Ranking Dungeons

Sonia Elle Ranking Dungeon Guide & Strategies

72 Comments

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 Boost, Skill Bind Resist Skill Lock 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 3274 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 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 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 Skill Boost (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 Skill Lock Resist Badge is a great choice.

In regards to your leader, Ilm 3235 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 3385 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 3274 / Melissa 
Floor 6 29 (30M DEF) Regular True Damage
Floor 7 1,530,347 Solve bi-colour
Floor 8 55 Ilmina 3274 / 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 3274 / 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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72 thoughts on “Sonia Elle Ranking Dungeon Guide & Strategies”

      1. 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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              1. 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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                  1. 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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  2. 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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  3. 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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      1. 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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          1. 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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  5. 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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  6. 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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    1. 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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  8. 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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      1. 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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  9. 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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  12. 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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    1. 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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      1. 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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  13. 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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  15. 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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  16. 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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  17. 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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    2. 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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  18. 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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    1. 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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  19. 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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    1. 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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  20. 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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