The Scholar career in Where Winds Meet turns your character into a professional arguer: part lawyer, part philosopher, part support class. It unlocks the Gift of Gab debate minigame as a full profession, lets you craft combat talismans, and even argue other players out of false criminal charges.
How to unlock Scholar
Scholar becomes available early, but not immediately. There are two separate requirements:
| Requirement | Details |
|---|---|
| Character level | Reach at least Level 13. |
| Exploration quest | Complete the Legacy exploration quest tied to Scholar (varies by naming: “Legacy: Scholar’s Path” / “Scholar’s Path”). |
| Gift of Gab intro | Finish the Gift of Gab tutorial quest chain (notably “Gift of Gab: Silver Tongue”). |
Once the level requirement is met, you can pick up the Scholar legacy quest in the Moonveil Mountain / Heaven’s Pier area. Map markers will highlight the quest location when it becomes available. Expect a climb: teleporting near Stillwind Slope or Front Mountain gets you close, but you still have to scale the mountain to reach the quest NPCs.
The core unlock sequence follows this pattern:
- Start the early Gift of Gab quest in Heaven’s Pier (often titled “Gift of Gab: Silver Tongue”).
- Complete the introductory debate encounter there.
- Later, pick up the Scholar legacy quest (“Scholar’s Path”) around Moonveil Mountain / Deeforage Grove–style locations.
- Speak with the Scholar NPC (Yan Huaijin–type character), then confront a retired doctor (Wei Rujun) inside a nearby building.
- Defeat Wei Rujun in a guided debate using Gift of Gab.
- Report back to the Scholar NPC outside.
Winning that debate promotes you to the Novice tier of the Scholar career and unlocks the full Scholar UI, including card decks and talisman crafting.
What Scholar actually does
Scholar is not a crafting profession in the traditional MMO sense. It changes how you interact with NPCs and players:
| Feature | What it changes |
|---|---|
| Gift of Gab debates | Enables a real-time card-based debate minigame against NPCs and in certain career activities. |
| False accusation cases | Lets you argue in court‑style hearings to clear Jianghu bounties for other players who have been falsely accused. |
| Talisman crafting | Unlocks the ability to craft short‑duration buff items (talismans) usable in PvE and PvP, but not in Trials. |
| Core stats | Raises character attributes like Spirit, Vitality, hit chance, parry, and block efficiency as your Scholar mastery goes up. |
In practice, that means you can:
- Unlock extra conversation branches, sniff out lies, and trigger new side content through debates.
- Take on “lawyer” work in Jianghu Bounty, defending players who got hit with crimes they didn’t commit.
- Support your own combat build (or your group) with crafted talismans that boost damage, mitigation, or healing for a few minutes at a time.
Scholar is never mandatory to progress the main story, but it quietly powers some of the stranger and more social systems in the game.
Scholar Career Menu and tabs
Once unlocked, Scholar lives under the Careers/Profession menu. The Career Menu exposes three main tabs specific to Scholar:
| Tab | Purpose |
|---|---|
| Scholar upgrade | Shows Tier, career mastery, and attribute bonuses. This is where you spend Career Notebooks to rank up. |
| Gift of Gab | Manages debate decks per argument style (the “suits” of the card game) and upgrades individual cards. |
| Talisman crafting | Crafts bamboo paper and talismans, displays recipes, material requirements, and stamina cost. |
Get into the habit of opening this menu regularly. Almost everything that makes Scholar feel stronger—more damage in debates, higher success on cases, better talismans—comes from upgrades buried in these three tabs.
How Gift of Gab debates work
Gift of Gab is the combat system for Scholars. Instead of swords, you throw cards; instead of HP, you whittle down “focus” using “inspiration” as your resource.
Debate flow and UI
Every debate follows the same skeleton:
- At the start, you choose one of four argument styles (your “deck”).
- The game recommends the style that counters your opponent.
- Each side has:
- a focus bar (health) at the top of the screen, and
- an inspiration gauge (resource) near the bottom.
- You drag or activate cards, spending inspiration to:
- deal focus damage,
- apply debuffs (weaken their recovery or defenses), or
- buff your own regeneration and protection.
- Quick‑time prompts appear near character dialogue; hitting the prompted key in time fires a powerful rebuttal for bonus damage or silences.
Inspiration regenerates over time, but many cards modify how quickly that happens. High‑regeneration setups are usually stronger in long debates.
Argument styles: the rock‑paper‑scissors loop
Debates use a circular counter system, so matching the right style to your opponent matters. Two naming schemes exist in the UI and quests, but they map to the same underlying loop.
| Simple style name | Alternate naming | Counters | Is countered by |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rebuttal | Infuriating Nitpicker | Filibuster / Heart Stab | Provocation / Yapping |
| Filibuster | Heart Stab | Bluster / Wild Boasts | Rebuttal / Infuriating Nitpicker |
| Bluster | Wild Boasts | Provocation / Yapping | Filibuster / Heart Stab |
| Provocation | Yapping | Rebuttal / Infuriating Nitpicker | Bluster / Wild Boasts |
The client usually auto‑selects the counter style when you initiate a debate, but you can override it. Early on, it’s easier to trust the recommendation and focus on learning your cards.
Practical debate tips
- Open with cards that increase your inspiration regeneration; they pay off over the full timer.
- Weave in debuffs that slow the opponent’s inspiration recovery to keep them from playing their strongest cards.
- Do not ignore the timer: if you stall too long, your focus can start draining automatically.
- Hit every quick‑time rebuttal prompt you see—these are effectively free, high‑damage plays.
- Once your regeneration engine is running, spend aggressively on high‑damage cards to close out the debate.
Leveling Scholar: ranks, mastery, and stats
Scholar ranks are tied to career mastery and raised with a single currency: Career Notebooks. Both Healer and Scholar spend this same resource, so progression choices matter.
Upgrading tiers with Career Notebooks
Inside the Scholar upgrade tab, the lower‑right corner exposes an Upgrade button. Each press spends a set number of Career Notebooks and raises your tier (Novice, Adept, etc.). The Notebook cost climbs rapidly as you go up—going from Tier 1 to Tier 4 might cost 4, then 8, then 16, then 32 books, and so on.
Two main ways to get Career Notebooks:
- Career and Sentient Being activities: On the world map, zoom in fully to reveal:
- Gift of Gab debate icons (speech bubbles) that reward Notebooks when cleared.
- Other profession‑related icons (like heal‑illness gourds for Healer) that also drop Notebooks.
- Season / Activity shop: Use the in‑game Jade Fish currency in the seasonal profession section to buy Notebooks in bulk, up to a high cap per season.
Each Scholar rank‑up:
- Raises career mastery, which gates the difficulty of debate targets and framing cases you can take.
- Adds flat bonuses to base stats such as Spirit, Vitality, hit chance, and defensive efficiencies.
- Unlocks new talisman recipes and sometimes cosmetic appearance options linked to the career.
Note: You cannot advance the profession while your character is suffering from certain illnesses. Clear the ailment first (either as a Healer or via a healer NPC) and then upgrade Scholar.
Upgrading Gift of Gab cards
The Scholar Gift of Gab tab lets you upgrade individual cards within each style’s deck. Card upgrades are separate from career rank and are fueled by a different consumable: Gift of Gab Notes.
| Upgrade element | Resource | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|
| Career rank & stats | Career Notebooks | Debates, career activities, Season/Activity shop. |
| Specific debate cards | Gift of Gab Notes (card‑specific) | Scholar gift boxes and custom career gift boxes from the Season/Activity shop. |
Gift boxes bought with Jade Fish drop random Notes for Scholar or Healer. Scholar gift boxes focus on Gift of Gab Notes; custom career boxes let you choose between sets when opened. Each Note corresponds to a named card (for example, “Enlighten Me” or “Unarguable”). When you have enough copies for a card, you can upgrade it in the Gift of Gab tab.
Upgrading a card typically improves one or more of:
- Damage multiplier on focus.
- Debuff strength (for example, lower enemy inspiration recovery or defense).
- Buff value (increased own regeneration or mitigation).
There is a weekly cap on how many Scholar gift boxes you can buy, so grabbing the full allowance every week keeps your card pool evolving instead of stalling behind content difficulty.
Talisman crafting and stamina use
The third Scholar tab handles talisman crafting. The loop is simple but gated by both materials and a stamina system.
Crafting flow
- Craft bamboo paper as a base material.
- Use bamboo paper plus other reagents to craft specific talismans.
- Spend a fixed amount of daily stamina per craft.
The UI lists every ingredient required for bamboo paper. Hovering over each material reveals ways to get it: hunting particular animals (wild boar, grey wolf, she deer, giant elk) or pulling it from specific life‑supply loot boxes purchased in the Season/Activity shop.
Talismans produced here grant 10‑minute temporary buffs. Examples include:
- Reducing both damage dealt and damage taken when HP falls below a threshold, useful for tank‑style play.
- Boosting the healing effect of medicines for a short window.
Talismans function in open‑world PvE and PvP but not in Trials. That restriction keeps instanced content from being too tightly tied to a single side system.
Stamina mechanics
Every talisman craft consumes stamina, a separate progression currency:
- Your character restores a set amount of stamina daily (for example, ~450 points), up to a hard cap (such as 2,500).
- If you sit at the cap, any regenerated stamina above that is effectively wasted.
- Crafting talismans—or even extra bamboo paper—keeps the bar moving and converts otherwise wasted stamina into tangible buffs or saleable items.
The Talisman tab shows current stamina and the per‑craft cost, plus a help tooltip explaining recovery rules. The expectation is that you spend stamina regularly rather than hoarding it indefinitely.
Clearing false accusations as a Scholar
One of the stranger side effects of the game’s law system is that NPCs can randomly frame your character for crimes you never committed. When that happens, a false accusation status appears, often near illness indicators on the UI.
Scholar plugs directly into that system in two ways:
- Defending other players: In the Jianghu Bounty interface, the Career tab lists cases flagged for “solve framing.” As a Scholar, you can accept these, travel to the scene, and debate on the accused player’s behalf. Winning clears or reduces their charges and pays out rewards like Bounty Tokens.
- Hiring help when you are framed: If your character is falsely accused, you use a Bounty Token from your inventory to post a “solve framing” bounty. Another player‑Scholar with sufficient mastery can accept the case and argue for you.
Scholar mastery functions like an item‑level requirement here: tougher accusations demand higher mastery. If your number in the Scholar panel is below what a case requires, you simply cannot take it yet.
There is no reliable way to “farm” false accusations for yourself—they trigger unpredictably during normal play. Treat the framing system as opportunistic social content rather than a grind loop.
Scholar occupies an unusual space in Where Winds Meet. It doesn’t raise your weapon damage directly, and much of what it unlocks happens outside of traditional combat. But the combination of stat bonuses, legal work, world debates, and talisman crafting makes it one of the more flexible long‑term investments, especially if you care about exploring Jianghu’s stranger corners or supporting other players when the law turns against them.
