Black Myth: Wukong has a load of secrets for players to discover, and they reward all sorts of items that will help you get through all the tough fights that you will be stumbling into. Among these items are the vessels, which provide you both an active and passive ability as long as they are equipped. In this guide, we’ll quickly go through how to get each of them and what they do!
All Vessel Locations
There are currently four vessels to be found throughout the game’s many chapters. Almost all of them are actually acquired through secrets that each have multiple steps and bosses to deal with, which is why it’s not a surprise to see a lot of people struggle to get a complete collection.
In the follow sections guide, we will be going through each vessel in the order that you can get them in as you progress through the story. This should make it easier to follow along if you’re going to try and get all of them at once, as it will progressively get harder barring the last one (we’ll explain further below).
If you are already past certain stages of the game and have retrieved some of the vessels already, then use the Table of Contents right below this to skip ahead!
Vessel #1 – Chapter 1. The Fireproof Mantle
The very first vessel can be found in the opening chapter of the game. To get it, you will need to gain access to the Ancient Guanyin Temple, which is a secret area housing a deceptively easy boss. You’ll see what I mean in a bit.
First, to get yourself teleported to the temple itself, you will need to find and ring three bells in this region. We actually have a more in-depth guide on how to find the three bells, but let me summarize the steps for you as well:
- Step #1 – Defeat the optional Guangzhi boss and ring the bell that he is guarding.
- Step #2 – Defeat the boss named Guangmou and ring the bell near his arena.
- Step #3 – Finally, you will have to beat the Whiteclad Noble and ring the final bell. Be careful and don’t waste a lot of heals for this one, as there is a second phase that brings him back to full HP.
Upon ringing the last bell, you will be teleported to the Ancient Guanyin Temple. Here, you can activate a shrine and proceed to the boss arena, where you will have to beat the Elder Jinchi.
This encounter is pretty much just a slightly modified version of the Wandering Wight fight. The key differences are the following:
- There will be minions that die in one hit all around the arena. They are mostly harmless, until they are activated and do the following:
- Occasionally, the Elder Jinchi will take a few steps back and call upon them for help. When this happens, all of these minions will charge at you and explode after a few seconds. Just continue to sprint and they won’t hit you.
- He will sometimes absorb all of them to charge up a very painful palm blast. Be ready to dodge at the right time!
- IMPORTANT: These minions will heal a decent amount of your HP if you hit them. This is why the fight is fairly easy, as you have virtually infinite heals.
- He can enter a meditative state in which minions will start spawning. These adds will try to walk towards him, which will heal the boss. Just run around and slap them as they spawn to prevent any regeneration.
Once the fight is over, you will be teleported back to the final bell. From here, you can now claim your Fireproof Mantle by interacting with the corpse tied to the dead tree.
It is highly recommended to get the Fireproof Mantle before taking on the final boss of the first chapter, who uses fire-based attacks. This is because the vessel will provide you with the following bonuses while it is equipped:
- Passive Buff – You will gain increased resistance to burn and also become immune to scorch damage.
- Active Ability – Using the mantle will grant you temporary burn immunity and also bonus Focus generation.
Vessel #2 – Chapter 2. The Wind Tamer
The Wind Tamer is the next vessel you can get, and it can be found through the completion of multiple tasks within the second chapter. All of this will lead you to a secret zone known as the Kingdom of Sahali.
Luckily for you, we have a guide on how to get to the Kingdom of Sahali that will be a massive help here. With that said, let me summarize the steps that you need to follow for this one:
- Step #1 – Defeat the Tiger Vanguard boss. My only advice here is to pay attention to his animations. He becomes hilariously predictable once you learn how his attacks flow.
- Step #2 – Proceed to the Windrest Bridge area past the tiger boss to find the Sobering Stone item in a glowing pot.
- Step #3 – Find the Drunken Boar at the Rockrest Flat area of Fright Cliff. Exhaust his dialogue options to give him the Sobering Stone.
- Step #4 – Find the Drunken Boar once more. This time, he will be near the entrance to the tiger boss’ arena at the Crouching Tiger Temple. Give him a Jade Lotus.
- Jade Lotus can be found in watery areas or purchased from the shrine store.
- Step #5 – Get the Arhat Gold Piece by defeating the First Prince of the Flowing Sands. This is the giant rat boss near the Valley of Despair shrine. It’s an easy one, you got this.
- Step #6 – Return to Fright Cliff, where you first met the Drunken Boar. You will immediately enter a fight with the Yellow-Robed Squire pig boss.
- Step #7 – Follow the boar through the stone door nearby to trigger a cutscene. You will now find yourself in the Kingdom of Sahali.
Getting to the Kingdom of Sahali is just the warm up for what’s to come. Once inside, you will now have to defeat a different Tiger Vanguard and then speak to an NPC to summon a boss named Fuban.
Fuban is a giant bug creature, and it is a fairly straightforward fight. Once you have dealt a decent chunk of damage, he will burrow down and trigger a cutscene.
After resurfacing, you must climb on top of the boss and retrieve the vessel from the stone head on its back. The fight will then continue, but the friendly NPC will also be helping you in battle.
Once Fuban has been defeated, another cutscene will play out, and you will be teleported out of the Kingdom of Sahali. You will then get a notification that you have retrieved the Wind Tamer! Here are its bonuses:
- Passive Buff – While equipped, you will gain bonus damage reduction.
- Active Ability – Wind Tamer will grant you a huge temporary damage reduction buff as well as immunity to strong winds.
Vessel #3 – Chapter 4. The Weaver’s Needle
Skipping right over to the fourth chapter, you can retrieve the Weaver’s Needle by completing, you guessed it, more secrets! As with the previous two, we’ll be summarizing the steps you need to follow below:
- Step #1 – Explore the Webbed Hollow zone until you find the Venom Daoist. Defeat this boss and he will run away. Now you can proceed to the next part.
- Step #2 – Find and defeat the Venom Daoist once more. This time, he will be waiting at the Temple of Yellow Flowers. Upon defeat, he will reveal a portal to Purple Cloud Mountain.
- Step #3 – Enter through the portal on the wall and then follow the road. This will lead you up the mountain, where you will find three shrines in total.
- Step #4 – At the last shrine, which is the one labeled “Cloudnest Peak”, there will be stone steps leading up. Prepare for a boss encounter before ascending it.
- Step #5 – Finally, defeat the Duskveil boss and retrieve the Weaver’s Needle as a reward!
The Duskveil boss has two phases, with the first one being relatively straightforward and should be a breeze for you at this point. The second phase, however, will require you to watch out for the following, among other moves:
- Long range crescent projectiles and melee slams
- Raining needles that you will need to sprint away from as they fly towards you
- A lot of wide sweeping attacks in general, which are sometimes mixed in with flying stomps
Once you have bested both phases of the Duskveil, a cutscene will play out, in which a snake lady will give you the Weaver’s Needle and teleport you back out of the zone. Here are the vessel’s bonuses:
- Passive Buff – While equipped, you will gain extra critical hit chance & damage.
- Active Ability – When used in combat, the Weaver’s needle will home in on nearby enemies and deal damage. This is extremely useful for the final boss of chapter 4 as it can instantly cancel a special debuff there.
Vessel #4 – Chapter 5. The Plantain Fan
Funnily enough, the last entry on this list does not require anything special. The Plantain Fan is something that you will receive as a reward for finishing the fifth chapter.
We’ll try to avoid spoilers for this as it is pretty dang far in the game and the vessel itself is related to a significant character and moment. Let’s quickly go through what it does instead, which are the following:
- Passive Buff – Increases your stamina regeneration by a decent amount.
- Active Ability – When used, it will create a tornado that will deal damage to nearby enemies and push them around. This works on some bosses too, which can trivialize certain fights.
That wraps up this entire guide, as there are no other vessels left to be found in the game as far as we know. It goes without saying, but the Plantain Fan seems to be the obvious answer when it comes to the question of which one is the best. It’s understandable, though, as it comes in so late into the story.
With that in mind, the game does have a new game plus feature, and vessels are confirmed to be among the things that you keep. This means that you can take all of these items and experiment with them in earlier encounters where they originally would not have been usable in!
