The English Guide to The Matchless KungFu

This guide is still in progress. PLEASE ask questions about the game in the comments. Either myself or Commenters will do our best to answer your questions. If we don't know, we'll certainly find out!


Guide status update
Last updated 4:50 am EST, 2/19/2024.

GUIDE IS CURRENTLY OUTDATED AS OF 5/19/24
this guide features information about an older build of the game. Some of it will still be relevant, some of it won't. I hope there's enough useful information still in this guide to be helpful, but I'm going to have to rebuild the entire combat and stats section from the ground up.

What to expect

When this project of a guide is over, expect an in-depth look at this game and its mechanics.
As this guide grows, expect information to get edited and become clearer over time. There is still a LOT to cover about this game, so bear with me.

This guide may also one day become redundant when the game is finally fully translated properly.

Basic Stats and Their Function

THIS SECTION IS SLIGHTLY OUTDATED
Personal Character Stats

Health: The amount of Meridians you have that aren't damaged. The more meridian damage you take, the less health you'll have. When your health reaches 0, your character dies, and you have to make a new one or reload a save. You can gradually take health damage from debuff stacks such as poison, heat, or cold.

Load: This is your carry weight. You can carry above your maximum load, but this slows you down.

Vigor: Acts as combat health. when this reaches 0, you'll take damage to your Health

Energy: This allows you to sprint, swim underwater, jump across water, and climb mountains.

Spirits: This is how happy your character is. You can keep Spirits high by doing activities that make your character happy. This includes sleeping, playing music, drinking at a bar, or taking a bath.
If spirits get too low, you'll take damage to your meridians. This can also happen to npcs.



Titles and Reputation

Player Titles (some of them, still gathering data)

Title (positive or negative rep)	How it's Earned
Just (+)	Initiate 3 battles against evildoers
Merciful (+)	In 3 battles won, spare their lives and take no items
Chivalrous (+)	Help NPCs 5 times
Loyal (+)	Perform 3 good deeds for someone you have positive relations with
Honorable (+)	Reject relations with the opposite sex twice
Charitable (+)	Offer money or gifts 5 times
Sociable (+)	Have 3 close friends
Reckless (-)	Initiate 2 battles and get defeated
Flirtatious (-)	Become intimate with 3 people of the opposite sex
Cowardly (-)	Beg for mercy 3 times
Treacherous (-)	Perform 3 bad deeds against people you have strong positive relations with
Miserly (-)	decline 4 requests for monetary assistance
Ruthless (-)	Deliver 3 killing blows in battles won

Treacherous NPCs have no loyalty and will attempt to backstab you regardless of how high your relations are. Generally speaking, feuding with these guys isn't the worst thing in the world.

Basic Combat Mechanics

AS OF 5/19/24 THEY HAVE CHANGED SOME COMBAT MECHANICS. SECTION SLIGHTLY OUTDATED

Combat is rock paper scissors with a bit of nuance.

Terminology and Mechanics.

MOVES: Punches, Kicks, Thrown Weapon, Held Weapon, Palm attacks are all called MOVES.

Moves can also be augmented with status effects

By themselves, Moves can only be chained together with moves of the same type. Palm chains to palm, fist chains to fist, etc. However, the game has ways of stringing different combos together such as Omni Moves and Changeable Moves.

OMNI MOVES: Omni Moves allow you to chain from one type of Move to a different type of Move. These are an expendable resource in the combo, and you need to be wise with how you use it.


CHANGEABLE MOVES: Changeable Moves allow you to turn one type of Move into the type of Move Listed on the Changeable Move. After Turning one type of move into another [Example: using a Sword Changeable Move on a Palm Move] You will then start a chain of the Changed Move. [Palm is now Sword, will chain with other Swords]





DEFENSIVE MOVES: Defensive Moves allow you to take one Move currently available to you and save it for next round.


MOVE COUNTER: Each Move can Counter and Be Countered by at least one other Move.

If your Move Counters the Opponent's Move, you do damage.
If neither of your moves counter each other, you both take no damage.
If you Counter 3 of their moves in a row, any moves after those three will be completely ignored.
If you have More Moves than your opponent, all extra moves will do damage.

MOVE COMBO and SURPRISE MOVES.

If you link 4 of the same move in a combo, you'll get extra Moves to use. They do not have to be in a row, you only need to play 4 in the same chain. You can even do 4 of one move and 4 of another.

Surprise Moves are from linking 3 different types of Move. You can only Trigger this once per chain due to there being only 5 different types of Moves.



SKILLS: Skills, as mentioned earlier, are 6 Special Attacks that can Damage the enemy, Debuff the Enemy, or Buff/Heal Yourself. Each Skill has a number of needed Moves before it can be used in combat. There are some Skills that do not require any move inputs, but are limited in how many times you can use them in battle. Having Skills equipped changes the number of Moves of a certain type in your Move Pool. Skill Damage can be augmented by gear or breathing patterns created through the Meridian System.



Skills can also be leveled up using Martial Arts Experience earned in fights.

IF YOU ARE STRUGGLING WITH THE COMBAT, YOU SHOULD LEVEL TECHNIQUE

VERBAL DUELS

This is by far the most confusing part of this game and I'm not even gonna hide it.

Here's what I've understood so far.

THE MECHANICS AND STRATEGY

The game refers to the act of verbal dueling and the options you use as verbal duels. Personally, for the sake of this guide, I will refer to the overall gamemode by some variation of Verbal Duel. For the selectable options, I will refer to them as;

Arguments : The Pink/Gray/Blue options with an eloquence value
Rerolls: The rethink option.
Argument Pile: previous arguments you've used that show up in random order
Argument Grid: the 9 arguments that show up in random order during the damage dealing part of the round

At the start of the Verbal Duel, you have 9 random arguments that give you your starting point value.
Your characters do some word damage to each other, and NOW you can begin your strategy.

To start, you'll have 3 options to select from (6 later on). My advice is to select whatever has the highest eloquence unless you have an argument that multiplies its value based on the arguments adjacent to it.





Keep in mind, Adjacent tiles mean Up, Down, Left, and Right of an argument. Diagonals are not accounted for.

During a Verbal Duel, Two of your arguments can combine into a much more powerful one. You can see which ones are able to do this by looking at your verbal duel argument deck.

Potential Cheese????

My usual strat is to just spam "witty barrage" and blue arguments for maximum multiplier.
witty barrage can also combine with "Classic Quotes" for a powerful argument of "let's agree to disagree"



Witty Barrage can stack with itself as well.

Abilities

Abilities can be Earned by completing tasks or asking NPCs to Teach you.

Ability	How to Earn	What it does
Fly On Water	Jump on the surface of water	Reduces the amount of energy used
Quingong	Jump | Enlightenment Stone	Big Jump | Double Jump | Triple jump
Fly On Snow	Carry Past Max Encumberance	Increases Max Encumberance
Wall Walking	Climb on walls | ??Sage Unlock Method Unknown.??	Climb speed | ???????
Fist |Weapon | Kick | Concealed Weapon | Palm Usage	Use the appropriate moves while in combat	Increases respective Move Damage
Iron Bone	Get Hurt	Increases Vigor, and Reduces Enemy Move Damage
Technique	Use moves in combat | Use Wooden Training Dummy to unlock sage	Increases the number of options you have in combat
Beg	Beg	Beg (but for more value)
Sneak	Sneaking (crowded places award more exp) | ??Trainers broken?? | Use the Talk Function to talk to sneaky people to level to max	Reduces the ability of enemies to detect you while sneaking
Establishment	Build Stuff or Plant Sect Banners	Unlocks more Advanced Building Modules
Cooking/Weave/Forge/Produce	Craft Items from their respective skill sets	Unlocks more stuff to craft
Tame	Tame an Animal	Allows specific animals to do specific abilities.
Geomancy (stealing and lockpicking)	Steal and Lockpick	increases lockpicking speed, and the amount of item value you can steal in one go
Wine Art	Make Wine and Drink Wine	Increases Alcohol Tolerance
Leechcraft	Make healing items at a crucible	Allows you to make more advanced healing items
Music	Play an Instrument	Lets you play new scores of music that affect npc mood
Empower Spirits	Debates	Increases your character's max spirits
Open Mind	Verbal Duel	Gives you more options to pick from when in verbal duels
Basic Debate	Win Debates	Unlocks new Verbal Duels to use
Rethink	Combine Verbal Duels while in a Debate	Gives you more re-rolls to your verbal duel pool
Contemplation	Remove Verbal Duels in a Debate	Gives an extra chance to remove duels
Ability	How to Earn	What it does

LEVELING UP ABILITIES TO MAX

Because the game's sage ability trainers are still bugged, a workaround to needing them is to simply talk to various npcs in the world about the skill you'd like to level up. For example, if you wanted to master geomancy, you could talk to bandits 20 times about geomancy in order to rank up to the last tier of it. Each time you want to level up an ability by talking about a topic, you will need to talk about that topic 20 times. There is a cooldown when talking to one specific npc about a topic, so you will need to either wait or find multiple people knowledgeable in that ability.

Meridians

1 chi = 1 hex worth of movement.
The meridian flows one way and has to connect back into the core when you're done, otherwise you get no passive boost. I highly recommend you make your character go to sleep so you can learn your first meridian pattern.

The patterns are learned from npcs and skill books.

DAMAGE AND DEBUFFS TO YOUR MERIDIANS

Damage and Debuffs to Meridians can be cured by linking your chi through every damaged node.
If you do not have enough chi for every damaged node, try match nodes of the same type first.


you need to wait a brief duration after all damage is linked so the debuff can be cured.


If the debuff is one that you cannot deal with normally, you cannot heal it without either a doctor's help, or with the breathing technique GOLDEN ACUPUNCTURE. This skill can be learned from a doctor after meeting the leechcraft and NPC affinity requirements or by reading a skill book (Active Karma Bonuses will make even an early game character able to earn this skill without needing leechcraft)


Golden Acupuncture instantly clears all debuffs next to one of the square/tri/circle nodes in your meridians when you channel chi through it. It does not, however, allow you to clear a debuff instantly if it is not next to one of these nodes. If your broken leg is not directly next to a square/tri/circle, you'll still need to go to a doctor to fix it.

OPTIMIZING YOUR MERIDIANS.

Unlike the example above, merdians don't have to just have one flow out. As long as it links back into your core, you can have as many flows connect to different nodes.
EXAMPLE:

The red and blue complete one full loop. The orange and green feed into the blue and red loops.
The orange circle shows one node that is completely useless for making any sort of pattern in this example BUT you should still loop through as each acupoint node still provides a passive benefit.

Experiment. Customize. Don't just blindly follow the path I made. (but also, if you find a better meridian build pls share cuz am stupid)




YOU CAN INCREASE THE SIZE OF YOUR HEALTH POOL AND ADD ACUPOINTS WITH A LEARNED NPC BREATHING TECHNIQUE

You can permanently increase your inner chi for a character by consuming Chi increasing items such as the ones that can sometimes be purchased on merchant ships

Meridian Ailments

DOUBLE DIPPING

So as it turns out, you can double/triple/quadruple/quintuple your buffs from individual acupoint nodes by connecting more meridian threads to the start of a chain. What do I mean by this?
Each acupoint node gives you a minor buff to your attack/vigor/load. Each chain through that node gives you that acupoint buff. If you connect multiple threads through an acupoint, you get the passive bonus AGAIN.

Visual Example of a Meridian that doesn't double dip:

One flow out, One flow in.
Here are the stats:

However, if we Double Dip... (red is the very first node in the chain, blue arrow is the feed into the center)


We'll see our stats are MUCH higher!

NPC Interaction Menu Explaination

THIS SECTION WAS INCREDIBLY OUTDATED. EDITING TO BE MORE RELEVANT TO THE LATEST PATCH AS OF 2/5/2024

INTERACT

FOLLOW: Your character follows that NPC.
SPAR: A nonlethal duel for exp
CURE: Allows you to heal NPCs. This improves the NPC's attitude towards you.
VERBAL DUEL: Allows you to have a "friendly" debate with the NPC.
BATTLE (Hostile Action): Like spar, but is an act of aggression that the NPC did not consent to.
Mark as Enmity(Hostile Action): Instantly starts a feud between you and the NPC.
Use Skill: Allows you to do some damage to an NPC using one of your skills.
Get Bio: Bribe NPC to learn more about them.

TRADE

Allows you to barter for items in the NPC's Inventory. Giving the NPC a deal doesn't net you any favor. HOWEVER, through the verbal duel system, you can haggle for a better price. Will do a Verbal Duel section the instant I figure out what the hell is going on.

GIFT

Allows you to give away some of your wealth to an NPC in exchange for them liking you more. Optimal Cost-to-Favorability would be 500 coins for 50 positive NPC favorability.

REQUEST

LEARN: Ask the NPC to teach you something. The NPC needs to like you in order for them to teach you anything.
HIRE: Hire an NPC to do a task for you.
FOLLOW ME: Ask an NPC to follow you.
CURE: Ask an NPC for medical aid

ASSIST

TEACH: Teach an NPC one of your skills, abilities, or breathing techniques.
QUEST: Ask an NPC for a quest
CURE AILMENT: Not really sure what makes this one different than "Cure" will update later.

VIEW

VIEW RELATION: Allows you to see who the NPC is friends and enemies with.
VIEW SKILLS: Allows you to see what combat skills they can use.
VIEW INNER KUNGFU: Allows you to see what passives they have.

TALK

Allows you to have a conversation with the NPC. This is how you can become intimate with an npc, talk to them about their interests, or invite them to join your sect.

STEAL

Hostile Action, must be sneaking to do.

POISON

Hostile Action. Must be sneaking and have a means of poisoning the NPC. This is generally pretty weak and currently not worth your time.

Crime and Villainy

[Had a similar section to this one that was full of information that was no longer accurate. Starting from scratch]

SNEAKING

To start sneaking, press G [by default].


As you can see, the world turns blue and white. Around your character, you'll see two white rings. The larger of the two rings is the radius in which characters can start to hear you. The smaller of the two rings is the distance in which enemies almost instantly detect you.

Blind NPCs can hear you from slightly further away compared to NPCs that can see.

Sneaking behind objects can prevent you from being spotted by NPCs in shops. Even Bookshelves can be hidden behind despite the obvious gaps.

Every NPC in the game has an ear and an eye next to them, representing if the npc can hear you or see you (obviously). HOWEVER. CURRENTLY. If you are equipped with a sable, a snake, or both, you will see an ear and an eye perpetually around your character. that is because your pets are attached to you, and therefore can see and hear you at all times.

PRESSING MOUSE 1 WHILE SNEAKING THROWS YOUR THROWABLE WEAPON IN THE DIRECTION OF YOUR MOUSE CLICK. BE CAREFUL.

LOCKPICKING AND LOOTING

The level of your geomancy skill determines how much monetary value you can loot at once. Time freezes while looting, so as long as you're not within direct ear or eyeshot of an NPC, you can take however much you want. This is great for stealing every single martial art from every sect in the game.

PICKPOCKETING

Pickpocketing makes noise. Npcs will likely turn around while pickpocketing them. sometimes you can get away with a successful attempt right as they turn around. It's kinda jank though, and I recommend just getting them drunk and looting their passed out body.

MURDER

I generally recommend against murder in this game, but if you want to get away with murder, I suggest knocking someone out, forcefeeding them alcohol, and then dropping them off of a cliff several times. If you do it the traditional way, you get spattered with blood, people generally don't like it, and you can even have martial arts masters sent after you. If dropping them off of a cliff isn't your style, putting them inside an active volcano or frozen tundra should also do the trick for you.

GU WORMS

Generally speaking, implanting worms in people's bodies is frowned upon. At least until you put the third type of worm; the "Love Worm" inside them. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

Just be warned: a person infected with the love worm will count as an intimate relationship. Your spouse will count it as infidelity.

DESTROY INNER KUNGFU

When you beat someone in combat, you have the option to completely remove that enemy's ability to do a certain skill or have a certain passive. In previous updates, this was something you could do freely. Now, matching the wuxia genre, this is considered by basically every martial artist to be a "♥♥♥♥ move". Expect to get your ass kicked if you do this willy nilly.

IMPRISONING NPCS

When you knock out an NPC, you have the option to lock them in a cage and interrogate them. Using this evil method, you can force NPCs to do your bidding, torture them, or slowly stockholm syndrome them into liking you.

CLEARING YOUR NAME

Once the eunuchs start coming after you for your sins, your crime does not go away on its own. you can either spend time in prison, or you can resist arrest and initiate a conversation with them. Select interact, talk, (introduce yourself if you haven't already) and clean your sins. The bribe for me when I was at tier 3 was about 10k or 13k.

Karma

Permanent upgrades/tweaks for future descendants. Some are positive, some are negative, some are mixed. After unlocking them, you start with extra spendable karma points.

When your character dies, or you start a new character, you can choose between which karma effects you'd like to have active. Some of these are enabled by default at the start of a new character.

Karma	How to Earn	What it does
Restricted	Get Locked in a Cage	start life locked in a cage, but with a treasure map
Vigorous	Starts unlocked	+50 Vigor
Chiful	Starts unlocked	innate true chi +10
Bloody Feud	Die while an enemy you're feuding with is still alive (This one has to be re-earned every life return to karma)	Start life in a feud with someone, but they have a unique skill for you to learn
Blind	Get affected by the blind debuff (you can trigger this with multiple stacks of poison. may take a while)	Better stealth detection and throwing skill
Disabled yet resolved	Break your legs	Start life with a broken leg, but earn exp 50% faster
Ominous	Start 30 feuds	Can't form positive relations with others, but your damage scales off of how many people hate you. Incompatible with some other karma options
Affectionate	Gain 15 Lovers (intimate relationship)	Makes your character more attractive to the opposite sex but increases jealousy of the same sex
Irresistibly charming	Earned through the disguise skill, which currently cannot be obtained	???
Wonderous manifestation	Survive 3 days without a sect	Have a strange appearence but a unique breathing technique
Talented	Win the martial arts tournament	No skill learn requirements for skill books
Beast tongue	Tame 5 different animals	Can talk to animals, tame them without battling first, and have many of the same type
Wise within foolish	Survive 21 days	abilities take longer to learn, but you get one more move in combat
Ice Physique	Get debuffed with freezing 1000 times	Moves have a 30% chance to inflict cold and you have -10 total max cold stacks
Fire Physique	Get burned 1000 times	Moves have a 30% chance to inflict scorching and you have -10 max heat stacks
Venom physique	Get poison debuffed 49 times	Moves have a 30% chance to inflict poison, and you have -10 max poison stacks
Under a lucky star	Help others 10 times through quests (needs to be re-earned every return to karma)	Chance for additional resources to be granted from resource nodes. Only applies to your next life
Ill Fate	Murder an innocent (needs to be re-earned every return to karma)	More likely to be struck by lightning. You are forced to start with this in your next life and it can be mitigated by donating money at an incense burner or burying bodies for merit. (Do NOT destroy or defile graves as your merit will reduce by 1000.)
Noble Scion	Become sworn brothers/lovers with 2 sect heads	Character creator family section will include families with special knowledge on abilities.
Pristine Birthright	30 intimate relations OR 30 grudges OR 1,000,000 coins in your character's inventory or an inventory your character owns when your character dies / returns to karma	A VERY POWERFUL breathing technique. Blows everything else in the game out of the water by miles . Activate it once, and your character gets a permanent boost

Tips and Tricks

Tips I've learned over time

1: Poo can be used to fertilize farmland to cut down on the time it takes for plants to grow

2: Talk to people about the topics they're interested in. If you succeed the ability check, it's +5% exp towards the next level in that ability. Use this to level up Stealth and Geomancy (it's called thaumaturgy when the bandits talk about it. Oh by the way, bandits talk about stealth and geomancy.)
This also helps leveling up production skills without wasting a LOT of resources.

3: The quickest way to level Iron Bone is to find some brambles in the world that you can damage yourself with. Place a shack down nearby to heal back up.

4: The best use for lineage points should be on the abilities that take the longest or require the most resources to level up. Weaving, Forging, Sneak, and Geomancy are my preferred first picks. From there, I like to max technique and Iron Bone. Quingong max tier requires an enlightenment stone, so perhaps you may want this one as well.

5: on the opposite side, do NOT waste your points on Establishment (can be leveled up by placing sect banners on unclaimed squares)
Wine arts (make wine, drink wine, get 50 stacks of drunk at a doctor and lay down on a sick bed before you pass out)
Fly on snow (you'll be overencumbered with money for 95% of the game)
Fly on water (literally just jump on water)
Any of the Move Skills ( it really does not take that long to level these up if you build the move you want to level up)
Music (it takes like 2 in game days of playing on the zhuge to max it out, this one's easy)

6: You can copy mastered skills and breathing techniques into manuals on shelves that you own. This can be used to quickly allow your next character to have easy access to previously learned skills/techniques. This can also be a great way to earn money.

7: You can grab buckets of water from wells to put out fires with

8: Ice physique is the best body type to have because cold is the more punishing debuff to have.

9: Minterfresh's Merit Farm: "I don't know what Merit even does, but here's a trick. Find a house with a bit of open empty space, build it if you want, you can also use one part of the Da Nei castle. Get a bunch of dead people however you like. Bury them all inside the house somewhat near the main door. You'll get 100 Merit each time. Now go to the door and set the house on fire. The fire will burn up the graves and the corpses fall out. Put out the fire or let an NPC do it. Bury the corpses again, you'll get the more Merit and can repeat."

MAKING MONEY

I decided this needed special attention. A requirement to unlocking the final karma is to earn 1,000,000 coins and then return to karma. You do NOT need all 1,000,000 coins in your inventory when you return to karma, so stash it away for your next character. (Stash a few chi increasing items too since you'll need it)

1: Steal. Just steal from everyone and everything. Steal experience scrolls, steal martial arts techniques, steal resources. Just steal. This will earn you enough money for the next way to earn money which is ;

2: You can copy your mastered martial arts skills and inner cultivation techniques into a bookshelf by paying 1000 coins for each copy you make. If you copy techniques worth 2000 coins, you double your money when you resell. You can sell these hundreds of copies to merchant boats. Use coins to make more copies, use copies to make more coins. I recommend setting up an autoclicker for making copies.

FAQ

This section will be for questions from the comments. I'll sort these into their proper categories as time goes on, so expect this to change.

Q: How do I restore Spirit?
A: Hot Springs, playing music on a zither, or drinking

Q: How do I have multiple of the same animal companion?
A: Beast Tongue Karma enabled on the character you're using.

Sects and Factions

[Redoing this section from scratch due to the previous version being laughably outdated. Coming soon]

JOINING A SECT

At some point very early on, you'll be approached by a random NPC that will offer your character a chance to spawn one of a couple sects to your world. DON'T WORRY, you can fill your world with all of them if you keep playing.

After placing down a sect tile, head over to that area and look for a billboard out front. Interact with it, and pay close attention to the requirements for joining. If you meet the requirements, feel free to join whichever sect you choose.

I'm in! now what?

Assuming the AI pathfinding doesn't mess up, you should be approached by a fellow disciple. This disciple will guide you to the training hall if you allow it to. From here, you can train your technique, or request your fellow disciple to educate you in that sect's martial arts. Interact with the training dummy and train martial arts, this will allow you to gradually learn the skills of your new sect. Training in this way lowers your spirits so make sure to keep track of that so you don't die from hysteria.

RANKING UP IN THE SECT

Once you've earned enough prestige, talk to your boss about a promotion.

[CINDØRmir]

Where do i check my sect reputation and stuff?

[ALMSIVI]

To unlock the third character slot is it the same condition as the first slot?

[ForemostCrab7]

@very person
Dying is a MUST for it to unlock, you were never meant to play as a single character.
Return to Karma somewhere safe, or put all your items in a box in a house you own and then go collect it on rebirth.

[very person]

I've got 30 enemies on my character but it only seems to give me pristine birthright when I get killed and return to karma, though not when I get captured at the far north of the map. Does anyone know what to do?

[ForemostCrab7]

Also forgot to add, there is no repeatable way to increase Vigor, the soft cap is 15K through Meridians and a parent with high vigor from the get go.

[ForemostCrab7]

@Koda Chan
I am not certain that reaching 20k on it's own is actually possible, the highest i've gotten to is 15k, however if you wear an Armor you can craft, it Doubles your Vigor when worn, bringing you up to 30k...Not that you'd ever Need that much vigor.

[Koda Chan]

how do you increase your vigor in the end game? in a way that is repeatable if possible to reach like 20k

[ForemostCrab7]

Also works with the Blade that adds 1 Cold for every 100 damage, which might make it easier to figure out the over all damage.
When i use a single Wave Palm it makes the opponent end up with roughly 1,600 stacks of Cold...Or was it 3,200? I forget.

[ubersoul97]

You can find out how much actual damage your skills deal by equipping ''jade sting'' knife, it inflicts 5 poison stacks for every 100 damage dealt to the enemy regarless of the move or skill you use.

[InuAres]

Correct, I recommend teaching every virtuous person on the map "primordial chaos" so you can always learn it right away. Teaching unorthodox/evil people is usually a waste of time or suboptimal.