Genshin Impact 2.8 has arrived and, alongside some fun tropical events, introduced arguably the most annoying version of the Spiral Abyss dungeon yet.
The first Abyss reset of July updated the enemies for floors 11 and 12, and it's the third stage of floor 12 that really rankled players. As an aptly titled "rage post" on the Genshin Impact subreddit shows – and it's far from the only one, to say nothing of many like-minded comments – players have developed a vendetta against the new Ruin Serpent Chasm world boss in particular, which made its Abyss debut this month.
The Ruin Serpent is pretty easy to kill out in the world, but with its HP scaled up for the Abyss, you really start to see just how time-consuming it can be. The Abyss is fundamentally a time trial where you have to kill enemies as fast as possible, meaning anything that runs down the clock is going to be a problem, and the Ruin Serpent is maybe the worst offender of all.
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The Ruin Serpent is a burrower that spends a lot of time underground, and it has two special attacks that make it virtually invulnerable for extended periods. One turns the entire arena into a quicksand mire while the boss is totally hidden, and the other gives the Ruin Serpent heavy damage reduction while it summons tracking explosives. Either of these attacks can eat up 15 to 25 seconds of the fight, which is pretty significant when you only have roughly two minutes to burn through well over one million HP.
That's just the second half of floor 12. The first half is another headache despite having just three Fatui enemies. The central Mirror Maiden applies a hydro aura which dramatically lengthens your skill and burst cooldowns, and the two cryo Fatui guarding her can (and will) use this aura to freeze you on the spot, interrupting your combos and burning precious seconds. Long-time players may remember the cryo horrors of the first-ever Spiral Abyss rotation, and this is basically another floor of that but with much longer cooldowns.
And we thought it was painful getting crushed by dogs with a million health. Experienced and well-equipped players likely won't struggle with this Abyss rotation for too long, but it's easily among the tankiest and most annoying enemy combinations in the dungeon's history, so it's sure to be quite the hurdle for even relatively new players.
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