't leave your cultivator in here for too long, they can freeze to death.

3. Extreme heat. Make a ring of incredibly hot ingredients or items and have your cultivator sit in the center. You can also make a hot room out of igneocopper or fire essence and fill it with these very hot items to spread the heat through the entire room. This imparts a -40 'scorching hot' moodlet. Be very careful how long you leave your cultivators in here, they can drop from extreme heat even faster than extreme cold.

4. Extreme stress. Put your BC cultivator in very negative circumstances such as sharing space with inner disciples, eating dirt or feces, pain or being trapped. After their mental state has stayed at 0 for a while, they will get the -40 'confused state of mind' negative moodlet. This is one of the easier but more time consuming moodlets to get.

5. Walling them in. Place your BC cultivator in a room with no exits, and leave them there for a while. If all goes well, they'll get the -40 'can't get out' moodlet. Make sure the room isn't too hot or cold, or your cultivator might freeze or burn to death before they achieve this moodlet.

6. Sharing a bed. Force your BC to sleep in a bed with someone they are not romantically involved with, and they'll get the -40 'poor planning' moodlet. This can be hard to get once your BC cultivator becomes an inner disciple because they no longer sleep unless injured, so ideally set this up right before you promote them so that the negative moodlet is still present and carries over from when they are an outer disciple to when they're an inner disciple.

BC cultivators can remember between 3 and 7 negative moodlets while using berserk, so the more moodlets memories you can stack on one BC cultivator, the better. Remold the brain organ to increase the number of negative moodlets used during furious berserk.



Then there's these things. Strange mushrooms have the potential of giving a -200 moodlet, but can be difficult to get onto a physical cultivator. This is because a cultivator will block the -200 hallucination that has a chance to occur in outer disciples. To get this onto a BC cultivator, have the outer disciple you plan to have study BC eat these immediately before you promote them into their BC law. If this is done correctly, the hallucination moodlet will last until they successfully become a cultivator, earning its spot on the negative memories list. Since these only have a chance to impart the -200 moodlet on an outer disciple each time they are eaten, you may need multiple mushrooms to achieve the moodlet before you can promote them. Be warned, the effects will linger for five days after use, so your BC cultivator may spend the next few days doing nothing but eating and sleeping.

Strange mushrooms can be found rarely on invaders, rarely come out of the 'otherworld portal' sect map legacy (chosen at the beginning of the game), and can be rarely bought for about 100k spirit stones from a travelling merchant. There are initially two large stacks of strange mushrooms in mistwood forest, which is in the Mt. Tigerpaw region. Since they don't spoil, if taken care of these mushrooms can last you an entire playthrough.

In practice, all of this combines to create a cultivator with stackable power that is defined by what essences you use to refine them. It can be confusing where to start if you don't know what essences are most easily available, or which ones can be most useful.

This section outlines an easy just-starting build that can be very easily attained. NOTICE! This is not a min-max build. This is a build that can be set up quickly and cheaply for defense purposes.


Now that Little Brucey has helped to explain the basics of BC, it's time to discuss what we're actually doing to him. He's been spending about half of each day breathing in wraith breath near a full grave. This essence is cheap, plentiful, and very very useful. Wraith breath can be used to remold multiple accuracy and power increasing labels. It's specifically helpful to remold bloodthirsty muscles and inactivating flesh onto the arm muscles, the corrosive blood basic label onto the arm muscles as well, and hollow bone onto the arm bones to increase accuracy to max and damage to nearly double what mixed element arm can reach without these remolds.


^ copy these on all body parts associated with mixed element arm, or any other offensive secret body.

^copy these on all body parts associated with heavenly shield leg, or any other defensive secret body.

Wraith breath can also provide endurance to a defensive part in the form of the gray bone and senseless skin remolds. These remolds increases the amount of punishment a part can take, which is especially important on defensive parts. Combining these with the enhanced flesh remold will help ensure your cultivator has healthy functioning defensive secret bodies even after extended combat. If all defensive parts fail the cultivator can suffer much more dangerous injuries that prevent them from doing damage, or even knock them out cold.



Little Brucey has also been remolding his organs. Organs can be remolded with multiple upgrades that increase true Qi regeneration, making them vital. Innate restoration and void breath increase true Qi recovery while dire potential decreases the amount of time your BC cultivator will spend weakened if they run out of true Qi. Vital function slightly increases the true Qi cap. All of these except void breath can be remolded without wraith breath essence. While this is good for unused organs, if an organ takes part in a secret body, its better to choose labels to fit that body rather than these passive effect labels.



Possibly least pleasant is gathering strong negative moodlets. A BC cultivator doesn't need to constantly have high negative moodlets, but they do need to have the memory of them. The highest value of negative moodlet you can easily gather on a physical cultivator is -40. You'll want at least four of these to have a noticeable increase in your BC cultivator's strength when using furious berserk. Some of these can only be obtained at early stages of cultivation, or even before promotion. Even if you are past this stage, there are still enough obtainable moodlets that you can still hit a reasonable power level with furious berserk. You can find a list of these in the "Furious Berserk" section.


Once you've done all this, if you have some downtime or alternative defense and can afford to let your BC cultivator stagnate in power for a while, you can really increase their strength in the long run by remolding with Solar and Lunar essences. These can be gathered fairly easily over time by setting a breathing pattern that looks like the picture above.

Solar essence is gained through breathing during the day, and provide a set of unique remolds on bones, muscles, and organs. On bones and muscles it provides power and attack accuracy respectively, as well as an increase to the cultivator's remolding speed. On organs it provides berserk power gain and remolding speed, both of which affect the cultivator. Remold the corresponding labels onto offensive secret bodies, and onto organs if you are creating a berserk-focused BC cultivator.

Lunar essence is gained through breathing at night, and also provides a set of unique remolds to bones, muscles, and organs. On bones and muscles it provides endurance and defense success rate respectively, as well as an increase to the cultivator's global dodge percentage. On organs it provides protection against elemental damage and an increase to global dodge percentage. Only the second one affects the physical cultivator, while the first affects the secret body the organ is a part of. Remold these labels onto defensive secret bodies, unused muscle and bone, and if you really need to cap your dodge percentage, onto organs as well.

The sooner you can get the essence to apply these labels, the better. Waiting too long can increase the time and essence needed to achieve these labels by enough to make them very costly. If possible, remold the parts you intend to remold next before any other parts.

This is a list of BC resources that contain information outside my guide, and so may be helpful. I cannot vouch for the correctness of all parts of these resources, as for some I haven't tested everything personally, and for others I've noted some inconsistencies. Otherwise, some parts of these resources are useful.


Sovrin's Body Cultivation Resource and body law compared:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1QfVZ9tvaUFXORqIEG3zOP2O-KYcPlpd0I7aR0Y0SzJI/edit?usp=sharing

Sovrin's guide contains a list of essence specific labels, their stats, and a possible trib IX build.


Essences (Physical Cultivation) wiki page:

https://amazing-cultivation-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/Essences_(Physical_Cultivation)?so=search

This wiki page contains a list of essences and where to acquire them.

Thank you to these people:

- @samog (discord) for the information about the 11x11 breathing square for BC

- @hnl (discord) for the suggestion to use awakened animals instead of regular ones to avoid demon
beasts in the breathing room

- @leebears (discord) for guide feedback

- @Sonah Zudao (discord) for guide feedback

- @Rasengetsu (discord) for guide feedback

- @IraDiaboli (discord) for guide feedback

- @Klearch (discord) for guide feedback

- @Aule (discord) for extensive guide feedback


Sources:

- "Skills", Amazing Cultivation Simulator Wiki, viewed on 04/02/2022
Web Address: https://amazing-cultivation-simulator.fandom.com/wiki/Skill


Thank you all for the help with this guide!