Introduction

The Xiu Min Ranking Dungeon is simply a terrible Ranking Dungeon. This is because it is a 10 floor adventure with no Leader Skills. As such, buttons reign supreme along with the need to have highly specific cards. Lacking even just a few key cards will make it significantly harder to crown to the point one has to pray hard to skyfalls to succeed.

In fact, not having at least 10+ combo count average (on 6×5) will place you outside of a crown unless you are able to move blisteringly fast.

This article will give an overview of the generic team template used for this Ranking Dungeon along with my own compositions/modifications to achieve a reasonably high score.

On a side note, this article is being released late due to health issues.

Video commentary

—video coming soon–

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 the Xiu Min Tournament is 9  floors, each Combo is quite devalued as per the following calculation:

5,000/9= 555.5 points per combo.

As such, the best way to bolster your score is to utilize as many buttons as possible to lower the number of floors that are combo-ed. For example, using 4 buttons across the 9 floors will result in each combo being worth 5000/5 = 1,000 points. Following this logic, using as many as possible means one has to get lucky via skyfalls on fewer floors while ideally abusing bicolour board changers.

No Leader Skill

The No Leader Skill restriction means players will have to rely on actives and awakenings to progress through the dungeon. This results in bringing numerous Skill Boosts  to have key actives ready to skip as many floors as possible.

In an ideal world, actives that provide two or more benefits are desired as they can potentially solve 2 floors at once. For example, Ilmina ‘s 100,000 True Damage (buttons a floor) plus bicolour board gives a significant advantage as it can effectively deal with 2 floors.

Key cards to own

This Ranking Dungeon is horribly restrictive and it does require players to own specific cards to succeed. The more of these you own, the easier time you will have in obtaining a high score as you have to actually do less thinking/orb moving and are less vulnerable to skyfall luck.

Just remember that you are able to use a Friend’s card so you can be missing 1 piece.

Core pieces

The following cards are invaluable for this Ranking Dungeon and are somewhat mandatory for success:

 Brachydios

Brachydios is able to provide a massive Button to execute a single floor, but the double Jammer Row and Devil Killers  are the main reasons why he is needed.

The double Jammer Row is essential in forming a VDP  board while the Killers help ensure he hits damage cap on Floor 5. Using a Physical Killer  Weapon Assist is highly desired.

 Revo Satan

Revo Satan is another mandatory card as he is able to Button a single floor along with forming a full board of Dark orbs. This when used in conjunction with Brachydios results in a 7 Combo VDP board.

Thankfully, Satan is farmable so everyone is technically able to have him.

Dark VDP card

Due to the fact that we are planning on using Satan + Brachydios, we will need a dark card with the VDP  awakening. Unfortunately, this is slightly restrictive as the VDP card has to essentially deal 3 million damage on their own. While this can be helped along via burst actives, using either Sheena , Dark Metatron , or base Veroah  is preferred. With that being said, Sheena has the highest personal damage due to her innate Physical Killer and ability to take Physical Killer latents.

All VDP cards can be bolstered via a Physical Killer Weapon Assist.

Not having these three components will make the final floors far less consistent and should be prioritized over everything else.

High value card

 Ilmina

Ilmina is technically not needed, but she is incredibly valuable and will make your runs significantly easier as she is the best Button solution for Floor 1/2 while also producing a bicolour board after. Furthermore, she has 4 Skill Boosts  and can be run as either an inherit or sub.

if you are missing 1/3 above Core cards, do not bring an Ilmina friend.

Skill Boost  cards

Due to the fact that we are planning on using numerous Button actives, it becomes paramount to bring sufficient Skill Boosts. While one can technically use anything that provides enough total Skill Boosts, there are several farmable options.

While Whaledor  has 5 Skill Boosts, he also has lower ATK (which can be an issue for some Buttons) along with no SBR . As such, it may be risky to bring too many Whaledors as one can be Skill Bound on Floor 8.

By comparison, Dark  and Light  provide 4 Skill Boosts (with Super Awakenings), have no sub attribute (faster animation times), higher stats, and SBR.

Finally, Tengu  is the easiest Skill Boost card to acquire while also having SBR.

Buttons

Button cards tend to be inherited on Skill Boost bases as actives may not come up in time otherwise.

When deciding on which Button to use for a given floor, always check to see if you are facing 1 or more spawns and how many targets the Button hits.

The following icons include some of the more popular Buttons that have not already been mentioned:

•  Grimmjow – when Low HP
•  Vritra – when Low HP + Dark damage boost
•  Arch Demon Lucifer – Floor 4 Button
•  Awoken Archangel Lucifer – Floor 7 Button for 8c VDP
•  Dark Metatron – Floor 3 Button + bicolour board
•    Ra, Famiel, Lumiel – Budget Floor 1/2 Button

Dark Metatron is  a viable card for this Ranking Dungeon as she is able to produce a bicolour board while also being able to Button Floor 3. This can be used in lieu of Ilmina.

Higher value Buttons

One major limiting factor in this Ranking Dungeon is hitting Damage Cap. While it is not impossible to do, it will either require a dedicated burst inherit or using one of the following Buttons in conjunction with an Ilmina board:

•  U13 – 3x burst
•  Lance – 2x burst
•  Bahamut – requires Haste

These cards are able to button Floor 3 (have a Button kill Floor 4) and then use the retained Ilmina board to solve Floor 5 as the damage buff carries over.

These options are superior to a burst inherit as they act as both a button and solution to damage cap.

Useful inherits

If using Whaledors and Satan, your team will most likely not have 100% SBR. As such, using the Sumire Weapon Assist . Furthermore, using any Weapon Assist the grants a Physical Killer  will help kill the final boss or have Brachydios hit Damage Cap.

Dungeon overview

Every floor is button-able (except Boss) so it comes down to finding the ideal places to use them; however, Floor 5 is the most common place to hit Damage Cap while the Boss is a simple solve of a memorized VDP board.

Floor	Spawn, effective Killers, HP, & notes
Floor 1	5 Ninjas  9,422-10,011 HP, ~2700 DEF
Floor 2	3 Golems (R/B/G)   ~14,000 HP
Floor 3	Phoenix  125,920 HP
Floor 4	2 Light Chimera 210,827 HP
Floor 5	Amon   300,485 HPBest place to hit Damage Cap
Floor 6	Red Sonia   225,335 HP5 Combo Shield
Floor 7	Defoud 365,280 HP5 Combo Shield
Floor 8	Leviathan   739,712 HPPreemptive Skill Bind
Boss	Xiu Min  3,100,000 HPJammer/Poison skyfall, 1 million Damage Void Must use VDP

Sample teams

There is no “perfect” team for this Ranking Dungeon, but many of the more consistent scores will feature several key cards.

Xiu Min Ranking
Card
SA	–		–	–	–	flex
Inherit	Weapon
Latent			–	–	–

The above team will be able to Button 6 floors while only needing to solve 1 non-modified floor. Floor 5 will be solved via Ilmina’s bicolour and the burst from U13 will ensure Brachydios hits Damage Cap. In addition, Floor 6-8 will be buttoned and produce a 8 Combo, cascade-able VDP board for the boss.

• Floor 1: Combo
• Floor 2: Ilmina Button
• Floor 3: U13 Button
• Floor 4: Arch Demon Lucifer Button (Whaledor inherit)
• Floor 5: Solve Ilmina bicolour
• Floor 6: Satan Button
• Floor 7: Archangel Lucifer Button (Sheena inherit)
• Floor 8: Brachydios Button
• Floor 9: solve 8 Combo VDP board

If lacking U13 or other button + burst inherits, one will need to use a Gemstone to hit damage cap which means there will be one less Button available.

Sample crown score

The following took far too many attempts as I am missing almost all of the higher value cards. I only used 5 Buttons with a Carat  to hit damage cap after a Dark Metatron  board. This set up relies on me matching 2 non-modified boards on Floor 1 and 2 which has resulted in numerous 7-combo boards with no Skyfalls.

Xiu Min Ranking – Mantastic’s team
Card
SA	–		–	–		–
Inherit	Weapon					Weapon
Latent		–	–	–	–

I am unable to achieve amazing Skyfall luck but thankfully am able to move quickly.

In all honesty, if you get a lucky run where your combo count is 12+ and you do not take an exorbitantly long time, you will Crown. For example, if you got 12 average combos, you could be a full 22 seconds slower compared to my score and achieve the same finish.

More buttons means you have to get less lucky as there are fewer floors to puzzle.

VDP boards

Floor 9 is doable with a Dark VDP card when using the premade boards created by Satan + Brachydios and Archangel Lucifer in some setups.

Due to the fact that they are always going to have the same distribution of orbs, they can be quickly moved into the following positions:

Satan + Brachydios (7 combo, no cascade)

Satan + Lucifer + Brachydios (8 combo with cascade)

JP Scores

The following chart was compiled by pandaa and it shows the first few days of the Ranking along with the JP scores.

JP Crown: 131,152

JP Xiu Min and Magic Stone: 95,022

Conclusion

The Xiu Min Ranking Dungeon is a pretty horrible Ranking Dungeon as it relies heavily on specific cards and skyfall luck to succeed. Scores that hit under 10 average Combos will greatly struggle to Crown unless the player is able to move at blisteringly fast speeds.

In essence, the more Buttons and key cards you own, the easier it will be to Crown. As such, this has been one of my least liked Ranking Dungeons.

Happy Puzzling!

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