What are the passive internal types for?

[Starfisher]

There was a tutorial window about them but I cannot figure out how I can reread tutorials.
There are the internal passive skills and they have a so called 'internal type' like Yang, Neutral, Yin, etc. When I equip a skill, this internal type is shown written on my character portrait.
The tutorial said that I should match the internal types to something to get better effects. But I cannot remember anymore what was it about.
So I am asking here: what is the point of these internal types and what are they determine?
(Also: can I reread tutorials?)

[tvance52]

Originally posted by Starfisher:

There are the internal passive skills and they have a so called 'internal type' like Yang, Neutral, Yin, etc. When I equip a skill, this internal type is shown written on my character portrait.

Honestly I don't find the type to be very important, but for some externals they get a bonus from your internal type or do extra damage to an enemy with a certain internal type. It will tell you within the external or internal's own descriptions, but honestly I've never bothered with as there are far, far stronger reasons to some internals over others.

I don't remember the stuff about matching types, but there are guides for the best end game internal and externals (specifically Avenging Angel's min/max guide).

I think the stats from internals and the other bonuses they give you are what I aim for, such as automatic self-healing of HP or MP, blocking negative statuses like internal injury/blindness/etc., or combos with certain weapons or externals, For example, with Legendary Internals there are a few that give a big bonus to damage for certain Externals when you use them. All this will be listed in the external skill and internal skill descriptions.

Somebody can correct me if I am forgetting something important.

[funkmonster7]

Originally posted by Starfisher:

There was a tutorial window about them but I cannot figure out how I can reread tutorials.
There are the internal passive skills and they have a so called 'internal type' like Yang, Neutral, Yin, etc. When I equip a skill, this internal type is shown written on my character portrait.
The tutorial said that I should match the internal types to something to get better effects. But I cannot remember anymore what was it about.
So I am asking here: what is the point of these internal types and what are they determine?
(Also: can I reread tutorials?)

Pretty much what tvance52 said, but I'll elaborate...

There are 3 Internal types/natures/affinities: Yang, Neutral, Yin. Normally this doesn't matter, but certain external martial arts give bonus damage or other effects if your current internal martial arts is of a certain nature/affinity aka. yang, neutral or yin. Some weapons also have bonus damage scaling or extra effects based on these as well.

When external martial arts say "positive" or "harmonious" or "negative", these correspond to yang, neutral and yin respectively.

The reason for this is in Chinese Mandarin, yang tends to refer to increase in energy or heat, which is viewed as a positive nature; neutral is just balanced yin-yang; and yin tends to refer to decrease in energy or heat, thus negative nature.

Yang is associated with the power of life, and yin is associated with the extinguishing of life which is death. That is also where "positive" and "negative" comes from.

This is why you look at a martial arts like Bone-Melting Nether Hands, it synergizes with yin internal. And then generally speaking, most yang internals you find will have names like "Burning Sun" or something like that. Shifa Temple in particular, a lot of their techniques are either yang or neutral types. I don't think they have a single yin type martial arts...

As far as gameplay goes, you just want to match external martial arts with certain effects or bonus damage to match the internal type if you want those effects. This means you ideally want a mix of yang, neutral and yin internal martial arts, unless you don't plan on using any external that matches yin internals.

[Dude1234]

I can try explaining in terms of real life, even though real life internal skills are never as great or outlandish as the internals you can get in the game. External skills are what you use like fist, sword or sabre(knife in game) to beat up or slash the enemy. Internal skills are the breathing technique which you use to enhance your "beating-up" skills.

But now I will move on to explain the internal skills in terms of gameplay.
If you learn the Flaming Blade external skill and equip a Yang internal skill like what the Flaming Blade manual describes, you can cause much more damage.
It just means like this; read what the external manuals describe. If they say that "if the main Yin internal force/skill" causes so and so, then equip a particular Yin internal and then the external skill can do more damage . Same goes for Yang external skills like how I mentioned for the Flaming Blade.
Also, if you equip a particular internal skill and go up in skill level like 8 or 10 or whatever, your HP and MP will also go up . You can read how many HP or MP amounts can go up in the descriptions on the manuals when you put your mouse arrow over them.
Sometimes the Yin or Yang internal skill doesn't really matter. If you just want to evade better, the Neutral Dreaming Sutra internal will do regardless of the Yin//Neutral/Yang elements. If you just want to poison the enemy, equip the Yin Five Poisons Secret Move internal. If you want to have a high chance to be immune to Sealed,Blinded, Poison etc , then equip the Yang Vairocana Solar Sutra.
I don't know how to give better explanations other than these but hopefully others can.

[Avenging Angel]

Originally posted by funkmonster7:

There are 3 Internal types/natures/affinities: Yang, Neutral, Yin. Normally this doesn't matter, but certain external martial arts give bonus damage or other effects if your current internal martial arts is of a certain nature/affinity aka. yang, neutral or yin. Some weapons also have bonus damage scaling or extra effects based on these as well.

I'll elaborate a bit on this as well. There is a hidden damage bonus/DR bonus depending on your internal type. Willy and I once tested it on Discord. Essentially having Yin gives +10% Damage, Yang gives +10% DR, and having neutral gives 5% Damage & 5% DR.

Now I run 13 Sutras and as such you get 10% Damage from it.