Phantom Abyss: How to Navigate the Abyss (Tips & Tricks)

Hello, fellow treasure hunters. By now I’m sure many of you have already delved deep into the bowels of this cosmic prison and learned many things about the dangers and sweet loot within. Or perhaps not, and you’re looking for some help in learning the ropes (or whips, in any case).

Either way I am here to hopefully provide some of that much needed assistance. In this small guide I will mostly be going over tips to help make your journeys faster and more lucrative, though I will also attempt to compile some basic information to help you understand what you’re dealing with.

This will be by no means a truly comprehensive guide, but I may update it occasionally to try and keep up with development.

The illustrious Guardians of the Abyss are some of the most bothersome dangers you will come across. Barring the very first stage of each run, along with some very rare edge cases, they will be present constantly to make your trek through the temples a living hell. Fortunately, even as they grow in power, there are ways to avoid them.

Note also that most traps will be highlighted in a certain color when you near them; this is the color of the Guardian that is hunting you, so they can be used as a quick reminder in case you happen to forget.

Arguably the most stress-inducing Guardian currently released, the Devouring Rage doesn’t generally pose much of a threat right away. It always spawns near the start of the floor, regardless of how far into the floor you’ve made it, meaning the sooner it spawns, the sooner you need to worry about it.

The Devouring Rage’s mode of attack is also the most simple, but simultaneously the most effective: once it spawns, it constantly chases, moving directly toward you at a set speed, ignoring walls and other obstacles entirely. Because of this, the real danger it poses is in its ability to suddenly block your escape route when you decide to take a side path for extra loot.

To effectively deal with it, you must make yourself even more aware of your environment. How far away is it? Where can you grapple to? What traps are nearby, and how many of them are there? Are there any side paths you think could be worth the risk? Where are YOU at this very moment? One of the best ways to manage it is to remain aware of its exact movement. It will ONLY move directly toward you, so if you position yourself away from where you actually want to go, you can more easily keep it out of your way to begin with.

As you go deeper into the temple, it gets stronger by moving faster. On Floor 2, it moves at 3 meters per second (3m/s), and for each new floor, it moves .25m/s faster. On much later floors, this Guardian will make it exceptionally risky to take ANY extraneous paths to open those much-needed chests, and you will have to make some sacrifices to avoid its imposing presence.

What sometimes seems to be the least common of the Guardians, the Eye of Chaos is no less threatening than the others. It spawns in open air nearby and attacks by charging up and firing a heat ray toward you.

One of the most effective ways to avoid it is to hide behind something when it begins charging, as its beam cannot penetrate obstacles. The beam also has loose tracking capabilities, meaning that it doesn’t follow your movements exactly; it can hit you easily if you’re running almost directly toward or away from it. Therefore another good method is to keep on the move, zig-zagging both horizontally AND vertically to dodge it.

Overall, the Eye of Chaos is generally most powerful in areas with long sight-lines and/or few hiding spots. Be aware, as well, that the Eye is prone to teleporting to a new spot very quickly if you move out of its sight before it can begin charging.

As you go deeper into the temple, it gets stronger by firing more frequently. On Floor 2, it fires its heat ray once every 7 seconds, and for each new floor, it fires the ray .78 seconds sooner. On later floors, this Guardian will be a constant threat from all angles, and you may need to take extra liberties to avoid stepping too far away from a pillar or wall that could be used to block it.

One of the most commonly seen Guardians patrolling the temples, the Masked Defiler moves around in a manner identical to the Eye of Chaos: it spawns nearby, floating in the open air, performs its attack, then quickly blinks to another spot to continue its assault.

Where it differs is in HOW it attacks: while the Eye prefers to attempt attacking you directly, the Defiler lobs small barrages of pinkish-purple balls in your direction that explode into temporary clouds of poisonous gas. Attempting to pass through these clouds on foot will see you slowed down significantly, and if you remain inside the poison for more than 2-3 seconds, you will take damage.

The balls often bounce up to 2-3 times before detonating, though they will commonly bounce only once or even detonate on first impact. While the throw angle does deviate slightly, the clouds almost always cover the same general spot as each other, making the Masked Defiler a strong “zoning” enemy, a term that means it hinders your progress by making it dangerous to pass through a certain area. Though they don’t last more than about 5-7 seconds, the diameter of the clouds is about 1.35 times the height of your character model, meaning they are capable of entirely blocking off many of the smaller corridors you’ll find yourself in.

Much like the Eye of Chaos, one of the easiest ways to handle the Masked Defiler is to keep on the move, but also try to slip behind walls WHILE moving. It will always try to lob a ball toward your general area, but they usually can’t reach you if you’re too far away or out of its line-of-sight. At the same time, it works similarly to the Devouring Hunger by blocking escape paths with gas when you try to go after some extra loot. Sometimes the only way forward is to push through the gas. If you find yourself in this situation, always be on the lookout for spots you can grapple to in order to minimize your time in the danger zone.

As you go deeper into the temple, it gets stronger by firing more balls of gas in each barrage. On Floor 2, it fires 4 at a time, and each new floor increases the number by 1. On later floors, this Guardian will have entire sections of a given room cut off at a time; even larger rooms will become more dangerous due to the sheer volume of gas bombs. Avoid being under it as much as possible, and try to take the high ground whenever feasible, as it has a much harder time throwing the bombs upward.

You will be looting treasure chests much more commonly than picking up actual artifacts, and this is a good thing: even though you lose your current whip and any keys you carry when you die, it is all restored to you once someone else completes that specific temple. You need these keys to unlock new whips, as well as to open the doors to deeper sections of the Abyss. Each zone contains a different rarity of key (Uncommon, Rare, etc.) and is split into three floors, with the last floor containing two exits: one at the bottom of the stairs leads to a lesser relic, which you will still want to retrieve so that you can start unlocking rarer whips, while the other door situated further back leads to the next zone. This door requires a key of the same rarity you could retrieve in your current zone to unlock, so if you don’t have any stockpiled from previous runs, or you didn’t grab one on your way here, tough luck.

But keys aren’t the only thing you get from these chests. In fact, chests come in 3 sizes, and keys are only found in the largest size. No matter what kind of chest you find, you also receive some form of currency (we can call it gold or coins for simplicity’s sake). Unlike the keys you find, gold is completely unrecoverable: if you die, you permanently lose every bit of it you had. Aside from a couple of edge cases depending on which whip you have equipped, gold isn’t used for anything except purchasing “blessings” from shrines you find at the end of each floor, and occasionally at the very beginning of a floor. These blessings can mean the difference between a successful run and a loss, ranging from longer whip range and a double jump to increased maximum health and even outright healing some damage taken.

Back on the topic of chests, they are considered one of the many interactive parts of the Abyss. There are a couple of ways to retrieve their contents, but the most important thing to note about them is that when you open one, you DO NOT HAVE TO STICK AROUND and wait for the gold to slowly spew out; you will automatically collect all of it. You can open a chest by walking up to it and pressing the button/key it prompts you with (default E), OR you can smack it with your whip to open it from a distance (while aiming at the chest, you will notice your reticle change to a roughly square shape when it’s within range, and it will make a distinct sound when successful). You will also notice the phantoms of previously unsuccessful players who trekked the same path you’re taking. They will trigger traps by walking near them, but will also open any chests the player originally did. If a chest is opened this way, the gold WILL NOT automatically come to you. You must still retrieve it yourself by walking near it.

Some rooms have chests that spawn in set locations, but most of the chests you will find are in extra side areas that may not always appear in the same spot, or at all. Learning the difference, and which paths are likely to contain large chests, is key to getting the most out of your time spent.