For reference on Core 3 back when I was at that part of the gamel personally I was hitting roughly mid 200s Qi with what I had at the point of getting all 10 paragon relics, and was forced to spend several incarnations defaulting to cultivating in Harmonized Settlement, as it gives affinity to everything, so it could auto the harmony bands to give more starting Qi (on top of the Affinity bonuses) so that I could actually get to 370
Not sure about the person who reported this balance issue, they don't seem to mention any specific numbers but I did feel like "wait, did I miss something to push Qi faster?"