Three of Crystaria's endgame modes have no final floor: the Shifting Labyrinth, a seasonal maze beneath the realm; the Descent, a dive into the corrupted deep; and the Ascent, a climb into the open sky. Each is entered from the Endgame menu, each uses your real character, and none of them ever risks your gear or levels — only a run's unbanked progress.

The run rules — Descent and Ascent

The Labyrinth plays by different rules — it is persistent and seasonal rather than run-based, and its own section below explains what endures.

The Shifting Labyrinth

Crystaria's endgame maze — find it under Endgame → The Labyrinth.

One maze, the whole realm. Every player runs the same labyrinth: each floor's layout is fixed for the whole season (quarterly), then the maze reshapes for everyone at once. Compare routes, share maps — the corridors you learn are the corridors everyone walks.

Eye-level: the first-person view. The maze is drawn from inside the corridor — stone walls receding to the dark, a tiled floor underfoot, and doors, stairwells, chests and shrines looming out of the murk ahead of you. Every floor is lit in the colour of its Sign, so you always know the element you're walking through. A blocking foe stands in the corridor wearing its real sprite.

Getting around. Movement is a proper crawler: turn left / right to rotate your heading and step forward / back along it, from the compass in the move panel — or with the arrow-keys (Up/Down step, Left/Right turn) and your WASD keybinds. The top-down maze lives on as a map in the map panel (where the overworld map sits), floor-labelled with your heading marked, revealing as you explore.

Exploring a floor. Each floor is a fog-of-war maze explored corridor by corridor; your torchlight reveals a 3×3 ring as you go. On every floor you'll find (each marked on the map panel):

• The stairs (▼) — descend to the next floor. First-clears pay Ascendant Sigils.
• A Brass Door (▢) guarding the stairs — its key is always carried by the floor's Keywarden (♛).
• The Vault (▣) — a sealed treasure room. Vault Keys (◆) drop from lesser foes (rarely); vault chests pay gold, Ascension Dust and Sigils.
• A Shrine (✦) — choose one of three blessings per floor. Blessings stack until you fall.
• Chests (▪) — gold and Ascension Dust, once per season each.
• Denizens (★) — dungeon-grade foes fought with your full kit: hotbar, spells, artes, abilities, fusion, pets. Engaging one plays a battle transition, and the combat log reads newest-first.

The Sign. Every floor bears an elemental Sign — shown at the top of the view and colouring the whole corridor: all its denizens share one weakness (and one resist). Casters who match the Sign hit noticeably harder — check it before you build your loadout.

Wardens, checkpoints and the Shift. Every 5th floor the stairs are held by a Warden (☣) — a full dungeon boss above your level, the fight your blessing stack exists for. Every 10th floor cleared plants a checkpoint. Falling shifts the maze: you wake at your checkpoint, blessings gone, the corridors above re-fogged and repopulated. But everything permanent endures — chests looted, floors first-cleared, and your deepest floor record.

How the Labyrinth Scales

Depth measures itself against you. A floor's denizens are never a fixed level — they are a multiple of your own. Floor 40 therefore asks the same of a Lv3,000 delver as it does of a Lv20,000 one: there is no wall you can out-level, and none you will ever outgrow.

The rhythm is a sawtooth, not a ramp. Within each ten-floor block the pressure climbs steadily; at the next checkpoint it resets — one notch higher than the block before (about 1.2% per block, and that part never stops). Trash is deliberately kept below you so a long descent stays survivable, the Keywarden meets you as an equal, and the Warden stands above you. That last fight is the one your blessing stack exists for.

Multipliers are of your level — a 0.90× trash foe fighting a Lv10,000 delver is Lv9,000. Fighting far above or below your own level applies its usual pressure on top, exactly as it does anywhere else in the realm.

What stops growing. The maze reaches its full 21×21 at Floor 40 and its densest population at Floor 60. Beyond that the floors stop changing shape and only the per-block creep continues — Floor 60 and Floor 150 are the same maze, but the Warden waiting in it is about a tenth stronger.

The first floors are a teaching ground. Floors 1 and 2 run a shorter route to the stairs and carry no brass door, so the way down is open from the moment you find it. Their Keywarden is still there if you want the fight — and its key banks toward Floor 3, where the lock begins in earnest.

Echo Delves. From the entrance, dispatch your Echo into the depth you've conquered — 1, 4, 12 or 24 hours — and it returns with Sigils and gold scaled to your deepest record. Active play pushes the frontier; your Echo farms it while you're away. Unlocks at Depth 5.

Seasons and rewards. The season's deepest depths are ranked on the entrance panel and in the Hall of Legends. When the season turns, the top ten (and everyone past Depth 5) are paid Ascendant Sigils by post — then the maze reshapes and the race begins again. The Sigil Exchange (Dust, the Herald of the Worldspine title) lives on the entrance panel. See Equipment for what Sigils and Dust are for.

The Descent

The dive below — open it from Endgame ▾ The Descent. The Descent turns the Underworld from a flat farm into something you go down into, floor by floor, the enemies drawn from the run's own seed.

The Three Strata. Three Strata stack beneath the Underworld, each opened only by proving yourself in the one above — reach depth 10 in a Stratum, and hold the required Covenant rank, to unlock the next.

Your oath shapes the dive. Your Covenant flavours the whole descent. The deeper and more corrupt you are, the more the Deepsworn thrive on the extra damage; the Wardens instead lean on their ward to endure. Every fifth floor's Stratum Guardian is a wall that a well-built, well-oathed character can break, and an ill-prepared one cannot.

Rewards. Banking a Descent pays gold, Dark Crystal shards, experience, Covenant reputation (the Descent is the main way to climb your oath), and a push against the Blight Tide — the deeper the Stratum and the further you bank, the greater every reward. The Descent is not a detour from the war; it is one of its fronts.

The Ascent

The mirror of the Descent — a seeded, un-mappable endless climb into the open sky. Open it from Endgame ▾ The Ascent at level 3,000.

The run rules above apply unchanged; what differs is the shape of the climb: floors rise roughly 60 levels apiece, and the every-fifth-floor Guardian here is an Ascendant Guardian of the high air. Banking pays gold and Dark Crystal shards by depth tier, plus depth-scaled experience, and the realm's highest climbs are ranked on the leaderboard — how high can you get before the aether lets go?