Neon Abyss (PS4)- My Top 10 Tips To Beat The Game (Including Ares and Athena)

In this post and video, I’ll outline my top 10 tips for beating Neon Abyss, whether you just checked out the game or hit a wall on one of the bosses. And when I say “beat” I mean killing all 5 main bosses or managers of the game because completing all the achievements and unlocking the platinum trophy is very time-consuming. As a roguelike or more technically rogue-lite game, most of your success will be based on random luck depending on the drops you get, but here are my tips for consistently making it further into your runs. So let's get started.

1) Get Weapon Upgrades- Use whatever you need to open these doors leading to these rooms with this symbol, even if it is two bombs. After clearing out the 3 waves of enemies you always get an item that increases your weapon damage in some way, either by upgrading your weapon, increasing its damage, or rate of fire. Always prioritize these rooms on each floor.

2) Open Golden Doors - Next would be to open the golden doors leading to a support item. There is always at least one of these per floors so make sure you find it before fighting the boss. While sometimes they might give you something less beneficial, other times you might get a single item that makes your entire run easy. So I would make sure to save at least 1 key per floor for these doors.

3) Get a Flying item or Jumping item Talking about items that can make your run easy, one ability that almost guarantee’s success, at least if gotten early enough, are items that enable you to fly. Two of these items include the Pegasus Wings and Divinity. Whether it’s in the shop or golden rooms getting these flying items allows access to many chests and bypasses the need for keys, bombs, or double jumps. While these flying items are very rare, items like the Winged Hat or Bunny Ears, are also helpful to provide a double jump to get to those hard to reach areas.

4) Conserve Keys/Bombs This tip you will pick up on by just playing the game, but if you're just starting there are many explosive barrels and wooden boxes in most rooms. Sometimes shooting boxes and explosive barrels in a certain order will help you gain access to a free chest, so don’t go around shooting everything without thinking because sometimes it can save you a bomb or key. Also when in rooms where you have to use bombs to get access to a chest, look for multiple chests that you can access with a single bomb or key.

5) Unlock Rules and Special Rooms As you defeat bosses you gain these gold tokens you can use to purchase items that become available on your subsequent runs. There are a couple of rules, and special rooms, that I’ve unlocked already that have been very useful, while others not so much. The one I found to have the most potential is the Piano Room minigame, for 15 coins you can play a jumping game where you can get a random utility item or weapon. Since these normally cost about 50 coins in the shop you are getting a big discount, especially if you don’t mess up the mini-game. You can also replay it several times if you’ve saved up your coin. Other good rules are the Marked Stone, which allows you to see which stones will drop items, and the Safe Switch, which spawns a random item room if you haven’t taken damage on a level. There are some other rules like Bomb Counter or the Intersection Room that didn’t help me as often as I thought it would.

6) Check Shops Similar to how there is a golden door on each floor there will be a shop on each floor as well. After playing the game over and over you will tend to see how good certain weapons or utility items are. So check into each shop, using gems that tend to be pretty plentiful, and see if those items are available to purchase. You can use the Amir character to preview descriptions or look them up online if you want to make sure the item would be worth spending the coin on. Some items too look for are the flying items I mentioned previously, a lottery ticket that awards 777 coins, and guns that you prefer like the Keygun that can unlock any doors or chests for free.

7) Step on Worms When you first start a new run coins can be hard to accumulate, which you need to unlock certain gates or buy items with. When killing these blue monsters make sure to step on the worms instead of shooting them. They will drop at least 1 coin and there are many of these guys early on so they will start adding up if you can step on the worms without being damaged.

8) Utilize secondary skill on weapons. While weapons aren’t as necessary as the utility and weapon damage upgrades themselves, it's nice to upgrade to a different weapon than what you start with. Often weapons will come with an active or passive skill that can be more useful than the amount of damage it does. Things like allowing you to fly in a room, upgrading your weapon, and producing coins or random drops can make runs a lot easier. Luckily, unlike Enter the Gungeon, items do not disappear when left on the ground as long as you don’t go to the boss or next level, so feel free to swap between guns and utilize the passive skills while on that level.

9) Unlocking Ares The hardest boss or manager for me to get to, and what I was stuck on for several days was getting to the Ares encounter. When sacrificing life to open the red chests or doors after they have been damaged you will build up the meter in the bottom and once it is filled, you will be taken to Ares temple where you can sacrifice a heart container for a choice of 3 utility items. Finding the token can happen anywhere between your first to the fifth visit, but for me, I encountered it on my 4th and 5th visits which makes it a hassle because you end up needing to take damage to fill up the meter. The only tip here since it's based on luck is trying to go to Ares temple as much as possible during the first 5 floors because once you hit the 6th floor any damage you take subtracts a full heart or full piece of armor, instead of the half it was previously. If you haven’t found it token before then, I would restart because you may not have enough life to defeat the bosses at that point.

10) Unlocking Athena I found finding Athena’s token to be much easier to unlock and was able to find and beat her on my second run after defeating Ares. Whereas unlocking Ares took close to a dozen different runs. For this my tip would be to find a weapon that shoots straight, like the starting weapon, so you don’t accidentally shoot chests and doors which turn them red and take away from the Athena meter if you touch them. So weapons that shoot in multiple directions or bounce around should be avoided, in favor of one that you can accurately control. Enemies can also lock you out by damaging the containers and chests, so be careful to take them out first, or spend the crystals quickly before filing the room with your bullets. I would get in the habit of not always holding down the shoot button as you enter or explore rooms at this stage. Just by not taking any damage in a room you also build up the meter to find the Athena temple, which is pretty easy if you stay near the entrance to a room and keep your distance from enemies. Just be careful of bombs and explosives.

And those are my top 10 tips and recommendations to help you beat Neon Abyss. I hope these tips were useful, and help you on your way to defeat the 5 managers. Let me know in the comments below if you have any other suggestions that helped you that I didn’t mention. There were a lot of rules I didn’t unlock so let me know which ones were more consistently helpful during your playthroughs. So until next time, good luck!