The game opens with a handful of choices that quietly shape how smooth your first hours feel.
| Setting | Recommended for most players | Why it matters |
|---|---|---|
| Exploration guidance | Detailed | Highlights paths, chests, and points of interest so you don’t miss early systems and collectibles. |
| Control mode | ARPG | Gives direct, responsive camera and movement control that fits the parry‑and‑dodge combat. |
| Difficulty | Recommended | Keeps full rewards and intended challenge without the punishing health and damage spikes of higher modes. |
| Social preference | Shared Journey | Enables co‑op, guilds, and online bosses; you can always switch to solo later. |
Difficulty can also be set to Story for a more relaxed run or to Legends for a permanent higher‑difficulty badge run. Rewards are the same across difficulties; Legends is mostly about bragging rights. If parry timing is new to you, Parry Assist can be enabled at the start. It slows time and shows prompts while you learn, and can be turned off later in the gameplay settings.
Create one main character you’re happy to keep
Character creation is more than just a face editor. There are a few rules worth knowing upfront:
- Each account supports multiple character slots, but progression, battle pass rewards, and purchases stay on the character that earned them.
- On platforms with cross‑progression, you should link your account before creating characters on a second platform or you risk fragmenting progress.
- The first several appearance re‑edits are free; later changes can require a voucher item, so it helps to get broadly close to what you want early.
Near the end of creation, you pick an Aspiration Talent:
| Talent | What it helps with | Who should pick it |
|---|---|---|
| Drunken Precision | Pitch Pot throwing mini‑game | If fast, precise aim challenges are not your strength. |
| Rhetoric Edge | Gift of the Gab debate card game | If you like dialogue and card mechanics and want easier wins there. |
Neither talent locks you out of any content; they just tilt a few side activities in your favor.
Learn what the HUD is actually telling you
Where Winds Meet throws a lot of information on screen. A few elements are critical to understand from the start:
- Your Health bar and the Qi bar sit together. Health works as expected; Qi is your stagger and guard meter. If your Qi hits zero, you become Exhausted and lose the ability to block.
- Enemies have the same two bars. Draining an enemy’s Qi fully exposes them to an Execute attack that chunks a large portion of their health. Many fights are about breaking Qi first, then Executing.
- The bottom of the screen holds two skill clusters: Martial Arts (weapon skills) and Mystic Arts (universal abilities like stealth, mobility, and utility).
- The mini‑map shows far more than roads. Campaign bosses, world bosses, Boundary Stones (teleports), oddities, clinics, and shops each have their own icon. It’s worth learning these quickly instead of ignoring the corner of the screen.
Combat basics: parry windows, glints, and Executes
Combat is built around reactions, not endless light‑attack chains. A few simple habits change how dangerous even early mobs feel:
- Play around the glints. A bright red weapon flash means a parryable heavy that, if deflected, does big Qi damage to the enemy. A yellow flash warns you that the move is unblockable; you must dodge instead.
- Don’t hit parry on the first glint. Enemies often “arm” a red move before it lands. The parry window lines up with the second, brighter flash and the start of the swing.
- Delay your Execute. When a foe is Exhausted (Qi bar empty), you can Execute immediately, or you can slip in a couple of extra strikes before triggering it, as long as you don’t let the Exhaust window end.
- Use block plus deflect. Binding block to one button and deflect to another lets you hold block as a safety net while you tap deflect for the precise parry timing.
Early on, treat every duel as a training exercise: watch a few attacks in full without committing, then start dodging and parrying once you recognize patterns.
Unlock the first mount quickly
After the prologue in Qinghe, you are free to roam, and getting a horse immediately makes everything less tedious.
| Method | Where | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| “Borrowed” horse | Dirt roads near the starting village | Find a rider, knock them off, ride away, then bind the horse through your radial menu. |
| Wild horse taming | North of the start, across the river | Crouch, sneak behind a wild horse, then complete a rhythm mini‑game to tame it. |
Once bonded, your mount can be summoned via the radial wheel, and additional horses can be sold to dedicated traders for coin if you lean into horse theft as a side hustle.
Grab a strong second weapon early
You begin with a basic sword and spear, but one of the biggest early spikes is a visit to the Oddity Collector north‑west of the starting area. After freeing him from a rock pile, he teaches you one of four additional weapon types:
| Weapon | Role | Key traits |
|---|---|---|
| Panacea Fan | Support / hybrid DPS | Mid‑range attacks, agile strings, plus built‑in healing effects for much‑needed sustain. |
| Thundercry Blade | Tanker bruiser | Slow, heavy swings with charged hits that hit very hard and favor trading blows. |
| Infernal Twin Blades | Mobile DPS | Fast, multi‑hit attacks with strong movement baked into the skills. |
| Umbrella | Hybrid ranged/melee | Can juggle foes in the air and even be thrown to auto‑attack while you fight with another weapon. |
For pure survivability, Panacea Fan is an excellent first choice because early healing is scarce. On the other hand, Thundercry Blade and Vernal/Soulshade Umbrella normally come from later regions, so picking one of those here lets you “skip the line” and run a rarer playstyle from the beginning.
Prioritize a few Mystic Arts that unlock whole playstyles
Three Mystic Arts stand out in the first region because they solve dozens of puzzles, stealth setups, and combat problems:
| Mystic Art | What it gives you | Why it matters early |
|---|---|---|
| Touch of Death | Stealth takedown from behind or above | Turns infiltration missions and outpost clears into one‑hit setups instead of messy brawls. |
| Veil of Stillness | Partial invisibility / stealth field | Makes sneaking into martial schools or past guards practical, especially when combined with Touch of Death. |
| Heavenly Snatch / Celestial Seize | Remote interaction with items and NPC inventories | Opens distant chests, yoinks keys from NPCs, and even disarms enemies or bosses for a moment. |
Touch of Death is earned from a short ruin‑clear quest south of the Oddity Collector: solve a torch puzzle, perform a Mighty Drop on a pressure plate, and follow the hidden passage. Veil of Stillness is taught by an NPC you secretly observe during the “Skill Theft: Unearned Lesson” quest. Heavenly Snatch / Celestial Seize is introduced at Heaven’s Pier during a story‑adjacent interaction, then becomes usable everywhere.
These three skills are also required for specific chests, stealth‑heavy quests, and some weapon‑stealing encounters later on, so getting them early saves backtracking.
Use Wind Sense to see what the world is hiding
Wind Sense is your scanning mode and quietly underpins exploration, crime, and quest solving.
- Activating Wind Sense highlights interactive objects, hidden pressure plates, oddity puzzles, and NPC inventories.
- When you focus an NPC in this mode, you can Request or Seize items they’re carrying. Request is polite; Seize relies on intimidation and may scare them.
- Some quests explicitly need you to notice that an NPC “knows more” than they say. Inspecting them with Wind Sense and then using Heavenly Snatch to take a hidden key or document often advances those objectives.
- Stone doors and shrines that appear inert often have a nearby pressure plate only visible in Wind Sense. Performing a Mighty Drop on it opens secret chambers.
Exploration points, oddities, and the Afterglow Pendant
Exploration in Qinghe isn’t just about scenery; it’s a progression track with major rewards.
- Almost everything you do in a region—opening chests, solving micro‑puzzles, helping “Cat Play” sentient beings, completing exploration quests—feeds into that region’s exploration score.
- At certain thresholds (notably around levels 3 and 4 of the regional bar), you unlock large perks. In Qinghe, level 4 grants the Afterglow Pendant, which enables new traversal skills like Shadow Dash and Meteor Flight.
- Oddities like insects, cursed flowers, fireflies above mushrooms, and beehives can be collected and then turned in to the Oddity Collector for a sprawling talent tree of passive buffs: max HP, defense, endurance, bonus damage to monsters and elites, and even new movement techniques like Wallstride.
Upgrade your healing flask as soon as you can
The single white bottle in your quick‑use bar is your main, refillable heal. Its strength and number of uses are controlled by the Medicinal Chest system.
- As you progress through the main chapter and exploration milestones, you earn Medicinal Tales.
- When you have enough, your map will show that the chest can be upgraded. Travel to the Evercare / Everare Clinic on the western side of Qinghe and talk to the healer NPC (Yao Yaoyao in some versions).
- Upgrades increase:
- How many flask charges you can carry.
- The raw health restored by each use.
- Additional effects such as temporary damage reduction or extra healing over a few seconds.
- The same clinic can remove injuries and illnesses that stack up from falls, bad landings, and combat; untreated, these can slow you or limit your actions.
For long boss attempts and dungeons, flask level is often more important than small gear stat bumps, so never sit on upgrade prompts.
Use the Develop screen: Martial Arts and gear slots
Character power comes from three places: your Martial Arts levels, your Mystic Arts, and the underlying gear slots themselves.
Upgrading Martial Arts
Open the main menu, go to the Develop / Abilities section, select one of your Martial Arts, then upgrade its level. Each rank increases the damage of all skills in that style and unlocks passive perks at key breakpoints. You can level a style up to your current character level, using coins as the main cost.
Enhancing gear slots, not just items
In the Develop / Gear section, Enhancing works differently from typical RPGs:
- When you enhance a slot (main weapon, off‑hand, helm, armor, bracers, greaves, disc, pendant, bow, ring), you permanently raise the Attack, Defense, or HP that slot provides your character.
- The enhancement level sticks to the slot even if you swap items. Replace a level 4 helm with a new one, and the helm slot remains level 4.
- Early levels mostly cost Oscillating Jade and coins; higher ranks add extra materials you can inspect in the menu to see where to farm them.
This means there is almost never a reason not to enhance: you aren’t wasting resources on a piece you’ll soon replace, you’re upgrading the “socket” itself.
Respect set bonuses, but don’t obsess on day one
Armor and weapons belong to named sets (like Jadeware or Formblend). Equipping two or four pieces from the same set unlocks bonus stats such as increased attack or damage reduction. Early on, simply wearing your highest‑rated items is fine; as you accumulate more gear, start aligning sets so the bonuses line up with your role (DPS, tank, healer).
Understand gear types and what you should equip now
Gear is split into three broad categories, each with fixed main stats by slot:
| Category | Slots | Primary purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Offensive | Primary weapon, secondary weapon, disc, pendant | Attack power, offensive modifiers, and sometimes role‑defining passives. |
| Defensive | Helm, armor, bracer, greaves | Max HP, defense, and survivability. |
| Bow / accessories | Bow, ring | Supplemental ranged damage and utility, not core to melee combat. |
Early in Qinghe, simply equip the highest attack weapons and highest HP/defense armor pieces you have. Tuning and sub‑stat hunting can wait until you’ve settled on a weapon combination and are pushing higher world levels.
Cosmetic outfits are separate from stat gear. They change your look only; they do not affect combat, so feel free to wear whatever you like visually.
Push world level and account level at the right times
Progression has multiple caps layered on top of each other:
- Your character level periodically hits soft caps; a short breakthrough quest unlocks the next 10 levels.
- Your solo (or online) world level is a separate value you can manually raise from the character screen once you meet requirements.
Raising world level does three things at once:
- Makes enemies tougher and increases their health.
- Boosts the quality and quantity of rewards from quests, bosses, and activities.
- Raises the cap on your energy/activeness resource and maximum achievable character level in that mode.
Spend limited currencies carefully
Several currencies are effectively capped and are easy to waste early.
Echo Jade / premium‑style jade
- Echo Jade comes from redeem codes, quests, and exploration. Redeemable codes like
WWMGO1114,WWMGLyoutube, andWWMGLtiktokcan be entered once per account in the in‑game Settings → Other → Exchange Code menu. Rewards are then claimed from the Letters tab. - It can be used in gacha‑style systems for cosmetics, but it is also required for permanent internal skills sold by special vendors, including universally strong Eternal or Inner Way skills that every build wants.
- Early on, prioritize buying and upgrading these evergreen skills over rolling for outfits.
Activeness / mental energy
- Strongholds and dungeons consume a regenerating energy resource. You can let it recharge over real‑time, but once it caps, any further regeneration is wasted.
- Below around level 40, use it just enough that it doesn’t cap. At higher levels, funnel it into the content you need:
- Dungeons for equipment and gear upgrade materials.
- Strongholds for Mystic Arts upgrade materials.
- Online runs of dungeons and strongholds pay out more than solo, and first‑time clears reward one‑off bonuses, so try to clear each at least once.
Weekly shops and plumes/tickets
- Weekly shops in towns, sects, guilds, and other hubs sell fixed amounts of upgrade mats, martial arts tickets, and career items. These stocks reset weekly, and unbought items are effectively gone.
- Some late‑game progression items—often dubbed plumes or similar—are far more efficient to use after level 90 than early on. It is often better to hoard them until experience gains slow down sharply.
Use clinics and healing professions for injuries and side rewards
Injuries and illnesses are not cosmetic. A limp, clutching animation, or a red icon on your HUD indicates a lingering condition that can reduce movement speed or combat effectiveness.
- Clinics (Healer Healing icons on the map) can instantly clear these for a fee and upgrade your Medicinal Chest with Medicinal Tales.
- You can also attempt to treat sick NPCs and animals yourself. Target them, start the healing mini‑game, and play out a small card‑style battle against their ailment. Successful cures award experience, items, and sometimes unlock new interactions and quests in that settlement.
- Later, taking on the doctor profession turns this into a deeper career path, but you can start dabbling as soon as you spot obviously injured NPCs.
Read the map icons and unlock Boundary Stones early
The world map is dense but logical once you recognize what each icon represents. A few symbols are especially important at the start:
| Icon type | What it is | Why you should care |
|---|---|---|
| Campfire | Wayfarer / region reveal point | Talking to the Wayfarer fills in the area map and marks major activities. |
| Boundary Stone | Teleport/respawn shrine | Acts like a bonfire: fast travel point, heal and restock; discovering many gives exploration points. |
| Oddities | Insect puzzles, strange flora, beehives, etc. | Feed the Oddity tree for permanent stat buffs and traversal skills. |
| Healer | Clinic | Upgrade flask and cure injuries. |
| Campaign Boss / World Boss | Major encounters | Drop gear, currencies, and one‑time rewards; world bosses can be re‑fought for challenge objectives. |
| Side Story / Encounters | Side quests | Grant XP, materials, and sometimes Martial Arts or Mystic Arts unlocks. |
Boundary Stones, in particular, should be activated whenever you pass them. They’re free exploration points, free heals, and they dramatically cut travel time as the map opens up.
Join a sect and a guild when you’re ready
Two social structures anchor the long‑term game: sects (martial schools) and guilds.
- Sects specialize in specific weapon styles and philosophies. Joining one:Before joining, check which weapons the sect focuses on so you don’t commit to a school that doesn’t fit your chosen pair.
- Grants access to sect‑specific Martial Arts and internal arts.
- Imposes rules you’re expected to follow; some quests and behaviors may conflict with sect doctrine.
- Guilds unlock at around level 20 online. Being in a guild:
- Provides a weekly Jade coin “salary.”
- Opens guild‑exclusive dungeons and raids with extra loot.
- Gives access to shared facilities (crafting, cooking, potion brewing) at the guild base.
- Enables long‑form tasks and guild wars tied to the weekly schedule.
The early game in Where Winds Meet feels huge because it is, but there is a clear spine to follow: set sensible starting options, lock in a main character, pick up a horse and a second weapon, then secure Touch of Death, Veil of Stillness, and Heavenly Snatch while pushing exploration in Qinghe to unlock the Afterglow Pendant and stronger flask. With Martial Arts and gear slots leveling alongside your world level, both solo story chapters and online bosses become far less intimidating—and the world’s stranger systems, from doctoring geese to flying across mountain ranges, open up naturally as you go.
