Shendao Quick Guide

(More \* means more important)

### Progressing through Mental State tiers

1. Promote to Shendao, wear good quality pants, unequip shirt if Male (and Female if you have Equality mod), assign to Shendao bedroom. Just wait around until you hit 90 Mental State and equip Story and Divine Comprehension , and after that, go into Indulgence until you breakthrough to Calm. This can be done in Camp and Enter, to save 3 days worth of time.
2. Equip Divine Authority and set your Shendao to Restrained. The reason is that before Divine Realm creation, Divinity is capped at 50, so the temporary Divinity from Restrained actually prevents your regular Divinity from rising further, temporarily halting Divinity gain.
3. If have Agency, go to one with around 10m belief, and Celestial Meditation to reach next cultivation stage. If not, just Travel to Cities (The ones where you can recruit), pick Help to gain belief and followers. Gain enough Belief to get to next cultivation stage, and Celestial Medidation to reach next cultivation stage.
4. Go into Mind Fasting for duration of breakthrough + 1 day to breakthrough to Still. (If you have Stats Suppression Room with Int relics, you can lower the breakthrough duration by Mind-Fasting in the room, as duration is longer, the higher your Int, minimum of 3 days at 0 Int)
5. Wait around for your Mental State to hit 300, then unequip first your Story, wait again until it hits 300, then unequip your Divine Comprehension until the same happens
6. When Mental state has hit natural limit without boosting via the talismans, go on 30 adventures to any city like City of Abundance and choose Help option (option 3), it should hit 1000 followers, as a higher cultivation stage gives more followers. To speed this up, wear Adventure Speed Talismans.
7. Celestial Meditation until you hit Creation. Check breakthrough bonuses and once you determine everything except Distress, mind-fast for 2 days.
8. Create your Divine Realm. If all bonuses are +++++, you will hit max limit of 48 realms.
9. Keep Divine Authority equipped. There are two options. If you have under 50 distress under normal times, head to Camp and Enter to break through to Sagely. If not, mind fast for half the duration of the breakthrough while in sect, and the other half while in Camp and Enter. (If you have Stats Suppression Room with Cha relics, you can lower the breakthrough duration by Mind-Fasting in the room, as duration is longer, the higher your Cha, minimum of 3.3 days at 0 Cha) (The in-game description is wrong, Charisma is the correct stat).
10. You should be now creating residence buildings until you hit max residents your realm can handle while also connecting your divine realm to one of the agencies for followers (Need the building in third tab of Tier 2 Agency (25k followers + Upgrade) and building in Divine Realm).
11. At this point, you should attempt to breakthrough to Wise. It just requires 400 Mental State and can be done via Camp and Enter. Equipping both Story and Divine Comprehension should get you to above 400 Mental State.
12. Work on getting Hedonistic obsession which requires 150+ mood (Methods of raising mood: Euphoria Pills, 5x Panacea, 1 Reconstruction, Good Room, Indulgence) and Anxious Obsession which requires you to be on verge of breakthrough, just meditate until you hit breakthrough and don't go through with it. Once you get Hedonistic obsession, remove all gear and camp and enter any random map. Now you should be working on getting both Anxious and Depression obsession which requires you to have 50- mood (Not having clothes/gear help). Once you get both, you have a -90 Mental State which should bring you back to Still, which has a high rate of natural mental state increase. You can now breakthrough and get the Shendao Guard that grants you a better Meditation known as Meditation of Unification. Let it build up till it naturally hits 300 Mental State then assign your weakest cultivator as Sect Leader and create a Branch and assign all possible candidates to the Branch to reduce your Shendao Mental State. After that, assign your Shendao as Branch leader, wait until they hit the next stage after Still, unassign them, and reassign them again. If done correctly, you should have two debuffs, one from being a Branch Leader, and one from being Dismissed as Branch Leader. Wait until it hits next stage again. After this, you can remove your Shendao from Branch leader and go Camp and Enter a map again, until the debuff from being dismissed as the Branch leader wears off.
13. Meditate until you manage to hit Attainment Stage in Cultivation (If lacking in belief, you can camp and enter a map for free belief gain, as you retain all belief you gain while in camp maps). Boost your Shendao with Divine Comprehension and Story for the next breakthrough to Empty. For this breakthrough, you require Distress to be less than 10 and 10 days or more of Mind-Fast. Mind-Fast for half the duration of the Breakthrough + 2 to 4 days so that we have enough time for Distress to drop to below 10 while maintaining the Mind-Fast. After the Mind Fast ends, you can Camp and Enter once again to finish the next half of the Breakthrough in Camp.
14. Same as Step 10.
15. You should now start doing Detachment Tribulations to remove your Obsessions, which will allow you to recover 90 Mental State.
16. Now you are ready for the last Mental Breakthrough. At this point, equip all Mental State items possible, while removing the Divine Authority talisman and equipping the Divine Concealment talisman (Alternatively, if your Divinity is already under 40, which is plausible if you followed this guide properly, you can equip another Mental State Talisman). If you have Ancient Scrolls, try to get Mortal Melancholia which also decreases Divinity. Also build 9 of Trees of Prayer that decrease Divinity. Now you designate a room with a bed, a table, and leisure items inside, and put your Shendao in there while walling it off via building a wall right in front of the door. Create a branch area for the room and designate it a Cultivation Branch Area with a good branch leader and set yourself in the branch. Now you set your Shendao on Indulgence and wait until you break through to the final Mental Stage.
17. Celebrate.