If you’ve ever showed up to a marked quest location only to find the NPC is nowhere to be seen, or spent 20 minutes hunting a rare Echo that only spawns after dark, you already know how useful it is to learn how to change time in Wuthering Waves. The game’s day-night cycle isn’t just for show—it directly impacts quest availability, enemy spawns, environmental puzzles, and even the visuals of the open world. Many new players miss the time change feature entirely at first, since it’s not front and center on the main UI, but once you know where to look, it takes seconds to adjust the clock to whatever time you need.
How to Change Time in Wuthering Waves: Exact Step-by-Step Steps
Unlike a lot of open world games that tuck time settings deep in the pause menu, Wuthering Waves keeps it accessible once you know the right spot. You don’t need to unlock any special items or complete a specific story quest to use it, either—it’s available from the very start of the game for all players.
Here’s the exact process to adjust the in-game clock:
- Open your main menu by pressing the Esc key on PC, or the menu button on your controller.
- Look for the small sun/moon icon in the top right corner of the menu screen, right next to your in-game currency displays.
- Click or select the icon to pull up the time adjustment wheel.
- Drag the wheel left or right to set your desired time, or tap the preset buttons for dawn, noon, dusk, and midnight for one-click adjustments.
- Confirm your selection, and the game will fast forward or rewind the time immediately with a short transition animation.
It’s that simple. I missed this icon for my first three days of playing, since I was too focused on scrolling through quests and inventory to glance at the top of the menu. If you’re playing on mobile, the icon is in the exact same spot, just a little smaller to fit the smaller screen size.
Top Reasons to Adjust Your In-Game Time Regularly
Changing time isn’t just a fun gimmick to see the sunset over Jinzhou—there are real, practical benefits to using this feature every time you play. Skipping the in-game wait for time to pass saves you dozens of hours of wandering around doing nothing over the course of your playthrough.
The most common use case is unlocking time-gated side quests. A huge number of NPCs only appear at specific times of day: for example, the street food vendors in Jinhsi Station only set up their stalls between 5PM and 11PM, and the ghost story quest in the misty bamboo forest can only be triggered after midnight. If you show up at the wrong time, you’ll get a generic “this NPC is not available” prompt, and you’ll waste time waiting around if you don’t know you can skip ahead.
Another big reason is to farm rare Echos and materials. Lots of powerful boss Echos only spawn at night, and some gathering nodes like glowshrooms and starblossoms only appear after dusk and disappear when the sun comes up. I once spent an hour running in circles looking for starblossoms for an ascension material before I realized I was playing at 2PM in-game, and none of them were spawned. Adjusting the time to 9PM made all of them pop up immediately, and I collected everything I needed in 10 minutes.
You can also use the time change feature to make environmental puzzles easier. Some light-based puzzles require specific sun angles to activate, and you can skip waiting for the sun to move by adjusting the clock manually. It’s also a great way to get perfect screenshots if you’re into capturing your favorite moments in the game, since you can get exactly the lighting you want in seconds.
Common Mistakes to Avoid When Changing Time
While the time change feature is straightforward, there are a few small mistakes that a lot of new players make when using it for the first time. These can mess up your quest progress or waste your time if you don’t know what to watch out for.
First, never change time while you’re in the middle of an active quest that has a time requirement. For example, if you’re doing a stealth quest that requires you to sneak through a base at night, changing the time to midday will fail the quest automatically, and you’ll have to restart from the last checkpoint. The game will usually give you a warning if you try to change time during an active time-sensitive quest, but it’s better to finish what you’re doing first before opening the time menu.
Second, don’t forget that some daily resets are tied to in-game time, not real-world time. A lot of daily farming spots and small side quests reset at 6AM in-game, so if you change time from 5AM to 7AM, you’ll trigger a reset and be able to collect those rewards again. That’s great if you want to farm extra materials, but if you already did your dailies for the day, it can be annoying to have them pop back up on your quest list immediately.
You also don’t need to worry about changing time affecting your real-world playtime or any account rewards. There’s no penalty for adjusting the clock as many times as you want, and it won’t impact your battle pass progress or any time-limited event rewards. I adjust my clock at least 10 times per play session, and I’ve never run into any negative consequences for it.
Fixes for When the Time Change Feature Isn’t Working
While the time change feature works perfectly 99% of the time, there are a few rare cases where you might click the icon and nothing happens, or the time wheel is greyed out. These issues are almost always easy to fix, and you don’t need to restart your game or submit a support ticket in most cases.
The most common reason the time feature is locked is that you’re inside a dungeon or instanced area. Time doesn’t pass in dungeons, and you can’t adjust the clock while you’re inside one, even if it’s an open-world instanced event. All you have to do is exit the instance back to the main open world, and the time icon will be usable again.
Another common issue is that you’re in the middle of a cutscene or a story quest that locks your menu access. If you can’t open the main menu at all, you obviously can’t access the time feature, so just finish the cutscene or the current quest objective, and you’ll be able to adjust the time again.
If you’re on PC and the time wheel is unresponsive when you try to drag it, try closing any overlay apps you have running in the background. Steam overlay, Discord overlay, and even some screenshot tools can interfere with the menu interactions in Wuthering Waves, and disabling them for a second will usually fix the problem immediately. If that still doesn’t work, a quick game restart will almost always resolve any minor UI glitches.
At the end of the day, learning how to change time in Wuthering Waves is one of those small quality of life skills that makes your entire playthrough way less frustrating. You’ll waste less time waiting for NPCs to spawn, farm materials faster, and never miss a rare Echo because you showed up at the wrong time of day. The next time you find yourself standing around waiting for the sun to set or rise, just pop open the menu and adjust the clock yourself—it’ll save you a ton of hassle in the long run.