Stygian Onslaught is the one piece of Genshin endgame that most players open once, get hit by a level 110 boss, and never touch again. That is a mistake worth about 450 Primogems, three Dust of Enlightenment and half a million Mora every six weeks, plus two weapon skins that quietly disappear when the cycle turns over.
And the cycle is about to turn over. The version running right now, Stygian Onslaught: Battle of the Starburst, closes on 2026/09/22 at 03:59 server time — about three days from this article's check date. If the Radiant Phantasm skins are not in your inventory by then, they are gone with this iteration.
Quick answer: Stygian Onslaught is a permanent combat challenge at Sal Terrae in Liyue, unlocked by the World Quest "Tumult Subduer" and open to any account at Adventure Rank 20+ who has cleared Archon Quest Prologue Act III. Each cycle runs three time-limited battlefields across six difficulties — Normal, Advancing, Hard, Menacing, Fearless and Dire — at enemy levels 40 / 70 / 90 / 100 / 105 / 110. The Primogems all sit in the first three tiers: 150 each for Normal, Advancing and Hard, for 450 total. Menacing and Fearless pay one Dust of Enlightenment each. Dire pays no Primogems at all — it pays the Radiant Phantasm weapon skin, and finishing all three battles on Dire in single-player within 180 seconds total upgrades that to Radiant Phantasm: Sublimation. The current cycle ends 2026/09/22 03:59 server time; based on eleven consecutive archived cycles spaced exactly 42 days apart, the next one should open on 30 September 2026.
Article status: verified 19 September 2026. The event window, eligibility, Adventure Rank gates, Co-Op rules and the Disturbance Outbreak rule are transcribed from the live in-game announcement 21847 on genshin.hoyoverse.com, mirrored on HoYoLAB as article 46329018. Enemy levels, timers, the reward ladder, the Battle Record Rules and the Exalted Ones system come from the in-game tutorial and description text reproduced on the community wiki; per-cycle totals and battlefield mechanics come from its archived 2026-08-19 page. The next-reset date is derived arithmetic on eleven archived start dates, not an announced date. No leak, beta build or datamine is used here.
What is Stygian Onslaught in Genshin Impact?
Stygian Onslaught is a boss-rush challenge added in Version 5.7 and kept permanently in the game, unlike the rotating event tab most players scan on patch day. You reach it at Sal Terrae in Liyue after the World Quest "Tumult Subduer". The entry requirements are modest: Adventure Rank 20 or above and Archon Quest Prologue Act III, "Song of the Dragon and Freedom". The notice adds, "Complete Archon Quest 'Perilous Trail' first to get the best experience from this event" — a spoiler courtesy, not a hard gate.
Structurally it is closer to Spiral Abyss than Imaginarium Theater: three battlefields, one boss each, a timer, and a ladder you climb rather than a roster puzzle you solve. What makes it distinct is how deep that ladder runs — the same three bosses exist at level 40 and at level 110.
The Events Overview panel above is the fastest way to read your own state: Disturbance Outbreak counter, accumulated Dire Prestige, and your best record in seconds. Read that record field carefully, because it is the one that gates the Sublimation skin. HoYoverse's Battle Record Rules state that "best records will only record your highest-difficulty challenge performance for the current cycle" and that ties are broken by "the shortest total clearance time". It is a total across all three battles, not a per-battlefield best.
What are the six Stygian Onslaught difficulties?
Six tiers, ascending, and from Hard onward each clear unlocks the next:
- Normal — enemy level 40
- Advancing — enemy level 70
- Hard — enemy level 90
- Menacing — enemy level 100
- Fearless — enemy level 105
- Dire — enemy level 110
Two rules change the mode completely at the Menacing line, and both catch people out.
First, the timer collapses. At Hard and below you get roughly ten minutes per boss, which is effectively unlimited for any built account. At Menacing and above you get two minutes. The challenge stops being a survival check and becomes a damage-per-second check.
Second, the roster locks across battlefields. At Menacing and above, characters, weapons and artifacts used on one battlefield are locked out of the other two. This is not a DPS problem, it is an inventory problem: you need three non-overlapping teams, each with its own artifact sets. Players who stall here are rarely stalled by the boss — they are stalled by owning two sets of Crit pieces and three teams that all want them. Our artifact reshaping guide covers which pieces are worth converting versus rerolling.
Co-Op follows the same split. The notice confirms Normal, Advancing and Hard support matchmaking, while Menacing, Fearless and Dire are same-world only, and the Fearless and Dire reward tiers are granted only on single-player clears. Carrying a friend through Dire gets them the fight, not the skin.
How many Primogems does Stygian Onslaught give?
450 Primogems per cycle, and every one of them sits in the bottom half of the ladder.
The full ladder, as HoYoverse prints it:
- Normal — 150 Primogems, 100,000 Mora, 5 Hero's Wit
- Advancing — 150 Primogems, 100,000 Mora, 5 Hero's Wit
- Hard — 150 Primogems, 100,000 Mora, 5 Hero's Wit
- Menacing — 1 Dust of Enlightenment, 100,000 Mora, 5 Hero's Wit
- Fearless — 1 Dust of Enlightenment, 100,000 Mora, 5 Hero's Wit
- Dire — the Radiant Phantasm weapon appearance (single-player clear), upgraded to Radiant Phantasm: Sublimation if all three battles are finished in 180 seconds total
Cycle total: 450 Primogems, 500,000 Mora, 25 Hero's Wit and 3 Dust of Enlightenment — two from the difficulty ladder, plus a third if you also bank 1,200 Dire Prestige during the Outbreak — and both weapon skins.
Read that ladder as a strategy, not a list. Hard is the payday — a level 90 boss on a ten-minute timer with no roster lock, which any account with two ascended teams can walk through. Everything above it costs far more effort for zero Primogems. If you are not ready for a two-minute level 100 fight, clear Hard on all three battlefields, bank your 450, and close the menu without guilt.
One thing worth stressing about the skins: Radiant Phantasm and Radiant Phantasm: Sublimation are not permanent unlocks you can farm later. They are available until the next iteration, then they rotate out, and the current announcement confirms a new weapon appearance has been added to both this cycle. That is the real deadline on 22 September — the Primogems come back in six weeks.
What is the Disturbance Outbreak and how does the Resin exchange work?
This is the part of the mode that actually pays your account, and the part almost nobody opens.
The official notice states it in one line: "In the first 10 days from when the challenge is available, the Ley Line disturbance will be in an 'Outbreak' state." For this cycle that window ran 2026/08/19 10:00 to 2026/08/29 03:59 server time and is already closed, so treat the first ten days of the next cycle as the only ten that matter.
Correct one misconception first: the Outbreak is not free rewards, it is a Resin multiplier. The notice spells out the loop — players at Adventure Rank 45 and above can clear stages at Hard difficulty or above and then "consume Resin to earn the rewards from their chosen Domains of Blessing, while also accumulating Dire Prestige".
The exchange rate is what makes it worth doing. Spending Original Resin pays 1x the Domain rewards and awards 20 Dire Prestige; Condensed Resin pays 2x and awards 40; Fragile or Transient Resin pays 3x and awards 60. Prestige buys nothing directly — it is a milestone track with two payouts. At 120 you get an additional random 5-star artifact from the two sets in your selected Domain of Blessing; at 1,200 you get a Dust of Enlightenment as an additional "Dire Commendation", the third Dust in the cycle total above.
You pick that Domain through the Reward Settings panel, which is the real draw: for ten days your artifact farming stops costing travel time and starts paying triple on Fragile Resin. If you change one habit next cycle, make it this.
Which bosses are in the current Stygian Onslaught rotation?
The Battle of the Starburst cycle runs three battlefields, each with an advantage tag telling you what the fight is tuned around:
Chimeric Winged Lion — advantage goes to Superconduct and Cryo characters. At the start of battle the Nemesis generates an Electro Ward that has to be broken through Radiance: Stellar Glimmer and reaction damage rather than raw hits. This is the battlefield most directly tied to the current lunar mechanics — if the Stellar Glimmer language is unfamiliar, our lunar reactions explainer covers how Lunar-Charged and Stellar Glimmer actually calculate.
Veteran Wind Operative — advantage goes to healing characters. The fight applies Bond of Life through its "Hunt Down" pattern, which turns a healer from a comfort pick into the mechanic that lets you keep your damage window open.
Knuckle Duckle — advantage goes to Electro-Charged and Electro characters. The Nemesis raises a Ward that increases all RES, then enters Duckstruction Mode and deploys Stamping Devices that are, in HoYoverse's words, "fairly resistant to all DMG except Electro DMG". You disrupt them either by dealing Electro-Charged or Lunar-Charged damage repeatedly or by simply destroying them. Bring an Electro applicator, not an Electro burst.
Layered on top of all three are the Exalted Ones, and this is the mechanic most guides get backwards. Exalted Ones are playable characters, not enemies. Up to 16 characters are designated Exalted at a time, and the notice is explicit: "'Exalted Ones' will obtain buff effects; adding them to your party will help you complete the challenge." The buff is an Eminent Boon worth +20% HP, ATK and DEF, and the status is earned through Eminence accumulated by every player who used that character in a solo Dire clear. The roster refreshes daily at 04:00 server time, is tracked per server, and the bonus stacks alongside the equivalent bonus a character carries in Imaginarium Theater.
Which makes the most important line in the whole announcement read very differently than it looks:
"Under the 'Dire' difficulty, 'Exalted Ones' no longer obtain buff effects."
That is a nerf to you, not to the enemies. At Dire the Ley Line disturbance is described as "interfering with even the Exalted Ones and rendering their Eminent Boons ineffective" — so on top of five extra enemy levels, your own team loses a 20% stat block it had at Fearless. Dire is strictly harder than the tier below it, not a loophole around it. If Fearless is out of reach, Dire will be too, which is why its reward times are usually cleared by heavily constellated accounts.
When does Stygian Onslaught reset?
The current cycle ends 2026/09/22 at 03:59 server time. HoYoverse has not published a start date for the next one.
What it has published is eleven previous cycles, and they are unusually disciplined. Archived start dates run 25 June 2025, 6 August 2025, 17 September 2025, 29 October 2025, 10 December 2025, 21 January 2026, 4 March 2026, 15 April 2026, 27 May 2026, 8 July 2026 and 19 August 2026. Every single gap is exactly 42 days — no drift, always a Wednesday, always one week after a version release. Version 7.0 launched Wednesday 12 August 2026; Stygian Onslaught opened Wednesday 19 August 2026.
Extend that pattern and the next cycle lands on Wednesday 30 September 2026, with the Outbreak running to roughly 10 October. Treat it as a derived date, not an announced one — ten consecutive intervals with zero drift, but HoYoverse can move it, and we will update this page the moment a notice appears in the in-game feed.
That also explains the gap you are about to see: Version 7.1 arrives on 23 September, leaving about a week with no Stygian cycle running. Our Version 7.1 release date guide has the maintenance windows server by server, the 7.1 banner breakdown covers what to save for, and our Vesna build guide covers her artifact and weapon priorities if she is on your list.
How do you actually clear Dire?
Three things separate accounts that clear Dire from accounts that do not, and none of them is "more constellations".
Plan three teams before you start, not after. The Menacing-and-above lockout means your first battlefield choice silently decides the other two. Sequence it backwards: build for your weakest battlefield first, then allocate what is left.
Match the advantage tag. The tags mark the element each fight is balanced around. Entering Knuckle Duckle without an Electro applicator is not a hard mode, it is a wall.
Treat 180 seconds as a separate goal, and budget it as a total. The Radiant Phantasm skin drops on any solo Dire clear; Sublimation needs all three battles finished inside 180 seconds combined, which is roughly sixty seconds per level 110 Nemesis. Bank the clear first, then optimise for the record.
FAQ
Is Stygian Onslaught a permanent event or a limited-time one? Both. The mode is permanent — added in Version 5.7, it lives at Sal Terrae in Liyue year-round. The individual cycles are time-limited: Battle of the Starburst runs 2026/08/19 10:00 to 2026/09/22 03:59 server time, and its rewards and weapon skins expire with it.
How many Primogems can you get from one Stygian Onslaught cycle? 450 — 150 each from Normal, Advancing and Hard. The three tiers above pay no Primogems: Menacing and Fearless pay one Dust of Enlightenment each, and Dire pays the weapon skin.
Do you need to clear Dire to get everything worth having? No, with one exception. Every Primogem, all the Mora and all the Hero's Wit are available by Hard difficulty. The only Dire-exclusive rewards are the two Radiant Phantasm appearances, and those need a single-player clear — a Co-Op carry does not count.
Can you do Stygian Onslaught in Co-Op? Partly. Matchmaking is available for Normal, Advancing and Hard. Menacing, Fearless and Dire are same-world only, and their reward tiers are granted only for single-player clears.
What is the difference between Fearless and Dire? Five enemy levels — 105 against 110 — plus one rule that makes the jump much larger than it looks. The notice states that "under the 'Dire' difficulty, 'Exalted Ones' no longer obtain buff effects". Exalted Ones are playable characters, so that line strips a +20% HP, ATK and DEF Eminent Boon off your own team. Dire is harder than Fearless in both directions at once, which is why its reward times are usually cleared by heavily constellated accounts.
When is the next Stygian Onslaught reset? Not officially announced. All eleven previous cycles started exactly 42 days apart, always on a Wednesday one week after a version release, which points to 30 September 2026. Treat it as derived until a notice appears in the in-game feed.
Did I miss the Disturbance Outbreak this cycle? If you are reading this in September 2026, yes — it ran 2026/08/19 to 2026/08/29 server time. It is always the first ten days of a cycle, so set a reminder for the opening weekend of the next one.
What are Exalted Ones in Stygian Onslaught? They are playable characters, not enemies. Up to 16 are designated Exalted at a time and receive an Eminent Boon worth +20% HP, ATK and DEF when you put them in your party; the notice says plainly that "adding them to your party will help you complete the challenge". The roster refreshes daily at 04:00 server time, is tracked per server, and the boon stops working entirely at Dire difficulty.
Bottom line: clear Hard on all three battlefields before 22 September and bank the 450 Primogems — that part of the mode is free money for any account past the early midgame. Chase Dire only for the Radiant Phantasm skins, the only rewards in the ladder that do not come back.
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