The fourth floor of the Hera Nyx Challenge set features maximum 4s move time. This set has a really annoying boss, Hera-Beorc, who is essentially a worse version of Awoken Lakshmi from Arena 2+. The dungeon is full of tricky mechanics, so I highly recommend you take your team-building for this seriously.

Overview:

• While it is possible to resist-cheese this dungeon, I find it very boring to cheese in general and will not discuss these in this guide.
• Leaders:
  • Multiple preemptive gravities mean leaders with HP conditionals (e.g. Yog, Kamimusubi) are strongly disadvised.
  • absorb can be difficult for fire teams.
  • 4s move time restricts most combo leads, and time-extending active and leader skills are nullified. Very few people are consistent at 7c+ with 4s.
  • Beorc is really tanky, has a light absorb and 6M null so Yog and Pixel would not work that well.
  • Bringing  helps a lot on the Jize and Beorc floors.
  • Leads that can tank 33k easily are encouraged.
• Multiple floors generate . Beorc kills you if you leave even one remaining which can be difficult given the fixed move time.
  • 5 is highly recommended to fully resist  converts.
  • If you happen to have it,  from Justice League Collab has 5 by himself!
  • The farmable monsters   provide three  each.
  • The Sengoku-series equip evos  provide two  each when inherited on another monster.
• There are no resolves! GH actually didn’t use their new favorite mechanic.
• Mercuria is VERY tanky unless you’re running a wood team or stacking killers to deal with it.
• Jize can be delayed with Orochi to get rid of the absorb. Beorc can also be delayed.

Dungeon Gimmick

This 4s dungeon is effectively to stop most players from running combo meta teams, such as Anublos. Very few people consistently get high combos with 4s, so you’ll want to design a team you can activate with that constraint.

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Floor-by-Floor Analysis

Floor 1: Awoken Gaia 

Info: 4.5m HP  

Preempt: 5 turn Fire absorb

Enrage: Below 30% HP, Gaia will rotate between 13,445 + 2 turn bind and 21,510 damage.

Normal Pattern:

1. Hit for 17,926 and change 1 color to hearts
2. 99% gravity
3. 10,756 damage

This is actually a fantastic place to stall. The heart generation means that you can save hearts until the gravity and heal. If you can heal 29k regularly, you can stall here indefinitely.

Be ready for 10,700 damage preempt.

Floor 2: Light Orb Dragon, Yobi 

Info: 18.3m HP 

Preempt: Locks all  , converts all orbs to  and deals 10,700 damage.

Enrage: Under 20% HP, he will delay all skills by 5 turns (once). Every subsequent turn under 20% he will deal 321k damage and convert the whole board to .

 

Skill Set:

First turn he depends on whether there are  left or not:

1. If there are , deal 29,960 damage and convert  to .
2. Otherwise, apply 35% damage shield and a status immunity for 10 turns.

Starting on his second turn he will go through a 4-turn cycle:

1. 13,910 damage and RCV halved for 2 turns.
2. 11,770 damage and create 3 at random.
3. 90% gravity
4. Buff himself to do 1.5x damage with all attacks for 999 turns. If this buff is already applied, instead apply 1M+ damage absorb shield for 4 turns.

Recommendation:

If you’re using that 5 , it actually makes him relatively easy to kill right away. The 35% shield doesn’t go up until the next turn and you might not need to use a board changer. It might be hard to stall with the RCV debuffs, , and gravities. Highly recommend killing him ASAP. You can delay him, but it’s better to save that for Jize.

The next floor will preempt 18,240 damage if you have no dark monsters.

Floor 3: Unleashed Knight Dragon King, Nordis 

Info: 25.3m HP   ; Resist  by 50%

Preempt: If you have  monsters, bind all  monsters for 3 turns. Otherwise, deal 18,240 damage. Always apply Status Shield.

Enrage: Below 20% Nordis will attack for 182k.

Special Skills:

• The first time only that you hit him between 50% and 20% HP, he will do one of the following:
  • Dispel all player’s buffs if at least one exists
  • Otherwise do a 99% gravity.

Normal Skills: randomly use one of the following:

• Buff attack by 2x for 2 turns, then attack for 29,182 damage, converting the third row of orbs to .
• Deal 18,240 (36,480) damage and absorb  for 1 turn.
• Deal 20,063 (40,126) and delay team’s skills by 0-1 turn.

Strategy:

Kill ASAP. This is not a good place to stall. Most leaders will have a rough time surviving his 2x hits, and the elemental resistances give him ~50m effective HP if your team uses . You might need to use a spike active to deal with him depending on the team.

Floor 4: Cerberus Rider, Jize 

Info: 16.5M HP  

Preempt: Create 2  at random. Void 1M+ damage for 5 turns.

Enrage: below 20% he will always use a 70% gravity and 22,602 damage in the same turn.

Special Skills:

• On the first turn, if any  exist, lock all  and deal 30,134 damage. Otherwise, buff his attack by 3x for 1 turn.
• This skill set is used again when you hit him below 50% HP.

Normal Skill:

• Deal 15,067 (45,201) damage, convert 1 random color to  and 3 random orbs to .

Recommendation:

As I mentioned, those  will come in handy. The 2  preempt means you have to either convert them immediately, or tank the 30k and contend with two locked . Depending on your team this could be preferable to the buffed 45.2k attack.

My biggest recommendation is to run 5  and run a delay. Jize will cast his enrage on turn 1, at which point his damage void will have 4 turns left. Use a 4-turn delay like and he will do his buffed attack in 5 turns, meaning you have one turn without his damage void to kill him. If you tank the 30k and try to stall him out without a delay, the repeated orb changes will likely leave you without  forcing you to burn a board change; this is risky and wastes an active.

Floor 5: Griffin 

Info: 6M HP

Preempt: 99% gravity.

Cycle:

1. Bind 1 random monster for 2-3 turns
2. 26,280 damage

Recommendation:

Kill before you start taking binds. If you’re running unbindable leads and don’t care about the subs, you can take the first turn to heal. WARNING: the next floor preempts with 33,554 damage; ensure you can survive that.

Floor 6: Storm Mighty Dragon Emperor, Lifive 

Info: 24M HP  

Preempt: 5-turn status immunity and 33,554 damage.

Attack Pattern:

He always does the same moves in order, regardless of HP.

1. Apply a 5c shield and deal 36,606 damage.
2. 36,606 damage and void 5M+ damage for 5 turns.
3. 45,756 and bind all cards for 5 turns.
4. (and all subsequent turns) Enrage, dealing 1,525,200 damage.

Recommendation:

Kill immediately. If you fail to one-shot him on the first turn you have a second turn with a combo shield to finish him off; however in this 4s fixed dungeon it can be particularly difficult to deal with for some leads, especially row teams. His high damage output, damage void shield, and team-wide bind make him immensely difficult to deal with after the first two turns.

Floor 7: Ocean Horn Wisedragon, Mercuria 

Info: 42M HP    ; 50%  resist

Preempt: 20% chance for skyfall orbs to appear locked for 10 turns, status immunity for 4 turns.

Enrage: at 15% or less, always deal 27,036 damage and change own element to  or  (whichever it is not currently). Oddly enough this attack is arguably better than all his others.

Starting Turns:

Apollo will perform the following skills in order:

1. Second column from the left and right are hard blinded for 1 turn and deal 25,347 damage.
2. Second row from the top and bottom are hard blinded for 1 turn with 25,347 damage.
3. Bind 2 random cards for 3 turns and deal 25,347 damage.
4. Deal 114,066 damage and apply a 50% damage shield for 3 turns.
5. Soft Enrage, buffing attack by 2x for the remainder of the fight.

Normal Skills:

After the ordered skills, Mercuria will randomly select from the following attacks:

1. Second column from the left and right are hard-blinded for 1 turn with 50,694 damage.
2. Second row from the top and bottom are hard-blinded for 1 turn with 50,694 damage.
3. Deal 54,072 damage.

Recommendation:

Mercuria is the second-tankiest thing in this dungeon; it has fairly high HP, elemental resistance, and the ability to shield itself further on the fourth turn. That massive fourth-turn attack and the subsequent 50k hits makes this a bad fight to prolong.

Mercuria is triple-typed; killers can help you do enough damage:
Tsubaki’s  awakenings and ability to run can actually make this fight not so bad. With 3x , she would only have to deal 2,765,433 damage (this would be the damage shown on the card) to kill Mercuria by herself, accounting for elemental disadvantage. I know I said fire is ill-advised, but Tsubaki is an exception.
On a similar note, Ragnarok Dragon is , technically farmable, and can also take . With three , Ragdra only needs 2,074,075 damage to kill Mercuria.
There are a few other monsters with relevant killers that can help a lot with damage. Check your box for any monsters with at least 2 applicable killers, and run them if you can.

If you’re running a spike, Mercuria is not a bad place to use it since Beorc has a damage void shield.

 

Floor 8: Colorful Queen, Hera Beorc

Info: 140m HP  

Preempt: absorb  for 10 turns, and void damage in excess of 6m for 999 turns.

Enrage: below 10% HP Hera will attack for 1,212,000 damage. If you ever leave a on the board, Hera will enrage and attack for 1,010,000 damage.

Special Skills:

• First turn only, convert 10 non- at random into , and put up a status immunity shield for 999 turns.
• Below 50% HP, Hera will do a one-time attack for 35,350 damage that converts the entire board into   and forces you to start your match using a specific orb.

Normal Skills: use one of the following at random.

• Deal 28,280 damage and convert up to 5  at random to .
• Deal 28,280 damage and bind one monster at random for 5 turns.

Recommendation:

This is an incredibly annoying fight unless you have 5  (if you have them it is much easier but still very annoying). Like Awoken Lakshmi, she kills you if you leave any  on the board. She specifically targets your  for conversion, making it difficult to stall unless you can resist the conversions. Her binds may leave you susceptible, which could put a damper on your plans. If you’re using equip evos for  put them on something unbindable; if you’re running bindable subs with them, make sure you have some way to unbind.

150m HP is a lot to deal with, and that 6m damage void shield means you can only get in about ~40m per turn on a monocolor team with perfect damage control. She enrages below 14 million HP, adding another thing to worry about. She can be delayed only before her first turn, which you should consider doing if you’re planning to damage control her.

Her 10 turns of  absorb mean that the best monster for killing devils, Pixel Cloud, will be absorbed for 10 turns. If you can safely stall out that long or have an attribute absorb void skill, then it works fine. Alternatively, use an inherit like Kopis on Cloud to convert him to fire type for one turn. With 3 devil killer latents, Cloud will deal 50.625x damage to Beorc! This means Cloud only needs to hit 4M damage by himself. But wait! Buy one get one free with Kopis 1.5x damage. Now you’re at 2.6M damage to deal which can be accomplished with rows / orb count / combos on a higher multi lead.

 all have weaker options for , and  has elemental disadvantage. If you’re opting for this strategy your second-best bet would probably be a triple- Pixel Terra or Squall. Terra has 2 rows which Squall doesn’t have but this doesn’t help a lot of teams. Squall base damage is a lot higher.

Strategy: I highly recommend NOT USING AN ORB UNLOCK. That’s right. But Glitch-senpai, how do I make a consistent board with locked orbs?

That’s easy. Don’t let boons go to waste. Mercuria prempts 20% locked skyfall for 10 turns. I’ll assume you don’t spend 10 turns on that floor especially since I say DON’T SPEND 10 TURNS HERE. So how do we use locks? Depending on whatever pixel you choose to use, bring actives to guarantee a full board without unlocking the orbs. 20% of 30 is 6. If you clear the full board on Mercuria you will normally get 6 locks. Even if you don’t, don’t fret! The first turn of Beorc doesn’t inflict damage, so take that turn to setup orbs and clear for more locks. Make this pattern and then swipe. Congratulations!

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Team Strategy

One of the more common leads used for this is actually Pixel Sephiroth. As a row based lead you don’t need to make insane combos and pairing double Pixel leads helps with the damage on Beorc. A combination like Ronia + Akechi makes a full enhanced board that can be paired using the locked orb strategy I discussed for Beorc. Seph having mech killers is nice for Mercuria who is otherwise one of the tankiest enemies here. Similar things can be done with Pixel Tyrannos. While I mentioned red row might be bad with Gaia, if you have the RCV to stall on Gaia and Tsubaki for Mercuria, red row can be very strong in this dungeon. Machine Goemon is fantastic. 2SB with machine killer and full board for the Beorc box tactic. Machine Goemon MUST BE EVOLVED otherwise his active has an unlock portion which ruins the strategy. Blue is a bit lucky in this sense. Blodin and whaledors are high SB low cooldown cards that can be used for inherit bases. Toshiro is an inheritable FULL BOARD changer. With Meri’s RCV you would have no problems stalling floor 1. The biggest issue becomes Mercuria with the blue resist and Beorc with wood attribute.

As mentioned earlier, Green Arrow makes a few of the spawns much easier by himself. That or bring Droiddragon and inherit Hatsume assist over for 100% resist. This goes a long way and can let you use a tankier lead like Julie x Skuld. With no worries of dying to Jammers on Beorc, just keep working on tanking and chipping her more. Cards like Ragdra work well as a sub for this. Spike for Beorc final push (need to kill from over 10%) is also recommended.

What utility you need for this dungeon depends more on the lead. Just be very careful with the Griffin 99% Premptive into 33k from Lifive since most teams will fail right there. Jizz, after his initial 45k damage, won’t really do much besides 15k and 3 poisons making him really easy to stall with 5 jammer resist. This can give you a great opportunity to charge back actives to push through the rest of the dungeon.

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Thanks for stopping by! When you have completed this challenge floor you should check out the next guide in this series!

Happy Puzzling~

Having trouble with The Queen’s Temple of Dance? Make sure to join the Puzzle and Kupo Discord server (read and follow the rules!) using the banner below if you haven’t done so already. We have a dedicated channel just for questions about this challenge set with access to help from end-game players!