It has to be the easiest cycle during the Sumerian patch set because there is no way I 36-starred it in spite of all my trivial mistakes, like skipping bursts during my rotation, or running a suboptimal team on the second half of the 12th floor's last chamber where I chased the enemies across the arena while my hypercarry's burst was active. Had this been the last Abyss, I would've certainly clocked 4 minutes in the last chamber. I can't complain, though; it was genuinely fun and undoubtedly less stressful than any other Abyss in the past couple months!
Yup, it's a much welcome respite, but I'll spend all of it farming upgrades for my core units because I don't trust Hoyo to not pull another 3.7 on us soon. Won't hurt to be fully prepared.
I don't follow leaks so I don't know what's HoYo is cooking for us in Fontaine but it's definitely not going to be pretty after Hyperbloom proved to lower the barrier to entry for the Spiral Abyss. So, if their track record of buffing enemies for the Abyss specifically and the fact this cycle was specially tailored for Eula (to many theory crafters, a weak unit by today's standards) are anything to go by, then I expect them to just do that to us ;)