Brilliant Failure is one of the trickiest Encounters to trigger in Where Winds Meet, but the quest itself is short, charming, and easy to clear once it starts. It takes place in Qinghe and revolves around Elder Yang, a well-meaning inventor whose contraptions keep backfiring.
Brilliant Failure encounter requirements and trigger conditions
Brilliant Failure is an Encounter Quest in the Qinghe region and counts toward your Qinghe Exploration total. It is flagged in some checklists as part of the Finesteed Hamlet group, but the actual trigger is on the far northeastern coast of Qinghe, near a small dock and houses north of Buddha Fort.
Several systems can prevent the encounter from appearing even if you stand in the right spot:
- Active Encounter cap: You can only have a small number of Encounters active at once (players consistently hit a limit of two in practice, while broader documentation mentions three). If you are already tracking multiple Encounters, Brilliant Failure will not start. Finish or abandon other Encounters first.
- Hidden cooldown: Encounter attempts run on an internal cooldown. Walking into the trigger area without meeting the conditions can put the encounter on a real-time timer, delaying your next chance.
- Time of day: Brilliant Failure has a strict time window. It must be started during You Hour, which covers roughly 17:00–19:00 in the in-game clock.
The key is not just being in the area, but entering the water at the dock during You Hour while your Encounter slots are free.
How to start Brilliant Failure (location and reliable trigger)
Step 1: Clear out your Encounter log. Finish or let expire any other active Encounter quests so that no more than one or two Encounters are currently tracked.
Step 2: Open the in-game time menu and set the clock to You Hour (the early evening window between 17:00 and 19:00). Confirm the change before you travel.
Step 3: Fast travel to a nearby landmark such as Buddha Fort, then move north toward the small coastal hamlet at the top-right edge of Qinghe. Look for a fishing dock with two or three boats moored out from the pier.
Step 4: From the cliffs or high ground behind the dock, use a lightness skill such as Meteor Flight or a long glide to launch yourself over the pier and land in the river just offshore. Aim to splash down between the boats or slightly beyond them, not right next to the shoreline.
Step 5: Once you hit the water, swim back toward the dock area. When the encounter triggers correctly, the game will cut in with an Encounter prompt and reveal a man on the bank mourning his drowned goose. This automatically starts Brilliant Failure.
Players have also triggered the encounter by simply climbing down the dock ladder and entering the water during You Hour, then swimming a short distance away and back. The airborne approach from Finesteed Hamlet or Buddha Fort is more consistent because it guarantees you cross the hidden trigger volume from outside the zone.
Brilliant Failure quest walkthrough
Detailed quest flow
Step 1: After the encounter starts, approach the man on the riverbank. He is grieving over his dead goose, which is lying nearby in the water.
Step 2: Talk to him. He introduces himself as Er Mengzi and explains what happened: Elder Yang built a metal wing for the goose to help it fly, but the invention was far too heavy, and the bird sank and drowned instead of taking off.
Step 3: With that context, travel to Elder Yang’s residence. Enter and speak with Elder Yang. At first, he brushes you off and shows little interest in discussing the failed invention or the consequences.
Step 4: Challenge Elder Yang to a Gift of Gab debate to get through to him. This uses the Scholar persuasion mini-game. Choose dialogue options that press him on responsibility and safety rather than mocking his ambition.
Step 5: Win the debate. Once you defeat him in Gift of Gab, Elder Yang becomes more reflective and less dismissive. He acknowledges some fault and decides he wants to prove himself properly.
Step 6: Elder Yang invites you to assist with his next big experiment. He asks you to return the following day at Shen Hour, which is a later-evening time slot on the in-game clock.
Step 7: As you leave Elder Yang’s home, his disciple Yang Ming stops you. Ming warns that the upcoming experiment is extremely dangerous and hints at using a safety device or “contraption” to reduce the risk to his master.
Step 8: Open the clock and set the in-game time forward to the next day at Shen Hour. Make sure the date flips over; do not simply move within the same day’s time window.
Step 9: Return to Elder Yang’s residence at Shen Hour. This time, you find him hefting a strange weapon-like device. He proudly describes it as an “indestructible weapon” that can fire self-loading projectiles.
Step 10: Watch the sequence as Elder Yang insists on testing the weapon on himself. You and Yang Ming try to intervene, but the device triggers anyway, blasting Elder Yang off his feet and flinging him out of view.
Step 11: Once control returns, search the area around his home. Walk behind the house and check near the trees on the slope; Elder Yang is lying on the ground beneath one of them. Talk to him to complete the encounter. He admits that his experiment failed yet again, but vows to keep chasing his ideas until he finally succeeds.
Brilliant Failure rewards and progression impact
Finishing Brilliant Failure grants a set of modest but useful rewards tied to early-game progression in Qinghe. Players receive:
- Echo Jade ×20 – premium currency for pulls and shop items.
- Qinghe Exploration ×50 – a significant bump for the region track.
- Coin ×5,000 – standard spending currency.
- Stored EXP ×5,000 – bankable experience you can convert into character levels later.
The Exploration points mean Brilliant Failure is effectively mandatory for anyone chasing 100 percent completion in Qinghe or aiming to clear all Encounter entries in regional logs.
Common Brilliant Failure problems and workarounds
Encounter refuses to trigger at the dock
If the dock remains empty no matter what you do, run through these checks:
- Free your Encounter slots: Open the quest log and ensure you are not already tracking multiple Encounters. Finish or let timers expire, then leave Qinghe for a few minutes of real time before returning.
- Confirm You Hour before entering the water: Do not change the time after you arrive. Set it before you fast travel or glide in, and verify the clock is still showing the correct hour when you jump.
- Approach from outside the trigger zone: Standing on the dock and spamming time changes tends to hit the internal cooldown. Leave the whole coastal area and re-enter from the sky or from further inland, landing into the water.
- Change your landing position: If dropping straight down off the dock does nothing, try the glide-and-splash method: overshoot the pier, land between the boats or just beyond them, then swim back toward shore.
It may still take more than one attempt. Giving the game a “break” by doing other content for a while, then coming back and repeating a clean You Hour entry from the air, has resolved stubborn cases for many players.
Related Qinghe Encounters that cause confusion
Brilliant Failure is often chased at the same time as two other difficult Qinghe Encounters: Where the Soul Returns and Paralyzed by Panic. These do not directly interact with Brilliant Failure, but they share similar issues around hidden prerequisites, weather or time conditions, and internal cooldowns.
Where the Soul Returns (overview)
Where the Soul Returns is tied to the Northern Vow storyline near General Shrine:
- Progress the Northern Vow Fort content and complete the underground chamber puzzle so that both Liu brothers are fully resolved.
- Speak to the injured brother at his post again after clearing the ruins, then involve their sister at General Shrine by the creek.
- Later, travel north from Encircling Lake along the road toward a Y-shaped fork with a small makeshift rest spot. An old man appears there and starts the Where the Soul Returns encounter.
This NPC can be stubborn about spawning. Changing the time (including night hours), leaving the area for a while, and looping back in from Riverview Terrace toward the fork has helped trigger him reliably once all family-related prerequisites are complete.
Paralyzed by Panic (overview)
Paralyzed by Panic is associated with Encircling Lake and is highly sensitive to how you enter the zone:
- The encounter expects rainy weather, though some players have successfully triggered it without heavy rain once the internal conditions were satisfied.
- Standing still at the lake shrine usually does nothing; you must enter the lake area from outside its bounds, often by walking or dropping in from the surrounding cliffs.
- One reliable pattern is to set the weather to rain (whether through natural time-skipping or creative use of photo mode filters that “stick” when you teleport quickly), then fast travel to the Encircling Lake shrine, run up the road, make a sharp turn toward the ridge, and jump from the cliff down into the lake.
As with Brilliant Failure, if the encounter does not appear after a few clean entries into the area during the right conditions, step away to other content and come back later rather than repeatedly tripping the cooldown.
Brilliant Failure sits in the middle of these encounter quirks: strict time gating, invisible trigger volumes, and a quiet cooldown system that punishes trial-and-error at the wrong moment. Once you align You Hour, your Encounter slots, and a fresh entry into the water near the northeastern dock, the scene with the drowned goose should finally play out, and Elder Yang’s latest misadventure can unfold.
