Introduction
The Sonia Elle Tournament is now live and gives players the opportunity to chase a crown along with Sonia Elle by achieving a high score. Players are ranked based on Combo Count, Time Remaining, Max Damage, and Skill Only Defeat with the top 6% earning a Crown and top 26% earning Sonia Elle.
This article will explain my thought process for earning a crown along with strategies for maximizing your score.
Dungeon information can be found HERE.
Video commentary
–video coming soon–
138,504 score
Skyfalls were quite friendly
—
No assists
No assists means players will have to use subs that bring a healthy mix of Skill Boosts 
, Skill Bind Resist 
, and relevant active skills to succeed.
Furthermore, it is almost mandatory to have a Cloud Resist 
awakening as the final floor will produce far too many Clouds to puzzle under.
Thankfully, players will have access to Super Awakenings as Ranking Dungeons are only completed in solo mode.
Score breakdown
In Ranking Dungeons, players are scored based on the following:
- Each Combo is worth 5,000 points
- Each second remaining is worth 500 points
- Hitting 40 Million damage is 10,000 points
- Each active used to kill a floor (no combo made) is -5,000 points
Due to the fact that Sonia Elle is 9 floors, each Combo is somewhat devalued assuming one combos each floor.
5,000/9 = 555.56 points per combo made means one has to move at an exceptionally fast pace to justify matching additional combos without active skill help.
With this in mind, players can inflate their combo count by either abusing bi-colour boards or buttoning a floor to decrease the number of floors the combo score is divided by.
For example, if a player uses 3 buttons, each combo now becomes worth 5,000/6 = 833.33 which can be further amplified via bi-colour boards and 7×6.
Key components to bring
Being skilled at solving boards is a valuable skill to have, but no amount of amazing puzzling will compensate for a poorly crafted team as Sonia Elle has many mechanics to abuse to increase your score.
Inflating combo count
The best way to inflate your combo count is to utilize a 7×6 leader along with bi-colour boards.
Thankfully, Ilmina 
and her skill up, Melissa 
, are both able to provide a 100,000 True Damage and bi-colour board changer. As such, it is vital to have at least one as a sub and pair with a friend’s Ilmina.
A bi-colour on 7×6 will usually provide 10+ combos which will help pad your total score.
Buttoning
The Sonia Elle Tournament has 9 floors, but three of them have 55 or less HP (with high DEF). As such, virtually any True Damage active will execute them and is the main reason why Ilmina or her skill up is vital.
One active is able to clear two floors and will help keep your total combo count higher since there are fewer floors that are actually matched. Granted you do lose 5,000 points per button, but the time saving and combo count preserving greatly outweighs this penalty.
For this event, one only needs to pair with an Ilmina, have her skill up (or an actual Ilmina) as a sub/leader, and one non-board modifying True Damage active skill to succeed.
Resolve counter
There is one resolve spawn on Floor 2 and while a FUA 
is a potential solution, using a 25+% Gravity is far more efficient.
The FUA requires more elaborate matching which may drastically reduce your consistency as a board changer may not provide 6 hearts nearby and subsequently waste additional time. Thus, a 30% Gravity will immediately bypass the Resolve threshold and one can combo as usual.
The best option for this is the farmable (and trade-able) Christmas Hera 
as she has a 13 turn cooldown, 1 Skill Boost , and the vital Cloud Resist Awakening.
Cloud Resist
The final floor in the Sonia Elle tournament will spawn an absurd amount of Clouds and it is almost mandatory to have a Cloud Resist awakening on your team. The above mentioned Christmas Hera and Avalon Drake 
will be the two most common solutions via their Super Awakenings.
Team building
In order to have a Hera’s 30% Gravity ready for Floor 2, one must have 12 Skill Boosts (can gain 1 via the Solo Mode Badge) on their team. This can be eased by pairing with a Ilmina friend as she already come with 4. Thus, one needs to find 8 across 5 cards.
While it may be tempting to use a Whaledor 
, they provide less benefit compared to a bi-colour board maker as their enhanced skyfall active is not a reliable source of additional combos.
If Skill boost needs can be met, one may need to use the Skill Bind Resist Badge is a great choice.
In regards to your leader, Ilm 
and Yog 
are great solutions (provided no ilmina is available) as they have two Skill Boosts, high multipliers, and a bi-colour board changer. Barring this, any combo-oriented leader will work. For Mantastic, I used Anubis 
and simply had to play with only 3 bi-colour board changers.
If lacking more ideal options, virtually any combo-based leader can work when paired with Ilmina.
Generic set up
The following is a generic team set up/floor-by-floor strategy:
Sonia Elle Ranking Template |
||
| Floor | HP | Notes |
| Floor 1 | 3,316,640 | Combo/Bi-colour |
| Floor 2 | 3,129,507 | Gravity + Combo/Bi-colour |
| Floor 3 | 3,129,653 | Combo/Bi-colour |
| Floor 4 | 2,727,708 | Combo/Bi-colour |
| Floor 5 | 16 (27M DEF) | Ilmina / Melissa |
| Floor 6 | 29 (30M DEF) | Regular True Damage |
| Floor 7 | 1,530,347 | Solve bi-colour |
| Floor 8 | 55 | Ilmina / Melissa |
| Floor 9 | 25,000,000 | Solve bi-colour |
Combo/Bi-colour means you can either regular combo or use a bi-colour and solve that board. A given team will have 3-4 bi-colour boards so use them when you feel the normal board does not preset an easy solution. If using 4 bi-colours, one will only have to solve 2 vanilla boards.
Regular True Damage is any form of True Damage that does not disrupt the board. This is to save on both animation time as well as prolonging the time to plan out the bi-colour board given by Ilmina / Melissa .
Will NA outpace JP?
This is always a challenging question to answer as there are several factors at play. Firstly, NA is able to sometimes use new cards, but will have a feasible team template ready on Day 1 which grants more overall attempts as theory crafting is not required; however, NA tends to lag behind JP when it comes to pure Puzzling skills.
As such, there is a possibility NA will be able to surpass JP due to the extra knowledge of winning team compositions, but being forced to heavily combo on 7×6 with little movement time may be restricting. Furthermore, many players may not be able to build the stronger team templates so that may also be a limiting factor.
The following chart was compiled by Pandaa and shows the JP cutoff for a Crown and 26% for Sonia Elle:
If the image does not load or is hard to see, the final cutoffs are:
Crown (6%) – 127,958
Sonia Elle (26%) – 98,004
Conclusion
The Sonia Elle tournament gives players the opportunity to acquire a 6% Crown or Sonia Elle at 26%. As a whole, this Ranking Dungeon will be quite accessible for players who have the more ideal team templates as it will provide them with a significant advantage over the average player; however, everyone should have access to a friend Ilmina and this can help pad their score overall.
Let me know what you think about this Ranking Tournament in the comments below along with what team composition you plan on running.
Happy Puzzling!
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Mantastic Puzzle and Dragons 
Hey there, i Don t have Ilmina or yog. What other card can i use as a leader?
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Use Ilm and find a friend that has Ilmina.
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You can virtually any combo-based leader such as Anubis or Dark Ideal
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Any combo based leader is a suitable substitute
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My only combo leader is yusuke, is he Fine? I m thinking of pairing him with Melissa, hera is, jin and lucifer. But i have to max oft some cards. Do you think this could work?
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Yes it can work (assuming you pair with ilmina)
Yusuke and ilmina’s bicolours dont have synergy with each other but you should still do enough dmg
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Thank you so much for the good advice
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You are very welcome =)
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Hey Mantastic in order your advice i created a team with Yusuke, Melissa, dragon caller cotton (because of follow attack), Erna (resistance cloud), Lucifer (true damage)and ilmina. I managed to get 124.554 Points and sitting now on 12.0%. but i m still far away of a crown. do you have any helps to get into 6%?
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Using a FUA is far more time consuming compared to a gravity so that would be the main place that could be improved
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thats exactly what i was thinking but i only have Hera is with a 20 cool down not enough to be ready at floor 2. is it nessesary to have a 30% gravity or are 10% enough?
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You need 25% to break resolve
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I was able to make one of the top JP teams with Honjo and Brachydios, and got 135k earlier (top 2%). I’m not as good a puzzler as you, so I had to rely on some luck, but this is pretty solid. I hope there aren’t enough NA players to push me out of crown range, but I feel like this one has such a well defined formula our cutoffs will probably be higher than JP (like the last tournament). Crossing my fingers!
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You should be quite safe here and I do not really foresee the scores climbing too high despite having more options
I am estimating a 132k-ish cutoff
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115708 Ed leader with ilm friend. youske yog lelian and ny yomi. Ilm to clear 5 and set board for 6. Ny yomi to boost damage. Lelian for 9 and pray for blind combos. Hit 11 on last board behind cloud. Lol. Puts me at 16.6 percent. High enough to get Sonia Elle. Not so close I have to chase that crown.
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Well getting Sonia Elle is still pretty nice =)
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yeah couldnt stand there. don’t have the ideal team, but ran Ed w/ duel famiel, whale for boosts and yog for followup with a Ilm friend. hit 128k, and am now at 8%. combo number is going to kill me. Famiel are my only direct damage orb changers.
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That is a huge improvement! Congrats =)
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Made one small tweak, and had better combo luck. swapped second Famiel for a lowly Riza Hawkeye for Neptune. Removed the orb change graphic, and had better combo luck. hit 132,052 now within crown range at 4.7 percent. lets see if i can get my first crown. 🙂
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That is another big improvement! Congrats on waht may be a crown and a nice score =)
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Do you know why my Holy Night Santa Claus Hera 1781 only has 3 awoken skills?
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Need to +297 it, and then super awaken it (with another +297) to get access to cloud resist. Check the Monster Enhancement menu to sort it out.
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^ that is correct =)
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Thank you so much for the guide! ^^ Went in blind earlier and got a 104k, now up to 127k with an adjusted team~ X’D I’ll keep trying!
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You are very welcome and glad to hear you vastly improved!
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I’m currently sitting at 16% with Vraska and Diablos leads with Avalon Drake (cloud resist), Lumeiel, Famiel, and Ra. This is an alright team,
Floor 1 – As is
Floor 2 – Vraska for FUA
Floor 3 – As is or Avalon
Floor 4 – As is or Avalon (if not used on last floor)
Floor 5 – Famiel
Floor 6 – Ra
Floor 7 – Solve former Famiel board
Floor 8 – Lumiel for true damage
Floor 9 – Solve former Lumiel board
I’m averaging 9-10 combos before skyfall, and overall getting about 11-12 combo average after skyfall. I just need to be conscious that Vraska gives extra time to move the orbs, so I need to drop the orbs before the time is up to stay competitive.
Much of this seems like skyfall luck, but I might have that lucky moment 6 times, once; one can only hope.
Speaking of hope, I hope this can help others think of different teams if their boxes are not so deep. (This is a similar concept to Mantastics, a baseline if you would, so I give credit and thanks to him.)
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Glad to see you found something that works for your own individual monster box =)
In terms of helping your luck, try cascading if possible, the staggered rate of matching can facilitate skyfall matches
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Who’s ready for Xiu Min ranking next? That will be FUN🤦🏻♂️
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oh boy
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Enra is an amazing lead for this.
She comes with the cloud resist super awakening, as well as having access to a tri-color boardchanger that already have FUA built in, in the form of Urd.
I’m using a defense break rather than button to handle the two high def floors.
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Outside of the cloud, I feel she is weaker than Yog due to no bi colour board changer; however, she is still certainly viable
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She has Red Sonia as a bi-color board changer for her. I neglected to mention that.
Personally, I opted for Urd bc Urd had the 7c awakening and FUA.
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How did you manage to place in the tournament?
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I have been playing just over a year. The best % I have ever gotten was 57. With your suggestion, I used maniacal ilm, holy night hera, bewitching ilm, holy night ilmina and judging saria with a phantom ilmina partner. Woo hoo. I’m currently at 103,906 at 28%.
Thank you.
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Congrats on your huge improvement! Enjoy the new solo quests rewards!
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I’ll have to try this out- I’m at 19% with double Vraska but I don’t think I can squeeze much more out of them.
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That team just does not have the right mechanics to sweep a 9 floor dungeon effectively
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139,352 and 0.6% shoud be far enough for me to secure my crown, thank you for your guide and you video.
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Very safe crown and congrats!
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Thank you for the guide as always. What do you estimate the cutoff will be for getting Sonia Elle (26%)? I’m currently sitting at 22.1% with a high score of 114,002. I don’t see myself getting much higher of a score as I don’t have a cloud resist awakening and don’t really feel like wasting a bunch of +297s on my Christmas Hera. I don’t really care about crowns, I just want the new monster. I’m hoping I’m safe but I’ve gone down a full percent in the least 12 hours or so.
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I would say that your score would not be safe for Sonia Elle and you would have to try more in order to raise it a bit. NA is better able to do this ranking dungeon due to it being released much later compared to JP so we have more cards available
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Thank you, I realized that it is possible to turn off the skill description text box pop-up when using actives and was able to shave off a couple of seconds and got 117,150 which puts me at 21.6% with 14 hours remaining. I’m thinking this should be good enough to get a level 1 Sonia Elle.
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That looks like a safe score for Sonia Elle! Congrats =)
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Where in the menu options can you do this?
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I ended up breaking 100k using double vraska with balboa for double turn defense break on floors 5/6. On the last floor I popped vraska’s and prayed to combo out and got real lucky! Hoping now that I have my method down I can do even better.
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Glad you were able to break 100k! Keep trying to improve!
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Currently at 13.6% with Ilmina/Ilm/Superman/Ra/Tsubaki/Aw Vrajawhatever
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Nicely done =)
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At 14.1% with athena helios, roots, lumiel, tsubaki, saria, ilmina.
Have a jin cloud resist but went with this and try to look at the button ilmina board and make 1-2 moves on the last floor.
Doubtful the 14.1% will hold but whateever.
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14.1% will certainly hold for 26% and Sonia Elle
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I just want to say thank you. Thanks to your guide I might be able to crown for the first time after years of playing. As of this moment I am at 5.6% with 132,604 points. I dont think it is safe to relax just yet but I clear boards left to right which probably makes it harder and no stylus skills either. Your guide helped me so much and if only I could clear a couple seconds faster I would be safe.
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Congrats on that score! You still have a few days left and I am certain you can improve!
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Urgh right after I erote this I was bumped to 5.7%. 😦
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Nooo
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What do you think of replacing wedding scheat with xmas hera provided you give scheat cloud resist super awakening? saves an extra board swap for ronia and gronia.
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FUA animation is slower than gravity overall. With that being said, if you don’t have a Christmas Hera ready is use scheat =)
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I tried because I was hoping for some extra love from 3 turns of light skyfall, but it definitely doesn’t act like eschmali’s lightfall boost.
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Skyfall boost does not always give an extra combo, but in the long run over the course of many tries/floors, you will have an extra combo here n there
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How are you one shotting floor 4 with yog? I match the two lights and a heart and only do half damage while activated both leader skills..
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13 combo in the video gives the edge on dmg. If you only match the three it won’t be enough.
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I was also full HP from a heart skyfall on f2 so that ensured i could have full Yog multiplier
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Floor 4 (assuming ilmina pairing) can be killed with 2 Light and Fire (make sure to heal as well). Using Yog board without being at 80% or more will not kill sonias uless you get a heavy light board/high combos
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Ive been playing for 5 years and every tourn I finish a half to 1 percent out of crowning. when crown were 1 percent I finished 1.2 and did not crown. Ive watched your video and right now Im at 7 percent. Great advice thank you but Ive even played at the same time as watching your video and Im doing better than you did at least time wise until floor five when you button the first time and I finish 10 second later than your time even when I don’t even try to combo at all. Why is that
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Are you using the same buttons for f5-9? Using Ilmina style board changers is the most efficient way along with a vanilla true damage for neptune
10 seconds is 5,000 points
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team is the same but I use Hathor for the 25 gravity. My team is lim and yog leaders with lim, Drake , Ra, Hathor. Ithink Im slow combos I think PAD needs to crown out like 10 percent. I wish I could see you in person crown I just heard about you on the Rikuu tourn and didn’t have the right monsters to crown. Finished like 10 percent on that one. You guys make it seem so easy to crown but I always fall short. Anyway I am Fan of you so thank you
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In an ideal world, you are finishing your combo before the timer runs out. Assuming you button 3 floors (leaving 6 to combo) any you spend 1 second less per floor, that is 6 seconds saved or 3,000 more points
Try that mentality and see if it improves your score =)
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For whatever reason I didn’t keep a Melissa… Have everything else for your team (except skill lol) and I just got pushed out of Elle reach. I don’t think I can do any better than I have with yusuke in place of melissa.
Been trying with A. Vajra and yog…Not doing any better.
Going to the the Red Athena strat and see if that pans out.
Thanks again Mantastic!
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You are very welcome and hopefully you were able to secure Sonia Elle =)
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I did it, I finally did it! First crown ever! Thank you so much!
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Huzzah and congrats! Enjoy your shiny new Crown!
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Well it’s over but at least I made it to 21 so a new monster for me that I may never use . Reeeeeeeeeeeee
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But at least you have her =P
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