Hello, and thank you for choosing Tower System Services! No wait, wrong game, sorry.
Abyssal Tower type events, or Towers, are a high-difficulty monthly event. Unlike with Record and Variation events, you don’t need to grind to get all the rewards from the events. Instead, you “only” complete the missions. However, completing the quests and missions in Abyssal Tower is significantly more difficult than in other PVE modes.
Tower Structure
There are five towers, one for each element (Fire, Water, Wind, Light, and Dark). Each month, one tower becomes available. After each initial run, they are rerun.
In their original runs, each tower had twenty quests. Reruns add another ten quests.
Each quest has three missions. The first mission is always to beat the quest without anyone getting incapacitated (knocked out). The second one is to beat the quest with two specific characters in your loadout (e.g. any Griff and any Lars) for the first ten missions, or with characters with two specific weapon proficiencies for the later missions (e.g. a gun and a spear character). The last mission differs between the quests. See later in this guide for strategies for the toughest among them.
You unlock rewards for beating specific quests and for certain milestones for the number of missions completed.
Creating a Tower loadout
First things first: You don’t create a single loadout for the entire tower. Since each quest has different character or weapon requirements for its missions, you need different loadouts for each quest. Sometimes you need a specific loadout just for the third mission.
The good news is that you don’t need to clear all three missions in a single attempt. You can have one optimized loadout that you use to initially clear the quest and ideally the first mission, and then retry it once or twice with different loadouts for the second and/or third missions.
Your Tower loadout should be made up of one healer and two DPS. Refer to this tier list for information on which DPS costumes to prioritize. Possible healers are Bloody, Abstract, and Dissenting Captive (F66x), Reborn Exile (Rion), Intoner and Simulacrum Girl (Fio), and Reborn Witch (Saryu).
Alternatively, you can use an attack debuffer or a defense buffer instead of a healer. This requires you to use weapons with healing skill.
Main weapons should be the correct element. Avoid weapons with timed passives and agility increasing effects. Weapons that can heal or blind are especially powerful, with heals being stronger than blinds. Sub weapons with element buffing skills are especially useful.
Give your healer either the +25% HP memoir set (“The Young Lord’s Studies”), or the +30% DEF one (“Musings of a Hunter”). Look for HP and DEF substats. Your DPS should have either the +40% CRIT DMG (“The Wanted Man”) or the +30% ATK (“Of Kings and Soldiers”) sets. Look for critical damage and critical rate substats. Avoid agility substats are useless.
One companion should have a shutdown passive and another a support passive, for the appropriate elements. The third companion is flexible, but companions with healing, like Tome: Blood & Sacrifice, are powerful.
Tower Strategy
Unlike most PVE content, Towers aren’t a DPS race. Enemies have too much health for you to burst them down before they can kill you. That’s why you need a healer. Use healing skills whenever available (unless everyone is at full health). And focus enemies one by one. Be patient and you’ll eventually outlast them. If you build your team properly, there’s not much you can do wrong here.
You don’t have to complete every single mission to get all rewards. You can choose to skip the harder missions. It’s also okay if you don’t get all the available rewards. The tower will return in 6 months, and you’ll have another chance.
Tips for specific missions
Clear by using weapon skills 10 times or fewer
Turn off Auto. Focus down enemies one by one. Don’t entirely stop to use weapon skills. You can go for 1-2 skills in wave 1, 2-3 skills in wave 2, and the rest in wave 3. Character and companion skills do not count against this limit, so use them freely.
Make sure not to waste weapon skills on an enemy that is already low health.
Clear by using character skills 5 times or fewer
Similar to the limited weapon skills mission. Depending on your characters, you might want to use a single character's skill five times instead of splitting them up. For example, the character skill of EX Lars is exceptionally strong.
Clear by performing X critical hits or more
If you’re struggling with performing enough critical hits, you can swap out memoirs for ones with a higher crit rate or use weapons with the Ambush skill.
Clear by reaching maximum damage of X or more
You must perform a single hit that deals exceptionally high damage. You can equip high crit damage memoirs and weapons, or use characters that have high damage numbers on their character skills (300+%). Companion skills are also useful for this, especially books. Their skills deal 350% damage.
Also, use the high damage skill when you have the maximum combo bonus (reached at 20-hit combo) and all buffs and debuffs you can get.
Clear by reaching X-hit combo or more
Use weapons that have 4- or 5-hit skills, and then queue up all weapon skills at the same time.
Clear with 2 or fewer characters in your party
By far the hardest mission. Create a loadout that is just one healer and one DPS. Don’t hesitate to skip this one.
Clear with everyone in your party at 80% HP or more
If you’re struggling with this one, you can try a loadout with 2 healers and only 1 DPS.