Pardon Parades in Where Winds Meet turn criminal punishment into a public spectacle. If you steal, murder NPCs, or otherwise break the law, your character can be jailed for real-world hours. A Pardon Parade lets you trade some of that downtime for a walk of shame through town while other players pelt you with food — and earn rewards for doing it.
Pardon Parade where Winds Meet: what it actually is
A Pardon Parade is a timed event triggered by a jailed player to reduce their detention sentence. Instead of simply waiting out the full real-time penalty or bribing a guard, the offender can opt into a parade where their character is marched in public as a criminal.
Key points:
| Aspect | Details |
|---|---|
| Purpose | Reduce jail (detention) time and create a public punishment event. |
| Benefit to criminal | Each parade cuts the initiator’s sentence by 60 minutes of real-world time. |
| Role of other players | Join the parade instance and throw food at the criminal for rewards. |
| How it feels | A “walk of shame” through town, framed as a social punishment. |
For the player in jail, it is one of the main alternatives to simply waiting out a long sentence. For everyone else, it appears as a temporary event you can jump into for quick rewards and some low-stakes chaos.
How jail and Pardon Parades fit together
Criminal behavior in Where Winds Meet can land your character in jail for a set number of hours measured in real time. While jailed you have three broad options:
| Option | What happens | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| Wait it out | Remain jailed until the timer ends. | No extra risk or interaction, but you lose playtime. |
| Bribe a guard | Pay money to be released early. | Costs in-game currency but avoids public humiliation. |
| Start a Pardon Parade | Trigger the public event to shorten your sentence. | Removes 60 minutes per parade but exposes you to ridicule. |
Choosing the parade means your sentence is cut by a full hour, which is significant when timers stretch across multiple hours. The game leans into the idea of social consequences: you get practical benefit, but other players literally throw things at you to make it happen.
How to join a Pardon Parade (PC and PS5)
Pardon Parades are surfaced as time-limited activities from the main HUD, rather than being tied to a specific NPC or location. Participation is first-come, first-served, and each parade has a cap on how many players can enter.
| Step | PC | PS5 |
|---|---|---|
| Open the event menu | Click the Time-Limited button in the upper-left corner of the screen. | Press Options to open the main menu, then scroll to the very top-left item. |
| Find Pardon Parade | Select the Pardon Parade entry from the list of limited-time events. | Navigate to the same Pardon Parade entry using the d-pad. |
| Pick a criminal | Choose one of the currently parading criminals to join their event. | Highlight and confirm the criminal you want to throw food at. |
On some setups, a glowing icon near the minimap can also indicate when a Pardon Parade or similar time-limited event is active. If the event is full, you’ll need to back out and try entering another parade instance as they appear.
What you do during a Pardon Parade
Once you successfully load into a parade, the structure is simple: you’re dropped into a short, timed sequence where the criminal walks the route and everyone else plays the crowd.
| Element | How it works |
|---|---|
| Objective | Throw food at the criminal a set number of times before the timer expires. |
| Required throws | 10 successful throws within the allotted time to qualify for rewards. |
| Throwables | Eggs or vegetables, chosen freely during the event. |
| Reward limit | Participation rewards can be earned up to 5 times per week. |
| Participation limit | You can join as many parades as you like; only the weekly rewards cap applies. |
Missing the 10-throw threshold usually means you watched the event but didn’t qualify for the payout. Hitting the quota turns a short burst of target practice into a reliable weekly income stream of small rewards.
Rewards and limits for parade participants
Pardon Parades are designed as quick, repeatable activities with a weekly ceiling on actual loot. That structure pushes you to sample the feature without turning it into a grind you can spam indefinitely for progression.
Important constraints:
- You must land 10 throws on the target during a parade to earn credit.
- Reward payouts are limited to five completed parades per week.
- You are still free to queue into more parades after hitting the cap; they simply stop providing additional rewards.
For the criminal, the reward is different: the key outcome is the one-hour reduction in detention time for each parade they personally initiate. Other jailed players’ parades do not affect your sentence.
Triggering a Pardon Parade when you are jailed
Starting a parade as the jailed player uses the same system that surfaces it to everyone else, but you interact with it from inside the jail context. When your sentence begins, you’re presented with ways to handle the penalty, including the option to start a Pardon Parade.
High-level flow for the jailed player:
- Commit a crime and get arrested (the game applies a detention time in hours).
- From jail, choose the option to begin a Pardon Parade instead of passively waiting.
- Once the parade completes, your sentence is reduced by 60 minutes.
That reduction is fixed per parade rather than scaling with your original sentence length, so the feature is especially attractive when your timer is long enough that one hour makes a noticeable difference.
Why Pardon Parades matter in Where Winds Meet’s world
On paper, Pardon Parades are a sentencing mechanic; in practice, they’re a way to make the justice system visible to everyone online. Instead of hiding punishment in menus and timers, the game pulls the camera back and turns it into an event that mixes social friction, slapstick, and light rewards.
For players who enjoy flirting with the law, the system is a pressure valve: you can still cause trouble, but you’ll occasionally have to eat a very public consequence. For everyone else, the event becomes another rotating activity sitting alongside side stories, boss campaigns, and exploration sentient beings — a small but memorable part of Jianghu’s day-to-day life.
