As of v1.1 the endgame in Duet Night Abyss is still Theatre, specifically Immortal Repertoire. This post goes through what is Theatre, how important it is, and how to approach it. It's about perspective and planning because if you're not careful, you can end up blindly grinding without a real plan and waste a lot of time.
What is Immersive Theatre
The obvious overview:
- In this game mode, a mix of bonuses and penalties that change from season to season determine which elements (and therefore which characters) are favored.
- Obviously the game mode is meant to give players a reason to grind for power creep and develop multiple characters. Otherwise the game is generally so easy and devoid of FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) that you don't have to grind at all.
But let's get into what it REALLY means by examining it more closely.
How Important is Theatre
From the time Duet Night Abyss launched, it basically removed a lot of FOMO assuming you can be patient.
The only real FOMO is the featured character skin which is strictly cosmetic, and you pull get it from a gacha banner that lasts about two months (during which they give you opportunities to earn free pulls with a 7-day calendar login that lasts about one month).
Yum-Yum Milk
This is currently the most important part of Theatre as the Ticket Stub store is the only source of this geniemon ascension material. You can only buy one each Theatre Season. Compared to everything else you can get from Theatre and the game in general, this is basically the most limited resource and there is for now literally only one way to get it.
Therefore, it is the most important part of Immersive Theatre.
For new players, this is a way to maximize your materials farming early.
- You get two guaranteed copies of Bro Boxie and they are very rare otherwise. (It's almost like they want you to use it to ease your materials farming...)
- You can use Yum-Yum Milk to help you ascend them to maximum potential. Even an Ardent or Miraculous Bro Boxie is fine because the Shiny one just gives you one extra Trait slot but its abilities (such as the bonus drop rate) are capped at the same power as non-Shiny ones.
- Add a gold Frugal trait and you have the best possible loot drop rate.
After this, Yum-Yum Milk is still very important especially for players who buy the Battle Pass. The special Elf geniemon is only available through the battle pass, so if you want to ascend them you either need to buy the same copy once a month through the battle pass, or you use Yum-Yum Milk. They start with all Trait slots unlocked but some have decent abilities and ascension options are very limited.
Just completing Featured Repertoire (three Acts, Level 60, Level 70, and Level 80 respectively and not considered endgame) gets you enough tickets to buy Yum-Yum Milk each season as long as you don't use your Ticket Stubs frivolously, especially on items you can farm or craft through regular channels.
Featured Character and Weapon
The newest character is gated behind Featured Repertoire and the Theatre store where you can buy Secret Letters for the featured weapon using the Ticket Stubs you earn. In this debut season for the new character and weapon, you can get them free from Theatre or you can pay for them in the game store.
The Featured Character can be extremely useful (such as Fushu in Season 3) but realistically they are useful only for getting deeper into Immortal Repertoire as the rest of the game is easy enough.
- So the Featured Character and Weapon in Immersive Theatre is really for the possibility of doing more Theatre.
This is not Honkai Star Rail where the new content is so irritating you "need" the newest SSR banner pull or you will have a rough time. Theatre being what it is means some characters naturally have an easier time but the main rewards are concentrated in the first 6 to 12 Acts of Immortal Repertoire.
(Sometimes the Featured Character also has a special skin as the gacha banner but typically that lasts longer than their Theatre Season).
So what Theatre really gets you is just early free access to the newest character and weapon. After the Theatre season ends (it typically lasts 4 weeks), the character and weapon are rotated into Nocturnal Echoes where, if you focus on getting their Secret Letters, you can get approximately one copy of the character or two blueprints of the weapon each week.
(This also means there is no bad time to start Duet Night Abyss -- You missed nothing if you missed the previous Theatre seasons).
Eventually, the character and weapon will be rotated out of Nocturnal Echoes and the Secret Letters put in the regular Covert Commission shop where you can buy them with Secret Letter Clues that can drop from any game mode where enemies drop loot.
So if you can wait a month or more, you don't really have to care about doing a lot of Theatre. Just get your Yum-Yum Milk and you're done.
The devs have announced they will adjust Featured Theatre to give a lot more Secret Letters (total 35) for doing Featured Repertoire--which is high-level but not endgame and generally you can pass with just purple demon wedges and even underleveled characters
Currently, completing Act III of Featured gets you 20 Secret Letters for the Featured Character, but with the upcoming change, completing just Act I will get you the same amount. 20 Secret Letters is typically (but not always) enough to get you a copy of the Featured Character so by Act III, you are basically guaranteed one copy.
They are basically signaling that endgame grind is not necessary.
Secret Letters for the Featured Weapon are trickier as players have reported not getting the required Tier II component even after 20 Secret Letters, so they are much more of a gamble for the expense in Ticket Stubs.
And even supposing you buy up all 30 Secret Letters and can make three copies / Smelt level 2, the weapon may still be inferior to weapons you have already Smelted to maximum level.
Set Your Goal for Theatre
If you just chase after what influencers promote each season you will probably go crazy and feel overwhelmed by the required grind in gold wedges as you spread your effort out over whatever they try to get you excited about.
Instead, first set your goal for Theatre. How much do you care, and how far do you want to go?
Do Nothing
Maybe you are a newer player and haven't even unlocked the Immersive Theatre mode. That's fine. Even Yum-Yum Milk is not supremely important because the game is generally so easy anyway that you are unlikely to need your Battle Pass Elf geniemon upgraded. And in the worst case you can wait for Bro Boxie to show up in the overland and collect a copy for Ascension.
You are not missing anything by ignoring endgame.
Unlike many gacha games, endgame in Duet Night Abyss won't give you any cash shop currency or free pulls on the banners.
You really are NOT MISSING OUT by not doing Immersive Theatre.
Featured Repertoire Act 2 - Yum-Yum Milk
Highly recommended you set this to be your minimum goal. Assuming you started with zero Ticket Stubs, you need to clear Featured Repertoire Act 2, four stages, for a total of 14 points and 1050 Ticket Stubs (Yum-Yum Milk costs 1000 Ticket Stubs).
I recommend always being stingy with your Ticket Stubs and prioritize buying Yum-Yum Milk. Be careful buying anything you can get some other way, such as Projectiles which you can craft with some grind and don't cost Ticket Stubs which are arguably the hardest currency to get in the game.
Good builds will be useful and I recommend the Pinned Posts in the theory crafting channels of the official Discord for build suggestions. Featured Repertoire, no gold wedges are probably not needed, just have a sensible build. Your Trial Rank is also important as that can give you global boosts to stats. But all of this will come naturally as you play the game, without excessive grind.
Featured Repertoire Acts 1-3 - Featured Character
20 Secret Letters should be enough to get a copy of the Featured Character but bad luck means you may need a bit more more.
Starting with Theatre Season 4 (Kezhou), the number of Secret Letters for the Featured Character will be greatly increased so you only need to clear the Featured Repertoire (Act 1) for 20 Secret Letters. This is already less than what you need to get Yum-Yum Milk.
Featured Repertoire Act 3 - Immortal Repetoire Act 8 - Featured Weapon
The first 10 Secret Letters for the Weapon are 75 Ticket Stubs each, so you need 1000 for Yum-Yum Milk plus 750 for 10 Secret Letters = 1750 Ticket Stubs total.
If you can clear four stages of Featured Repertoire Act 3, you will get 1900 Ticket Stubs total.
10 Secret Letters should be enough to craft one copy of the Featured Weapon, but some players have had bad luck and can't get all the components even after 20 Secret Letters have given them 1-2 Blueprints. So you may in fact have to buy some of the expensive Secret Letters at 150 Ticket Stubs each.
To buy another 10 Secret Letters costs 1500 Ticket Stubs (3250 Ticket Stubs total) and you will need to clear Act 8 of Immortal Repertoire for that many extra tickets and only extremely bad luck will prevent you from still not having every component required to craft the Featured Weapon.
If you only want one copy of the weapon, I recommend you buy Secret Letters individually until you get what you need to craft the weapon.
Immortal Repertoire Act 12 - Maximum Secret Letters for the Featured Character
To get more Secret Letters for the Featured Character you will have to clear Immortal Repetoire Act 12. There are no copies to buy in the Theatre Store.
Immortal Repertoire Act 36 - Maximum Secret Letters for the Featured Weapon
To get every Secret Letter for the Featured Weapon requires 1000 Ticket Stubs reserved for Yum-Yum Milk + 750 Ticket Stubs for the first ten Secret Letters + 3000 Ticket Stubs for the last twenty Secret Letters = 4750 Ticket Stubs. To do this you will need to clear Act 36 of Immortal Repertoire, and that can be pretty daunting especially if this is your first Theatre Season. Be prepared for some grind although full sets of Amplified Gold Wedges might not yet be necessary. Introns for characters and Smelting for Weapons will also be useful.
The devs probably intended that getting every Secret Letter for the Featured Weapon would be a stretch goal. Previously, after Act 12, players would get only 10 Ticket Stubs per 2 stages cleared (or 50 per 2 Acts cleared) but they increased it to 20 per 2 stages up till around Act 36.
Immortal Repertoire Act 37+ - Ticket Stub Farming
The only reward for going really deep into Immortal Repertoire is more Ticket Stubs. If you can get deep enough that the enemies are level 180, then difficulty plateaus and enemies don't get any harder. From there you can just repeat Immortal Repertoire until you are burnt out.
Other than Secret Letters and Yum-Yum Milk, all the Memento Store items can be gotten elsewhere in the game at any time and certainly without the comparatively huge grind investment in characters. It's probable that the devs didn't expect anyone to get much further than Act 12, and Act 36 was meant to be a stretch goal (especially for a miserable reward, basically the possibility of a third copy of the Featured Weapon if luck allows).
The amount of Ticket Stubs you get does feel very small for your effort, BUT actually it is insanely good.
- The reason is if you can build one really good team that can clear level 180 enemies and bosses, then whenever their element rotates into Theatre, you can farm as many tickets as you can tolerate (because it does get really boring really fast).
- Your grind is focussed and you can develop other characters at your leisure instead of scrambling to put together a team every Theatre Season.
- Then, with your reserve of literally a few thousand tickets, you can just buy the most critical items in the Theatre Store in the following seasons even if you don't have a team ready for those other elements.
- Featured Repertoire for a copy of the Featured Character should be no problem especially as you probably don't even need to clear more than Act 1 of Featured Repertoire.
Focussing on one good team is something you want to do this anyway in order to reliably complete Level 80 Bounty/Chase (where you need solid burst damage in the final phase if you are playing solo) so your investment won't be wasted.
CAVEAT: All this assumes they will not make radical changes to Theatre such as more tightly forcing you to use certain characters.
If the devs do in fact pull such a dirty trick, at least you will have some tickets banked, which translates to more time to develop the required characters.
I recommend Psyche as the easiest to play and who can sustain her ultimate for basically ranged combat with unlimited ammunition. My second choices would be Lynn and Lady Nifle.
Lynn plays similarly to Psyche except her mobility is sharply limited in exchange for her ultimate attacking pretty much everything you can see.
Lady Nifle requires her Embla weapon and a lot more investment, but is theoretically very good if you use the recommended rotation, and is theoretically good for both Lumino and Umbro elements.
For all characters, Fina and Fushu are solid AI Partners.
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