Character creation in Where Winds Meet starts with a deceptively simple fork: Elegant or Realistic. That choice defines the overall vibe of your hero before you ever touch a slider.
What Elegant and Realistic actually change
Once you’ve picked a gender/body type, the game loads a grid of pre-built faces under two tabs: Elegant and Realistic. These are full presets that bundle face structure, skin texture, makeup, and overall styling into a single click.
| Preset type | Visual style | Typical details | Best for players who want… |
|---|---|---|---|
| Elegant | Stylized, idealized wuxia look | Smooth skin, symmetrical features, clean lines, light fantasy flair | A heroic drama lead with minimal effort |
| Realistic | Grounded, lived-in appearance | Scars, wrinkles, skin texture, more varied face proportions | A rougher wanderer or veteran fighter vibe |
Elegant skews toward “poster character” faces—clean, polished, and close to modern beauty standards with a wuxia twist. Realistic dials in the grit: you’ll see more age, more imperfections, and options that look like they’ve actually survived a few campaigns.
Under the hood, though, Elegant and Realistic are just starting templates. Every slider, every makeup option, and every hairstyle is available no matter which tab you came from.
Impact on gameplay: purely cosmetic
The Elegant vs. Realistic choice has no mechanical effect. It does not change:
- Combat stats, damage, or defenses
- Difficulty or enemy behavior
- Available weapons, Inner Ways, or builds
- Story options, dialogue choices, or romance
Character customization in Where Winds Meet is strictly visual. If you want to get into the world quickly, you can pick any preset from either family and move straight to outfits. If you like to sculpt every feature, you can ignore the distinction after your first click.
How to pick between Elegant and Realistic
If you’re torn at the first screen, it helps to think about the kind of story you want your character to tell just by standing there.
| Question | Lean Elegant if… | Lean Realistic if… |
|---|---|---|
| How “perfect” should your hero look? | You like clean, almost cinematic faces. | You want visible flaws, age, or roughness. |
| Do you care about scars and wrinkles? | You prefer minimal skin texture. | You want scars, laugh lines, and pores. |
| How much time will you spend in sliders? | You’d rather adjust lightly from a glam baseline. | You plan to tweak heavily and don’t mind starting from a plainer face. |
| Roleplay angle | Young master, sect prodigy, wuxia drama star. | Mercenary wanderer, scarred veteran, local troublemaker. |
What stays the same between Elegant and Realistic
Once you jump into deeper customization, the Elegant/Realistic label effectively disappears. Every character, no matter how they started, has access to the same main tabs:
| Tab | What you can change | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Customization | Face shape, eyes, nose, lips, ears | Fine-grain sliders with on-face markers showing what moves |
| Makeup | Foundation, eyebrows, pupils, eye makeup, lip makeup, blush, facial accessories, facial hair | Where you add scars, tattoos/marks, heavy or subtle looks |
| Hairstyle | Haircuts and facial hair styles | Hair color for head hair is locked to black at creation |
| Smart | Voice-based and image-based generation | Lets the game build a face and voice from your input |
| Outfit | Starting clothing sets | Visual only; more styles are unlocked later or purchased |
| Background | Portrait background and pose | Changes the profile shot shown on your character card |
Preset families don’t limit any of these. An Elegant start can become a heavily scarred, weathered fighter; a Realistic base can be smoothed out and painted into something that looks almost illustrative.
Smart Customization with Elegant and Realistic
Smart Customization sits beside the preset tabs and ignores the Elegant/Realistic split entirely. After choosing a body type, you can let the game generate a face using:
- Image: upload a clear, front-facing photo of a single person.
- Voice: record yourself reading the provided text; the game infers traits and builds a face from them.
Both options still drop you into the same slider system afterward. You can start from a generated face, then push it toward an Elegant or Realistic feel manually with makeup, scars, and texture choices.
Makeup, scars, and “grit” vs. “glamour”
The real difference between an “elegant” and a “realistic” final look often comes from the Makeup tab more than the starting preset.
- For a more Elegant result:
- Use softer blush and gradient lip colors.
- Keep foundation smooth and even-toned.
- Pick precise, stylized eyebrow shapes and sharp eyeliner.
- Avoid heavy facial accessories or strong scars.
- For a more Realistic result:
- Introduce scars or facial accessories that break symmetry.
- Dial up subtle discoloration or less perfect foundation.
- Choose less sculpted brows and lighter eye makeup.
- Combine with slightly duller lip shades for a lived-in feel.
Because all of this stacks on top of your base face, you can effectively “convert” an Elegant preset into something that feels grounded or make a Realistic preset look like a legendary hero.
Gender, hair, and color limits at creation
Before you reach Elegant vs. Realistic, you select Male or Female. That choice controls which presets appear in each family and which hairstyles and facial hair options are available. The Elegant/Realistic distinction then layers on top with different facial vibes for that body type.
Hair has a couple of important constraints at creation:
- Every starting hairstyle uses black hair; head hair color cannot be changed in the creator.
- Facial hair color can be adjusted in the Makeup tab.
- Additional hairstyles and recolors later require cosmetics or dyes obtained in-game.
Outfits, backgrounds, and poses: where presets really shine
Once you’re happy with the face, you step into outfits and portrait settings. This is where the difference in mood between Elegant and Realistic is most obvious:
- Elegant faces tend to pair naturally with flowing robes, ornate armor, and clean, dramatic backgrounds.
- Realistic faces often look better with more utilitarian sets, muted tones, or harsher environments.
You can try any unlocked outfit on any face, so nothing is locked behind a preset family. The same goes for background scenes and both solo and duo poses. If you want a scarred, Realistic veteran in pristine ceremonial armor, the game lets you do that.
Saving and sharing looks across Elegant and Realistic
Where Winds Meet treats appearances as data you can save, share, and reuse, independent of their original preset type.
- QR code import: share an appearance image with a QR code; others can scan it in the Appearance menu to copy your face.
- Gallery import: browse the public gallery and apply any posted character design to your own.
- Outfit Plans: save full appearance “builds” that include clothing choices and dyes, then swap between them later.
None of these systems cares whether the original creator started from Elegant or Realistic. Once saved, a look is just a configuration that any player can apply.
The Elegant and Realistic labels are best treated as mood filters, not hard categories. They help you find a starting point that matches the story in your head—polished wuxia lead or scarred drifter—but the tools that follow give you full control. Pick the family that feels closest to your vision, then let the sliders, makeup, and outfits do the rest.
