Genshin Impact update 5.7 rolled out a new permanent endgame mode called Stygian Onslaught today, finally answering the community's requests for a hardcore combat activity other than Spiral Abyss after nearly five years. But as expected, the monkey's paw curls: this thing is so hard that only accounts with substantial character investment can totally clear it.
Stygian Onslaught is essentially a boss rush mode where you use three teams of four units, with no overlap between them, to fight souped-up versions of bosses. For the first Stygian rotation, those bosses are the Hydro Tulpa, Lava Dragon Statue, and Secret Source Automaton. The mode doubles as a special, secondary domain for every type of artifact, dishing out extra artifacts at set Resin intervals, so it's definitely worth doing.
There are six tiers of difficulty to the activity, with each tier increasing the stats of the bosses. Normal, Advancing, Hard, Menacing, and Fearless difficulty follow a pretty standard difficulty curve, with Fearless feeling comparable to, and maybe slightly harder than, the hardest floors of the Spiral Abyss.
It's the sixth tier, Dire, which is accessed after beating Fearless and unlocking the "Perilous Challenge" option, that's knocked players flat. Dire massively increases boss HP, almost exponentially so, making it considerably more difficult to kill them within the 120-second timer, to say nothing of the 180-second total timer for the true pinnacle challenge.
Having played since launch, I have a pretty well-invested Genshin Impact account, and I'm still struggling to clear this thing on Dire. Thanks to five years of semi-regular battle passes and Welkin passes, I have almost every character, about two dozen five-star weapons, and a couple of Constellations on some five-star characters, all with good artifact builds (minus Skirk, who I'm still building after her recent debut). I breezed right through Fearless, but Dire presents a much steeper DPS check. It isn't completely out of my reach, but assuming it is doable, it will take some legitimate practice and optimization.
Loads of other players have had a similar experience. Even a Fearless clear is proving difficult for some players – in part because these bosses demand specific elemental counters, so if you don't have strong characters of those elements you're basically out of luck. It also doesn't help that you start Stygian Onslaught encounters with zero energy for characters' Elemental Bursts, adding a warm-up stage to fights and favoring energy-agnostic characters like Mavuika and Skirk.
In the Genshin Impact Twitch category, I've been watching streamer and reputable theorycrafter Zajef77 struggle and ultimately fail to get a single Dire boss kill even with good long-term account investment.
"My goodness, the spike from fearless to dire is astronomically huge lmao," one player says in a top-rated post in the Genshin Impact Reddit community. "Truly whale certificate."
There is hope, though. A Japanese player has already proven that you can just barely clear Dire mode without wildly egregious spending – all you need are perfect meta teams with top DPS characters, signature five-star weapons, max Constellations on four-star supports, and – screw it – a full team of five-stars to counter the Secret Source Automaton.
I'm sure that sounds egregious to some players – and those players absolutely have a point – but compared to the Dire clear I saw from YouTuber IWinToLose Gaming, who has spent upwards of $100,000 maxing out every character and weapon, that's not unreasonable. Regular oil baron dhcwsp has also posted a blazing fast Dire clear featuring teams worth more than my car.
At the same time, I've seen plenty of players say they're struggling even with teams worth more than my car, which goes to show how technically demanding this mode can be. And even then, it's recent characters, especially those boosted by the restrictions of the mode, that clear more easily.
The good news is that you only need to beat Fearless to obtain all the main rewards from Stygian Onslaught. Heck, you can get all 450 Primogems just by beating Hard, and with help from matchmaking, other players can give you a boost. Beating Menacing at all and beating Fearless in single-player just nets you two Dust of Enlightenment used for Genshin's new artifact reroll system, which is nice.
Clearing Dire unlocks limited-time weapon cosmetics, while beating the challenge within 180 seconds adds a special shiny effect to them. Each Stygian Onslaught lasts for a whole six-week patch, so you can enjoy these cosmetics until 5.8 before you have to unlock them again by clearing the next rotation.
"Yeah, nah, I've been playing for 5 years without weapon skins," one fatigued player put it. "I'll be find without them now. I'm beat."
Stygian Onslaught gives hardcore players and spendthrift whales a place to measure their characters, the highest tiers are only gatekeeping limited-time cosmetics, and it dishes out a few extra artifacts every patch. Personally, I'm reasonably pleased with it so far; it's meaningfully different to Spiral Abyss, and it's an actual coherent challenge unlike the garbage plate that is Imaginarium Theater, Genshin's previous stab at permanent combat content. It's not amazing, but it is something new to do that actually has bite.
