Darksiders II Crucible adds a tiered Survival Mode to Darksiders II that can yield some pretty strong rewards.

This added content isn’t available right away, and with good reason. You will need some major gear and a lot of understanding of your skills if you are going to make any kind of headway in Crucible.. Once purchased, your first chance to take on the trial comes after Act 1, basically after finally reaching the Tree of Life in the Forge Lands.

You receive an invite to a strange tournament where wave after wave of the enemies that you’ve faced are thrown at you and your only goal is to take out the enemies and make it as far as possible. There are 100 waves in total, and at the end of each 25 waves, you will be granted special gear that will greatly increase your stats.

Actually, Darksiders II Crucible’s reward system is similar to that of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. Every five waves, a chest appears and you can choose to pick up the loot and leave the arena, or ignore it and move on to the next wave. If you ignore the chest and continue fighting, only to die before the next chest appears, then you leave the arena with nothing.

The Crucible is broken up into four sets, and each time you complete one of these sets, you will be awarded a specific piece of equipment. These items are The Heartstone Talisman, Abyssal Boots, Barbed Defilers (scythes), Abyssal Spaulders (shoulder guards) and the Assassin Talisman, but Crucible offers one more final wave if you manage to get through all 100 fights. This last one pits you up against Wicked K, the creature running the Crucible. Those who played the first game might remember running into this character a couple of times, and each one of those fights was hard. Your reward for taking down this top-hat sporting demon is the Elemental Talisman, and if you manage to go through all 101 waves in a single sitting, then you can get even more rewards.

Darksiders II Crucible’s rewards are mostly rated for level 22 or above, and with good reason; this isn’t an easy challenge. Just because the arena is available to the player at the end of the first act, around level 10 depending on how you play your character, doesn’t mean you will be able to make it very far.

In fact, you would be hard pressed to make it past the first 25 waves until you’ve gotten close to the end of the game and really filled out your skill tree. As for getting to the end of the entire Survival Mode, well, playing through Darksiders II a second time on New Game Plus mode is a must have. The good news is, if you die, when you are revived, your health and wrath potions, as well as your Reaper level are all reset, so there is no real lasting consequence if and when you fall in the fights. On the flip side, killing the many enemies you will take on doesn’t yield any experience, so don’t expect to level up while in the fight either.

Darksiders II Crucible is a pretty good compliment to the rest of the Darksiders II experience. Sure, you don’t need the Survival Mode in order to enjoy and play through the game’s story, but with the added challenge of facing pretty much every enemy found in the game, both low-level grunts and bosses, Crucible just adds more to an already enjoyable and challenging experience.

I would recommend this add-on to anyone who is already enjoying the rest of the game, even if you haven’t had a chance to beat the story yet. Crucible is a fun place to try your hand when you are stumped in a dungeon or just need a break from the rest of the game’s quests.