So you're officially addicted to Genshin Impact, and it's time for you to jump headfirst into the Spiral Abyss. You've quelled Stormterror's rage. You rumbled with Azhdaha beneath the surface of Teyvat. Your tenacious Traveler even beat down [spoiler], over and over again just for those weekly spoils. After pummeling all the bosses, you dominated all the domains and exhausted all the ley lines. The Spiral Abyss is your next challenge, and it's one that you really need to prepare yourself for to succeed.

Genshin Impact is a persistent experience, and players get new content trickled out at a consistent pace. But for those who continuously improve their characters, a challenge far beyond what the story and limited-time events have to offer may be necessary. That's exactly what the Spiral Abyss offers.

What Is the Spiral Abyss?

The single-player-only Spiral Abyss is, for all intents and purposes, the current “endgame” content for Genshin Impact. Located in Monstadt's Musk Reef, the Abyss initially serves as a way to test your party's elemental synergy as you progress through the story. Many players ignore the challenges after acquiring completing Xiangling (a reward for completing Floor 3), but there is so much more to experience. You can tackle the Spiral Abyss as early as Adventure Rank 20, but the real draw is the final four floors, which “reset” twice a month.

You divide your forces into two teams of four to challenge the Abyss' 12 floors, which are each separated into three chambers. Your performance in each chamber is rated between zero and three stars, with prizes such as Primogems earned by collecting a certain number of stars. Your progress is saved after each chamber, so there's no need to rush through all at once. It's a great way to collect Primogems and artifacts, as well as some significant bragging rights. You'll need to earn at least six out of nine available stars on a given floor to unlock the next one.

The Effects of the Abyss

The Spiral Abyss presents a serious challenge, but also provides a small number of temporary benefits.

What is the Blessing of the Abyssal Moon?

Twice a month, the “Blessing of the Abyssal Moon” refreshes with a new benefit for players. Blessings kick in when certain conditions are met and affect stats in many different ways. For example, hitting an enemy with a Normal attack might increase ATK damage by 15% for several seconds. Awareness and exploitation of the current blessing is key to successfully completing the Abyss.

What are Benedictions of the Abyss?

Each chamber of the Abyss also offers you to choose one of three “Benedictions of the Abyss.” Typically, one of the options affects you for the entire floor, while the other two only affect the current chamber. Perhaps you need a simple Health boost to survive one last chamber.

Or maybe your team is specialized to focus on Elemental Bursts and needs those to be more powerful. The options vary from chamber to chamber, but a single Benediction might make the difference between success and failure.

Preparing for the Spiral Abyss

As you prep to get into the Spiral Abyss and dive deeper into the floors, you will want to pay attention to these things the most:

• 8 characters of varying elemental combinations, with at least one Pyro, Hydro, Cryo, Anemo, and Electro character
• Character level as high as possible (90, preferably)
• Primary 3 Talents at Level 8 (Normal/Charge Attack, Elemental Skill, Elemental Burst)
• High-level Artifacts that boost your party's primary role effectiveness

Team Elemental composition is perhaps most important

Paying attention to Elements is paramount as you plan your assault on the Spiral Abyss. Elemental reactions allow you to deal extra damage to enemies or afflict them with lingering statuses. Teaming up Cryo and Hydro users will allow you to freeze enemies in place. Pyro and Electro users can create explosions to keep approaching hordes at bay. If you use an Anemo character, attacks can combine with most other elements to create a Swirl effect that plays off the Elemental Mastery stat. The list goes on, but make sure to take these reactions into account when forming your team.

Each floor will have different bonuses to elements, so making sure that you pair the right elements together can make your fight much easier.

Character Levels at 90, Talents at 8

When preparing for the Spiral Abyss, you'll want to make sure to upgrade your characters as much as possible. First off, boost their levels as close to the cap of 90 as possible using EXP books. Leveling up characters raises their basic stats, but much more upkeep is required for a solid Abyss run. Be sure to also pay attention to your team's Talent levels. Talents can be leveled up with Talent books and character-specific resources. You'll want each character's main three Talents to be at least level 8.

Artifacts to Boost Role Effectiveness

Next, you'll want to focus on artifacts to supplement your characters' most notable traits. With the right artifacts equipped and leveled up to the max, your team will have a great chance of reaching the end of the 12th floor. A good rule of thumb is to aim for:

• Crit Rate and Crit DMG for artifacts equipped by your main DPS and sub-DPS
• Elemental Mastery and Energy Recharge are good for Support characters

Which Characters are Best for Spiral Abyss?

I wish I could tell you that all characters are viable in the Spiral Abyss, but that's not the case. With one or two very notable exceptions, “starting” characters just don't perform up to par in the Spiral Abyss (read: keep Amber far, far away).

4-star characters obtained from wishing fare a bit better (Xingqiu and Xiangling are great examples), but you'll want a handful of 5-star characters to do the heavy lifting. In general, 5-star characters tend to have better overall stats and more powerful and synergistic abilities (Ganyu, Jean, and Diluc, for instance).

Use Elemental Skills and Bursts Constantly

Regardless of star rating, characters with Area of Effect (AoE) abilities are extremely useful. Xiangling's Elemental Burst Pyronado allows her to transfer a spinning flame to another character, making her a great Abyss teammate. Ganyu's Celestial Shower is another fantastic Burst that decimates enemy groups while applying a Cryo affliction (combine that with Xingqiu's Raincutter, and you have a frozen army to smash at your leisure).

In the Spiral Abyss, you want to be attacking as many enemies as possible at once while triggering elemental reactions constantly.

Healing vs Shields vs Damage

Healing and general damage prevention are also of the utmost importance. You won't get far in the Spiral Abyss if you rely solely on Damage dealers without any support.

For healing, Barbara is a great “free” choice due to her ability to heal the party in several different ways. Jean is a 5-star character, but when built correctly with artifacts and weapons, can do massive damage which also applies heals to the entire party. There are plenty of characters who can heal in some way, and you would do well to make sure you have at least one on both Spiral Abyss teams.

Geo characters can generate shields to prevent damage (and everyone gets Noelle when they start the game who both heals and shields the party), but the recently-added Corrosion ailment will chew through even the most heavily-shielded character's health. That doesn't mean they're useless by any means, but you will want to be aware that Geo shields don't make you invincible for long, the deeper you get into the Spiral Abyss.

That said, don't stack support too highly, or you'll never make the time limits. Bring high DPS characters such as Diluc and Ganyu, or Xiangling and Xingqiu to blast through shields and beat down enemies as quickly as possible.

An Endless Spiral

The Spiral Abyss offers plenty of opportunities to fine-tune your party while waiting for the next event or Archon quest. It's an ever-changing series of challenges where the player is forced to find and exploit enemy weaknesses, focus on crowd control, and create elemental reactions while weaving around myriad dangers.

The Spiral Abyss is not the perfect endgame, however. There's plenty of room for improvement in future updates. One of the biggest complaints is that it relies too heavily on enemies being damage-sponges in the later floors (massive amounts of HP and shields that take loads of time to whittle away). While this is true, it also forces the player to discover more efficient strategies. With updates every few weeks, it's always exciting to see what's next in the most daunting challenge in Genshin Impact.

What does your Spiral Abyss team look like? What strategies can you share to help folks get to lower floors?