Topic: Where Winds Meet

F2P open world collectathon mmo-lite. I put in around ten hours over the weekend. Pleasantly surprised. The developers Everstone Studio crammed in all the usual side activities you'd find in other open world games from the past twenty years into this game.

Battle pass, pay-to-look-cool, the usual F2P trappings. The collectathoning has DCUO vibes, the gear progression has The Division vibes (gear sets), production values are on the level of Saints Row III or GTA IV. The combat isn't as in-depth as Black Desert Online, but that's fine. So far the music and the unique scenery are the standout portions of this experience (I don't play many games with a Chinese aesthetic).

I appreciate all the nods to Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Kung Fu Hustle, Hero, etc.

I highly recommend you give it a try.

50 hours in. Story campaign half done. Achievements/trophies half done.

Rolling a healer, so Panacea Fan + Soulshade Umbrella. Although my guild doesn't have a tank, so I might switch Panacea Fan to Thundercry Blade (and Soulshade Umbrella) to play a hybrid paladin build. Ivorybloom + Rainwhisper gear sets. Internal arts: Art of Resistance (tank mandatory), Exquisite Scenery (tank optional), Restoring Blossom (healer optional), and Bitter Seasons (universal optional, enemy defense debuff).

Build Theory
The only purpose of using Soulshade Umbrella is for its martial skill, Echoes of a Thousand Plants. The umbrella will constantly heal you plus the team member with the lowest hp while allowing you to attack/tank at the same time. The internal art Art of Resistance is mandatory as it allows the Thundercry Blade's martial art Predator's Shield to have 100% uptime. Exquisite Scenery leans towards a counterstrike style gameplay as it allows Galecloud Cleave activation with zero charge. And Restoring Blossom enhances healing in general.

Quite possibly the best solo build? AoE damage plus AoE passive heals.

Ugh, turns out the Thundercry Blade is a little rough. Slow, probably the worst option in PvP. It also turns off your ability to triple jump, so you're forced to constantly switch to a different weapon every time you want to navigate the world properly. At least Stormbreaker Spear gives you martial skills to draw aggro, grant damage reduction, and stun a single enemy.

100 hours in. I would've popped the platinum trophy earlier this week...if it were possible. Currently the last one-third of the base game is locked behind the solo world eight unlock coming a week from today. Although I only have 80% of the Kaifeng oddities at the moment. Plenty of time between now and then to mop that up.

Easily the best game I never gave money to. That feels a little dirty. I'm compelled to give NetEase at least a little something for publishing this experiment of a game. I've had my eye on that magpie outfit. I'm hoping the world eight unlock will provide an avenue to farm the Flawless Defense armor set.

Currently the only way to get pieces for the set reliably is to purchase the level 56+ Agile Steps weekly gear chests from the jade fish shop. Long time to wait. The AS/FD sets are currently unavailable to farm via the Challenge and Outpost challenge energy system options. I suppose you could run Sword Trials but then you'd have to rely on your teammate's loadouts and boss mechanic competency.

Since I'm a healer/tank hybrid, I'm changing my loadout to Rainwhisper & Flawless Defense / Stormbreaker Spear & Soulshade Umbrella / Bitter Seasons & Rock Solid & Restoring Blossom & Morale Chant. Ivorybloom is arguably better than Rainwhisper, but the bonus is only active while your health is full. Better to have the constant +10% crit damage and crit healing from Rainwhisper always active, even though the additional +15% would never activate with my current loadout.

Turns out doing Bounty board missions (vendettas and bounties particularly) is the best way to reach the weekly jade fish limit, 20k jade fish in an hour. I ponied up $35 for the magpie outfit and dyed it to my favorite black & white mix. I'm just grinding dailies as I work towards that dope Bounty hunter hat. Looks straight out of Big Trouble In Little China, lol.

Some folks are playing Where Whales Meet out here with their drip though.

$2,000 later...

$40,000 later...

You know you've got nothing left to do when you're tuning the level 41 gear in your Arsenal to squeeze out 1-3 more mastery points, lol. I'm considering using my guaranteed gold tuning rolls on my level 51 gear when the Arsenal expands with the Season Two update later this week. I wonder if the juice would be worth squeeze?

I look forward to getting some legendary skins via the draw's pity system sometime next year, because I will not be dropping hundreds of dollars (or more) for a less than 1% pull on some drip.

Gave this game a few hours.
Couldn't get into unfortunately, the progress was kinda overwhelming and the UI for the game was one of the worst I ever seen out of a game.
Though I have immense respect for the developers with how well they optimized the game while still making it look amazing.

Menus are brutal. So many reward notifications (orange diamonds) pop up as you play, but they're buried deep. Multiple menus for power progression, missions, shops, etc. I didn't get comfortable with navigating the menus until I finished the Qinghe area, around the 50-hour mark.

Update went live yesterday. Solo world 8 unlocked. Gear level 61. Divinity level 2. Arsenal level 56. Enhancement level 30. The last one-third of the map, Kaifeng - Roaring Sands, is now open.

Popped the trophy for 250 Kaifeng oddities shortly after. We're back to waiting. Ten days until solo world 9 is unlocked. I was disappointed to discover that gear that guarantees gold tuning rolls are locked to the gear level. So a level 56 gear piece with a guaranteed tuning roll can't be used on a level 61 gear piece.

Mastery over 15k now.

Ghost Bind spam in PvP is ridiculous.

Too easily abused and the cooldown on Serene Breeze (its counter) is too long.

I watched someone play this for a few hours. It was interesting to watch, but it's not a game I think I'd play. I don't like the whole F2P thing even though I think it's really well done and relatively unobtrusive. It's also just way too complex and demanding- it's a game you play if you have nothing else going on, no other games to play and just want to devote yourself to it.

But I thought it looked pretty good. Very Souls like, with some Skyrim and Zelda elements, Batman Arkham x-ray vision, Witcher 3 sense and footprint investigation, even saw a Mortal Kombat Raiden head charge lol. Those Chinese devs sure don't hesitate to appropriate, but I think it also offers quite a few original ideas as well. And tbh, all the ideas it uses are good ones.

I saw this game came to mobile which makes me wonder if it will come to Switch 2. Granted, I wonder if any of the big F2P mobile rpgs will come to Switch 2.

@FishyS
Probably not.

With Switch being a hybrid handheld, which by default means non-continuous internet connection, I don't think it's a system that lends itself to such genres.

Then again, Fortnite and Apex Legends have done incredibly well, but I think the bar of entry is much lower for those types of games. These rpg souls-likes with 1,000 menus and mechanics and currencies and multiple skill trees and bounties and... ya, they're such a time sink for a very particular type of gamer. But, I suppose any game can find a fanbase just about anywhere.

I just don't think there's enough people interested to justify these games. Maybe one or two, sure, but these kinds of games are so dime a dozen at this point I don't think there's enough room on NS2. Keep in mind NS2, unlike other platforms, gets 10+ 1st party exclusives every year that 3rd party must compete with. So there's just not as much room as elsewhere.

Closing in on 17k mastery. Although I've taken a break from the rng gear grind considering solo world nine unlock is coming Monday. With solo world nine we'll be getting gold legendary gear as well as access to bows and rings with a low chance to be gold themselves when crafted.

If you want gold tunings on your gear...you'll be crafting a whole bunch of bows and rings.

GOLDEN HOUR - JVKE | WHERE WINDS MEET KONGHOU COVER BY REYKOVA

Solo world 9 unlocked yesterday and the rng grind kicked in. We now have legendary gold gear pieces available to grind. Sadly, after opening 40 level 61 chests with a chance of being gold gear, I didn't get a single piece for my build. An AI search suggests that the chance is as low as 1%. But hey, at least that's better than trying to pull a legendary draw before pity (which is less than 1%).

We've got two weeks until solo world 10 unlock, but at this rate I'm not sure I'll be ready by then.

My tank loadout and rotation.

If you're tanking, don't half-ass it with a hybrid build, use Stormbreaker Spear & Thundercry Blade.

Rainwhisper and Flawless Defense gear sets.

Inner Ways - Rock Solid, Art of Resistance, Exquisite Scenery, and Morale Chant.

Tank Rotation 1
Stormbreaker Spear - Storm Roar (Mob aggro and mob damage debuff.)
Stormbreaker Spear - charge heavy attack (Hit or miss, let the animation play out to gain Drumbeat*.)
Dual weapon skill (The grey skill. This will transition you from Stormbreaker Spear to Thundercry Blade)
Thundercry Blade - Predator's Shield (If you activated Drumbeat, this skill will be red "Shifting Heaven" instead of black. Gives 2 points of Fighting Spirit* and Breakthrough*.)
Thundercry Blade - Sunrush Gale (gives Focus* and Fortitude*)
Thundercry Blade - charge heavy attack "varied combo" (hold attack until you audibly hear "ping" and release)
Parry - To proc Exquisite Scenery's Defensive Riposte. (Breakthrough should still be active for bonus damage.)
Dual weapon skill
Continue to Tank Rotation 2

Tank Rotation 2
Stormbreaker Spear - Storm Roar
Stormbreaker Spear - charge heavy attack
Stormbreaker Spear - Thunder Shock (Adds 8% damage vulnerability to the mob for huge team damage, but you aren't given enough Fighting Spirit* to use this in the first rotation.)
Dual weapon skill
Thundercry Blade - Predator's Shield "Shifting Heaven"
Thundercry Blade - Sunrush Gale
Thundercry Blade - charge heavy attack "varied combo"
Parry - To proc Exquisite Scenery's Defensive Riposte.
Dual weapon skill
Repeat

Activated passives
Drumbeat - Necessary to activate Predator's Shield's perception skill, Shifting Heaven.
Fighting Spirit - Signified by the shield icons above your weapon in the lower-right area of your HUD. A necessary resource for martial arts skills Thunder Shock and Sunrush Gale.
Breakthrough - negates the endurance cost of charge attacks and increases charge attack damage by 30%.
Focus - increases charge attack charge rate by 50%.
Fortitude - stagger immunity.

Special Notes
You could mix in some mystic skills, but you would be hurting your damage-per-second. As a tank, charge attacking should be your priority. Golden Body while pointless in solo play, can be a life saver in team play. Save your squadmates from an AoE boss nuke if timed properly, like a good tank should. In regard to Inner Ways. While Trapped Beast is a tank-centric Inner Way, it does not benefit you as much as Morale Chant could or would.

I got a couple hundred Amazon spacebucks for Xmas. I'm torn between adding more Switch games to the collection or getting to pity in the Draw store. I'm 90 pulls away from pity, $200 exactly. I've got my eye on that golden aura accessory. But then I realized I need two harmonic cores. Unless I get/got exceedingly lucky, I would need more than $200. I would need an additional 24,000 pearls (72 pearls per $1 = $334) to reach the second pity.

FOMO

Conversely, you can go the poor route, the $5 Monthly Fund. 100 Echo Jade every log-in and 300 Echo Beads per month you purchase. You can spend 400 EJ for 2x Lingering Melody every week from the Jianghu Treasure tab in the Store. And 200 EJ for 1x Lingering Melody from the Season shop every week. Between the EJ and the EB it would take 36 weeks to reach pity. Nine months of diligently logging in every day and $45-worth of Monthly Fund purchases.

Thank goodness the pity counter doesn't reset every season.

Allegedly, the global version is still on Season One for another couple weeks.

edit: the math wasn't adding up at first...

This is gold gear grind is brutal. I've opened roughly 200 level 61 boxes and still only have two gold pieces for my build. I'm now genuinely curious what the Arsenal cap will be for level 61 gear? If it's 3,500+...that may take a while.

Solo world 10 prep and January roadmap breakdown.