Introduction
The Affinity system in Wayfinder is one of the many ways you can increase your Wayfinder’s power. You can access the Affinity menu on your character screen. Once there you can spend affinity points in order to gain additional bonuses. You can also gain additional perks by hitting a certain affinity level. In this Wayfinder Affinity Guide, you will learn everything you need to know about the Affinity system.
Wayfinder Affinity Guide: How it Works
Your Wayfinder possesses affinities. These affinities will allow you to tap into the potential of your equipped gear. As you level up, you will earn Affinity Points. These points can be used to upgrade your affinity. There are three different types of affinity:
- Instinct
- Discipline
- Focus
Each of the different types of affinity will increase the power of items with specific stats. You will also receive bonus perks once you reach certain milestones within an affinity.
Wayfinder Affinity Example
For example, the item Spore Pendant has the following stats associated with the following affinities:
- Instinct – Ability Power
- Discipline – Crit Rating
- Focus – Magic Defense
This means that if you equip the Spore Pendant on your Wayfinder and then increase your Instinct Affinity you will receive a boost to your ability power. However, if you unequip the spore pendant and equip a different item then that bonus will no longer apply.
For example, if you were to unequip the Spore Pendant and equip the Codex of Shadow’s Whisper you would receive a bonus to your Crit Power instead of your Ability Power. This is because you increased your Instinct affinity and Crit Power is tied to Instinct on the Codex of Shadow’s Whisper but Instinct is tied to Ability Power on the Spore Pendant.
It’s very important to point out that you will only receive these increases in power on the specific items you have equipped that have those stats. This is not an overall passive buff as you increase your affinity.
By upgrading an affinity, the associated stats on the equipped weapon and accessories will be increased by a bonus multiplier. This bonus multiplier will be applied to any affinity-aligned base stats coming from the current equipped loadout.
Therefore, when you’re building out your character it’s important to keep in mind what items you are shooting for, what stats you are trying to increase, and align your affinity spending accordingly.
Affinity Points
As you level up you will earn affinity points to spend. However, you will only earn a total of 29 affinity points once you reach max level on your Wayfinder. There are a total of 15 affinity points per affinity category for a total of 45. This means you can not max out all of the affinity on your Wayfinder.
You will have to pick and choose which affinity you want to max out, or potentially spread your affinity points over all three categories and not max out any of the three.
Weapons function a little bit differently (more on weapon affinity below). Currently, each Affinity category for your weapon has a maximum of 10 affinities that can be allocated. You can max out each of the affinity categories on your weapons. This is because your weapons do not require affinity points to upgrade. You simply need to acquire a set amount of Gloomstones and gold to upgrade the affinity on your weapon.
Affinity Perks
Each of the character affinities also includes a collection of passive perks that are unlocked at key affinity levels. You can view these perk details and unlock requirements via the affinity perk submenu. Each Wayfinder has different perks associated with affinity upgrade milestones.
As an example, we can take a look at Wingrave’s character perks for each affinity type:
| Affinity | Perk | Unlocked at Affinity Level |
|---|---|---|
| Instinct | Healing Wave: Increases the healing of Healing Pulse by 20% | 5 |
| Instinct | Healing Favor: Healing Pulse heals an additional 10% over 8 seconds, can stack up to 3 times. | 15 |
| Discipline | Crusader’s Blessing: Healing Pulses restore guardbreak meter of recipient by 10% | 5 |
| Discipline | Crusader’s Finesse: Healing Pulses lower ability cooldowns by 1 second. | 15 |
| Focus | Damage Ward: Healing Pulses reduce incoming damage of recipient by 10% for 8 seconds. | 5 |
| Focus | Damage Surge: Healing Pulses increase weapon power of recipient by 5% for 8 seconds. | 15 |
Weapon Affinity Upgrades
Just like each Wayfinder, each weapon has affinities associated with it as well. Weapons have three sets of affinity-aligned stat groupings that can be upgraded at any time using Gloomstones. When upgraded, the included stats will permanently increase their values.
Each affinity-aligned stat group affords a maximum number of upgrades. However, these can be further increased when a weapon has achieved max level. This can be achieved through a process called Weapon Reinforcement. You simply need to visit the Weapon Master in Skylight to start the process (Not available yet. Weapon Reinforcement will be added to the game at a later date.)
Let’s take the sword and shield “Vanguard” as an example. As you increase the affinities for this weapon you will receive the following:
- Instinct – Resilience, Weapon Power
- Discipline – Crit Rating, Physical Defense
- Focus – Max Health, Ability Power
The stats that are increased will depend on the weapon that you are upgrading. It’s important to point out that these upgrades are associated with that particular weapon. For instance, if you were to upgrade the Focus affinity of Vanguard you will receive an increase in max health. If you were to equip a different weapon you would no longer receive that benefit from upgrading Vanguard.
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Wayfinder Affinity Guide Conclusion
The Affinity system is Wayfinder is a key component to your overall power progression. Just remember to keep in mind that the affinities you upgrade are tied to a particular Wayfinder or weapon. Once you swap your Wayfinder or weapon you will no longer receive those bonuses from the affinity upgrades.