While Duet Night Abyss is a gacha game, all of its characters and weapons can be earned completely free. You'll still have to roll the dice to get skins and cosmetics, but you can unlock the entire Duet Night Abyss roster with a little bit of grinding.

Figuring out how to get new characters and weapons can be intimidating at first glance, especially with all those unique currencies and store pages. Once you get comfortable with the core progression systems in Duet Night Abyss, however, you'll be able to farm for your favorite characters without spending a dime.

How to unlock characters in Duet Night Abyss

Characters, weapons, and Demon Wedges are all unlocked with special items called Secret Letter in Duet Night Abyss. You use Secret Letter to claim rewards after Covert Commissions, repeatable missions with shifting objectives that are the primary source of new characters and equipment.

Covert Commissions are all set at level 40, so you'll need to progress far enough in the Duet Night Abyss storyline and create a decent build for your starting character before you can start farming them comfortably.

Once you finish a Covert Commission, there's a chance you'll receive some character Thoughts. These are used for unlocks, and it takes 30 Thoughts to obtain a new character.

You'll unlock the majority of the Duet Night Abyss cast just by playing through the main story. New characters will be obtainable through story progression as well, and any character not tied to the story can be obtained with Secret Letters.

Either way, you'll still need to farm Secret Letters to unlock Intron upgrades for each character. Think of these like Constellations in Genshin Impact or Eidolons in Honkai Star Rail. They significantly boost the strength of each character, but you won't have to spend any money to get them in Duet Night Abyss!

Covert commissions explained

Covert Commissions are divided into three categories: Character, Weapon, and Demon Wedge. Missions in each category will let you spend a Secret Letter for a chance at unlocking something new. 

The missions in each category rotate every hour. The rewards stay the same no matter what, but the objectives vary in difficulty and length. You might have an escort mission in the character category for now, but that escort objective can move over to the weapon category later on.

After successfully completing a Covert Commission, your chosen Secret Letter will present you with a trio of items pulled from its potential loot pool. Think of it like a fancy lootbox. You can only take one of the three rewards, and the chances of getting key upgrade materials like Thoughts is slim. 

Gold-tier rewards like 10 Thoughts have a 10% chance to drop, for example, and the more common rewards aren't that valuable. You'll have to trudge through a few hours of gameplay to get enough Thoughts to unlock your desired character. 

If you're after weapons or Demon Wedges, you'll only need to get the blueprint to drop once to unlock the option to forge them. The real grind is getting all the crafting materials required to make them, but those thankfully drop from the same Secret Letter as the blueprint.

How to get secret letters

Getting Secret Letters in the first place is also a struggle once you've exhausted all the free early-game rewards and pre-registration bonuses. To get a Secret Letter in Duet Night Abyss, you have to exchange 10 Secret Letter Clues.

Scarlet Letter Clues come from everywhere in Duet Night Abyss, but some activities that give more than others. Starting out, you should focus on clearing the main story and major side quests. These will reward you with Scarlet Letter Clues that you can turn in for Scarlet Letters featuring your desired character or weapon.

After that, you'll have to turn to limited activities and endgame modes to get more Scarlet Letters. Every week, you can take on bosses in Nocturnal Echoes to earn Scarlet Letters for the newest characters. There's also the roguelike Mystic Maze which gives 30 Scarlet Letter Clues weekly, plus the challenging Immersive Theater that gives up to 280 Scarlet Letter Clues every refresh.

Finally, daily and weekly objectives will reward you with a steady supply of Secret Letter Clues. Make sure to knock these out whenever you log in so you don't miss out on any free goodies. Completing your dailies will get you 15 Scarlet Letter Clues, and that adds up really fast!

New character restrictions

Even though Duet Night Abyss has moved away from gacha mechanics for characters, the release schedule for new characters is still reminiscent of traditional gacha games. 

You initially won't be able to buy Secret Letters for new characters using Secret Letter Clues in the shop. Instead, Secret Letters for brand new characters will be featured rewards in the Immersive Theater mode for 28 days. After that 28-day period, their Secret Letters will then be moved to the Nocturnal Echoes weekly boss reward pool. Finally, their Secret Letters will show up in the shop after that.

At launch, Psyche is the featured character in the Immersive Theater. By completing Immersive Theater stages, you can unlock 65 Psyche Secret Letters and 50 Secret Letters for her signature weapon. 

Also during the launch window, the Nocturnal Echoes weekly bosses will reward Secret Letters for Tabethe, Truffle and Filbert, Yale, and Rhythm. After Psyche spends 28 days in the Immersive Theater, her Secret Letters will become obtainable via Nocturnal Echoes, replacing one of the existing reward characters.

This actually makes it pretty easy to target farm for new characters as long as you have a strong team capable of clearing Immersive Theater stages with the maximum rating. If you'd rather just wait, then every character will end up in the Secret Letter Clues exchange eventually.

How to get skins and outfits

There may not be any gacha mechanics for characters and weapons in Duet Night Abyss, but you'll still have to roll the dice to get skins and cosmetics. 

Skins are incredibly detailed in Duet Night Abyss, and you can even customize them to your liking with different color schemes, accessories, and visual effects. You can access the cosmetic gacha by selecting Myriad from the game's menu.

There, you'll see a familiar interface if you've played other gacha games. There's a limited and standard banner with unique currencies for each, an item exchange shop, and even a pity counter to help you keep track of how close you are to the big-ticket items.

You'll need Prismatic Hourglasses to pull for limited-time outfits and Pristine Hourglasses for everything else. You can get Hourglasses through in-game events and login bonuses, and they can also be purchased with Phoxene Plumules, the game's paid currency.
 

Pity system and gacha rates

Understanding the pity system in a gacha game is crucial if you want to plan your pulls and spending schedule, and Duet Night Abyss is no different.

You're guaranteed to get a purple-rarity item with every 10 pulls, and hard pity guarantees you 25 Iridescent Prisms after 90 rolls. Iridescent Prisms can be spent in the Prism Exchange to get the featured skin (priced at 25 Iridescent Prisms) or other rewards like weapon skins and accessories.

There's a 0.3% drop rate for gold-rarity items, which includes the featured outfit, a bundle of 25 Iridescent Prisms, and an even bigger bundle of 50 Iridescent Prisms. The big bundle has a significantly lower drop rate than the other rewards, but if you're lucky enough to get it, you'll have enough Prisms to exchange for the featured skin, weapon skin, and a few other items of your choosing.

There doesn't seem to be any form of soft pity in Duet Night Abyss, so your odds won't get any better as you climb toward that 90-pull guarantee. Pity is also banner-specific, so your accumulated pulls won't carry over to other banners.

There are also paid skins in Duet Night Abyss that you can straight up buy without taking any chances. These are typically seasonal outfits, and a Christmas-themed skin is the first that'll be available at launch. It has an introductory discounted price of just a dollar, and you can use it with any character in the game. New updates will add even more outfits to the shop, so be sure to check often.

Duet Night Abyss is available now on Epic Games Store.