As you progress in Wuthering Waves, you’ll reach a point where the overworld enemies start feeling like a walk in the park. But fear not! If you’ve dedicated time to leveling up your characters and fine-tuning their Echos, your efforts won’t go to waste.
In fact, you’ll be rewarded, as the game offers a plethora of challenging endgame content where you can put your built characters to the test.
As of closed-beta test 2, Wuthering Waves offers three main endgame modes: Tower of Adversity, Depth of Illusive Realm, and Tactical Holograms. Let’s take a look at what each mode has to offer.
Note that everything discussed in this article is from the second closed-beta testing of Wuthering Waves and is subject to change upon full release.
Tower of Adversity
The Tower of Adversity presents a vertical progression combat experience where players must combat waves of enemies across multiple floors. Each floor gets progressively harder than the previous, and you must defeat all enemies within a set time limit to earn Crests, akin to the stars found in Genshin Impact’s Spiral Abyss.
The Tower of Adversity is divided into three main zones: Stable Zone, Experimental Zone, and Hazard Zone. Stable Zone has one tower, Experimental Zone has two towers, and the Hazard Zone has three towers you can challenge.
The main endgame of Tower of Adversity starts once you’ve beaten both Stable and Experimental Zones. Stable and Experimental Zones offer one-time clear rewards that include the premium currency Astrite as well. Once you’ve beaten both zones, you will unlock the Hazard Zone, which is the equivalent of Floor 9-12 of Genshin Impact or Memory of Chaos of Honkai: Star Rail.
In the Hazard Zone, challenges and rewards undergo periodic resets, with the content of the challenge levels changing in each cycle. The Hazard Zone will also have something called Deep Interference. Deep Interference refers to special environmental effects during your battles in the towers. Think of these as the buffs you will get that will aid you in your battles.
You get rewards for every 3 Crests earned. If you earn 30 Crests across all three towers in the Hazard Zone within the periodic cycle, you can earn up to 700 Astrites, which is equivalent to four pulls on the Character Event or Weapon Event Convene.
One of the rewards obtained from completing the Tower of Adversity is Deep Records. These special tokens can be exchanged for various valuable items such as level-up materials, credits, or even a Shiny Echo from the Deep Tower Exchange available in the Points Store.
The Tower of Adversity also has another feature called the Vigor. The Vigor is like your “cost” of using your Resonators (or characters). For each floor within a tower, the Resonator loses a certain amount of Vigor to fight. Once the Vigor of a Resonator reaches zero, they’re unable to fight.
In the Experiment Zone’s first tower, the first floor costs 1 Vigor to use a Resonator, the second floor costs 2 Vigor, the third floor costs 3 Vigor, and the fourth floor costs 4 Vigor to use a Resonator. This is an important feature and a welcomed addition for those looking for a challenge. The Vigor system incentivizes players to build more characters instead of using the same characters to beat the content.
If the Vigor of your strongest character reaches zero, then you’re left with no choice but to use other characters that may or may not be built. If they’re not built, you are forced to build them, allowing for more variety in your gameplay. It’s a very welcomed addition.
The following video shows us clearing Tower of Adversity Experiment Zone Tower I’s Floor 3 with 3 Crests.
Depth of Illusive Realms
Depth of Illusive Realms offers a rogue-like gaming experience, where players advance through different stages, gaining power boosts like “Illusive Tacet Discord,” “Metaphors,” and “Character Enhancement” after each stage. These power-ups enhance their abilities, making them stronger as they progress toward the final boss.
Currently, the mode has three difficulties, with the third being the most difficult and having 14 stages. As you progress through these levels and stages, you get a special token called Illusive Specimen, which you can exchange in the Illusive Shop for rewards.
The game mode also features an exclusive passive skill tree known as “Thought Evolution,” which players can upgrade using Memory Points. These points are earned simply by playing the Depths of Illusive Realm mode. By investing Memory Points, players can unlock various enhancements like increased Stamina recovery, higher max HP, boosted damage, and more for their characters, enhancing their strength throughout the Depths of Illusive Realm.
Depths of Illusive Realm also has something called “Abnormal Investigation,” a set of different challenges players can complete within the Depths of Illusive Realm to earn the premium currency Astrite.
It also seems that you’re limited to certain characters during each Depth of Illusive Realms cycle, and your characters do not automatically scale up to match the enemy levels in the game mode. This serves as another incentive for players to diversify their character builds rather than relying on the same characters exclusively throughout the game.
The following video shows the complete Depth of Illusive Realm difficulty level II run. You can see we go through ten stages in the video as we collect different power boosts after the completion of each stage.
Tactical Holograms
Tactical Holograms present a series of highly demanding combat encounters against the bosses scattered throughout the Overworld. These encounters span six main difficulty levels, progressing from level 1 to level 6. Advancement to the next difficulty tier is unlocked upon successfully defeating the boss at the preceding difficulty level.
For each difficulty level, you only get 5 minutes to defeat the boss. The bosses get progressively challenging as the DPS ceiling is raised, and they get new move sets. On top of the new move sets, the bosses also gain new buffs, and the players get debuffs, adding to the challenge.
Fighting these formidable bosses not only showcases one’s prowess but also yields lucrative first-clear rewards. You earn Drill Data Set, which is a special token used at the Drill Store in the Points Store for various things, including level-up materials, Shiny 5 star Echos, and credits.
There are currently four Calamity class bosses in Wuthering Waves‘ Tactical Hologram challenge. You can challenge these bosses indefinitely and try to beat your best time. These bosses are not easy to beat even with your built characters. You will have to spend some time farming the Echos to get the best stats to beat these bosses as fast as possible.
The following video shows us fighting the tactical hologram of Tempest Mephis boss at difficulty level 1. The gameplay showcases various dodges, parries, and even the intro and outro skills of the characters.
The landscape of Wuthering Waves is undeniably shaping up to be driven by progression and rich rewards, setting the stage for a game that demands both practice and skill from its players. It will be interesting to see how well these endgame modes transition into the full release of the game.
