Wuthering Waves 1.2 will be released on Thursday, August 15th at 6am in the UK. As always, this update will bring a bunch of new content, but the most exciting thing is that we will soon be able to get a new free 5-Star character, Xiangli Yao.

I believe most of us players may be preparing for him. In this guide, we will talk about the necessary materials you should prepare for Xiangli Yao and how to create the best build for him. Without further ado, let’s get straight into it.

Required Materials

First, let’s take a look at the materials you should prepare for Xiangli Yao so that you can quickly upgrade him to level 90 when he is released. His Ascension requires a total of 46 Tempest Mephis and 60 Violet Corals.

Since he is primarily located in Norfall Barrens Map, he will also need 29 Green Whisperin Cores, 40 Blue Whispering Cores, 52 Purple Whispering Cores, and 61 Gold Whispering Cores.

Just like any other Gauntlet user, he will need Cadence Materials to upgrade his talents. He will need 25 Cadence Seed, 26 Cadence Bud, 55 Cadence Leaf, and 67 Cadence Blossom.

For Weekly Boss Materials, he will need 26 Scar Material. Of course, don’t forget Shell Credits.

Kit

Before we get into his guide, let’s go over the basics of his kit so you know how to build him.

Xiangli Yao is a 5-Star Electro DPS character who uses Gauntlets. He excels at dealing Resonance Liberation damage, as all damage from his Forte Circuit counts as Resonance Liberation damage.

Just like any other Electro DPS character, the best set for Xiangli Yao would be 5-Piece Void Thunder.

Echoes

For the main Echo skill, the buff from Thundering Mephis Echo skill is the best for him. But generally, for any DPS character, any Echoes that take up a lot of Field time are definitely not worth considering.

And Thundering Mephis has the longest Field time and cannot be swap-cancelled. Therefore, the best Echo skill is Tempest Mephis Echo skill, which has a relatively short Field time, and the second hit of this skill can be swap-cancelled.

Alternatively, you can use Flautist Echo Skill to get some nice damage and Concerto Energy. You can also use the 5-Piece Lingering Tunes with Mech Abomination Echo skill. This Echo skill is very easy to use because it does not have any animations. And if he is on the field for a long time, the effect is very close to Void Thunder Set.

At this time, we still don’t know if Xiangli Yao’s skills can be swap-cancelled. If his best play includes a swap-cancelled skill, then Lingering Tunes will not be a good choice. You can mix and match the 2-Piece Set effects of Lingering Tunes, Void Thunder, or Moonlit Clouds until you get a better choice.

Energy Regeneration

For Xiangli Yao’s Energy Regeneration, we still don’t know how much Energy he will generate. But his Energy cost is low at 125, and he will be on most of the time.

Therefore, we can safely assume that he may need about 125% Energy Regeneration. It is crucial to restore his Burst in time, as it is an important part of his equipment.

Weapons

Now, let’s talk about his weapons.

The best weapon for Xiangli Yao is his Signature Gauntlet. It has base attack damage of 588 and provides 24.3% of critical damage from its sub-stat.

In addition, its passive skill increases all attribute damage bonuses by 12%. When Resonance Liberation is activated, it increases Liberation damage by 48% for 8 seconds. Resonance skill can extend this duration by 5 seconds, and this effect can be triggered 3 times, which means a maximum extension of 15 seconds. So if you want to main him, I recommend you use his Signature Weapon.

Since Xiangli Yao is free, it becomes much easier to pull his weapons. His second best weapon would be the 5-Star Standard Banner Weapon, Abyss Surges, as it is able to provide a lot of attack stats and energy regeneration.

Another good choice is Stoner. It provides critical hit rate, making him easier to build, and further provides an 18% Liberation damage bonus.

These are the best options for him, however, these weapons are premium options. So if you don’t plan to make Xiangli Yao a main character in your Wuthering Waves Account, you don’t have to invest in more rare equipment on him.

Here is an alternative, which is to use Hollow Mirage. This is a gacha weapon option, which provides attack percentage from its secondary stats and passive stats. However, this weapon is conditional, as the stack of its passive stats will disappear if you get hit.

Team Combination

Moving on to his team combination. Xiangli Yao’s best teammate is obviously Yinlin, who can greatly amplify his damage with her extra buff. What’s more, she also deals a lot of off-field damage, greatly improving the damage output in the team.

If you don’t have Yinlin, there are some other good options. I think Zhezhi can form a good pair with Xiangli Yao, as she can also deal high off-field damage.

Changli can also form a good pair with him, as you can run a Dual DPS comp and Xiangli Yao can benefit from Liberation damage. But this team is only possible if his play style allows it.

In addition, Jianxin can provide Resonance Liberation damage buff and Crowd Control. Mortefi can provide some good off-field damage. Sanhua can be used as a Moonlit Set activator, and the basic attack damage buff is not completely wasted. Yuanwu can provide some off-field damage and can also deal Vibration damage, helping you break the enemy’s shield faster. The last position is usually used by Sustain Support such as Verina or Baizhi.

In conclusion, by understanding Xiangli Yao’s unique mechanics and preparing the required materials ahead of time, players can maximize his potential from his debut, making him a powerful addition to any team in Wuthering Waves.

Wuthering Waves, a new free-to-play RPG from Kuro Game, was released globally on May 22nd. As this is a fresh game, many players might find themselves in need of guidance. So today, I am going to cover several tips to help your characters improve their damage. Let's get started!

Echo System

To start off, I want to talk about the Echo System. The Echoes are acting as a Resonator's armor or clothes for their main stats. They have rarities ranging from 2-star and all the way up to 5-star. This ties into dealing more damage with your Resonators is the rarity of your Echo and what substance they provide to your Resonator.

You're given a Data Bank level, and in this Data Bank level, you are restricted to your drop rarity. When you are starting Weathering Waves, you'll be starting at 2-star rarity Echoes. In the very early game aspects of your playthrough, it is very easy to fall victim to leveling up those low-cost Echoes.

To avoid wasting a lot of time and materials in the early game that you're going to need later on in the endgame, do your best to farm lots of Echo in the open world and get your Data Bank level up. The higher your Data Bank level goes, the better drops you will get for your Echo, and the higher chance of getting a 4 or 5-star Echo.

Your Resonators have different base stats, such as HP, attack, defense, energy regeneration, crit rate, and crit damage. Whenever you absorb an Echo, that Echo is automatically given different stats, and these stats are completely randomized. For example, the Crownless echo has crit rate and attack, which are 2 good stats to improve damage on Resonator.

Ascension

When leveling up your Resonators, you would typically reach a plateau. This plateau is called your level cap. In order to bring that level cap number even higher, you have to do what is called an Ascension. Doing an Ascension will raise your Resonator's base HP, base defense, and base attack. Another thing that you must remember is your SOL3 Phase Level.

A couple of tips I can give you to improve your Union Level is that you can adventure into the open world, do mini-games, farm chests, do things in your handy guidebook, or use your Waveplates on the boss fights. You just want to divide some time into focusing on your Union Level rank because it will plateau in certain areas and aspects of Wuthering Waves.

Skills

Next, let's talk about skills. You can identify what skills your Resonator possesses and what they do. In terms of building your Resonator to deal with more damage, you want to focus on your skill tree. Each Resonator has a total of 5 skills that can be leveled up all the way up to a maximum of 10.

Resonators have 5 skills, and when you level them up, they also give you additional benefits as far as your stats are concerned. Upgrading your skill trees does require a lot of resources, so make sure to pre-farm them.

Weapons

Speaking of which, let's talk about weapons in Weathering Waves. If I'm going to be very honest, I wouldn't worry about any weapons you get at the beginning of your playthrough because that would be wasted resources leveling those weapons up.

Instead, from the pre-registration rewards of a new Wuthering Waves Account, you are given a free 4-star weapon of choice which you could use on Rover or somebody from the novice banner that you get at the beginning of Weathering Waves.

Use your resources on leveling up the 4-star weapons instead of using the 1-star and 2-star weapons from the beginning of the game. Also, the higher rarity weapons will give you better benefits and help you better in the long run.

Keep in mind while you're leveling up your Resonators or your weapons that your resources are very scarce. Make sure that when you are upgrading anything in Weathering Waves, it will actually have long-term value for you. If you don't make the right choices, it will cause you to struggle in the endgame. Similar to the sequence node within Resonators, you could get duplicates of weapons as well, making the weapon have better benefits for the Resonator wielding it.

Team Composition

Your team composition is very important in dealing more damage in Weathering Waves. In your team setup, you can select up to 3 Resonators. With these Resonators, you can actually get a brief description of what they do and what abilities they have. This way, you can form your team composition together.

Do your best to try to keep them all at a different element because if you run into an enemy that has the same element as your Resonators, that enemy will be immune to that specific Resonators's attacks. The best way to build your own team composition together is to get a better understanding of your resonators. So read the skills that they have and form a team composition.

If you are the player that's looking for more of a temporary boost of damage, cooking food will help all your resonators on your current team composition deal with more damage. I will highly suggest exploring the open world of Weathering Waves to collect all those plants that you see out there and hunt all those animals.

In this guide, I will share with you 8 practical tips that beginners don’t know. I believe that at least one of these tips will make your experience in Wuthering Waves much better. Let’s jump right in!

8. Mining Ores & Crafting Weapons

If you come across these ores in the open world, take the time to mine them quickly, especially for some Indigoite ore vein or Scarletthorn materials, both of which will be used to craft free 4-star weapons. To do this, you need to go to this place called Weapon Crafting.

As you can see, you can craft a 4-star weapon for each profession, so you can get 4-star Sword, Broadblade, Gauntlet, Pistols and Rectifier. Especially in the early game, if you are unlucky in Gacha system, they are almost the best thing you can get. Because compared to 3-star weapons, they really provide very good basic attack power, and even the passive effects of some of these weapons are quite good.

Remember, in order to actually craft these weapons, you’ll also need a Standard Weapon Mold. It will drop from the weekly bosses, and there are currently two: Bell-Borne Geochelone and Scar, so just pick one to farm its upgrade materials for your character. You can then do this up to 3 times per week.

Now one thing to remember: you can use map markers to remind yourself where you mined the ores, as I believe they refresh every day after the server resets. But to save your sanity and speed up the process of collecting these ores, you can use the interactive map on your browser, that way, you can easily see all the known locations of these ores to get that 4-star weapon as quickly as possible.

7. Collect All Available Items

Now this next tip is very important, collect everything. If you’re one of those hoarders who hoards every material, you can get your hands on, now is your time to shine. Because you’ll be rewarded with Astrites and other useful materials that can help you upgrade your characters and progress in your Wuthering Waves Account.

There are two places that don’t explicitly state rewards, but do offer rewards, and that’s Synthesizer and Cooking Station. You can raise Proficiency simply by crafting or cooking various things at these locations, and once you raise Proficiency you’ll get rewards, including some free Astrites and materials.

On top of that, if you visit this Relic Merchant, you can turn in Sonance Caskets that you find throughout the world.

These Caskets are basically the equivalent of Oculus for Genshin Impact, and are very important for those who play Rover as a main character, as some rewards will provide key materials. Such as Mysterious Codes for leveling up Rover, and even Wavebands that can be used to gain new powers through Resonance Chain system.

Lastly, you can also visit Pioneer Association at this location, where you can get a lot of rewards for every percentage of map you complete. So again, in the open world, just collect everything and complete all the puzzle chests you come across to get a lot of rewards.

6. Use Your Waveplates Effectively

Now, the next tip is probably the most important tip I want to talk about, which is to not waste your Waveplates on unnecessary activities. Waveplates are basically the stamina system for this game. Not only can you get a ton of Union level experience to help increase your account level, but you can also get some serious rewards by spending Waveplates.

But where do you spend them? As a good rule of thumb, it’s recommended to prioritize dumping Waveplates on World Bosses first and completing Weekly Challenges, which can be done up to 3 times per week.

You can do Simulation Challenges to get various upgrade materials, but since the game has just been released, you should be able to get a lot of these materials by completing activities and exploring the open world.

On the other hand, when you want to level up to level 50 or reach Union level 20, you need 3 boss materials per character. I had to spend 540 Waveplates or 180 Waveplates per character just to prepare to get my main 3-unit team to level 50.

Obviously, if you’re playing as a Rover, the cost will be lower, as they use special upgrade materials that you can get from Relic Merchant.

If you don’t need boss materials, I recommend only spending your Waveplates on Simulation Training.

From the looks of it, we’re also going to need a lot of Boss Materials. For example, if nothing had changed since CBT2, you’d need a total of 46 Boss Materials to fully upgrade a character. In other words, you’d need to spend a lot of Waveplates.

Later on, you’ll also unlock these Tacet Fields, which can offer Tuners and Echoes as rewards. The current recommendation is to wait until you reach Data Bank 15, and then you can farm the highest-level Echoes.

5. Upgrade Your Echoes Properly

Speaking of which, I have to mention not to invest too much in low-level Echoes. There are currently 4 rarity levels of Echoes, from Green all the way up to Golden or simply Rank 5.

You basically only need to upgrade Rank 5 Echoes, as they offer the best primary attribute boost and the number of secondary attributes you can unlock.

However, it’s unrealistic not to upgrade the lower rarity Echoes to make the game easier. If you have to, I recommend upgrading them to level 5 at most.

4. Prioritize Focusing On One Main DPS

Now, continuing with the trend of resource allocation, I highly recommend focusing on cultivating 1 main DPS character that you enjoy playing first. This means that assigning the best Echoes, giving 4-star or 5-star weapons and prioritizing Waveplates spent on them is basically a friendly approach. This allows for a damage dealer that can quickly deal with any monster in the open world, saving you time when farming or exploring.

And as I said before, you definitely want to use at least one 4-star weapon instead of a 3-star weapon because it provides better basic attack power that scales well with the damage of your main character.

Basically, we are in the early game now, and it is not different from most gacha games, and having at least 1 powerful unit in your team can help the game progress.

3. Please Avoid This Banner Trap

There is a feature in Wuthering Waves that I like, namely the 5-star character selector banner here, which you can unlock after completing the beginner’s banner.

However, this banner can be a bit misleading. You can use Lustrous Tides or spend Astrite to make a wish on this banner, and you can also exchange Astrite for Lustrous Tides. But the thing is, you should never bother spending Astrite to get Lustrous Tides, because this currency is only used for Standard banner and this selector banner.

More importantly, trust me, you will constantly get Lustrous Tides through events, in-game mail rewards, and world exploration, so don’t rush to spend Astrite on this selector banner. Save it and collect those Lustrous Tides and then use them here.

2. Visit Souvenir Shop

While exploring the world, you will come across many treasure chests and these things called Tidal Heritage. You will notice that they offer a resource called Wood Textured Shard.

You can actually use it in a special shop called Souvenir Shop. Talk to this NPC and tell them that you want Souvenirs. You can spend this Wood Textured Shard to get Lustrous Tides, or to get experience materials, Tuners, Ascension material, and even recipes to help you level up your Chef for more rewards.

1. Unlock Pseudo Mount

Now as an extra tip, this isn’t something I recommend everyone do, but if you want to speed up your exploration, you can get Pseudo mounts in the game. You’ll need to accept this quest from the notice board, called “We Promise, We Deliver”.

Completing this quest chain will unlock the ability to fight and collect Inferno Rider Echo. Now, for the cool part, if you hold down Echo button to summon Inferno Rider, you can actually ride it anywhere in the open world for a few seconds. However, you can also equip 3 copies of the same Echo for all active teammates to ride the motorcycle repeatedly.

Obviously, this Echo may not be the best match for every character, but if you happen to have to farm this boss and want to speed up your exploration or just want to look cool, you can do this.

That’s all for this guide. Hopefully, these tips will help you have a better gaming experience in Wuthering Waves! Good luck!