The Phoxhunter Summit event for Duet Night Abyss has begun. Here's our contrarian guide to getting the best prizes.
Step 1: Identify the Best Prizes
The event heavily favours Anemo characters and Psyche's the easy favorite after three seasons of Immersive Theatre. She's stupidly easy to play and has all kinds of ridiculous advantages like flying over the battlefield and treating it as a shooting gallery.
But don't rush to build her or any other Anemo character. First, identify why you're doing it: The prizes (slide 1). Here's our ranking:
Yum-Yum Milk
Twilight Thread
Recasting Mould
Titles and Avatars
Amplification Stimulator
Carmine Globules
Yum-Yum Milk is our top pick because it is still basically the rarest material in Duet Night Abyss and it's the best way to Ascend your Battle Pass ("Bards's Tome") elf geniemon.
The Battle Pass geniemon is deliberately PAYWALLED and TIME-GATED. Yum Yum Milk helps you with both situations. Otherwise you need to wait another month for the next Battle Pass, buy that battle pass with real money, choose the same geniemon you already have, and feed it to your existing geniemon to Ascend it.
Currently, Yum-Yum Milk is only available once per Immersive Theatre season in the Memento shop. You can't even get more with cash or Phoxene.
Twilight Thread is also very rare. Normally you can get one a week from Mystic Maze, two from each Battle Pass on the free track, and another two from the Battle Pass on the paid track. That's approximately six to eight per month. Events sometimes award one as well. This sounds like a lot of units, but you need eight to fully unlock all the Skills on a character.
Recasting Mould is interesting because the Featured Weapon in each Immersive Theatre season has only 30 Secret Letters available in the Memento shop, so you are likely to be able to craft only three copies and will have to get additional Secret Letters from Nocturnal Echoes in the following month. A Recasting Mould can let you get one extra Smelt ahead of time. But that's really the only benefit that makes this prize stand out, and it's a pretty weak one.
Titles and Avatars are the hardest prizes to qualify for. As a collectible they are nice to have since they might be time-limited and unique. But unless you are actively in co-op areas, and you think people are checking you out, then they are worthless. If you prefer solo play and don't interact in co-op areas then there's even less incentive to get them. Personally I turn off visibility of other players to avoid screen clutter when I am forced to clock time in a co-op area for weekly Battle Pass points.
Amplification Stimulators are way down in last place on my list because they are essentially just grinding shortcuts and worth about the same as a bunch of Commission Manuals (and we get up to 30 Commission Manual I per day from the daily activity tracker).
Yum-Yum Milk and Twilight Thread will not need any special qualification to redeem from the Apex Shop, so you can just basically grind out the currency required from sheer repetition. Recasting Mould is at a pretty low qualification tier so hopefully all but the newest players can redeem that prize.
Carmine Globules will be used in increasing quantities in endgame as you start Amplifying your gold Demon Wedges, so if you have an excess of tickets, consider spending them here if you feel the grind for Passes and Phoxcoin is superior to doing Escort or Chase. After the initial limited amount, you can redeem more for 100 Phoxcoins per 600 Globules.
UPDATE: Tinfoil Hat Time
Amplification Stimulators are fairly reachable if you are near or have reached endgame, and the better your score, the more you can buy. This isn't an accident: Use one wisely and your build improves. Maybe enough to reach the next tier and buy another one? And the reach for the next tier (maybe doing so quickly by buying them in the cash shop) and buy more? By the time you've run out of them in the event store, maybe you're sold on their value and the price doesn't look so daunting anymore but good value?
If thinking this way or spending this way even makes you mildly uncomfortable but you're struggling with how to process it, try this article about rankings events.
Step 2: Build a Character (or not)
I actually do NOT recommend you specifically build a character for this event, especially if you don't already have an Anemo character you've been working on because of previous Immersive Theatre seasons.
Newer players -- especially from the recent Steam launch -- take note!
If you are feeling humiliated in the rankings, that's because everyone else had literally months of not just progression, but having Anemo as the featured element in Immersive Theatre endgame mode since launch. That's three seasons of endgame mode where Anemo was the favored element. Everyone's probably got a strong Anemo build.
If you are looking for ways to suddenly catch up for the event... I wouldn't say "don't" but think carefully. This is obviously an event for whales and no-life grinders and especially "influencers" to chase prestige. If you look carefully at the Group stage tiers (slide 2), you will spot the paywall trap:
The tiers are based NOT on score but RELATIVE score.
For example, your score relative to the top 5% of the player base that is participating will determine whether you are SSR ranked or not. Therefore, if you swipe your credit card to rapidly build a strong team for this event, you might get in the SSR tier. But you will possibly also be bumped out by someone else doing exactly the same as they squeeze into the top 5% with a superior score.
This event is for pro athletes to say they are superior to newcomers in their sport. And without the influx of new accounts from Steam, that top 5% SSR rank in the Group Phase would have far fewer spots and be a lot harder to qualify for.
If prestige means a lot to you, by all means grind and/or spend. Whether you need to do so will ultimately be informed by your choice in Step 1.
THAT SAID...
Newer players shouldn't let this event make them rage-quit either. There really isn't that much you can do. Just get some perspective and grab what you can. The two best prizes we identified aren't about ranking or performance at all but sheer repetition.
Play the game. Don't let the game play you.
If you feel FOMO: “I’m here for rewards, not validation.”
If you feel behind: “This is a progress check, not a judgement.”
If you feel tempted to spend: “Spending doesn’t buy months. It rents a moment.”
Step 3: Grind Team Passes
Regardless of what you decide in Steps 1 and 2, you want to get ready with a whole bunch of Team Passes to grind out the currency you need for Apex Shop redemptions.
It takes 3-5 Team Passes to attempt Apex once, and based on the participation prizes, you only need to clear any Stage (presumably even the easiest ones possible) 20 times to get 15000 Phoxcoins for the store. This is a total of 60 tickets and if you completed the Group Stage participation prizes you would already have a large amount banked.
If you have time, you might as well grind the event and clear out as many prizes as you can from the store, even the "trash" prizes that you can easily get playing the game normally.
In my guide to Duet Night Abyss Commissions, I recommended that players decide on targets to achieve instead of chasing specific drops that you can get from any Commission (e.g., Secret Letters). This event is no different: Do not get swayed by which Commission is the easiest and fastest to grind out Team Passes unless you are somehow desperately short on Team Passes. Stick to your plan and advance your goals at the same time instead of possibly taking a side trip and ending up with a lot of what you don't need.
In case you don't have time to amass a lot of Team Passes, know that if you abort a challenge before it concludes (either from success or timeout), you will have your Team Passes recovered.
Step 4: Plan an AFK Team
Especially if you have a LOT of Team Passes, consider testing an AFK team.
Day 1 of Apex and I have over 1000 Team Passes. If I spent them all in Stage III that would be 200 matches. Theoretically it wouldn't take much time, but mentally it would be insanely tedious and maybe hard on my fingers.
Of course if you can clear Stage III but your AFK team can only clear Stage II then you're losing a lot of Phoxcoins. But you gain in having more free time and a more relaxed "grind" where you practically did nothing.
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