Indigo Descended is going to be available on November 20th at 6pm and brings fourth a new set of challenges, some familiar faces, and a 7×6 board. Those who have managed to clear the first Endless Coridoors will have unlocked a 7×6 board onwhich to practice upon. I have found myself becoming quite dizzy and slightly nauseous from playing the 7×6 and 5×4 boards as I am too familiar with the 6×5. With a larger board, the boss’s health is boosted to compensate for the higher average combos when playing with 12 additional orbs. Row enhance-based teams will have a tough time trying to match a horizontal line of seven orbs whereas a  focused team will excel as more two prongs can be achieved. Naturally, combo-based teams will have it easier; players are expected to pump out millions of damage every turn to overcome the nearly 10 million health pool of the boss.

The boss drop  is not that appealing compared to  or , and I might not want to pursue skill ups. She will most likely be an evolution material for the strangely dressed  . Her art is not as flashy as some of the newer cards being released and it is a small breath of fresh air that her background isn’t as “noisy” as the Halloween monsters. For myself, she will be a pretty blue trophy to add to my box collection.

The descend itself seems exciting and will require large amounts of concentration to consistently combo very high to overcome the augmented health pools. The first floor seems somewhat annoying as monsters have 25 health and high defense. With 25 health, they require three turns to kill, or you need to break 866,667 defense. However, you are given until their second turn to kill as they will charge up upon being hit. Just don’t miss your colours! Floor two is uneventful and very easy to stall as only 3 poison orbs are made per turn. Floor three has the blue Grimoire   appearing and this was what gave me the most trouble in Scarlet Descended  due to 5 million health and resisting 3 colours. Her colours are different, but mechanics are the same as Scarlet; however, with the 7×6 board and level 99 monsters, it should be less of a headache in comparison as stalling is now a viable option. I may want to try and kill her above 50% to prevent the enhanced water skyfall mechanic.

Floor four has a humorous reference to the customary Belial text as he has now evolved and will try to kill you from turn one by preemptively skill binding you for 5 turns. His “I’m not even going to wait 1 turn!” line cracks me up as the less evolved Belial would heal you to full health and say, “I’ll give you 3 turns.” This floor makes me very tempted to bring a higher  team to ensure safe passage through the descend, but as long as you keep  above 20% health, stalling through the poison and 12,622 hits should be doable. If not the buff owl Amon  on floor five will take 4 turns before hitting for 32,622 (up to 6 if you push him under 50% on your third or fourth turn to trigger the enrage).

The boss floor of  has nearly 10 million health and preemptively produces jammers and poison orbs along with locking them in place. This locking mechanic prevents  style board changers from removing the problematic orbs, but  or  board refreshes will clear the board. Provided you can survive the first turn, it should be reasonable to stall through. The 30% damage reduction shield for three turns at <80% health is annoying but at least manageable. Running out of hearts could be an issues after her Freezing Wind ability and worse if followed by the basic attack. On the bright side, she appears to be delayable, which is unusual for higher level descends as most have had preemptive status void spells.

I could be blowing this out of the water by being intimidated by the larger health pools, but I should practice more on 7×6 boards to get a strong grasp of how much damage I can actually put out.  I will most likely try to resist farming The Friday dungeon for my second Kali skill-ups in favour of challenging a new descend and I have a few teams in mind.

For my Fantastic account, it will have to be the Wonder Boys of  while Mantastic will either use the lovely  or  teams. I am tempted to make my  debut here as the extra-large board combined with numerous  awakenings should make short work of every floor.

My love for  has lasted for over two years, and I am very comfortable using her for all the new content, but I may be tempted to debut  as the extra large board should make the 7 combo threshold a breeze. I am still practicing using  as a lead in Extreme Endless Corridors and I have encountered some cases in which I am unable to match 5 orbs with one enhanced along with 7 combos total. As such, the 7×6 board should always have perfect activation due to twelve additional orbs. I still have a brief period of time before the descend goes live and will make a second post to update on my progress =)

As for new evolutions, Awoken Thor  and Set  make their North American debut!

 Awoken Thor may not be the dreamboat we have seen running around the movie cinema lately, but he brings three  to the table! I still remember when  was the first monster to receive three row enhances, and pretty much everyone lost their pants with excitement. Times have most certainly changed, there is no longer a massive amount of hype for a monster to gain three rows. This could partially be due to the fact that light teams have mainly been either rainbow or healer in nature, thus reducing the popularity of light rows. It could be that, or perhaps it is because Thor is neither a pretty girl nor a hunky husband. Regardless, Awoken Thor will be here and will have a meaningful impact on the new 2/9/2.5 teams. Sadly, you will have to wait for a new GFE,   , to be released, and I have no idea when that will occur.

When playing the role of a sub,  can either join the ranks of the rarely used  teams or can be used as the blue sub in light-based rainbow teams. In terms of his competition for a sub role, he goes up against   as a damage enhancing sub. Awoken Venus also has three “pointless”  awakenings for rainbow teams and trades  ‘s double  for two  . Thor also trumps Venus for the other awakenings as the extra skill boost may ensure a turn-one activation. At this point, it will come down to whether or not you want to have an active that comes up very frequently (and possibly adds similar damage) or want to wait for 12 turns for  who will boost damage for two turns. It is here I will award  bonus points just for being ready faster (and being prettier). Of course, Venus’s bonus damage relies on having excess light orbs that are not enhanced (so she will most likely need to combo with a light orb maker). Take all this with a grain of salt as  and  play comparable roles for their respective teams; you need to determine what type of damage you need to bring, and you can also bring both as they overlap.

 On the other hand, Set has some hot art work. His weighted stats are boosted to 724.80, which is still quite low by today’s standards. However, the additional triple  has propelled him into the spotlight as a viable mono red sub for the meantime. The most notable team he will gain a sub slot on would be  as he is heavily  based. The low recovery is also compensated by  ‘s leader skill and as such,  would have very favourable stats. The main problem with  moving forward in the next few months is he will be replaced by  upon release. Both share 12-turn cooldowns and enhance differently than   , which allows you to pump out even more damage as you are utilizing enhanced red orbs along with fire attribute enhancement.  has a built in orb changer, but  multiplies damage by 2x instead of 1.5x along with haste and lasting two turns. Granted  has one more  , but lacks . and one less  . Another drawback of  ‘s active is that he will also change heart into fire orbs. This could potentially interfere with other orb changers and cause too much red to be present, thus interfering with combos or  . I dislike long cooldowns for a single orb change and the double dipping hurts  in the long run as neither component does that much for a 12-turn cooldown. Lastly,  is usually orb change heavy, and you may not want to remove heart orbs. For now,  is going to have amazing damage due to triple  , but will be slightly forgotten in a few months.