Wuthering Waves

Wuthering Waves

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Guide To Clear Tower of Adversity for New Players
By Astronema
TOA is wuwa's easiest end-game content and a source of free pulls every reset. If you are new, strategic planning is needed to clear it.

HERE's How to do it.
   
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Minimum Investment Overview (TLDR version)
To hit 30 stars in ToA, the smartest move is to have two teams fully built (for floor 4 of the left and right tower and floor 1+2 of the middle tower) and a third team that’s good enough to handle the middle floors (floor 1 to 3 of the left and right tower) with way less investment.
  • Most beginner teams right now are a main DPS, a healer, and a sub-DPS for stuff like co-ord attacks, outro buffs, or echo set synergy.
  • Your main DPS needs the most love, but putting some effort into your sub-DPS makes runs smoother.
  • “Fully built” doesn’t mean maxing every character—it means heavy investment in your main DPS, some in your sub-DPS, and barely any in your healers.


  • Aim for 2 level 90 main DPS with a level 90 weapon, 6-6-8-8-10 skills, maxed echoes, and ideally 2000 ATK, 50% crit rate, and 250% crit damage.
  • Sub-DPS can be level 80/90, with weapon level and crit substats less critical.
  • Healers are super efficient—low investment, high returns due to their buffs. Put spare resources into your sub-DPS or third team.
Team Planning
When picking your two main DPS, go for ones with 5-star weapons and make sure they’re not the same element. Bosses have resistances—like Scar for example, has Havoc and Spectro resistance, so using Jinhsi, Rover, or Danjin against him is gonna suck. Similarly, check for resistances like Inferno Rider’s Fusion resistance to avoid building teams that’ll struggle.

Verina & Baizhi
For healers, Verina is the go-to for both Hazard floors. If you don’t have her, grab her or pull for the next limited 5-star healer. You only really need one good healer for smooth clears, and Verina’s great for that.
  • Baizhi works well for the final floors on the outer towers. The best part? These healers don’t need much investment. Keep them around level 40-60 for survivability, but make sure to unlock Verina’s inherent skills in her forte circuit.
  • For Verina, slap on 3-cost echoes with Energy Regen (ER) as the main stat and a weapon like Variation with ER. Your sub-DPS depends on your main DPS—check sites like Prydwen for synergy tips if you’re unsure.

Team 3
For the middle floor team, pretty much any character with decent AoE works. Pair them with someone who brings utility. Rover + Jianxin/Yangyang is a solid combo to group enemies and blast them. Characters like Jianxin or Yuanwu can trigger the heal echo set buff with a weapon like Originite Type IV, or someone like Taoqi with built-in healing can boost DPS for less-invested units.

Character Building
  • Upgrade order: Character Level > Weapon Level > Inherent Skills > Fortes/Stats (I go by cost order).
  • No need to max every Forte. I do 10/10 on the three key skills, then 6/10 on the rest since they don’t need weekly materials (probably why some folks are out of resources).
  • Character level boosts stats, and every 10 levels below the enemy drops your damage by 2%. Level 80 (max ascend) to 90 is a small DPS bump—skills matter more at that point.
  • Max out your sub-DPS characters (my good teams are double main-DPS setups).
  • Healers and their weapons (like Variation) don’t need maxing. Their buffs don’t scale with Forte/stats, so there’s little point. Level 70 is fine for both inherent skills (though Baizhi’s second inherent is meh, so I skip it). Upgrade Variation if you need more ER (its rank-ups are solid).
  • 5-star weapons are a huge DPS boost over 4-stars. Get them for your main DPS, ideally sharing one or two between teams to save on farming.
Main DPS Investment
Your main DPS stats are the biggest factor in clear times, so let’s set a baseline for smooth runs. Aim for +50% crit rate, +100% crit damage (250% sheet CDMG), and 2000 attack. You can get away with less, but it’ll mean more resets on later floors. Maxing a 5-star weapon and a 4-cost echo gets you almost halfway there.


You only need 2-3 crit rate or crit damage rolls per echo, which is way easier than chasing perfect double-crit substats.Focus on character level, weapon level, and skill levels. Max your weapon to 90 for the raw attack and crit value—it’s a huge DPS boost.

Character level should be at least 80/90, but maxing it is a permanent gain, and you only need to do it for two characters. For skills, you can scrape by with full level 6 and your main skill at level 8. But since these are permanent upgrades, aim for main skill at 10, two secondary skills at 8, and the rest at 6.

Sub-DPS
The same stuff applies to your sub-DPS, but it’s less critical. For example, in a Jiyan/Mortefi/Verina team, Mortefi’s value comes from his outro skill and heron echo buffing Jiyan. So, prioritizing ER for faster concerto rotations can be better than boosting his personal DPS. His damage is a bonus, not a must.


Limited sub-DPS like Yinlin or Zhezhi benefit more from investment, so eventually aim for the same baseline as your main DPS. But don’t go past level 80/90 to save resources unless you’ve got extra. Their signature weapons give a ton of crit value, so you can be less picky with echo substats and still do great. 50% crit rate and 250% crit damage is ideal, but dropping 25 crit value won’t ruin your run.

Resource Management and Time Gating
ToA resets every 4 weeks. If your teams aren’t at the baseline yet, you’ve got enough time to farm skill materials and credits for two characters’ skills. If you’ve been smart with open-world and event resources (or start now), you won’t need to farm exp materials for character or weapon levels. Prioritize those three first.

If you’re short on 50% crit rate and 250% crit damage, work on echoes after, but honestly, just max out a full echo set for your main and sub-DPS, even if the substats aren’t perfect. You can recycle them later.

The bottleneck is weekly skill materials. At UL60, you get about 9 per week, so 18 per ToA cycle. That’s enough to get two main DPS to the skill benchmark (6-6-8-8-10) over two weeks. In a month, you can get your sub-DPS there too.

Echoes
Don’t make level 25 echoes unless it’s your first set, you’ve got good stats, or you’re feeling wild. Level 20 to 25 is almost as costly as 1 to 20 (another reason folks run out of resources).Level echoes gradually and check your ER needs. Make sure attack-type % damage rolls (e.g., Resonance Liberation damage) are solid—some are as good as ATK% (like for Xiangli Yao).


I’ve cleared ToA with multiple level 20 echoes. Share echoes when possible, especially for healers or floors 1-3.Healer echoes aren’t a big deal right now—just get enough ER for rotations.

More healing is nice, but you can also just play better. My healer echoes are 25/15/15/15/15. Turtle and 1-cost echoes probably don’t need levels if your ER is fine. 3-cost echoes with ER main stats get ER from levels, so those are worth upgrading.

Gameplay
  • Learn quickswaps and rotations! Check YouTube guides for specifics. I don’t do super-optimal stuff, but I’ve picked up a lot from clips about what’s possible.
  • Having a consistent opener helps get runs rolling.Reset for crits if needed—sometimes a crit on your Resonance Liberation at the start makes the difference between 3* and 2*.
  • Make sure you’re actually dealing damage. Some enemies (like Inferno Rider) don’t take damage during their intro (about 3 seconds until they’re back on their bike).
  • If time’s running out, do whatever deals damage, even if it’s not efficient—like using Changli’s Resonance Liberation with 3/4 Forte Circuit.
Tower buff
The buffs for each tower would change every cycle, as you are a new player, its all down to luck if you happen to build the characters who can use these buffs.
Final words
If you hit these benchmarks and still struggle, it’s probably about gameplay know-how.

You would probably have to read more guides, or your characters' wall of texts on their forte.

4 Comments
Astronema  [author] 17 Jul @ 9:01am 
you can google "How To Actually Play Calcharo" guide on youtube from ItsSenpai. Hes hard to play but just as good if you get the hang of it.
Darklight2506 17 Jul @ 7:19am 
I'm grateful for your advice! I do agree about needing another 5* main dps, I'm currently planning on phralova as more than anything I just need more options right now, so fingers crossed.

I did try Calcharo since I have him at lvl 70, but i'd certainly need more practice because even on part 1 of the side tower I couldn't do much with him. Haven't tried Danjin yet though, perhaps i'll play around with her during the wait for 2.5
Astronema  [author] 16 Jul @ 6:55pm 
You only need two teams (6 characters) for the hardest parts. One team is SK Sanhua Carty, the other, well, you can try getting baizhi up to 60 or sth. You need a second good 5 star main DPS unless you can play calcharo/danjin very well. Put calcharo and danjin on team three (floor 1-3 of side towers).
Darklight2506 16 Jul @ 5:03pm 
As a newer player who didn't join till 2.4 and hasn't gotten Data level 60 yet (currently 52), is it worth trying? The only 5star dps I have are Calcharo and Cartethyia, with S6 sanhua and s4 danjin. So my cart team has been carrying most content, but when it comes to content that requires multiple teams, I usually hit a pretty hard wall. I don't have verina yet, but I do have shorekeeper