Ready to dive into the world of Shu? Here’s some tips to assist you.

The Guide: Welcome To The Ming Dynasty

Ready to jump into Wuchang Fallen Feathers? This guide more then anything will help you discover some of the basic mechanics as well as some other aspects that I think are beneficial. Some of these might seem obvious, but they still hold some resemblance of relevancy in this guide. This section will focus on more then anything the basic system of the game from leveling up, to the more refined aspects such as the Feathering system.

The World: General Things to Pay Attention To

• Goldwing’s for Navigating: One of the most important aspects of souls like games is navigating the world around. More often then not, these games thrive on a natural aspect of exploration and Wuchang is no different besides one very minimal aspect that most people will shrug off as an environment addition -Goldwing’s. Hear those annoying, almost calming chirps as you’re navigating the world? Those are the Goldwing’s and they almost almost signify an area of interest. Follow the chirps and it’ll almost always lead towards a new area or place you haven’t been.
• Goldwing’s Feathers: Another added benefit of the Goldwing and their abundance in the world is what they drop. When you kill a Goldwing, they always drop a item called a Aurum Feather. This item provides you a random buff with the options being extra health, extra stamina, or boosting your damage for around 30 seconds. These items can be very useful in a pinch and add a little extra buff if you need it before a boss fight or other challenging area.

• Green and Yellow Floating Orbs: If you ever happen to notice a green and yellow tinted flowing orb of fire hovering over a blank space, this means there is an invisible walkway under it. These almost always lead to a shortcut or area of interest, so make sure you check out whatever is on the other side.
• Faces of the Past: When you’re walking around the various areas in the game, you will notice random objects that have a bluish sparkly hue around them. These are called the “Faces of the Past”. More then anything they represent an opportunity for you as the player to learn something about Wuchang’s past. To unlock this small bits of dialogue, simply walk up and interact with them. They will usually give you a prompt such as “Pay your respects before the God of Shu’s statue to reunite with the faces of the past.” What this means in simplest terms is you must emote, for example by pressing the touch pad on the PS5 controller, and choose the one that fits the blue text. This doesn’t have to be the exact emote, and there appears to be some level of wiggle room with the ones these interactions accept, but you will know you did the right thing when you are gifted some kind of item. In both my playthroughs I’ve seen everything from a skill point, to a divine gift, and a weapon upgrading item. More then worth the effort required.
• Bamboo Shoots Merchant: As you roam around the map you’ll find these cute little bamboo creatures that run away from Wuchang. Once to kill them you will receive an item called a bamboo shoot. The easiest way to find the merchant who takes these as currency is to cross the downed log into the first town and stay on the right path all the way until you reach a bridge. Once at that bridge, keep heading straight. You see your second bamboozling and a cave entrance on the left side. There is a panda merchant inside that you can spend the bamboo shoots at.

• NPC Interactions: Following in the footsteps of the Dark Souls series, this game has a huge roster of NPCs that almost always have some sort of side quest for you to partake. This tip is going to be short as really, I don’t want to spoil some of the amazing questlines but make sure to always pay attention to your teleport screen when moving from shrine to shrine. NPCs silhouettes will be visible next to a location any time they have something to give or tell you.

Building Your Character: Understanding The Basics

If this game does one think right it’s giving the player the freedom to build a character as you want. More then anything you as the player have the tools at your disposal to build Wuchang however you like. Here’s a quick guide to some mechanics.

• The Different Stats and What They Mean: You have 4 primary stats that you will want to pay attention to based on your build. They are Strength, Agility, Feathering and Magic. This game simplifies any of the guessing you would have to do as each weapon tree has points for whatever scales best with the weapon you use. One-handed weapons scale with feathering and focus on magic damage and spells, two-handed swords focus on strength and agility, and so on. There is every little room for error and you will almost always be trying to max out your weapons skill tree before branching off into the others. This allows you to min max as efficiently as possible as the developers created the system that way.

• Feathering – What is it?: Of all the stats you have access to in Wuchang Fallen Feathers, feathering in the one that stands out most as something that is new. The feathering is technically the disease ravaging the and but how does it match up with our characters skills and how we build her? Think of feathering as a secondary form of magic damage. This means that the higher your Feathering stat, the higher damage you will deal with Spells and weapons that use Feathering damage most notably the one-handed sword. On the same note, a higher Feathering Mitigation stat reduces the amount of incoming Feathering damage you take from enemies and bosses.

• Resetting Your Skill Tree: One other thing the developers added that is a great change of pace from the usual mold is the ability to reset your skill tree without any kind of “payment”. Even better is the ability to reset entire skill trees without needing any kind of prerequisites. This allows you to reset your character whenever you want, and gives you as the player the ability to mold the build as you want. Simply hover over a skill and press square. A menu will pop up and all you have to do is confirm and everything that leads from that node will reset.

• Temperance/Manna Upgrade Tree: Remember how I said most of the upgrades in the skill tree are in the right side with all the weapons? That was a lie. Once you start getting upgrade materials to put into your Manna, you will want to start carving your way into the left tree. This will allow you to upgrade the number of Manna charges you have as well as the health each one gives. Also on this side of the menu is your temperance upgrades. Temperance is the ability to add any kind of ailment to your weapon you want, and all of the upgrades for this tool are also on this side of the map.

• Benediction Passives: Another upgrade tree you’ll want to pay attention to when you unlock it is the Benediction menu. This menu can be accessed through any altar and allows you to assign three rune gems that you find scattered throughout the world. Though these passives might not seem like much, their power lies in the passives that you can activate by combining three in the same tier together. The best way I’ve seen of using these is equip three that have the same icons in the bottom right corner. This will allow you to get a unique passive that greatly boosts the damage/stats of the weapon you have equipped.

• Upgrade Materials: This tab will simply tell you a simplified list of all the upgrade materials and where to find them. For reference +10 is the max for any weapon.
  
  Weapons:(Found from defeating side bosses and enraged enemies that have a purple, purchased from merchants, or found littered around the world.)
  Faint Red Feather – Up to +3.
  Brilliant Red Feather – Up to +6.
  Radiant Red Feather – Up to +9.
  Lustrous Red Feather – Up to +10
  
  Manna Vase:
  (Both are found in golden chests scattered throughout the map.)
  Forgotten Remembrances – Upgrade the amount of charges for use.
  Lost Remains – Upgrade the amount of health per charge.

The Demon Inside: Understanding the Inner Demon Mechanic

It’s about time we got a somewhat unique buff/debuff mechanic in a souls like game not released by Fromsoft. The inner demon mechanic can be summed up in a couple paragraphs here that I think will assist the majority of the player base in actually understanding what it is. Let’s get into it, and if you feel lost, just bear with me.

• The Inner Demon Mechanic Explained: The inner demon is a status effect that Wuchang can obtain by doing one of the following things: invoking through a altar, defeating human enemies (I know right awkward considering almost everything your carving your way through is human.) or by using the maddening incense in your inventory. So what does this status provide or take away? Well in simplest terms it is a buff to your damage and the amount of Red Mercury you receive from enemies. The drawback? Well you take more damage and you can be invaded by a not so friendly NPC that has it out for you. Simple enough right?

• The Drawbacks of Staying Maxed: Say you play like me and are content with having a damage buff and earning more money to upgrade your skills. How an NPC and a little debuff going to make my time any worse when everything already wants to kill me? Well in simplest terms, any time you die with a maxed out inner demon status this scantily clad NPC will invade you and more or less hold your Red Mercury hostage until you defeat her. Though she isn’t particularly challenging from a standard enemy perspective, she can invade at the worst of times and will make your life difficult if you are already in a pinch. I personally see no problem with keeping your inner demon maxed, but that doesn’t mean the playstyle is for everyone. So how do we cure this madness?
• Curing the Madness/Inner Demon Gauge: The most simple way to clear your madness is to simply beat the NPC that invades your world. Defeating her not only returns your Red Mercury, but also completely cure the Inner Demon gauge and resets it to 0. For some this can be an easy fix, but for others not so much. But as always there is another option: a shrine. There’s one in Shu Sanctum and another at the cliffside area just beyond the pavilion. The only issue with this method of curing your madness is that this requires an item called a Fragment of the Divine Gift or a full Divine Gift. These items can be obtained by defeating the invader, exploring the world, or buying them from Tao Qing or Wu Gang.

And that is all I have for you today. I hope you enjoyed this beginners guide for Wuchang Fallen Feathers. If you have any additional tips that you think will be useful, comment them for below so we can add them for others to see. As always, thanks for being here.