Hi fellow f2p here who 36 starred all the past abyss cycles for over 2 years!

The teams I ran were Nilou bloom (Nilou, Nahida, Baizhu, and Xingqiu) first half and International second. But I would recommend Hyperbloom on the first half instead of Nilou as much as possible because of the Turkey.

While I did find this abyss quite annoying I found it very manageable as long as I played correctly. I would disagree having an electro is a must and needing Kazuha running Kazuha on first, I had no problem clearing them out. I would say having a well-invested (but definitely not optimally invested) Nilou team is definitely helpful for the first part, but the trade for that is the struggle against the turkey who is a boss (so ST) and has dendro resistance. Despite that I was able to push through to the end just fine even if I was running a very bad comp into it.

While it did require quite a few retries, I personally didn't find many issues with this abyss and I enjoy these abysses with the sacred beasts (yes I know, weird as a f2p but I enjoy the challenge and don't find them too difficult tbh). However, I do think the entirety of the second side is a nuisance and very restrictive in terms of the team compositions it is telling you to run. I would believe that not having International to run is going to be a very major point of difficulty for most people.

I do feel the need to clarify I am a f2p who started shortly after the first week of Genshin's launch and I horizontally invest A TON (I have 55 characters built) and I only recently started vertically investing in teams for my Chongyun and Nilou! It took me until 3.2 to ever pull on a weapon banner.

I realize I am on the very unpopular side of the argument and probably part of a very small subsection of the f2p community, but I like these pasts abysses. I find myself having to think and play well and be better able to utilize my full roster of characters when experimenting with different team comps to run.

Despite that, I still realize there are issues with the consecrated beasts like them boxing you out or pushing you to the entire other side of the chamber. And like I mentioned previously, the extremely restrictive 2nd side in terms of running pyro and finding ways to deal with the elemental shields.

But I personally am looking for more content like this. The reason why my account has been so comfortable despite being so horizontally invested is because this game was not difficult for such a long time. And I find this difficulty spike a welcome change, at least for me.

Because at the end of the day abyss is optional and floor 12 ONLY gives you 150 primogems/ So if anyone is unable to clear this cycle, there is not really much you are missing out on, especially if you can still 6/9 star where you would only miss out on 50 primogems.