Here’s a practical start: focus on mobility, free progression, and a couple of early power boosts before you wander off into side content. The strongest early priorities are getting a mount, unlocking basic movement skills, redeeming any free rewards, and upgrading your core combat setup first.

First priorities

  1. Get a mount as soon as you can, because it cuts travel time fast and makes the open world much easier to manage.
  1. Redeem any available codes or free rewards from the menu early, since they can give you currency and materials for upgrades.
  1. Upgrade your weapon martial art and gear slots once you have enough resources, because those early stat gains matter a lot more than most cosmetic or optional systems.
  1. Upgrade your medicine/healing capacity when the game unlocks that option, since survivability becomes much smoother with more healing resources.
  1. Unlock useful movement or utility skills like Cloud Steps, Celestial Seize, Meridian Touch, or similar early mystic tools as soon as they become available.

Good early quests

  • Do the short side activities near the starting area, especially the ones that reward a weapon, martial art, or a useful skill.
  • Complete exploration-focused tasks and boundary/wayfarer-type unlocks while moving through the map, since they help with travel and progression.
  • Pick up oddities, encounter quests, and early wandering tales if they’re on your route, because they often give permanent or high-value rewards.
  • If the game offers a choice between main story and side content early, keep the main story moving until the core systems are unlocked, then branch out.

Smart early setup

  • Choose a beginner-friendly weapon style you actually like, then invest in it instead of spreading resources too thin.
  • Turn on helpful exploration guidance if the game offers it, because the world can be busy and easy to miss things.
  • Unlock fast travel points whenever you see them, since that saves a lot of time in a game built around exploration.
  • Don’t ignore level caps or breakthrough-style progress gates; in this type of game, advancing the right progression track matters as much as raw combat XP.

Simple first-hour route

A clean opening loop is: leave the tutorial, grab any free rewards, get a mount, unlock nearby travel points, finish one or two early side quests that reward a weapon or skill, then upgrade your martial art and gear. That route gives you mobility, power, and a better sense of the game without wasting time.

What to avoid

  • Don’t burn resources on everything at once; early materials are better spent on one weapon path and core survivability.
  • Don’t get stuck in menus trying to master every system on day one; the game has a lot of them, but the early win is steady progression, not perfect optimization.
  • Don’t skip movement and map unlocks, because the game’s open-world design pays off much more once travel becomes easy.

Quick scoop

If you want the shortest version: mount first, free rewards second, one weapon path third, healing and travel upgrades next. That order gives you the smoothest start in Where Winds Meet and keeps the early game from feeling overwhelming.