Morale Chant sits in an awkward spot for a lot of players: it is widely recommended as a “must-have” Inner Way, but it also costs around 5,000 Echo Jade at an early Blissful Retreat merchant. That is the real opportunity cost when cosmetics and other upgrades are competing for the same currency.
The skill’s strength is not about flashy procs or niche combos. It is about always-on throughput that quietly raises both damage and sustain for almost every build in the game.
Morale Chant where winds meet: what it actually does
| Property | Morale Chant effect |
|---|---|
| Inner Way type | General (works with any Path or weapon) |
| Trigger condition | Attacking or healing |
| Trigger chance | 80% to gain a stack when checked |
| Check interval | Once every 2 seconds |
| Buff name | Yi River |
| Per‑stack bonus | +1% Physical Damage and +1% healing |
| Maximum stacks | 5 |
| Stack duration | 8 seconds (refreshes as new stacks are gained) |
Morale Chant does not care what you are swinging or casting. If you are hitting something or restoring health, you are rolling for Yi River stacks. With frequent actions, it settles into a near-permanent buff around the 4–5 stack range.
In practice, that means roughly 4–5% more physical damage and 4–5% stronger healing during real combat uptime, without asking you to change how you play.
Why Morale Chant is considered “universal”
Most Inner Ways in Where Winds Meet are tied to a specific weapon Path and often to one or two named Martial Arts. Sword Morph, for example, only matters if you are using Nameless Sword’s charged skill. Morale Chant is the opposite of that design; it is tagged as General and its condition is “when attacking or healing.”
This makes it compatible with:
- Any melee weapon path (Bellstrike, Bamboocut, Silkbind, Stonesplit)
- Mixed setups that weave in Panacea Fan or other healing skills
- Future weapon swaps without having to re‑spec your Inner Ways
Because the buff is physical damage and healing, it naturally fits most early and mid‑game builds, where a large portion of output is physical rather than heavily Affinity‑weighted. It also scales with your character: as your weapon and crit stats climb, Morale Chant multiplies a bigger base.
How Morale Chant compares to other early Inner Ways
Morale Chant is rarely the only Inner Way in contention for early Echo Jade. A few other early standouts sit in the same “core” bucket:
| Inner Way | Type | Core effect | Best use case |
|---|---|---|---|
| Morale Chant | General | Up to +5% Physical Damage and healing via Yi River stacks | Any build that hits and/or heals frequently |
| Bitter Seasons | General | Chance to apply stacking Poison that deals damage and lowers Physical Defense | Longer fights, sustained DPS builds |
| Envigorated Warrior | General | +5% damage and healing, disabled briefly when hit; taking a hit adds a damage‑taken penalty | High‑skill, low‑hit play, especially ranged or evasive builds |
| Divine Roulette | General | After a successful deflect, grants one of several big buffs to the next skill | Players who consistently deflect and build around burst windows |
Morale Chant’s power profile is steady and low‑maintenance. Bitter Seasons offers more damage in protracted boss fights by stacking a defense‑reducing poison, but does nothing for healing. Envigorated Warrior can push damage higher on paper, but punishes you hard when you take hits. Divine Roulette spikes damage if you are reliable with deflections, but its uptime is lower, and the buff depends on your timing.
That mix is why Morale Chant keeps showing up in early game “best start” setups alongside weapon‑specific Inner Ways like Sword Morph. It is rarely the single strongest choice in any one extreme scenario, but it is almost never a bad choice.
Where Morale Chant really shines in actual play
Morale Chant’s numbers look modest in isolation. The impact becomes clear once it is layered into the way Where Winds Meet flows.
- Constant combat actions: Normal attacks, Varied Combos, Martial Arts skills, and support tools like Panacea Fan create frequent Yi River checks. In a real fight, you almost never sit idle for 8 seconds, so stacks stay up.
- Synergy with self‑healing: If you are running Panacea Fan, Royal Remedy, or other heals, you gain stacks when you attack and when you heal. That means Yi River both boosts the fan’s healing and is refreshed by it.
- Boss and elite pacing: Longer campaign bosses, Skill Theft instances, and Gleaming Abyss‑style dungeons give Yi River enough time to reach full stacks and stay there. The longer the fight, the closer Morale Chant gets to acting as a permanent 5% physical throughput buff.
Morale Chant also fits neatly into the broader power ramp of Internal Arts. Path Trials hand you note bundles for hitting basic build milestones like upgrading gear, and you can recycle unwanted notes through Tips Exchange to chase more Morale Chant notes. As those upgrades land, the passive percentage grows while costing zero extra actions mid‑fight.
Cost, timing, and the 5,000 Echo Jade question
The first big friction point is the upfront purchase. A merchant at Blissful Retreat sells the set of Morale Chant pages for roughly 5,000 Echo Jade, which is a meaningful chunk of early‑game currency and directly competes with cosmetics and other convenience buys.
On the other hand, Echo Jade flows in at a steady pace from exploration, side quests, region level‑ups, and general play. The spend on Morale Chant is a one‑time unlock that remains useful regardless of how you later respec your weapons or Path, and it scales with Inner Way breakthroughs and account power.
A simple way to think about it:
- If you are still experimenting with weapons and want a safe, evergreen buff that will follow you through those changes, Morale Chant is an efficient early purchase.
- If your main focus is fashion or you are committing hard to one weapon that has a very strong, specific Inner Way available, delaying Morale Chant in favor of that specialization is defensible.
How to unlock and upgrade Morale Chant efficiently
Morale Chant unlocks when you collect its set of pages, sold early on by a merchant on the right side of the road in Blissful Retreat. After purchasing and activating the pages, it appears in your Inner Ways menu under the General category.
Upgrading Morale Chant follows the same pattern as other Inner Ways:
- Reach Solo Mode Level 4: The breakthrough system for Inner Ways unlocks once your solo progression hits Level 4, which is gated by completion of certain solo challenges.
- Use Morale Chant notes: Each breakthrough tier consumes Inner Way‑specific notes. For Morale Chant, that means Morale Chant notes, obtained from merchants around Kaifeng, random Internal Art Note Chests from enemies and bosses, and reward bundles tied to Path Trials.
- Recycle through Tips Exchange: By trading unwanted note drops for Bookplates and using those to buy more Tome Chests, you effectively reroll toward the notes you need.
Working Morale Chant and Royal Remedy together create a very sturdy core for any mixed DPS–support playstyle: one passive pushes physical damage and healing, the other amplifies a specific, high‑value heal loop.
Who should prioritize Morale Chant, and who can skip it (for now)
Morale Chant is not mandatory for every player on day one, but it is close to universally good. It is worth putting it into context for different archetypes.
| Playstyle | Morale Chant priority | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| New players unsure of main weapon | High | Works with anything, smooths damage and survivability while you experiment |
| Panacea Fan / healer‑leaning builds | Very high | Boosts both outgoing healing and physical damage, and procs frequently through heals |
| Boss‑focused DPS with long fights | High, alongside Bitter Seasons | Steady throughput that stacks well with debuffs like Bitter Seasons’ physical defense shred |
| High‑skill deflect specialists | Medium | Divine Roulette offers larger conditional spikes; Morale Chant is still strong filler |
| Style‑first, min‑max‑later players | Low | If cosmetics are the main goal, you can delay it without breaking your build |
For most players who care about performance, the honest answer to “is Morale Chant really that good?” is yes: it is one of the safest, most reliable early Inner Way investments in Where Winds Meet. The opportunity cost is there, but the buff follows you from your first experimental build all the way into endgame dungeons and boss rotations.
Once Echo Jade income ramps up, the initial 5,000 starts to feel less like a painful sacrifice of cosmetics and more like the baseline tax for builds that want their numbers to quietly trend upward in every fight.
