There's a lot to do in Genshin Impact, especially for a free-to-play game. Players can complete quests, do the main story, farm domains for a variety of items, complete Ley Lines, explore the map, and plenty of other things. Plus, new content and events get added in pretty often. But there's an area that's only unlocked after Adventure Rank 20 and that's the Spiral Abyss.
There's a lot of things from other games (and even other anime games) we could compare it to, such as The Bloody Palace from the Devil May Cry games, the Trials of The Titans from God of War 2, or The Crucible from Darksiders 2 and 3. Basically, it's a tower of challenging enemy encounters. And to help players prepare for the challenge, here are some of the biggest tips we learned for climbing the Spiral Abyss.
Updated on March 1, 2021 by Jessica Thomas: Now that many players have completed the story of the game and reached level 80, it's time to really try and tackle the Spiral Abyss. With many of the challenges in each floor being time-related, though, players will need to quickly cut through enemies while ensuring that their team stays topped off on health. This can be rather tough as each floor changes, and after floor, four players will be forced to use two teams in order to take each room. This can get a bit overwhelming, and earning stars quickly devolves into a frustrating process. With the tips below, though, players can make easy work of the Spiral Abyss.
12 Try Using Shields
Shield users have understandably become more and more popular in combat. While Ningguang may not do much to help in the Spiral Abyss, characters like Diona and Xinyan will. Using elemental shields can help the player absorb damage, taking less time away from having to heal.
When players can match the elemental shield to the enemy's elemental type, they will be able to absorb 250% of elemental attack damage.
11 Learn The Fatuis Weaknesses
One of the enemies players tend to get hung up on most when encountering the higher floors of the Abyss is the Fatui. The Fatui can put up shields that take long periods of time for the player to break down. This can be especially troubling since they already have quite the large health bar to deal with.
On Fatui filled floors, players will need to align their two teams so that they can easily use elemental attacks to wear down the enemy's shields. Also, ensure that the first Fatui member you take out is always the hydro as they heal the other enemies.
10 Study The Enemies For Each Chamber And Their Spawn Locations
First and foremost, study what the upcoming rooms will have and build the team around that. Players can select each of the three Chambers on a Floor and see what the enemies will be. This becomes important once each Chamber is broken into two halves, and even more so once enemies start to rely on Elemental Shields more. Basically, we recommend looking at each Chamber, taking notes on what enemies will spawn, figuring out which to target first, and going at it.
9 Start Leveling A Second Team Early
This was a big one. Leveling a second team is mandatory for the Spiral Abyss, and looking back, that info was so helpful. Don't just pump all those EXP and Talent resources into four characters, try to bring up a team of 8 relatively equally or at least at a 70/30 split. Like we said, the Floors after 4 are broken into two halves and players will need two complete teams to really make it through Floor 6. Well, unless someone got super lucky and rolled some of the better 5-star characters.
8 Talent Levels Matter, Grind Those Talent Books
Once characters reach a certain level in Genshin Impact, they can then "Ascend" to the next "Phase" and their level cap is raised. Phase one is from level 1-20, two is from 20-40, three is from 40-50 and so on. And, with each Phase, players are also able to use more Talent Books, random materials, and a whole lot of Mora in order to level up the basic attacks, Elemental Skill, and Elemental Burst of their characters. So, if players are having a hard time getting past a certain Floor, maybe back out of the Spiral Abyss for a day, grind out some Talent Books, and then go back in once those are leveled up.
7 Have At Least One Ranged Character & One Grouping Skill
It's insanely important to have at least one archer in Spiral Abyss and it's also very helpful to have one character with an ability to group enemies up. Venti is so insanely good basically because he's both of these, an archer with an Elemental Burst that sucks all the enemies up into it.
This isn't hugely important for early Spiral Abyss, but once players start encountering the Fatui, that's when a grouping skill becomes tantamount because enemies will just overwhelm your team otherwise. And, on Floor 8, there's a Chamber that has players face off against two Ruin Guards, and if they don't have an archer to hit their weak spots, there's no way they'll be able to clear those rooms in time.
6 Elemental Reactions Have Never Been More Important
The Combat in Genshin Impact is pretty unique in a lot of ways, but the two primary reasons are its Elemental Reaction system and its insistence that players switch between all four of their characters frequently. In the main game, both of these things matter but aren't really super important until maybe World Level 3, as the game is easy enough that players can frankly ignore these mechanics if they want to. But, in Spiral Abyss, it's a different story. Players absolutely have to learn the best combo's for their team as well as the best Elemental Reactions to use against certain enemies.
5 Focus On Clearing All 3 Floors First, Then Go Back And Grind For Max Stars
Here is something that helped us out quite a bit once we started bashing our head against the more difficult Floors. Just focus on making it through all three chambers first, don't try and go for 6-stars right out of the gate. Just try and make it through all three. Once a player has all three cleared, it's super easy to just build the best team possible for the first chamber, 3-star that, restart, build the best team for the second chamber, perfect that, and so on.
4 Build Two Healers Or Weapons That Will Heal
In the main game, healing isn't super important. Players have Shrines and Food to heal them whenever their party gets low, and for the most part, enemies are pretty easy (in early World Levels) so it's rare that they'll even get low in the first place. But, in Spiral Abyss, food isn't allowed, not even the attack-buffing crab-based foods. Plus, healing Benedictions are rare and enemies are relentless, so players will be taking a ton of damage as they go higher. That's why its crucial to build a way to heal as early as possible. Obviously characters like Qiqi, Bennett, Jean, Noelle, and especially Barbara are great for this, but for people who haven't been lucky with their rolls, there are also tons of weapons that heal the character using them for every kill or elemental orb gathered.
3 Artifact Levels, Skills, And Set Bonuses Are Important
Wow, we already miss the days of exploring the map in the beginning, opening hundreds of chests, gathering tons of useless artifacts and using them to level up our few good ones. For the players who grinded to the higher AR levels, it's rough. With little to no chests lefts, finding artifacts to feed into others is pretty rare. So, we encourage all players to put a focus on kitting out all eight characters with at least decent artifacts as early as possible.
Set bonuses would be nice as well and are really important later, but they certainly aren't priority #1. Get every character the right artifact for them, whether its Max HP for Barbara, pure Attack power for Diluc, or Electro Damage for Razor, and get those artifacts to max level if at all possible.
2 The Benedictions For Each Floor Change Daily
The Benedictions of the Abyss each player can pick per Chamber change daily, and that info is super difficult to find so we understand if players had no idea this was a thing. Within the Spiral Abyss, players get two innate buffs, one is the Blessing of the Abyssal Moon (a constant buff that changes bi-monthly), and then there are the Benedictions of the Abyss. These Benedictions pop up at the start of every Chamber and give the player an option between three "buffs" that can last 1 Chamber, 1 whole Floor, or give an immediate effect. So, if every chamber has a buff that isn't really helpful for the current team, it's probably for the best to rain-check the Abyss until tomorrow.
1 For Later Floors, Focus On Ascending At Least 3-4 Characters Phase 4
And finally, we'll end things on one more late-Abyss tip, and that's to Ascend characters to at least Phase 4 (Level 70). At Phase 4, Characters unlock their final passive Talent, and a lot of these passives are insanely useful such as Venti's or Fischl's. They can truly make all the difference between just barely not making it through Floor 7, and getting to Floor 8 with 9 stars. We're not saying that people have to Ascend all 8 characters and level them all to 70 (though they will have to at some point for higher floors, and leveling isn't exactly hard), but we are saying to take a look through all 8 passives for their two teams, and see which ones would make the most difference by unlocking.