Echoes of Aincrad does not attempt to rebuild the full 100-floor tower from Sword Art Online. The game ships with two floors, and everything you can explore, fight, and complete happens across those first and second levels of the floating castle.
Quick answer: There are exactly two playable floors in Echoes of Aincrad, Floor 1 and Floor 2. No additional floors are unlocked in the base game.
Why the game stops at two floors
The scope decision comes down to scale. Each floor is enormous. Floor 1 alone spans a ten-kilometer diameter, which works out to roughly eighty square kilometers of playable ground. Producer Yosuke Futami has said that recreating all 100 floors at that level of detail would take about ten years of development.
Even with the reduced scope, the two maps took four years to finish, with work starting back in 2021. Rather than thin out the entire tower, the team concentrated on making a smaller slice dense and detailed, drawing heavily from the Sword Art Online Progressive material.
What Floor 1 contains
Floor 1 is the largest floor in Aincrad, and mapping it out is a core part of the experience. Its terrain mixes grasslands, dense forests, a lake and wetland region, and mountainous ruins. The surrounding plains are home to animal-type monsters such as boars and wolves, along with insect-type enemies like wasps.
- The Town of Beginnings, the largest town in Aincrad, serves as the starting base for most players.
- Tolbana, the second-largest town, is a bustling settlement known for its long history.
- Additional stops include Horunka Village, Medai Village, and the Black Iron Palace.
- A Labyrinth tower rises at the northern edge of the map, and you must clear twenty levels to reach the boss room.
What Floor 2 contains
Floor 2 shifts to a savanna environment built around grasslands, plateaus, and rocky ground dotted with small caves, some hiding underground water. The main hub is Urbus, a city set inside a mountain crater, and it is joined by smaller villages used by adventurers and merchants.
The threat level steps up here. You face ox and buffalo-type monsters, including giant cows, which makes gear upgrades and build experimentation more important. Floor 2 also holds the “Martial Arts” extra skill quest.
How long the two floors last
Two floors does not mean a short game. The main campaign runs about 30 hours, and finishing the side content adds roughly another 20 hours. In story terms, the two floors are comparable in size to The Witcher 3, so the compact floor count reflects density rather than a lack of content.
The narrative also follows a new original character rather than Kirito, and it focuses on the early days of the death game, the strain of survival, and the darker corners of that period.
Will more floors arrive through DLC?
The Deluxe and Ultimate editions include an Expansion DLC pass, and you can review the tiers on the official Echoes of Aincrad page. However, the immediate DLC is not expected to add new floors, and no official date for additional floors is currently confirmed. Anything beyond the first two levels would likely depend on future releases, not the launch expansion.
How the floor count compares to other SAO games
| Game | Floor scope |
|---|---|
| Echoes of Aincrad | Floors 1 and 2, with deep content on each |
| Integral Factor | All 100 floors in a mobile gacha format |
| Hollow Fragment | Floors 76 through 100 |
| Fractured Daydream | Smaller roster with five boss fights |
If you came in expecting a full 100-floor climb, Echoes of Aincrad is a different kind of project. It trades breadth for detail, building out two large floors instead of sketching the whole tower. Whether the higher levels ever appear will depend on what comes after launch.
