Inner Ways sit at the core of character power in Where Winds Meet. They are passive skills that run quietly in the background, modifying how your Martial Arts behave, how hard you hit, how fast you recover resources, and even how you heal. With only four slots and dozens of options, they are also one of the easiest ways to waste potential.
Inner Ways basics: passive skills with only four slots
Inner Ways are one of the three main skill types alongside Martial Arts and Mystic Arts. They function as passive effects: once equipped, they trigger automatically when you meet their conditions. Almost all of them work only in combat.
You can equip up to four Inner Ways at once. That limit never increases, so every slot is valuable. The game does not stop you from equipping an Inner Way that does nothing for your current weapons, so you have to read each description and check its weapon requirement yourself.
Inner Ways split into two broad categories:
| Type | Weapon dependence | Examples of effects |
|---|---|---|
| Universal / General | Work with any weapon; sometimes reference Mystic Arts | Flat damage and healing bonuses, poison or bleed stacking, extra Vitality for Mystic Arts, execution lifesteal, movement and dodge tweaks |
| Martial Art–linked | Only meaningful with specific weapons and skills | Extra charges or follow‑ups for a Martial Art skill, stronger shields, increased damage reduction, faster Endurance refunds on a particular weapon |
In the Inner Way menu, each Inner Way shows an icon and a label underneath. That label either lists the weapon(s) it works with (for example, “Nameless Sword / Nameless Spear”, “Strategic Sword / Heavenquaker Spear”) or displays “Universal” in gray for weapon‑agnostic effects.
Because you equip two Martial Art weapons at the same time, a typical endgame setup uses:
- One Inner Way that is core to weapon A
- One Inner Way that is core to weapon B
- One or two Universal Inner Ways that benefit the whole build
How Inner Ways synergize with Paths and weapons
Every Inner Way is tagged with a Path and additional keywords. The Path matches the Martial Arts system: Bellstrike (Splendor or Umbra), Stonesplit (Might), Bamboocut (Wind), Silkbind (Jade or Deluge), or a General tag for Universal options.
That tag is not a restriction, but a hint. Inner Ways tagged with a Path usually:
- Hook into specific Martial Arts from that Path (for example, Nameless Sword or Strategic Sword for Bellstrike)
- Boost damage types associated with that Path (external damage, Affinity damage, or Bamboocut‑type damage)
- Interact with that Path’s usual gameplay loop (bleed stacking, shields, taunts, airborne control, etc.)
A few concrete examples help illustrate how tight that link is:
| Inner Way | Path / Weapons | What it actually changes |
|---|---|---|
| Sword Morph | Bellstrike – Splendor Nameless Sword / Nameless Spear |
When Nameless Sword uses its Charged Skill with a Qi shield present, it fires multiple extra sword energy waves at the second charge stage. You can spend extra Endurance to scale that bonus damage, up to 20%. |
| Sword Horizon | Bellstrike – Umbra Strategic Sword / Heavenquaker Spear |
After a Strategic Sword Martial Art, Special, or Charged Skill, you can press the button again during the ending frames to cast Crosswind Blade, a follow‑up that detonates high Bleed damage when the target has max Bleed stacks. |
| Adaptive Steel | Bellstrike – Umbra Strategic Sword / Heavenquaker Spear |
Grants a Martial Skill effect based on your current blade weapon. For spears, this includes ignoring a portion of the target’s Physical Defense. |
| Rock Solid | Stonesplit – Might Thundercry Blade / Stormbreaker Spear |
After Stormbreaker Spear’s taunt (Storm Roar), you gain additional damage reduction, up to a cap, while slightly lowering your own damage output during that window. |
| Vendetta | Bamboocut – Wind Infernal Twinblades / Mortal Rope Dart |
Extends the duration of the Vendetta/Bounty mark applied by Mortal Rope Dart’s Martial Art Skill and refunds more Tokens that fuel its rat summons. |
Universal Inner Ways, tagged “General” or “Universal”, instead support broad playstyles:
- Envigorated Warrior: +5% to all damage and all healing, but loses its effect for five seconds after being hit and applies a “Cage” debuff that increases damage taken during that downtime.
- Bitter Seasons: A flat chance on hit to poison a target over time and stack Physical Defense reduction.
- Fivefold Bleed: Periodically adds stacks of Weeping Blood that deal damage each second; at five stacks, the debuff converts into a one‑time Piercing hit.
- Fury Harvest: Gives extra Vitality from certain recovery actions, specifically to fuel Mystic Arts.
- Wind Beneath Wings: Reduces Endurance cost of air dashes, briefly boosts movement speed when landing, and restores a chunk of HP whenever you kill an enemy.
These Universal options work well when a build leans on multiple weapons or Mystic Arts and needs flexible stats rather than one more weapon‑locked gimmick.
How to unlock Inner Ways
Inner Ways do not all unlock the same way. The Inner Way menu surfaces the requirements per skill, but the underlying methods fall into three patterns: merchant pages, legacy clues and quests, and Martial Arts Sanctums.
Unlock Inner Ways by buying pages from merchants
Many Inner Ways come as tomes broken into “pages” or “torn pages” sold by specific merchants in the world. You need every page of a set to compile the full tome and learn that Inner Way.
The workflow is simple:
- Open the Inner Way menu (
Main Menu > Develop > Inner Way). - Highlight the Inner Way you want.
- Use the acquisition hint to jump to the merchant listing.
- Confirm the merchant on the world map and travel to them.
- Buy all the required “Torn Pages” or “Notes” for that Inner Way.
- Use the pages in your inventory to assemble the tome and unlock the Inner Way.
Inner Way pages typically cost jade‑like currency, the same premium used for cosmetics and gacha pulls. That makes Inner Ways one of the biggest long‑term sinks for that currency, and a reason to prioritize progression over cosmetics early on.
Unlock Inner Ways by following legacy clues and quests
Some Inner Ways are tied not to stores but to Jianghu legacies. For these, the Inner Way entry references “legacy clues” rather than a merchant.
To work with legacy clues:
- Open
Main Menu > Develop > Inner Way. - Pick an Inner Way that lists clues as its source.
- In the inspection screen, select “Comprehend Inner Way” in the lower‑right corner.
- On the next panel, press “Comprehend the Clue”, then “Explore”.
When your clue progress is high enough, the game highlights a search area on the map. Within that area, an interaction — such as talking to a particular NPC, starting a quest, or investigating a location — eventually rewards the Inner Way tome.
These Inner Ways are often tied to side content like Jianghu Legacy quests or exploration events, and they tend to reflect the flavor of those stories.
Unlock Inner Ways from Martial Arts Sanctums
A third group of Inner Ways is locked behind sect sanctums and the Skill Theft system. These sanctums act as stealth dungeons for Martial Arts and their associated Inner Ways.
The general loop looks like this:
- Locate a Martial Arts Sanctum in the world, usually tied to a weapon sect.
- Infiltrate the sanctum, loot all chests, and perform a Skill Theft on the targeted Martial Art.
- Learning that Martial Art unlocks the Inner Way that is bonded to it.
For example, stealing the Heavenquaker Spear Martial Art inside its sanctum unlocks Wolfchaser’s Art, which compresses the combo requirements for Sober Sorrow and adds extra combo gain when you hit bleeding bosses.
How to upgrade Inner Ways (Breakthrough and Tips)
Unlocking an Inner Way only gives you its Tier 1 version. From there, Inner Ways level up through a Breakthrough system powered by itemized “Tips” or “Notes” for each specific skill. Upgrades move them through higher tiers, each adding incremental improvements along a branching node path.
To use Breakthrough, you first need Solo Mode Level 4. Once that milestone is done, the process is:
- Open the Inner Way menu and select the Inner Way you want to upgrade.
- Enter the Breakthrough or upgrade view.
- Inspect the node tree and the “Tips” requirement for the next node or tier.
- Feed the correct Inner Way Tips or Notes to unlock nodes and raise the tier.
Costs grow with each node: a first node might cost 10 Tips, the next 20, and so on, making fully maxed Inner Ways one of the longest grinds on any character.
Where to get Inner Way Tips and Notes
Inner Way upgrade materials come from several repeatable sources:
- Merchants that sell Tips: Certain NPCs offer a limited number of Tips for a given Inner Way in exchange for jade‑type currency.
- Inner Way Tips tomes from the in‑game shop: In the Inner Way Breakthrough screen, selecting the required Tips material and then choosing more info surfaces “Inner Way Tips – Tome”. From there, you can purchase up to 20 random Tip tomes per week with a separate weekly cap of that shop currency.
- Activity rewards and bosses: Some energy‑gated activities and bosses drop chests that open into random Inner Way Tips across various Paths and rarities.
Randomness is unavoidable. Tomes and drops rarely let you target a specific Inner Way directly, which is where the Tips Exchange and Conversion systems come in.
Tips Exchange: recycling unwanted Tips into what you actually use
The Tips Exchange menu lets you break down surplus Tips and re‑roll them into something closer to your build. It does this in two steps: first turning Tips into a neutral currency, then buying Recommendation Tomes for the Path you care about.
The flow:
- Open the Inner Way main menu and enter “Tips Exchange”.
- Select “Obtain Book Tokens” to reach the recycling view.
- Select Tips you do not intend to use and recycle them.
- Receive Vintage Bookmarks in return. The amount depends on the rarity of each Tip.
- Spend Vintage Bookmarks on Recommendation Tomes aligned with a specific Martial Art weapon or Path.
- Open those tomes to receive a random Tip for Inner Ways tied to that weapon or a Universal Tip for that Path.
This system does not remove randomness, but it sharply narrows the pool. Recycling unused Panacea Fan Tips, for example, can be turned into tomes that only drop Sword‑related or Universal Tips if you are pivoting to a Bellstrike build.
Inner Way Conversion: swapping progress between high‑rarity Inner Ways
Inner Way Conversion is a separate mechanic used to swap the accumulated Tips between two high‑rarity Inner Ways. It does not recycle Tips into currency, it directly exchanges the upgrade counts between two Inner Ways you own.
Key constraints define how it works:
- Only Purple and Gold‑ranked Inner Ways are eligible.
- Conversion costs nothing for the first four uses each season; later uses cost Vintage Bookmarks.
- Both Inner Ways used in a conversion enter a seven‑day cooldown and cannot be used in another conversion during that time.
To perform a conversion:
- Open the Inner Way Conversion menu.
- Place the Inner Way you want to drain Tips from into one slot.
- Place the Inner Way you want to boost into the other slot.
- Confirm the operation.
The Tip counts swap. For example, if Sword Morph has two Tips and Bitter Seasons has three, converting leaves Sword Morph with three Tips and Bitter Seasons with two. This lets you undo early upgrade choices and refocus on a newly acquired core Inner Way without losing weeks of progress.
Notable Universal Inner Ways and why they matter
Among Universal options, a few stand out because they slot into almost any build and directly boost output.
| Inner Way | Role | Effect summary |
|---|---|---|
| Morale Chant | Scaling offensive and healing buff | Attacks or heals have a high chance (with a short internal cooldown) to grant a stack of Yi River, each giving +1% Physical Damage and +1% healing for a few seconds, stacking up to five times. Works for any build that hits or heals frequently. |
| Envigorated Warrior | Baseline throughput boost | Flat +5% to all damage and healing, at the cost of losing the buff for five seconds after taking damage and suffering a 5% damage‑taken increase during that window. |
| Divine Roulette | Skill‑based amplification | On a successful deflect, grants one of three buffs that either increases the next skill’s damage, guarantees a critical hit, or guarantees an Affinity hit, with a 10‑second duration and a 30‑second cooldown. |
| Evening Snow | Emergency sustain | During the first 12 seconds of combat, if your HP falls below 60%, you gain a short Snow Vision regen effect that restores a percentage of max HP plus a flat amount per second. Can trigger once every five minutes. |
| Vital Leech | Execution lifesteal | Whenever you use an Exhaustion Execution Skill, you heal for 8% of the damage dealt, rewarding aggressive play against staggered foes. |
| Wind Beneath Wings | Mobility and sustain | Reduces Endurance cost of aerial dashes for Movement Mystic Arts, briefly boosts movement speed on landing, and heals a percentage of max HP plus a flat amount when killing any enemy. |
| Fivefold Bleed | Damage over time | Gives a flat chance on damage to add Weeping Blood stacks (up to five), each ticking once per second; at full stacks, the effect converts to a single Piercing hit. |
| Bitter Seasons | Defense shred and DoT | Chance on hit to apply Poison that deals damage over time and reduces the target’s Physical Defense per stack, refreshing and stacking up to five times. |
Because these effects require only that you hit or heal — not that you wield a specific weapon — they are ideal when you already committed two slots to weapon‑specific Inner Ways and still want more throughput.
How Inner Ways and Mystic Arts interact
Several Inner Ways explicitly reference Mystic Arts rather than Martial Arts, tying your passive choices to your toolkit of puzzle, movement, and offensive mystic techniques.
- Fury Harvest links to Mystic Arts by giving a 50% chance for certain recovery actions to grant 1 bonus Vitality, the resource used to cast Mystic Arts. It does nothing when you gain Vitality by attacking, being hit, or deflecting, so it strictly rewards non‑combat and support actions.
- Shadow Assault expands the range and damage of the assassin Mystic Art Touch of Death and heals for a percentage of damage dealt after a successful ambush.
- Wind Beneath Wings interacts with the Movement Mystic Art Skywalk Dash by lowering its air‑dash cost and giving speed after landing.
These links turn Mystic Arts from side utility into core build pieces. A Touch of Death setup backed by Shadow Assault and Morale Chant, for example, becomes a legitimate assassination playstyle in both PvE and Arena.
Inner Ways are the connective tissue between weapons, Mystic Arts, and raw stats in Where Winds Meet. They decide whether a Nameless Sword’s charged strike is a finisher or a screen‑wide barrage, whether a Stormbreaker Spear turns you into an immovable frontline, and whether a healer’s Dewdrops can keep up with high‑end boss damage. Understanding how they’re unlocked, how their Tips are recycled, and how they sit inside a four‑slot layout is the difference between a character that merely swings a strong weapon and one that feels purpose‑built for every fight.
