After the puzzle that is Baal, floor 8 of this challenge is where the difficulty starts to ramp up. The no RCV condition means you will want to bring some form of recovery, especially since one floor will preempt you with a 99% gravity, and the next floor also preempts with damage.

General Tips

Delays and boards with hearts will help in survival. Shields that are combo dependent (like Cthugha) or orb match (like Kami or Yog) may prove somewhat useful for keeping HP higher, but with no RCV it may be difficult to keep up the HP conditional of your leader skill. Though, Kami and Yog’s instant heal is pretty useful for keeping it up. Stalling may prove difficult, so going in with SBs for crucial actives will be a good idea. 100% poison res will also come in handy towards the end if you can afford it.

Floor Overview

Floor 1 – Random Warchief. Each Warchief will absorb their color for 5 turns and preempt with some ability, worst being the dark warchief with poison skyfall. The next floor will preempt with a 99% gravity, so don’t worry about keeping your health up (unless you’re playing an HP conditional lead then it may be an issue)

 Preempt: 5 turn Fire absorb and 15k damage, WLD to fire.

Deals damage and locks orbs. Does two different attacks, 12k and change water to fire or a 14k hit. Under 50%, a spinner gets placed(row 3 column 4) and there will be a 7 combo shield. In 10% intervals, will lock additional orbs and deal 14k (4 orbs at 40%, 8 at 30%, 12 at 20%). Under 15%, deals 42k and locks your board.

 Preempt: 5 turn Water absorb and 11k damage, locking waters.

You will want to one shot this one. Does 11k while either changing water to woods or blinding the board. At 50%, puts up a 10 turn 1m damage absorb shield and gives 10 turns of wood skyfall. After that, it shields and does 14.5k damage in 10% intervals (35% at 40%, 50% and 30% and 75% at 20%) Under 10%, does 40k and reduces your move time by 75%.

 Preempt: 5 turn wood absorb and 3 turn skill delay.

Does 11k damage and converts fire to wood, or 50%. At 50%, cuts your RCV by 50% and 99% gravs you. In 10% intervals, turns non hearts to poisons and deals 15k damage (3 at 40%, 6 at 30%, 9 at 20%). Under 10%, 41k damage and turns board to poison.

 Preempt: 5 turn light absorb, 17k damage and bind 2 random cards for 3 turns.

Depending on how many turns of light absorb are stalled out, this one gains a “charge”. Above 50%, just hits for 16k but gains charge. When you push under 50%, it releases charge and does increasing damage according to how charged it is. The damage ranges from 17k to 25k, and one sub will get bound for 3 + X turns where X is the amount of charge. Under 10%, will deal damage and bind according to charge count, but I don’t expect you to survive if you’ve made it to this point. 84k at minimum to 420k, and binds X subs for Y turns based on charge.

 Preempt: 5 turn dark absorb and 25% poison skyfall for 7 turns.

The worst spawn to get in this dungeon, for poison skyfall and no RCV may quickly clutter your board and hurt. For 7 turns, it will deal 20k damage and spawn or lock poisons, making 3 mortal poisons if there are no poisons, and locking poisons if there are. After 7 turns, it will put up a 99% shield and spawn 4 poison and 4 mortal poisons. If you clear them, it will just refresh its buff and poison skyfall, but if you don’t it executes you for 500k. Long story short, don’t get get this spawn and if you do, kill it quickly.

Floor 2 – Gronia

 Preempt: 99% gravity

You will want to heal on this floor, because next floor will also preempt you. I recommend a board like Nohime/Tachibana for its ability to make hearts and place a shield to tank the next floor. If you somehow do have heals and don’t one shot this floor, see below.

Poison arrow for 20k, spawns 2 poisons or turn the 3rd column into woods and deal 28k. Under 70%, she skill binds you for 6 turns and repeats arrow/gale shot. Under 30%, she announces her execute for a free turn and then deals 470k after that.

Make sure you have the equivalent of about 21k health before moving into the next floor.

Floor 3 – Puppets Pure, Charité, Courage

If your team isn’t light or dark oriented you can ignore the worst part about this floor, else it is kind of a pain to stall, especially since there is no RCV. A good way to handle this floor if you are light or dark oriented is to delay here and wait for the color absorb to drop off.

If you have no hearts, you will take a 20.5k preempt, but if you left some you will take 10% less damage woohoo. Oh, and each puppet will break the hearts as well if you tried to save some. Their move sets and damage are similar so I will just summarize them. Above 50, they change their attribute to whichever they aren’t (for example Pure turns red if green, green if red) and either change an orb to another orb, make a row of color, or break hearts.

Pure – Water to Wood, Middle row to Wood, Heart to Fire

Charité – Wood to Fire, Middle row to Fire,Heart to Water

Courage – Fire to Water, Middle row to Water, Heart to Wood

Damage(approx) 22k, 20k, 18k

Once under 50%, they have a unique attack and then change your board and deal high damage while kept under 50%. If healed above 50%, will resume its normal attacks, and then if taken under 50% again will repeat their unique attack.

Pure – 1 turn Status shield, 15 orbs to jammers. Stitch puppetry(44k): Change board to 5 rows of Fire/Wood/Fire/Wood/Fire.

Charité – 1 turn Status shield, bind leaders for 1 turn. Stitch puppetry(44k): Change board to 5 rows of Water/Fire/Water/Fire/Water

Courage – 1 turn Status shield, -3s move time. Stitch puppetry(44k): Change board to 5 rows of Wood/Water/Wood/Water/Wood.

Make sure you have a board change ready for the next floor, or have 100% poison res.

Floor 4 – Purgatory Beelzebub

 Preempt: 2.5k damage and board to poison

Same as arena Beelz, either does 25k and turn 1 orb type to jammer, or 37k while above 50%. When under 50%, repeats the preempt and you get that amazing poison board. After that, he will just repeat doing 31k and make 6 poisons. Without RCV, you will want to just one shot Beelz and get out asap.

Floor 5 – Verche

 Preempt: 5 turns of Heart skyfall

The heart skyfall might be great to get a turn or two of healing, but Verche can hurt. He does 3 turns of 60% grav, and 4709 damage and spawns 1 mortal poison. On the 4th turn, if you still have mortal poisons, he executes you for almost 600k. If not, he heals you to full. Stall if you need to, but the next floor does no damage for 5 turns. In addition, the heart skyfall may hinder you on the next floor so pick your poison with either killing turn one or getting rid of the heart skyfall.

Floor 6 – Raphael (New boss!)

 Preempt: Board to Heal… but wait there’s more!

With a 75% shield and resisting dark damage, Raphael can be quite tanky. Raph teases you with a full board of hearts, but then prevents hearts from being matched for 6 turns. For 5 turns he will change a row or column to an orb, and then on the 5th he makes a heart board again. After that, he executes for 450k. After that, I can only assume the process repeats from 1 or spams execute. Raph can be delayed, which may give you a few turns to kill while the heart debuff falls off, or you can try to 100% shield the attack on the 6th turn. Board changes without hearts may prove useful here to deal damage to Raph, but the objective here is to defeat him before the execute. He changes orbs in this order:

1 – middle column to fire

2 – 2nd column to water, 5th column to wood

3 – top row light, middle row dark, bottom row fire

4 – 1st column water, 3rd column wood, 4th column light, 6th column dark

5 – board to heart

6 – rip

Not much else to note, otherwise use these orb makes to get rid of your heart board if you have no board changes for this floor.

Good luck!