Progression in Wuthering Waves is tied to a mechanic called Union Level, a familiar trope if you’ve played the likes of Genshin Impact. The system determines the relative power of enemies in the world, which gates how much you can level your characters and how fast you go through the story. Today, I’ll talk about the best ways to increase your Union Level so you can experience everything Wuthering Waves has to offer
How to Increase Your Union Level in Wuthering Waves
The first thing you need to know about increasing Union Level in Wuthering Waves is how long it takes until you can do it consistently. In practice, you’ll need to reach around Union Level 10 and progress through the story well past where you can reroll your account. Doing so unlocks many of the regular, daily activities you’ll need to complete consistently to continue leveling.
In particular, the best ways to get more EXP and increase your Union Level are:
Daily Missions
Like both Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star Rail, Wuthering Waves has a daily mission screen with seven simple tasks for you to complete every day after the daily reset at 5:00 AM EST. These include cooking, performing your characters’ various Skills a certain number of times, doing daily quests, etc.
The end result: completing 100 points of Daily Missions rewards a whopping 2,000 Union EXP per day, meaning if they’re all you do, you’ll still get enough for one Union Level per day until much later in your account. Doing dailies also awards 60 Asterite in total as well as experience materials, so you get tons of extra benefits for spending the little time it takes to complete them.
Quests
Another major source of Union Level EXP comes from doing quests. Most quests give a moderate amount of EXP toward your Union Level, usually around 300-500, but larger, longer quests give as much as 2,000. Main Story and Companion quests give the most, in my experience, though these are fewer and farther between and take significantly longer to complete.
Still, if one of your main goals is to progress as quickly and efficiently as possible, you’ll want to do every quest you can find in Wuthering Waves. Like your dailies, most quests come with a modest Asterite, experience material, and currency reward on top of their Union Level EXP, though in this case, the Asterite is your main focus after increasing your Union Level.
Spending Waveplate Stamina on Challenges
Waveplates are Wuthering Waves‘ version of Resin or Trailblaze Power, from Genshin and Honkai: Star Rail, respectively. You get a maximum of 240 of it, with a single point regenerating every six minutes. Once you unlock access to Forgery Challenges, you can take on various combat trials to spend your Waveplates and earn rewards in return. These include basic combat encounters with a few enemies to fighting world bosses, doing short gauntlets for character ascension materials, and so on.
Each challenge you complete rewards a set amount of Union Level EXP, between 300-450 in most cases. You’ll need to be choosey about which challenges you attempt and when, as you don’t want to spend all your Waveplates on materials you don’t need or could get elsewhere in the game. The experience and currency Simulation Challenges are a prime culprit here, as you’ll stock up on both as you progress the story. Focus on farming for character ascension materials when you unlock those challenges.
The Guidebook
Early in your Wuthering Waves career, you’ll unlock the Guidebook, a handy menu giving you a set of tasks for you to complete as you play. These include leveling characters and their weapons to specific thresholds, taking down bosses, doing quests, etc. Each Guidebook task awards 100 Union Level EXP, and completing a full page of them awards Asterite, Echoes, upgrade materials, and more.
The Guidebook isn’t a renewable source of Union Level growth. It will have an endpoint at Level 6 when you’ve accomplished all the tasks it can set out and learned all it has to teach. You’ll get 380 Asterite and plenty of other goodies for progressing the Guidebook, however, and none of the tasks are time-sensitive. I like using them as backup sources of EXP for when I need just a little more to advance my account.
Exploration
The most plentiful but grindiest sources of Union Level EXP (and Asterite, as it happens) is to open chests and complete the hundreds of challenges in the world. You only get 10 or so EXP per chest and challenge complete, but because there are so many, you can spend a few hours farming world loot and rack up not only tons of Union Level EXP but tons of Asterite and other upgrade materials while you’re at it.
Like the Guidebook, exploration rewards are a one-and-done thing. If you completely clear the game of it, there’s no way to refresh or renew it. In other words, spend all world rewards at your peril. Much like the Guidebook, I try not to 100% clear entire zones for long periods of time in case I need an emergency infusion of Asterite or a weapon drop specific to a particular zone.
Defeating All World Bosses
There are eight world bosses currently available in Wuthering Waves, and while you will be spending 60 Waveplates to farm them for the long term, the first time you defeat them, you’ll get 500 Union Level XP for your victory, no cost required. That’s a maximum of 4,000 Union Level EXP if you beat them all. And while these rewards are also not renewable, there are some other benefits as well.
First and foremost, you’ll need to explore the world to unlock each boss, meaning you’ll be collecting chests, Echoes, unlocking fast travel points, and more on your way to each. That means more Union Level EXP just for reaching a boss, provided you don’t beeline it to them at the expense of everything else.
Those are my main tips for increasing your Union Level as fast as possible in Wuthering Waves. As long as you’re smart with your time and resources and dedicated to playing the game in the longer term, you shouldn’t have too many problems. For more content, check out our dedicated Wuthering Waves guides hub, including a launch character tier list.
