Mercyheart Town looks like the setup for a major rescue arc in Where Winds Meet: an entire settlement poisoned by datura “Buddha flowers,” secret resisters called the Five Rats, and sick villagers hidden below ground. In practice, it behaves very differently from the story-heavy quest areas elsewhere in Qinghe.
Instead of a single, linear storyline that frees the town, Mercyheart is built as a persistent exploration hub with Wandering Tales, anecdotes, puzzle dungeons, and a healer-focused co-op activity. You can help individuals and uncover a lot of lore, but you never flip the town into a “cured” state in solo play.
Where Mercyheart Town fits in the world of Where Winds Meet
Mercyheart Town sits in the Sundara Land sub-region of Qinghe, alongside locations like Mercyheart Monastery, Thousand-Buddha Vale, and Thousand-Buddha Cavern. The broader area leans into Buddhist imagery and suffering: monks, Buddha statues, burned-out villages, and poison spreading through the populace.
On the world map, Mercyheart Town is flagged simply as a landmark rather than a main-chapter quest zone or combat campaign. That labeling reflects its role. The town anchors side stories and multiplayer activities more than it does a single big story decision.
Why the town never feels “saved” in solo mode
Mercyheart’s core tension is the Buddha flower poison affecting most residents. You meet townsfolk talking about their condition, the monks’ role, and quiet resistance led by NPCs referred to as the Five Rats. It looks like the prelude to a heroic purge of the poison.
In solo play, that payoff never arrives. The town’s overall state does not progress the way other quest areas do. You can rescue individual people in cages, complete personal Wandering Tales, and learn how the poison operates, but the main streets remain under the same thrall. This is intentional rather than a bug: Mercyheart functions as an exploration and lore space, not as a world-state pivot.
Five Rats, healer co-op, and what’s actually progressing
Players who track down several of the Five Rats, raise their favor to Revered, and listen to their talk of fighting back, often expect a hidden trigger. There is none that transitions the town from poisoned to purified in solo mode. The Five Rats flesh out the idea of an internal resistance; they do not unlock a full liberation sequence.
Instead, Mercyheart is closely tied to a healer-focused co-op activity. In that online mode, players investigate and confront the cause of the disease as a repeatable event. The encounter can walk you through finding and stopping the source of the poisoning, but because it must be replayable, it does not permanently alter your solo world. The town resets rather than remembers the outcome.
Solo players still get meaningful progression, just on a smaller scale. People you free from cages, for example, can move into hiding in an underground “rat cave,” and individual Wandering Tales resolve with different moral outcomes depending on your choices. The key is to think in terms of character-level changes, not town-level transformation.
Finding the underground areas beneath Mercyheart Town
Mercyheart’s underground can be confusing because the minimap shows NPCs and even chests below your feet without an obvious way down. There are two separate entrances to this lower level, both somewhat tucked away between buildings or near the shoreline.
Entrance 1: Eastern beach access. One access tunnel sits near the beach to the east of town. If you follow the river toward the sea and watch for a cave opening or descent point close to the shore, you can drop into the underground network that runs beneath the town. This route is also near icons that mark ill people, which can help you orient yourself.
Entrance 2: Southern buildings in town. Another entrance lies among the buildings south of the river that cuts through Mercyheart. Thread through the alleys between those structures and look for a subtle opening or stairway that leads downward. This entrance brings you closer to where some hidden villagers and at least one Wandering Tale NPC are located.
Once underground, you can reach the NPCs that seemed “stuck” below the map and interact with them for story and side activities. Some rescued villagers relocate here, underscoring that your actions help individuals even if the main streets remain under the poison’s influence.
Mercyheart Town Wandering Tales overview
Mercyheart Town hosts a cluster of Wandering Tales, most of which revolve around the town’s misery, Buddhist relics, and how single choices ripple through people’s lives. While exact map coordinates vary, the structure of the Tales is consistent: short, location-based vignettes with small item-fetch tasks and, occasionally, alternate endings.
The Mercyheart Wandering Tales are numbered within the game’s overall Wandering Tales progression, but here they function as a loose anthology. You can tackle them in almost any order once you discover the starting NPCs and learn how time-of-day and clan-time systems gate certain steps.
Wandering Tale 1: The lost medicine bag and the underground father
The first Mercyheart Wandering Tale starts inside a house in town with a distraught woman. She sends you in search of a lost medicine bag in a nearby cave. The bag can be difficult to spot; you may need to sweep the cave until the interaction prompt for a “lost medicine bag” appears.
What you do next changes the outcome.
Bad outcome. If you bring the medicine bag back directly to the mother in the house, the Tale ends on a tragic note. The story highlights the town’s desperation without offering much hope.
Better outcome. Hidden in the underground section of Mercyheart is the child’s father, reachable once you find one of the two lower entrances. If you deliver the medicine to him instead of the mother, the Tale resolves in a more positive way. The game quietly tracks this branch; there is no global town cure, but within that family’s story, your choice matters.
Wandering Tale 2: Boundary Stone errand
The second Mercyheart Wandering Tale begins at the Mercyheart Town Boundary Stone. A man pacing near the stone asks for help, turning the interaction into a short fetch quest.
The sequence is straightforward. You head into Mercyheart Town to a specific location, pick up a requested item, and bring it back to the quest giver at the Boundary Stone. The Tale then concludes without further branching. It is more about grounding the physical boundary of the town as a narrative space than about moral choice.
Wandering Tale 3: Children, a worn Buddha statue, and a timed replacement
A later Tale unfolds among a group of children bullying a smaller kid. Behind them is a worn Buddha statue you can pick up. You can simply return that worn statue to one of the kids to end the interaction quickly, but there is a more involved route that leads to a better resolution.
The improved outcome requires you to obtain a new Buddha statue from a location outside town, then carefully time when you return to the group of children. The time system labels hours with Chinese stems or clan names, and this Tale hinges on one specific slot.
Step 1: Travel to the indicated remote location and claim a pristine Buddha statue. The old, worn statue is not sufficient to unlock the stronger ending.
Step 2: Go back to the bullying children and adjust the in-game time to the specific hour referenced in the quest hint. At that hour, some of the kids disperse, leaving only two remaining.
Step 3: Talk to one of the remaining children and give them the new Buddha statue. This gesture shifts the tone of the encounter and grants the Tale’s better resolution. Again, the town does not change, but this small corner of it does.
Wandering Tale 5: Young Shaggy Granny and the burned house
Another Mercyheart Wandering Tale revolves around a younger version of “Shaggy Granny,” a recurring personality in the region. To see her in this timeline, you must use the time system.
Step 1: Go to the designated location near Mercyheart Town and switch the time to the hour labeled “Z.” At that point, Young Shaggy Granny appears and engages you, requesting a specific item.
Step 2: Travel to the site of a burned house described in the Tale. At a precise spot in the ruins lies the quest item Granny wants. Once you have already picked it up, it no longer glows, but the item is found exactly where that earlier interaction indicates.
Step 3: Return to Young Shaggy Granny while still within the required time window and hand over the item to complete the Tale. The story ties into the broader tragedy of the nearby burnt village and Mercyheart’s poisoned fate.
The cursed doll Tale: Harassed child, emissary, and clan-timed meetings
Mercyheart also features a Wandering Tale built around a cursed doll. The story threads through multiple time slots and two different NPCs, with the doll changing hands along the way.
Step 1: Travel to the southern part of Mercyheart Town and pick up the cursed doll from a marked spot. The item begins the Tale once it is in your inventory.
Step 2: Return to the child who was previously being harassed by other kids. Shift the in-game time to the slot labeled for Wuang Clan. During that period, the child will accept the cursed doll, pushing the Tale to its second phase.
Step 3: Go back to a specified location again, and this time change the clock to the hour labeled “Hi.” An emissary NPC appears there; he collects dolls and is interested in the cursed one.
Step 4: Give the cursed doll to the emissary to close the Tale. The sequence reinforces how Mercyheart’s suffering becomes an object of fascination and trade rather than something the wider world genuinely cures.
Wandering Tale 6: Nighttime ledger delivery
The final Mercyheart Wandering Tale mentioned here only becomes available at night. Time and place both matter.
Step 1: Wait until nighttime around the hours labeled “Hi” or “Z.” In that window, an NPC appears who asks for help locating a missing ledger. This interaction starts Wandering Tale number six.
Step 2: Head toward the body of water and then to a nearby house identified in the dialogue. Inside or near this house lies the “lost ledger” you need to recover.
Step 3: Pick up the ledger and return it to the quest giver before time rolls too far past the intended window. Handing it back finishes the Tale and closes out the Mercyheart Wandering Tales sequence for this part of Qinghe.
What Mercyheart Town offers if you visit early
It is easy to stumble into Mercyheart Town while freely exploring Sundara Land, especially after completing the spirit-cleansing work in a burned village nearby. Reaching Mercyheart early does not break anything, but it sets expectations that the main story does not fulfill here.
Even if you arrive before tackling Mercyheart Monastery or some local puzzle dungeons, you can still:
- Raise favor with the Five Rats and other befriendable NPCs.
- Rescue caged villagers who later appear in underground hideouts.
- Pick up profession lines, like the Healer profession, that synergize with Mercyheart’s co-op activity.
- Start or finish several Wandering Tales that deepen the lore of Miaoshan and the Buddha flower poison.
The limitation is that the poisoned main streets stay that way. There is no hidden flag that flips the town’s world state in solo mode, and the healer co-op runs as a separate, repeatable experience. The best approach is to treat Mercyheart as a dense side hub: clear the stories you can find, accept that some encounters may be finicky or bugged in early versions, and move on to other regions once you are ready.
The result is a town that never truly recovers but leaves a trail of small, personal victories. For a game that leans on Wuxia tragedy, that fits: Mercyheart Town does not get a clean cure, but a few people do.
