Duet Night Abyss Commission Guide

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This was written for VERSION 1.0 of Duet Night Abyss. v1.1 / Huaxu expansion of course introduced several changes including quality of life changes, but largely the information is still relevant and correct.

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.

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

Have a Plan:

This is the most important part of doing Commissions. It sounds obvious but if you watch a lot of guides, it is not. For example, there are guides that show you how to get as many Secret Letters as possible by doing this or that type of Commission in a certain way, but you end up with pointless drops and just delaying other grinds.
And the game is grindy. You won't think so early on but once you hit the Level 60+ bracket, options open up (especially Gold Demon Wedges) and the grind really begins.

There are various guides about doing commissions as fast as possible and they can be useful if you don't mind doing Commissions back to back several dozens of times. But the grind really is insane, and I recommend instead doing as much of it AFK as you can (letting your AI Partners handle it).

First, I recommend you decide one character to fully develop for the hardest content.
  • This will be Theatre and you don't even need to get very deep, but you do need to be prepared to use a character who isn't one of the preferred elements.
    • In the future they may make it even more punishing if you have the "wrong" element, but since the game is quite casual, this is unlikely
  • You only need 1000 Points per season to get the Yum-Yum Milk. Everything else in the shop is available some other way or will eventually be available some other way as they rotate the featured character out into increasingly easier content, though this could take months.
  • Currently, I would recommend Psyche. She's easy to play in Theatre and good for Bounty with Truffle as support.
  • For whichever character you choose, you'll be doing, in no particular order:
    • Maximum Introns when you can.
    • Maximum Smelt on her key weapons.
    • Gold Demon Wedges.
    • Maximum level on her skills.
    • Maximum level on the skills for her AI partners for Theatre.
    • You might as well get maximum Smelt on her partner weapons but this is lower priority.
Next identify key supporting characters for AFK Commissions.
  • Rebecca is useful as an AI Partner for doing certain Commissions AFK, so make sure to level her and maybe get her Introns up and get her good weapons. Partners don't use Demon Wedges so fortunately you don't have to grind up a full set for her.
Once you can comfortably clear enough of the toughest content (Theatre, Maze, Bounty/Chase) and you can use your AI Partners to do Commissions, you can feel much more relaxed about the game in general.

And whenever you grind, you have a direction. Whenever you need something like Secret Letters, you might as well do some content toward your goal instead of just anything. Your goal has multiple directions so you are unlikely to need to do anything that gets you something pointless.
If you stop and do something not on your list (to for example, try to quickly farm Secret Letters, which can drop from just about anywhere), you are just delaying what you must eventually do.

Next, I recommend that instead of sitting down for hours trying to do commissions as fast as possible and risking burnout levels of boredom, that you treat Duet Night Abyss as mostly an Idle game.
  • If you have to play a Commission manually, consider using the Commission Manuals.
  • If AI Partners can handle it, then line up something useful you need to do anyway and just check in to restart the Commission. You won't believe how many you've run when you're not focusing on them. Plus you'll get something else useful done too.

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.
    • There may be a daily soft cap on how many you can get but you can get around it by being in a party where the leader hasn't hit the soft cap.
  • Quitting a Commission means losing everything, as if you had not done the Commission at all. This includes XP and loot from defeating enemies.
  • 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.
  • Commission Manuals
    • A Commission Manual IV multiplies your reward by 20 but it costs far more than 20 Commission Manual I books, so be aware of the inefficiency in merging.
    • Commission Manuals multiply basically all results, as if you had run the Commission multiple times.
      • For XP the calculation isn't straight x2 if you have XP bonuses such as from a Geniemon with the Wise Trait; typically it is more.
      • It DOES multiply the drop from the Primander in Noctoyager Commissions that drops Demon Wedges.
      • It is not clear if Bro Boxie or the Frugal geniemon trait can give you a bonus on Commission Manual bonus drops or just the base drop.
        • After observing some Commission Manual I results, it appears that the likelihood of geniemon bonus drops (Bro Boxie + gold Frugal trait) may be diminished. Needs further observation.
    • I recommend that you use Commission Manuals only on certain missions:
      • When all the drops in the reward pools are useful.
      • When you cannot AFK or semi-AFK the mission.
      • When the mission is annoying to do, such as a mission that is presently very hard or tedious for you to complete.
      • When you need an enormous amount of drops, e.g., you want four gold Volition Wedges at +10. This would require 4 x 10 gold wedges x 5 purple wedges = 200 purple wedges in total for forging.
    • Manuals are not consumed unless the mission is successful.

AFK Farming Warning

It's very easy to have AI Partners do all the work while you go AFK and let them finish certain Commissions like Defense or Expulsion for you. BUT you still need to be careful especially if you use Commission Manuals.

For some missions like Exploration or all Noctoyager Commissions, you MUST pick up the drops yourself. For Noctoyager Commissions, if you don't pick up the Primander wedge or blueprint loot drop, you will basically lose it when the mission ends.

This CAN still happen even when you are using Bro Boxie's expanded collection range because sometimes an AI Partner will run to the enemy and then use a skill which kills an enemy too far away from you.

You can mitigate this by assigning ranged weapons to your AI Partners.
  • They won't run far or at all, but they also often delay using their skills. Sometimes they don't even bother shooting their ranged weapon, which can be risky in Defense missions the delay in their action could result in mission failure.
  • If they do use their skills, it will probably be close to you so the total range to a kill will probably not exceed Bro Boxie's collection range.
  • Of course they will shoot at enemies and those could die at range, but typically they won't do so until enemies are around 30m away or less. This could still put a drop outside of range.
    • When they have melee weapons, they can run all the way out to that kind of range before using a skill, so it's theoretically worse.
Despite these cautions, it generally only happens very rarely that you'll miss an important drop f you have Bro Boxie equipped. You may still want to boost even Bro Boxie's collection range with the Gluttonous trait for extra insurance.

A lot of players will recommend Rebecca as the obvious choice, and you do get a free copy of her, but if you have Psyche, try her paired with a healer.
  • She can do better and handle minibosses in Commissions faster than Rebecca, ASSUMING she's strong enough to handle the enemies quickly.
  • Giving her a melee weapon seems to make her inclined to use her Ultimate so she can attack at range. If she has a ranged weapon, she seems to like to shoot it even if it is comparatively ineffective to her unlimited-ammunition Consonance Weapon when she is flying.
  • She can however sometimes do strange things such as focus her attack and attention on inanimate objects. Or just fly somewhere and become completely idle.
    • If she has Intron level 2 she will still output target-seeking butterflies that attack real targets for high damage.
    • If you have Fushu, she can help sustain Psyche's Sanity so her skill use at the inanimate object will release target-seeking butterflies that attack real targets.
    • You have to move far enough away from her to trigger her AI to follow you in order to get the AI to do something else and hopefully go back to attacking real targets. Of course if you are completely AFK, then the mission may fail (e.g., the artifact you are defending in a Defense Mission gets destroyed).
  • For Level 80 Commissions I prefer my Intron-2 Psyche over Rebecca and accept the occasional failure because her AI glitched, because overall I can do it faster and go further in waves than with Rebecca.

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.
  • Instead of doing several other Commission types, consider doing the highest-level bounty you can easily clear.
    • 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 at the end of the commission but will be part of the "Dropped" loot list from the Prize Chest in Phase 3.
    • Comparison:
      • Level 70 Chase (the second-highest level Commission) includes 98000 Coin, 1680 Carmine Globules, and 35 Luno Mementos (we are excluding the bonus you get from having Bro Boxie or a geniemon with the Frugal Trait, and you frequently get bonuses).
      • A Level 70 Excavation gives 27000 Coin, a Level 80 Escort gives 540 Carmine Globules, and a Level 80 Defense gives 10 Luno Mementos.
      • So even a not-hardest Chase is worth 3.6 Excavations, 3.1 Escorts (and has no puzzles to solve), and 3.5 Defense Commissions (but has no additional skill materials). This is approximately 10 other missions at highest possible difficulty for their type. So if you can clear a Bounty in around 12 minutes, this is 1.2 minutes per Commission.
      • You cannot however use Commission Manuals to multiply your results.
  • Do not exit the tournament until the Phase 3 post-victory countdown is done, or you will lose all rewards--including enemy loot drops. This is the same as failing Phase 3 due to the Prize Chest being destroyed.
  • The maps use the same room types, just arranged differently. But there are only a few different maps, and you can tell from the entrance / where you start.
  • 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 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.
      • Since you can tell from the entrance which map you are on, if you don't know the route to the targets on a particular map, you could try exiting right away and challenging it again to get a map you are familiar with.
    • If you don't know where the targets are:
      • You don't need to only attack Clue Cubes: Defeating enemies inches up the clue meter slightly.
      • From the starting location, heading south on any map to find more Clues 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 only know where one of the targets are:
      • Beeline for them, ignoring everything else: As soon as you find them, your Clue bar will fill up for free to the first target.
      • Save the kills and Clue Cubes on the way for after you kill the first target, toward locating the second target.
      • Generally head back the way you came until you get enough Clues.
      • Suppose the last few rooms you passed through were Rooms 1 and 2 and you found the first Target in Room 3. Room 1 should have the other exit that eventually leads to the other Target.
  • Phase 2:
    • Currently this arena 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 arena is identical in all runs.
    • Ace Players come from one of three directions.
      • The amount of warning (the announcement) you get when an Ace Player appears can vary, and sometimes you don't get much warning at all, so do not delay too long in going to deal with them.
      • 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.
    • Chest Keys
      • It can be hard to see the Chest Keys even when you're carrying one, so also try to listen for the distinctive sound when a Key drops from an enemy.
      • 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, IF you are looking in the correct direction.
        • v1.1 greatly improved the visibility of this key icon as well as the drop rate of keys.
      • You can only carry one key at a time.
      • It's not really critical to grab a key as soon as you get it. But Ace Players always drop a key, so if you are carrying one, it's better to use it on the chest before going to the Ace Player so that you don't leave a key far away where the Ace Player is defeated.
      • If you are confident about your ability to kill enemies quickly at the chest, you can try farming the eastern lane which respawns quickly just behind the door at the end of that corridor. With a bit of luck you can get keys quickly and not have to deal with too many Ace Players.
    • Once the chest is ready to open, the Ejection timer starts, and it doesn't end immediately after you open the chest.
      • So there's still some time to scramble around to grab enemy loot drops, but not much.
      • It takes several seconds for the chest to explode all its contents, so don't delay opening it. You MUST open the chest to get the loot. It's possible to get ejected by the timer and not have opened the Prize Chest.

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.
  • Some characters have skills that go through obstacles.
  • The best thing to do is really not to do this mission at all and wait for something else like Defense or Expulsion where you can be AFK while your AI Partners handle it for you quickly (all Covert Commissions are level 40), you can do something else useful in the meantime, and you collect more XP for your characters and weapons.

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. Or race through quickly if you know where to go.
  • Your AI Partners CAN approach the guards and cause them to sound the alarm.
  • Once the prisoner is found, any alarm countdown ends harmlessly. Just race for the Extraction Point.
  • For Carmine Globules, other types of missions are recommended assuming you are not going to use a Commission Manual to multiply results:
    • 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.
      • Level 80 Escort mission gives a base of 540 Carmine Globules.
      • Level 70 Bounty/Chase gives a base of 1680 Carmine Globules, plus Coin and Luno Mementos.
  • Whatever Carmine Globules you have invested in a Demon Wedge can be fully recovered using the Extract function from Inventory. This is a LIMITED solution.
    • This extraction has a daily limit (5000 for Trial Rank 60+). This is the main limitation.
    • But if you haven't reached that daily cap, you might as well run missions to try to farm the Demon Wedges that you do need, and Extract the rest.
    • If you hit the cap for daily Extractions, Bounty/Chase is still recommended because you largely can't do anything without Coin anyway. Forging a Gold Demon Wedge costs 50000 Coin and then it costs Coin in addition to Carmine to Amplify it to +6 and beyond.

Excavation (Geniemon)

  • This can seem pretty tedious especially as you have to run quite far during the commission but there are shortcuts as well as alternatives to making Coin.
  • The Excavation sites are basically the same once the map is loaded and they just pick from the same locations in each wave.
    • 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.
    • Fairly reliable only when the mission is 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. I recommend not leaving until it is at least at 20% completion and still has a near-full bar of health.
    • 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:
    • Selling stuff: Once you have run a lot of Commissions, especially those that involve killing a lot of enemies, you have have literally tens of thousands of certain common materials. It's unlikely you would need more than 5000 and if you did you, you'd get them in short order just by running Commissions. Discovering 10,000-30,000+ is not uncommon if you just haven't been paying attention to your inventory.
    • (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 with no Introns 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 Trace Points, and got over 9000 Threads, which is basically 900,000 Coin.
        • Even the basic run with no difficulty modifiers beats every other mode assuming you can clear Mystic Maze effortlessly and reliably.
        • I recommend:
          • Truffle with smelted weapons if you can that support her damage (HP and Skill Damage).
            • Intron 0 Truffle can easily clear maximum difficulty (300% more Trace) but the final boss has so much health it's tedious, especially if you get unlucky with artefacts and lampwicks.
          • All Difficulty modifiers except more Enemy HP and Enemy takes reduced damage (total difficulty 80)
          • Choose yellow doors if you are confident and just skip the merchant to save a bit of time. Shop only at the final merchant before the final boss.
          • Otherwise choose Blue doors and space-bar the dialog.
          • If you have to choose Red doors, take "Scattered" for fewer enemies but one extra Primander.
          • Generally choose artefacts over currency or lampwicks.
    • (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 (Geniemon)

  • 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.
  • If your AI team is strong, enemy element won't matter so much unless you actually want to do a lot of waves.
    • Instead, focus on one strong AI team that can handle any element instead of trying to level a bunch of characters.
    • Even if you can't do the Tier you need to get the color grade of material you need, lower grade materials can be fused through Forging into higher grades.
  • In v1.1, Completing an exploration Wave 1 can trigger a Geniemon Rescue at the start of Wave 2.

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.
    • The loot pool is wide here so even if you use Commission Manuals, you might just get a lot of what you don't want. Plus the level requirement is higher compared to Noctoyager missions for the same type of Demon Wedge.
    • Noctoyager missions have smaller loot pools for Primander drops but you cannot use Commission Manuals and they do not have equal chances to drop.
    • If you need a bit of everything, then consider Expulsion with a Commission Manual may be a good way to get started (assuming the drops have equal weight, which is not necessarily true) and then finish up with Noctoyager missions to get the last few you need.
    • Even if you did Noctoyager missions solely looking for Primander drops which means no Commission Manuals to multiply the result, you will still get useful drops from the reward pool which you need to make other types of gold Demon Wedges like Typhon Prime.
  • On most maps 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

  • Unless you need to rush a character's level to max, I do not recommending doing Hedge for character XP books.
    • Instead just focus on whichever characters you really need such as someone for Maze (Truffle), farming commissions AFK (Rebecca plus someone else) and someone for the current Theatre.
    • For all other characters, take them on AFK runs of repetitive missions to grind for other things such as Noctoyager missions for the piles of demon wedges needed to forge multiple copies of gold demon wedges.
    • If you are trying to get Trial XP, maybe get all your characters up to around level 40 or 50 and finish up with passive XP from AFK missions.
    • XP books for both Characters and Weapons are very common rewards for dailies and events.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • This is one of the missions I like to save Commission Manuals for.
    • The reward table for Weapon Ascension materials has six types of materials and often you get materials for ranged weapons when you want melee weapons. But all the drops are ultimately useful because lower-tier materials can be forged into higher-tier ones.
    • A few runs of the highest tier mission (VII / Level 80) with Commission Manual IV and you are set for a long time with weapon ascension materials.

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.
    • Commission Manuals CAN multiply the number of drops.

Relocation (Ejection)

  • 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.
  • The ones you end up needing to Forge -- Coolant and Weaponholder -- aren't in the reward pool at all, but can drop from any Primander on any mission.
  • 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.

Termination (Geniemon)

  • As with Hedge, I do not recommending grinding Termination missions for Weapon XP.
    • Many characters need the special ability of a weapon rather than to do actual weapon damage, and that special ability is determined by the level of Smelting, not the weapon level.
    • Passively earn XP for most of your weapons through grinding missions where you let strong AI partners handle everything.
    • XP books for both Characters and Weapons are very common rewards for dailies and events.
  • 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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