Beginner's guide: realms, unlocks and your first week

Sword of Immortality is a long-horizon cultivation RPG: most of your power comes from realm progress, not from moment-to-moment execution. A new player who understands the ladder will spend resources in the right order and avoid the handful of irreversible mistakes. A player who does not will spend a week re-earning what was lost.

What is the realm order?

There are ten named stages. Each one is a gate: the next system, map or upgrade tier stays closed until you cross it.

#	Realm	What it opens
1	Qi Refining	Core loop, first story route
2	Foundation Establishment	Alchemy, market
3	Golden Core	Party play
4	Nascent Soul	Spirit beasts
5	Spirit Transformation	Fengyao Record
6	Void Refining	Secret realms, artifacts
7	Fusion (mid-stage)	Tribulation Aperture
8	Mahayana	Qianji, Taihua, Yanhuang, Jueyun systems
9	Tribulation	Nine-Turn Body Refining
10	Immortal Realm	Three Thousand Daos, Path of Dao Verification

The order is fixed. Your combat direction is not: the three academies are an identity choice, but the fighting style is assembled from four ability slots, and you can switch slots without penalty once you own abilities from more than one academy. Pick a faction for the story and the starting arts, not as a permanent class.

What should you do in the first hours?

Three things, in this order.

1. Finish the opening route before you optimise anything. The early story path delivers the experience and materials that make the first breakthroughs cheap. Wandering off to farm before Foundation Establishment just slows the unlock chain.
2. Choose an academy for its starting arts, not its reputation. Zhenwu gives you sword arts built around single-target shield breaking and finishers. Taixu leans on critical bursts. Fenyang stacks burns and detonates them. All three can be mixed later through ability slots, so the choice mostly decides which abilities you can test first.
3. Hold enhancement materials until the cap is visible. Enhancement is capped per realm (see the table below). Spending everything the moment you get it is fine early, but hoarding the last tier until you know your next cap avoids waste.

Which systems should you ignore early?

Spirit beasts open at Nascent Soul, the Fengyao Record at Spirit Transformation, and secret realms at Void Refining. Before those points, any guide that talks about beast line-ups, orb merging or artifact sets is describing content you cannot use yet. Reading it is harmless; spending on it is not.

Two systems deserve attention as soon as they appear: the market at Foundation Establishment, because it is where ascension stockpiles are bought, and party play at Golden Core, because group content is the cheapest source of the materials later caps will demand.

What are the enhancement caps?

Each realm raises the ceiling on how far a piece of gear can be refined. The ladder below is the one to plan around:

Realm	Enhancement cap
Golden Core	40
Nascent Soul	70
Spirit Transformation	100
Return to Void	200
Fusion	230
Mahayana	300
Tribulation	360

The table uses Return to Void for the 200 cap; it is the same band the ladder above calls Void Refining. The jump from 100 to 200 is the largest in the game. That gap is why Void Refining feels like a wall: the cap doubles while material income does not. Plan the stockpile during Spirit Transformation rather than at the wall itself.

How should you prepare for ascension?

Ascension is the transition into the Spirit Realm, and several preparation steps are one-way doors. The corpus records five rules; treat them as a checklist rather than advice.

• Bank at least 5,000 Lunjian Stones. The stockpile is what lets you act on the other side instead of grinding for a week.
• Do not read the Training Manual early. After ascension it converts into the Spirit Realm Star Chart. Reading it beforehand consumes the item in its less useful form.
• Claim Star-Gazing Tickets after ascension, not before. They are keyed to the post-ascension state.
• Clear the shops on the day you ascend. Shop stock is refreshed by the transition; buying first captures both sides of the reset.
• Keep pill toxicity at 20–24 points. That band leaves room for the pills you will need during early Spirit Realm progression without tripping the penalty.

What should you check before every breakthrough?

Breakthroughs are gated by materials and by the current enhancement cap. Before you push one, confirm three numbers: the material cost, your current cap, and whether the next realm's unlock (a new map, a new system, a new slot) is something you can immediately use. If the answer to the third is no, there is usually no rush.

It also helps to know where the next power spike comes from. Combat power in this game is summarised as Lingya, which is computed from your flying fabao rather than from a single visible stat. The combat systems chapter breaks down the formula and its stun rule; read it before you spend on anything advertised as a Lingya upgrade.

Where to go next

Once the ladder is clear, the two most useful next reads are the academy comparison for the identity choice, and the build library for the ability order you will actually press. If you are still deciding whether the game is for you, the overview covers platforms, launch dates and cross-save.