Tower of Sisyphus

The Tower of Sisyphus is an endless-ascent dungeon, and the only instanced content in the game that is not built around a boss. It is a climb: 63 floors, one after another, and floor N holds level-N monsters.

That single rule is what makes it work. Difficulty rises on every step, the tower can never be badly tuned for you, and it grows as the game's level ceiling grows - when a level-64 monster exists, so does floor 64.

Eight ways in

The entrance rows are not difficulties of one run - they are starting points at different heights. There are eight of them, at floors 1, 8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48 and 56.

With a start every eight floors, a run lost to a disconnect costs you at most 7 floors. Everything above an entrance is the same climb as the full one.

Each entry asks for roughly the level of the floor it starts you on - the shortcut is earned, not given - and each has its own Easy, Normal and Hard. Entry costs one dungeon coin, like any mission dungeon, and the run has a generous four-hour limit because it is a marathon rather than a sprint.

The entrance list is ordered by level and shows six rows at a time, so the higher starts are on the second page.

The alpha cap is 40, so the floor-48 and floor-56 starts are listed but cannot be entered yet.

Your character level is the only key to the shortcuts. Because floor N is level N, levelling up is the progress token - there is nothing to carry, lose or trade.

Guardians

A guardian waits on every fifth floor, and the floor below announces that one is coming. On Hard there is a guardian on every floor - that, more than the monsters themselves, is what separates the tiers.

The floor you are on is announced when you enter and at every transition, so you always know how far you have climbed.

Favor of the Heroes

As you climb, the heroes of myth offer you blessings - 51 of them, from nine heroes. You are offered a choice on the run's first cleared floor, on every third floor and on every guardian floor, and you pick one card.

• A blessing you already hold can be offered again at a higher rarity, empowering it.
• A Legend slot holds a blessing that fires on its own cooldown.
• An Oath slot holds either a Heroic Oath - which needs two blessings from that hero first - or a Pact between two heroes. Oaths and Pacts are only offered on guardian floors.
• Starting from a higher entrance gives you extra offers to catch up.
• Your blessings are lost when you die.

Reaching floors 16, 32 and 48, or the summit, by climbing is announced to the whole server.

Things worth knowing

• The early floors are quiet. Many of the low-level monsters the tower reuses do not attack first, so the first stretch is far calmer than the numbers suggest.
• Clearing a floor opens the stair.
• The weekly is floor 15. The Oracle Goddess in Gaiyan Town gives one Tower quest a week: climb to floor 15 and bring back the proof for a Bronze Coin.
• Your clear rank picks the reward box - Platinum, Gold, Silver, Bronze or Iron, from the best rank down.
• The monsters are spread along the whole floor, not bunched at one end.
• Tower kills do not count toward Hunt achievements or the codex. The tower's monsters give experience and drops, but farming them does not advance "kill N of monster X" goals - hunt those in the open world and in dungeons.
• Camera rotation is locked, as in every dungeon in the game.
• Clearing the tower grants the title "Unbowed". Titles in Legend of Edda are not purely cosmetic - they carry stat bonuses - so this one is worth the climb by itself.

Where to go next

• Dungeons - the coin budget and the clear grades, which apply here too
• Achievements - where the title is tracked