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Leveling in Where Winds Meet and progression through the Inner Way system are the two things that actually decide how strong your character feels, and this guide covers both. The short version: you level automatically through play, then push real power gains through Inner Ways, four equipped passive arts whose effects stack, upgraded through tiers using item-specific Tips. Everything else — gear, Martial Arts levels, Tuning — layers on top of that core loop.
TL;DR
- Leveling is automatic through play but gets gated by Breakthrough checkpoints, not a flat XP curve
- Inner Ways are passive skills, four equipped at once, upgraded in tiers using Tips specific to each one
- Pick one main weapon Path, fill remaining slots to match it, and add one General Path option for utility
- The Tips Exchange (recycling unwanted notes into Bookplates) is the fastest confirmed way to hit higher tiers
- The commonly cited level cap of 61 is guide-sourced, not something Everstone has confirmed as final or permanent
Where to Get XP, Levels and Inner Way Tips
Most of your character level comes from simply playing rather than grinding a specific activity. You earn Talent EXP from just playing the game: opening chests, finishing quests, and doing mini-games. The catch is that your level does not climb freely — in Solo Mode, your character’s level is capped based on your current Solo Mode stage, and when you reach this max level cap, your automatic leveling stops. Any experience earned past that point isn’t wasted, though: stored XP protects your progress, and if you play at the cap, the game saves the extra XP and gives a bonus later when the Breakthrough opens and you pass it.
Breakthroughs themselves are combat gates rather than a menu toggle. You must enter an arena for each Breakthrough, fight a group of enemies inside a short timer, and passing the fight unlocks new levels and new rewards while failing means your power needs work. The very first of these shows up early — the first time players level up past a certain point, they hit a cap at Level 15, which corresponds to Tier 1 of the Solo Play Level. Inner Way progress is tied to this same gate: upgrading is its own system, and Breakthrough unlocks after Solo Mode Level 4, then you push tiers using Notes or Inner Way advance materials. That’s also where the story-versus-exploration debate resolves itself: the main quest is what unlocks new Breakthrough arenas and level brackets, while exploration and side content are what fill the Stored XP bank you cash in once you clear each one. For weapon variety added in the Version 2.0 expansion, the Hidden Mountain expansion guide covers how the newer Gauntlets and Rope Dart kits slot into this same leveling loop.
Step-by-Step: Building Your First Four-Slot Inner Way Loadout
Follow this sequence to get it done fast.
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1
Commit to one main weapon Path first
Inner Ways are tied to a Path, and the Path label matters a lot, because each Inner Way is built to pair with Martial Arts from that same Path, with a General Path meant to fit anywhere for raw utility.
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2
Reserve one slot for a General Path option
this covers utility that works regardless of which weapon you're swinging, so it isn't wasted if you respec later.
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3
Fill the other three slots to match your Path's role
damage-focused Inner Ways for a DPS Path, sustain or defensive ones if you lean tankier, rather than grabbing whatever unlocked most recently.
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4
Push all four to their first breakthrough before
since once you complete the Upgrade to Tier 1 challenge it opens the next challenge for Tier 2, then Tier 3, then Tier 4, with each martial art path having its own version of that chain.
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5
Route Tips Exchange output into your main Inner Way
recycle notes you won't use into Bookplates and spend them on the chest pool tied to the art you actually main.
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6
Save Conversion for real mistakes only
it exists to fix a bad early pick or a Path switch, not to chase whatever a tier list calls best that week.
Best Leveling and Inner Way Farming Methods
There isn’t one single fastest way to get stronger — leveling XP and Inner Way Tips come from different activities, and the table below breaks down what each one is actually good for.
Tip
Tips Exchange lets you recycle unwanted notes into bookplates, then trade those for new chests — lock the notes you want to keep, auto-add the rest, recycle them, and use the bookplates on fresh chests. It’s the closest thing this system has to a reliable farming loop instead of pure chest luck.
| Method | Speed | Effort | Best For |
|---|---|---|---|
| Main story quests | Fast | Low | Unlocking new Breakthrough arenas and level brackets |
| Open-world exploration and side content | Medium | Low – Medium | Filling the Stored XP bank while capped |
| Solo Mode Breakthrough arenas | Required, not optional | Medium | Actually raising your level past each cap |
| Tips Exchange (Bookplates) | Fast for targeted tiers | Low – Medium | Pushing one Inner Way to Tier 4 |
| Co-op strongholds and dungeons | Medium | Medium | Farming upgrade stones and Notes together |
Inner Way Rewards and What You Unlock
What Tier 4 Actually Gives You
For most players, the main objective is reaching Tier 4 across all four slots. These effects are passive bonuses that activate automatically during combat — there’s nothing to press or manage, once the condition is met, the effect triggers on its own. That means the payoff isn’t a new button, it’s your existing rotation quietly hitting harder or surviving longer.
Why the Four Slots Compound
Inner Ways function as passive buffs that can profoundly affect your damage output, durability, healing output, and more, and their effects become exponentially more potent as your character levels up. Guide sites frequently point to Inner Ways with stacking, damage-and-sustain profiles — one commonly cited example provides stacking bonuses that improve damage, critical rate, penetration, and sustain over time — as the kind worth prioritizing over narrow, situational effects, precisely because a stacking buff compounds with the other three slots instead of sitting idle most of a fight.
Gear, Tuning and Armory Layer On Top
Inner Ways aren’t the only power system, just the most opaque one. The Enhancement and Armory systems turn every upgraded gear piece into account power, and even if you switch weapons or pick up a better item, enhancement levels carry through via Armory brackets, giving permanent attack and defense bonuses. Once you’re pulling higher-rarity drops, Tuning lets you feed extra gear into a weapon or armor piece to raise its internal tuning level — a separate investment from Inner Way Tips, and one that matters more the closer you get to the level cap.
Common Misconceptions About Leveling and the Inner Way
Myth: You Should Grind XP Directly
You can’t really grind XP past the current cap even if you wanted to. For your first few days, your main goal is hitting the level cap, and the game gradually raises it every day or two until the current maximum. Time spent trying to force extra levels before a Breakthrough opens is time better spent on exploration or Inner Way materials instead.
Myth: Any Four Inner Ways Work Fine Together
You can’t equip very many Inner Ways, which is why picking the correct ones is so important not only for less frustrating early progress but also for late-game optimization. Four random unlocks from different Paths rarely stack cleanly — mismatched trigger conditions mean some of your slots simply never fire in a normal fight.
Myth: Switching Builds Means Starting Over
That used to be the fear, but it isn’t quite true. The Inner Way Conversion system allows you to transfer existing upgrades from one Inner Way to another you plan to use instead, though this can only be done a limited number of times each season. After a conversion both Inner Ways enter a seven-day cooldown, you get four free conversions per season, and after that each conversion costs Bookplates.
Warning
Conversion is not a free respec loop — burn through your four seasonal swaps chasing every tier-list update and you’ll be paying Bookplates for the rest of the season just to fix mismatched Paths.
Our Take: Is Grinding the Inner Way Worth It
Our Take
Worth it, but only once you stop treating it as a checklist.
The Inner Way menu gets a reputation for being confusing mostly because the game hands you dozens of unlockable passives with almost no framing for which four actually belong together. Once you accept it as a Path-locked build system rather than a collection tab, it stops being overwhelming — pick a weapon, fill three slots to match it, keep one General slot flexible, and let the fourth tier climb naturally through the Tips Exchange rather than raw luck on chests.
The leveling side is honestly the less interesting half of progression here. Because it’s automatic and gated by Breakthroughs rather than a grind you control, there’s not much decision-making in it beyond not skipping the arena fights. The real choices — and the real payoff — sit in which four passives you commit materials to, and that’s exactly why this piece leans on the Inner Way rather than repeating a level-by-level walkthrough. Treat the frequently cited level 61 figure as a rough community waypoint rather than a hard ceiling Everstone has locked in, since that number comes from guide sites and community datamining rather than official patch notes, and it’s the kind of thing a future update can quietly push higher.