Duet Night Abyss Commission Guide

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Duet Night Abyss (DNA) has various infinitely repeatable short missions for various materials. Sometimes you'll have no choice which ones to do because you need that particular material, but when you can choose (e.g., for Covert Commissions because whichever one you do will give you the same drops), then this guide can help you choose.

Unlike many games, you can mostly just smash your way through most of the content even if you are at-level or under-levelled, so we are mostly concerned about time spent versus potential benefits of spending a bit of extra time.

Table of Contents:
  • Important Mission Traits
  • Mission Types
    • Bounty / Chase
    • Capture
    • Defense
    • Dismantle
    • Escort
    • Excavation
    • Exploration
    • Expulsion
    • Hedge
    • Mediation
    • Noctoyager
    • Relocation
    • Termination

Important Mission Traits:

  • Ejection:
    • Some Commissions are what I call "Ejection" missions where you are "suddenly" ejected from the mission once it registers conclusion. You'll have to remember to collect enemy drops on the ground before that happens, especially any purple or gold items that Elites might drop.
    • Some Commissions technically Eject you (e.g., Exploration) but you can choose to continue to the next wave, collect your loot, then abort the mission with no penalty.
    • If you use the Bro Boxie geniemon, you will likely not encounter difficulties with having to scramble around grabbing loot because of the large bonus to auto collection range.
    • If the main character is defeated, reviving them is generally not necessary for AFK because the mission automatically completed (instead of having to go to an exit location for example).
      • You do not collect loot drops while defeated so Exploration missions will basically stall because you can't collect the serum dropped by enemies until you are revived.
  • Geniemon (NOT in Covert Commissions):
    • Sometimes a "Rescue the Geniemon" event can happen and you are guaranteed to capture it (100%).
    • If you can't find a geniemon on the map or Dynamic Encounter to do task (e.g., for the Bard's Tome Weekly Inspiration) then you can try running these Commissions.
    • Even though these geniemon are usually Inactive ones with Traits, you can merge 3 of the same Trait together to upgrade a Trait to the next tier, so all geniemons are really useful.
  • Quitting a Commission means losing everything, as if you had not done the Commission at all.
    • For Commissions with multiple waves, it lose only what was gained in the current wave, not previous successful waves.
    • This includes loot dropped by enemies and XP.
  • Forsaken Leaders: Bombaholic, Deceiver, Toymaker
    • I need to investigate this more carefully but whenever these appear, they seem to have a high chance of dropping purple or gold materials, including Weaponholders and Coolants, which are expensive to Forge.
    • Seems to virtually guaranteed in Level 80 Mediation.
  • Hitstun
    • Often when you want to AFK a Commission, you don't want the active character to be bounced around by attacks, forcing you to check in periodically and reposition them (especially in Defense Missions).
    • If you are going to do this AFK, try the Steadfast Demon Wedge (Feathered Serpent wedge for the center slot). Steadfast makes the character immune to HitStun at the cost of damage, but since you are AFK anyway the character isn't doing any damage.

Mission Types

Bounty / Chase (Ejection)

  • You can only do this three times a week for Blueprints but you can run it as many times as you like for the regular rewards:
    • If you inspect the details of the mission, it includes a lot of Carmine Globules, Luno Mementos, and Coin in addition to the weekly Blueprints. 
      • These "regular rewards" will NOT show up under mission rewards but will be part of the "Dropped" loot list.
      • The actual treasure chest you open in Phase 3 also contains a separate small amount of Coin and Carmine Globules.
    • Even if you can one-shot most of the regular mobs, all the running around required means you should expect a run to take upwards of 20 minutes.
      • Currently there are only two layouts, so as you do more runs you'll start to recognize locations and where things are, so you can trim some time.
      • Even at 20+ minutes this can still be time savings compared to running a mix of Defense, Escort, and Excavations for equivalent drops. And there are a lot of Elites/Primanders in Phase 2, so you are likely to get some purple crafting materials like Coolant, which would cost 10,000 Coin plus materials to craft.
      • There are different drawbacks to farming with Chase:
        • You cannot use a Commission Multiplier.
        • Unlike Defense missions for Luno Mementos, you can't be AFK and let Partners with ranged weapons handle all the enemies.
      • If you need only Coin, then Excavations or even Mystic Maze V can be a faster option.
    • Do not exit the tournament until the Phase 3 countdown is done, or you will lose al rewards including enemy loot drops. This is the same for failing Phase 3 due to the Prize Chest being destroyed.
  • Although Snow tells you to "hurry" to the next round, it doesn't start imminently.
    • You need to exit the current area and go through a previously locked door (the lock icon will still be visible on your minimap) so after Phases 1 and 2, you can run around looking for any loot that may have been dropped, especially by any Elites.
    • Once in the new area you still need to move to the gold quest marker to really start things.
  • Phase 1: Looking for Clues
    • If you don't know where the targets are:
      • There are two starting locations but much of the rest will look familiar including where the Star Players are located once you get enough clues.
      • You don't need to only attack Clue Cubes: Defeating enemies inches up the clue meter slightly.
      • From the starting location, heading south to find more Clue Cubes puts you in the direction of the first Star Player you have to eliminate. By the time you take them out, you should be close to enough Clues to find the second one, assuming you don't avoid enemies on the map. Keep heading south until you get enough Clues and you should be in the direction of the second Star Player.
      • The Clue Cubes are in fixed locations.
        • Sometimes they can glitch and be invisible, but if you point your reticle at their location, their health bar will display.
      • If you see a red health bar ticking down from damage, it means there's a Gold Clue Cube being attacked by enemies there.
    • If you know where the targets are (and they are basically always in the same place)
      • As soon as you enter the chamber with the target, it is located for you and you don't need any clues.
      • So if you know your way around, you can really cut this part short and just beeline to the targets. This can really save a LOT of time.
  • Phase 2:
    • Currently this location is identical in all runs.
    • Seeded Enemy Players (special Elites) start spawning quickly once you capture 3/6 zones. There can be a lot of Elites in this phase (plus fast respawns of enemies) but it appears you cannot endlessly farm enemies here: After 1,000 enemies, no enemies in the mission will drop anything other than supplies like Ammo Supply Chests and potions, and you also stop gaining XP.
    • The Captain (Elite Sergeant) appears when you capture 5/6 zones and disappears if you capture 6/6, so if you want to defeat it for potential drops you need to do so before completing Phase 2.
    • After the phase is over, enemies stop spawning and you can run around grabbing loot especially anything from an Elite.
  • Phase 3:
    • Currently this location is identical in all runs and Ace Players come from one of two directions.
      • Ace Players use special attacks that can do a lot of damage to the Reward Chest in a burst, so it's better to take them down from a distance. At Level 70, they can destroy the chest in seconds. Even a single volley can do huge damage.
      • They beeline the chest and ignore your team so they basically DPS checks.
      • You can try to block them and thereby halt or slow their advance. They are harmless except to the Reward Chest, so you can use this to help take them down before they are in range to attack the Chest (but in the meantime, regular enemies are swarming the chest).
      • Sometimes they can get stuck on their way. It's probably then better to leave it alone as the game won't spawn another Ace.
      • They always drop a Chest Key.
    • Keys have to be picked up and it appears that autoloot distance bonuses might not apply. The small key icon will be visible on your screen no matter the distance. You can only carry one key at a time.
    • Instead of defending the chest, head down the corridors to farm the enemies streaming in as they respawn almost as fast as you wipe the wave. This can hopefully get you keys quickly and you have less Ace Players to deal with. Typically the regular enemies can't hurt the chest much, but check back occasionally to clear the area around the chest.
    • Once the chest is unlocked, the Ejection timer starts, but it doesn't end immediately after you open the chest so there's still some time to scramble around to grab enemy loot drops. However you should stay around the chest until all the drops from it are collected.

Capture (Geniemon)

  • Ignore everything and just race for the target. Pretty fast mission as long as you aren't bogged down by useless mobs that you can just leave behind by running.

Defense

  • There are two types of Defense Missions: "regular" Commissions and Noctoyager Manual Defense Commissions.
  • Regular (with lemniscate/infinity symbol):
    • The best reward for each Tier is on Wave 3, so this can affect how you do Defense Commissions:
      • If you want to use a Commission Multiplier, check which wave you can clear. For example, Wave 3 of the Level 40 tier has level 50 enemies and gives the same number of Luno Mementos as Wave 1 of the Level 60 tier with level 60 enemies.
      • If you don't want to use Commission Multipliers, then I recommend grinding multiple Waves of lower Tiers to get faster completions instead of a single long high-difficulty Tier because each time you start you have to run over to the defense site, slowing you down instead of staying at the site to do more Waves.
  • Noctoyager Defense (Ejection):
    • There are just two waves plus one Elite in the second wave. No continuations.
  • AFK clears:
    • If you are going to do this AFK and let the Partners clear it, note that sometimes enemies can get stuck pathfinding their way and then the whole mission is stalled until you manually go over and kill that enemy.
    • Rebecca or area of effect damage over time effects are not really necessary, just Partners with strong ranged weapons.

Dismantle (Ejection)

  • This is only available as a Covert Commission.
  • The time limit is not bad especially if you use Truffle and Filbert: Her Buff/Ultimate where she rides on Filbert makes her immune to hitstun and getting knocked about so just rush around to the three items that need to be destroyed.
    • While on Filbert, if you use her skill, she zooms even faster, saving you more time.

Escort

  • This mission is not bad if you can quickly defeat any enemy you encounter. Just ignore stealth and defeat them quickly before the alarm can be raised.
  • For Carmine Globules, other types of missions are recommended:
    • Echoes of Missteps > Mystic Maze first is recommended for the weekly limited purchases of Carmine Globules (20 units x 200 Globules per unit x 50 Threads if Time).
    • Bounty/Chase is recommended for a good mix of loot for your time, including a number of Carmine Globules.
  • Whatever Carmine Globules you have invested in a Demon Wedge can be fully recovered using the Extract function from Inventory. This is a SHORT TERM solution.
    • This destroys the Demon Wedge but you get your Carmine back without loss. The Coin spent upgrading is gone however.
    • This extraction has a daily limit.
    • You can do mostly-AFK farming with Noctoyager Commissions and extract purple Demon Wedges for 50 Globules each, instead of Escort missions. Slower but you do need to farm a lot of Wedges anyway.
    • The reason this is a short-term solution is because ultimately you will still need a lot of copies of various Demon Wedges to Amplify gold Demon Wedges. Five copies of gold wedges can be used to amplify a gold wedge up to +10.
      • Amplified Demon Wedges do not go into your Demon Wedge stickerbook or give you Trial XP, so you're unlikely to be Amplifying every Wedge, and some will eventually pile up while you are farming other types, so those can be Extracted.

Excavation (Geniemon)

  • This can seem pretty tedious especially as you have to run quite far during the commission but there are shortcuts. The Covert Commission version seems to have less running.
  • The Excavation sites are basically the same once the map is loaded and they just cycle through the same locations.
    • At the start of a new wave, it appears the game randomly picks from the locations again, so it might start at the location of the last excavation site.
    • Marker for Sites 2 and 3 appear when site one completion is at 50% and 100% respectively.
      • The third site is typically closer than the second one so if you need to collect Excavator Modules anyway, just stay at the first site then choose which of the two you want to go to next.
      • Sometimes Site 3 will be the same as Site 1 so if you just wait at Site 1 until it's done (e.g., you are waiting to collect modules from bugs anyway) you might not need to run anywhere for Site 3 then finish up with Site 2.
  • Bro Boxie is highly recommended especially if you want to semi-AFK this:
    • You can get a bonus reward equal to the mission reward.
    • If you need modules for the excavator you can leave the characters parked at the excavator and let Bro Boxie vacuum up the module when your Partners kill the flying bugs that carry them.
  • Even if you completely abandon the excavator and head to the next one to set it up, enemies seem to have a hard kill destroying it before it finishes excavation BELOW LEVEL 50.
    • At Level 40 and below, even if you use Continue, enemies basically can't destroy it before it finishes.
      • Interestingly, I allowed an excavator to be destroyed before it finished and the mission still completed successfully with full coin award. Not clear what the rules are exactly or if it were a bug.
      • At Level 50, enemies can tear down an Excavator pretty quickly assuming you and your team are far away and not killing any of them.
    • So you can try moving on to the next excavation site as soon as the current excavator has enough modules.
    • You are not timed so you can let the team farm XP and common loot drops until you can peek in and move to the next excavation site. This only somewhat works because there is typically a cap on how much XP and loot you can get in each Commission/Continuation.
    • Excavators seem to tick their progress at a slower rate if they are more heavily damaged.
    • Rebecca is an interesting Partner choice here since she can lay down Jellyfish area effects and while she's running after you when you go to the next site, her jellyfish are theoretically still active and providing some defense at the excavator that is still completing. And typically you can race to the next site and enemies are still following so she won't immediately drop more Jellyfish and thereby cancel the previous ones, at least not for a little while.
  • High spawn rate of easy enemies here so it's good for grinding XP, but very few elites so don't expect purple or gold material drops.
  • Geniemon encounters seem to trigger at the start of the next wave since finishing three Excavations ends the Commission. They may not trigger after that no matter how many waves you Continue.
  • A slightly lower level Excavation mission might be preferable:
    • You can do more Continuation to another wave, resulting in less mission restarts and possibly saving time overall. Also, the Coin awards cycle:
      • Level 40 mission wave 1 = 17100, wave 2 = 20400, wave 3 = 24000, wave 4 = 27300, wave 5 (level 52 enemies?) = 30800, and the cycle repeats after this. Average per wave 23,920.
      • Level 60 mission wave 1 = 24300 coin.
    • Enemies don't level up as aggressively as Defense or Exploration (which are +5 levels per consecutive wave). It appears to be +3 levels per wave so wave 5 wound be +12 levels.
    • You may already be carrying some modules so you can jump start the next wave a bit.
  • Other ways of making Coin:
    • (active farming) Mystic Maze
      • The efficiency here doesn't really make this worthwhile until Tier V (Level 70) and Tier VI (Level 80). Prior to Tier V, the ratio of Threads to time is low and not really worth it.
      • Tier V: Really depends on what other options are available to you.
        • You can rush through in about 15 minutes assuming you can just breeze through all the fights quickly. Truffle can basically facetank all the bosses while mounted on Filbert. A 15 minute run gets you around 1500 Threads of Time, or 150,000 Coin.
        • However five waves of Excavation also takes approximately as long and also gives you a lot of XP and miscellaneous loot.
        • An easy Bounty/Chase where you can also takes approximately as long, gives around half the Coin, but lots of Luno Mementos and some Carmine Globules.
      • Tier VI:
        • Same number of stages (21) as Tier V and no huge difficulty jump (?)
        • Basic run is around 2300 Threads of Time but you can increase the difficulty with modifiers you choose, netting literally thousands more per run. I chose all difficulty options for 100 Total Depth and 300% Bonus Trade Points, and got 114192 Trace Points and 9135 Threads of Time.
        • Even the basic run with no difficulty modifiers beats every other mode assuming you can clear Mystic Maze effortlessly.
    • (active farming) Bounty/Chase:
      • IF you are not going to use a Commission Multiplier, this is one of the best Commissions to grind.
      • Do a quick low-level one where you can one-shot most regular enemies and it can take maybe 15 minutes once you are used to the layout.
      • You get not just Coin but a mix of other key materials such as Crimson Globules and Luno Mementos.
      • If you don't care about anything other than Coin then possibly Mystic Maze can get you more Coin.
    • (more passive AFK farming) Exploration:
      • You can go semi-AFK here (just start the Commission then Continue the waves).
      • Each Commission gives a bit of coin and some Character Ascension Materials. If you have an excess of materials for Character Ascension as well as enemy loot drops, you can sell those.
      • It won't be tends of thousands of Coin per run (not including Commission Manuals to multiply output) but you can mostly be AFK, much more so than Excavation.

Exploration

  • If you race around and get to the Serum Storage Points that Snow marks for you, this Commission can actually go faster than just grinding mobs, even with Rebecca or Truffle and Filbert. And at high difficulty when you can't easily kill the enemies, you can still race around and collect Serum Storage Points until you complete the mission.
  • Rebecca is of course very good here if you don't want to run around, though you will need to occasionally run around and vacuum up the Serum drops if her area effect kills are too far away.
  • Truffle and Filbert is an interesting choice here as well as other high-enemy-density situations:
    • There are enough Sanity potion drops to keep her Sanity topped up so she can use her Ultimate/Buff to ride Filbert almost constantly (short cooldown after it ends). She's also right at the enemy when it is defeated so their Serum drop is picked up immediately.
    • However you need to stay in high-density areas, meaning you just circle a small area over and over and let enemies spawn around you.
    • When enemies are tougher, you can instead of running just sit on Filbert and use Filbert's attacks which are area effect. In open areas it's better to try to kill the enemies outright than keep flinging them away and making you have to chase them down.

Expulsion (Ejection)

  • There is very little reason to do the regular Expulsion Comissions for Demon Wedges as Noctoyager Manual Commissions have Primanders with their own special Demon Wedge drops.
  • You don't actually have to move around: Enemies will spawn starting at a certain distance from you.
    • If you move too far from a dead end, they can actually spawn behind you even though there's no "entrance" because it appears enemies spawn based on distance from you.
    • Depending on the map, some enemies can get stuck pathfinding their way to you.
  • I recommend starting with ranged attacks and letting them group up then smash through with area effects. Otherwise your skills tend to blast them around and you'll have to run after them.
  • If your companions can kill them easily with ranged weapons, it's helpful to find some kind of corridor or room where the enemies come to a chokepoint or have to go around a bend to see you. Then you can use ranged attacks and ranged skills to kill them and have their loot drops piled up in a tight area. When the kill counter nears the end, move forward to grab all the loot and finish up the kills.

Hedge

  • Hedge is similar to Exploration except all your kills count and you don't have to run around collecting Serum drops. So if you aren't smashing enemies easily then you might try this instead. Once the mission is done, enemies stop spawning.
  • Regular Commission Hedge is for XP Books but you can farm up XP for characters you are not currently focusing on in an AFK manner.
    • Only the active character gets XP and weapons get a fraction of that.
    • To AFK farm some XP you just need strong supporting Partners who can handle all the combat and keep the main character safe.
    • Most commissions have a quick cap before XP and lot drops stop so you can't just leave your characters AFK in an instance.
      • Bounty/Chase probably has the highest cap at 1000 enemies and there are lots of elites in Phase 2 once you have captured 3/6 locations.
      • Multiple waves of Expedition can be good for XP; presumably each wave has its own kill counter for XP/loot limits.
    • While you are doing other Commissions you might as well farm XP on your miscellaneous characters, such as when grinding Noctoyager Commissions looking for specific Demon Wedges.
  • The exit location is always the same so you might consider parking right there at the start. I do not recommend this.
    • There is a railing and this can frequently cause the AI partners to glitch as they just run into the railing, not going anywhere and also not responding to the enemy. In rare situations this may mean they get defeated by the enemy and in general it just makes the mission take longer.
    • After you hit 100% Serum, enemies stop spawning but the remainder still approach you so there's not a huge hurry to move because you can get some residual kills and loot. And the distance you travel is the same whether you go immediately or later. So just get into serum collection range (yellow circle on your minimap) and go AFK.

Mediation

  • The Forsaken leaders are basically always in the same location whether their location is revealed or not.
  • Deceiver
    • Easiest to AFK kill yet has the most impact on the mission.
    • If you do not defeat Deceiver, then Elites keep spawning at an aggressive rate once you expose the Finale Flare to damage.
    • If you defeat Deceiver, Elites pre-placed on the map are also removed.
    • If you can handle them easily you might as well let them spawn and hope for some purple crafting materials.
  • For your AI Partners to actually attack Finale Flare, generally you have to first strike it a few times or combat has to begin with enemies nearby.
  • There is a limit on how many enemies spawn once you expose the Finale Flare, as well as a separate limit on how much XP you can get and how many enemies can drop loot.

Noctoyager

  • At first you will want to quickly get one copy of each type as that helps with your Trial XP, pushing you to Trial Rank 60. Later you will be grinding these basically forever because gold wedges (from Forging) can be further upgraded after +5 into +10 using multiple copies of the same and the Amplify process.
    • one copy for +6, one copy for +7, two copies for +8, two copies for +9, three copies for +10 = total 10 blueprints and 50 purple wedges
    • So in the short term if you are desperate you could Extract some unused ones into Carmine but in the long term you will want to hold on to a lot of them.
  • These missions are either Defense or Expulsion and are the same for all mission in the same Tier.
    • Level 20 - Expulsion
    • Level 30 - Defense
    • Level 40 - Expulsion
    • Level 50 - Defense
    • Level 55 - Expulsion
    • Level 60 - Defense
    • Level 65 - Expulsion
    • Level 70 - Expulsion
    • Level 80 - Expulsion
  • The "Possible Rewards at Current Level" are not straightforward:
    • At Level 20, not every mission has the full Reward Pool.
      • The first four mission in the Level 20 Tier are actually Level 10 missions and do not give green Demon Wedges.
      • The remaining two are Level 20 and can give green Demon Wedges and grey Phoenix Wedges.
    • At Level 30, the Reward Pools appear the same
    • At Level 40, the Reward Pools appear the same
    • Level 50 and 55 Reward Pools are the same for every mission.
      • To forge certain gold tier Demon Wedges, you need to farm this reward pool and the game defaults to recommending the Level 50 missions. However Level 50 is Defense and Level 55 is Expulsion, so it's more convenient to farm the Level 55 missions.
    • Level 60 Reward Pool is the same as Level 50-55 but replaces the big Typhon class Demon Wedges in the Level 50-55 pool with Griffin but the other types are the same (purple Phoenix, Cerberus, Lilith).
    • Level 65 Reward Pool is the same as the Level 50-55 but replaces the Typhon class with the Covenanter class Demon Wedges.
      • The Covenanter Wedges look like they have the same stats as the gold Covenanter Demon Wedges you can Forge using Blueprints from the Covert Commissions, but have a lower Tolerance cost.
      • Each Commission has only Covenanter Wedges related to one element.
    • Level 70 and 80 Reward Pools: All Commissions seem to share the same Reward Pool.
  • A Primander spawns in every mission and as part of the mission you will have to kill it.
    • It is guaranteed to drop a Demon Wedge according to its special loot table but you must pick it up yourself if you killed it at long range.
    • A tiny blue triangle icon on your screen and distance measure indicates its location, but this can be tough to notice AND you must be looking in the correct direction in the first place.
    • If you are using the Bro Boxie Geniemon, it CAN give you a bonus Demon Wedge drop from the Primander.

Relocation (Ejection)

  • This is actually not bad because it's basically on rails and the time you need to spend is more or less fixed assuming you don't abandon the vehicle you're escorting to go and wander the map.
  • The only important drop is from the Elite that shows up as it could possibly give a purple or gold material. Otherwise, you can really just ignore all the enemy drops and stay with the vehicle.
  • You probably don't have to do this mission at all except as a Covert Commission because all the mission rewards are something that can potentially drop from any enemy, so while doing other missions you can often get what you need incidentally, especially Defense and Exploration.

Termination (Geniemon)

  • This is like Expulsion, except you are not Ejected suddenly and you have to run to the various enemies and then run to the exit.
  • Starting with the Level 40 tier, one of the enemies you are pointed to will be a guaranteed Elite who can drop a purple or gold material.
  • Unlike Expulsion, there are more enemies on the map than are required but you are pointed only to the nearest group. So if you are having a hard time because you are trying a tier harder than you can comfortably handle, you can try being choosy with the enemies and look around the map for something easier than the Elites.

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