Pardon Parades in Where Winds Meet are one of those systems you probably first meet by accident: a glowing banner at the top of the screen, a bird icon near the minimap, and suddenly a crowd is pelting a shackled player with vegetables. Underneath the spectacle, though, sits a very specific set of rules about jail time, rewards, and weekly limits.
What a Pardon Parade is in Where Winds Meet
A Pardon Parade is a public event triggered by a jailed player who has been detained for committing in‑game crimes such as stealing or killing NPCs. When the parade begins, that player is marched through the streets in a literal walk of shame while other players line the route and throw food at them.
There are two key outcomes:
- The criminal who initiates the parade cuts their detention time by 60 real‑time minutes.
- Participants who throw food at the criminal earn rewards for taking part.
Choosing the parade is an alternative to simply waiting out a multi‑hour sentence in jail or bribing the guard to get out early. It turns the punishment into a shared event that pulls other players into your personal bad decisions.
How detention and crime feed into Pardon Parades
The game treats crime as a real risk. If you stray into:
- Stealing from stalls or chests in view of guards or townsfolk
- Murdering NPCs or other protected targets in areas where the law applies
you can be arrested and sent to jail for a set number of hours in real-world time. While in jail, you have three broad choices:
| Option | What it does | Trade‑off |
|---|---|---|
| Wait out the sentence | Remain in detention until the timer naturally expires | No cost, but you lose playtime |
| Bribe a guard | Pay currency to leave jail early | Costs Zhou Coins, keeps your record stained |
| Start a Pardon Parade | Trigger a public event that removes 60 minutes of detention | Public humiliation, relies on other players to join |
Pardon Parades sit in that third lane, turning punishment into a social spectacle and giving you a timed, one-hour reduction in your sentence for each parade you run.
How to start a Pardon Parade as the jailed player
When your character is in jail, you gain the option to initiate a Pardon Parade rather than waiting or paying your way out. The parade itself is a discrete event: once started, it runs its course and either reduces your remaining time or, if you have almost none left, effectively clears it.
The key points for the initiating player:
- Each parade removes 60 minutes from your current detention.
- You still need to be in jail long enough for the parade option to matter; if you only have a few minutes left, the reduction is effectively capped by the time remaining.
- You are the target, not the participant—you do not receive the same “throw food” participation rewards that others get.
Once the parade begins, your character is moved into the procession route, shackled or otherwise visually marked as a criminal. Other players then receive an event prompt and can teleport into your world instance to take part.
How to join a Pardon Parade from the open world
You do not need to be in jail to take part. Most players encounter the feature from the outside: a banner appears in the upper left of the screen, or a glowing bird icon shows up near the minimap, signaling that a parade is currently recruiting.
Opening the Time‑Limited events menu
All parades are surfaced through the Time‑Limited events interface:
- PC: Click the Time‑Limited button in the upper‑left corner of the HUD when it appears.
- PS5: Press the Options button to open the pause menu, then use the directional buttons to scroll all the way to the top‑left tab where the Time‑Limited events live.
Inside that menu, one of the entries will be labeled Pardon Parade whenever at least one jailed player has started a parade and there are still open participant slots.
Selecting a criminal and getting a slot
Once you’re in the Time‑Limited menu, the flow is simple but competitive:
- Choose the Pardon Parade entry.
- Browse the list of active parades, each tied to a specific jailed character.
- Click on a criminal to attempt to join their parade.
There is a hard cap on the number of participants per parade. If a parade is already full, your join attempt will fail and you’ll need to pick another criminal or wait for a new parade to appear. Expect a bit of friction during peak times, since each parade offers a limited number of reward-eligible slots and those fill quickly.
What you actually do in a Pardon Parade
Joining the event drops you into the parade instance, typically near the marching prisoner and guard escort. Your role is not to fight or escort; it’s to pelt the criminal with food under a strict quota.
The system tracks your participation with one simple rule:
- You must throw food 10 times within the parade’s time limit to qualify for rewards.
Two types of throwable items are supported:
- Eggs
- Vegetables
Functionally, there is no difference between the two in terms of progression. The game just counts throws. You can mix and match egg and vegetable throws in any order; what matters is that the total reaches ten before the parade ends.
Rewards and weekly limits for Pardon Parades
On the participant side, Pardon Parades behave like a capped, repeatable event, not an endlessly farmable mini-game.
| Role | Benefit | Limit |
|---|---|---|
| Jailed initiator | 60 minutes of detention time removed per parade | Limited by how often you are jailed and allowed to start parades |
| Participant who throws food | Event rewards for completing 10 throws in a parade | Rewarded up to 5 times per week |
The API is clear on two separate constraints for participants:
- You can earn participation rewards from Pardon Parades only five times each week.
- You can join as many parades as you want beyond that, but additional completions after the fifth will not grant further rewards.
That weekly cap applies to your account, not to individual characters within a single week’s reset window. If you are planning your time in the world of Jianghu around currency and item gain, front‑load your five rewarded parades early in the weekly cycle and treat any extra parades as purely social or role‑play moments.
How the UI signals a Pardon Parade is live
Pardon Parades are easy to miss if you’re not looking at the top of your HUD. The game uses a couple of visual cues when a parade is recruiting:
- A banner in the upper left of the screen calling out the event.
- A glowing bird icon near the minimap that acts as another entry point into the same Time‑Limited event menu.
Clicking either the banner or the bird icon opens the same Time‑Limited interface where the parade entry sits. On console, the banner still appears, but you’ll rely on the Options‑menu route to dig into the event list.
Why Pardon Parades matter in the bigger Jianghu loop
The event has two subtle effects on how Where Winds Meet feels to play.
First, it gives weight to the justice system. Jail time is measured in real hours; triggering a Pardon Parade is a tangible way to claw back that time by pulling strangers into your punishment. An hour shaved off a sentence is significant when everything else in the game is also ticking in real‑time.
Second, it adds a social rhythm to the world. The random pop of a parade banner can pull you off your current quest and into a crowd activity that has nothing to do with your story arc but everything to do with the world’s shared fiction—someone stole, someone was caught, and now everyone gets to throw eggs.
If you want to lean into that rhythm, keep one eye on the upper‑left corner of your HUD while you explore. When “where winds meet pardon parade” becomes a recurring moment in your week, you’ll know you’ve fully dropped into the game’s idea of communal justice.
