Bitter Seasons is an Epic Inner Way in Where Winds Meet that turns every hit you land into a chance to poison and shred an enemy’s defenses. It works with any weapon, scales through multiple tiers, and competes directly with Fivefold Bleed for a damage-over-time slot in many builds.
How to unlock Bitter Seasons
Bitter Seasons is obtained as a tome from a chest that only becomes available after clearing a key campaign boss.
Step 1: Progress the main story until you reach and defeat The Void King, the final boss of the Gleaming Abyss campaign. Clearing Gleaming Abyss also unlocks the Mist Gate area behind this fight.
Step 2: After defeating The Void King, return to the boss arena and head toward the back. A fog door opens here, leading into a secret path known as the Mist Gate.
Step 3: Follow the Mist Gate route. The path eventually opens onto a secluded house surrounded by lavender or purple trees and plants. This is the only building in that pocket area.
Step 4: Go inside the house and open the chest placed within. The chest rewards the Bitter Seasons: Tome, which unlocks the Inner Way once you have the required number of tomes for comprehension.
There is also a separate Region 1 legacy route that leads to Bitter Seasons: you start at the Wraith Village landmark, climb toward a mountain shrine, kneel at a stone pillar to begin a legacy, use the Meridian Touch mystic skill to immobilize two worshippers to open a gate, and loot a golden chest inside that contains the tome. Both routes deliver Bitter Seasons as an Inner Way legacy reward.
Bitter Seasons core effect
At its base level, Bitter Seasons is a universal, attack-focused Inner Way with a stacking debuff:
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Type | Inner Way (Internal Art), Epic rarity |
| Path | General (no weapon path requirement) |
| Tags | Attack, Debuff, Stacking |
| Weapon pairing | Universal — works with all weapons |
| Trigger | When dealing damage |
| Base proc chance | 10% chance to apply Poison |
| Poison duration | 5 seconds, ticking once per second |
| Defense debuff | −0.6% Physical Defense for 10 seconds per stack |
| Stack limit | Up to 5 stacks; duration refreshed when a new stack is added |
The damage-over-time component is modest. Players testing both Bitter Seasons and Fivefold Bleed consistently see individual ticks around a few percent of a standard light attack. The real value comes from the stacking Physical Defense reduction and, at higher tiers, an additional Physical Resistance reduction and global Physical DMG Bonus.
Because the Poison applies from any damage instance, it synergizes best with fast, multi-hit weapons and skill rotations that produce many separate hits in a short window. Twinblades, rope dart, spear, and umbrella all fit this pattern particularly well, while very slow, single-hit weapons struggle to keep five stacks active before they fall off.
Bitter Seasons breakthrough tiers and upgrades
Like other Inner Ways, Bitter Seasons gains powerful secondary bonuses as you break it through using Bitter Seasons: Notes and reach higher tiers.
| Tier | Breakthrough bonus | Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Tier 1 | Increases Physical Defense reduction per Poison stack to 1.2%. | Doubles the armor shred; at 5 stacks that’s −6% Physical Defense. |
| Tier 2 | Increases Precision Rate based on Solo Mode Level. | Improves your chance to land Precision hits, indirectly raising Critical hit uptime for crit-focused builds. |
| Tier 3 | When attacked, 10% chance to apply one stack of Poison to the attacker. | Turns Bitter Seasons into a partial “thorns” debuff tool in PvP or against aggressive mobs. |
| Tier 4 | Increases Poison application chance on hit to 15%. | Makes reaching and maintaining 5 stacks significantly more consistent, especially on mid-speed weapons. |
| Tier 5 | Increases Physical DMG Bonus by 2.5%. | Flat multiplicative bump to all your physical damage, regardless of whether Poison is active. |
| Tier 6 | At 5 Poison stacks, also reduces the target’s Physical Resistance by 10. | Adds a second layer of mitigation shred, further amplifying burst from all physical sources. |
The later tiers change Bitter Seasons from a niche DoT debuff into a broad physical damage amplifier. Once Tier 5 and Tier 6 are unlocked, you gain a permanent Physical DMG Bonus and a significant spike in damage whenever enemies are fully poisoned, making it attractive even if you are not relying on the Poison ticks themselves.
How Bitter Seasons compares to Fivefold Bleed
Fivefold Bleed is the natural comparison for Bitter Seasons. Both:
- Trigger off regular attacks with a chance to apply a stacking debuff.
- Deal low, periodic damage per stack over a short window.
- Cap at 5 stacks, then add an extra effect at maximum stacks.
The difference lies in what happens at those five stacks and how easy those stacks are to maintain:
- Bitter Seasons focuses on defense reduction. At base, 5 stacks strip 3% Physical Defense (6% at Tier 1), and at Tier 6 they also reduce Physical Resistance by 10. The DoT is small and largely incidental.
- Fivefold Bleed builds up “weeping blood” stacks to trigger a one-time burst of piercing damage at 5 stacks, then (with upgrades) can retain stacks and improve its proc rate.
Player testing in outposts and on bosses such as Lucky Seventeen shows a few key patterns:
- Both Inner Ways deal very small tick damage relative to normal light attacks, on the order of tens of damage per tick versus hundreds per swing.
- Fivefold Bleed’s pierce hit is noticeable but not game-breaking, and can be awkward to trigger, since you often need to spam multi-hit skills to get to 5 stacks before the debuff expires.
- Bitter Seasons stacks more reliably on fast weapons and keeps those stacks up more easily, especially once the application chance is upgraded to 15%.
Community consensus tends to shake out as:
- For pure PvE DPS on bosses: Fivefold Bleed generally has higher raw throughput, especially on multi-hit weapons, because its piercing burst is tuned as direct damage and many bosses are treated as having little or no armor for Bitter Seasons to strip.
- For PvP and tanky enemies: Bitter Seasons shines thanks to reliable defense and resistance reduction, plus the Tier 3 reactive Poison on attackers. Top-tier duelists often favor its debuff profile on physical builds.
- For slow, heavy-hit builds: Neither DoT Inner Way is ideal. If you still want one, Bitter Seasons can be more forgiving because its defense reduction lasts 10 seconds versus the 5-second DoT window, so slower combos can still benefit from the debuff.
In short: pick Fivefold Bleed if you want a self-contained damage option and you’re already hitting very quickly; pick Bitter Seasons if you care about scaling your whole party’s physical damage, stacking crit, or pressuring enemy defenses in PvP.
Best weapons and builds for Bitter Seasons
Bitter Seasons cares primarily about hit volume and physical damage. It is path-agnostic, so it fits into many setups, but some stand out.
Twinblades and rope dart
Twinblades and rope dart generate many independent hits through their normal strings and multi-hit skills. That makes them ideal for:
- Reaching 5 Poison stacks on large targets quickly.
- Maintaining stacks throughout long combos, ensuring near-permanent defense and resistance reduction.
- Taking advantage of the Precision Rate bonus at Tier 2, because more hits mean more opportunities to roll Precision and thus Critical hits.
Many Infernal Twinblades/rope dart builds already lean into crit-heavy gearing and other Inner Ways like Seasonal Edge or Morale Chant. Bitter Seasons slots neatly into these as a universal damage amp that doesn’t interfere with weapon-specific synergies.
Strategic Sword and spear
Strategic Sword builds that center on Sword Morph and Sword Horizon often stack multiple bleed and burst mechanics. Bitter Seasons adds a separate status lane (Poison) that:
- Applies independently of bleed states, so it does not interfere with bleed rotations or Sober Sorrow timing.
- Contributes defense and resistance shred that benefits the Strategic Sword’s high-scaling heavy hits and affinity damage procs.
Spear’s rapid thrusts and multi-hit skills also make it a comfortable fit. Even if bosses ignore armor in some calculations, the Tier 5 Physical DMG Bonus and Tier 2 Precision scaling still push overall damage higher.
Heavy, slow weapons
Weapons like Thundercry Blade that rely on slow, heavy swings are less natural partners for Bitter Seasons because:
- Stacks are harder to build before the 5-second DoT timer expires.
- The Poison uptime on trash enemies may be low because they die before the stacks ramp.
However, if you still want a debuff Inner Way on such a build, Bitter Seasons is more forgiving than Fivefold Bleed. The defense reduction persists for 10 seconds per stack, so even sporadic hits can sustain some armor shred on long-lived targets.
When to slot Bitter Seasons in your Inner Way layout
With only four Inner Way slots, the opportunity cost for a DoT/debuff slot is high. For many meta builds, three slots are effectively locked by weapon-defining Inner Ways (for example, Sword Morph, Morale Chant, and Battle Anthem for Nameless Sword/Spear). That leaves a single flex slot where Bitter Seasons must compete with options like Fivefold Bleed, Seasonal Edge, or additional utility.
Bitter Seasons is usually worth that final slot when:
- Your build hits quickly enough to maintain 5 Poison stacks on priority targets.
- You lean into Critical damage and want more Precision Rate and physical penetration in the late game.
- You participate in a lot of PvP or co-op content where shredding shared targets benefits the whole party.
It is less attractive when:
- Your weapon hits slowly, and you rarely see max stacks before stacks drop.
- You need strong, weapon-specific Inner Ways in every slot to make your core kit functional.
- You care strictly about solo PvE boss damage, and your weapon already synergizes well with Fivefold Bleed’s piercing burst.
Leveling and upgrading Bitter Seasons
Once unlocked, Bitter Seasons still needs breakthroughs to reach its full potential.
Step 1: Reach at least Solo Mode Level 4 (also shown as Level 4 Roaming). This is the minimum progression level required before any Epic Internal Art can advance through tiers.
Step 2: Obtain Bitter Seasons: Notes. These drop from Inner Way Note chests you earn in campaign dungeons like Gleaming Abyss, daily and seasonal shops, the battle pass, and other gameplay rewards. The notes are specific to Bitter Seasons.
Step 3: Open the Develop menu, go to the Inner Ways tab, select Bitter Seasons, and use the Inner Way Breakthrough option to consume the required number of notes and ascend one tier at a time.
Step 4: If you have duplicates for Inner Ways you do not plan to use, recycle them into Vintage Book Plates in the Develop > Tips Recycle screen. Then trade these plates for targeted note packs in the Tips Exchange, focusing on general notes and any packs that list Bitter Seasons among their possible rewards.
Because note chests award random scrolls, upgrading Bitter Seasons to Tier 6 is a long-term project rather than a quick unlock. The biggest breakpoints are Tier 1 (doubling the defense shred), Tier 4 (better Poison uptime), and Tier 6 (physical resistance reduction), so prioritize reaching these first.
Bitter Seasons is not a flashy Inner Way. Its Poison ticks will not carry a build by themselves, and raw parsers often favor Fivefold Bleed in clean boss fights. But once fully leveled, it quietly stacks defense and resistance reductions, pushes Precision and Physical DMG Bonus, and makes every fast-hitting physical build feel a little sharper. In a game where many Inner Ways are narrow and weapon-locked, that kind of universal, percent-based scaling is exactly what late-game loadouts tend to reward.
