First Arena 2 Clear

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Of course, it was a fucking Bubpy.

Yeah. It took Xiang Mei’s release for me to finally get around and clear this turd of a dungeon. I only ran it twice before — once with Ra Dragon, once with Pandora, both before skill inheritance — but that was enough of a sample size for me to put the dungeon on hold. Now with Xiang Mei and SI, the dungeon is pretty much a joke. I remember it taking me several times to clear Arena 1 with Ra Dragon for the first time because rainbow teams were so foreign to me. Xiang Mei doesn’t have that problem. It only took a little while to get accustomed to fitting a row and three heart matches onto the same board.

I’m planning on making a script to generate the HTML for my team setup with SI, but I just haven’t had the time to do it. For those curious I’m using the pretty standard SI setup, but I’ll probably tailor it to my own needs as I get more experience with the team.

  • XM1: Shine Flare Ring (Saria)
  • XM2: Sunburst Knuckle (Awoken Ra)
  • XM3: Holy Crest (Arcline)
  • Uriel: Force (non-awoken Orochi)
  • Gadius: Miracle of Healing (Raphael)
  • XM4: Crimson Cross Spear (Sanada)

Everything has 2 SDRs. The SDRs allow you to reliably stall on the Kalis in case you need to recharge your Py-killing skill. The other latents don’t matter much.

Having to juggle inherited skills was a new concept to me. I’m so used to skill conservation being a high priority, but with XM you need to manage your cooldowns so the right skills (base vs. inherited) are available at the right time. This is especially true for XMs inherited with skills that don’t generate hearts; you don’t want to be caught with your pants down since you didn’t manage your skills correctly.

I originally had Genie on Gadius, but I feel like Raphael is more flexible. Like my first run, I mismanaged my cooldowns, was planning to stall on DQ Hera, but skillfalled to kill her early. I was left facing LKali with only Genie ready. Maybe that’s results oriented thinking — maybe I’d be singing Genie’s praises right now if I got DKali instead — but I think Raphael is an overall better fit (although I still need to kill Illsix with Raphael). Maybe when I get more comfortable with the team and familiar with Arena 2, I’ll go back to Genie. It’s just a shame we don’t have Fencer on NA. I’m also not sure if I want to run Awoken Orochi on Uriel instead to save five turns.

For my friend lead I actually really liked having Sanada available (thank you WWM). Using a Saria friend is fine and all, but for some reason I preferred Sanada. Since I have a lot more Sarias on my friend list, I might put him on my own if I continue to enjoy his services.

33 thoughts on “First Arena 2 Clear”

    • Wasn’t planning on it. I was under the assumption that there would be plenty of content already made since XM seems to be pretty damned popular (that and video-makers don’t need 2x DKali to make a competent video). Maybe if I’m bored, but I’ve been pretty busy lately so I wouldn’t expect it.

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    • I have about 50 you could have for free. I’ve already max skilled everything in water.

      Actually, not true. I have two Neptunes that need some skill ups (the original light and dark versions). Some of those crappy collab silvers are looking mighty fine, too.

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  3. I have the ideal team for RaDragon but also have XM/Uriel/Uriel/Uriel/Gadius/XM for Xiang Mei. Which one is your opinion has the highest ceiling in terms of potential and longivity in the game? Trying to decide which one will get my 300k MP.

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    • Pretty much impossible to say. Since the two teams are pretty even, which will be better depends on where the meta goes. Since dungeon difficulty has only increased lately as a function of co-op, it’s hard to say where they go with single play in the future, if they do anything at all.

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  4. And Bubpy is the one that dropped for me today from my rare monster guerrilla runs.

    Does Water just have the lowest amount of fodderless monsters, or is it just an apparent jinx where it seems to be the most common one to drop?

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    • There is a running joke that gung-troll has a desirability sensor: whatever you desire most will drop the least. Believe this or not as you will, but I swear when I am farming for something (ie weekly dungeons) said thing will almost NEVER drop lol.

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    • Pre-SI, water had the least amount of desirable awokens and Karin system was never really a thing. There’s also very few collab silvers worth the Bubpys. Post-SI, it’s still bad, but at least now dupe Orochi and Isis have some use.

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  5. I rolled 2 Gadius in PCGF (already own 1) and 0 Uriel. Go figure. Granted, I only have 384,000 MP anyways. Congratulations on the Arena clear! Xiang Mei is so amazing. I woke up this morning with like twenty of them in my friend’s list.

    I’m currently thinking about purchasing You Yu or Xiu Min. Or both. Which has led me to begin to have the goal of being able to farm the Mythical level rogue dungeons (such as Z8) so I can essentially “farm” MP (and attempt to skill up my Z8 who has gone 0/13). Everybody on the forums is, of course, trying to poke me into getting Machine Zeus since he farms everything like it’s a joke. But like hell I can get Machine Zeus. I don’t even have stones right now, I rolled till I was outta stones on the PCGF (and rolled nothing dark, go figure). I got Ra so I might just farm Z8 with Thoria…and try to find partners for co-op.

    It would be awesome if I could get MZeus or MHera but a) nothing can clear it that’s in my box and b) I don’t have stones right now so I can’t ask anyone to carry me. Sadness!

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    • You should look into getting someone to carry you through MZeus with the Dacho or similar carrying team. I think Yuki was doing it for a $5 stream donation, but you could probably find someone to do it for you for free if you look. All you need is Awoken Ra, 3x delays and a Tengu. I’d say paying Yuki for a guaranteed MZeus is well worth the $5.

      Also you’ll need to do it before light Yomi gets the 2.5x god enhance “buff” as it basically nerfs the build.

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      • It’s not a huge nerf, you can just inherit awoken yo I over change the world, and it actually gives you extra damage leeyway.

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      • Yeah, I’m poking around. I’m like legit broke right now due to summer school, don’t even have two dollars to rub together (*sigh*). Oh the price of education!

        There’s some people on the PF forums who seem like they’d be willing to help me out but dacho method or no dacho method I’m also plumb out of stones after spending my last five yesterday morning for a Susano (worth) so I need to collect some more so that the person helping/carrying me doesn’t have to stone for my sake. I might not have $5 but I can eventually obtain $5 worth of stones.

        Which should then help me farm up MP and skill ups (for Z8) AND experience (since there are super dragons in that dungeon). …AND rank experience.

        I did pull a Ra in PCGF after a string of 6 silvers so the dacho carry method is now a possibility. Hahaha.

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  6. Well I know what the JP list aggregate info says about leaders, but I had told myself that the second MP purchase would be YomiDra… Ofcourse I didn’t get 300k MP saved until today. Seeing this, I decided to go for XM.

    Threw a team together just to feel it out: XM, Gadius, NY Mitsuki, Kiriko Another, and Uriel… Ok, I get it. XM is pretty amazing.

    Really interested to see what skill inheritance can do with this team once I figure out that mechanic. I’m actually thinking about Fuu as a skill inheritance option instead of Sanada… 2 useless colors changed to hearts and 7 turn cooldown… Dunno, think there is potential there.

    Anyway, just wanted to say thanks for helping me decide which MP purchase should be prioritized.

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  7. Is Ra’s inherit still necessary after the knights (arcline) get true damage added to their actives? I still need a monster from who I can get a strong shield (Indra or Raph pls, rem) and a dupe Ra.

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  8. Sanada is also excellent for ill six, as his skill enables a kill without using a less reliable board change, after illsix changes the board.

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  9. Congrats on your clear. I also plan to try Arena for the first time some time with RaDra soon. How important is Skill Delay Latents on RaDra / DKali / DKali / AIsis (AOrochi SI) / Indra / RaDra team? And what skills should I inherit? Thanks!

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    • Not that important. It’s more a luxury to increase your clear percentage for farming.

      As for SI, how about you do some research yourself? If you have questions on specific things after that I can try to help.

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  10. Ugh, can’t decide if I should sell some more dupes and get a 3rd XM. I guess I can wait a bit to decide, used up my stockpiled guan yinping and zhu bijae or whatever his name is on XM 1 and 2.

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    • imo the haste synergy is what really takes the team from elite to straight out stupid. It’s like the Cloud System on crack. If you have NY Mitsuki, you can kinda see if the extra haste is that important to you and weigh that into your decision to get a 3rd. I can understand if you’re reluctant to sell dupes, though, as so many weird things have become good due to SI.

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      • I got impatient, and sold the dupes and got myself a 3rd one. Now I just need to get some more flampys…

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  11. Ayo Setsu, nice job on the Arena clear! Now we just gotta wait for Arena 3 with Radar dragons and the inevitable 3rd series of MP monsters to trivialize it 🙂

    What latents did you use in this clear? I gotta get my XM team up and running myself and I’m a bit torn. Everyone mentions that the latents don’t matter but I wanna be a perfectionist

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    • As stated in the post, everything had 2x SDR. The rest literally don’t matter, but I guess you should fit at least one of each resist to cover the 100% gravity edge cases.

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    • You want SDR latents on your (three) Xiang Meis at least, Uriel and Gadius are optional. If you’re only running 1 Xiang Mei you probably want Uriel and Gadius to have SDR latents.

      You want at least 1 light resist for Yamatsumi and Zhu and 1 water resist for Hera. The rest should be wood and dark.

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    • It’s more for redundancy and isn’t a requirement. When you want to farm something, you want to cover as many edge cases as possible in order to improve your clear rate.

      In general, without a damage enhance you need a two-color board to do real burst. For Xiang Mei in particular, that takes two actives to achieve. So what if you found yourself in a situation where you couldn’t have both components of a two-color board ready since you got trolled by RNG earlier in the dungeon? Well, a damage enhance can give you a shot of reaching your damage goal in only a single active.

      When you add in all the Armored Knights getting true damage in the future, the active becomes even more flexible. In JP, Fencer is mostly used for the 100% dark damage resist, but since she can also be used for PreDRAs and Pys, it makes it that much better.

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  13. In lieu of having a Ra to inherit, would it be better to go with a Jize or a Rodin for dealing with PreDras? The team I’m using is XM(Saria)/XM/Uriel/Uriel/Gadius, and my current plans are to inherit Arcline, Awoken Orochi, and probably Raphael on to that team once they’re ready.Tough part is figure out who should get what, since managing the cooldowns for both Xiang Meis is important.

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    • Jize seems unusable since his gives you such a small window to use the base skill. So while ROdin is far from ideal, I think he’s what you have to work with. If you don’t like him, then you can always swap them to see what it’s like.

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  14. Is mythical/extreme endless good practice before attempting arena? I’m really hesitant about attempting before optimizing my team but my endless runs are looking pretty solid at the moment

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