Hello everyone! On Monday, October 23 we will be getting a Red Athena challenge dungeon set similar to the White Snake Challenge. This article focuses on how to successfully clear the first three challenges!

First Floor

The challenge set begins with a warm-up level featuring relatively easy monsters and mechanics that have been in the game a long time. Monsters have reasonable HP levels for most teams to deal with, but monsters can hit fairly hard so you will need to be careful.

Quick Advice:

• If you have bindable water monsters be sure to kill Mitsuki immediately.
• If you bring light monsters, make sure they are unbindable.
• Bring a delay, absorb damage void active, or No Skyfall Matches leader to deal with Parvati.
• Bring a bind clear to ensure your countermeasure for Parvati isn’t bound.
• Avoid hitting monsters into low HP. They deal much more damage and inflict debuffs or mess with the board.

Analysis:

Floor 1:

Red Fairy will convert the bottom row of orbs into Casino Orbs for 1 turn. She will also convert the bottom row into fire, so she effectively gives you a preformed row of the color of your choice. You can solve the rest of the board and hold your movement orb until the bottom row becomes the color you want.

I advise just killing her, but it’s a pretty safe floor.

Floor 2:

You will get a preemptive water skyfall buff for 5 turns, and Beyzul will do nothing for 4 turns. You can use these turns to charge up active skills, but make sure you kill Beyzul before his attack turn or he will hit you for 110,000 damage.

Floor 3:

These have low HP and may offer another turn or two to stall. Kill them before they attack.

Floor 4:

Mitsuki will bind all water monsters for 1-3 turns on her first turn; if you have bindable water monsters you should kill her immediately. You can bait her into using the bind by bringing an unbindable water monster to score an extra turn of skill charge.

Mitsuki will skip the second turn (first turn if she doesn’t use her water bind). Afterward she will do 8.2k normal attacks. At low HP she will use a skill that hits for 12.4k.

Floor 5:

Horai will preemptively attack you for 6.3k. Make sure you heal above that before entering this floor. He hits for 19k each turn so it’s advisable to kill him immediately. Below half HP he will boost his damage then will guaranteed multi-attack every turn for up to 38k.

Floor 6:

CDD will preemptively attack you with one of two skills:

• If you have a light monster he will bind light monsters for 4 turns.
• If you don’t have a light monster, he will give you a 5-turn jammer skyfalls debuff.

You can avoid the jammer debuff by baiting him into using the light bind: just bring an unbindable light monster. CDD does moderately high damage and converts orbs each turn. Below half health he will blind the board and deal 31.8k damage every turn. It is advisable to kill him immediately.

Floor 7:

Jeanne preemptively attacks with a 75% gravity. This generally cannot kill you, but you will have very low HP. You must heal back up before floor 9.

It is advisable that you kill her outright if possible. Jeanne will bind fire monsters for 2-3 turns if you hit her below half HP. She will cycle between buffing her attack power then multi-attacking for 31.4k for the next 3 turns.

Floor 8: 

T&S are pretty much identical to their descend, except with buffed HP and damage. Thoth has a status shield and Sopdet has a 5c shield. Avoid their annoying board changes and binds by killing them immediately. If you haven’t healed up yet, ensure you do so before entering the next floor.

Floor 9:

Parvati is the only really challenging monster in this dungeon. She preemptively attacks for 13,050 damage and binds a sub-slot monster for 6 turns. She also has a shield that absorbs single-hit damage at or above 1m. This shield only lasts six turns, but on her sixth attacking turn she will hit for 54,375 damage, awaken bind you for 1 turn, and convert the middle two columns into fire orbs. Let’s avoid that.

There’s a few different ways to deal with Parvati.

First, since she has 5.4m HP and absorbs hits over 1m it is entirely possible to damage control and kill her in one turn. However, this is a risky strategy to employ for leaders that don’t have No Skyfall Matches. You will need to practice solving in Endless Corridors to get your damage close to 1m per sub without going over. The shield applies after elemental disadvantage so water monsters can hit up to 1,999,999 whereas fire can only hit for at most 499,999.

The second way is to bring a delay. If you can survive a few turns of Parvati’s attacks, you can delay her before her sixth turn then kill her by bursting damage after her shield is gone. The longer the delay the better, but make sure you have a bind clear to use in case your delay gets bound by her preempt.

The third way is to use an Absorb Void active like Fujin and kill her that turn. As with the delay strategy, you will want a bind clear to ensure Fujin is ready. Run it as a sub or it may not come up in time. Stall as many turns as you can earlier in the dungeon where it’s safe.

The last way is to use a strong shield like Indra or Kushinada to survive her heavy damage hit, then you will want to kill her as soon as possible.

She will reapply the absorb shield if you hit her below 20% HP without killing her so you will need to be careful.

Example Clear:

That’s all for Floor 1! Onto the next challenge!

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Second Floor – Teams of 4 Or Less

This floor restricts you to bringing only 3 sub monsters instead of the usual 4. This makes teambuilding more difficult.

Quick Advice:

• You must have 5 Skill Bind Resist on your team!
  • Several floors preemptively skill bind.
• Pairing with a 7×6 leader like Diablos is advisable for combo shields.
• Dark monsters will be bound for 3 turns on the first floor.
• Bring a Follow-up-Attack monster and actives that make hearts.
  • Two floors have resolve with nasty enrages.

Analysis

Floor 1:

Unicorn is more annoying than dangerous. He absorbs >200k damage like Awoken Sopdet for 3 turns but has no instant kill mechanic. He will bind dark monsters for 3 turns on his first turn if one exists, otherwise he will randomly attack for either 13.7k or 17.1k with board changes. Just keep healing each turn and kill him when his shield runs out.

Floor 2:

Yomi has an 8-combo shield which is why I recommend bringing a 7×6 leader. It is advisable to kill him outright as he can hit pretty hard and does some annoying orb changes and inflicts a move time debuff. If you hit him below 30% HP he will skip a turn once, then every subsequent turn below 30% he will instantly kill you with a 500% gravity. Be extremely careful about that.

Floor 3: 

Leviathan will skill bind for 10 turns so you MUST have 5 SBR on your team or you could be in serious trouble. His ramp-up damage scales from 4,323 on turn 1 up to 172,900 on the fourth turn. You can stall 2 turns on him pretty safely, but definitely kill him after that.

Floor 4:

Neptune has high defense (366,667) and 766,262 HP. This should easily be burstable and it is advisable to kill him immediately so you don’t have to deal with his scaling damage attacks that create poison. He is immune to status effects so he cannot be delayed or defense-voided with skills, but the rainbow defense void awakening will function.

Floor 5:

This fight begins with a 50% resolve shield and a preemptive 2-turn skill bind. If you proc the 1 HP resolve Tabby will attack for 11460 and bind your whole team for 1 turn. If you have one unbindable monster you can ostensibly tank this hit and ping him for the remaining 1 HP. However, it is much better to do a Follow-Up attack and avoid that problem. If left at 1 HP Tabby will attack you for 57,300. Tabby can also be delayed if you don’t have any FUA monsters.

Floor 6:

The ever-annoying Zhu Bajie preemptively strikes you with a 99% gravity. You will want to heal up and kill him outright if possible. He has a chance of binding water monsters for 2 turns. Below 50% HP he will put up a 75% damage reduction shield making him harder to kill, then the following turn he will instantly kill you with a 100% gravity. Ideally avoid getting hit by that at all, but you can put a light-resist monster or latent awakening on your team to make it survivable.

Floor 7:

Zera requires you to do at least 5 combos and has a 50% resolve. Zera has just shy of 10m HP, and repeatedly refreshes a 2-turn status shield. The 7×6 leader and FUA sub will make it much easier to deal with them.

Zera’s standard damage cycle involves two attacks each turn. Zeus deals damage and generates light orbs in various patterns. Hera will use annoying moves that mess up your board, bind your subs, gravity you, or refresh the status shield the turn it disappears. If you’re unlucky Zeus will bind gods for up to 4 turns and Hera will 99% gravity you in the same turn.

Hitting them below 10% will result in Zeus using a 95% gravity and Hera will heal for 50%, putting them back above their 50% HP resolve point.

Getting Zera above 10% but below 50% is dangerous. The resolve drops off but Zeus will bind gods for 2-4 turns and Hera will wind up for a big attack. If you don’t kill them that turn, Zeus will attack for 28,350 and Hera will attack for 50,400. Obviously this is very bad.

If you don’t have a FUA sub you can bring a monster with a Counterattack active skill and Zera will kill itself with your counterattack damage from the resolve gravity. This strategy works great for Zera, but most other resolve monsters either have a deadly resolve attack or heal before they do damage which makes the counterattack strategy not work.

Another alternative is after triggering the resolve and Zera heals, use a gravity or sufficiently large damage skill to push them below 50%. Then you can just kill them by comboing.

Example clear:

Whew, things are ramping up! Onward to Floor 3!

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Third Floor – 7×6 Board / Tricolor 

This dungeon consists of a single floor so it’s a bit of a weird one. The 7×6 board is amazing for high-damage combo leaders because you can fit 14 combos into that space. And believe me, you’re gonna need it.

Analysis

Floor 1:

THD does nothing for 3 turns then on the fourth he will multi-hit for 140,580 damage. Doesn’t sound so bad, right?

Well here’s the thing– this guy has 300,615,000 HP. Yep, 300 million. How can we deal with that?

You can’t delay him because he has a status shield, so those 3 countdowns and final turn are likely all you’re gonna get. That’s roughly 76 million total damage required per turn!

If you have a strong shield like Indra or Kushinada and 36k HP you can tank the attack and gain another countdown cycle. You could alternately immune it with something like Raphael, but that skill needs to be up quite fast.  The attack cycle will repeat itself so you can reduce the load to 37m per turn, but that’s still a lot of damage.

Leader-wise you’re looking at whatever can crank out the most absurd damage possible; things like color cross or Reincarnated Anubis certainly come to mind. Killer awakenings will also be very useful here. You’re gonna want to stack as much damage as you can!

THD begins light and turns wood after you drop it below 50%. So dark and eventually fire have type advantage here. It has healer and dragon typing.

is always a great option when you need to tear a dragon in half. Her two Dragon Killer awakenings confer 9x against THD. If you’re so inclined, you can even add Healer Killer latents which boost her damage up to 20.25x for two latents or 30.375x for 3.

 

has both Healer and Dragon Killer awakenings.  Each fire TPA match is boosted by 3.375x from her 3 TPA awakenings, and she can take Healer Killer latents. Assuming all fire matches are TPAs, she will have the following multipliers:

• 30.375x without latents
• 68.34x with 2 Healer Killer latents
• 102.5x for 3 Healer Killer latents.

If you happen to have made a Red Athena already, she’s an excellent option for padding out your damage. She’s technically farmable, but difficult to make. You need to have already acquired an  to evolve her.

 

from the Heroine REM is another good option. Her active skill converts the whole board into Dark and Fire and boosts attack for Dragon and Machine cards by 2.5x for 1 turn. This pairs very well with Tsubaki, who is a dragon and uses fire orbs. Barbara is dark and has a Healer Killer awakening, meaning she will do 6x against THD while he is light attribute. She has a TPA awakening that will boost this to 9x if all your dark matches are TPAs. When her damage spike is active this jumps to 15x without TPAs up to 22.5x if all dark matches are TPAs. She can be given Healer Killer latents as well, which can increase her multiplier to a maximum of 75.9375x (including spike). However, this is less desirable on Barbara because she has Machine Killer and can take Machine Killer latents which are more widely useful.

These are just monsters of particular note. Any monsters you can fit on your team with Healer or Dragon killer will help you dish out the 300m damage.

Running the aforementioned Killer monsters as subs will help ensure that you get the damage you need in time. Damage-boosting active skills like  will also help you dish out enough damage.

High-power combo leaders like or leaders like or can be used to brute-force the high damage you need. The 7×6 board makes activating combo leaders vastly easier and bicolor cross leaders can hit the damage cap.

A “Farmable” Swipe Team:

 

If you don’t have enough firepower or comboing skill you can use this team to one-shot THD. Assuming max level, fully-awoken fire monsters with +99 attack, you can pop Goemon, enhance the board with Red Athena, then swipe it to one-shot THD. Whaledors can be anything with enough skill boosts to get Goemon and Red Athena’s skills up on turn 1.

Example clear (not swipe team):

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

Happy Puzzling~

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