If you’ve been grinding to ascend your favorite Spectro character or craft a top-tier weapon in Wuthering Waves, you’ve probably hit a wall trying to find one elusive material. Learning how to get Autumn Trace in Wuthering Waves is a common pain point for new and returning players alike, since its spawn conditions are not clearly explained in the in-game guide. I’ve spent hours wandering the Jinzhou Region testing spawns and routes over the past month, and I’ve put together all the actionable tips you need to farm this material fast, no random wandering required.
How to Get Autumn Trace in Wuthering Waves: Core Spawn Requirements
First, let’s clear up some common misconceptions about this material. Autumn Trace is a seasonal orange-glowing crystal that only spawns in very specific zones and conditions, so you won’t find it scattered randomly across the map. It’s not a boss drop, and you can’t earn it from regular story quests, so you’ll have to go out of your way to collect it if you need it for upgrades.
The first non-negotiable requirement is access to the Jinzhou Region maple forest zones, which unlocks once you hit Adventure Rank 22 and complete the “Maple Fall” side quest. You can still travel to Jinzhou before that, but the Autumn Trace spawns won’t activate until you finish that short quest. Next, you’ll need to set your in-game time to between 7AM and 6PM, since the trace only appears during daylight hours. I’ve seen dozens of players waste hours searching at night, only to come up empty handed, so double check your time setting before you head out.
Once you collect an Autumn Trace from a spawn point, it will respawn every 48 real-world hours, so you can plan your farming runs around that schedule. Spawns are shared across your account, so you don’t have to worry about switching characters to collect extra, and you won’t lose uncollected spawns if you log out for a few days.
Optimal Autumn Trace Farming Routes for Fast Collection
Wandering around the entire maple forest looking for spawns is a huge waste of time, so I’ve tested 6 different routes to find the fastest one that hits the most spawns in the least time. Before you head out, make sure you have these four things ready to make your run as smooth as possible:
- At least 1 empty inventory slot per trace (they stack up to 99, but clear extra space if you’re a hoarder like me to avoid missing spawns)
- All Jinzhou maple forest fast travel waypoints unlocked to cut down on travel time between spawn clusters
- In-game time set to 10AM, when the light is bright enough to make the orange glow of the trace easy to spot from 20+ meters away
- An exploration-focused character with scan abilities, like Jiyan, to highlight nearby collectibles without having to check every tree
The route I use takes just 8 minutes on average, and hits 12 confirmed spawns per run. Start at the southern maple forest waypoint, and head north along the river bank to collect 3 traces under the first cluster of red maple trees. Next, fast travel to the central maple forest waypoint, and circle the small grassy hill in the middle of the zone to collect 5 more traces. Finish by fast traveling to the northern cliff waypoint, and follow the cliff edge west to pick up the final 4 traces.
I’ve run this route 11 times in the past month, and I only came up short of 12 traces once, when one spawn glitched for a few hours. That’s a 99% success rate, which is way better than the 3-4 traces per hour I was getting when I first started searching randomly.
Alternative Ways to Earn Autumn Trace Without Farming
If you don’t have time to run exploration routes, or you only need a small number of traces to finish an ascension, there are a few other reliable ways to get this material without wandering the forest. These methods won’t give you hundreds of traces, but they’re perfect for topping up your stock when you’re just a few short of what you need.
The first and easiest option is seasonal autumn event rewards. Every time Wuthering Waves runs a fall-themed event, you can earn between 15 and 20 Autumn Traces just for completing basic event tasks, like defeating a certain number of enemies or collecting common materials. These tasks take less than 30 minutes total to complete, and you don’t have to spend any resin or rare resources to get the rewards.
Second, you can pick up traces from weekly Jinzhou guild bounties. 3 out of the 10 weekly bounties for Jinzhou usually reward 2-3 Autumn Traces each, and most of these are simple kill tasks that take 5 minutes or less to finish. You can also trade 5 Maple Sap, a common collectible found all over the Jinzhou Region, for 1 Autumn Trace at the Jinzhou specialty vendor, up to 10 trades per week.
Just note that none of these alternative methods are unlimited. If you need 30+ traces to max ascend a 5-star character, you’ll still need to run the farming route at least a few times. But these options are great for cutting down the number of runs you need to do total.
Best Uses for Autumn Trace to Avoid Wasting Resources
Autumn Trace is a relatively rare material, so you don’t want to waste it on low-value rewards that don’t benefit your account long term. There are two main uses for this material that are worth spending your stock on, and a few you should avoid entirely unless you have extra to burn.
The most high-value use for Autumn Trace is ascending 4-star and 5-star Spectro-element characters. Most 5-star Spectro characters need 36 Autumn Traces to reach max ascension level 90, and 4-star Spectro characters need 24 traces each. This is the only way to unlock your character’s full stat potential, so you should prioritize this use over everything else.
Second, Autumn Trace is required to craft the Autumn Whisper long sword, which is the best-in-slot weapon for most DPS Spectro characters, including Jiyan. Crafting this weapon takes 40 Autumn Traces, so it’s a big investment, but it’s well worth it if you main a Spectro DPS. Avoid using Autumn Trace for temporary autumn event food recipes, which only give a 10 minute stat buff and use 1 trace per dish. I made this mistake when I first found the material, and I had to wait 3 extra days to farm enough traces to ascend my Jiyan to level 80, so trust me when I say it’s not worth it.
If you have extra traces after ascending all your Spectro characters and crafting the weapons you need, you can use them for the food recipes or to trade for small guild rewards, but don’t do that until you’ve covered your core upgrade needs first.
Once you know the spawn requirements, optimal routes, and alternative collection methods, learning how to get Autumn Trace in Wuthering Waves doesn’t have to be the frustrating grind many players make it out to be. I do one run of the farming route every other day, and I’ve had more than enough traces to ascend all my Spectro characters and craft two copies of the Autumn Whisper sword in just a month. If you have a favorite spawn spot I didn’t mention, feel free to share it with other readers in the comments below.