Wuthering Waves – Efficient Echo Upgrading

Basic Guide to Efficient Echo Upgrading

By Houseplant.

First, let’s look at the possible substats, their ranges, and the likelihood of rolling them.

As you can see, low rolls are more common than high rolls. If you get a low roll on a critical substat you need, you need to choose whether to just cut your losses and trash it or continue in hopes that the rest of the substats will make it worth it.

Click to enlarge…

Why Flat ATK Is Not a Bad Stat

Before we continue, we need to clear a common misconception: unlike many other games, Flat ATK substats are not bad in WW. It can actually be more valuable than rolling Resonance Skill, Liberation, or Basic attack %!

Below is a short explanation:

In short, because of plentiful damage bonuses present in a late-game build, there are serious diminishing returns when stacking certain bonuses such as Resonance Skill%, Resonance Liberation%, or Basic Attack%. Because of this, Flat ATK (or whatever flat stat that your specific character scales on) is quite valuable.

Now that we’ve cleared that up, let’s move on to the fun gambling part. Upgrading echoes!

How High Do I Upgrade My Echo?

First, be aware of the EXP costs:

As you can see, the last +5 levels are almost like leveling a brand-new echo from 0 to +20.

Going past +20 is extremely expensive and you can kill your account progress by wasting Echo EXP which is very scarce in late game.

Poor Return Rates on Feeding Leveled Echoes

Even though you can recycle already-leveled echoes to feed and upgrade a new echo, the return rates are very poor.

Rates of Echo EXP and Tuner returns:

• Sealed tubes (Echo EXP material) return rate: 75%
• Tuners (Echo substat unlock material) return rate: 30%

With how scarce Echo EXP and Tuners are, it’s even more important to conserve your materials and be selective about how far you upgrade an echo. Also, you should not upgrade an echo that doesn’t have the exact main stat that you want and does not have the sonata set that you want.

Therefore, it’s recommended to level gold echoes up to +20 and leave it there until you have completed +20 echoes for your main team.

Analyzing Your Echo

Step 0: Figure out your non-negotiable substats for the character you are working on

There are “nice to have” substats and non-negotiable substats.

For every character, there are 1-3 non-negotiable substats that they absolutely want on their echoes. If an echo doesn’t have these, it shouldn’t be upgraded further. “Nice to have” substats may make the echo worth gambling on, but if it doesn’t roll any non-negotiables within the first 3 substats, you should stop.

*Obviously, this depends on the character, so please follow a build guide or ask for the optimal build.

Step 1: Level the Echo to +10 and tune

Check for at least 1 of your non-negotiable substats.

If it doesn’t roll at least one of your important stats, drop it or hold onto it for later.

Some people like to gamble to +15 to fish for the right substat. Not recommended but we can’t stop you.

Step 2: Level the Echo to +15 and tune

Some characters don’t care about anything except their non-negotiable from Step 1, so just continue to Step 3 if you don’t mind what else it rolls.

Otherwise, follow these guidelines:

• Bad Value Stats: 
  • If 2 of 3 substats are bad or unwanted, consider trashing here. Things such as flat HP, flat DEF, etc. Or if a character can’t use the stat (getting Resonance Liberation% on a healer that doesn’t care about Liberation Ultimate damage.) Note that Flat ATK is NOT a bad substat for ATK scalers.
• Average Value Stats:
  •  If you only have 1 non-negotiable substat and 1-2 “nice to have” substats (ATK%, Flat ATK, Liberation Dmg%, Skill Dmg%, Basic dmg% etc.) you can consider moving forward. It is up to you on how far you want to gamble it.
• Good Value Stats:
  • If you rolled at least two of your non-negotiable stats, that’s a green light to keep going!

Step 3: Level the Echo to +20 and tune

• You’re done! Leave it here for now until you’ve equipped your whole team and have extra echo EXP left over. If you want to, you can keep going but keep track of how much Echo EXP you have left!

Step 4: Optional: Level the Echo to +25 and tune

If perfect/amazing substats or you’re just high on hopium, level to +25 for the final tune.

Priority Order for Leveling Echoes

• 4 cost > 3 cost > 1 cost

This is if you are low on resources. We recommend leveling to +20 on your 5 echoes, and only attempting the +25 if you are done with all the pieces. 

I sincerely hope this was helpful. Good luck to you!