The Escalation game mode is a new endgame activity in The Division 2 Rise Up Season. Players who have been looking for more challenges in the game have plenty to do within this new game mode. There are ten total tiers within Escalation, all with progressively more difficulty, and a brand-new gear rarity to grab as well. Players are recommended to fully level attributes within their existing gear pieces to max, and then attempt it.

This article goes over the new Escalation game mode in Y8S1.

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The Division 2 Y8S1 Rise Up: Escalation game mode breakdown

The Escalation game mode can be started from a menu available within the White House, just on the left of the Countdown vendor. Here, you can choose the mission, and the option for either matchmaking or solo one of these missions. A new batch of missions will be rotated every week, during the reset time.

Beside each mission, there’s the option to view as mutators as well, giving you an idea of the disadvantages you can face based on the tier you are attempting.

Once you select a mission from the menu, you can fast-travel to that mission’s starting location. Here, you can “Escalate Mission” and bring up the tier screen available, which for you, should start from 0 as a beginner. With each tier that comes after, you will require a specific number of tokens to attempt them.

You can get 2 tokens by completing the Tier 0 Escalation mission. You will not be asked to deposit any tokens to attempt this difficulty. However, from Tier 1 until 10, you are required to deposit a number of tokens to attempt those difficulties, with each difficulty progressively increasing the amount of required tokens.

Here’s a list of the number of tokens required, compared to the amount of profit you can make upon completing each tier:

• Tier 1: Deposit 1, Profit 3.
• Tier 2: Deposit 3, Profit 6.
• Tier 3: Deposit 7, Profit 10.
• Tier 4: Deposit 12, Profit 16.
• Tier 5: Deposit 20, Profit 24.
• Tier 6: Deposit 29, Profit 34.
• Tier 7: Deposit 41, Profit 46.
• Tier 8: Deposit 54, Profit 60.
• Tier 9: Deposit 70, Profit 76.
• Tier 10: Deposit 87, Profit 94.

With each tier, enemy’s health and damage will also increase by 20-40%, alongside the addition of mutators to make things more challenging for the players.

Note that the profits mentioned above are for solo players and group leaders only. In groups, anyone aside from the leader do not need to deposit any token to start a tier. However, the profit they will make will be significantly lower in number than what a leader will recieve.

In short, group members aren’t losing anything, and are also gaining a handful of tokens just by being in a squad.

To make the player’s life even more difficult, here is a list of enemy mutators:

• Harvester: When dealing damage, enemy can regenerate armor and health based on your max armor. Can also overheal.
• Suppressor: When damaged, the enemy starts to charge an EMP, which then explodes within the area when that enemy is killed. Everyone within the area will be suppressed.
• Anchor: This enemy has damage resistance and throws incendiary ammo as long as he has allies around him.
• Aid Specialist: This enemy will fix armor of all allies around them if the armor is badly damaged.

A couple of global modifers are also included in some tier, namely:

• Unyielding: All enemies become immune to CC when significantly damaged.
• Hot Foot: When you stay still for too long, a charge counter fills up, which can shock and damage you once fully charged.

Players will find all six mutators in Tier 7 to 10 in every Escalation mission.

Lastly, for rewards, you can get the new Prototype gear pieces from enemies within this game mode. The drop rate is unforgiving, so you might have to keep going until a few Prototype gear drops. Dismantling these gears will yield Proto Cores, usable for upgrading a maxed-out gear to Prototype.

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