Wuthering Waves 3.8 brings Lily and a forced launcher switch on Steam

Wuthering Waves version 3.8, "Lilies in a Dying Dream", launched on November 12 after a maintenance window the official website gave as 04:00 to 11:00 (UTC+8). For Steam players it comes with a bigger change than usual: Kuro Games has replaced Steam's download method with its own Official Launcher, and the old game package has to be uninstalled first.

What 3.8 adds

Kuro's Steam post of November 11 lists the content. The new 5-star Resonator is Lily (Spectro, Pistols) on the "Bloom of Yesterday's Dreamsoil" featured banner, joined by the 5-star pistol Lullaby on the weapon banner. The story continues with Main Quest Chapter IV Act V, "A Bouquet for Tomorrow", which leads to a new area called Train of Souls. A new Tactical Hologram challenge, Calamity Effigy, and a set of events, among them the Dreamfield Odyssey combat event and a 7-day login event, round out the version.

The quality-of-life changes may matter more to regulars. Blitz Mode, according to the developer preview quoted by Gematsu, can be switched on when claiming rewards from material collection challenges and lets you restart the challenge right away. Gematsu also lists reworked Resonator animations, with a focus on turning in place and movement transitions, and an automatic switch of Rover's equipped Echo set after Resonance Conversion. Consoles get a Graphics Quality tab with a choice between Performance and Quality, and PSSR support on some devices. Gematsu lists the update for PS5, Xbox Series, PC, iOS and Android. As maintenance compensation, the official notice hands out 300 Astrite and 2 Crystal Solvent, claimable until the next version update.

The launcher switch

Kuro laid out the details on Steam on November 5, after first previewing the change in an earlier Steam post. Steam players have to completely uninstall the old package, then install the Official Launcher through Steam once 3.8 maintenance begins. Account data and progress are not affected, the notice says. Players who run into login failures, payment errors or missing map assets are asked to check whether the old package has been completely uninstalled. The stated aim is tiered downloads: in future versions the resource package will be split into UHD, HD and SD tiers. For now, categorized downloads on PC start as a limited test, and everyone else gets the Full resource package by default. Pre-downloads on Steam follow once pre-download for Version 4.0 starts.

Players on Steam are not pleased. One reviewer objects to "Adding a Launcher to another launcher to bypass Steam's system". A player in the Steam community hub complains about having to download more data in-game after the launcher download, and a Linux player reports in a review that the launcher simply did not show up. Other negative reviews return to older grievances such as banner reruns.

Over the last 48 hours, 509 new Steam reviews came in, about 255 a day and 9.8 times the earlier pace. A week ago the store page already rated recent reviews as Mixed, with 60 percent of 1,374 reviews from the last 30 days positive. The overall rating remains Very Positive at 86 percent of 58,531 reviews. On November 12 the game had 17,911 players on Steam, a daily peak of 20,984 and rank 79 on the most-played chart.

The game is free to play, so 3.8 is an easy point to start or return, with a new story act and a new area. Steam players should uninstall the old package before installing the launcher, as Kuro instructs, and claim the compensation before the next version arrives.