Ceremonies and evolutions

Some things are not announced like one more skill. When you become a Hero Egg, when the Harvest Festival begins, when your species evolves, the Great Sage speaks with its own line and its own staging. There are two ways to see them: the classic announcement, a veil over the world, and — since 0.0.7 in early access — real full-screen scenes, opaque, cut like Raphael's evolution, when the sageShaderRendering gamerule is on.

The six moments

The Sage watches these states continuously. The first time it sees you, it only records where you stand: reconnecting never replays a ceremony you already passed. The two awakenings absorb the skills they grant: instead of a second announcement stacked on top, the ceremony stays open, adds them to its own sentence ("Tsuzukete, kakutoku shita sukiru o hōkoku shimasu" — "continuing, I shall report the skills acquired"), and only says its closing words after 2 seconds of silence.

When a Demon Lord awakening also evolves your species, the evolution is grafted into the same sentence — "…[old species] より [new species] への進化…" — and the ceremony keeps its identity: a Demon Lord awakening stays red, it is not an ordinary species change.

What the Sage says

Species names are spoken too: 183 species are voiced (see Voice coverage). A species with no voice keeps its impact and its name on screen, with a gap where the word would be.

Classic staging

Each milestone has its palette and above all its direction of motion: you recognise the event by the gesture before you have read a word.

Species evolution has its own scene, built around a shell that can no longer hold what is inside it. The Sage states that the conditions are met and petitions the Voice of the World — then waits, for a long time, because nothing says the request will be granted. Meanwhile the core charges, almost imperceptibly, then all at once; the shell vibrates and light leaks through its seams. The world answers: the shell bursts into twenty plates that tumble away, the core is left bare, then a new shell four times denser (42 vertices, 120 edges) crystallises outward from the centre and locks into place on the exact frame the new species name lands.

Full-screen scenes (shader rendering)

With shader rendering, the five ceremonies and species evolution are no longer a semi-transparent veil: they are opaque full-frame scenes, cut like Raphael's and fed by references from the anime. Each shot falls on a sentence of the voice; Japanese title cards sit at the top, subtitles at the bottom. Each scene has its own ambience running underneath, which ducks by itself under the voice, and impact frames (inverted black and white, speed lines) punctuate the big moments.

The skill report is one card per skill: the rank header in Japanese (-ユニークスキル-), the skill's kanji huge, its name in spaced capitals, a flash sweeping the middle with every card.

If the voice is off or the line is missing, there is nothing to time a scene on: the classic announcement takes over. Ordinary acquisitions always keep the usual announcement.

You are safe during a ceremony

Awakenings often happen mid-fight. Dying during your own cutscene is not part of the game.

Other players hear it too

Since 0.0.7, the True Demon Lord awakening, the start of the Harvest Festival and the True Hero awakening are announced to the whole server by the Voice of the World, in a banner at the top of the screen — even for players who do not carry the Sage. See The Voice of the World.

Settings and commands

Possible values: hero_egg, demon_lord_seed, harvest_festival, true_hero, true_demon_lord. ceremonyHoldTicks (client) sets the silence before a skill-listing ceremony closes.

To watch a scene again without changing anything about your character:

• /greatsage ceremony <type> — replays a milestone;
• /greatsage evolve <from> <to> — replays an evolution (Tensura species ids, for example slime demon_slime);
• /greatsage demo — a Demon Lord awakening that absorbs skills from four ranks.

See Commands. The evolution of the Great Sage itself has its own page: Raphael's evolution.