Genshin Impact: Contending Tides guide — Extreme mode and rewards

The world of Teyvat is full of monsters, and you’ll finally have a shot at battling most of them in an arena due to the inclusion of the Contending Tides event in Genshin Impact. In it, you’ll have to select a particular challenge difficulty, and you’ll need to complete a few tallies and objectives to obtain rewards. Here’s our guide to help you with Genshin Impact‘s Contending Tides event.

Note: For more information about the game, check out our Genshin Impact guides and features hub.

Genshin Impact: Contending Tides event guide – Challenges and rewards

To start Genshin Impact‘s Contending Tides event, you’ll first need to reach Adventure Rank 20. Then, check the event panel so you can get a quest called “Mountainous Summons.” This simply entails visiting Dr. Livingstone in Dadaupa Gorge. After speaking to her, you’ll get a quest marker for the hilichurl arena.

The arena is where you’ll be able to begin a Contending Tides run. As of now, only one such challenge is available: “Welcome to Easy Mode.”

Here’s the gist:

• There’s an aura in the middle of the arena. Standing within it will boost the ATK of your characters.
• If a character inside the aura has a full stamina bar and they hit an enemy, they’ll unleash a powerful shockwave.

Likewise, there are three difficulty modes to choose from, each with its own recommended party levels, tasks, and rewards:

Note: To save time, try to do the Extreme difficulty version of the Contending Tides challenge (assuming that your party’s able to). Completing a Contending Tides challenge at a higher difficulty mode will net you the rewards for the lower tiers.

As far as the nature of the encounter goes, multiple mobs will be spawning in waves. This usually emphasizes the need for survival (i.e., healing, mitigation, and avoidance). It might be hard to do a pure nuking setup since more mobs will pop up anyway.

In my case, I used Ganyu as my main DPS due to her AoE capabilities. Venti was also there to provide support due to his tornado burst. Lastly, I had Qiqi keep my team in tip-top condition with her heals.

The only dangers here are the mitachurl leaping smashes (which can crush a weaker/low-defense character) and the hilichurl archers. If you get hit by Electro and Pyro shots in quick succession, the Overload proc will blast you to smithereens and leave you open for more punishment.

Day 2: Don’t Sweat It

Extreme difficulty requirements:

• Defeat 30x opponents in 180 seconds.
• Time between kills cannot exceed 20 seconds.
• No character deaths.

You’ll be facing a lot of Hydro slimes here. As such, you’ll want Cryo characters to keep them frozen. Then again, they’re just slimes, so you can do whatever you want. Heck, I accidentally used some of my unleveled characters like Zhongli since I forgot to swap him out. The only things you need to beware of are the water bubbles that can damage and trap you.

Day 3: Art of the Cannonball

Extreme difficulty requirements:

• Defeat 25x opponents in 190 seconds.
• Defeat 3x Blazing Axe Mitachurls.
• No character deaths.

This is similar to the challenge on day 1. As usual, you’ll want some AoE and crowd control capabilities.

Day 4: Battle of an Epoch

Extreme difficulty requirements:

• Defeat 5x opponents in 135 seconds.
• Do not leave the arena during the challenge.
• No character deaths.

This might be the first Contending Tides bout in Genshin Impact that’ll be tough. You’ll need to defeat 5x Ruin Guards here, but only two will be spawned at the start. Ideally, you should have someone who uses a bow for the stunning shots. But, you should also have some mitigation since these guys will leap, spin around, and fire homing rockets often. Likewise, watch out for attacks that cause knockback as you could end up tossed outside the arena (automatically failing the challenge).

Then again, this encounter is also a decent showcase for nuke-ready setups (i.e., Mona/Bennett comps). If you can quickly eliminate the first two Ruin Guards, followed by the next set, you should be able to finish within the time limit.

Genshin Impact is available via its official website. For more information, check out our guides and features hub.