Wayfinder Leveling Guide

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Reviewed by Jeffrey Hsu

In this guide, we’ll take an in-depth look at leveling up in Wayfinder. In this recent early access free-to-play MMO, you play as a titular wayfinder, who is essentially a living memory of a legendary hero that fought and “died” trying to save their world from a dark power known as The Gloom. And now you continue that fight.

This isn’t only a cool backstory but also an in-universe explanation for why there are multiple copies of the same person running around, why you can use a variety of mythical weapons, and why you have to train and regain your strength.

In other words, the game has narrative justifications for its core equipment/weapon mechanics as well as leveling. These mechanics come together to offer a unique system for customizing your character that I personally quite enjoy. However, it also means that leveling up in Wayfinder is more complex than in most MMOs.

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Leveling Up Your Wayfinder

In a normal MMO, you pick a class to play, customize your character’s appearance, grab your class specific weapon(s), and start leveling up your character by beating monsters and completing quests. Simple.

In Wayfinder, however, while you do pick a wayfinder (your class equivalent) to level up, you also level up the specific weapon you wield, your weapon mastery, your abilities, and your affinity.

At the start of the game, you’ll choose a wayfinder to play during the game’s tutorial. Each wayfinder is a specific hero with different abilities, such as the stalwart Windgrave with his sword and shield, or the shadowy Niss with her dual daggers.

Once you’ve played through the tutorial, you’ll have the option to lock in the character you played as your first wayfinder (you can unlock the others to play as later on in the game), or you can choose to try out another. Once you’ve chosen your starting wayfinder, the tutorial ends, and you can begin leveling your selected character.

Best Way to Level Up & Max Level

Like with most traditional MMOs, you level up your character by doing quests. Most of these quests will have you either doing a dungeon (known as an expedition) or doing a boss fight (known as a hunt). You can do these solo, with friends, or with randos.

You can also fight enemies in the overworld, but if your goal is to level up quickly, you’ll primarily want to focus on completing the main story quests. As such, you’ll be going through a lot of procedurally generated dungeons and boss fights.

It is also worth noting here that the current max level in Wayfinder is level 30, and you have to level each wayfinder separately.

Upgrading Your Power Rating & Abilities

But what do you get for leveling up your wayfinder? The first thing that you get by leveling is an increase to your overall power rating. When entering an expedition or hunt, you’ll be given a recommended power rating compared to yours to show (roughly) how difficult it will be for you.

Your power rating will be affected by the base value of your stats, such as:

• Max Health
• Resilience
• Weapon Power
• Ability Power
• Crit Rating
• Crit Power
• Break Power
• Physical Defense
• Magic Defense

When playing the tutorial, you’ll have 4 different abilities on the lower right-hand side of your screen in a little wheel (or diamond) shape. These consist of 3 normal abilities and 1 ultimate ability that you need to charge up to activate. As your go through the tutorial, you will unlock these abilities and be prompted to try them out in turn.

However, once you exit the tutorial, you will no longer have access to these abilities. In order to regain access to them, you’ll have to level up your wayfinder to unlock your abilities again. It’s worth noting that you can unlock them in any order you wish. That being said, it’s probably a good idea to unlock your ultimate ability last since it can’t be used as frequently as the other three.

In addition to unlocking your abilities, you will begin to unlock upgrades for them as you continue to level your wayfinder. Like with the abilities themselves, these upgrade points can be allocated as you wish. Each one of your abilities has 3 upgrades available, so you can decide if you want to spread your upgrades around or focus on maxing out one ability at a time.

Leveling Up Your Affinity in Wayfinder

Once you complete the quest “Instinct, Discipline, Focus,” you’ll unlock the affinity system. And as you level up your character, you will gain affinity points. The three affinities are (unsurprisingly) Instinct, Discipline, and Focus.

In order to level up an affinity, you will need a certain number of affinity points, gold, and gloomstones (gray, blue, or orange). Each of the three affinities maxes out at level 15. However, you will only ever get a max of 29 affinity points per wayfinder, so you’ll only be able to max out one affinity and be left with 14 points to spread between the other two. Currently, there is no way to respec your affinity points, so plan carefully!

But what does leveling up your affinities actually do? Each affinity will grant you bonuses based on what equipment you have in your loadout. Additionally, each affinity will have certain stats they grant bonuses to, and if you have items equipped that also have those same bonuses, then your affinity will further boost them.

Leveling up an affinity will also grant you affinity perks. These are passive bonuses that are unique to each wayfinder. For instance, a Windgrave with max Focus will have different affinity perks than a Niss with max Focus. Remember, just like with everything else, your affinity is leveled up separately for each wayfinder.

Leveling Up Your Weapons in Wayfinder

The next thing you can level up in Wayfinder is your weapons. Each wayfinder starts with a specific beginner weapon that belongs to a specific weapon type and weapon mastery group (which we will get into later).

For example, the wayfinder Niss starts out with the dual daggers Slicer and Dicer. However, there are other craftable dual daggers in the game that are more powerful. Additionally, Niss is not limited to only wielding the duel daggers.

Any wayfinder can equip any weapon. Because of this system, each individual weapon in the game levels up separately, not just the weapon types. So leveling up Slice and Dicer will not affect Venom, even though they’re both dual daggers.

And just like wayfinders, weapons max out at level 30. However, once you hit level 30 with a weapon, you can visit the weapon master to reinforce your chosen weapon, upgrading it further.

Each weapon in Wayfinder will offer bonuses to some of the stats listed above in the character leveling section. Unsurprisingly, leveling up your weapon will increase these bonuses.

Once you hit a certain level with a weapon, you’ll be able to temper it with gold and gloomstones to further raise its stats and unlock additional echo slots. Echoes are items dropped by enemies that can be equipped to your character, weapon, and accessories to further boost your stats.

Your weapon also has affinity upgrades, just like your wayfinder. Each weapon affinity boosts a certain number of stats and can be upgraded 10 times max.

Leveling Up Weapon Mastery in Wayfinder

Lastly, we have weapon mastery. Each weapon type belongs to one of the 4 groups that are currently in the game (more might be added later on).

1. Guardian Melee: Sword and Shield
2. Executioner Melee: Two-Handed Axes, Two-Handed Maces, Two-handed Scythes, Two-Handed Swords
3. Marksman Ranged: All Rifles
4. Twin Striker Melee: Dual Daggers

By fighting with a specific weapon, you’ll earn EXP to level up the weapon mastery of that weapon’s group. For example, if you have Slicer and Dicer equipped, you’ll earn exp to level up your Twin Striker Melee mastery.

Each weapon mastery in Wayfinder will grant you 3 different trees that each have 3 upgrades. Following the theme of the game, this lets you choose which types of bonuses you want to really customize your character with.

However, the 3 trees you are offered will vary from archetype to archetype. For example, a Wingrave equipped with Slicer and Dicer will unlock different Twin Striker Melee mastery options than a Niss equipped with Slicer and Dicer.

However, your weapon mastery isn’t tracked with each individual weapon; it’s tracked by weapon group. So, if you play as Niss and level up your Twin Striker Melee weapon mastery with Slicer and Dicer, then switch weapons to Venom, you will retain all those mastery upgrades.

Join the High Ground

Now you have an in-depth look at all the ways you level up in Wayfinder. Don’t worry if it sounds like a lot, the game will notify you any time you have available upgrades, so you should never miss them.

Let us know your thoughts in the comments below, especially if you have any more questions. And don’t forget to subscribe to our weekly newsletter for more gaming content!

Have fun fighting the gloom, wayfinder!