Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, the much anticipated souls like RPG, is finally out where players take on a dark and perilous journey in the land of Shu. Even if you are used to soulslike games, this game can be incredibly challenging with some mobs even being more difficult than the bosses. On top of that, the game features mechanics and systems that might not click with you immediately. If you’re in this boat, we have you covered! In this beginner’s guide, we’ll go over all the basics of the game, while giving you tips and tricks where appropriate. With that said, let’s dive in!
Ultimate Beginner’s Guide
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers is a bigger game than you might think at first, as it rewards exploration a lot alongside multiple playthroughs. This is why we’ll be going over multiple tips and tricks that you wish you’d have known sooner when starting the game.
If you’re just starting out, you might also want to check our best early game samurai build!
Dodging – A Key Mechanic
Wuchang: Fallen Feathers places a heavy emphasis on dodging, making it the main way for you to avoid damage – especially with the generous invincibility frames (iframes). However, keep in mind that enemies are also relentless in this game.
Dodging also helps you generate one of your core resources, Skyborn Might. You can find the icon for it next to you Madness icon.
This Skyborn Might can be spent to unleash weapon techniques, spells and instantaneous heavy attacks.
Spells have their own perfect dodge mechanic, known as Alacrity. This can be triggered by casting the spell at the right moment – just as enemy is about to hit you.
When this happens, Wuchang will phase shift through the attack and be able to unleash the spell uninterrupted. Higher levels of madness can buff this mechanic, but we’ll look at more later in the guide.
Instantaneous Stun – Dealing With Mobs
Following up with perfect dodges, the second tip is to always get behind your enemy and unleash a heavy attack – resulting in an instant stun. This allows you to follow up with a devastating obliterate – a powerful stab attack on staggered enemies.
With a bit of practice, you can use perfect dodge to get behind the enemy, and then use this to stun them. This is a great way to deal with small and medium sized enemies, and it even works on bosses.
As a result, we recommend that you invest in certain skills that will help you take advantage of this mechanic more. For example, you can get Windforce – where you consume 1 stack of Skyborn Might to quickly strike with heavy charged Spear attacks.
Of course, each weapon has its own variant of this skill early in its skill line.
Blocks, Counters & Clashes
You’re not just stuck with dodges in Wuchang: Fallen Feathers. You can also use blocks, counters and clashes. However, the way you get access to them depends on the specific weapon category.
For example, you will see that many axes feature the block mechanic by default, which is great for damage mitigation. Similarly, dual blades excel at clashes, which are automatic blocks that trigger while attacking.
However, this does need some investing with a lot more passives in the tree. It is why these mechanics shine in the mid to late game stage.
Other weapons can get it from unlocking new techniques in their skill lines that you can easily swap in and out. One of the best examples of this early on is the Sword Counter – one of the best abilities for the long sword.
By timing your block, you can deflect enemy attacks. This allows you to punish melee units and build up their stagger meter fast.
Temper System Explained
Tempering allows Wuchang to stick needles infused with power into one of her arms – giving access to various status ailments and other useful bonuses. It is one of the best ways to improve weapon damage. However, new players tend to not use them properly.
To actually use the system, you need to first equip the Temperance skill in your quick menu. From there, once it’s on your bar, you can activate it with the Square button or equivalent button – like you would with any other item.
Initially, it starts with only one charge. But you can increase this up to four by the time you reach the end game.
You can get more Needles with more boons in various ways. Some of these can be acquired by defeating Demon Manifestations. They can be quite distinct – with some of them even being stronger than your Inner Demon mechanic.
However, they only spawn in certain areas. You’ll know when you’re in such an area when the Invasion message pops up on screen.
Luckily, you can get access to any of the five statuses early on via the Rapid Temperance skill line. This helps a lot as enemies in the game tend to have different weaknesses and resistances.
So, depending on the element, you can severely debilitate them or even deal more damage than you normally would to them.
lnner Demon (Madness)
We mentioned Inner Demon and Madness quite a bit in the guide, so let’s expand on it. They are incredibly useful mechanics, with many skill nodes even providing unique bonuses at various madness levels.
When you die or kill another character, your madness meter slowly fills up. You can find this meter in the bottom left corner by looking at the characters’ outline. Additionally, you can even check the character status menu.
The Madness Meter will fill at a rate of 15 points per death. As it fills up, it progressively gives you better bonuses, at the cost of some big drawbacks.
Some benefits and drawbacks of having high madness in Wuchang: Fallen Feathers are:
- Increase in overall damage dealt
- Increases amount of red mercury gained
- Increases the level of resistance
- Increase the damage you receive (allegedly)
- Dying leads to losing more or all of your red mercury (depending on your level of Madness)
- At 50% or below madness levels, you lose a small fraction
- Between 50% – 90% madness levels, you lose a majority
- Above 90% madness levels, you lose almost all of it
When you reach the maximum Madness of 120, you will get invaded by an Inner Demon. This is an exact clone of you that has all your skills or more. You will mostly find it spawning on the location where you dropped your Red Mercury.
You will have to defeat it – otherwise you will lose all your Red Mercury. If you do manage to defeat it, it’s going to clear out any Madness that you might have built up, resetting it to 0.
You can also clear Madness in other ways, like offering Divine Gifts to Statues of Shu.
A good tip to know is that the clone will attack anyone near it. So, you can use it to clear out any tough mobs in the area before jumping in and defeating it.
Staying above 50% Madness level allows you to get extra bonuses to your skills. You can actually get some really strong skills that benefit from high Madness.
Some of the skills that we recommend are Swift Resilience, Conversion and more. You should check the descriptions of skills in the skill line, so you can see which ones benefit from Madness. After all, you will want skills that suit your play style.
Exploration & Side Missions
As mentioned before, Wuchang: Fallen Feathers rewards exploration. Searching every nook and cranny allows you to get the best gear in the game while allowing you to level up faster and uncover unique dangers.
Additionally, the map is highly interconnected which can make it confusing to explore. This is where the compass can help because of two main features:
- The Red Arrow indicates the closest shrine that you haven’t visited
- The Yellow Arrow shows the nearest NPC that wants to talk to you
Speaking of NPCs, you’ll find a variety of side characters on your journey that will offer unique quest lines and the strongest items in the game. Luckily, the game will let you know when you can further develop the quest line.
You can check this by seeing their character portraits being displayed on Travel Points they are currently at. So, simply teleport to where they are, progress the conversation and bring them the requested item.
Some of the NPCs we recommend paying close attention to are the following:
- Wu Gang
- Tao Qing
They will allow you to unlock some of the best gear and weapons in the entirety of Wuchang: Fallen Feathers.
Weapon Mastery
One of the most important resources in Wuchang Fallen Feathers are Red Feathers. They function much like Weapon Stones in Elden Ring, and come in different qualities.
They are the main way of achieving Weapon Mastery which will impact the damage you deal with weapons. In this game, you can upgrade weapons from +1 all the way to +10 using different qualities of Red Feathers.
Typically, you will need better quality feathers for higher mastery level upgrades.
There are multiple ways to get Red Feathers in Wuchang Fallen Feathers, which includes:
- Defeating poisoned jar enemies
- Defeating enemies in advanced stages of feathering, aka Madness
- You can tell these stages by the red glow in enemy’s eyes
- Finding them by exploring hidden places
Hidden Stat Modifiers Explained
Every weapon or spell in Wuchang Fallen Feathers has at least one or multiple control attributes that affect one or more of their four main stats – known as multipliers. You can check these by looking at the Lotus in the main Weapon menu.
These multipliers can range from I (lowest) to VI (highest). So, your goal should be to focus on the stat that has the highest multiplier for the respective weapon.
In some weapon categories, this will be straightforward with it targeting one stat like Strength. Others will have quite a balance, such as Swords with Strength and Agility – meaning you can target any of the stats.
Additionally, the Magic stat impacts the damage you deal with stats and Feathering affects your Weapon Techniques. So, try to focus on stats with the highest multipliers. We recommend you choose a weapon that suits your play style and go from there.
Puzzle Statues, Birds & Invoke (Extra Items & Boosts)
On your journey, you will come across blue puzzle statues that give you a riddle to solve. To solve these puzzles, you just need to select the Pose that is hinted by the statue’s pose.
Do not skip them because they can give important items, consumables, skill points and other useful unlocks. They can even help you progress through character side stories – which we already established can give you lot of rewards.
You should also pay special attention to birds that you can find throughout the world. When you do see them, try to kill them which you can do easily by simply striking them with your weapon. In case they are somewhere high or far up, you can use your Throwing Daggers.
The reason for this is that they drop Aurum Feathers. These items can be used to randomly increase one of the following boons for a limited time:
- Maximum Health
- Maximum Stamina
- Damage Dealt.
They are especially useful if you’re just about to face off against a boss.
Another way to get some bonus items is by using the Invoke mechanic. You can do this by visiting any Shrine and selecting the Invoke option.
Here, you can purchase a number of items by spending Madness. These items can allow you to get extra HP and resistances, helping you out with the combat ahead.
Missing Items Retrieval
In a challenging game like Wuchang: Fallen Feathers, it is normal for you to end up dying before you can pick up items left by enemies. The problem is that sometimes these enemies will drop useful items or resources.
In such cases, you can simply revisit the Donation Box. Not only can you get the Preoder and Deluxe bonus items here, but you’ll also find the items that you missed and can retrieve them.
This includes weapons and gear pieces as well.
Secret Items & Spells Vendor
While on the journey, there are small green creatures called Bamboozlings that can pop out at random places. You only have a few seconds to kill them before they run away – so get after them.
Killing them drops an important resource called Bamboo Shoots – that you can actually bring to a secret vendor.
This is the Panda vendor that you will find at different locations, like the following:
- Worship’s Rise: Shu Sanctum
- Cloudspire: Snowfall Palace
- Mt. Zhenwu: Zhenwu Altar
Talk to the vendor and you’ll be able to spend Bamboo Shoots to progressively unlock better rewards. This includes spells, weapons and upgrades.
Manna Upgrades (Potions)
Upgrading your Manna Vase is essential in Wuchang Fallen Feathers because you’ll be using this to restore your HP on use. As you progress, you will want to increase both its potency and capacity.
Here is a breakdown of what each Manna Vase upgrade and the consumable you need:
- Manna Capacity
- Increases your Manna Vase charges
- Resource Required: Forgotten Remembrance
- Manna Potency
- Increases the health recovered by each charge
- Resource Required: Lost Remains
You can obtain both of these resources from one source, Golden Treasure Chests. These tend to be found in secluded areas, puzzle areas or in locations after you defeat strong bosses.
So, be on the lookout for these as these upgrades will help you deal with the higher difficulty as you progress through the game.
Secret Loot Doors
During your playthrough, you will come across special gates with a two solution puzzle. When you interact with them, you can select two options. There is no wrong answer but one of the following will happen:
- The door will open and you can get the loot behind
- You will be transported to a new location.
Often, the new location you get transported to is one of that is either completely inaccessible otherwise, or a location that you get to later on. In essence, you can use these gates to skip to later locations, allowing you to get better items early.
It also allows you to get extra dialogue with characters. In other words, these doors allow you to experience a completely different playthrough and adds replayability.
Final Advice
Once you finish the game, you will be able to try out the New Game Plus mode. It allows you to keep all your progression, levels and unlocked items. This gives you the opportunity to try and get another of the game’s multiple endings.
And that’s pretty much it for the Wuchang: Fallen Feathers beginner’s guide. Hopefully, this should have given you an idea of the basic mechanics and systems – alongside some useful tips that will help you streamline your playthrough. Remember to keep exploring and you’ll be rewarded with a lot – including some secrets and quests we might have missed!
