Where Winds Meet beginner tips that actually help

Difficulty is purely about how hard enemies hit and how tight parry windows feel. Rewards and drops do not scale with it, so lowering the setting when a boss walls you is fine. You can change it from the Journey or game settings menu at any time.

Learn how combat actually works, not just the buttons

Where Winds Meet is built around reactions more than aggression. Every enemy has two bars that matter:

• Health – when it hits zero, the fight ends.
• Qi – their stagger bar; emptying it puts them in an Exhausted state.

The strongest openings come from draining Qi, not from spamming skills on full-health, full-Qi enemies. Once Qi is gone and an enemy is Exhausted, you can perform an Execution for heavy damage.

Two small habits make fights dramatically smoother:

• Delay your Execution. When an enemy is stunned, use a few quick attacks first, then trigger the finisher just before they recover. You squeeze in more damage during that stun window.
• Watch for yellow and red weapon glints. A yellow glow flags an attack you cannot safely block or parry, so dodge or reposition. A red glow is the opposite: a well-timed parry here crushes Qi and often sets up an Execution.

Do not react to the first flicker of color. Wait until the glow peaks and then commit to your parry or dodge. That timing is more forgiving than it looks once your eyes adjust.

JorRaptor • youtube.com

Where Winds Meet Tips And Tricks

Starts at: 00:04

Unlock Martial Arts, Mystic Skills, and Inner Ways early

Almost everything you do in combat flows from three systems:

• Martial Arts – movesets bound to weapons (sword, fan, umbrella, etc.).
• Mystic Skills – utility and combat techniques like Tai Chi, Meridian Touch, Heavenly Snatch, Cloud Step, and movement “lightness” skills.
• Inner Ways – passive bonuses that tie into specific styles and builds.

Early on, treat Martial Arts like weapon “subclasses.” Try several weapon types up to about level 20–30 to find the animations and rhythm you actually enjoy. Upgrade materials can be partially refunded (around 80 percent), so experimenting is not especially risky at low levels.

Mystic Skills are where a lot of the game’s hidden utilities live:

• Tai Chi comes from the first bear encounter. It can parry, grab shields, throw enemies off cliffs, and even break some destructible walls.
• Meridian Touch breaks certain blue Qi bars and lets you immobilize NPCs and enemies, including during stealth sequences.
• Heavenly Snatch pulls distant chests or items toward you, which neatly bypasses snakes, barred doors, or awkward ledges.
• Cloud Step gives extra verticality and is required for some Oddity puzzles, like knocking down frogs or reaching high platforms.
• Lightness skills like Mighty Drop, Wallstride – Shadowdash, and Thousand-Mile Flight handle fall safety, wall-running, and long-distance traversal.

Basic, Arena, and Boss talent trees sit on top of these systems. The Basic branch unlocks fundamental mechanics and is worth prioritizing first. Arena and Boss talents become more relevant once you dig into PvP or farmable bosses.

Use Oddities and Qi Sheng to unlock lightness and permanent stats

Oddities are small collectibles marked by a moth-like icon on the mini-map. They never appear on the big world map by default, which is why they’re easy to ignore.

Each Oddity is a micro-puzzle. Examples include:

• Shooting down beehives or birds.
• Breaking pots or crates to reveal insects.
• Following and catching purple bugs.
• Using Wind Sense and flame arrows on corrupted flowers and butterflies.
• Catching falling purple orbs before they hit the ground.
• Using movement skills like Cloud Step to chase frogs.

Turn these items into Qi Sheng (or equivalent Oddity NPCs) to unlock Melodies of Peace talents. These rewards are not minor: you gain permanent stats like extra endurance (stamina), lightness movement unlocks, and even new Martial Arts options.

The most important thresholds are region exploration levels. Every chest, Oddity, encounter, and Boundary Stone contributes points toward that level. Reaching level 4 in a region awards a key item that lifts lightness restrictions there, letting you actually use movement Mystic Skills like Wallstride – Shadowdash and Thousand-Mile Flight in the open world.

Boundary Stones are particularly efficient: they give a large chunk of exploration points and act as fast travel nodes. Activate them as soon as you see them.

Grab your first free weapon choice carefully

Near the start, on the way to the General’s Shrine and after dealing with the bear, you will free a man trapped between rocks. Helping him starts the “Oddity: Melody Hunt” objective.

Two philosophies work here:

• Survivability first: Panacea Fan gives you early healing in a game where flasks are limited and healing skills are rare at the start.
• Long-term value: Thundercry Blade or Vernal Umbrella normally unlock later in Kaifeng, so taking one now gives an advanced weapon path sooner.

Any of the four will carry you through early content, but picking something that either heals or unlocks late-region Martial Arts early is the most efficient use of this choice.

Use movement skills to explore vertically and stay alive

Traversal is a major part of Where Winds Meet, and the game does not fully explain how much your skills affect it.

• Mighty Drop (jump then Q on keyboard or L3 on controller) is your friend whenever you fall from a height. It converts a long drop into a safe slam attack and prevents injuries like sprains, which otherwise slow or block sprinting and may even require clinic treatment.
• Wallstride – Shadowdash only works in regions where lightness is unlocked, but when it does, it gives you enormous horizontal and vertical mobility. Combine it with Thousand-Mile Flight or Fan Glider once you obtain those to cross canyons and quickly tag distant points of interest.
• Cloud Step opens up hidden routes in the General’s Subterranean Shrine and other dungeons, lets you knock down frog Oddities, and offers new ways to flank enemies or reach vantage points.

Movement Mystic Skills rarely feel optional once you see what they unlock: secret crypt entrances (using Mighty Drop on cracked floors), fast shrine routes, and alternative stealth paths into schools and strongholds.

Breakthrough quests and solo mode levels gate your power

Character level progression is segmented. Every ten or so levels you hit a cap that can only be removed by completing a breakthrough challenge.

Two things are easy to miss:

• Do not trigger a breakthrough in the middle of a long mission. Enemy levels may jump mid-instance, causing spawns to reset and suddenly making the mission much harder.
• If you stay at a capped solo level, the XP you earn is stored and dumped into the next solo tier once you finally break through. That means there is no penalty for “overfilling” the bar before moving on.

You can revert to a lower solo level once every 24 hours if difficulty spikes too hard, but you cannot immediately change it back again, so plan around long sessions.

Understand gear, Enhancing, and what to do with old items

Gear is split into offensive slots (two weapons, disc, pendant), defensive slots (helm, armor, bracer, greaves), and a separate bow slot plus ring. Early in the game, the main rule is simple: equip the highest-stat items and do not obsess over set bonuses and substats yet.

The real baseline power comes from two menus under Develop:

• Enhance (Gear tab) – spends Oscillating Jade and coins on each slot to raise flat Attack, Defense, or HP as long as something is equipped there.
• Martial Arts upgrades (Abilities tab) – spends coins and specific materials to increase the level and damage of each Martial Art, up to your current character level.

Later, you unlock tuning to add substats using gear of the same tier, and at higher solo levels, an arsenal that lets you bank old gear for passive bonuses. Until those unlock, it is safe to recycle several tiers below your current gear level once your bag is full. Just avoid scrapping items that match your current tier, because you will want them for tuning.

Healing, injuries, and why a fan is often your best friend

Your main healing comes from a refillable Medicine Chest plus any skills attached to your Martial Arts.

• The Medicine Chest behaves like an action RPG flask: limited charges that refill at Boundary Stones, as long as you have the crafting ingredients.
• Medicinal Tales, earned from campaign progression, are turned in at the Evercare Clinic in Qinghe to improve both the number of charges and the amount each use restores.
• Injuries and illness (sprains, ailments, diseases) add persistent debuffs until cured. You can ask another player to heal you in Shared Journey, or pay the healer NPC (Yao Yaoyao) at the clinic to remove them.

Because flask refills consume materials, having at least one Martial Art with built-in healing, like Panacea Fan, is extremely valuable—especially in single-player runs. That second weapon can top you up without burning through crafting ingredients or potions in long dungeons and boss runs.

Exploit the early dungeon under the General’s Shrine

At the General’s Shrine, a boy complains that his Cuju ball fell down a hole. The cracked ground in front of him is your hint: use Mighty Drop there to break through into the subterranean shrine.

This one detour does a lot for your start:

• Several quivers of fire arrows and some early chests near the entrance.
• A set of Dual Blades to broaden your weapon options.
• The Cloud Steps Mystic Skill, which is key to later traversal and Oddity puzzles.
• A compact bandit dungeon culminating in a boss (Zhang Lang) and a golden chest by the statue.
• An extra Appearance reward and currencies if you bow three times to the statue after the fight.

On returning topside, giving the Cuju ball back completes a Wandering Tales encounter and showers you with more currency. That’s a very high-yield side trip for the early game.

Mounts, crime, and other systems the game leaves you to discover

Several background systems quietly shape your experience:

• Mounts dramatically shrink the time between objectives. You can buy one, tame a wild horse, or simply “claim” a passing rider’s mount by confronting them and taking it. Once you own a horse, the call-mount button lets you summon it anywhere outdoors.
• Crime and Punishment tracks your behavior toward NPCs. Stealing, attacking civilians, or other misdeeds can land you in prison with a sentence scaled to your offenses. You can serve time, try to bribe guards, stage a breakout, or participate in public shaming events that reduce your stay.
• Activeness/stamina is spent on bosses, PvP, dungeons, strongholds, and even some social mini-games. Spending it regularly on bosses and high-yield activities keeps gear and materials flowing.

There is also a light settlement-building system that unlocks around level 25. You gain a construction menu, blueprints, and the ability to recruit NPCs into roles across facilities like ink shops, pottery workshops, wineries, farms, and homes. Over time, this base can generate income and materials while you focus on combat and exploration.

Exploration mindset: read messages, use Wind Sense, and pick everything up

Where Winds Meet hides a lot behind environmental cues rather than waypoints. A few small habits keep you from missing most of it:

• Use Wind Sense often. It highlights interactive objects, hidden clues, connected butterflies on corrupted flowers, and sometimes safe paths through stealth areas. On the keyboard, it is bound to V by default.
• Read other players’ ground messages. With online mode on, these notes often point to hidden crypt entrances, bowing spots behind statues, or off-screen mechanisms for puzzles.
• Grab every plant, ore, insect, and animal you encounter. Those materials drive medicine refills, crafting, and upgrades. A quick detour now saves targeted farming later.
• Unlock Boundary Stones and campfires as you pass them. They are your fast travel backbone, heal you, refill potions, and grant exploration points.

If the world starts to feel overwhelming, narrow your focus to three things at a time: keep your flask upgraded, keep your main Martial Arts and Enhance levels roughly matching your character level, and clear breakthrough quests whenever you reach a cap. With that foundation, everything else—Oddities, dungeons, side stories, home building—becomes optional spice instead of mandatory homework.