Rock Solid Inner Way in Where Winds Meet: Unlock, Effects, and Best Uses

Rock Solid is an Epic Inner Way in Where Winds Meet built for front‑line spear users. It wraps defense, taunt synergy, and self‑sustain around Stormbreaker Spear, trading some personal damage for much higher survivability and aggro control.

How to unlock Rock Solid (Unbound Cavern and Dao Lord)

Rock Solid is not a random drop or vendor purchase. It is locked behind the Kaifeng campaign dungeon Unbound Cavern, and the Dao Lord boss fight in Ghost Light Market.

Step	Requirement or action	What happens
1	Reach Kaifeng in the main story (Chapter 2: Universal Furnace)	Kaifeng City and its Campaign quests, including Unbound Cavern, become available.
2	Open the Campaign list and look under the Kaifeng tab for “Unbound Cavern”	The umbrella‑style Campaign icon for Unbound Cavern appears in Kaifeng; selecting it starts the dungeon scenario.
3	Play through the Unbound Cavern dungeon	You clear Unbound Cavern faction enemies such as Unbound Cavern Crossbowmen and Ghost Mistress of Unbound Cavern while moving toward Ghost Light Market.
4	Enter Ghost Light Market and defeat Dao Lord	Dao Lord acts as the Campaign boss; beating him completes Unbound Cavern.
5	Claim Campaign completion rewards	The Rock Solid Inner Way tome is granted as part of the Unbound Cavern rewards and is added to your Inner Ways.

Unbound Cavern also pays out a broader loot bundle typical for Kaifeng Campaigns, such as Rainwhisper gear pieces, cosmetic chests, Crimson Leaves, Stonesplit Might tips, Oscillating Jade, coins, and character EXP. Those rewards are incidental; Rock Solid is the main progression‑relevant prize.

Rock Solid lore hook and in‑game positioning

Within the game’s fiction, Rock Solid traces back to the Ghostlight Market. During the early Sui Dynasty, Linghu Xi seized land and suppressed local heroes; the Zhu patriarch answered by founding the Ghostlight Market and creating Rock Solid to push back against that oppression. That story is reflected in where the tome is found: completing the fight with Dao Lord in Ghost Light Market at the end of Unbound Cavern.

Mechanically, Rock Solid sits in the Defense–Martial Arts–DMG Reduction niche and belongs on the Stonesplit – Might martial path. It is tuned around Stormbreaker Spear’s taunt‑centric skills and around acting as a durable anchor in group play or solo boss fights.

Rock Solid core effect with Stormbreaker Spear

Once equipped as an Inner Way, Rock Solid directly modifies Stormbreaker Spear’s defensive roar skills.

Aspect	Effect
Type	Epic Inner Way focused on defense and damage reduction
Path	Stonesplit – Might
Tags	Defense, Martial Arts, DMG Reduction
Main synergy	Stormbreaker Spear (Roar skills that taunt and reduce damage)
Primary Inner Way effect	After successfully taunting a boss with Stormbreaker Spear’s Roar of Storm, increases that skill’s damage reduction by 20%. After taunting a non‑boss, adds 5% damage reduction per taunted unit, up to 20% total. While this damage reduction buff is active, all damage you deal is reduced by 10%.

In practical terms, Rock Solid makes Roar of Storm a much stronger mitigation tool against bosses and packs, but you pay a global damage penalty while you are under its protection. The design assumes your role is to soak damage and hold enemy attention rather than race for top damage numbers.

Other descriptions in the game also emphasize that Stormbreaker Spear’s taunt roar gains increased damage reduction and aggro while Rock Solid is active, reinforcing its tank‑leaning identity.

Breakthrough tiers and what each one changes

Like other Inner Ways, Rock Solid gains additional passive bonuses as its tier is raised through breakthroughs. These tiers shift the build from simple damage reduction to a robust package of shields, HP scaling, and sustain.

Tier	Breakthrough bonus	Impact on playstyle
1	Extends the duration of your own HP shields. Improves the bonus effects tied to the skills that create those shields. Increases the HP damage shields can absorb. If a shield expires without being broken, it heals you based on remaining capacity (does not apply to pure damage‑immunity shields). While any HP shield is active, increases all damage and all healing you do.	Makes every shield significantly more valuable, both as protection and as delayed healing and damage amplification, encouraging frequent shield uptime.
2	Raises Max HP in proportion to Solo Mode Level.	Scales your health pool as you level, reinforcing Rock Solid for solo progression and higher‑level content.
3	Grants 5% extra damage against taunted enemies.	Offsets some of the 10% global damage penalty during roar damage reduction windows and rewards correct taunt use.
4	Raises the damage reduction of Thundering Roar (or equivalent Stormbreaker roar) to 25% after taunting a boss, up to 25% total.	Pushes the core mitigation even higher in boss fights, making you substantially harder to kill while you have roar up.
5	Increases Physical Damage Reduction by 2.5%.	Adds a small but permanent layer of toughness against physical hits, regardless of roar or shield state.
6	While Wind Thunder Roar damage reduction is active, each time you hit a target you recover HP based on the Fighting Spirit spent on that skill. The heal is 1% of Max HP per bar of Fighting Spirit. One skill used on the same target only triggers the heal once, and heals up to five different targets per use.	Turns your roar windows into self‑healing phases, especially in fights where you can hit several enemies with high‑cost skills.

Tiers 1 and 6 are the most transformative. Tier 1 effectively upgrades every shield in your kit and ties them to both damage and healing boosts, while Tier 6 blends damage reduction and life steal during roar uptime. Together they make Rock Solid feel less like a flat resistance buff and more like a full defensive engine.

How to upgrade Rock Solid (requirements and materials)

Raising Rock Solid’s breakthrough tier uses the same structure as other Inner Ways but with item requirements specific to this tome.

Requirement	Details
Solo Mode Level	You must first reach Solo Mode Level 4, sometimes described in‑game as Level 4 Roaming, before tier upgrades unlock.
Tier‑up items	Rock Solid: Notes are required for breakthroughs. These are categorized as Internal Art advance items.
Primary source	Notes can be obtained through multiple activities, with the Tips Exchange called out as a major repeatable source.

Once the level gate is cleared, Rock Solid upgrades in the same menu where other Internal Arts are advanced. Each tier consumes a set number of Rock Solid: Notes alongside other general advancement currencies.

When Rock Solid makes sense for your build

Because of its damage trade‑off and heavy focus on Stormbreaker Spear, Rock Solid is not a universal pick for every character. It fits cleanly in a few scenarios:

Use case	Why Rock Solid works
Stormbreaker Spear tank in co‑op	The Inner Way amplifies Roar of Storm and related taunt skills, giving stronger damage reduction, more aggro, and late‑tier self‑healing while your allies focus on damage.
Solo boss progression on Stonesplit – Might	Tier 1 shields and Tier 6 sustain let you survive longer during boss patterns, while Tier 3 and shield buffs recoup some damage output.
HP‑stacked frontline hybrid	Tier 2’s HP scaling and Tier 5’s physical damage reduction stack with armor and gear, pushing you toward “unmoveable” status when combined with strong defensive Mystic Skills.

In pure damage‑racing builds that use different weapons or ignore taunt mechanics, Rock Solid’s 10% damage loss during mitigation windows is hard to justify. It shines when your job is to stand in front, provoke enemies, and stay alive in fights that would otherwise delete a glass‑cannon build.

Rock Solid ties together several of Where Winds Meet’s core progression systems: Campaign dungeons, boss unlocks, Inner Ways, and Solo Mode scaling. Pushing through Unbound Cavern and Dao Lord in Ghost Light Market does more than tick a quest log — it unlocks one of the earliest, most complete defensive packages for Stormbreaker Spear users, and it keeps gaining depth as its breakthrough tiers come online.