How to prepare for Breakthrough 10 in Where Winds Meet

Breakthrough 10 is the turning point for the current season of Where Winds Meet. The level cap jumps from 70 to 75, Tier 71 gear arrives, and several progression systems open up fully for the first time. Players who plan ahead will get into powerful gold sets, finish key upgrades, and spend their limited energy on the right activities instead of chasing dead ends.

Requirements to unlock Breakthrough 10

Advancing to Breakthrough 10 is gated behind two checks:

• Reaching character level 70.
• Clearing Taipang Mausoleum floor 9.

Once both are done, the breakthrough unlocks as soon as the patch hits. If you are still climbing, put your remaining energy into the campaign and Taipang progress rather than side grinds. There is no shortcut around these two conditions.

Tier 71 gear and why it changes your priorities

Breakthrough 10 unlocks Tier 71 gear, including gold-rarity legendary pieces. For this season, Tier 71 is the final gear tier; you will be using it for more than a month, until the season wraps on February 6. That makes this the first tier where aggressive min-maxing is worth the investment.

Two Tier 71 pieces stand out as pain points:

• The bow.
• The ring.

Gold versions of both have a low craft chance of around 3%. The limiting factor here is not just luck but also the weekly-limited materials needed to keep rolling for them, such as Dried Dogwood Berry and Pheasant Feather. Spending those materials on Tier 61 crafts shortly before Breakthrough 10 is a direct loss.

Practical implication: stop crafting Tier 61 bows and rings once your current set is serviceable. Stockpile their shared crafting components so that when you unlock the Tier 71 blueprints, you can chain-craft immediately and give yourself multiple shots at the gold versions in the first days.

Energy, pillow pills, and what to farm before and after

Energy becomes far more valuable at Breakthrough 10 because every point translates either into Tier 71 drops or into the new currencies tied to them.

Two timings matter:

• In the last few days before the breakthrough, many players stop spending energy so it caps at around 500. That lets them dump a full bar into early Tier 71 farming the moment the patch arrives.
• After you are in Breakthrough 10, pillow pills finally become efficient to use. Since Tier 71 is the end-of-season tier and remains relevant until February 6, there is a long enough window to justify burning stored pills to refill energy and grind gear, Shells, and Inner way resources.

Before that point, pillow pills are generally better left unused because previous tiers are quickly outclassed. At Breakthrough 10, the equation flips in favor of heavy farming.

Martial arts, Mystic skills, and Inner ways at Breakthrough 10

Skill systems do not all move forward equally with this breakthrough, which affects where you spend both energy and currencies.

• Martial arts get five more levels, rising from 70 to 75. You can prepare selection chests and other upgrade items now, but you still need to level to 75 to unlock the final ranks. Gold is the main bottleneck; plan for a coin-heavy stretch.
• Mystic skills are capped at Tier 4 and do not expand with Breakthrough 10. If you already have your key mystics at Tier 4, you can ease off Outpost Challenges and other Mystic-skill-focused content for a while.
• Inner ways are the real winner here. With Breakthrough 10, you can push them all the way to Tier 6, which provides a substantial power spike. Inner Way Note Chests and the Tips Exchange become priority sinks since Inner Way levels scale all of your baseline combat stats.

Because Inner Ways finally reach their full seasonal cap, anything that supplies Notes or Note Chests becomes a better use of time than marginal Mystic gains once your mystics are already at version peak.

Hero’s Realm and Sword Trial after Breakthrough 10

Once you break through, both Hero’s Realm and Sword Trial change in important ways: they gain new boss fights and start feeding Tier 71 progression.

In Hero’s Realm, you face Twin Lions and Ghost Master and receive supreme Tier 71 gear chests. These chests carry higher legendary odds than standard drops and also deliver the Tier 71 tuning materials needed for serious stat rolling, so a weekly Hero’s Realm clear becomes non-negotiable for anyone aiming at endgame builds.

In Sword Trial, Sleeping Daost and Murong Yuan stay as bosses, but the reward structure updates. You still earn Tier 71 path chests, but an additional currency appears: Gear Echo: Fiery Heart. This currency is the backbone of the new seasonal shop economy, which is where Breakthrough 10 really starts to reshape gearing.

Gear Echo: Fiery Heart and the new seasonal shop

Gear Echo: Fiery Heart drops from Tier 71 Sword Trial clears and from other energy-using activities, such as outposts and campaign boss runs set to the new breakthrough. It is spent in the seasonal shop, which receives several powerful upgrades around this tier.

The biggest changes are about cutting out randomness.

• You can buy legendary gear chests that let you pick the exact slot and set. If you are missing only a helmet from a specific Tier 71 set, you can spend Gear Echo to force that outcome instead of endlessly gambling broad chests.
• You can buy Shells, a new family of tuning consumables that guarantee certain types of substat rolls. These sit alongside existing “guaranteed gold” mechanics on bows and rings but are purchased directly, which makes fine-tuning less dependent on drop luck.
• Tier 71 Attunement Stones appear in the shop, both for general PvE and for PvP. That makes the seasonal shop one of the primary paths to fully attuned Tier 71 builds.

Because Gear Echo can also be earned in places like outpost rushes, you are not locked into Sword Trial if you prefer other content loops – but the most efficient path usually involves a mix of modes.

Shells and late-game tuning

Shells are consumable items used for tuning Tier 71+ gear. Instead of hoping a random roll lands on the stat you want, you burn a Shell to force the quality or type of the attribute.

The structure looks like this:

The key to efficient tuning is order. First, you use Shells to land the correct types of stats (attack, crit rate, crit damage, affinity, and so on) on each slot. Only after your lines are correct do you invest in separate tuning or recasting tools that increase the values of those stats toward their caps.

Shells are earned in several ways once the system is live. Higher-difficulty Sword Trials are a primary source of Premium Shells, while outposts and joint battles skim off smaller amounts of purple and gold types. Many Shells also come from consuming or recycling gear with high-tier attributes, which is why well-organized players hoard purple and gold pieces instead of breaking them down immediately.

Path Trial, Inner ways, and long-term power

Path Trial in Taipang Mausoleum quietly becomes one of the best returns on time after Breakthrough 10, specifically for Inner Way progression.

The system works on a weekly attempt model:

• You begin with 10 attempts when the feature opens.
• You then receive five attempts per week.
• An attempt is only consumed when you successfully clear a stage. Failure does not spend a charge.

First-time clears of each Path Trial stage deliver large bundles of Inner Way Notes and Note Chests. Since Inner ways can reach Tier 6 after Breakthrough 10, these rewards directly push you toward the new cap without relying purely on random drops.

Picking a path that matches your build identity – for example, your main weapon style or desired role – ensures the bonuses line up with how you actually play. Splitting early attempts across multiple paths dilutes progress and makes it harder to finish any one line before the weekly window closes.

Divine craft and element choices

Divine craft also hits its seasonal ceiling at Breakthrough 10. Each upgrade tier is expensive, typically costing 10 Wolf Frame Weights per step, so trying to push multiple elements in parallel stretches you thin.

The three elemental options behave differently in practice:

• Poison applies steady pressure to the enemy’s Qi (chi) bar, effectively shredding their stamina. This favors solo play and any build that relies on quickly breaking guard.
• Fire is the more straightforward DPS pick and tends to be the go-to for dungeons, raids, and general PvE damage racing.
• Water exists but is widely treated as a low priority in the current environment.

Because Divine craft tiers persist across content and are costly, picking one main element to push first – usually Fire for group PvE or Poison for solo breakers – is safer than trying to keep all three at parity.

Shops, currencies, and things that expire

Several systems and shops quietly gate powerful items behind timers or weekly resets. Staying on top of them before and after Breakthrough 10 prevents avoidable gaps.

• Seasonal shop: Before the patch, it is worth cleaning out recurring staples such as Jades, Inner way items, and Mystic skill breakthroughs. After the patch, the same shop turns into your Gear Echo hub for Tier 71 chests, Shells, and Attunement Stones.
• Battle Pass shop: This refreshes on a fixed schedule and often includes martial arts books, Mystic skill items, and custom materials. Make sure you buy out items relevant to your main weapons and sects before the reset.
• Event shops: Events like the Verse of Winter and other limited-time menus carry skins, Echo Jades, and upgrade mats that do not restock once purchased. If an event store has anything you care about, prioritize finishing it before chasing low-yield farms.
• Hidden weekly purchases: Items such as “Lingering Melody” and certain appearance exchange selections sit behind one-per-week limits and are easy to forget. A quick pass through all shop tabs once a week is a simple safety check.

Even small evergreen purchases add up. The difference between someone who never misses a weekly Jade or Inner way bundle and someone who does is significant by the time Tier 71 gear is on the table.

PvP attunement and stat priorities

With Tier 71 sets and Shell tuning, PvP gear finally stabilizes for a while. That makes it worthwhile to dedicate a full attunement slot to competitive stats.

For anyone who plays arenas or other player-versus-player modes even semi-regularly, the last attunement slot on legendary pieces should be filled with PvP-specific perks rather than more PvE bonuses. These perks typically provide outsized value against other players and are available in their own section of the shop under Arena-related items. Because they are effectively free in currency terms once unlocked, ignoring them is a direct power loss.

If you never touch PvP at all, it is still correct to lean into pure PvE damage attributes, but the general rule at this stage is to specialize each slot toward a clear role instead of running generic mixed rolls.

Guilds, January roadmap, and why timing matters

Breakthrough 10 is also the front door to a crowded January roadmap that leans heavily on group play.

• Week 1: Breakthrough 10 itself and a new Hero’s Realm variant, Sorrow of Mortalbound.
• Week 2: A fresh campaign chapter and Legacy Quest, a new world boss named Nameless General, and the Jianghu Martial Games event.
• Week 3: The Mistveil Prison puzzle cave, Guild Battle pre-season, and the Nine Mortal Ways Base region.
• Final week: Additional story content and catch-up style end-of-season events under labels like Season End Dash.

Guild Battles, in particular, are built around 30v30 matches, and pre-season arrives only a couple of weeks after Breakthrough 10. That narrow window makes early guild involvement important: players who join organized groups now will have people to run Hero’s Realm, raids, and eventually guild PvP with, while also benefiting from guild-specific raids and parties that feed progression mats every week.

When the last breakthrough before a reset lands, it is easy to treat it as just another five levels. Breakthrough 10 is not that. It locks in the season’s final gear tier, lets Inner ways and Divine craft hit their true caps, and introduces Gear Echo and Shells as long-term tuning tools. Line up your level 70 requirement, finish Taipang Mausoleum floor 9, cap your energy and pillow pills, and then spend the first weeks of Tier 71 deliberately: Hero’s Realm and Sword Trial for chests and Gear Echo, Path Trial for Inner ways, seasonal shops for targeted pieces and attunements. Done right, this single patch sets the foundation for the rest of the season.