New Mechanics: Sun Elemental EX

Fresh from the 2.5 Anniversary Dev Letter was the announcement of brand new challenge content! Sun Elemental EX will be running for a limited time between Nov 10 and Dec 8, rewarding challengers with another powerful Story Card.

But that’s not all. This challenging stage will bring some brand-new tricks into the fold, with the Global server being the first to have a crack at the puzzle!

Gauges introduced a whole slew of buffs and debuffs enemies were able to inflict on the playing field to help them gain the upper hand. These typically ranged from stat boosts to  Seals that prevented the use of certain command. More recently, these also included the ability to change Weaknesses, requiring players to be flexible in tackling a stage.

With Sun Elemental EX, Mode Change will be included as a Gauge Break effect. This buff changes an Enemy’s Race, making it so that they only receive damage from attacks possessing Killers for that specific Race.

Need a reminder of what a Killer is? Attacks come with a set of Killer tags which guarantees a Critical Hit against any enemy with the same tag. For example, a Fairy-Killer attack would guarantee damage against all enemies with the Fairy Tag.

These Mode Changes aren’t permanent, at least for this particular stage, and will wear off after 5 turns. Players wishing to avoid a protracted battle will want to bring the right Friends along to tackle any potential Mode Changes from enemies.

The following Mode Changes will be present in this Elemental EX:

• Hell Mode!+
• God Mode!+
• Mastermind (LW) Mode!+
• Swimsuit Mode!+
• Gensokyo Mode!+
• Summer Mode!+

Although players have generally been taught to Graze against difficult enemies, Lost Word has been gradually pushing back against the idea, either by rewarding risky coordinated play with Barrier Anomalies or by removing Barriers altogether in certain Divergent Spirit difficulty toggles.

The newest challenge comes in the form of Graze Penetration, which is a status certain attacks will be able to do. Attacks with this property will ignore any Graze you put up, dealing direct damage against your Friends.

For Sun Elemental EX, these are interspersed between different enemy Shot or Spell Card types, allowing some amount of prep against curtain fire. Players will likely want to face these enemies hyper-aggressively to limit the amount of attacks they are able to do.

Worried about tackling these new challenges? Difficult problems can seem much smaller when you have an entire community working together to solve them! The  Official Discord Server is a great place to share strategies and learn new ones. Be sure to check it out today!