Tower of Lost Souls

Soul Caibur IV Guide - Tower of Lost Souls

Sixty floors of hurt await you in the Tower of Lost Souls single player mode. Those looking for a challenge will definitely find one here. Skills, equipment, and weapon stats are in full effect here. Before setting out be sure to outfit your character of choice (or create a whole new one) with equipment and skills, as they play a large part in this mode. For more information on character creation, equipment and skills, check out the “Character Customization” section of this guide. There are two options: “Ascend” and “Descend.” The ascend option is available from the get go, but descend is only unlocked once floor 20 is completed. Descend is much like the Survival mode in the past Soulcalibur games in that you are pitted against an endless wave of enemies to see how many battles you can survive. You are permitted to select two characters here, however, and as with Ascend, weapon and equipment effects are active.

The floors are separated into “ranges,” and your party must survive to the end of the last floor in the range to unlock the next set of floors. If one of your characters is KO'd before the end of the set, that's it, they're done until you either reattempt or clear the last floor. Should you lose your entire party, you must then reattempt the set starting at the first floor. There are 1-4 enemies on each floor, and each set allows you to choose 1-3 characters. Furthermore, the status of a character's health bar carries over from one floor to the next. The only way to recover health, besides certain skills, is to switch out an injured character for awhile. For all of these reasons, the skills you equip your characters with are very important (ex., the HP Drain A skill would greatly aid a character who must face nine characters by him or herself).

If you are permitted to bring along more than one character, you can swap them on the fly by pressing the “SWT” button. By default, the switch button is set to RB on the Xbox 360 version, and the R1 button on the PS3 version. This configuration can be altered if you wish; pause the game, enter the “Control Settings” menu, then allocate the command to a button of your choosing. Characters cannot be switched in and out without restraint however; the status box in the bottom-left corner of the screen displays the status of the HP Gauge and Soul Gauge of the character next in line, as well as the switch gauge that empties whenever a character is swapped. The only way to refill a switch bar is to attack your enemies. Any character in reserve will regenerate health gradually, so it's best to swap out injured characters to preserve them for later use.

There is also a hidden item on every floor. At the start of each floor, a clue as to how to earn that floor's treasure chest appears on screen. When the requirement for the treasure chest is met, an equipment piece is awarded to the player. While every piece of equipment can be purchased in the character customization mode, unlocking the pieces this way means that you won't have to spend any gold on it. If you happen to earn a treasure chest that contains an item you previously unlocked or purchased, you will be given gold instead. Once the “Acquired a Treasure Chest” message appears, the floor does not need to be won to earn the treasure.

The next two pages will give you the ascending and descending treasure chest requirements for each floor.