Deck Guides/Elemental Hall

Elemental Hall Guide

The Elemental Hall ("EH") can be extremely rewarding (and fun) if you can reliably defeat the enemies. Included here are some tips on how to handle the challenge...

Of course we know the Elemental Halls give the element of the day (I'll call it the main element) a shield that resists the devastating Elemental Wave. In Advanced and Advanced+ modes, even max-stat GUR cards will be devoured by 4 or so Elemental Waves if they don't match the main element ("wrong element").

So how do we approach this problem? What teams and strategies can we use? The first thought is to use our standard FAW teams, but we also have to make multiple teams-- 4 for Advanced, 3 for Intermediate, and 2 for Beginner.

However, it's important to note that there are some major differences between the EH enemy unit and an FAW enemy unit that affects what type of teams will be successful.

Features of the Elemental Hall enemy units

• The Elemental Wave can only be performed by the main AW. Of course, this encourages you to make pure-element units based on the main element, but there can be some exceptions for certain team compositions
  • Mentioned in the Help section, it's important to note that this attack cannot be blocked by any Skill Nullify ability! Chocolatier will not save your wrong-element cards from being blown to bits!
• Archwitch Field, the annoying move that clears all buffs and debuffs in the battle, can only be performed by the main AW.
• The servants have significantly more HP (or "soldier count") than the FAW servants and cannot be quickly eliminated by an unbuffed card's attacks
• Unlike FAW, the servants do not automatically die when you defeat the main AW
• The servants seem to be assigned varying active skills such as turn skip, a single-target hit, attack down to your team, and a group heal
• At least one of servants have been assigned the attack skill nullify ability. Eliminating the servants with the nullify skill should be top priority
• There doesn't seem to be a turn limit like traditional AW/FAW battles have (AW/FAW run away in 100 turns). This means you can plan out longer battles if you really need it, but hopefully you don't have to because it won't be enjoyable (or really possible).
• The FAW's Archwitch Wave is not used in battle. Why do I want to point this out? Because this difference means weak cards are more viable options in EH than against FAWs.
• Some of the servants can use the Archwitch Whirlwind skill which does constant damage. ATK down and DEF up cards have no effect. However, this can be blocked by Skill Nullify

Strategies For Beginner through Intermediate+

1. Kill the main AW as soon as possible. This should be the primary objective, because in general you need attack buffs (or an infinite-proc attack skill) to kill all of the servants, and the main AW, although it has the most HP, can clear your buffs at any time. Once you have eliminated the AW Field threat, your buffs will remain for the rest of the battle and you can snipe off the servants. Also, if you are using wrong-element cards, you also need to stop that Elemental Wave from lawn-mowing them down.

2. Attack buffs are absolutely necessary. There is way too much HP to deal with to ignore attack buffs. If you can't get at least 1 good attack buff in every team with a strategy on keeping them alive (use the main element, a turn-skip system, ATK+DEF buffing with single-target unleashers), don't even bother with EH. Ok, maybe.. MAYBE you can use an infinite proc life-suck skill such as Megaera, Azi Dahaka, Charybdis, or even Soul Eater, and there doesn't seem to be a 100-turn limit like with regular AW and FAW, but without attack buffs, you're going to be fighting for a looooong time, win or lose. Your Jack Pot time might even expire just doing 1 battle!

2. Skill Unleash (Single), is almost a necessity for most team formations. Fortunately, nubee has been gifting us this ridiculously powerful skill with good proc rates ever since the end of last year, starting with SR Sulis, then UR Redeye and UR Jean. I hope you collected a bunch of these cards, because this skill is almost necessary for EH (and extremely useful for FAW). Now if you don't have the SRs or URs, you may want to think about collecting the Rs (Seagull and Furinkazan) who have this skill, but they are huge liabilities with their low soldier counts, base stats, and infrequent proc rate (max 10%).

3. Turn-skips provide a way for mixed-element teams to survive and get their skills activated. I have often run teams composed of 2 turn-skip cards (especially ones that can skip a total of 6 turns and have a proc rate of at least 15%), and the teams are not perfect by any means, but provide a relatively high success rate.

• One very important thing to note is that there are some turn-skip skills that simultaneously deal damage. Try to avoid relying on these skills when the servants nullify is active! Once the servant with the active nullify is dead, then unleash this skill.

4. Non-Attack skill nullifiers (did anyone keep Vitruvius?) or any-skill nullifiers (such as Chocolatier) can be somewhat useful for the sole purpose of preventing AW Field or servant skills.

5. When dealing with units with servants, attack buffs are more useful than attack skills. This doesn't mean attack skills are useless, but a buff-based team will generally perform better than one that relies on attack skills for dishing out the majority of damage.

6. As mentioned earlier, since the EH enemies don't use the FAW's AW Wave, I have found base-stat SRs matching the main element can do ok in battle; they will certainly survive better than a max-stat HUR of the wrong element. So try out your "incomplete" cards that have useful skills such as team buffs and turn-skips.

7. Team healers can be useful for a pure-element team matching the main element and continuously heal until your key skills are ready to use (such as 3 team buffs and a turn-skip?). This works in EH far better than against FAW, since FAW with AOE attacks can often 1- or 2-shot your entire team.

8. GSR High Vampire is a great filler card for a skill unleasher team, providing a passive 50% attack increase to the entire team.

Team compositions

• 1+ attack buffers and 2+ skill unleash (single): this is a very successful team setup for both EH and FAW, but based on your situation, your buffer(s) may not match the main element and is susceptible to a quick death. If that's the case, it's imperative to dedicate extremely high proc rates to this team so you can quickly achieve maximum damage and take out the main AW. However, if your team matches the main element, it will be much easier to manage and you can take on 3.5 mil damage with ease. If your team needs 3-4 procs to achieve max damage AND has pieces that don't match the main element, I strongly suggest limiting this unit to battling main AWs with less than 2 million HP. For a mixed team, I would prefer it against a unit with many servants so that main AW can be taken down in a limited number of turns. (more servants is better)
• 1+ turn-skip, 2+ skill unleash (single), and 1 auto-skill ATK Up card: This is a very fun team I came up with for GUR Monkey. This team is even possible with SR like Dark Santa, although you will need to use significantly more turn skips (~23 turns will achieve 3.5 million damage though as long as your SR has max ATK (19999) and all of the Elemental Shrine bonuses). Against FAW, it had 2 issues-- it's pretty slow compared to other teams I have formed, and if I couldn't get the turn-skip running within a few turns, the team was susceptible to the AW Wave (If i wanted to include a skill nullify card like Chocolatier, I would be relying on only 2 skill unleashers to chain the turn-skips). In EH, this team is still pretty slow to use but is very successful thanks to the lack of AW wave. If you only have Monkey/Jean/Redeye to use for this team like I do, you have a mixed deck and absolutely must get turn-skips to activate fast, so you'll want to dedicate high proc rate skill unleashers to this team. Also, don't attack with Monkey (use another card to waste turns) until you start turn-skipping, because if even 1 buff is cleared, it will take much longer to defeat all the enemies. This team with a GUR can handle the most difficult Advanced enemy with great ease! (All-purpose)
• 9/10/15 addition - 1 auto-skill ATK Up card, 1+ any/passive skill nullifiers, 1+ skill unleash (single): a relatively safe team similar to the turn-skip team above, but now that we can manually activate a skill nullication, this is a valid strategy. The main weakness is that an enemy with multiple servants have plenty of skills they can activate in a single turn, which can screw up your skill nullification protection. Imagine if you have 1 any-skill nullify on Standby. The enemy unleashes AW Field (canceled by your nullify), but then uses a turn-skip and ATK Down-- the turn-skip gives the enemy another chance to cast AW Field and more turn-skips, etc. But no strategy is perfect anyway, and this composition will be extremely successful with at least 2 nullifiers (do not use active-skill-only nullifiers).

• 2+ Attack buffs and 2+ turn-skips (supplement with skill unleash if possible): the idea is to start activating the attack buffs only when you have a turn-skip ready to go in order to prevent getting AW Fielded. I would fight the easier enemy units with this type of team, because you need to sit around and wait for all the skills to activate; as your cards start to approach death, you will have to gamble and activate whatever skills you have. Try to fight against units with less servants, because they can turn-skip you and ruin the day. (1 or less servants is better)
• [Pure element] 1+ team healer, 2+ attack buffs, 1 turn-skip: this team's strategy is to stall by healing until enough skills are active that will let you defeat the main AW. Something like 2 +200% team buffs on a max stat GUR with a 3-turn skip will let you hit the main AW 4 times for around 500k each hit without risk of getting AW Fielded. Obviously more power is preferred... Super Iroha with a +200% team buff can hit for nearly 900k each hit... less servants is better, as unpredictable turn-skips and constant crits may ruin your plan to heal and save your cards. (1 or less servants is better)
• [Pure element] 2+ AOE HUR/GURs, 1+ attack buff (and optionally 1+ turn-skip): It seems there is a limited number of times the servants can nullify your skills, so if you have several attack skills to unleash, you will eventually break through and annihilate the entire enemy party. However, this team has limited damage potential since you can't rely on the attack skills to activate frequently, so avoid fighting an AW with 3+ million HP with this team. You are encouraged to buff up your AOE cards' ATK stat as much as possible, and it really helps to have 2 team buffers unless you have some premium cards that have more significant buffs. (more servants is better)
• [Pure element] 2+ critical attackers, 1+ attack buff, 1+ turn-skip: Similar to the above team, but this team will have lots of trouble against multiple servants and instead focuses on fighting 1 or 0 servants. A turn-skip card will be really helpful in fighting this type of enemy, as the main AW will have tons of HP, meaning you need to sustain the buff over a couple turns to take it down. (1 or less servants is better)
  • If you are a veteran, you may have 3 max stat AOE GUR with 2 team buffs, and that team is pretty much the fully developed combination of this and the above team ideas.

Strategies for Advanced and Advanced +

Die fast, die hard. Take out the servant that is nullifying skills, then work on the main AW. Use Deal DMG (All) cards to take out the servants while you whittle down the AW.

Your best bets are to use Snowballers with team or element buffers along with Turn Skippers or Damage Turn Skippers. Unleashers can be a good add-on and possibly even healers. Basically use all those cards that old-time players would have considered relatively useless until now.

Team compositions

• In general you want your teams to be pure elements. Mixed elements will die way too fast in Advanced halls.
• Turn skippers will save you the most. Stopping all the enemy movement is key to surviving.
• Generally you won't want a card that is a pure nuller. If you have a Dual Skill card that contains a nuller, that will work well and may save you from being fielded. Otherwise, you'll only want a pure nuller if you have nothing else.
• Using a Snowballer like Monkey, Pure Oracle, Goth Oracle, or Letta will give you a great head start on taking out the nulling servant while waiting for your other support skills to activate.
• For your buffers, using a super buffer that boosts both ATK and DEF will be the most helpful. The ADV+ AW can tap for 10-15k so boosting your defense will be helpful.
• If you lack a DEF buffer, but have an ATK Down card, that can help you survive as well. Minimizing the massive tap damage of the main AW will help you last that much longer.