Hera-Nyx – The Queen’s Temple of Dance – Floor 1 – No special effects

Hello! On Monday (11/20/17), we will be getting the Hera-Nyx challenge set, which is like White Snek, LAzazel, and RAth, but has six floors only and is much harder overall. Think of it like the first 4 floors (the easier floors) were removed from those sets, and the rest of the floors were more difficult. That’s roughly how to experience this set of challenges. Please keep in mind that as the set progresses, the teams and utility expected to clear consistently will converge more and more with being whale. Please don’t take this out on us, we didn’t design the dungeons after all. This article will guide you through floor 1 of Nyx, which is easy and straightforward compared to the rest of the challenge set, but still has some dangers.

General tips:

• Zaerog’s Light + Dark absorb is very annoying. Bring a delay, or a team that can kill him through either absorb if possible.
• Ideally, be able to burst 10M for 3 floors straight with locked orbs skyfall. The last 3 floors will have a lot of locked skyfall and won’t be that nice to stall on.
• Blue based teams will be very strong if you can one shot each floor.
• Bind clear for floor 2/4 can help significantly.
• 30k HP is highly recommended.

Floor by floor analysis

F1:

She super-blinds orbs in a heart formation for 1 turn before letting you proceed to the second floor. Cute.

F2: 2x Demons 1.6M HP Each

Since succubus blinds for 1 turn, most players may find it difficult to kill depending on the lead used. If you don’t damage them, they hit for 14,910 each OR have a chance of binding the attribute they’re weak to. (Fire will bind all water cards, etc.).

So if you budget for about 30k HP, you can tank the floor safely but if your leads are bindable and they get caught, you might find yourself in a sticky situation. Having a bind clear here can help as a fail sale, that or some way to guarantee that you’ll kill when you arrive (if you’re using a row lead, use a row generator). If you decide to try and kill, make sure you can, because sub 35% they will hit for 26.1k each! That’s about 52k for both and more than most teams can handle.

F3:  3.3M HP

Follows a very simple attack set and is always on a 2 turn timer.

>50% : 21,407 damage

<50% : Bind darks for up to 4 turns, one time

<50% : 24,974 damage

<10% : 35,680 damage

It should be immediately clear that 21k every 2 turns should be more than tankable by most teams. This would be the best place to stall in my opinion given you have 2 turns to heal between hits. It’s very hard to hit the nuke range because the dark bind attempt is priority (but you must have darks for it to activate)!

Before moving on, be ready to tank 12,783 damage.

F4:  5.6M HP

The premptive hits for 12,783 (as mentioned earlier) and breaks the middle row into fire / jammer. On the first turn he ALWAYS attempts to bind 3 random cards for 3 turns.

Remember when I mentioned bringing bind clear for a failsafe on floor 2? Well, it can come in handy here too. So what I would recommend to deal with this floor would be to have the bind clear ready for floor 1 and stall it back before you enter this floor. That way you have it ready if you have to take the first turn bind here.

After that he mainly hits for either 14,750 per turn, or changes fires to jammers with 9,833 damage. If you leave jammers he will change jammers to poisons with the same damage as his fire to jammer.

It’s highly recommended you kill him ASAP to avoid the bind (saves you a skill slot if you don’t need to bring the bind clear for floor 2 / 4) but know that he’s not all that bad should you need to stay here.

F5:  5.2M HP with 50% resist to light and dark

If you’re running a light / dark team, she can be relatively tanky compared to the rest of the deungeon. Meanwhile a fire team would make quick work of her. Luckily, even if you hit her below 50% and fail to kill, she’s still fairly safe and gives you a free turn while she casts her green skyfall debuff. Unfortunately, green skyfall debuff is horrible when you consider the next floor premptively locks skyfalls for 99 turns (30% chance for each skyfall orb to be locked). This means you might run into A LOT of locked green orbs if you let Armadel cast the green skyfall debuff and if you’re running a rainbow based team I’d highly recommend killing this ASAP to avoid the debuff. Use a spike if you need to. If you’re running a blue / light / dark team, her HP and resists make her the tankiest enemy in this dungeon.

Either hits for 11,167 or hits for 5,584 with a heart -> green break above 75% HP. If under 75%, she can be annoying and bind your subs for 1-2 turns, but that only does 5,584 damage as well. Under 30%, she will hit for 22,334 damage and convert a random color to fire or wood. Keep in mind she will always cast the debuff first before hitting for her sub 30% hit.

F6:  9.1M HP

Above 70%, he will hit for 12,275 per turn and change a random column to jammers. This makes it a bit more difficult to save orbs. Furthermore, if you don’t clear the jammers, he hits for 19,290 and locks the jammers.

Under 70% he will attempt one of the following attacks in order of priority.

Use a normal attack if your HP is 8768 or less (will hit for that much).

Remove player buffs if they exist.

Bind all blues for 5 turns if they exist.

Debuff mortal skyfall for 2 turns, 20% chance.

Under 50% he changes to breaking 2 columns into jammers (Either 1+4, 2+5 or 3+6) and hits for 14,029 instead of the original 12,275.

The 19,290 still exists if you fail to remove jammers.

Under 20% he will instantly hit for 52,608 damage (enough to kill just about every team).

F7:  8.1M HP and EITHER dark or light absorb for 4 turns

The only “hard” floor of the dungeon. If you can kill through the absorb, just please do. If you must stall until the right absorb, here’s his attack pattern/cycle (he repeats it):

• 99% Gravity*** (Use this turn to save hearts)
• 15,694 hit + bind random sub for 1-2 turns (Heal using the hearts)
• 23,541 hit + convert random orb color to jammers (Heal using the hearts)
• Light or Dark absorb recast

*** = If he’s under 50% he will attempt a 100% gravity instead of 99%!

Some teams may have difficulty in stalling out for a favorable absorb. It’s usually not that hard to stall but I highly recommend just using a delay lest you get stuck with 40 turns in a row of light / dark absorb which is stopping you from progressing. Just a note, if ever the absorb is down, Zaerog prioritizes the absorb move and continues in the cycle from there. So if you delay and the absorb wears off, kill before he can attack again.

F8:  9.5M HP

Premptively casts fire and jammer skyfall debuff of 10% each.

Hits for 25,254 damage per turn and EITHER changes water to jammer or any color to fire.

Under 50%, she casts a combo shield, absorbing 5 or less combos. She continues her 25.3k hits and has a chance of hitting as high as 37,881 damage.

Strategy

Given that 4/7 of the enemies you fight are fire type, I highly recommend bringing a water based team. Since there are no combo shields (outside of hitting Hera-Ur to under 50%) you can easily use a row lead like Meri. With a bind clear and either spike or big water maker, Meri should be suitably equipped to clear the entire dungeon with ease. Other water leads could be any combo lead like Rukia / Cthuga or Julie (can pair with Skuld). Lots of options in this realm.

Combo leads in general work very well. Ameno / Yog are always OP as is Anubis x Diablos.

I would avoid wood row leads for this. Red row / Dark row (primarily through HNene) should perform equally well to Meri except for the fact that you lack the RCV that Meri has with those options. Further, dark row suffers against Zaerog with dark absorb.

Since there are no combo shields for the most part, something like Dandelion system could even work (though be ready for locks later). On the same line, Rushana x Odindra or Acala would perform very well too. Basically, anything with consistent damage and ability to tank works. The less reliance on board changers the better.

Conclusion

Congratulations, you have beaten Floor 1. Onto Floor 2, where the challenge really begins. Don’t feel pressured to complete the entire set. This is designed to be challenging even to late gmae players.

Happy Puzzling~

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