DragonSword: Awakening Tower of Trials
Quick answer
The Tower of Trials is DragonSword: Awakening's 50-floor endgame gauntlet and the only source of Fragments of Memory and Whirling Thoughts, the game's two Karma materials. It unlocks through Cerese's Bond Quest, is completable solo, and difficulty rises with each floor.
Updated · Verified on Patch 1.0.x · Sources: in-game testing, Steam store page, Hound13 announcements
The Tower of Trials is not optional content. It is the fuel supply for DragonSword: Awakening's largest power system, and a lot of players finish the story without ever opening it.
Unlocking the Tower
The Tower of Trials unlocks through Cerese's Bond Quest. Do it as soon as it appears in your log.
Until it is done, you have no source of Fragments of Memory or Whirling Thoughts, which means Karma progression — the biggest post-story power increase available — has no materials. The quest presents as optional character content and is in fact a system gate.
What the Tower is
| Property | Detail |
|---|---|
| Floors | 50 |
| Difficulty | Rises with each floor |
| Players | Solo |
| Primary drops | Fragments of Memory, Whirling Thoughts |
| Also | Karma cards and gear rewards |
| Unlock | Cerese's Bond Quest |
Why players stall at floors 20–30
This is the most common wall in DragonSword: Awakening, and the cause is almost always composition, not gear.
Boss-type floors require Break windows to kill in reasonable time. A team of two setup heroes and a burst hero has nothing that converts an ailment into a stagger, so you apply ailments, deal moderate damage, and eventually lose to a health pool you cannot burst through.
The fix is not levelling. It is adding a break specialist — Castella or Eileen — and covering setup, break and burst. Run your trio through the team builder to confirm which link is missing, or read best team comps.
The second cause is gearing: Ailment Buildup Rate belongs on your setup hero, not your burst hero. Reversed, your chains start too slowly to fit inside boss windows. See upgrade priority.
Farm the floor you clear reliably
The instinct in DragonSword: Awakening is to push as deep as possible. That is usually wrong.
Consistent clears at a lower floor out-earn inconsistent attempts at a higher one. A clean, fast clear at floor 30 that you complete every time beats a floor 35 attempt you fail half the time — failures cost the full run duration and return nothing.
Find your reliable floor, farm it, upgrade, then move up. Use the material planner to convert your material target into a run count using your own observed drop rate.
What the drops are for
Both Tower of Trials materials feed DragonSword: Awakening's Karma:
1 Whirling Thoughts + 100 Fragments of Memory + 100,000 Gold = 1 Fragment of Afterimage.
The 100-to-1 ratio is why Fragments of Memory are almost always your bottleneck while Whirling Thoughts accumulate unused. It is also why gold matters — 100,000 per craft is substantial, and players routinely hit the Fragment threshold with an empty wallet. See farming.
Karma cards also drop here. Do not dismantle duplicates — duplicates of the exact same card are the only way to ascend that Karma and unlock its trait effect.
Team advice for DragonSword: Awakening Tower pushes
Freeze relay is the strongest general answer. Cerese's Freeze locks a target for roughly 3–5 seconds, which is enough uninterrupted time to build Break without being knocked out of it. Follow with a break hero, then a burst hero.
Cook before you climb. Food buffs are temporary stat boosts made from ingredients you already have, and they are free power almost everyone forgets. See cooking.
Do not lower Effects Quality. Ailment build-up and Signal Skill prompts are VFX, and higher floors punish missed prompts — see best settings.
Watch frame pacing. A stutter during a prompt window is a dropped chain. On Steam Deck, use the combat-priority preset for deep floors.
One more thing before you climb
Check your Karma elements match your heroes before a long session. It is a thirty-second check that is easy to skip and silently costs you damage on every floor.
FAQ
How do you unlock the Tower of Trials in DragonSword: Awakening?
Complete Cerese's Bond Quest. Until then the Tower is inaccessible and you have no Karma material income.
How many floors are in the Tower of Trials?
Fifty, with difficulty rising as you climb.
What does the Tower of Trials drop?
Fragments of Memory and Whirling Thoughts — the two Karma materials — plus Karma cards and gear rewards.
Can you do the Tower of Trials solo?
Yes. The Tower of Trials is solo content and completable without other players.
Why can't I get past floor 20–30?
Usually a missing break role in your team. Boss floors need Break windows, and setup plus burst alone cannot open them.