The Tower of Trials in DragonSword: Awakening is the game’s main endgame climbing mode, where you clear a series of increasingly demanding floors for rewards and tower currency. In practice, it works like a gauntlet: you unlock it through the Cerese questline, then push as far as your team can go, with progress tied to floor clears, milestones, and the rewards shop.
How it unlocks
You do not get access to the tower right away. One guide says it becomes available after progressing to Chapter 3 and completing Cerese’s bond quest, while another says you unlock it by finishing Seressi’s world quest, so the exact quest naming may vary by guide or localization. Community comments also suggest that if the tower teleport or barrier does not appear, returning to the spot where you meet Cerese is the fix.
What you do inside
The Tower of Trials is described as a floor-based challenge built around the game’s core combat states, especially Stun, Air, and Down. Each floor raises the difficulty, so the usual loop is to clear a few floors, bank the rewards, and come back stronger rather than treating it as a one-time sprint. One endgame guide describes it as a 50-floor gauntlet, but modifier details and exact reward tables are still unclear in the sources I found.
Rewards and why players run it
The tower matters because it feeds several upgrade systems, especially Exclusive Karma progression. Reports say it gives specialized currency for the tower shop, plus materials used for transmutation and crafting, including the dark hole item needed for some Exclusive Karma paths. Another guide says the tower is also a major source of Fragments of Memory, with each run reportedly giving over 2,600 in some setups.
How to approach it
A sensible approach is to treat the tower as a checkpoint grind, not an all- or-nothing climb. Push until your team starts losing efficiency, then stop at the highest reliable floor and cash out the rewards. If you are targeting Exclusive Karma upgrades, the tower is less about raw completion and more about consistent farming across repeat runs.
What is still uncertain
The broad structure is clear, but some details are not firmly documented in the sources I found, especially exact floor modifiers, reward scaling, and the full unlock path wording. So the safest description is that the Tower of Trials is a repeatable endgame climb that unlocks after Cerese-related progression and rewards currency, materials, and progression items for character gear.