Tokyo Abyss

Overview

Tokyo Abyss floor, showing all types of rooms.

A quest area created in 2021, accessed through the Alter-World menu on the Map, as it's set on that story line. It's the main source of Essence of Sin.

The gameplay consists in reaching the deepest possible floor, starting at the first floor with both the player's character and one 1★ or 2★ Demon at Lv. 1.

The deepest floor the player can reach is recorded and awarded.

There's no limit to how many times it may be played (there are no Action Points or Stamina depletion in the Tokyo Abyss).

The game is played solo, without access to any Demons the player has collected, so each run is almost like starting from the very beginning, except for its Armaments, which may be exchanged at any time, going back to the Entrance screen. Unlike any other quests, a Tokyo Abyss run can be interrupted at any moment, and it doesn't block other quests, missions, or challenges to be played.

The Demons gathered through the Tokyo Abyss run are not added to the player's collection. They also cannot the Paneled, Branded or have their Skills leveled up, although Transferable Skills are offered along the game, which also cannot be leveled up.

Mechanics

It plays somewhat similar to an Aura Gate, crawling a dungeon, although it's not a maze, and advancing down through 60 levels, but unlike an AG, it has Alter-World battle style, as the player's character also must participate in the fights.

• Just like in any other AW quest, if the player's character dies, regardless of any of its Demons still standing, the game is over.
• If all Demons die, though, the player's character may continue the quest alone.
• Similar to any AG, Demons won't heal after battles, or resurrect, so it's very useful to have at least one Demon with a healing Skill (innate or transferred).
• Resurrection Skills are also very handy in deeper floors, but be careful, obviously, with Recarmdra, unless Endure or similar is also transferred.

The player has to choose Armaments to run the Tokyo Abyss, similar to other Alter-World areas.

• Although the Demons collected in the Tokyo Abyss are important for the battles, a good set of Armaments is essential to go farther, so enhance them as much as possible.
• Each Shield owned by the player adds up to 20% bonus to each of its four Armament stats (+HP %, +Physical Defense %, +Magical Defense % and +Phys Damage Reduction %), summing up to 80% bonus for each maximized Shield, so getting as many and better Shields as possible, as well as enhancing them, is also important.

The floors are composed of paths, which lead to a series of encounter rooms:

• Normal Battle: a fight with a Wave of Demons, which reward EXP, a perk, and a Skill.
  • Don't avoid Normal Battles, because they're the best places to Enhance your Demons and test them in real fight conditions.
• Boss Battle: a fight with a Boss (immune to Mortal Skills), which reward EXP, a perk, and a Skill.
• Devil Talk: unlike normal Demon Talk in AG or quests, it doesn't matter if the conversation is successful or not in the first two questions, there'll always be a request for some HP in the third exchange, which must be accepted if the Demon is wanted to be added to the Team.
  • Rejecting a Demon has no other consequences, it simply won't be added to the Team.
  • If all three Demon slots are occupied, one of the Demons in the Team will have to be chosen to be replaced, losing all its Transferable Skills, so decide wisely.
  • Demons of higher grades (e.g., 4★ Attis and Pazuzu) may also engage in conversation, so, it's worth checking the Talk Rooms to see which Demons are available.
• Demon Fusion: follows the regular restriction rules and Fusion formulas.
• Conjunction: follows the regular restrictions for Fusion, but the result has chances to produce different Demons, including rare Gacha Demons (e.g., Ardha, Frost Ace).
  • Conjunctions are, usually, the most important places in the Tokyo Abyss, as they can yield Demons strong enough to advance to deeper floors.
• Skill Transfer: it offers six Skills for the player to choose one to transfer to a Demon in the current Team.
  • If the selected Demon cannot receive some of the offered Skills, those will be disabled for transfer.
• Heal: resurrects dying Demons and fully heals Demons and the player's character, just like in an Aura Gate.
• Rare Skill Transfer: it offers five rarer Skills for the player to choose one to transfer to a Demon in the current Team, or one Kasane Magatama of varied grade (usually in the range of 1~3★) to level up an upgradable Demon Skill. While in the regular game only 1★ Kasane Magatama are available, in the Tokyo Abyss, those higher grades exist and they can level up a Skill accordingly, that is, one level up per ★.

As of November/2021, the Tokyo Abyss is usually reset monthly, at the beginning of the month, so it may be played for the rewards again.

• The floors are randomized at the beginning of the season, so the structure of the paths, the Demons encountered, and the rewards offered change.
  • Paths, Demons and rewards are not randomized during a season, so it's possible to annotate where specific Skills, Demons or bonuses were found to plan a wider strategy, although it's usually too much work for a questionable profit, as the best Demons are obtained randomly by Conjunction, which are completely independent of source Demons or floor (it's possible to obtain a gacha exclusive 5★ Demon right on the first Conjunction, using two 1★ Demons.)
• The player gets Souls of the Demons that were in its Team at the end of the season as a final reward, regardless of that Team having been the best reaching, so think twice before resetting the game too close to the end of the season (not that Souls are, currently, very useful, anyway).

All battles reward:

• Extra Stat enhancements for the player's character (Strength, Magic, Vitality, Agility, Luck).
  • Some times, it offers enhancements at the cost of another Stats (e.g., Ag+3 Vi-1).
• Special bonuses for all the party members (e.g., +8% Ice Damage dealt, -5% Almighty Damage received, Phys Pierce, -25% chance of Status Ailments).
• One transferable Skill for the Demons.
  • Warning: player bonuses do not apply to the Demons and vice versa, e.g., the player character won't get Status Ailment resistances (except for increased Luck) or Skill reduction costs (except for Weapon upgrades done outside the Abyss,) and the Demons won't get Basic Stat upgrades (except for natural leveling up.)

Skills can only be transferred to Demons that don't already have them.

• That means Skills cannot be Leveled up, as they cannot be transferred more than once to the same Demon.
• In case of Skills earned in battle, the Demons that already have it cannot be chosen.
• In case a Fusion or Conjunction results a Demon that innately has a Skill it already has transferred, the transfer slot is emptied.
• Demons don't need to have free slots to receive new Skills, as the player can choose a previously transferred one to be replaced.

• Every time a bifurcation is reached, the player has to choose to go left or right.
• Once a choice is made, it cannot be undone, except by going back to the Tokyo Abyss Entrance (start screen) and resetting the game.
• The game allows stopping playing before fights or at the entrance of a new floor.
  • If needed to stop in the middle of another event, the only way to do it is by shutting down the game altogether.
  • The game will remember the exact point were it was left, so, it's possible to go back to the Tokyo Abyss later without losing anything (e.g., if the app was closed while choosing a Skill reward from a battle, reloading and entering the Tokyo Abyss will lead to that same screen.)

Teams

The Teams are composed by the player's character, plus one to three Demons.

• All Demons acquired in the Tokyo Abyss are of Common Archetype and are awakened.
• Before entering the first floor, the player has to choose a 1~2★ Demon from a small selection offered by the game, which are independent of the Demons the player has in its collection.
  • What happens in the Tokyo Abyss, stays in the Tokyo Abyss, that is, Demons obtained in the game are not added to the player's general collection. TA is almost an independent game, the only interactions with the other stories are the Armaments and the obtained rewards.

Both the player's character and its first chosen Demon start at Lv. 1, at the entrance of the 1st floor.

• Demons may be replaced along the quest as new ones are obtained through Talking.
• Demons may be fused or conjuncted with specific ones found in the Tokyo Abyss.
• Fusion, Conjunction and Talking may yield enhanced Demons (a Demon the player already have, but some Levels upper).
• Fusion and Conjunction preserve Skills acquired by the Demons.
• Talk effectively replaces Demons, so any Skills collected by Demons replaced by Talking are lost. Because of that, Talking is usually less important than Conjunctions, and even Fusions.
  • Because Conjunctions follow the same restriction rules for Fusions, if an unwanted Demon is obtained (e.g., because of its Weaknesses or generally useless Skills) and it cannot be used as Fusion material (e.g., Beloved), it's useless to keep it, and the only way to get rid of it is Talking another Demon in its place.

Demons and player's character gain experience through battles.

• Usually, each battle is enough to Enhance all Demons at least one Level up.
• Character and Demons evolve automatically as they are Enhanced, till reaching Lv. 99 (until the beginning of January/2022, the game capped at Lv. 50.)
• It's not necessary to sacrifice Demons of the same ★ rank to evolve a Demon to the next, until it reaches 6★ Evolution.
• The player's character doesn't need to Limit Break to go beyond Lv. 30.
• Enemy Demons may be above Lv. 50.
• Demons cannot be Infused with either Mitama or Essence of Sin.
• Demons cannot be Branded.
• Demons cannot be Panelled.
• After January/2022's game upgrade, Demon Skills may be upgraded using Kasane Magatama available at Rare Skill Transfer points.

Strategies

Each floor has a fixed map configuration, with fixed rooms (Battles, Fusion etc.), which may be reset on the next monthly season.

Items cannot be used, either during battle or outside.

Because the Demons are all of Common Archetype and cannot be Panelled, the Tier List ranking must be

On deeper floors, Status Ailments start becoming more common, so it's worth investing in Luck, Status Cleansing, and Status Resistances or Immunity since earlier floors.

Eventually, the enemies will outspeed the player's Team, so, Slow Team Builds have a better chance of survival.

Usually, Demons resist attacks better than the player character (Demons can be resurrected and receive Endure like Skills to keep them alive), so, it's important to Enhance Shields to get more protection.

At any time, the game allows going back to the Tokyo Abyss' Entrance to reset it and start a new run (the acquired Demons and progress are discarded and the player is sent back to the 1st floor). It's not necessary to get stuck in a battle to reset, some times the built Team is so lousy (mainly due to Conjunction RNG) that it's not worth continuing.