How to level echoes in Wuthering Waves: the +10 rule, feed vs recycle, and auto-discard
Level every new echo to +10 first, tune it twice, and continue only if at least one of the two substats is useful; recycle failures above +10 instead of feeding them. That one habit is the difference between running out of Echo EXP and never running out. This guide follows Optimized Gaming’s video step by step, and checks every number against the game’s level table and Kuro’s published substat odds.
Written by
Optimized Gaming
Free-to-play Wuthering Waves guides: resources, echoes and the habits that save them.
Optimized Gaming frames it for free-to-play accounts, and the reasoning holds for everyone: without duplicate copies or signature weapons, echoes carry your damage. Wanting better substats means rolling more echoes, so what each roll costs in Echo EXP and Tuners decides how many rolls you get. The video runs just under eight minutes. Below are its six techniques in the order you will use them, with the arithmetic that backs each one.
How much Echo EXP does an echo need to reach +25?
142,600 Echo EXP for a 5-star echo, and it is anything but linear. Optimized Gaming opens on the number that matters: the last five levels cost more than the first fifteen together.
| Step | Echo EXP | Running total | Advanced tubes |
|---|---|---|---|
| +0 → +5 | 4,400 | 4,400 | 3 |
| +5 → +10 | 12,100 | 16,500 | 7 |
| +10 → +15 | 23,100 | 39,600 | 12 |
| +15 → +20 | 39,500 | 79,100 | 20 |
| +20 → +25 | 63,500 | 142,600 | 32 |
The tube counts are in Advanced Sealed Tubes, the purple 2,000-EXP item; a gold Premium Sealed Tube is worth 5,000. Getting to +10 takes about 8 of them. Going from +20 to +25 takes 32, nearly four times as many for the same five levels. Shell Credits cost 0.1 per point of EXP plus 2,000 per tune, which comes to 24,260 for a full +25.
Levelling straight to +25 is the mistake the video calls the biggest. On screen, it means 72 Advanced tubes and 14,260 Shell Credits committed before you have seen a single substat.
When should you stop levelling an echo? The +10 checkpoint
At +10. By then you have tuned twice, two of the five substats are visible, and you have spent 16,500 EXP, 12% of the full cost. Optimized Gaming wants every finished echo to carry at least three good substats, ideally Crit Rate, Crit DMG and one more, and +10 is enough to judge the odds:
- • Both substats good: keep levelling, in steps of five.
- • One good: keep levelling. Two of the remaining three still have a fair chance to land.
- • Neither good: stop and move on. Three good rolls out of three left is rare.
The game can enforce the steps for you. In the Upgrade screen’s Auto-Select Settings, switch Mode from No Cap to Level Cap: it then only picks enough material to reach the next tunable level (+5, +10, +15, +20 or +25), so you never overshoot by accident.
What are the odds of getting Crit Rate and Crit DMG?
Kuro publishes the substat odds on its Korean product page, as Korean law requires. There are 13 possible substats with equal weight, and an echo cannot roll the same one twice. That makes the +10 rule easy to check with a little combinatorics:
| Situation | Outcome | Chance |
|---|---|---|
| Fresh echo, before any tune | Both Crit Rate and Crit DMG among the 5 | 12.8% |
| Fresh echo, before any tune | At least one crit among the 5 | 64.1% |
| +10 with both crits showing | Crit pair complete | 100% |
| +10 with one crit showing | The other crit in the last 3 | 27.3% |
| +10 with no crit showing | At least one crit in the last 3 | 49.1% |
| +10 with no crit showing | Both crits in the last 3 | 5.5% |
The bottom row is the reason for the checkpoint. An echo with no crit showing at +10 has a 5.5% chance of ending with both, about 1 in 18, and finishing it costs another 126,100 EXP. An echo with one crit showing has a 27.3% chance of completing the pair, five times better. Our probabilities assume nothing about which other substats you count as “good”. If your character also wants Energy Regen or ATK%, the odds of three good substats are higher than the crit-only figures above.
Which substats should you aim for?
Optimized Gaming’s order for a typical damage dealer is Energy Regen (up to the character’s requirement) > Crit DMG / Crit Rate > ATK% > flat ATK = damage-type bonus. The damage-type bonuses are Basic Attack, Heavy Attack, Resonance Skill and Resonance Liberation DMG.
Flat ATK is worth more than its reputation, according to the video. Unless 80% or 90% of a character’s damage comes from one damage type, flat ATK can beat that type’s bonus. Against ATK%, the gap is about 50 ATK on average, so it is not a wasted roll. A flat ATK roll is 30 to 60, and an ATK% roll is 6.4% to 11.6%. Which one wins depends on your base ATK, which is why the creator keeps them close.
Each character’s exact order, including how much Energy Regen they need, is on their build page. Start from the resonator list or the build guides, and check the tier list before deciding who gets your best echoes.
Should you feed bad echoes or recycle them?
Recycle anything at +15 or above; feed anything at +10 or below. Optimized Gaming calls this the lesser-known mistake. A +20 echo that missed Crit DMG feels like free fuel for the next one, so most players feed it.
On screen, feeding that +20 echo puts the fresh echo at +17, adding 60,750 EXP. The checkpoint was +10, so seven levels, roughly 44,000 EXP, are now locked into an echo you know nothing about yet.
The fix is the bag. Open the Echoes tab, tap the red trash icon, select the failed echo and confirm. The video calls the overshoot “40,000 echo EXP or eight gold tubes” wasted. Strictly, it is at risk rather than gone. The screens show where the difference comes from:
Data Recovery returns 12 Premium Sealed Tubes, one smaller tube and 12 Tuners, which is 60,500 EXP. Feeding the echo gave the same 75%: the refund is rounded down to the nearest 500, and the Tuners are 30% of the 40 spent on four tunes. So recycling does not return more EXP. It returns the EXP as tubes, which you can stop at +10 with. If the new echo then fails at +10, the fed version costs you a second 25% cut on those 44,000 EXP, about 11,000 EXP, when it is recycled in turn. The recycled version costs nothing extra, because the tubes are still in your bag. Over dozens of attempts that adds up, and the creator’s point stands.
Feeding is fine when the failed echo is at +10 or lower. It only brings a fresh echo to +8 or +9, short of the checkpoint, so nothing is spent past it.
Which echo should you level first: 3-cost, 4-cost or 1-cost?
For a new character, Optimized Gaming builds the 3-costs first, then the 4-cost, then the 1-costs. 3-costs are the hardest to get right. Their main stat comes from a long list (each element’s DMG Bonus, ATK%, HP%, DEF% and Energy Regen), so a usable one is precious and should get the easiest substat standard. Done first, Energy Regen still counts as a good substat on them, because the character has not reached their requirement yet.
1-costs come last because they are the opposite case. Their main stat is HP%, ATK% or DEF%, one in three for the one you want, and the enemies that drop them are everywhere. You can afford to be picky with their substats. The finished Havoc Prism below shows what picky looks like: Crit DMG 17.4%, Crit Rate 9.3% and Energy Regen 10.0% on a 1-cost.
Which echoes and sets a character actually wants is on the echo database. Every echo in the video has a page there, including the Shadow Stepper the creator levels throughout, the Havoc Prism and the Threnodian Leviathan.
How do you set up auto-discard for echoes?
The last part of the video handles the drops that are never worth a +10 check. Open the Terminal, go to Data Bank, then the bottom icon on the left, Echo Management, and pick Auto-discard Settings. You set each plan up once, and from then on it discards matching echoes automatically.
Each plan filters by rarity, cost, sonata and main-stat attributes. The creator’s example: discard every 5-star 3-cost echo from a Fusion sonata that is not ATK% or Fusion DMG Bonus. An Electro DMG main stat on a Fusion set will never be used. Choose an empty plan, select COST 3, add the five Fusion sonatas (Chromatic Foam, Trailblazing Star, Flamewing’s Shadow, Flaming Clawprint and Molten Rift), then tick every main stat except the two you want.
Name the plan, save it and switch on “Auto-discard by this plan”. Optimized Gaming shares a spreadsheet of their full plan list in the video description, which is a faster start than building every plan from scratch.
The routine in one list
- 1Level to +10 with Level Cap on. Set Auto-Select to Level Cap so the game only spends enough Echo EXP to reach +10, then tune twice to reveal two substats.
- 2Read the two substats. Two good substats: keep going. One good: keep going, the odds are still fair. None: stop, the echo needs a near-perfect last three rolls.
- 3Continue in steps of five. Level to +15, +20 and +25 one tune at a time and re-check after each, instead of paying for +25 up front.
- 4Recycle failures above +10. An echo that failed at +15 or higher goes to the trash icon in the bag, not into the next echo, so its EXP comes back as tubes you can stop at +10 with.
- 5Feed failures at +10 or below. A failed +10 echo can be fed directly: it only takes a fresh echo to about +9, so nothing is spent past the checkpoint.
- 6Set auto-discard once. In Data Bank → Echo Management, add plans that discard main stats you never use, so they never reach the bag.
Once the echoes are done, put them to work on the best teams. Thanks to Optimized Gaming for the method and the footage. The channel covers the free-to-play side of Wuthering Waves, and their earlier video on weekly resources pairs well with this one.
