How to Prepare for the Spiral Abyss Without Wasting Your Resources

You finally built a decent team. You walk into the Spiral Abyss. Floor 9 asks for two teams. You have one. You leave.

How Spiral Abyss Works: Floors, Chambers & Resets

Spiral Abyss is Genshin Impact’s main repeatable endgame mode – 12 floors, split into two parts. Floors 1-8 are the Abyss Corridor: clear them once, collect the reward, and they’re done forever, no reset. Floors 9-12 are the Abyssal Moon Spire, the part that actually matters long-term.

Each floor has 3 chambers of rising difficulty, and each chamber gives up to 3 stars, adding up to 9 per floor. You need at least 6 of those 9 to move on. The Abyssal Moon Spire resets on the 16th of every month at 4:00 server time, handing out 800 Primogems total, 200 per floor.

Every reset also brings a new Blessing of the Abyssal Moon, a buff that applies across the whole cycle. On top of that, each chamber lets you pick one Benediction of the Abyss, refreshed daily, with effects that last for the floor, the chamber, or start immediately depending on which one you choose. Pick the one that actually fits your party.

Best AR to Start Spiral Abyss (Floor 9+)

The first time I attempted Spiral Abyss, I was already AR50, and I still couldn’t clear Floor 9, because my characters were under-built for it. AR is a floor, not a guarantee. Now that I’m AR59, my actual recommendation is AR45 minimum, since that’s when 5-star artifact farming unlocks. One more check before you go in: if your main team still struggles with world bosses, you’re not ready for Floor 9+ either.

Why You Need Two Teams for Spiral Abyss Floor 9+

I like Genshin because of its lore, beautiful places, and banger OST. Endgame was never my focus. Because of that, I only built the characters I liked, and I still don’t regret it, but it caused me a lot of struggle in the Spiral Abyss. If I started a new account from scratch today, I’d still build my favorites first. I’d just make sure a couple of them could also pull their weight in endgame.

Certain chambers split into two halves: first and second, and you’ll need two separate teams to clear them, since you can’t use the same character in both. Technically, this split can start as early as Floor 5, but the enemies there are weak enough (around level 55) that one solid team clears both halves without you ever noticing the rule exists. Floor 9 is where it stops being optional.

The split exists because each floor comes with a Ley Line Disorder: two different buffs, one per half, reset with every Abyss cycle. You don’t choose them; the game hands them to you, and your job is picking characters that actually benefit. In one past rotation, Floor 12’s first half gave a 75% Elemental Skill DMG bonus, while the second half gave 75% Pyro DMG. So the first-half team leaned on Elemental Skill, the second leaned on Pyro, and neither could really do the other’s job. Next reset, the buffs are completely different, which is exactly why you’re building two teams on purpose, not for fun.

One thing worth knowing: the timer carries over from the first half into the second. It doesn’t reset. A slow first half eats directly into your second-half clock, and that’s stars lost before the harder team even starts.

My honest advice: don’t try to build every character you own. Resources are limited, upgrades take weeks per character, and spreading investment across ten or twelve characters just leaves all of them half-built. Build the characters you actually like and plan to keep playing and since your two teams can’t share characters, eight is really the floor you’re aiming for: two full, non-overlapping squads of four, built properly instead of twelve built halfway.

If you’re a low-AR player and not sure which characters are worth the investment, check out my guide on the Best Genshin Impact F2P-Friendly Teams for Low AR Players

Five Mistakes Beginners Make

• The most common mistake people make as a beginner is that they don’t know which character is good as DPS, supports, and healers. So, they end up bringing two DPS, no healer, and as a result, your team ends up dead in the Abyss.
• Skipping weekly bosses. For me, this was one of the crucial mistakes that I made – once you realize the value of a character and start trying to build them, you won’t have enough materials to fully level them up if you’ve been skipping these.
• Ignoring your Benediction choices. Every chamber gives you three options before you start – extra buffs, sometimes debuffs on the enemy. Skipping past them without reading costs you a free advantage you didn’t have to earn.
• AR45 unlocks the highest tier of Domains of Blessing – a guaranteed 5-star Artifact every run. Save your Fragile Resin until you hit AR45 so it goes toward that instead of lower-tier drops you’ll replace anyway.
• Attempting Floor 12 at AR45 with unleveled talents. Hitting AR45 means you can farm the artifacts – it doesn’t mean your talents are ready. Floor 12 is a damage check; walking in with Level 1 talents just burns resin and time on a chamber you were never going to clear yet.

What Stats Actually Matter?

Every character scales off different stats; Bennett wants high ATK%, Fischl leans on ATK and Energy Recharge%, Sucrose wants maximum Elemental Mastery. But the one pair that matters for everyone is Crit Rate and Crit Damage, and a good rough ratio to aim for is 70:140 (70 Crit Rate, 140 Crit Damage).

In the early game, leveling talents usually improves your damage more than chasing perfect artifact substats. Since you can’t farm 5-star artifacts before AR45 anyway, put your resin toward talents and use the best 4-star artifacts you already have with the right main stats.

F2P Team Suggestions

• The best F2P-friendly teams that you can build with 4-star characters that can even outperform some of the 5-stars in-game are –
• Bennett + Xingqiu + Xiangling + Sucrose – The National Team.
• Kaeya + Razor + Fischl + Diona – The Superconduct Team.
• If you want to know how to build teams as F2P and don’t have 5-star characters, this might help Best Genshin Impact F2P-friendly Teams for Low AR Players

Floor Bracket Expectations

• Floors 1-4: A tutorial that gives free rewards; you can just do it.
• Floors 5-8: Even though it might ask you for 2 teams, it’s manageable with one solid team that you have fully built.
• Floors 9-11: The floors that really require two teams and are for mechanical checks, like how you can utilize each character in your team to clear the floors.
• Floor 12: This floor is purely for damage check, and you will need to clear the floor within the timer so the pressure is real, but don’t stress it early in the game.

Floor Restrictions

• One mistake many beginners make is not knowing the restrictions of the Spiral Abyss. Once you enter a floor, you can no longer do the following –
• Consume food, change characters in your team, change Artifacts or Weapons, and you can’t even level up or ascend characters if you are in an active Spiral Abyss run.
• Your only option is to clear the floor with what you have or exit and lose your progress. So, make preparations before you attempt the Abyss, not while you are already challenging the Spiral Abyss.

Floor 12 can wait. Build eight characters right instead of twelve half-built ones, and the Abyss stops feeling like a wall.