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I've seen some comments fro other GMs and players that ED at high circles becomes less challenging. My campaign, as it's gotten tohigher Circles, ha slowed down and gotten more challenging. Bottom line, I play through training and advancement, and require the characters to perform a Master's work to achieve 9th Circle, and a Warden's work to achieve 13th Circle (We reversed the terms in our campaign, as Master comes after Journeyman IRL, and the Wardens are the guardians of the Discipline.)

The way this works: the characters have to find someone willing to train them. We don't use a downtime system. Training occurs while the rest of the party is doing other things. Training may run long, or be interrupted, by game events. To make 9th Circle, a character must accomplish something worthy of the title of Master, just like in an apprenticeship system, a journeyman must make a master's piece to prove their skill before being acclaimed as a master of their craft. This has led to some major projects and advancements. For instance, my wife's character, in order to make Master as an Elementalist, constructed a bath house out in the woods by the group's home city, using earth elementals to sculpt a hillside into an elven bathing paradise. He bound elementals to keep the water circulating and clean, and to heat and cool the pools, with hot water at the top of the hill, and cold at the foot, and multiple cascades for showering and such. This took the character several weeks of game time. AT one point, one of his enemies popped by late at night and banished a couple of his elementals, setting him back considerably.

Another character, a wizard, is working on a theory of mana as a wave, with the idea of wave theory being his master's thesis, leading to magical string theory as his warden's thesis. Both of these will advance the workings of magic considerably if he can pull off the necessary roleplaying and dice tests. This is the same character who worked out the gravitational constant a while back, and has been doing significant work in astronomy. His big plan is to build an observatory, using a camera obscura technique, with illusionism to project the star fields onto the inner surface of the building's dome, and memory crystals to store star maps for later perusal. This is taking him a lot of time, coin, and consultation. He's had to hire an architect, get land surveyed, find an Illusionist to drive a major part of the project, and go to Cathay to see a disused and semi-ruined observatory built for a long ago Emperor using similar techniques.

How do you go about providing a challenge in your campaign at high Circles? Advancement alone offers a lot of possibilities.

Those are awesome. I wish I could contribute more substantially to this conversation, but just know that these ideas have gone into my pot to simmer.

I've never advanced a player's character beyond circle 10 in over a decade as a GM in Earthdawn. Many PCs tend to die between circle 7 to 9 because of two facts. First this is the time when the game gets rough (GMs saying that Earthdawn gets easier with higher circle characters don't get the Earthdawn concept in my opinion: characters are trying to achieve to be a LEGEND and that involves doing incredibly dangerous and deadly tasks normal low circle adepts wouldn't dream to do; you wanna be a legend? go ahead! try and die!) and players who tend to not know their skills/talents/spells well enough die. Earthdawn is a very unforgiving high fantasy world, high damage and quick recovery.
Second this is the time when GMs start with high threat enemies like named Horrors and adepts of high circles. Death comes quick and easy with these, especially when characters get reckless because their spells/talents usually kill off low threat enemies quickly.

But I've done lots of circle advancements from circle 5 to 9 over the years. I never do circle advancement from 2 to 4, I always assume in this time the adventuring life is the best tutor for an adept who discovers new innate abilities along the adventuring way.
I always try to play a solo session with a player who likes to circle up. This session goes from 30 minutes up to an hour. I really dislike circle up rituals within normal playtime with the group (it happens).
Advancement rituals from circle 5 to 8 should in my view never be lethal. They should be challenging, with the chance to fail, but I never killed a character circling up. The advancement always includes three parts as I design it:
- a task where the character has to show his tutor that he knows his old talents and can perform them in difficult tasks
- the tutor showing the adept how to improve the way he uses his old talents in new unthought ways
- the teaching and explanation of the new talents
If you plan your campaign in a way that you know that the PCs have to travel a lot, never forget to let them get at least one pledge coin for a ghostmaster ritual and through adventuring ways give them names for ghostmasters to use. I usually give the first pledge coin+name away at circle 5 near circle 6.

Challenges used in a ghostmaster ritual can be anything. Some things I have used over the last years:
- the classical one vs one sword fighting challenge only with a blindfolded adept or on a ledge over a lava pit
- a breaking challenge where a fighter has to break through different kind of stones/metals to show off his physical thoughness
- the summoning of a difficult spirit or the enchanting of a magical item
- shooting tiny objects over increasingly greater distances or ever fast moving targets (ever higher DCs)
- headbutting really angry trolls/orcs in a tavern
- retrieving several body parts for a ghostmaster who wants to raise from the dead
- battling an illusionary hydra in an amphitheatrum
- taming a wild snow badger defending her little ones
- defending ground with a hand tied back and facing several adepts of lower circle at once
- going to a fighter pit and challenging the pit champion without the PCs usual weapon

To let the heroes construct fantastic buildings/rule cities or villages/invent magical theories and spells is certainly a way to design really high end circle advancement rituals (10+). The main difficulty in my opionion should be how to get a tutor with a high enough circle. There aren't really many adepts alive in Barsaive with circle 10+ and to get an ancient ghostmasters name should prove another challenge. Of course there is always the way to try to get a dragon to teach some discipline secrets, but that would come with a price that an adept shouldn't be eager to pay easily (and I ain't talking about money).

If you want to integrate another thing into your earthdawn campaign that can be very entertaining is to let an NPC decide to ask a PC for training as an adept. You can have pretty much fun and frustrate your player character the same way they frustrate you when deciding that right in the middle of an adventure it is time for them to search for a tutor for circle advancement!

Excellent idea. NPC trainees ahoy.