Wayfinder Echo Guide

Acquiring Echos

In Wayfinder there is no player marketplace and the only things you can buy from vendors are cosumables, base weapons, and certain accessories. That being so, pretty much everything you get in the game is either an enemy drop or something you craft. The same is true for echoes.

Sometimes when you kill an enemy you will see a purple and yellow sphere appear; that is an echo. But echoes aren’t just random drops. Specific enemies will have specific echoes that they have a chance of dropping once killed. Each specific echo will have a type and two stats that they boost, or in some cases, only one stat is boosted but by a lot more.

For example, if you kill a goblin archer, they will have a chance of dropping a goblin archer echo which boosts crit power and crit rating. So if you want specific stats boosted, you need to find out which echo grants them and farm that enemy.

Echo Types, Slots, and Rating

Each echo in the game will fall into one of five echo types. These five types are attack, guard, balance, cross, and rush.  You can recognize which type an echo is by its symbol. Attack echoes are represented by a sword, guard echoes by a shield, balance echoes by a dot in an oblong circle, cross echoes by a diamond shape, and rush echoes by a trident-like design. Rush echoes are unique compared to the other types of echoes in that rather than boosting stats, they grant special abilities such as getting a damage boosting effect after kill certain types of enemies or applying debuffs when you dodge.

Unsurprisingly, attack type echoes boost offensive stats such as crit rating or ability power, while guard type echoes boost defensive stats like resilience or magical defense. You get the idea. But an echo’s type doesn’t just determine which stats it will boost. Echo type also matters for your echo slots and echo rating.

As you level up each wayfinder, you will unlock additional echo slots for that character. The same is true for your weapons. Accessories will also have echo slots. Each echo slot will be associated with one of the five echo types listed above. And finally, in the echoes menu each category, those being character, weapon, and accessories, will have a maximum echo rating which will increase as you progress through the game.

Each echo will have an echo rating. You can only have echoes equipped to each of three categories mentioned above that have a combined echo rating no greater than the maximum echo rating for that category. So if say, my wayfinder has three echo slots available to equip echoes, and a maximum echo rating of twenty, and I equip two echoes with an echo rating of ten each, then I cannot equip an echo into that third slot, even though it is open. But I also mentioned that each echo slot will have a type associated with it. This is because if you equip an echo to a slot of a different type, that echo’s rating will count as double. In other words, if I equipped an attack echo with a rating of ten into a defense echo slot, it will count as having a rating of twenty for the purposes of max echo rating.

It gets expensive if you don’t equip your echoes into the appropriate echo slots. Without matching your types properly you can equip a lot fewer echoes. But for an example, I am currently running a crit build, and so I want to get as many of the aforementioned goblin hunter echoes as I can, since they boost crit rating and crit power. Even though I am equipping them into the “wrong” slots, I am trying to maximize my crit rating and crit power as much as possible. But if you are going for a more balanced build, you want a healthy mix, not only to maximize your echo rating efficiency, but so that you can raise both offensive and defensive stats as well.

The Echo system really allows for a lot of character customization. The more you level up, the more options you have for stat configurations. But it also incentivizes you to not only grab the most powerful echoes you can, as they will have a higher echo rating to go with their higher stat boosts. The math isn’t hard to make sure you maximize your echo rating efficiency, but it is there.

Echo Fusion

As with your wayfinders and your weapons, your echoes can level up as well. This is done by a process called echo fusion.

Echoes come in four different rarities. Common echoes have a white colored name, uncommon echoes have a green colored name, rare echoes have a blue colored name, and finally epic echoes have a purple colored name. Common echoes have a max rank of four, uncommon echoes have a max rank of six, rare echoes have a max rank of eight, and purple echoes have a max rank of, you guessed it, ten.

In order to increase the rank of your echoes, you will need two resources, those being dust and memory fragments. Memory fragments are acquired in exhibitions. They are the golden diamond you will find floating in the air. Run through them to collect them. You can also acquire memory fragments from chests or other rewards such as completing certain quests. Dust is a resource you can only gain from destroying (or dusting to use the in-game term) your echoes. So you need to chose which echoes to keep and which ones to get rid of.

In a recent game patch, the echo fusion interface was updated to be more streamlined and less confusing. This is a change I am very grateful for. It leads to less accidental dusting, and lets you more efficiently use your memory fragments. If you go into the echoes menu under the character option in the main menu, you will see your list of equipped echoes. If you highlight one of the echoes it will show you the echoes stats at the bottom of your screen. It will also give you some button prompts. These are prompts to unequip the echo, browse all your echoes, dust the echo, and if it is not already max rank, to upgrade the echo. In order to dust the echo you will need to hold down the prompted button for several seconds while a progress bar fills up a pinkish-purple. This ensures you won’t accidentally dust an echo you do not want to. If you want to upgrade an echo, pressing the indicated button will take you to a new menu which will show you the dust and memory fragment costs to upgrade the echo to the next rank. If you do not have enough of one or both of the resources, you will get a red message saying insufficient resources.

Making sure you have the right echoes equipped, and that they are max rank will definitely increase your wayfinder’s overall power tremendously. Be sure you keep up with your echoes so you can beat back the gloom. Happy gaming!