Hollow Vale sits on the Sect screen in Where Winds Meet like a locked door: visible, fully themed, and completely inaccessible. Players see its rules, its Soulshade Umbrella weapon, and even its Valley Master, and then hit a hard stop when they try to join.
Hollow Vale status in Where Winds Meet
In the current international release, Hollow Vale is listed among the 11 Sects but cannot be joined. On the Sect menu, joinable factions like Well of Heaven, Silver Needle, Midnight Blades, and Nine Mortal Ways include a Status button that opens their reputation and shop pages. Hollow Vale lacks that join/status option and is marked as having no known Entry Clue.
The in‑game description of its Entry Clue is blunt: Hollow Vale is too secretive and “no one knows how to join for now.” There is no Elder location, no quest chain, and no Jianghu Errand leading into the sect.
Community experience lines up with that messaging: Hollow Vale is not available at launch, not implemented on the Chinese servers, and effectively sits in the game as future content.
How to (not) join Hollow Vale
The short answer is simple: there is no way to join Hollow Vale right now.
| Action | Result for Hollow Vale |
|---|---|
Open Sects tab in the main menu |
Hollow Vale appears in the list with rules and weapon info. |
Go to Join Sect page |
Hollow Vale shows no usable Entry Clue interaction. |
Use Enter Clue in the bottom‑right |
Other Sects give map hints; Hollow Vale does not provide a joinable clue. |
| Explore Jianghu for Hollow Vale recruiters | No recruit NPCs or Elder for Hollow Vale are present in the live build. |
Other Sects use a consistent pipeline:
- Pick a Sect in the menu.
- Hit
Enter Clueto get a location or NPC name. - Track down the clue in the open world.
- Complete a short initiation quest (healing, PvP, theft, or trickery).
Well of Heaven, Silver Needle, Midnight Blades, and Nine Mortal Ways all follow that pattern. Hollow Vale breaks it by offering lore but no path in.
Developers have framed Hollow Vale, Inkbound Order, and several other factions as expansion or later‑patch content. Until a patch flips that switch, any claim of a “secret” current‑version unlock for Hollow Vale does not match the game’s own systems.
What Hollow Vale is designed to be
Even without a join flow, Hollow Vale is fully sketched out thematically. The sect is framed as a Yin‑Yang style faction: disciples are as skilled with poison as they are with healing, and their entire philosophy hinges on keeping life and death in equilibrium.
| Element | Hollow Vale details |
|---|---|
| Core fantasy | “Life and death must be in perfect balance”; cold‑hearted on the surface, surprisingly compassionate in practice. |
| Reputation | Expected to rise when you keep healing and poison in balance, and fall when you ignore sect rules. |
| Playstyle | Hybrid healer–poisoner with a strong role‑play hook around moral ambiguity. |
| Signature weapon | Soulshade Umbrella, a martial weapon that mixes defensive, healing, and toxic effects. |
| Leader NPC | Jiang Meiyan, the current Valley Master of Heartless Vale, carrying lethal poison in his own veins. |
The sect’s internal motto spells it out clearly: “Where there is life, there must be death; where there is death, there must be life.” Healing without consequence is seen as breaking the natural order; so is killing without understanding the cost.
Hollow Vale rules: how healing and poison are meant to work
Hollow Vale is one of the few Sects whose rules already appear in full, even though you cannot join. Two stand out and hint at how its mechanics will eventually function.
| Rule name | Requirement | Practical impact |
|---|---|---|
| No Living Puppets | Do not turn living people into “Sleeping Puppets.” Self‑experiments are exempt. | Pushes Hollow Vale away from certain necromantic abuses, even though it deals with death and bodies. |
| Balance of Life and Death | Use poison once for every life you heal; failing to do so causes self‑inflicted suffering. | Hardwires a 1:1 ratio between healing actions and poisoning actions into sect progression. |
The “Balance of Life and Death” rule is the one players fixate on. The plain reading is strict: every time you heal a life, you must also apply poison at least once to someone or something, or you take a penalty yourself.
Community discussion makes a few reasonable interpretations clear:
- “Every life healed” likely refers to any healing effect you use, whether it comes from fans, the Soulshade Umbrella, or dedicated healer skills.
- “Use poison” does not need to target another player specifically; poisoned mobs and NPC enemies should satisfy the requirement as well.
- Self‑poison may be treated differently, as self‑experimentation is explicitly exempt under “No Living Puppets.”
Other Sects with strong rule flavor, like Raging Tides and Nine Mortal Ways, turn their rules into soft constraints that feed a reputation meter rather than permanent debuffs. Expect Hollow Vale to follow that pattern: breaking the rule hurts your sect standing and may hit you with a temporary drawback, but it will not make your character unplayable.
Soulshade Umbrella skills
Hollow Vale’s martial art is built around the Soulshade Umbrella, a weapon that leans into graceful movement, status effects, and the poison–healing duality. The skill list is already defined.
| Skill | Type | Intended role |
|---|---|---|
| Floating Grace | Skill | Baseline ability that likely combines repositioning with mild sustain or control. |
| Pale Petal | Charged Skill | Stronger, wind‑up move, expected to deliver heavier poison or more impactful healing. |
| Echoes of a Thousand Plants | Special Skill | Ultimate‑style technique tied to Hollow Vale’s life–death theme, probably mixing strong damage, debuffs, or group support. |
Every Sect unlocks its signature martial weapon the moment you join. For Hollow Vale, that moment simply does not exist yet. When it does, the Soulshade Umbrella will slot into the same pattern as Thundercry Blade, Panacea Fan, Infernal Twinblades, and Mortal Rope Dart in other factions.
Hollow Vale, Jiang Meiyan, and Heartless Vale
Hollow Vale is also referred to as Heartless Vale in some texts, a direct reflection of its Chinese name. That “heartless” label is less about cruelty and more about ruthless emotional control: disciples are portrayed as cold‑faced but ultimately righteous, using poison to cure deeper rot in the world.
Jiang Meiyan, the Valley Master, is central to that story. He carries lethal poison within his own body and is still driven by the hope of a cure, alongside the weight of his sister’s sacrifice and past tragedies involving Sleeping Puppets. His history ties Hollow Vale directly to broader Jianghu calamities rather than leaving it as a detached side faction.
That level of narrative setup usually signals a major future content arc rather than a throwaway side sect: expect quests about the Sleeping Puppet disaster, Jiang Meiyan’s condition, and the moral line between using and abusing poison.
How Hollow Vale compares to joinable Sects
If you were planning your character around Hollow Vale, you still need something to do now. The closest live Sects cover pieces of its identity.
| Current option | What it gives you now | Overlap with Hollow Vale |
|---|---|---|
| Silver Needle | Healer‑focused faction with the Panacea Fan and Inkwell Fan, multiplayer healing tasks, and “One Life, One Price” rules. | Covers the pure healing and medical side of the fantasy. |
| Nine Mortal Ways | Trickster faction with Mortal Rope Dart, disguise play, and money‑driven mischief. | Offers poison‑leaning martial options and a chaotic Jianghu flavor. |
| Midnight Blades | Full PvP assassin path built around Infernal Twinblades and karma‑stealing duels. | Matches Hollow Vale’s darker, combat‑heavy side, but without any healing. |
| Sectless | No Sect rules or penalties, progression through Jianghu Errands and a Sectless outfit. | Lets you role‑play a Hollow Vale wanderer in spirit while you wait for real membership. |
Because martial skills are not permanently locked to Sects, there is no penalty in grabbing weapons that interest you now. You can:
- Join Silver Needle for medical fans and healer systems.
- Hop to Nine Mortal Ways for rope dart tricks and poison‑style play.
- Leave and rejoin Sects, keeping the weapon skills you have already unlocked.
The only real constraint is the betrayal lockout: joining, betraying, and rejoining the same Sect adds a temporary ban on leaving again. That matters less if you are only using interim factions as stepping stones while waiting for Hollow Vale to arrive.
Preparing for Hollow Vale while you wait
You cannot force Hollow Vale open, but you can set yourself up so you are ready when it does.
- Level healer and poison tools now. Raise the Healer profession, learn poison‑inflicting martial arts (including toad/frog styles and poison enchants), and practice swapping between support and damage roles.
- Collect Jianghu Errand rewards. Sect Commands feed into global reputation and currency that you can later bring into a new faction’s shop once it exists.
- Stay flexible with Sects. Avoid locking yourself into a long‑term faction fantasy if your heart is set on Hollow Vale. Use Silver Needle, Nine Mortal Ways, or Sectless play as temporary staging grounds.
- Watch major patches. When Hollow Vale becomes joinable, it will come with an Entry Clue, Elder location, and a short initiation sequence, mirroring the four existing joinable Sects.
For now, Hollow Vale is an idea more than a destination: a promised path for players who want to weave healing and poison into one build and live with the consequences. Once the door opens, expect its balance‑obsessed rules to turn that fantasy into a concrete set of choices every time you press a heal or a toxic strike.
