Dark Surge Season Guide

When you reach Chapter 4 every zone from that point on has a chance to contain Dark Surge.

Every zone that has Dark Surge displays a purple progress bar on your screen with some of the monsters marked with a purple icon on the minimap.

After killing some of the marked monsters, the bar fills up. Once it's full you can press the button ("V" is the default bind for PC version) to summon additional monsters to kill. The more monsters you kill, the more waves you summon. Magic and rare monsters give more progression.

Trait and Confusion Cards are a great way to add additional content to your maps. Season 2 introduced many new Trait Cards including Transformation - Dark Surge which lets you encounter Dark Surge more often by drawing 2 of the new Dark Surge themed Confusion Cards. Here is a list of all new Dark Surge Confusion Cards:

Each one of these Confusion Cards increases the chance to encounter Dark Surge in the maps affected by them. These Confusion Cards also benefit from a new keyword called Dark Surge Undercurrent which means that after completing 1 map with Dark Surge Confusion Card active you can continously draw more of them until the end of Chaos Invasion round.

When you summon Dark Surge monsters an icon appears next to the progress bar that determines what type of rewards the current wave of monsters drops. Possible rewards are:

The first summoned wave of Dark Surge monsters after the map boss has died has a chance to include a mini boss. After you kill it it drops one of the Seeds - special types of Compasses that affect Dark Surge map mechanics and one of the Edicts - special keys needed to face the Dark Surge pinnacle boss Tidemaster Keegan. They are very valuable so make sure to save up and use at least 1 wave after killing the map boss.

To encounter Tidemaster Keegan you need to go to the Void Rift at the Netherrealm and place 3 Edicts - Edict: Dart, Edict: Dive, Edict: Ruin to start the fight.

You can also add 4th, much rarer Edict: Doom to summon "Uber" Tidemaster Keegan which is far harder but with improved rewards.

Corrosion is a special way of crafting items that requires Corrosion materials - Aemberon Core or Familiar Nexus. Aemberon Core is acquired by killing monsters summoned by Dark Surge in maps. Familiar Nexus is a Tidemaster Keegan specific drop and provides a new possible outcome when you are Corroding an item.

Here is a list of possible Corrosion outcomes:

After Corroding an item it is put in Corroded state which prevents it from being Corroded again. When a T1 explicit modifier is being upgraded by 1 tier it turns into a new T0 Aember modifier which is usually extremely powerful.