Start here: your first weeks in Where Winds Meet

What should I do in my first week?

1. Pick one starting martial art and stay on it. Nameless Sword and Nameless Spear are the two starter arts, both native to the opening progression and both fine for learning timing.
2. Spend the week on Deflect, not damage. Run easy encounters until red-glint attacks are a reflex. This is the highest-return investment in the game and it costs nothing.
3. Do not optimize gear yet. You will not know which pieces matter until you understand the gear chain, and re-doing it later is the expensive mistake.
4. Open the codex pages before choosing a sect. The English sect names do not map obviously to the Chinese ones, so guessing wastes a reputation grind.

Which weapon should a new player use?

Start with a weapon whose identity you can describe in one sentence, because that is exactly what the first few bosses test — whether you know what your weapon does. The martial arts list groups arts by weapon class and unlock route; the two Nameless arts are the free entry point, and nothing else is cheaper to learn.

If you already know you want fist-range brawling, Gauntlets are a viable long-term target, but the build assumes gear and Inner Ways you will not have in week one. Learn the loop on a starter art first and migrate later — the migration cost is materials, not skill.

What should I spend resources on first?

What can I safely ignore early?

• PvP brackets beyond 33. Gear-enabled brackets reward a finished build; the equalized bracket rewards skill you can actually build in week one.
• Tier lists. A tier rating describes a finished build at a specific date, not a starter character. The Gauntlets page, for example, publishes its rating as "T0 as of September 2026" for a reason.
• Endgame set farming. Sets matter once Attunement is stable; before that they are noise.
• Any shop or currency decision. This site does not cover monetization, and it publishes no early spending advice.

How should I choose a sect?

Choose by the martial art you want to end up using, not by the sect's reputation. Each of the nine sects teaches a specific art, and the sect you join mostly determines how you gain access to that art and its support systems. The sect list maps each sect to its signature art, plus the two English naming traps (the Inkbound Order is new in 2.3, and Pear Garden is not a sect name).

What is the first real difficulty spike?

It is not a boss; it is the first fight where a mechanic stops you from draining Qi. When the Qi bar refuses to move, the answer is usually a mechanic — a shield, an add, a phase — rather than more damage. The boss pages document the three checks that cover most of these: a deflectable projectile, a hard timer, and a challenge mode.

When should I start looking at builds?

After the Deflect loop is automatic and the gear chain is understood. At that point a build page saves real time: Heavenwill Gauntlets for a burst melee character, Silkbind-Wings for team damage amplification. Both pages list mandatory Inner Ways, which is the part players most often get wrong.

What changed recently that I should know about?

The global build has two dated beats left in 2026: Hutuo on 13 November and Roaring Sands on 11 December, with Dual Spears in between. Anything you read about endgame content should say which side of those dates it was written on. The roadmap page keeps that list, including what is still missing from global.