How does the empire psylink work with psylinks from other sources?

[Forblaze]

I have a psylink neuroformer and a pawn with the Knight rank and a level 3 psylink. If I use the neuroformer to level up the psylink to level 4 and then rank to Praetor with the empire, does my psylink get to level 5 one rank "early" or do I need to get to Baron before they'll give me level 5?

Basically the question is if empire ranks correspond directly to psylink level or if each ceremony just bumps up the psylink one level.

[MadArtillery]

If you go up levels early you don't get any psy levels for ranking up until you get to the appropriate title.

[Jaggid Edje]

As @MadArtillery said, if you use the psylinks before getting the empire ranks, you just end up going up in rank without gaining any psycast level. What I like to do is save the psylinks and use them for the last few psycasting levels so I don't need to meet the highest empire rank requirements.

I do the same with the anima tree. I get a couple of empire ranks for a pawn, until the rank requirements become a thing, then I use the anima tree to rank their psycasting up the rest of the way.

[Forblaze]

Originally posted by MadArtillery:

If you go up levels early you don't get any psy levels for ranking up until you get to the appropriate title.

Thanks

[Red Bat]

The empire used to actually prevent people from using psycasts without the appropriate rank before that got retconned in the same update that added anima trees to royalty.

Now it's best to get your rank up first to whatever rank you plan to keep as your max, then use neuroformers, blinding rituals, or anima tree connections to increase it further. They only upgrade your psylink level to whatever it's supposed to be if you aren't already there. This is kind of important because otherwise you could renounce your title and just keep ranking up to yeoman over and over to grind psicasts.