Here's the livestream for the Wuthering Waves 1st Anniversary on April 29th, which means we are half a year away from my "wait until 1.5 years pass before playing" recommendation last year! Writing this as I watch it live, which somehow is better output than the vast majority of game journalists, I still don't understand:
For all intents and purposes, it's a "filler patch" in between story updates, but they seem to be putting a lot of resources into the event content itself, in comparison to previous "filler patches". (EDIT: confirmed by them saying 2.4 this summer would continue the story of Cartethyia) The main event is Mario Party, a tournament between every single character released in the game so far, but they're cubes. Not Minecraft-like models, no, actual four-sided cubes that you control in the overworld. It's hard to explain without seeing it in action, but expect social media to be flooded with content regarding them because of sheer marketability. (EDIT 1 hour in: they ARE turning the cubes into merch, please look forward to their presence all across xwitter)
Zani and 5 limited-run characters (and their weapons) will be the first banner run, Ciaccona and an additional 5 limited-run characters (and their weapons) will be the second banner run. For the limited run character/weapon banner, you can choose which ones you want, so it's essentially "filling in the blanks" if you're missing anything. Unfortunately, leaks beforehand stated that this would be a 'free' selector because it's the anniversary, but it's paid, and you know how I feel about that sort of thing, so I'll try to prevent myself from fedposting about the fact that there are twelve fucking limited-run characters in these banners-
Illusive Realm is returning, which was an incredibly limited Rougelike mode from the 1.0 version of the game (to fill in the wait for more content), with various enhancements based on their obvious-mechanic-testing events throughout the past year. Now it's permanent, as it should have been, but better late than never? Hopefully they'll keep updating it like they do their PGR game modes! There's another event game mode this patch featuring Ciaccona, and they're experimenting with story delivery where progress in the game mode = more story. All of this alongside standard patch events, if you've played the game since 2.0, you'll know what to expect, but it essentially adds up to at least one (1) guaranteed 5-star divided between the entire patch cycle. Give or take, depending on how good you are at the Endgame, but that's just a difference of a few pulls, so don't stress out over it too much.
They're also introducing a system where you can change the Main Stat of your (unenhanced) echoes, and removing Boss Cooldowns so you can keep fighting them repeatedly for their echoes without waiting ~5 minutes in between. Still waiting on full echo modification, but I anticipate that there will be further improvements as the game goes on, and they keep introducing new echos + set bonuses. As long as they don't invalidate already-farmed sets with future powercreep, there won't be revolts...so the ball is in their court to make sure they do right by their players over time.
Changli (counselor) and Carlotta (swimsuit) are receiving outfits in Patch 2.4 - and since Jinhsi's outfit cost around $50 without the launch discount, I can only assume a similar pricing structure. This may sound obvious, but please do not spend $50 on an outfit for your gacha characters, I am begging you!
Cyberpunk Edgerunners collab in 2026, what the fuck! They better get Rebecca playable, or there will be riots. I'll even take Lucy as a compromise.
Editing this while they play the orchestral melody of the past year's theme music, I'll also do a quick re-watch of certain parts after the stream to make sure I didn't miss anything major that hasn't already been covered. If I have, or if a detail is off by a bit, blame my schizophrenia. Until then, here's the codes from the stream for easy 300 Astrite total:
1STANNIVERSARY
EVERFLOWING
WITHYOU
Stream's over, Chat's complaining about no free 5-star, Total Leaker Death, etc., but that's just standard behavior for them at this point.
As for me, I'm attempting to pull for both Zani and Ciaconnia, which means I'll have to be on-top of running every single event each day so that I don't have to spend $$$. Do not take this as a recommendation of the game, I'm a freak starved for MMO/live service, you should still wait at least another half year like in my original recommendation, if you're not already playing!
Lots of other QOL and smaller event updates from the live stream, but not nearly as important to be written up (in my opinion), this patch already has a lot of major/themed events going on as-is. I would end with Ciaccona's trailer, since her folk music and singing are fantastic, but Wuthering Waves hasn't uploaded it to their channel minutes after the livestream ended, which means the game's obviously EoS any day now. Sad!