Antiques in Where Winds Meet sit in an odd space between gear, lore collectibles, and exploration checklists. They start life as ordinary items, later become tagged as antiques, and can then be tied into karma, incense, and regional completion. The game does a poor job of explaining that, which is why many players worry they have “ruined” an area by recycling an item too early.
This breakdown focuses on how antiques behave in practice and walks through two of the earliest and most confusing cases: Bamboo Abode and the General Shrine.
How antiques actually behave
Antiques are special versions of equipment or artifacts tied to specific locations and stories. Several patterns show up repeatedly:
| Behavior | What it means in game |
|---|---|
| Starts as normal gear | You can equip or use the item like any other piece of equipment. |
| Later “becomes” an antique | After progressing a related quest or lore beat, the existing item is reclassified as an antique in your records. |
| Tied to a specific sub‑region | Each antique is associated with an area (for example, Bamboo Abode or General Shrine) and counts toward its exploration percentage. |
| Linked to quest objects | Some antiques do not register until you read a specific document or complete a specific action, even if you already looted the chest. |
Antiques also interact with the karma/incense system: item descriptions point you toward “finding their owners” and “past traceable,” suggesting follow‑up exploration and story encounters. For completionists, the important point is that exploration progress is checked when conditions are met, not only at the moment you pick up the item. That is why antiques can retroactively unlock once you read a related letter or finish a quest.
Bamboo Abode antiques (early game)
Bamboo Abode is one of the first regions where antiques appear, and it already shows how unusual their behavior can be. There are two antiques tied to this area.
First Bamboo Abode antique: Ritual Crown
The first antique in Bamboo Abode looks like a standard early‑game piece of equipment:
| Detail | Ritual Crown antique |
|---|---|
| How you find it | Loot a chest in the first main area of Bamboo Abode. |
| Initial state | Appears as a normal item named “ritual crown” that you can equip. |
| When it becomes an antique | After progressing some early lore and quests, the crown is automatically reclassified as an antique for Bamboo Abode. |
Because of this delayed conversion, players often worry that the item “doesn’t count” as an antique. The game does not immediately flag it as such; the antique status is tied to story progress, not just the chest loot.
Second Bamboo Abode antique: Echoes in the shrine
The second Bamboo Abode antique is directly tied to a specific quest and an indoor statue set‑piece. It also overlaps geographically with the General Shrine, which makes the naming confusing.
The quest involved is called Echoes in the shrine. During this quest, you are led into a temple‑like complex that connects to the General Shrine and an underground section.
| Step | Action in Echoes in the shrine |
|---|---|
| 1. Start point | Travel from your checkpoint toward the General Shrine area until you reach the temple entrance. |
| 2. Meet the NPC | At the front of the temple, speak with the NPC standing at the entrance; this kicks off the quest chain. |
| 3. Break the floor | Use your downward smash on the marked floor panel near the entrance to drop into the underground area. |
| 4. Clear the dungeon | Fight through several enemies and open doors; this area is reused for multiple objectives. |
| 5. Reach the statue room | Progress until you reach a large statue in a larger chamber. |
| 6. Climb the statue | After the combat encounter in this room, repeatedly jump and climb to the top of the statue’s head. |
| 7. Collect the antique | On the top of the statue’s head sits the second Bamboo Abode antique; pick it up to add it to the region’s exploration. |
The jump to the statue’s head can be picky about positioning and timing. Expect a few failed attempts before you stick the climb and reach the item. Once collected, Bamboo Abode should show two antiques completed, assuming the ritual crown has already converted.
General Shrine antique: why it is easy to miss
The General Shrine antique causes more confusion than the Bamboo Abode, mostly because the crucial story object that unlocks it is not in the same place as the chest that finalizes it. To complete the antique entry for the General Shrine, two things must be true:
| Requirement | Where and how |
|---|---|
| Read “Lea Yan’s final words” | Acquire and read a quest document in the Northern Vow Ruins, outside the General Shrine area. |
| Open the correct chest in the underground shrine | Loot the chest at the top of the ladder near the end of the General Shrine underground dungeon. |
Order does not matter. You can open the chest first and read the document later, or read the document first, then open the chest. The antique only registers once both conditions have been met at least once on that character.
Step 1: Get and read “Lea Yan’s final words” in Northern Vow Ruins
The key story document for the General Shrine antique sits in the Northern Vow Ruins, not in the shrine itself. The flow there looks like a compact mini‑dungeon:
| Stage | What to do in Northern Vow Ruins |
|---|---|
| Entrance | Travel to Northern Vow Ruins and speak with the NPC outside the main gate to start the sequence. |
| Courtyard battle | Go through the gate and defeat all enemies in the courtyard, including a mini‑boss on the east side. |
| Torch puzzle (simple case) | If you have not touched any torches yet, light only two ground‑level torches: one directly opposite the main gate at the far end of the courtyard, and one near where you fought the mini‑boss on the east side. |
| Torch puzzle (reset case) | If you already fiddled with torches and nothing happens, leave only four torches lit: the two ground‑level torches just mentioned plus the two torches on top of the towers at the opposite side of the courtyard. All other torches should be off. |
| Open the floor | Once the torches are correct, open the courtyard chest to trigger a cutscene showing that you can break the floor via a jump and downward strike (L3 by default). |
| Drop below | Jump and use the down‑smash on the highlighted floor panel to open a hole and access the lower level. |
In the lower level, you are funneled through a short sequence:
- Interact with the main quest marker to “investigate” and gain a new pose.
- Move into the next room with a large statue and use the new pose on the statue to rotate it.
- Solve a wall‑button puzzle: press two specific buttons on the right‑hand wall and one button on the far left of the left‑hand wall. If earlier experimentation scrambled the layout, match the pushed/unpushed pattern to the expected final configuration to reopen the door.
- Pass through the opened doorway into a room with a waterfall, then walk behind the waterfall to find a lever.
- Pull the lever to open the final door leading to a large chest.
In this final chamber:
- The big chest contains the Touch of Death mystic skill.
- Immediately to the left of that chest lies the document Lea Yan’s final words.
Pick up the document, then manually read it from your inventory:
- Open your bag.
- Navigate to the Quest items tab.
- Select Lea Yan’s final words and choose the option to read/archive it.
Reading the letter is essential. Simply owning the item is not enough for the General Shrine antique to count. Once it is read and archived, the game internally marks that story as recognized for your character.
Step 2: Clear the General Shrine underground and open the ladder chest
With Lea Yan’s letter read, you can now satisfy the second half of the requirement in the General Shrine itself.
From the General Shrine entrance:
- Look for the breakable floor panel to the left of the main shrine building.
- Use your down‑smash (again bound to L3 by default) to shatter the panel and drop into the underground area.
This underground space is a short dungeon: a few enemies, a couple of simple environmental interactions, and a clear forward path. Follow it until you reach a ladder that climbs back up toward the main shrine level.
The critical chest for the antique sits at the top of this ladder, in the small area just before the path reconnects with the shrine above. Open this chest while your character has already read Lea Yan’s final words, and the General Shrine antique entry will be completed.
If you opened the chest earlier, before reading the letter, there is no need to reset anything. As long as the chest has been opened at some point and you subsequently read the letter in your quest items, the antique will still be credited. The game retroactively reconciles both conditions.
What if an antique was recycled early?
Many players worry about dismantling or recycling antique gear before they understand its purpose. The behavior that shows up in practice is:
- The exploration record for a region cares about whether the antique was recognized and its narrative condition satisfied, not whether the exact gear object still sits in your bag.
- For antiques gated by reading a document (such as Lea Yan’s letter), reading that document can immediately flag completion even if the related gear is gone.
That said, the item text for antiques hints at “finding their owners” and resolving their karma. If you want full flexibility for future incense and karma interactions, the safest approach is to avoid recycling anything explicitly labeled as an antique until its associated investigation or encounter is clearly resolved.
Antiques, oddities, and the wider collectibles ecosystem
Antiques are just one slice of the broader collectible systems in Where Winds Meet. Oddities, for example, are another category used to upgrade Melodies of Peace and are handled separately from antiques.
| Type | Role | Acquisition pattern |
|---|---|---|
| Antiques | Region‑tied relics linked to karma, owners, and exploration completion. | Often start as gear, then become antiques after quests, letters, or shrine events. |
| Oddities | Overworld collectibles submitted to Oddity Collectors to upgrade Melodies of Peace. | Come from small puzzles: catching insects, dispelling poisonous flowers, shooting hives, and similar tasks. |
Oddities appear on the minimap with a fairy or butterfly icon and are exchanged with regional Oddity Collectors for talent upgrades in Melodies of Peace (stat boosts and arts). Antiques, by contrast, are more narrative and region‑completion focused, hooking into karma incense and “past traceable” questlines.
The overlap between the two is mostly thematic: both reward exploration and small, self‑contained puzzles. In practical terms, treat oddities as upgrade currency and antiques as story relics that fill in your map and karma lore.
Once these patterns are clear, antiques stop feeling like opaque, missable traps and start to look like what they are meant to be: small, self‑contained stories bound to a place. For Bamboo Abode, that means watching an ordinary ritual crown quietly transform into a relic and climbing a statue for a hidden token. For the General Shrine, it means following a thread from Northern Vow Ruins through torches, statues, and waterfalls until a simple chest finally “clicks” into place in your exploration log.
