Introduction

I am not sure which is scarier: Halloween or the fact that we got these new cards and evolutions essentially at the same time as JP. This just goes to show that NA/EU can have content released on par with JP but we continue to remain 2-3 months behind as the norm.

Regardless, the Halloween REM features three new cards, a brand new evolution, and two new and Collab exclusive awakenings. This article will review all the cards found within the REM along with a brief review of the two new awakenings.

Just bear in mind that the Halloween REM is features mostly older cards that have not been updated and have subsequently fallen behind due to Powercreep.

Video commentary

—video coming soon—

Halloween Collab at a glance

Halloween REM Rarities
8-Star Base
7-Star Base
6-Star Base
5-Star Base
4-Star Base

Rankings are in no particular order within each tier

Halloween REM Rankings
S
A
B
C
D

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Costume Rankings by Pancaaake
S	coming soon?
A
B
C
D

Perhaps the most important ranking table in this whole article. This is just for fun and should not be the reason you roll.

New awakenings

The Halloween REM will feature two brand new awakenings: Skill Charge  and Super Bonus Attack . Both of these will hopefully pave the way for future cards possessing these new mechanics as they will greatly influence your team building decisions and compositions. Unfortunately, they are only available attached to rare Collab rolls so it may be a prolonged period of time before REM cards begin to acquire them.

The main downside to unique awakenings is that they cannot be inherited nor as easily piggy-backed off of a friend if the card itself makes a poor leader. As a result, I dearly hope they do not remain Collab exclusive moving forward as it is not feasible for the average player to pursue otherwise as these are somewhat meta shifting.

Skill Charge

Skill Charge  is an exciting twist on activating your active skills. Essentially, you are required to match all 5 colours (and have all colours present on your team) and the owning card will gain a single turn of haste for themselves. This leads to interesting potential for quickly charging up active skills beyond Skill Boosts .

For example, if you are playing solo through a dungeon with 8 floors, you can effectively gain 7 additional turns of haste for the owning card assuming you sweep every floor in one go. This can lead to easier inheritance as you can effectively negate the base cooldown on certain cards.

Sadly, Skill Charge is only available on Halloween Sonia Gran  who has a 15 turn base cooldown.

If this awakening spills over to the REM, I would not be surprised if Dark  and Light Kali  gain it through their anticipated ultimate evolution. If this is true and they gain meaningful damaging awakenings, they could act as desirable cards as they can efficiently carry a long inherit as their base skill will be quickly overwritten.

Super Bonus Attack

Super Bonus Attack  can be thought of as a Box Follow Up Attack   in that you are required to form a 3×3 square of heart orbs. This will produce 2 true damage that occurs after all your damage is dealt and 2x ATK for the owning card. This will kill off any resolve boss but also provide that card with a sizable boost in offensive output.

There are several interesting aspects to this awakening as it finally enables row-based teams to optimally function as you can still match your horizontal 6 and execute resolve bosses. This could perhaps lead to a (small) revitalization of row-oriented teams which would not be too uprising as there are only so many different patterns you can actually match in Puzzle and Dragons. However, one underlying implication for 2 damage worth of Follow Up Attack is newer spawns featuring resolves that will leave them with 2 health.

If new spawns begin to have this “Super” Resolve, it would either place further pressure to own a Super Bonus Attack card or bring two cards with regular Follow Up Attack or making 2 column of heart orbs.

At this point in time, only Halloween Nene  owns a Super Bonus Attack.

8-Star base

Halloween Xiang Mei – B

Pros	Cons
Has a wide sub pool Active can be used as a niche farming inherit Can be purchased for 500,000 MP Comes ready to use	Outdated as a leader Orb hungry as a leader Do not purchase for 500,000 MP Relatively poor sub value

Halloween Xiang Mei is a returning card in the Halloween REM and the scariest thing about her is how far she has fallen out of the meta as a leader. Xiang Mei  was once heralded as a top tier leader that had a terribly restrictive sub pool but was able to clear end game content. Unfortunately, system teams along with how she was precariously balanced became unsuitable when newer content was released as she could not keep up.

All of this applies to Halloween Xiang Mei and she would not be able to hold a candle to the other top tier leaders of today. Despite the fact that we do have a wider sub pool and inherits to draw upon, the orb hungry nature of her team and now comparatively lower damage will make it challenging to tackle modern dungeons.

Looking beyond her diminishing leadership potential, Halloween Xiang Mei has risen as a powerful inherit on Cosmic Trinity farming teams. The main idea is to produce a full board of your primary element and then use Halloween Xiang Mei to spawn 6 heart orbs. This will result in an ability to trigger Follow Up Attack, Box awakening, or optimal row board.

Halloween Sonia Gran – B (new evolution)

Pros	Cons
Reasonable leader skill God Killer  New Skill Charge  awakening	One of the worst active skills 15 turn cooldown Invalidates Skill Charge’s power Hard to feasibly use on a team

Halloween Sonia Gran has one of the most underwhelming active skills as it combines two different elements and blends them together into a 15 turn cooldown. This is disappointing as the 2x damage buff is low compared to Gemstones and the time buff is often not required. As a result, it can often be challenging to justify her usage on a team as it is not feasible to inherit over.

This is truly unfortunate as she is the only card with the Skill Charge  awakening. Skill Charge enables the owning card to hasten themselves when matching all 5 colours but with a 15 turn cooldown, you may still not have sufficient time to have an inherit ready.

However, Halloween Sonia Gran has modest leadership capabilities and can pair with the future Sherias Roots evolutions to provide an HP multiplier component.

Halloween Kali – D

Pros	Cons
Boobies The mirror is kind of cool Gained 2 dark resists	Essentially a dark attribute Light Kali Was outdated last year and even worse now Bait in Monster Point shop One of the least tastefully drawn breasts

Halloween Kali was underwhelming last year and has fallen even further down this year. Granted she did gain 2 dark resists  but even that 10% reduction is no justification of running her and it would not be a far stretch to call her the worst 8-star Collab card in Puzzle and Dragons.

Light Kali  has always been considered inferior to her dark sister due to the fact that she does not produce heart orbs and this also applies to the Halloween form. Rainbow teams often need the hearts to trigger their full multiplier, but even if they do not, you still want to have the option of healing after using a board changer. Thus, Halloween Kali will struggle to find a home on any team as her awakenings are nothing special.

The only positive thing I can find in Halloween Kali is the mirror in her artwork that has herself in a light form as the reflection.

Finally, her assets look like a deformed butt.

Halloween Verdandi – S (new card)

Pros	Cons
Active provides full health heal Tri-colour board changer that produces favourable colours Double 7 Combo  awakening Potentially has a high ATK multiplier Heart Cross damage mitigation	7 Combo is hard with heart cross Leader Skill is HP-reliant Heart Cross are not as favoured Active skill has a longer CD and can be wasted

Halloween Verdandi is a brand new card released in the Halloween REM and comes with a unique kit. Her awakenings are well designed to provide her with a healthy mixture of utility through Time Extends , defensive capabilities via bind immunity, and offensive potential courtesy of her dual 7 Combos . Furthermore, her active skill may be a common tri-elemental, but provides the popular heart, dark, and wood orbs. However, the full heal component is an interesting twist, but does sadly contribute to a significantly longer cooldown.

Outside of her own conditional HP leader skill, it is hard to utilize both components of Halloween Verdandi’s active skill as the tri-elemental board changer will usually provide sufficient healing. Thus, you are mostly stuck with a longer cooldown.

As a leader, Halloween Verdandi has a well designed kit for herself as the self healing is vital to achieving her amazingly high multiplier when triggering a heart cross. Unfortunately, it is not feasible to run in longer or preemptive heavy dungeons as you will quickly run out of actives as heart cross teams are notoriously orb hungry. Thus, I would only recommend her in short dungeons with fixed spawns you can plan around.

If used as a sub, she is wonderfully powerful on any combo team as the dual 7 Combos provide amazing burst damage and her tri colour board changer has synergy with Anubis  / Diablos  teams.

7-Star Base

Halloween Sonia – B

Pros	Cons
Bi-colour board 2 turns haste High base HP for inheritance	Low weighted stats (and no RCV) Challenging to use as a sub Mostly a situational inherit

Halloween Sonia would have been forgettable but the two turns of haste enables her to be used on specific farming builds. Even though we are in the age of Whaledor , you can never have enough Skill Boosts  when factoring in longer inherits. As a result, the two additional turns of haste combined with a fantastic board changer helps solidify Halloween Sonia’s niche in the meta.

Halloween Ruel – A (new card)

Pros	Cons
Double TPA  and 7 Combo  Double SBR  Can be used on Dark Athena  teams 5 turn base cooldown Bind immune Cat claws	Lackluster leader skill

Halloween Ruel is capable of replacing Loki  on Dark Athena  for solo usage as she is still able to provide the double SBR role while not sacrificing damage. However, this comes at the cost of significantly lower HP which may or may not make hitting Gaia Dragon thresholds possible. On the bright side, Ruel has a significantly faster cooldown which may help ensure your Gemstone comes up for certain challenge dungeons.

One could still use Ruel on combo oriented teams as the bind immunity can allow her to act as a bind clearer with a relevant active skill. The only major drawback is a lack of Time Extends.

 Halloween Nene – S (new card)

Pros	Cons
Top prize from Halloween REM Amazing active skill Only card with Super Bonus Attack  Enables row teams to have Follow Up Attack Best dark farming leader 6 connect orbs achieve 256x ATK	Can not match sets of 3 orbs Harder to use in longer dungeons I will probably never roll her

Halloween Nene is hands down the strongest card in the Halloween Collab as he brings several new components to Puzzle and Dragons.

Nene is currently the only card with Super Bonus Attack  which enables her to deal with Resolve encounters while still enabling row-based teams to function. This is important as it may revitalize this playstyle if more cards gain this awakening. Furthermore, Nene will gain 2x ATK with each box of hearts so she can achieve higher spike damage.

As a leader, Halloween Nene is unable to match 3 connected orbs, but is compensated with 256x ATK with 6+ connected dark orbs. This is borderline silly as you can stack dark rows  and sweep durable bosses with a single combo. Furthermore, this leads to the first truly viable dark speed farming leader as the inability to match 3 orbs acts as a pseudo no skyfall leader. Thus, you would ideally bring actives such as Diadem  who can spawn a fixed dark row as we lack a Zeus Dios  equivalent. One can argue that Dark Metatron  is able to act as a farming leader, but with the HP clause she is far more tedious by comparison.

In longer dungeon, Halloween Nene will struggle to sustain herself as she is reasonably orb hungry along with the inability to reset the board as easily through comboing. Thus, she would be mostly used in shorter dungeons where you can budget/plan out actives accordingly.

in regards to her active skill, Halloween Nene has one of the strongest ones available as she combines +2 combo count along with a Ryune  style board changer. This has wonderful synergy on any combo based team along with Dark Athena .

6-Star Base

Halloween Karin – C

Pros	Cons
Does the Thriller dance Can come flip her attributes	Low value overall Better options exist Lacks the stronger awakenings

Halloween Karin is a colour swapped version of non-awoken/reincarnated Karin which means she lacks the haste component to her active skill. Furthermore, Halloween Karin mostly features ample orb enhances for her primary colour (which you can swap between dark or water) but this has low value in this day and age.

The main problem I feel with orb enhances is the lack of damage they provide when using board/orb changers. As a result, you are often better off with TPA/7 combo cards when playing through challenging content unless your team hinges on the presence of enhance orbs or are purely mono colour.

On the bright side, there are some creative comments on PADx

Halloween Rozuel – C

Pros	Cons
Offensive soft bind clearer 5 turn base cooldown Her outfit The pumpkin	725 weighted stats Hard to place on a team

Rozuel  was once upon a time popular for her colour coverage and bind clearing potential on Ronove  teams. Unfortunately, that team has fallen out of favour and it was challenging to effectively use Rozuel elsewhere. Sadly, her Halloween form is just a colour swapped version that is just as hard to use efficiently. Most top tier teams do not require a soft bind clearer and TPAs have become replaced by 7 combo awakenings in terms of damage output.

Thus, I feel that Halloween Rozuel will mostly make for a cute box cheerleader for well developed accounts.

Halloween Laila – C

Pros	Cons
Forms a dark row on demand Helps build Halloween Nene farming team	Row is formed at the bottom Low value in the grand scheme of things

While writing Halloween Laila’s write up, Layla by Eric Clapton came on the radio which I thought was kind of cool. Regardless, Halloween Laila’s main appeal will be her dark row producing active skill for Halloween Nene teams. You will probably acquire a few Lailas in pursuit of Nene so you will most likely have a farming team ready to roll. Other than this unique usage, Halloween Laila has limited uses as her base stats, active, and awakenings are average at best.

Halloween Vampire – C

Pros	Cons
God Killer  Balanced type can accept any Killer latent Vampire or Werewolf? Yes	Claire  is generally a superior choice Low weighted stats

Halloween Vampire’s main shining attribute is his God Killer awakening which is further amplified by his Balance typing. With balance typing, you are able to equip any latent of your choosing to further bolster his damage potential. However, if you are not investing into specific latents, Halloween Vampire will be seldom used.

Halloween Alurane – C

Pros	Cons
Double SBR  Double Time Extend  Bind Immune bind clearing option	No offensive awakenings Better options exist for bind clearers

Halloween Alurane had some merits last year as a bind clearing option but we have no entered an age where we demand more from our subs. Halloween Alurane offers no offensive awakenings and while the utility can be useful, it is easily replaceable. As a result, her overall viability is quite low but can act as a bind clearing option for less developed boxes.

5-Star Base

Halloween Chiyome – B

Pros	Cons
5 turn base cooldown (still relevant as a base skill) Dragon Killer  Balance typing means you can accept any Killer latent	Low weighted stats Not suitable for every day usage

Halloween Chiyome is a powerful 5-star card if you are in the market for a dark Dragon Killer. This will mostly have applications for specific farming and not for every day usage due to her low weighted stats. However, you can push her value further through her ability to equip any Killer latent of your choosing.

Halloween Parvati – B

Pros	Cons
5 turn base cooldown Dragon Killer  Devil Killer  Balance typing means you can accept any Killer latent	Low weighted stats Poor base active skill Only used for Killers No SB  or SBR

Halloween Parvati has the potential to deal 9x damage to Dragon and Devil encounters which has amazing relevancy in Cosmic Trinity as the final floor has both those typings. Furthermore, you are able to equip any type of latent to further amplify your damage output.

Unfortunately, Halloween Parvati has two different Killers so it can be challenging to find ideal targets to use her on compared to cards like Tsubaki  and Mito . This lower flexibility combined with no other beneficial awakenings and lackluster base active means it will be challenging to fully capitalize on her skill set.

4-Star Base

None of these cards can be used as assists via Skill Inheritance due to no evolution.

Halloween Izanami – C

Pros	Cons
5 dark orb enhances  3 Light Resists  3 turn base cooldown	Terrible base active No real use in today’s meta

Halloween Izanami’s main benefit will be for 5o1e dark teams who are missing heavy dark orb enhance awakenings. Furthermore, her 3 turn base cooldown can be used to easily inherit a skill of your choice over top as the base skill is lackluster. Other than this, it is hard to find a place for Halloween Izanami

 Halloween Misery – D

Pros	Cons
Poison teams are a bigger meme than Jammers You can be Miserable when you roll her 7 Autoheal  is interesting	She is a meme

Misery was an interesting concept upon release as Hel and poison teams had some (albeit very small) potential. Unfortunately, you are unable to inherit Misery and GungHo has also seemed to have forgotten poison-based teams exist as there is no new leader that can utilize these orbs. Thus, Misery is a terrible card outside of meme team potential.

However, one strange and niche potential usage of Misery is her ability to restore massive amounts of health through her 7 autoheal awakenings. 7 Autoheals provide 5,600 health every turn when matching 1 combo and when this stacked, can provide sizable healing. This perhaps has the most applications on Resolve-based teams that want to stall out many turns with as little thought as possible. Terribly niche but worth mentioning.

Halloween Undine – D

Pros	Cons
Lots of orb enhance	Cannot inherit and have to use as a sub

If Halloween Undine was able to be inherited, she could have some merit for the very niche situations where you need to avoid fire damage for 3 turns. Sadly, she does not evolve and cannot be used as an inherit and will remain a poor silver to own.

Halloween Thoth – D

Pros	Cons
Grants +5s orb movement time as a leader Super cute	We have more than enough time extend

Halloween Thoth & Sopdet was once used as an Anubis pairing to produce more consistent activation as Time Extends  were in short supply. However, we now have plenty of cards providing more than 1 second of orb movement time and with Diablos  existing, we tend to have little trouble hitting the required combos. As a result, Thoth has no true value outside of super niche S-ranking random dungeons for a Tamadra (which is actually less efficient than running Tamadra Village in coop).

Halloween Mulan – D

Pros	Cons
3 Skill Boosts	I don’t know where to begin

Halloween Mulan is the final card in the Halloween REM and is another sad silver to roll. The only slightly positive aspect is the 3 Skill Boosts but even then it is not really that needed considering she does absolutely nothing for the team along with having a completely worthless base active on an 11 turn cooldown.

Conclusion

The Halloween REM returns to Puzzle and Dragons but the scariest part is the sad line up of silver cards. Strong Collabs tend to have valuable silvers available as collateral perks when chasing the Diamond eggs but the Halloween REM has none.

With this in mind, it is hard to justify rolling for the average player if you are looking for value (rolling for pleasure/pretty girls is another story). Thus, I encourage players to avoid this unless you are well prepared for disappointment.

Finally, I dearly hope the Super Bonus Attack  and Skill Charge  start appearing on REM cards as they are interesting and powerful new awakenings.

Let me know what you think about the Halloween REM as a whole and how much you plan on rolling.

Happy Puzzling!

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