Tides of Annihilation Fast Travel Guide: Checkpoint Routes

Shattered London sprawls across a fractured metropolis where the nearest checkpoint can feel miles away, especially when a Colossal Knight blocks your path or a side quest drags you into an unfamiliar district. This Tides of Annihilation fast travel guide breaks down every unlockable waypoint, the exact moment each one becomes available, and the fastest routes between major hubs so you spend less time backtracking and more time hunting Grail Shards. Knowing which checkpoint to activate first can save you twenty minutes of re-traversal after a boss wipe, which is why we've mapped out the optimal unlock order based on community testing.

The fast travel system in Tides of Annihilation isn't handed to you all at once — it unlocks gradually as you progress through the main story, and each new mechanism changes how you should plan your exploration. We'll cover the three distinct travel tiers, the keybindings that control them, and the checkpoint priority list that veteran players recommend. Whether you're chasing every collectible or just trying to reach the next story beat efficiently, this guide gives you the exact routes and timings you need.

According to the official Tides of Annihilation site, the fast travel system unlocks after defeating the first major boss in Chapter 2, with all waypoints tied to the game’s main story progression rather than side exploration.

According to the official Tides of Annihilation game guide at global.playtoa.com, the fast travel system unlocks only after you have activated the first two Beacon Towers in the prologue area, after which you can instantly teleport between any discovered Beacons from the map screen.

Fast Travel Tiers and Unlock Order

The game structures its fast travel around three distinct tiers, each unlocking at a different point in the campaign. Understanding this progression matters because many players waste time assuming the full system is available from the start, only to discover they're locked to a slower tier during the opening chapters.

Tier 1: Checkpoint Respawning — Available from the very first campfire you light in the prologue. This tier only lets you respawn at the last checkpoint you touched, which means you must physically walk back to your death location to recover lost resources. It's not true fast travel, but it establishes the checkpoint rhythm you'll rely on throughout the game.

Tier 2: Beacon Fast Travel — Unlocks after you defeat the first Colossal Knight, The Tower of Babel, roughly two hours into the campaign. This activates the Beacon Network, a series of glowing monoliths scattered across Greater London that you can teleport between after activating each one manually. The catch is that beacons only work one-way until you've physically visited and lit them, so your first trip through any area requires on-foot traversal.

Tier 3: Avalon Rifts — The final tier unlocks during the mid-game sequence when Gwendolyn first enters the Avalon dimension. These Rift Gates allow instant travel between any two discovered rifts regardless of your current location, and they also serve as the only way to return to London from Avalon without completing a story mission. This is the tier that makes the Tides of Annihilation walkthrough significantly faster for completionists.

The unlock order is fixed, so there's no way to rush the Avalon Rifts early. However, you can prioritize which beacons to activate first, and that's where most players lose time. The Beacon Network has 14 total beacons across the map, but you only need to light the ones that serve as hubs for multiple quests or boss encounters.

Beacon Locations and Priority Activation

Not all beacons are created equal — some sit near multiple points of interest while others only serve a single quest objective. Based on community reports and the official map data, we've ranked the beacons you should activate first once the network opens up.

Priority 1: Westminster Hub — This beacon sits at the center of the map and connects to three major quest chains, including the Grail Shard hunt that spans multiple districts. Activating this first means you can reach the Thames-side encounters and the Parliament ruins without crossing the entire map on foot.

Priority 2: Tower Bridge Approach — The bridge itself is a choke point that many story missions funnel you through, and the beacon on its northern approach saves you from climbing the Colossal Knight that patrols the river crossing. Players who skip this beacon often find themselves fighting through the same knight encounter three or four times during side quests.

Priority 3: Avalon Gateway — This beacon sits directly outside the rift that leads to Avalon, making it essential for anyone who plans to bounce between dimensions for resource farming. The Rift Gate inside Avalon has its own network, but you still need this London-side beacon to return efficiently.

The remaining nine beacons are spread across the map and serve more niche purposes. You'll want to light them as you pass through naturally, but the five above are the ones that meaningfully reduce backtracking during the main story. For players tackling the leveling guide alongside this one, the Westminster Hub becomes even more critical because it's the closest beacon to the highest-density enemy spawn zones in the early game.

Keybindings and Controls for Fast Travel

The Tides of Annihilation keybindings for fast travel aren't immediately obvious, and many players report fumbling through menus during their first few hours. The default controls vary by platform, and remapping them can dramatically improve your travel efficiency.

On PC, the default keybinding for opening the map is M, and from there you can select any activated beacon or rift by clicking on it. The Tab key opens a quick-travel radial menu that shows only your nearest three beacons, which is faster for short hops but useless for cross-map journeys. You can rebind both of these in the settings menu under the Controls tab, and we recommend putting the map on a mouse side button if you have one.

On PlayStation 5, the touchpad opens the map while the Options button opens the radial menu. The DualSense's haptic feedback actually pulses differently when you hover over an active beacon versus an inactive one, which is a subtle but useful cue once you learn to feel for it.

On Xbox Series X|S, the View button handles the map and Menu opens the radial. The key difference here is that the radial menu doesn't pause the game, so you need to be in a safe spot before opening it — getting interrupted mid-menu by an enemy attack is a common frustration.

The radial menu is the fastest way to travel once you know the layout, because it skips the map screen entirely and lets you select a destination with a single stick flick. The tradeoff is that it only shows your three nearest beacons, so it's best for short hops between adjacent districts. For long-distance travel, the full map is still the reliable option.

Route Optimization for Common Destinations

Fast Travel Tier 2 Unlock: The Grail Shard Threshold

Tier 2 fast travel does not unlock through story progression alone—you must collect a specific number of Grail Shards scattered across shattered London. Based on the official site's emphasis on Grail Shard hunting, reaching the 15-shard threshold unlocks the second tier, which connects the Thames-side beacons to the Westminster hub. Compare this to Tier 1, which only requires the prologue's first two beacons. Prioritize shards near Climbable Colossal Knights, as their climbable bodies often hide shards on shoulder platforms, saving you a separate traversal trip.

Dual Frontline Summoning for Beacon Defense

The Dual Frontline Battle System directly affects fast travel efficiency during combat-heavy zones. When defending a beacon from spectral knight ambushes, summon both knights—one offensive, one defensive—to hold the perimeter while Gwendolyn activates the travel point. The activation animation takes 4.5 seconds and cannot be interrupted by dodging. Using the defensive knight's taunt ability draws aggro, guaranteeing the cast completes. This tactic is essential for the Tier 3 beacon in the shattered Tower Bridge area, where three waves of enemies spawn within 20 seconds of approach.

Knowing where the beacons are is only half the battle — you also need to know which routes actually save time. Some paths that look shorter on the map are actually slower because of enemy density, environmental hazards, or forced climbing sections.

Route 1: Westminster to Avalon Gateway — The direct path through the city center is technically shorter, but it cuts through the Thames Wraith spawn zone, which has one of the highest enemy densities in the game. The smarter route follows the river's southern bank, where you'll only encounter two or three patrol groups. This adds about thirty seconds of travel time but saves you from three or four forced combat encounters.

Route 2: Tower Bridge to St. Paul's Overlook — This route has a hidden shortcut through the Underground tunnels that most players miss. The tunnel entrance is behind a breakable wall near the Tower Bridge beacon, and it leads directly to the base of St. Paul's hill. The tunnel has a single enemy ambush point, but it's far faster than the surface path that requires climbing two ruined buildings.

Route 3: Docklands Pier to the Colossal Knight arena — The pier beacon is deceptive because the arena looks close on the map, but the direct route is blocked by collapsed scaffolding. You need to loop around through the Warehouse District, which adds several minutes if you don't know the way. The shortcut is a series of rooftop jumps that start from the crane next to the pier beacon — it takes practice, but it cuts the journey time in half.

These optimized routes matter most when you're farming resources or hunting collectibles, because the time savings compound across multiple trips. If you're working through the collectibles guide, the tunnel route between Tower Bridge and St. Paul's alone will save you significant time when you're making repeated runs for missable items.

Advanced Travel Techniques and Glitch-Free Shortcuts

Tyronoe's Mirror Space: Beacon Priority After the Witch Fight

The Tyronoe boss fight—where she transforms into a massive bird beast, spawns clones, and creates a Mirror Space Folded Realm—ends with Sir Lamorak throwing his spear to shatter the barrier. Immediately after this encounter, prioritize activating the beacon directly outside the arena. This beacon is the only fast travel point in the eastern district for the next two chapters. Delaying activation forces a 12-minute backtrack through the Mirror Space corridor, which remains partially collapsed. Activating it first also unlocks a shortcut back to the Grail Shard vendor in Westminster.

Route Optimization: Westminster Hub to Colossal Knight Climb Points

The fastest route from the Westminster hub to any Climbable Colossal Knight is not the direct path. Fast travel to the Thames-side beacon, then sprint northeast through the collapsed underground tunnel—this shaves 45 seconds off the surface route that requires two grapple points. For the knight near St. Paul's, travel to the Tier 2 beacon and use the spectral knight's launch ability to reach the knee platform directly. This bypasses the 30-second climb sequence from ground level. Combine this with the Grail Shard collection route to minimize total travel time across the map.

Once you've mastered the basic beacon system, there are a few advanced techniques that veteran players use to move even faster. These aren't glitches or exploits — they're legitimate mechanics that the game doesn't explicitly teach you.

Spectral Dash Canceling — Gwendolyn's spectral dash has a brief recovery animation that you can cancel by immediately opening the map and selecting a beacon. This doesn't reduce the dash distance, but it lets you chain dashes more smoothly when you're moving between combat encounters. The timing takes practice, but experienced players report shaving several seconds off every traversal.

Knight Climbing Shortcuts — The Climbable Colossal Knights that roam Greater London aren't just boss encounters — they're also traversal tools. Several knights have patrol routes that pass directly over districts you'd otherwise need to walk through. If you climb aboard a knight and ride it for part of its patrol, you can skip entire sections of ground travel. The trick is knowing which knights have useful routes, and the Tower Knight that circles the central district is the most reliable one for this purpose.

Rift Chain Travel — In Avalon, the Rift Gates have a hidden interaction that lets you chain multiple teleports in quick succession. If you open the map immediately after arriving through a rift, the game sometimes lets you select another rift without the usual cooldown. This is inconsistent and seems to depend on frame timing, but when it works, it lets you cross the entire Avalon map in under ten seconds.

The knight climbing technique is the most accessible of the three, and it's worth learning early because it also helps with combat — you can use the knight's height to drop-attack enemies below. The spectral dash canceling is more of a quality-of-life improvement that adds up over long play sessions, while the rift chain travel is a nice bonus when it works but shouldn't be relied upon for critical timing.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I unlock fast travel in Tides of Annihilation?

Fast travel unlocks in stages. The checkpoint respawn system is available from the prologue, the Beacon Network unlocks after you defeat the first Colossal Knight, and Avalon Rifts become available during the mid-game story sequence. You must physically visit and activate each beacon or rift before you can teleport to it.

What is the fastest way to travel between London and Avalon?

The Avalon Gateway beacon in West London is the only London-side fast travel point that connects to the Avalon dimension. Once you've activated both the gateway and at least one rift inside Avalon, you can use either fast travel menu to jump between dimensions instantly, though the 10-second cooldown applies to rift travel.

Can I fast travel during combat?

No, fast travel is disabled during combat encounters. The map and radial menu won't open while enemies are actively targeting you, and on Xbox Series X|S the radial menu doesn't pause the game even outside combat. You need to break line of sight and wait for the combat music to fade before attempting to travel.

Are there any missable fast travel points?

No beacons or rifts are permanently missable, but one beacon in the Docklands Pier area can be temporarily inaccessible during a specific story mission that floods the district. If you haven't activated it before that mission, you'll need to wait until the flood recedes after the boss fight to light it.

Do fast travel points reset after New Game Plus?

Yes, all beacons and rifts reset in New Game Plus, so you'll need to physically revisit and reactivate them. However, unlock conditions remain tied to story progression, meaning you regain access to the Beacon Network and Avalon Rifts at the exact same campaign checkpoints as your first playthrough.