How to efficiently upgrade Echoes in Wuthering Waves without wasting materials

Upgrading Echoes in Wuthering Waves can drain resources quickly without a smart strategy. This guide covers efficient upgrade practices to help you maximize character potential while conserving your precious upgrade materials.

Best way to upgrade Echoes without wasting materials in Wuthering Waves

Echoes are vital to powering up your Resonators in WuWa, but upgrading them poorly can quickly drain your valuable Tuners and Echo Experience materials. These are vital for Echo progress, and must be conserved at cost. Fortunately, in this section, I'll break down how to be resource-savvy when enhancing your Echoes, starting with one of the most important materials: Tuners.

How to use Tuners efficiently

Tuners are used to unlock additional stats on an Echo at specific level milestones (Level 5, 10, 15, 20, and 25). Each time you hit one of these milestones, you can spend a certain number of Tuners to reveal a new random stat. Because the stat you gain is completely random, careful upgrading is essential to avoid wasting materials.

Here's how to use Tuners efficiently:

• Upgrade one stat stage at a time - After reaching Level 5 and unlocking a stat with Tuners, check the result before investing further. If the new stat is a high-priority one (such as Crit Rate, Crit DMG, or ATK% in most cases), it's worth considering upgrading to the next stage.
• Stop if the first few stat unlocks are bad - If the first or second unlocked stat is low-priority or irrelevant to your Resonator’s needs, it's usually better to stop upgrading that Echo and save your Tuners.
• Rarely push beyond the second stat stage - Unless the Echo has rolled two strong stats early (such as Crit Rate + ATK%, or Crit DMG + Energy Regen), it's typically not worth pushing to unlock all four stats, as the risk of ending up with a weak Echo is too high. The higher the level of an Echo, the more expensive it is to continue upgrading. It's good to know when to call it quits.
• Prioritize Echoes with ideal main stats - Only commit to Echoes that start with good potential both in their main stat and their first few upgrades.
• Always be farming Tuners in your downtime - If you've progressed your account enough to the point where you have several upgraded characters able to complete the endgame, you should be actively using your Waveplates on Tacet Discord fields to keep a steady supply of Tuners coming.

By upgrading Echoes carefully, one stat stage at a time, you'll dramatically increase your chances of building powerful gear without wasting Tuners on bad rolls. Tuners require Waveplates to obtain (in most cases), so be frugal about how and when you use them.

How to use Echo Experience materials efficiently

Echo Experience materials are the primary source of EXP when upgrading Echoes. Just like Tuners, wasting them on the wrong Echoes can set you back significantly. Here's how to maximize their use:

• Feed low-level Echoes into important ones - Instead of immediately using Echo Experience items, you can feed low-level Echoes to other Echoes of higher importance. These Echoes are then used as upgrade materials for better Echoes, saving on EXP costs.
• Focus on 5-star Echoes - It's more material-efficient to upgrade higher-rarity Echoes because they offer the best base stats and growth potential.
• Avoid using high-level Echoes as fodder - Max or near-max level Echoes can be use to give a massive amount of experience to another Echo, but it almost never a good idea to do this, as breaking down the Echo manually will help you save on cost, and prevent you from wasting excess materials.
• Upgrade slowly - Instead of dumping all your Echo Experience into a single Echo immediately, upgrade in small increments to evaluate whether the investment is worth it at each threshold.

Upgrade your Echoes one Tuner threshold at a time with EXP materials. Only use just enough tuners to reveal that threshold's random stat. Continue to do this until the stats on the Echo are no longer favorable, or you max out the Echo entirely. Follow these tips, and you'll never again be short on Echo upgrade materials.

For more helpful guides on all things Wuthering Waves, check out our Wuthering Waves section right on Pro Game Guides.