Hello everyone, this is a small guide for the newely released version of Taiwu, it will focus on starting out strong. First we'll talk about options in the character creation menu, then we'll talk about how to make a powerhouse character from the start, and finally a few tips on how to get ahead early to have a powerful start.

If you have some more basic questions or are somewhat lost with the game's many and complex systems in general, I reccomend you head over to my "Translation and Gameplay Basics Guide" : https://test-steamproxy.haloskins.io/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2867241661

A) Birthmonth and region :
First of all, pay attention to a the birthmonth and starting region of your character. Birthmonth gives a large elemental bonus, and I strongly advice to choice an element/month aligned with the sect of your choice, which you can check out in the region selection menu (if you click the little "martial arts" button on the map, you can have a preview of that sect's martial arts).
Here are the elements for each month of the year :
1, 2 : wood
3 : earth
4, 5 : fire
6 : earth
7, 8 : metal
9 : earth
10, 11 : water
12 : earth

B) Standpoint : I STRONGLY suggest playing either Kind or Even. Being Just, Rebel or Egoist is prone to provoke many conflicts, especially rebel/ego which are quite harder to play and definitely for more experienced players. In terms of gameplay, since you simply cannot just insult/steal/attack everyone, you would have to chose many actions which do not align with your standpoint, and thus be in a bad mood most of the time.

C) Heritage trees :
*The blue (left tree) can give you stronger stats (very useful), a big beauty bonus (very useful, dont underestimate this), a childhood friend (also very useful, as the friend will automatically be of the opposite sex, have no negative traits and decent stats/talents, a good marriage/partner candidate) and the two last options are being more resilient to poison (not that useful) or more longevity (not that useful either). Overall, blue tree is VERY STRONG, except the final boni are really lackluster
*The yellow tree is bad. Just bad, don't pick anything. You could get some extra ressources, a horse and a few other goodies, culminating in a strong treasure at the end... none of it is even close to worth it compared to blue/purple trees.
*The purple tree is also really good. You can get better fine arts talents, and be better at learning books, martial arts or technical/fine arts. Note that these 2 last ones, better at reading, will 100% pass on to any of your children and their children, very useful long term. The options to get some tools are materials are just bad/not worth it, and lastly you could get a bonus to inner arts+stunts+movement techniques, not bad... or a t3 (yellow) random high-level technique from the nearby sect
The decision here usually comes down to one choice : do you want to start with a specific high level technique from your sect (you can re-create characters until you get the one of your choice, but inner arts are impossible to get) ? If yes, then selecrt 8 points into purple for it, and perhaps 2 points blue for some stats. The alternative is to have an all around stronger character with no need to look for a good partner by selecting mostly blue tree... but do pick up enough purple to get both the martial and technial hereditary talents, that's too good to pass upon.

D) game difficulty and parameters : I don't see why not max longevity, so I always do. For fight difficulty, be aware that Normal fight difficulty will make the game a breeze, it's pretty much "easy mode", as all NPC's, friendly or enemy, get a huge debuff. Apart from longevity and world population, most of those settings can be changed when your character dies and passes on the Taiwu skills to your heir.

E) Birthplace Locations :
These are the resources you will acquire from each location choice when creating a character. Remember that blue resources are valuable and shouldn’t be removed unless you have extras that you don’t need.
Primary are guaranteed both common and rare resources of their type, while Secondary resources will appear at random based on the available options. This isn’t 100% accurate, bit the Primary’s are right and overall the Secondary’s will match.

Plains: Primary Weave / Carpentry ; Secondary Medicine / Toxicology / Cooking
Mountain: Primary Smithing ; Secondary Crafting / Carpentry / Cooking
Forest: Primary Carpentry ; Secondary Toxicology / Cooking / Weave
Wetlands: Primary Medicine / Toxicology ; Secondary Weaving / Cooking / Carpentry
Snowy Mountains: Primary Crafting ; Secondary Smithing / Medicine / Cooking / Weave
Seaside: Primary Smithing / Crafting ; Secondary Cooking / Carpentry / Toxicology (unique map in that it has more primary rare resources, but a lot worse common / secondary resource variety)

Credits to SlimePort for this part, thank you ! :)

F) First step into game :
- Lastly a few words about the very very start of the tutorial when you have your first conversation with father. If you answer 2) you'll get +10 to all martial arts. 3) is +10 to all fine arts, and (4) (silence) is +5 to each. But the important bit is that afterwards, your "Father" will propose a long list of martial arts to you, will give you a book and weapon for the one you chose. It looks like a very tutorial thing to not start naked, but be careful this is EXTREMELY DETERMINING, as you will also get a +50 permanent bonus to the relevant talent (unless already above 80 or 90, can't remember exact value) , representing your character spending their childhood training that martial art. So chose wisely !

- Fast forward to next map, and you get to the Hidden Village map with the boat and the few recruitable npcs : You will encounter three people besides the Taoist and a child. Ainu, Situ and Gao. You can take up to two of them into your party, one through the main route (the person with the highest intimacy will go with you). The second one is the person with the lowest intimacy, who will demonise. After the events they will appear as a T9 demonised person on the map and you can fight them to rescue them and take them with you. Be aware that situ is near impossible to beat this way.
Your choices affect the standpoints of the characters you take. If you go the main route (high intimacy) the character will turn to their opposite standpoint (i.e., Situ will go from Just to Egoism). If you go the demon route (low intimacy) they will retain their original standpoint.
[Credits to SlimePort for this part, thank you !]

A) The Imprinting system :
So how to make a powerful character, aside from what's been said before concerning heritage trees? Well there is a way to make really strong characters. One can be done fairly fast but still takes some effort, the other one is for much later when you've played for a long time and pretty much a newgame+. Both happen trough a system called "imprinting". When a character in your party is "Devoted" to you (max relationship), you can "Imprint" them. When creating a new game, instead of creating a character, you may use one of your "imprints" and slightly modify it :

- The sex, appearance, traits (good and bad), martial and technical talent and their growth rate, birth element, standpoint and name cant be changed
- Age, heritage trees, starting region can be changed.

B) How to get good imprints :
There are a few ways to get good imprints :
- When in taiwu village, go to ancestral hall and check every single villager for stats/talents/traits, and if some are good enough to your liking, recruit into party and imprint. Remember you can change age, so a grandma with good stats can be worth it

- Late game you will rear some powerful heirs to pass on the Taiwu duties, and those can be imprinted too of course (this is the "newgame+" thing i mentionned earlier)

- The easy and fast super strong imprint method : childhood friend from blue heritage tree. This friend always spawns with ONLY POSITIVE TRAITS, and always has decent stats and talents. Just remake new game until you find one with really good positive traits (such as + to all stats, or +movespeed/attackspeed, etc...). Then play 36 months so the friend matures from child to adult, and you can imprint/restart. It takes a bit of effort, but is well worth it.

C) Stat-correcting for imprints :
Since you can change heritage trees, using the blue tree becomes especially potent because you already know your stats in advance... and can simply pick the "stat heritage" for your weak stats. These heritage aren't a "boost" but a "replacement", thus it's especially worth it for weak stats but not worth replacing scores already at 50-60+ (unless you have extra points and really need that stat).

Here's an example of a childhood friend imprinted and made into a new character :

A) Tutorial, Hidden village :
In the Hidden Village region there are 4 npcs (little boy, girl, Aiu healer, and a middle-aged man). Whoever has the highest relationship score at the end of that section will ask to join you (after village burned, you go to village for boat then leave map). Whoever has the lowest mood will be turned into a Xianghu (possessed) after the burning village events.
You can recruit two of them by doing the following : be nice with the person you like only / insult or annoy the one you want to see possessed.
Then once all is over get the one you want to join you but after that don't click the exit adventure, turn around and go find the possessed person, fight them until low hp then use item (icon on your portait in battle) "Fuyu Hilt", it will turn them back normal and they'll join. If you also have a childhood friend, that's a 3 companions !

B) Infinite early farming
B) In the Taiwu village map, there will always be some random adventure spawning. One which will can spawn immediately (or if it doesn't, after you clear some weaker ones), and not too far from village is a "traitor" adventure with several deserters from the nearest sect (the sect you chose the region for). These are t6 (blue) enemies, so on normal(easy mode) it should be doable but on harder difficulties only try them once you've acquired some gear/skills.
What you can do, for any adventure but it's especially good for this one, is click spacebar (or the pause button) while adventuring, ideally right before final boss, and then click "Leave adventure". This will not despawn the adventure... and that's how you farm those enemies forever. Since they are t6, they loot
- good gear (lots of t7 t6), this will gear yo uup and make money
- good skills (t9 t8 t7 t6... from their sect, so the sect of your choice), this is a crazy good thing to get
- great materials and medecine (up to t5 t4)
This can be done before even opening the tutorial swordtomb once and "dying", to get an immense headstart before the invasion counter (counter after which your village gets attacked by a boss) even starts !
Even if you do it later, because for instance you're not on easymode/normal, it can still be very beneficial : after all, this will fully gear you up, give you tons of material and medecine, make infinite money, and give you many good skills. Especially good if you have trouble raising support in your sect, this is a good way to bypass that.

If you're not strong enough to beat t6 enemies... you could simply infinite farm some very low level adventure such as beggar gathering or bandit village, the rewards wouldn't be as good but
the money, gear and small skills might be enough for you to fight t6 enemies. This might take a while, but is probably the best strategy for starting out in the harder and hardest difficulties.

This strategy is not only good for "getting ahead". It's also very good for farming early on even if the invasion timer has started, it will make you very strong.
Lastly, if you feel like this a bit "cheaty" or exploiting game mechanics... then don't leave the adventure, and just keep looking or cycling trough adventures for it. Even without "infinite farming", with the npcs around the adventure and inside, you should get at least 15-20 fights, which should guarantee some decent loot


C) Economical start :
Economics in this game are rather easy. In fact, so easy that I always play on "barren" world settings, just to get a bit more difficulty points later on.
How to have a good start? It's about building up your ressource growth before making utility/practical buildings, as simple as that.
And what makes it so easy is that your Taiwu Village map starts out with tons of ressources to be cleared and collected (weeds, ruins and stones. don't collect the blue name ones unless you have several of them then its fine to remove a few).
So what to build first apart from the ancestral hall?
- Level up your warehouse to 3+ Doesn't cost much and otherwise collected ressources will go to waste
- Make the appropriate ressource producing buildings according to the ressources you have available in the village. Don't forget to man them by putting some people in charge.
- For the other ressources, dispatch one or two people on the main map around you

The objective is to get 20-40 production of each ressource very early on, and in the first years to turn that into 50ish by leveling the buildings and dispatching people.

This leaves us with the two slightly different ressources : money and prestige.
I would suggest to build the
"Practice Hall" along with 2 money producing and 1 prestige producing building. This will require 9 people to be busy andthats a lot, so you can also do 1 money and 1 prestige.

...and that's it. This should make you able to grow everything in your village with ease over the years, adding other skill buildings and extensions, more houses for more people, and so on

Generation mechanics (how to make a strong family !) :

1) STATS and TALENTS :
Children born receive talents and stats both randomly... on a small margin around the AVERAGE of your parents.
So you don't want a partner with one or two extremely low stats, the average would plummet. As for talents, that's one of the uses of the Ancestral Hall. BEFORE having children, make sure to buff up your partner's relevant talent (example : Swords if you're using sword skills), that way your children's average will be bigger.
Better yet, if you're preparing future heirs, find partners for your children and before they get married, boost BOTH their talents. If you then boost the children's talents again, you'll end up with monstruously high talent !

2) BIRTH TRAITS :
If you have a birth trait, theres a small %chance your children get it too. If BOTH parents have a trait, no matter if positive or negative, that chance becomes huge.
So as an example if you have "+30 comp trait" and find a partner with "-10 comp trait"... its way better then a partner with nothing, because high chance to get a "+ - comp" trait, and since its +30 and -10, much higher chances it'll be positive, probably +10 or +20
Thus if you have one good trait you feel is very important (typically + COMP / longlimbed to move and atk fast / genius for +allstats / +% qi or phys pen), find a partner which also has that, and all your children will. find them partners with also some kind of related trait, and that's your start of an entire dynasty of people with mostly that (and later on cousins will interbreed)

3) HOW TO GET A GOOD PARTNER? :
This comes in two steps :
A) Finding a partner
It's not easy and can be a bit time consuming when you do it for your many children. Sects on average have better people (or so I feel), and don't forget to look at people whom are at most at the world progress meter (30% default +10% per tomb beaten), as you can recruit up to those. Lastly, another option is to go to the Fu Long sect, get 30% regional deeds and receive a "Loyal servant", this is a companion with a super-loyalty trait (inherited by children), and can be good or bad.
This can become especially potent if you take the slightly unethical rule of save/loading right before and rerolling it, or the very unethical one if you install a mod which makes the loyal servant very strong.

B) Buffing up the partner and/or changing his/her standpoint
Once you have a partner, you can modify them in two extra ways :
- Change standpoint by the ranshan sect (regional deeds 30% cost)
- Buffing a positive or Nerfing a negative birthtrait (nerfing birthtraits cannot remove them, only lower the malus to 1-star-level), by the xuan nyu sect (regional deeds 50% cost, requires 2 tombs beaten). Note : this can be done for yourself too