Picot Ether – Kinda bland, kinda stressful, kinda enjoyed it though + tips to make it easier

You know the drill by now. I’m playing through all the games by my favorite indie studio Inutoneko, and I finally reached Picot Ether. First released in 2022, Picot Ether is a COVID-19 R-BOW virus treatment simulation game where you play Yumelusia, a medical doctor and researcher who tries to find a cure for the R-BOW virus plaguing the city of Ishwald.

Just like the virus it was based on, R-BOW virus mutates into various strains, starting from alpha (α) all the way to omega (ω). You don’t so much treat it as manage the symptoms until enough people have developed a resistance to that strain and the number of infected people drop. Then a new strain emerges and you have to figure out what the symptoms are and develop drugs to manage those ones as well.

Here’s what the main screen looks like:

Picot Ether game main screenThe important things are in the middle. The blue box with squares is your hospital with its patients. The progress bars under them show how close they are to being cured. Not all of them have the current R-BOW virus strain: others are just there to buy whatever medicine you have on sale. If you take too long to treat patients or don’t have any medicine for them, they’ll get angry and leave, but not before demanding hefty amounts of compensation and consuming a lot of your energy.

Therefore you have to manage the three bars labeled Life, Material and Medicine. Life means you have enough energy to deal with patients, material is the ingredients you use to formulate medicine, and medicine is your stocks of whatever drug you’re currently selling. That’s the three bottles below, so you can see exactly what you’ve got.

The last row in the middle shows Yumelusia’s Command Skills. Skills that refill over time and do things like refilling your Life, increasing the efficiency of medicines, treating patients without medicine (best skill ever) and even kicking out unruly patients.

Here’s the list of various symptoms:

I forget what they are, but they include things like fever, body pain and poor appetite. So the game goes like this: you’re introduced to a strain and you have to research it to see what it does, then either develop drugs to treat the symptoms or start selling the ones you already have that address those particular complaints. The latters like C, D, S and Z show how powerful the drug is at addressing that symptom. Later strains demand quite a bit of you. Oh, and more than one strain can be common at the same time, though there will always be a main one.

To get materials, money, new recipes and new command skills, you need to go adventuring. I’m assuming you send your usual adventuring crew on your behalf. The adventuring screen looks like this:

There are no battles or enemies. As long as you have enough medals, you can get anything and everything you want in that run. And you can leave at any time and go back to the clinic, putting things on hold if, for example, you don’t have enough medals. One of the most stress-free adventuring modes in an Inutoneko game. I’m assuming Yumelusia is too busy to actually rummage through the woods herself, so most of the work will be done by the usual Ishwald crew:

I wish I could tell you what’s going on with any of them, but I have no idea because I stopped reading the optional side stories long ago. It takes too long for the status quo to change in these games, so I lost interest. The only thing I picked up is that Rakumo from Rakunou Princess is managing a dairy-themed idol group now, which is both very like her and very unexpected.

Since Picot Ether is a simulation game, it involves saving and earning rewards like money, magic stones and medals to get stronger. You start with a tiny clinic, very few savings, a small material bag and so on, and then by the end you’re making millions of pounds and earning hundreds of magic stones every month. It’s very satisfying once you figure out the gameplay, get the right medicines to make your customers happy and increase your Life, Materials and Medicine stocks so you aren’t easily running out of all of them.

Early broke days

Easier said than done, though. Midway through, the game can get very difficult. Later strains require more expensive medicines, which cost more money to make. Plus stocking more expensive medicines makes your clinic more busy. You’ll be rushed off your feet in no time, and then patients will get angry at the slow service and ragequit your clinic, taking your money with it. It’s very easy to end up broken in such seasons, and there was a time when I was spending money on upgrades as soon as I made it, just to keep it from going to patients as compensation money.

Furthermore, although Picot Ether gives the impression that if a strain has three symptoms you can administer three drugs to address them, actually Yumelusia will complain endlessly if you do this (IDK why, the patients are still getting cured, right?) so you’re supposed to sell enough of a drug to unlock slots that can change or upgrade what they do. For example to give a fever-reducing medication the ability to stimulate the appetite. Or to change an effect from A to S, or S to Z. That kind of thing.

Look at this screenshot for the xi (ξ) strain, for example:

All the symptoms are being more than addressed, but Yumelusia doesn’t like it. She wants one drug to do everything. A visual bug? I think so. I ignored her and forced my way through with these drugs and the healing skill and the xi strain passed eventually. But compare it to the omega strain where I had one drug (the bottom one) doing all the work:

And she’s finally happy. The game ends properly when you deal with omega and life returns to (relative) normalcy in Ishwald. And everyone is happy except me because the instructions were unclear and caused a lot of frustration. Also the game wasn’t that great.

Good parts about Picot Ether

💊Getting rich, especially the late game when the money poured in almost faster than I could spend it. It almost made the early hard work feel worth it.

💊No matter how much you mess up, you don’t get a game over. You can lower your store’s rating, switch to cheaper medicines and build up your strength before tackling the stronger strains again.

💊No time limit or seasons either, just an endless loop of drugs and sickness.

💊Lots of different pictures for the drugs. I remember back in the day when inutoneko used the same icons for everything; they’ve really come a long way!

Heck yeah, I’m rich! In the game…🥹

Not so great stuff

💉Unclear instructions and requirements were frustrating. Yumelucia just complains when things are wrong but offers no hints or assistance.

💉The gameplay loop is dull and lacks surprises. Find recipe, make recipe, sell recipe, repeat.

💉Adventuring was too easy.

💉It’s a game about researching and developing drugs, but actually you just pick new recipes up in dungeons. Even the tweaking part requires selling lots of each drug, nothing intellectual at all.

💉It’s a game about making drugs, but every drug uses the same vague “ingredients.” I’m not expecting a deep Atelier series type of experience, but I’ve played lots of games from this developer to know they can do better. For example, they can have categories, like “active ingredients,” “solvents,” “flavorings,” “preservatives,” etc. that you combine in different proportions to make the drugs. Or you can have tools, or special facilities. Or a skill tree. Use a little imagination!

True ending where we go “Welp, guess we just have to live with the virus now.”

Tips for success

Picot Ether was underwhelming for me. I played it, I finished it, I more or less liked it, but it’s not great and I’m not clamoring for me. Most likely the other fans felt the same because there are precious few resources on the game unlike other inutoneko titles. In the off chance that others play it, or that it gets localized someday, here are a few simple tips to reduce the frustration.

1. Focus more on unlocking friends that make the main game easier, rather than those that make adventuring easier. One adventuring buddy is enough for early one. Friends that increase cash and medal drop rates are the best to have.

2. Absolutely do not expand the clinic too soon. Expanding it before you can store enough materials and make enough medicine to satisfy more clients is suicide.

3. I don’t know if which command skills you get are random or not. Either way, try and get the one that cures patients even if you don’t have medicine ASAP, as well as the one that refills life. Just those two alone will carry you quite some way into the game.

4. Don’t be afraid to roll back your clinic’s level and sell cheaper medicines if the stronger strains are kicking your ass. Nobody will die just because you failed to treat them.

5. Don’t ignore adventuring: try to upgrade to deeper levels as soon as you can afford it because that’s where the better recipes lie.

6. Don’t rush through each dungeon floor: collect all the magic stones first. And don’t use magic stones in place of medals: back out and save more medals and then return. You also don’t have to make it all the way to the end every time, you can leave when you’ve had enough.

7. There’s a gimmick where a drug gets harder to craft the more you sell it. You have to pull drugs regularly from the store and let them “rest” for a while to recharge. But you can use magic stones to stop this decline from happening. Do not do this for every drug! It’s too expensive! Do it only for the best ones to fight particular strains, or for those that counter lots of symptoms and that you’ll be using for a long time.

8. You can brute-force the whole game using the command skills I mentioned in tip 3. Just FYI in case Yumelucia is stressing you out too much and you can’t quite get the combination of drugs right for the harder strains.

9. Play around with drug slots a lot. It wasn’t very well-explained at first, but once I started adding attributes like “give me more life,” “cost less material to produce” and “reduce the number of patients” to my drugs, it made the game go by a lot faster. The omega strain in particular will linger forever unless you add lots of “reduce patients” attributes to your main drugs.

What else I’m playing lately

Immortal Life is semi-dropped while I explore other options. Now that I’m done with Picot Ether, I’m looking to either restart Atelier Marie Remake or start Slay the Spire. For gacha games I’m playing Chaos Zero Nightmare, but few of the problems I had with it last year have been solved. I hear there’s a big update coming up next week so I’m sticking it out till then before quitting. CZN is not for me, but card-based videogames themselves seem very promising. …I feel like I said the same thing last year. My backlog is just too darned long, that’s the problem. *sigh*

Still playing Immortal Life. Close to the end I think? Spoilers

Took a month off from playing Immortal Life because things got a bit crazy at work, but I’m back now. It’s very comforting to have found a low-pressure game I can just play for an hour here and there. No FOMO, no limited time events, no gacha drama, but still making steady progress every day. I said earlier this year that I wouldn’t rush through games but would stick to them as long as they were fun, but I didn’t think I could actually pull it off. I got lucky with Immortal Life, but it’s mainly because I’ve been super busy and haven’t had the time to really dive into other games that I’ve stuck it out this long.

When I left off, I think I was heading into the end game. I think. RPGs can always surprise you on that score, sometimes you’ve been playing for 40 hours and enter what you think is the final dungeon, but then it’s only disk 1 of 4. Somehow I doubt this game has that kind of volume, but you never know.

Nope, don’t understand a thing. But it sounds deep, right?

The reason why I think I’m near the end is because story revelations are finally, finally starting to come out. Although we haven’t figured out where the disaster that struck Guiyin Sect came from, Senior Xie Wentian revealed that the reason he saved us all was because my character asked him to. Or rather a future version of my current character, for timey-wimey reasons that don’t fully make sense because timey-wimey plots never do, was the one that asked him to. And so for timey-wimey reasons I honestly don’t understand, we’re trying to piece together and repair the box that future me must have used to time travel. And after that… umm. Something will happen for sure.

To repair the box, I need to conquer three dungeons, get a special seed from the bosses, plant it in the special seed spot and harvest the fruit. I’ve done the first one, still have two more to go. This means that if, for some reason, you really don’t like the dungeon exploration or the special seed growing gimmicks in Immortal Life—and both can be pretty annoying—you’re not finishing the game, sorry. Fortunately I don’t mind either, or rather I’m not ready to quit the game so I’m putting up with whatever they throw at me. But the flow of new seeds and fields dried up quickly and house decoration is pretty boring, so this game doesn’t have much to offer those who play farming games for the sim aspects. Speaking of which, I really like how there’s no romance in Immortal Life, but I’ll get to that some other time.

Quick point before I go: Brother Yang Ziqin did not turn out to be evil (I never really doubted you, bro), but he did address the elephant in the room: he never would have made it into the sect if disaster hadn’t befallen it. If virtually everyone hadn’t been wiped out, allowing him to take over, he would still be another failed applicant. An applican’t, haha, I crack me up. Naturally my character had to make soothing noises and say it’s not true, don’t worry about it, blah blah, even though I totally agree with the critics.

But I also think, so what? So what if you’re an opportunist? Seriously. It matters a little whether you get in through the front door or the back door, but it’s what you do once you’re in there that counts. It’s like if you married a widow, or if you got a job because the last occupant died. Yes, you’re profiting from someone’s misfortune, but it’s not like you caused it. And I’ll give Yang Ziqin credit where credit’s due: he worked like a dog to keep things together when it would have been easy to walk away. Maybe even some of the regular sect members would have walked away from a sect that could no longer provide resources and opportunities, but he hung in there and rallied a bunch of strangers to rebuild everything from scratch. I’d say he’s more than earned a spot as a disciple.

Aaand I don’t know why I’m bothering to defend or cheer up a game character. Maybe I can relate to Imposter Syndrome just a little bit, IDK. Either way, I’ve been invested in Brother Yang’s saga since day one, for better or worse, so it’s good to see some payoff in that regard. Looking forward to seeing what happens if/when we manage to avert the sect’s disaster through timey-wimey methods or if we manage to rescue any other survivors apart from Xie Wentian.

In other gaming news… Still playing Epic Seven for the 20 free summons a day (anniversary package) but it’s pretty boring. There’s nothing to do. I’m thinking of even skipping headhunt this year. I also got back into Chaos Zero Nightmare recently. I said I would check back in around the first anniversary to see if they had more content. They do and don’t in a lot of ways, but the real first anniversary starts tomorrow, so I’ll see what’s happening on that score and report back. Someone called CZN “Slay the Spire with waifus” so I really need to play Slay the Spire, I already own it anyway.

And that’s the update from me, still alive and well. I’ll try and post a little more often between now and January when work gets crazy again. See ya!

My Epic Seven Trial of Constellation Perdition Teams (September 2026)

A follow up from the outdated Nightmare teams I posted around this time last year. One Epic Seven‘s Trial of Constellations season lasts for about six months, and you only get Perdition rewards once in that entire time, so there’s no need to rush it. Just take your time, build up your Blessing of the Stars so that it nerfs the Perdition bosses, and then go to town on their candy asses.

As usual, I did zero of the work behind figuring out the mechanics, I just got all my ideas from Epic Seven content creators on YouTube, especially Tristen Wulf. Definitely subscribe if you’re a PVE-main player like me. Here are the videos I made reference to, for the video lovers among us. Epic Seven PVE always has annoying gimmicks and boss mechanics that makes a video worth a thousand words. Tristen Wulf Trial of Constellations Perdition Guides: Aquina, Herais, Magnar, Ethel, Rahel.

This little post of mine assumes that you’re already largely with the boss mechanics of Trial of Constellations, and that you’ve filled out 5 stars in the Blessing of Stars for each fight that you are doing. You just need to know, “Okay, which characters do I use and how do I avoid wiping out?” If you don’t know what you’re doing at all, then you should be doing Nightmare or lower. Perdition is super optional, just an extra 500 coins or so… which is an extra 50 epic charms, which is really nice to have but again, optional.

Scion of Hellfire Magnar (Perdition) Team

Forgot to show this, but place Fenne in the back row for an attack boost from Blessing of the Stars

Individual stats:

Daddy Brieg
He needs no introduction if you do PVE regularly. Build him however you like, but more effectiveness is better so he can land those defense breaks. IIRC he gives himself a 35% eff boost, so 65% should be enough. Don’t quote me on that though: I’m too lazy to actually read skill descriptions.

Tywin
I threw him in Grace of Growth because I hardly use him for anything else. He just needs enough effectiveness to land more defense breaks than not, and enough health to survive for a few rounds. Aurius is a bad choice of artifact, so try something more tanky-making.

Taranor Guard
Also in Grace of Growth, though I plan to just build him one of these days because it doesn’t cost Molagora. Give him speed boots so he goes more often. You can tell how little effort I put into this guy ‘cos he’s just there to hit a few times and then die.

Fenne
I currently have her on Lifesteal set for soloing Otherworldly Wyvern, but the most recent update made that unnecessary, so I’ll switch her back to Destruction later. You can refer to the Nightmare post for the build I used there. About 22,000-24,000 HP is better to be on the safe side. Instead of the Victorious Flag artifact, you can use a more survival-focused one like Proof of Valor or Celestine if she keeps dying.

Mechanics: Magnar is heavily nerfed (50% less DEF) and your Ice heroes are boosted (+130% damage, +20% health, etc.) if you have 5 stars in Aries under Blessing of the Stars. Just press Auto and let ‘er rip.

But if you really want to know, every time Magnar is hit with defense break, his moon phase goes down. When it hits zero, that’s when he gets def broken for real. Brieg applies def break, Tywin applies def break with his S1, Taranor Guard pulls in Tywin and Brieg often, helping Brieg build Focus and giving Tywin more chances to defense break. And Fenne is just there for DPS and some minor heals. Most likely Brieg, Tywin and Taranor Guard will all die after a few turns, but by that point Fenne should have done enough damage to finish the battle by herself.

Alternative team members: Any tanky-ish characters with defense break. The most sustain they have, the longer they can stay in the fight. IIRC the video I checked used Clarissa. Seaside Bellona on Bloodstone might be good too. Fenne can technically be replaced by any really good Ice DPS, but they need to be able to tank a good deal of damage too. Maybe a powerful Sigret on Lifesteal? Seriously, just use Fenne.

Scion of Frosttide Aquina (Perdition) Team:

Individual Stats:

Charles
I don’t think I’ve changed him much from the one I used in Nightmare. Making him a leeetle bit tankier, like 15-16k would be a good idea.

Estelle
New-ish character who makes the battle easier with her counters and barriers. She also has a damage-sharing skill that lets her absorb damage that would have gone to other characters, but whether it works against this boss or not, IDK.

Roana
Roana’s gimmick is that she heals the party when hit with counter attacks, dual attacks and extra attacks, which Aquina spams plenty of. All she needs is bulk to survive, nothing else. If this is the only content you use her for, go ahead and rebuild her on Counter Set.

Young Senya
Hehe, she’s such a cutie. Her job is to cleanse, heal, push up and do piddling amounts of damage. Somewhat replaceable if your other characters are much better than mine.

Mechanics: Her attacks and speed are nerfed by Blessing of the Stars while yours are boosted, so just let her have it. Counterattacks reduce Aquina’s moon phase and slow her down even more. Charles’ S3 gives him the counter buff (soulburn for more uptime). Estelle is usually built with Counter set for more counters, plus her barriers help sustain the team. Some people even build Roana and Young Senya on Counter set just to make sure they’re countering, but in my experience the two mains are enough. I was able to fully auto this battle with the team above, but I felt a bit nervous about it. I recommend soulburning Charles’ S3 or giving him more speed so he cycles better.

Alternative members: You can replace Charles and Estelle with Violet, Fenris or Ervalen, maybe even adult Senya. I would put Fenris on a counter set if I did that. If you’re confident enough in your damage, you can sub one of them in for Young Senya and run Roana as your only healer. I tried a team of Violet, Charles, Fenris and Roana and got very close to finishing the fight. I still lost, but with better stats, you might pull it off. I can’t think of any replacements for Roana, who is unbeatable in her particular niche. Just get her with a selector.

Scion of Herais (Perdition) Team:

Individual Stats:

Researcher Carrot
Chief damage dealer and burn supplier. Prophetic Candlestick or Etica’s Scepter (maxed) are the best artifacts for this. She needs a little bulk to survive, since all characters die once even one character falls in this battle.

Tamarinne
PVE queen. There for the pushups, attack boosts and occasional cleansing.

Schuri
I hardly use him, so he’s in Grace of Growth for this fight along with Tieria. Herais is the one boss in Trial of Constellations that is susceptible to Daydream Joker (an artifact that does extra damage to bosses based on the boss’s HP), so definitely put him on that artifact. He also pushes back the adds with his S3

Tieria
Her S3 functions like Daydream Joker and also stacks with Daydream Joker, shaving away Herais’ HP pretty quickly. You can build her much better than this. I believe in you!

Mechanics: The fight against Herais is an endurance race. You don’t defeat him, you just have to shave his HP down while staying alive for a number of turns and then you win. If one character dies, your whole team wipes. You also need to control his moon phase and defeat his adds with burns, which is what Researcher Carrot is there for. Her artifacts are there to cycle her S3 faster. Putting her in the front row also gives her 100% more Attack and Effectiveness if you have Lv. 4 Blessing of the Stars, which of course you do because otherwise you wouldn’t be doing Perdition. Right?

Alternative teams: Someone to apply lots of burns, a healer to keep the team alive, and two DPS fighters on Daydream Joker. For burns, Aramintha might work, or Robin. Carrot is just nice to have because she gives herself barriers when she gets hurt, giving her that extra bit of bulk that other mages lack. I had so-so results with Beehoo in Nightmare, not really a fan. For the healer, Achates and Mascot Hazel should work, though Tamarinne is the GOAT soulweaver for a reason. The DPS are also variable, just make sure they don’t die.

Scion of Aurelight Ethel (Perdition) Team:

Individual Stats:

Shadow Knight Pyllis
It took me a while to build her the way I liked, so I almost never tweak her build. Her job is to apply provoke to the adds and cleanse blind every couple of turns, so don’t use her S3 blindly.

Commander Lorina
Beastly DPS for tearing through Ethel’s HP. TBH people have raved about Commander Lorina for years and I have just never found her that great (too squishy), but she is excellent for this fight. You can keep her S3 in reserve for when Ethel has defense break, but I don’t do that and still clear just fine.

All-Rounder Wanda
The important thing is effectiveness to land the target debuff on Ethel. This reduces Ethel’s evasion so she doesn’t do nasty things to your things when you attack and miss her.

Assassin Cartuja
Also there to provoke the ads and occasionally attack Ethel. I just grabbed my regular Arena AssCart and shoved him in there.

Mechanics: When your Blessing of the Stars is 5 Stars for Sagittarius, Ethel’s adds Forma of Creation/Destruction will no longer transform from white to black. Ethel will also be struck with the unbuffable debuff (undispellable). That means Ethel will never get her indomitable buff that raises her defense, so you can beat her up around the clock. Her hit chance will also go down while yours goes up.

Just make sure to keep the adds provoked at all times, because otherwise their attack will reduce the number above your head and you will die when it reaches zero. You should also cleanse Blind as soon as you can because the same thing will happen if you attack Ethel and miss. Apart from that, this is one of the easier fights once your Blessing is high enough.

Alternatives: I used to use Dark Corvus instead of Assassin Cartuja, and that was fine. Pyllis is best in slot for this fight and shouldn’t be hard to get as a three-star unit, so just get her and Specialty Change her. All-Rounder Wanda is a nice-to-have, not a must. Another dark character with a Target debuff or the Song of Stars artifact should work. And any really good dark DPS can take Commander Lorina’s place. I think I’ve heard of people using Remnant Violet and New Kid Adin.

Scion of the Abyss Rahel (Perdition) Team:
Individual Stats:

Infinite Horizon Achates
If you run Infinite Horizon Achates with Lady of the Scales in this fight (and TBH I don’t recommend it) try to make her even faster and/or tankier so she can outheal Rahel’s massive damage. Give her a more useful artifact too, not Eternus.

Lady of the Scales
On one hand, Lady of the Scales is great for this fight because her soulburned S1 casts fear on the adds while lowering the moon phase. On the other hand, she can easily get your frontliner killed because of the whole damage-sharing thing. I beat Perdition twice with both teams and lost IH Achates both times very late in the battle. Still cleared, though.

Genesis Ras
Normal Genesis Ras. He’s the main damage dealer, so the better your Ras, the easier the fight. I should have mentioned this earlier, but you can put all of these characters into the… thingy. The thing that makes your characters do up to 400% crit damage in PVE, I forget what it’s called because I don’t use it. Bite me, Smilegate.

Watcher Schuri
Clean up hitter for Genesis Ras.

Mechanics: The main way to damage Rahel is by wiping out the mobs that accompany her. They’re very tanky unless they are afflicted with Fear or Stun, so you need to fear and/or stun them and then wipe them out to take down Rahel’s HP bar. Do that once, and she comes back with a second HP bar, and then a third. Lv. 3 Blessing of the Stars helps with that by reducing her HP by 60%.

Later in the battle, Rahel also spawns a super tanky mob that needs to be Feared/Stun and then hit with a defense penetrating attack before he will die. Not only that, but you see the red constellation debuff above the enemies’ heads? Like in the screenshot below:

Every time  you reduce Rahel’s moon phase to 0% by soulburning your attacks, they get one more of those red debuffs. I forget the maximum number of stacks. Anyway, the more of those debuffs they have when they die, the more damage is done to Rahel’s HP bar.

So you need to fear enemies, soul burn to get more debuffs, kill them, tank Rahel’s attacks till she summons the next wave, and repeat the process several times until she dies. She’ll wipe your team if you take too long to finish her off, just BTW. Worst Trial by far.

Alternative team members: I’m too lazy to do it this time, but I recommend replacing Lady of the Scales with a less dangerous team mate like General Purrgis or Ambitious Tywin. Someone who can stun/fear without killing Infinite Horizon Achates. An Ambitious Tywin on Aurius might even be able to protect the others? It’s worth a try because Rahel hits HARD. I think I’ve heard about putting Spirit Eye Celine in the frontline so she can revive everyone as well. Replacements for Genesis Ras and Watcher Schuri: any hard-hitting Light DPS with def-penetrating attacks. Everyone should have G. Ras, though.

That’s it. You already know what you’re doing if you’re fighting Perdition, so have fun. And if you have any better teams or ideas, feel free to share them to help others (and me!).

Immortal Life – C’mon, I wanted to farm, not grind levels!

Hi hi hi, I’m still alive and still plodding away at Immortal Life. After the bitter experience I had with Xenoblade Chronicles X, I decided I wouldn’t rush to finish any game this year but would keep playing for as long as it continued to be fun. Except Immortal Life almost decided to not be fun by introducing a long and tedious grind to get from the Initial Stage to the Middle Stage of Foundation Establishment.

I was given a mission to defeat the Soulslayer Whale, and I found myself doing scratch damage to the mobs in the stage. Meanwhile I was about 70,000 EXP from breaking through to the Middle Stage… and each monster was giving 40-60 EXP, so you do the math. Over 1,000 monsters just to get to the next level. I almost quit. Almost. It was this close, but I hung in there. The path of cultivation is never easy, after all.

The saving grace of this game is the lack of time limits, and the fact that you don’t need to eat or sleep so you can basically grind forever as long as you have enough mana and health elixirs. There are also grind-friendly stages with lots of concentrated enemies in most stages to make the process faster. But as far as I’m concerned, the fact that a farming game has “grind-friendly” stages is not a good thing… except Immortal Life never claimed to be a farming game? Did it? I can’t remember, so I’m a bit conflicted.

Anyway, I made it through. For anyone who’s played a Dragon Quest game or two, this level of grind isn’t even worth mentioning. Plus when I finally tackled the boss after breaking through and leveling a bit, he really wasn’t that tough. In retrospect I could maaaybe have taken him with clever kiting and items without bothering to break through first. But the enemies in Bright Moon Pass, the next stage, are also super tanky, so it’s just as well that I leveled up.

I’m still enjoying the quiet farming life in my little hovel, the grind is annoying but it’s always fun to get stronger, and even though my relationships with fellow sect members has improved, they’re still keeping a respectful distance and not bugging me when I’m busy. This is the (immortal) life! Most importantly there’s nothing else I’m rather be playing (even Epic Seven‘s 8th anniversary is disappointing) so I’ll be immersing myself in Immortal Life for a while longer. I haven’t even made it to the third year’s Winter like I said I would last time, so I’ve got a long way to go!

Played a year and a half of Immortal Life. It’s exactly what I wanted.

Farm screenshot from Immortal life video gameHaving a blast. Half ready to move on, half wanting to keep playing a little longer. The first in-game year of Immortal Life was a lot of fun, totally glorious, just what the doctor ordered to get me back in the gaming mood.

What I’m loving

Chinese cultivation! Heaven knows I’ve read enough cultivation web novels but I never thought I’d get to play a cultivator in a video game… Okay, that’s not completely true. I’ve played a mobile game with a cultivation theme before, but I dropped it after an hour or two and can’t remember the name so yeah, Immortal Life is the first.

Specifically Immortal Life has stuff like:

– A cultivation system that moves you from Qi Gathering to Foundation Establishment and then I don’t know what next because I haven’t gotten that far. I spent a lot of time at Qi Gathering because I hadn’t done the “Learning Spells” quest to break through (I didn’t even know it was a quest), but rising through the ranks should be faster now that I know what I’m doing.

– Flying swords! Only in the dungeons, but I’ll take it.

– Wuxia-inspired outfits and hairstyles. I found one I liked and just stuck to it, but there’s a range of styles to try out.
– Hidden realms to explore! They’re just dungeons by another name, but if I say they’re hidden realms then they’re hidden realms.
– An ancient master sealed in a jade pendant!
– Elixirs! And you get to craft them later too (no human furnaces or yin constitutions, though. No creeps here.)
– A sect system with teachers, junior and senior brothers/sisters, monthly allowances and increasing ranks.
– A spiritual pet who is starting to look a bit weird now that she can walk upright.

And probably some more stuff I don’t remember right now. All this makes the look and feel of the game very different from other farming games I’m tried, and that keeps me playing because it feels fresh.

Story

The story is that you arrive at the Guiyun Sect to work in their fields at an Elder’s request, but just then a meteor comes crashing down and obliterates the sect, leaving one comatose survivor and a bunch of wannabe sect members who use the disaster as a convenient way to declare themselves official sect members while no one is looking. No one will notice if there’s no one there to notice, amirite?

Now all of us wannabes-turned-official are working together to rebuild the Guiyun Sect from the ground up: repairing the broken buildings, finding sources of income, establishing relationships with other towns, etc. Technically we’re also interested in finding any sect survivors and solving the mystery behind the disaster, but honestly we’re not trying too hard in that direction. The fewer people ask questions, the better, amirite?

Gameplay

Farming! Colourful farming! And action RPG combat that is too easy to really count, but it’s still there. You grow mostly normal stuff like cabbages, bok choy, wheat, rice, but also a few unusual/cultivation-style crops like soulgrass and tianli fruit. Cooking and sharing various meals is a not unimportant part of the game, even though strictly speaking cultivators don’t need to eat. It’s a useful source of buffs and even money. In particular, it gives you stamina so you never have to worry about not having enough energy to do all your farm work. It very quickly becomes a non-issue, which is just the way I like it.

The story loop is that you sell some goods, process others, cook a few more, make money, spend it on fulfilling various main and side quests, make more money, and on and on. My advice is to progress the main quest as quickly as possible, at least until you wake up and fully cure Xie Wentian, because otherwise you’ll be stuck at Qi Gathering for ages, and that’s just not fun.

The action RPG combat comes into play in various dungeons that you explore to gather resources like Luminous Sand and Cinnabar needed to repair and renovate the sect and the neighboring town of Ferry Stop. Once you conquer a dungeon, the other ex-wannabees can explore it and gather resources too. Though they’re extremely slow and inefficient, they’re still better than most NPCs in similar games who contribute diddly-squat to your progress and instead just take, take, take.

In Immortal Life, sect members like Li Mengqing explore trade routes, Ji Yaohua runs a shop and manages trade and actually sends you pocket money from time to time, Chen Yuanzhou finds you free fish, You Jinhe repairs the sect buildings and Wei Hong makes very useful inventions like the Irrigation Well that saves you a ton of farming time, Yang Ziqin also collects resources and has appointed himself the de facto leader of the usurpers. Ostensibly he’s also watching over the surviving member’s recovery, but he’s sure taking his sweet time about helping the guy get better. This guy is fishy as hell (I’m kidding, I’m kidding, I know Brother Yang is a nice guy).

I should have separated the above into a paragraph about the characters in this game but eh, it’s not that important. One of the biggest draws of Immortal Life for me was that you don’t need to befriend or romance town or sect members to progress in the game. I am super over character interaction and fake hanging out with NPCs. I just want to farm and gather resources and fish and everything at my own pace, and the game is very, very good at letting me do that. Other people almost never come to my place, and that’s just the way I like it.

One thing I don’t like, however, is the lack of adequate explanations whenever something new is introduced. For example it would have saved me a lot of time if the game had told me that “Learning Spells” is a quest and not an instruction. And the last time I played, they introduced a gimmick with spiritual fruit, gave me an urn and a few lines of text and that was it. I had to look online to find out that plants have different elements and that the different-colored seed bags are actually a clue. I’m been feeling lazy to play Immortal Life ever since, because that kind of vague nonsense is just annoying. But writing all this makes me want to play again, so I’m going back now. See you with an update when I hit Year 3.