BDO Altar of Blood 22nd-24th Illusion: the new ceiling, the deleted Abyssal tier, and whether the climb pays

The Altar of Blood has quietly become one of BDO's most dependable weekly payouts, and the September 10 patch rebuilt its top end in a way that most launch-week coverage under-reported. Two things happened in the same maintenance: the ladder gained a 22nd, 23rd and 24th Illusion, and the Abyssal Illusion - the challenge tier that sat above the 21st Illusion for players who had cleared everything - was deleted from the game outright. Pearl Abyss has stated that the ladder is planned to extend as far as the 27th Illusion.

For veterans who cleared the Abyssal tier and have been coasting on that weekly since, the change is not neutral. For everyone else, the genuinely useful discovery is buried in the reward tables: the three new rungs pay the same weekly reward. That single fact decides how high you need to climb, and it is the reason this guide tells you to stop at 22 rather than push to the new ceiling.

The ceiling moved up and the safety tier vanished

One piece of goodwill is worth noting because it tells you how Pearl Abyss saw the removal: if you completed an Abyssal Illusion between September 6 at 00:00 and the September 10 maintenance, an additional Abyssal Illusion weekly reward was sent to your Black Spirit's Safe (B) during maintenance, on top of that week's normal weekly. If you cleared it in that window, check your safe.

The removal itself is the more consequential half. The Abyssal Illusion was the game's way of saying 'you have finished the ladder, here is something harder' - it stripped out the devices that predict spawn locations and events, and it was explicitly described as requiring a high level of proficiency. Deleting it and replacing it with three more numbered Illusions changes the shape of the content: instead of a separate skill-check tier above the ladder, the ladder simply continues. Whether that is better depends entirely on whether the new rungs feel different or just bigger, and the patch notes do not claim they do.

The three new rungs in numbers

Read the labels carefully, because they matter for matchmaking. The patch notes call these recommended AP and DP values, not minimums - and the distinction is not academic. Solo matchmaking checks your sheet against a minimum requirement, while a pre-made three-player party can enter without meeting it. The displayed AP figure (405 to 415) is the number on your character sheet; the total AP figure (2110 to 2290) is what that corresponds to once every bonus is counted. If you have been comparing your sheet to the total column, you have been reading the wrong number.

One thing the patch notes do not state is the stage composition. The Altar of Blood has historically alternated two wave-defence stages followed by a boss stage, which makes stages 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, 18 and 21 all boss fights - and by that rhythm the 24th would be a boss. Treat that as a pattern rather than a confirmation: the official notes for the new rungs list requirements and rewards only, so verify on your first attempt rather than planning a loadout around it.

All three new rungs pay the same weekly

Here is the part that should change your behaviour. The weekly clear reward for the 22nd, 23rd and 24th Illusions is the same list, item for item:

Weekly rewards are sent to your Black Spirit's Safe at 00:00 UTC every Sunday, once per Family, and only your highest clear of that week counts - clearing the 22nd, 23rd and 24th in the same week pays the top-end weekly exactly once. Combine that rule with the identical table above and the conclusion is unavoidable: once you can clear the 22nd Illusion, the 23rd and 24th add nothing to your weekly income. They exist for first-clear rewards and Knowledge.

Every first-clear reward is also guaranteed once per Family, so those numbers are real rather than aspirational - but they are also one-and-done. The gap between the 22nd and 24th first-clear payouts is a handful of Black Stones, five Trace of Nature, and ten Sealed Black Magic Crystals. That is a rounding error next to what one weekly pays, and it is why chasing the 24th for the reward is the wrong reason to do it.

What one top-end weekly is actually worth

The interesting currency here is not the gold. It is Resplendent Origin of Dark Hunger, which can be used when your Enhancement Chance is between 300 and 350 to raise it by 1 per item - the deep-failstack band where most endgame enhancement decisions actually get made. Resplendent Essence of Devouring converts into the same thing: use Heating on 4 of them to obtain 1 Resplendent Origin.

• 4 guaranteed Resplendent Origin of Dark Hunger from the weekly itself.
• 9 Resplendent Essence of Devouring, which is roughly 2.25 more Origins once heated at 4-to-1.
• Net effect: about 6.25 Resplendent Origins per week, from one clear, without touching a grind spot.
• Advice of Valks (+300, +250 and +200) sit on top as raw failstack injection for the same band.

Priced against the official Adventurer's Guide bands, the picture is easy to underrate. The guide lists Resplendent Origin of Dark Hunger with a Central Market price band of 1.5B to 6B silver, and Resplendent Essence of Devouring at 375M to 1.5B silver. Four Origins plus nine Essences therefore sit somewhere between roughly 9.4B and 37.5B silver at the listed bands - and the bands are internally consistent, since four Essences at the low band equal exactly one Origin at the low band. Treat that as a nominal range rather than a payday: those are listing bands, not sale prices, and they move with the market.

The gold is harder to pin down honestly. Each Gold Bar Box holds 3 to 10 Gold Bar (1,000G) items, and the item's stated exchange value is 100,000,000 silver each, so 14 boxes span a nominal window of roughly 4.2B to 14B silver. Flag that as a nominal figure: the roll spread is more than threefold, gold bars exist to move silver between storages rather than to be spent, and any single number you see quoted for this weekly is a guess dressed as a fact.

Getting in, and the rule that caps your ceiling

1. Open Menu (ESC) then War (F7) and select Altar of Blood, or use the Altar of Blood entry in the ESC menu directly.
2. Pick the stage you want to match for and press Find Match. You can queue solo or bring a pre-made party of three.
3. If you queue solo, you must meet the stage's minimum AP and DP. If you bring a full party of three, you can enter without meeting them.
4. The party leader selects the stage once inside and presses Start. The run begins immediately - there is no lobby to plan in.

The rule that catches people is the party ceiling: when you enter as a party, the highest stage you can challenge is set by the member with the lowest clear record. Two players who have cleared to the 22nd plus one who has only cleared to the 15th cannot pull the group up - the party is capped at the next stage for the 15th-cleared member. If you want to reach the 22nd this week, bring people who are already there, or push the lowest-record member forward first.

• Attempts: you get 10 matchmaking attempts before the party is automatically ejected - the old guides still say 5, but the limit was raised from 5 to 10 in the August 6, 2026 patch. There is no weekly limit on entries, so you can re-queue as often as you like.
• Death is permanent within a stage. No resurrection, and neither Witch or Wizard resurrection skills nor Medical Kits work here.
• Wave stages fail if the central relic's HP hits zero. Boss stages enrage six minutes after the boss appears and fail outright if the boss is not dead eight minutes after it appears.
• An Afuaru Graverobber can spawn in a stage; killing it with back attacks heals the relic by 10%, which is often the difference between a clear and a reset.
• No Combat or Skill EXP is awarded, and item drop rate and drop amount effects do not apply - do not burn a loot scroll here.
• Campsite, Maid/Butler, World Map, Quest UI and Minimap are all disabled. If nothing happens for ten minutes after entering, you are removed automatically.

Clear records never reset, and you always resume from the highest stage you have previously reached, so there is no re-climb each week. That is what makes the weekly reward system work: your job every Sunday-to-Sunday window is to clear your personal best once, not to re-run the ladder.

Should you climb past 22 at all?

The bottom line

Climb to the 22nd Illusion and stop there. The weekly reward is identical all the way to the 24th, so the only thing the last two rungs buy you is a one-time first-clear payout and two Knowledge entries - and the 415/475 recommended bracket they ask for is not a trivial step from 405/465.

Do the 22nd every week and bank the Resplendent Origins for the 300-350 enhancement band. If your gear already clears it comfortably, take the 23rd and 24th first clears once, collect the guaranteed rewards and the Knowledge, and then go back to running the rung you can clear without thinking. That is the whole optimal play - and it is a shorter sentence than the ladder's new length suggests.