Scroll of Taiwu Beginner Guide: What to Do After the Prologue

Okay, forum fam, let me tell you about the exact moment Scroll of Taiwu broke my brain.

I finished the prologue feeling like a genius. The game had been holding my hand, the story made sense, and I figured I was ready for anything. Then Free Mode kicked in. Suddenly I had a village, a giant map full of regions I didn’t understand, fifteen martial arts sects, and the creeping dread of the Sword Mounds hanging over everything. I stared at the screen for ten minutes and then did what every overconfident newbie does: I ran off to explore.

Reader, I paid for it.

Leap Studio’s life simulator, dynasty RPG and village manager is one of the deepest games I’ve ever played, and it’s also one of the least forgiving to people who skip the boring foundations. I’ve now burned through a couple of bad generations learning this stuff the hard way, so here’s everything I wish someone had screamed at me at the start. If you just finished the tutorial and have no idea what to do, start here.

The Scroll of Taiwu 1.0 Ultimate Beginner Guide: Master Character Creation, Factions, and Combat

Step Zero: Stop Wandering and Fix Your Village

I cannot stress this enough: do not leave Taiwu Village in your first few months. I know the map looks incredible, and I know there are sects out there begging to be visited. Ignore all of it for now.

Your home village is your safety net. Healing, resource collection and equipment management all run through it. Neglect it early and you’ll feel the damage dozens of hours later, when high-tier injuries pile up and you’ve got no infrastructure to fix them. That’s how most ‘unrecoverable’ campaigns die, and it’s exactly how mine did.

Here’s the early priority list I now follow religiously:

My golden rule for village decisions is ask whether it helps me in the next few hours of play. If a building supports my current character, weapon style or travel plans, it gets built. If it only makes sense for some imaginary perfect end-game village, it can wait. Fix the shortages you actually have, not the ones you might have in fifty hours.

The World Map Isn’t as Scary as It Looks

For the first ten hours I thought I was stuck in one tiny area. Turns out there are two views. The tile grid you walk around on is your local Region view, and the big picture lives on the Worldview map. Just hit the circular World button in the bottom-right corner and it opens up.

The Way Stations around your village are active from the start, but anything farther away is locked until you do something about it. Here’s what I learned:

• You pay Prestige to unlock distant Way Stations. Prestige is valuable, so don’t spam it.
• Travel costs Energy and Silver, and the bill scales with distance. Long trips get expensive fast.
• Equip a good vehicle. Carriages and mounts with a Travel Cost bonus will save your wallet. I ignored this at first and was permanently broke.

My hard-earned advice: Only unlock the Way Stations you have a concrete reason to visit. I wasted a chunk of Prestige on random regions ‘just in case,’ and I could have used it on sect advancement or local breakthroughs instead. Don’t be me.

Picking Your First Sect (Please Don’t Pick the Cool Weird One)

Fifteen sects sounds like a candy store. It’s actually a trap. The temptation to mix flashy, obscure arts is huge, and it’s the fastest way to build a character that does nothing well. You want a reliable engine, not a science experiment.

These are the sects I’d happily recommend to anyone on a first run:

Now the part where I save you some pain. Skip these on your first run: Five Immortals, Sanguine Sect, Veil Scar Sect, Jade-Maiden Sect, Kongsang and Ranshan. They lean hard on advanced status effects, precise elemental manipulation or alignment management. They’re built for veterans who already know how to bend the game’s systems. Come back to them once you’ve got a few generations under your belt, and you’ll appreciate them much more.

Your Martial Loadout: Less Is More

Press Q to open the Martial Loadout menu. My first loadout had every slot stuffed with whatever I’d just learned, and I got flattened by a random bandit. Here’s the thing nobody tells you: a packed loadout is not automatically a strong one. If your ranges and requirements clash, you’re just carrying dead weight.

Every build, and I mean every one, should answer four questions:

1. Main Range: Where do you want to stand? Melee (around 3.0), mid-range (around 5.5), or ranged (around 8.0)?
2. Pressure Answer: What’s your repeatable way of winning exchanges and dealing damage?
3. Survival Answer: How do you deal with incoming attacks? Active defense, movement, or instant recovery?
4. Recovery Plan: What happens when you mess up or mistime something? This is where your Qi Art earns its keep.

If you can’t answer all four, your loadout isn’t ready, no matter how many shiny arts are slotted in.

A habit that saved me a lot of grief: keep one preset as your boring, safe default. Use the other two for experiments or for countering specific enemy gimmicks. That way you always have a fallback that works.

The Cultivation Order That Finally Stopped My Stats From Scattering

Here’s the loop in a nutshell. You get a manual from a sect, read it, raise its proficiency, and then break through to uncap it. EXP comes from battles, books and special events. Simple on paper, but it’s very easy to spread yourself too thin.

I now stick to a strict order, and my characters have been far healthier since:

• Step 1: Level your internal art (Qi Art) first. Train it until your attributes and survivability feel stable. Everything else sits on top of this.
• Step 2: Bring your main weapon art up to match. You need to be able to actually pierce enemy defenses.
• Step 3: Add a movement or footwork art. Wait until you’ve felt your range problems in real fights, then pick something that gets you to (or away from) your ideal distance.
• Step 4: Only then, add passives and utilities. Core trinity first (internal, weapon, movement), niche stuff after.

The breakthrough trick that blew my mind

When you’re on the breakthrough wheel, look at the bottom-left corner. There’s an option that reduces the martial arts slot requirement by 1 in exchange for lower raw combat power. I missed it for ages, and it’s incredible for utility arts and Qi arts, where you don’t care about attack power and just want the breakthrough passive effects.

One warning, though: don’t use this on your main damage-dealing arts. Trading away power on your Annihilation arts is exactly the kind of ‘clever’ move that gets you killed.

Surviving the Long Game (And Meeting the Sword Mounds)

Eventually you’ll have to face the Sword Mounds, and I promise you, walking in unprepared ends your current generation very quickly. I’ve done it. It’s not fun. Before you even think about it, run through this checklist:

• Check your weapon’s durability. As gear degrades, efficiency and penetration tank, and your damage becomes wildly inconsistent. Repair at the village before you head out.
• Heal your injuries. Chaining fights while carrying internal or external trauma leads to Breath Chaos or permanent stat penalties. Rest fully before any hard trip.
• Work your NPC relationships. Befriend high-ranking people in your sect and nearby villages. Gifting items to Kind NPCs gets you to Familiar or Intimate status fast. Becoming Sworn Brothers lets you pick up low-tier skills (Tier 9 to Tier 8) quickly, without burning through your Sect Favor early on.
• Plan for succession. Death is a core mechanic here, not a failure state. If your Taiwu dies from fatal trauma or old age, the Scroll passes to a successor. Groom a good heir by teaching them skills, and consider marrying someone with strong innate traits so the lineage stays strong.

That last point changed how I play entirely. Early on I treated every death like a disaster. Now I treat it like a relay race, and each generation hands the baton to a stronger one.

My Honest Verdict

Is Scroll of Taiwu overwhelming? Absolutely. Is it also one of the most rewarding strategy and RPG experiences you can get? Also absolutely. The game rewards patience, planning and a willingness to fail a few times. Every disaster taught me something, and now that I’ve got a stable village, a reliable sect and a clean loadout, the game finally clicks.

If I had to boil this whole guide down to three lines, they’d be:

1. Fix your village before you explore.
2. Pick a safe sect and a simple loadout.
3. Train in order: internal, weapon, movement, then extras.

Do that, and you’ll skip most of the pain I went through. Got your own horror stories or smarter tricks? Drop them below. I’m still learning, and this community has taught me more than any tutorial.