Yi Xian: The Cultivation Card Game - How to Play Du Lingyuan

This guide will help both beginners and experienced players learn how to use more effectively Du Lingyuan.

Contents

Du Lingyuan Character Guide

Du Lingyuan Character Guide

Five Elements Mechanics

The Five Elements Alliance has some of the most confusing mechanics in the game. The main mechanic is the Five Elements mechanic. Nearly every Sect card has an elemental spirit type and an elemental spirit effect. They way they work is probably best illustrated by an example:

Notice all of the sections of the card descriptions that say “Water Spirit: …” or “Wood Spirit: …”. These effects only take place if the previous card’s type either is the same element or “generates” the element. The order in which elements “generate” each other is given by the element wheel that is provided during deckbuilding: Water -> Wood -> Fire -> Earth -> Metal -> Water.

So, as long as the type of your cards follows the order in this cycle with no interruptions, the bonus effects on each card will always be active. In our example, the types of the first four cards go Water -> Water -> Wood -> Fire. All the elements in this order are either the same as the previous element or the next in the cycle, so all the bonus effects will trigger.

The main exception to all of this comes with “Activating” elements. We can see that Water Spirit Seal has no conditional effect, so it always gives 3 Qi and “Activates” water. This “Activating” provides you with a buff such that whenever a Water Spirit effect appears on a card for the entire rest of combat, that effect will be active regardless of which card came before it. In this case, note that when the deck cycles back to the beginning, the first copy of Water Spirit – Waves would have been preceded by Healing Elixir, which has neither a Water Spirit or Metal Spirit type. However, because Water was activated, The Water Spirit effect still triggers.

Various effects only take place if an element has been Activated, such as the second part of Five Elements Fleche. These require some source to specifically provide you with a “Activate” buff. Lingyuan’s Incarnation Phase immortal fate, Five Elements Anima, also requires the corresponding element to be specifically activated, regardless of its wording.

Five Elements Circulation

This confusing card essentially allows you to play a second copy of one of the cards in your deck. You do this by playing it between two cards that are consecutive in the element wheel. In this case, because Five Elements Circulation is between a Fire Spirit card and an Earth Spirit card, and Earth comes after (or “generates”) Fire, the Five Elements Circulation card becomes a copy of Earth Spirit – Cliff. The text “Up to Lv. 2” means that if Cliff had been upgraded twice to a level 3 card, then Five Elements Circulation would have played the level 2 version of Cliff instead.

Overcome with each Other

First of all, when upgraded, this card provides 1 Qi, which is easy to miss because it doesn’t fit into the text box. Next, like Five Elements Circulation, its effect cards about the types of the cards directly to its left (wrapping around if necessary) and right side. Instead of the left card needing to “generate” the type of the right card, however, this time the left card needs to “overcome” the type of the right card, which essentially skips forward two elements in the order, given by the red/white arrows below:

In the above example, Earth overcomes Water, so because an Earth Spirit card is to the left of Overcome with each Other and a Water Spirit card is to the right, the card gains Chase and Water is Activated.

Basic Game Plan

To get started with Du Lingyuan, there is a fairly formulaic playstyle that you can follow. Doing exactly this every game is probably good enough for at least 4000 rating, but to climb as far as possible with Lingyuan, you should evaluate all of these instructions on a case-by-case basis.

Here is the beginner’s “Du Lingyuan Algorithm”:

First Two Phases (Initial, Foundation)

When the game starts, look at your innate element. Don’t exchange any cards from that element until at least virtuoso phases, and always try to put them on the board if it doesn’t cost much board strength.
Break through to the next stage as soon as possible every time.
Exchange cards only until you can field the maximum number of cards without compromising board strength, and then save the rest of your exchanges for later.
Recycle any cards not of your innate element that you don’t imminently need before each fight.
When given the option to choose between four cards, choose one from your innate element, a key incarnation phase job card, or otherwise draw a card immediately.
For your side job, choose Elixirist if you want a generic choice for all innate elements. Otherwise, see the section on each element for other options.
For the foundation phase breakthrough, choose Innate Mark if your element is Wood or Earth. Otherwise, choose whichever option feels like it gives you the most immediate board strength.

Overall, our goal here is to be one of the strongest early game boards in the lobby while holding onto all of our innate element cards to help us later transition into a mono-element deck.

Virtuoso Phase

Try to do all of the following on the first turn you break through to Virtuoso:

When breaking through to Virtuoso, always choose Innate Spirit Formation as your immortal fate.
Put the Spirit Formation onto the board, along with as many cards from your innate element as possible.
You will probably not be running a mono-color deck yet. It is more important to run the strongest board possible than to fit every card from your element onto the board.
Now is the time to use up to 10 or so exchanges if you feel your board is weak, if you have extra cards you are not already playing. If you don’t have a spare card to exchange, do this next turn instead.

For the rest of Virtuoso phase, slowly improve your board with the cards you are naturally given, without spending any card exchanges. Your goal is to transition to a mono element board while keeping as many exchanges as possible for Immortality Phase. Unfortunately, it is impossible to give much specific advice about this phase. Getting maximal value out of Virtuoso Phase is a major area of skill expression for Lingyuan.

Immortality Phase

Try to do all of the following on the first turn you break through to Immortality:

Do not choose Overcome With Each Other as your immortal fate. Prioritize options that give speed or cultivation (including extra cards of any type), followed by max HP. Qi is a good option if your element is Wood or Water.
Use all of your remaining exchanges (ideally at least 15 of them) now to transition to the strongest build that you can make, with at least 5-6 cards from your innate element and preferably more. Again, do this next turn instead if you run out of spare cards to exchange. You should be playing your formation at this point.
You can stop exchanging if you run out of cards to exchange or you are overwhelmingly strong.

For the rest of Immortality phase, you have two options for playing each turn:

Use all of your exchanges every turn to get the best board you can for each fight (ideally, only do this if you have scouted the enemy board and know this can make a difference)
Never exchange another card until you reach Incarnation Phase (usually not a good idea if your innate element is Fire)

Incarnation Phase

Now, we have reached the endgame and should spend all of our resources each turn refining our mono-element build as much as possible.

For your immortal fate, prioritize speed and cultivation again. If you feel like you are in a dangerous spot, choose Destiny if it is available. Only consider Five Elements Anima if your innate element is Wood or Water and you have a way to Activate that element. Another good option is Qi if your element is Wood or Water.
Each turn, first use all of your remaining exchanges until you run out of either exchanges or spare cards to exchange.
Next, scout your opponent and note their last speed. If possible, absorb cards until your cultivation + speed is at least 7-8 higher than theirs (more if you want to be sure you go first).
Then, depending on whether you expect to go first or second, arrange your cards to counter their formation as well as you can

How to Build Every Element

In order to be successful with Du Lingyuan, you will need to know the best way to build all five elements in the late game. In this section, I will give tips specific to each element, along with their ideal jobs and example midgame and endgame builds.

Water

Water is an element with good survivability and damage that ramps up very quickly but has relatively little burst. It has few truly terrible matchups, but often depends on some specific cards to go far.

Note: Water Spirit – Escape has been renamed to Water Spirit – Dive. Images still show Escape.

Suggested Jobs: Formation Master (recommended), Musician, Elixirist
Take Innate Mark? Yes (Unless not formation master)
Take Five Elements Anima? No

Sample Endgame Build

Often, the endgame comes down to running as many copies of Great Waves and Combine Rivers as possible, while positioning copies of Dive to nullify the most possible enemy damage. If not using Musician as the side job, Marrow Rhythm is an effective tool to greatly accelerate your deck.

If you use Musician as the side job, your endgame goal is to run Chord in Tune with either Predicament of Immortals (a card that disables Chase) or another Continuous card, depending on the matchup.

With Elixirist as the side job, you have extra HP and cultivation, which both help a lot to survive many matchups. In the late midgame and early late game, Spiritage Elixir provides a lot of Qi to really accelerate the scaling of Great Waves.

Formation Master is mainly chosen as the side job to utilize Meru Formation or the combination of Marrow Rhythm and Echo Formation. Because Water gets outsized value from playing a small number of Great Waves and Combine Rivers repeatedly, shrinking the effective size of the deck can be a significant boon. Below is the suggested super-endgame setup to shoot for using Formation Master:

The most important things here are the positioning of the Marrow Rhythm and Echo Formation. As always, Dive should be positioned where it will have the greatest impact against the current opponent or left out of the lineup entirely. If Marrow Rhythm and Echo Formation have at least 2 upgrades between them, you will chase every turn with this setup.

Sample Midgame Builds

Often, you will find yourself in some sort of Water + Wood + Fire combo in the midgame as you try to piece together more Water Spirit cards. Gradually phase out the non-water cards and weaker water cards as they come, and avoid combining Water cards other than the formation when it’s not necessary to do so. The healing from Wood can work well with the consistent damage from Force of Water.

Sometimes, you will be able to play mono-water in the midgame. This usually takes the form of a burstier deck that finishes opponents off with Turbulent on turn 6 or so. With high cultivation, you should be able to win most matchups, and might even consider running a shortened list to ensure you go first. The following list should probably swap Fleche and Elixir though (or cut Elixir entirely):

If running Formation Master as your side job, using Motionless Tutelary Formation can make you overwhelmingly strong against most midgame matchups:

Tips

Great Waves is an essential card and you cannot have too many copies of it. Therefore, using your rolls aggressively in Immortality (purple) phase is useful to ensure you have enough Great Waves to win in the late game.
Even more than most other elements, Water benefits from running a large number of high-quality unupgraded cards instead of a smaller quantity of lower-quality upgraded cards. Consider carefully if you need to upgrade any water card above Phase 1 before you do so.
Have at least one Water card as a sideboard option to replace Dive if there are matchups that don’t significantly attack.
Spring is a fairly poor Water card for the mono-element deck (relative to its cultivation level) and can often be replaced with something better if the extra Qi isn’t needed.
For mono-water, consider rolling extra on Foundation Phase (green) and not rolling at all on Virtuoso Phase (blue). Copies of Billows and Turbulent are extremely helpful for dominating midgame fights, while no Virtuoso Phase cards will help other than the Water Spirit Formation you already get for free.

Wood

Water is an element with good survivability in the midgame but very little in the endgame. Its damage comes through quickly scaling “Increase ATK”, which makes it very dangerous against slower, lower-damage decks but relatively weak to decks that just kill Wood faster than Wood can kill them, such as Metal.

Suggested Jobs: Elixirist or Fuluist
Take Innate Mark? Yes
Take Five Elements Anima? Maybe

Sample Endgame Builds

In order to have a shot at winning most games, you will need to kill the enemy by the end of the first cycle through your cards. The most potent way to do this is a combination of Spiritage Elixir and two copies of Fragrant to scale Increase ATK, followed by as many hits as you can pack into the back half of your deck. This particular iteration deals 134 damage in 5 turns, with Bud available to finish off the opponent at the end if it’s also needed for any reason. It is not normally a good idea to run the Wood Spirit Formation in your deck once you get your attack scaling running.

Here is a similar example, again with significantly more damage than needed to win on turn 5, but this time with healing on turn 4, which was needed to survive.

Sample Midgame Builds

In the midgame, by contrast, you definitely do want to run the Wood Spirit Formation, along with as many Wood cards as you reasonably can.

As with all elements, sometimes avoiding combining cards can be helpful to give you more Wood cards to put on the board. Here, having two copies of Sparse Shadow also ensures that I have enough scaling to beat pure healing boards in the midgame. Fire Spirit cards provide effective extra multi-hit cards. Picking Innate Mark as the Foundation Phase immortal fate lets us interleave Wood and Fire cards without worrying about receiving the Wood Spirit bonuses.

While you would usually like to be playing mostly Wood/Fire, sometimes the game doesn’t cooperate with your wishes. Here, I play 4 elements while holding many Wood cards in my hand and waiting for cards that generate Qi. Three turns later, my entire board will be Wood/Fire. I ultimately go on to win this game.

Tips

If the Wood Spirit Formation is up against two Wood cards, you may consider picking those cards over the Formation, as it is not used late game, while maximally upgraded early-game cards can fit into late-game decks.
Wood has relatively little reason to run a mono-element deck compared to any other element. Fire Spirit cards continue to have good synergy with Wood decks even in the endgame by providing Increase ATK, Chase, and cards that hit 3 times. A fully optimized list is likely to drop all Fire Spirit cards eventually though, simply due to having superior cards to fill the same roles that provide more Increase ATK and more hits.
Wood benefits relatively little from any Incarnation Phase (gold) cards. Therefore, it is helpful to use all of your exchanges in Immortality Phase to dig for the pieces you need. You could even consider delaying the final breakthrough until after exchanging cards, or even longer if you don’t need it to defeat your opponent.

Fire

Fire is fairly one-dimensional. It bursts enemies down as quickly as possible by reducing their max HP directly. It has no defense of its own, leaving it vulnerable to builds that kill just as quickly, especially if those builds can block some of Fire’s key attacks.

Suggested Jobs: Elixirist or Fuluist
Take Innate Mark? No
Take Five Elements Anima? Maybe

Sample Endgame Builds

Above is a build designed to kill on turn 4 against my final opponent, who was running no defense. It deals 110 damage in 4 turns, but does relatively little if Heart Fire is blocked.

Usually, though, you will be aiming more for a five-turn kill and using Flash Fire to chase instead of Marrow Rhythm. The general pattern is the same, though: Formation, then Qi generation, then Blast, then Heart Fire or Blazing Prairie. Even if an opponent is able to fully block the Heart Fire here, they are likely to run out of max HP on turn 6.

Sample Midgame Builds

[This is no longer an issue, HP is taken for Formation as well now.]

Once you find Blast, you might be ready to play your Formations. Don’t expect the result to be particularly strong, however. Together, my two Fire Spirit Formations here are dealing just 23 damage, which is not superb efficiency at this point of the game.

Ideally, once you reach Immortality Phase you will be able to slot in some purple cards after your rolldown. Generally, the positioning is fairly straightforward: Formations, then Qi generation and Blast, then attacks that decrease max HP, then attacks that don’t decrease max HP. Make sure you do not combine the Formations too early, as it can significantly decrease your damage. Hopefully, you will be able to win by turn 6 or 7.

If you do not find any of the Immortality Phase (purple) fire cards, you generally have no choice but to keep rolling for them each turn until either conditions improve or you die. Fortunately, if you do lose at this point it should not be by a large amount, so you might be able to outlast some opponents.

Tips

Mono Fire is in my opinion the weakest 5-elements archetype. If you find another viable game plan, it may be worth pursuing that instead. [This might be a bit different now that Formation also does HP damage.]
Even though Blazing Prairie is a phase above Heart Fire, it can be the weaker card sometimes if the opponent is not playing much defense.
As Fire decks have little going for them other than racing the opponent to 0 HP, max HP and cultivation are even more important than normal.
Fire is another element without any particularly important Incarnation Phase (gold) cards. Therefore, you may wish to delay that breakthrough if it doesn’t cost you much.
Even though you may sometimes want to take Five Elements Anima just for 7 extra damage, make sure you have a way to Activate Fire in that case (usually Fire Spirit Seal).

Earth

Earth wins by simply blocking the opponents’ attacks until some scaling damage source one-shots them. It has a dominant matchup against many attack-based builds, but also has some crippling hard-counters and essentially cannot win against builds that properly utilize Internal Injury or Ignore Def.

Suggested Jobs: Formation Master
Take Innate Mark? Yes
Take Five Elements Anima? No

Sample Endgame Builds

With Earth, one ideal endgame setup should look something like this. You want some combination of Combine World, Steep, and Quicksand, and you want to play them as often as possible using Meru Formation, from the Formation Master side job. As with many other elements, Marrow Rhythm is included to thin the deck and speed things up, but depending on the matchup, another Formation card could take its place as needed. The second Meru Formation is included here in case the first is skipped by my opponent, but will otherwise never be played. The more your key Earth Spirit cards are upgraded, the better your chances of winning.

Alternatively, copy the Marrow Rhythm plus Echo Formation setup included in the sample Water endgame builds, if you can find enough high-quality Earth cards to fill out the list.

Without Meru Formation, you may need to stretch things out and sacrifice some average card quality. Consider keeping your Cliff cards unupgraded so you have more high-quality cards to stall with while waiting for Quicksand. The above deck was able to win, but it would have been better if I had taken Innate Mark as my Foundation Phase immortal fate. Then, Shuttle, a Metal Spirit card, could have also fulfilled the same role as Meru Formation with a sufficient number of copies, as seen below:

Without Quicksand, your chances of winning are very low. There are some matchups that you can win with only Cliff (the example above won the round against a mediocre Unrestrained Sword deck), but others will require Quicksand to have a reasonable chance. Here, Iron Bone and Anthomania Formation were simply teched in to help nullify the multi-hits of Unrestrained Sword. Ultimately, I was not able to win this game.

Sample Midgame Builds

Earth Spirit Formation is far too good of a midgame card to not play it the moment you hit Virtuoso Phase. It’s worth playing even with just 2-3 other Earth Spirit cards, but the more the better. Even though it appears in this list, Dust is usually a very poor Earth Spirit card and often fails to make the cut once the board fills up.

Because you are playing so much defense, fights will last a long time, and therefore Cacopoisonous Formation is likely to get significant value. Make sure you try to position Cliff carefully to get maximal value against the enemy lineup.

Often, I try to steer my early-midgame decks toward Earth/Metal because it results in Qi-less decks that are more difficult to disrupt, easier to upgrade, and generally use their cards more efficiently.

Tips

Earth tends to have a strong midgame against most matchups (and can’t improve against many of the remaining matchups enough to matter anyway). Therefore, while exchanging cards at Immortality Phase is still important to acquire some key upgrades, as many exchanges as possible should be saved for Incarnation Phase to find Combine World. It is possible to win without Combine World, but it won’t be easy to do so.
Beware of enemy Guard Up and pay special attention to make sure you can actually deal damage with Quicksand.
Don’t be afraid to integrate Metal Spirit cards, especially Shuttle.
You might prefer not to upgrade Meru Formation, as you may need to play too many different Earth Spirit cards or may wish to keep Shuttle in your deck for that little extra bit of damage.

Metal

Metal is a fairly one-dimensional element, with the basic goal of simply bursting down your opponent as quickly as possible while making it difficult for them to stop you or burst you down in return. It has fairly good matchups against an impressive proportion of builds and can often kill on turn 4 by the endgame. Metal is currently the best innate element to get on Lingyuan.

Suggested Jobs: Elixirist
Take Innate Mark? No
Take Five Elements Anima? Maybe

Sample Endgame Builds

Your default endgame build will almost always look like this. It kills almost anybody in five turns if Tripod is not blocked. If Guard Up hits Tripod, then it usually kills in 8 turns instead.

If the enemy has significant amounts of defense, you do something like this instead. Make sure that Heart Pierce is placed in a location such that its damage will be completely blocked, so that it does not consume any stacks of Penetrate.

Sometimes, with enough Shuttles and card upgrades, you can achieve a four-turn kill. In the above deck, the first copy of Giant Tripod deals 122 damage by itself. Just make sure you are confident in your calculations before committing.

Sample Midgame Builds

Overall, the advice is similar to that for Earth. Ideally, you steer yourself towards Earth/Metal builds that don’t utilize Qi in the first to phases, for a seamless transition to Metal as soon as possible. Charge is placed fairly late so that it is not played on the second cycle through the deck.

The key midgame piece for Metal is Sharp. Although you will not play it late game, you can win most matchups even into Incarnation Phase by stacking Penetrate and then finishing off your opponent with Sharp followed by another damage card. This gives you time to find Tripod later.

The Metal Spirit Formation is often worth playing even if you only have a handful of Metal cards available.

Tips

Never get rid of your copies of Heart Pierce unless you are absolutely sure that you will never need Ignore DEF
Save as many rerolls as possible for Incarnation Phase. Acquiring copies of Iron Bone and Shuttle is not that critical. However, you will not be able to win without a copy of Tripod.
As a burst deck, it is extra-important to prioritize cultivation and speed. Going first can win many matchups by itself.
Usually, if you have an upgraded Shuttle, it is best to place it directly before Tripod.
Running two Formations is almost always better than running one. Accidentally combining Formations can reduce your damage significantly.
If you can do so, sideboarding an additional copy of Charge and substituting it for Iron Bone may enable you to win some matchups that require slightly more damage.

Other Du Lingyuan Tips

Remember that breaking through into the next phase will always give you a card. You may take advantage of this to break through “early” by absorbing one of the cards in your deck, then immediately replacing it with the free card from the breakthrough. The resulting cultivation + HP advantage alone can be enough to win some matchups.
Although this guide does currently cover them, it is useful to learn some endgame builds utilizing 3-5 elements to flex into if the opportunity arises. These tend to use Ultimate World Formation or World Smash, along with Five Elements Circulation.
- 4-element World Smash decks run Overcome with each Other, Water Spirit-Spring, and World Smash, usually with exactly those cards in the first three slots. It’s hard to give an exact list because there are so many possible options, but some late game staples include Fire Spirit-Blazing Prairie and Earth Spirit – Dust. Here’s an example list from an innate Water game (This is an unusual version, because I am using innate Water instead of Overcome to activate Water at the start. Usually metal is not run in this deck archetype):

Ultimate World Formation (UWF) decks run Ultimate World Formation as the first card, then Water Spirit Seal as the second card, and ideally up to two more copies of Five Elements Circulation later on. These copies of Circulation will trigger UWF so that you can essentially play the same card twice in one turn. The cards you want to “copy” this way depend on the matchup, but some popular choices include Wood Spirit – Thorn, Wood Spirit – Fragrant, Fire Spirit – Blazing Prairie, Earth Spirit – Combine World, and Earth Spirit – Dust. Like with Lingyuan’s World Smash decks, usually UWF decks do not use Metal.

Lingyuan’s signature card, Overcome with each Other, better enables you to build two-element decks that differ by two spots on the element wheel. This is most easily accomplished by using it to activate the non-innate element and then switching between the two elements at will. For example, with innate Earth:
- Overcome -> Water Spirit Cards -> Earth Spirit Cards
- As long as the first card is Water and the last card is Earth, you can try to tech in the best water or earth cards in between to best counter enemy damage.
- The best use of Overcome is to give you a strong power spike on tier 4, running 3 or 4-element “good stuff” decks with whatever you happen to find. Unfortunately, this clashes with the playstyle of taking a formation on tier 3.
One common question I get on Lingyuan is when to stay on Initial Phase and skip Foundation Phase entirely. Generally, I would not ever suggest this strategy if you plan on playing a mono-element deck. You will be giving up the cultivation, max HP, and free extra card from Lingyuan’s passive without usually gaining enough board strength to compensate. All mono-element decks also get a lot of value out of their Foundation Phase cards until late game. The main reason to stay in Initial Phase is if you plan on playing UWF later. This usually requires you to have at minimum a double-upgraded Water Spirit Seal, which you are unlikely to organically find without extending your Foundation Phase. A full guide to playing UWF is outside the scope of this guide. However, it is one strategy you may want to use if you roll innate fire, as fire is a particularly weak element in the current metagame. Painter is a possible side-job to help provide the early rerolls to hit the Water Spirit Seal, then also help you find UWF faster in the late game.

How I Play Du Lingyuan

This isn’t a full guide, but I wanted to add a quick note for my current Lingyuan playstyle, for more advanced players that want to know how she works at the highest level. When pushing for 9k rating, bottom 4 finishes are extremely highly punished, so my playstyle is focused around being as consistent as possible, though this sometimes comes at the expense of first place finishes. Currently, I place bottom 4 around 15% of the time on Lingyuan. Usually, I pick Overcome with Each Other on tier 4 for maximum tempo, and I often pick 5 Elements Anima as well for even more tempo, though it is worse for first-place finishes due to giving up cultivation.

Usually, I do not go for mono-element builds. The loose game plan when not going mono-element is as follows: Turn 1-2 can be sacrificed safely. Your priority on these turns is to find some upgrades and form the shell of the board you will play for turns 3-7. As such, I tend to reroll only exceptionally bad cards like Earth Spirit: Smash and Fire Spirit Seal and avoid absorbing any cards whatsoever until I get a couple upgrades and a reasonable board plan. Turns 3-7 should be used to slowly build upon your turn 1-2 board and play the highest-tempo board possible, conserving rerolls as much as you can without affecting board quality too much. Break through as soon as possible each time. With enough cultivation, you can even break through to phase 4 on turn 7 and run two copies of Overcome with Each Other (which you should always take).

Try to plan ahead to have a decent Overcome board the moment you break through. The most common ways to play it are Earth -> Water or Metal -> Wood, followed by either an Increase ATK/multi-hit setup, a World Smash setup, or just a “good stuff” setup, but try to be creative. There’s a lot of skill expression here. Roll fairly aggressively on tier 4 to try to win every fight, but still try to save at least 10 rerolls or so for phase 5 if you can afford to do so. Break through to phase 5 on turn 11 or 12. Take Five Elements Anima if it gives good immediate value and you feel you can use a bit of immediate board strength (especially if running World Smash). Otherwise, take whatever else feels most useful. Keep playing strongest board and try to win every individual matchup as best you can.

It’s hard to give specific deck advice, but the most common end-game plans with this playstyle are UWF, World Smash, Overcome Wood/Fire, and Overcome Water. Overcome Wood/Fire and Overcome Water are more desperation options for top 4, rather than winning boards. There are many other Overcome boards that can top 4, but it’s hard to give every possible example.

UWF example (innate wood):

UWF example (innate fire):

World Smash example (innate metal):

Overcome Wood/Fire example (innate earth):

Overcome Wood/Fire (innate fire, overcome into water):

Overcome Water (innate metal):

I’ll give a brief description of my plan for each innate element:

Wood

Wood is currently the best element to get, as it offers the most flexibility, gives the strongest benefit from Five Elements Anima, and has a solid power curve through all stages of the game. I pick Fuluist as my side job and always take the Innate Mark on phase 2. Don’t play for mono wood in the midgame and take Overcome on tier 4. Take Five Elements Anima on tier 5 and try to collect cards for some variant of wood/fire (UWF is better, divine walk into fragrant plus wood chase cards is almost as good though). World Smash is a good intermediate build and can hold many of the cards for other builds while you find them.

Water

Water is the second best element, due to enabling mono water, the best mono-element build. I suggest taking Formation Master as your side job and taking Innate Mark on phase 2. If you find enough quality water cards like Billows and Turbulent on tier 2, then take the free Water Formation on phase 3. Skip Overcome if your board is shaping up to be good for mono water. Otherwise, play Overcome as usual and try to gradually work toward a normal mono water build, though don’t try to force water too hard. With level 2 Meru Formation, you can skip past your final earth card and Overcome in a Water/Earth board.

Metal

Metal is the third best element, because it plays particularly well with World Smash. I suggest picking Elixirist as the side job and taking Innate Mark on phase 2. Unlike the previous two elements, innate metal is well suited for winning with World Smash, so consider not pivoting out of World Smash unless you are really struggling to find copies. You can also substitute Tripod for World Smash in most matchups if you find more copies of Tripod than World Smash. When running World Smash, I strongly recommend Five Elements Anima on phase 5 on metal innate, since you need to kill ASAP and it provides that little bit of extra reach that helps you do so. Otherwise, another choice is often more valuable, unless you’ve already gotten a good Overcome Wood/Fire board going that gets to activate Wood.

Fire and Earth

I’m lumping these together since I approach them similarly. These two elements are more or less tied for worst. Both innate marks provide relatively little value and can be safely sacrificed for good cultivation talents (fire is a slightly better innate since it provides 7 damage with 5 Elements Anima and gives some useful additional flexibility in both early-midgame boards and World Smash boards). Otherwise, use the normal gameplan described above and play for top 4.

What cards to reserve?

It’s worth adding a quick note about which cards are worth locking in the “Daoist Rhyme Omen”. These are all the cards I would consider taking over a random immediate card:

World Smash: Pretty much always worth locking. Getting World Smash on curve is as close as it gets to a free top 4.
Wood Spirit – Fragrant: This is usually worth locking. Overcome into Fragrant (or Overcome into water qi generator into Fragrant) is an extremely strong midgame combo that will easily carry you into top 4.
Water Spirit – Great Waves: Obviously lock this if you’re innate water, but even without innate water, 2 force of water per turn plus all the Qi you need is quite potent, and Great Waves is a good card to play well into late game on some boards. However, I’m not always sure this is always worth the early-midgame tempo loss.
Water Spirit – Combine Rivers and Heavenly Marrow Rhythm: Consider reserving these cards if you are innate water and want to commit to mono water. Otherwise, these cards are very unlikely to see play.
Metal Spirit – Giant Tripod: If you’re metal innate, you might as well reserve this and go mono metal.

Example Game

Midgame, set up to take Overcome