Last year I made a post about climbing to Champion V in Epic Seven‘s regular arena (not RTA, all my homies hate RTA). More recently I decided to make the push to Emperor V just to see if I could. I actually made it to Emperor III before dropping all the way back to Champion V, it was pretty crazy. How quickly you climb and how long you stay there depends on the day of the week and where in the season you are, but the whole point of this post is to say that it is very possible to climb to Emperor V after lurking in Champion V for a while.

“Possible” is not the same as “worth it,” though. All you get is an extra 50 skystones a week which is yes, an extra 2500 skystones or so per year, but is it really worth the effort of building teams and spending precious minutes on selecting and beating other players’ teams versus just auto-ing NPC teams? I don’t think so. The bigger draw is getting a few more conquest points to spend on gear charms, but even then, it’s like mehhh… So really the main gain is the one-time rewards for making it to Emperor V and above for the first time, after that you can just coast.

Now then, the 2024 post is hopelessly outdated when it comes to the meta at the time. Most of the terrors back then like Navy Captain Landy, ae-Karina and Ocean Breeze Luluca are nowhere to be seen even in Guild Wars these days. However the main principle that led me to Champion V is the same: find counters to the most common teams and then farm them exclusively. Easier said than done, though. Let’s break it down into two not-so-easy steps.

How to find counters

Two ways. 1) Get advice from others. In my case I watched a lot of YouTube videos about people fighting Guild Wars and Arena battles, and even RTA sometimes. Just search for things like epic seven arena defense or whatever. For example, here’s a video that straight up says “HOW TO BEAT EVERY ARENA DEFENSE CURRENTLY! OCTOBER 2025! Epic Seven.” Other people might have characters and builds that aren’t attainable for you, but you’re bound to get some powerful clues that lead to a solution.

2) Set the offending team as your own defense and see all the ways people counter them. Of course this method only works if you have the common units. I don’t have Bystander Hwayoung or Witch of the Mere Tenebria, so I can’t do that, but I have most of the others. I would never have thought of using Benimaru against Rinak and Setsuka if someone hadn’t done it to me first, of course.

How to farm them

As I did steps 1 and 2, I compiled a Word document showing the most common teams and how other people handled them. Here’s a screenshot showing several the possible counters to the Genesis Ras / Lady of the Scales / Setsuka / Frieren team I used to have so much trouble with at first.

The ones crossed out are the teams I tried to use but failed. Other people reported great success with New Moon Luna, for example, but I was never able to get the speed tuning right on mine to avoid getting cut by Lady of the Scales, so I abandoned it. The team in bold is the one I eventually found success with. So much success, in fact, that I actually auto-battle those teams. Genesis Ras, Lady of the Scales, Setsuka and Frieren have turned from an object of dread into free points that I eagerly hunt for. And that’s the whole purpose of this exercise.

But then you might ask, “What if I don’t have any of the common counter units?” I’m going to post my most commonly used counter teams below, and they will contain a lot of moonlight, collab and limited characters and artifacts. That’s just the kind of game Epic Seven is. They make their money by creating problems and selling the solutions. The good news is that the meta is constantly changing, and eventually Smilegate will release enough counters to send whatever unit is terrorizing you into hiding. In the meantime, you should try to get at least one copy of every limited and collab unit and artifact. The unit part, at least, is not hard as long as you don’t waste skystones. Moonlight units are a little more challenging. You just have to collect them over time, focusing on the meta-defining ones, i.e. anyone who does something really annoying or unfair.

Then you might also ask, “What if I have the units but I don’t have the gear?” Uh… welcome to the club? Epic Seven players who are fully satisfied with the builds of all their characters don’t exist. The beauty of the “hunt specific teams” method is that you don’t need to gear your whole roster, you just have to put your very best gear on your hunters and go to town. You’re bound to have some good gear somewhere, even if you’re relatively new. Otherwise you wouldn’t have made it to Champion V in the first place.

Moreover, to be honest, unless you’re trying to outspeed everyone, you’re unlikely to run into any crazy strong builds between Champion V and Emperor V. It’s only from Emperor onward that people try all kinds of psychedelic builds just to mess with your sanity. You won’t win 100% of the opponents you challenge, but as long as you win most of them, you’ll naturally climb.

Last note, what about arena defense? LOL IDK. Mine has like an 8% win rate, not gonna lie. It’s a good place to put annoying characters (like Belian) and assorted trap builds, but I can’t be bothered.

Teams I actually used

Time to share what I targeted and how I did it. I learned from others, others can naturally learn from me. Besides, there’s no point gatekeeping any of this stuff anyway: new characters like School Nurse Yulha and Rider Sigret are bound to shake up the meta in the coming weeks.

Enemy team 1: Basically anything without Harsetti or Lady of the Scales

Solution: Cleave with Straze and Amid. Those teams are the most likely to be booby-trapped, so I honestly avoid them until nothing easier is showing up. A Ruele of Light could be 300 speed for example (almost certainly not at the Champion level but you never know), or 280 with Sole Consolation to cut and apply Invincible. If your Amid is 310 or higher, Straze cleaves become much safer, and then you can aim for unprotected Rinak teams as well (i.e. still no Harsetti or Lady).

Example:

Stats on my team:

Amid

My fastest unit, but considered slow as far as Amids go. I pulled her on release and she was a bench warmer for the longest time, but she’s useful now I have some speed gear. That’s why I say you should pull every limited unit if you can. I occasionally give her Young Senya’s Proof of Friendship artifact to make sure Straze goes after her.

Straze

The legend. Probably my favorite character as far as design and cool factor goes. I would love to get that crit damage to 350 and the speed to about 200. Triple torrent is in the cards for him in the future as well.

Watcher Schuri

The same one I use for Dark Constellation. He’s mostly here for the speed imprint, which brings Amid to 306 speed. He usually doesn’t get a turn, but something slips past Briseria and Straze sometimes, and then he finishes the job. Ka-blammo!

Briar Witch Iseria

In this team, her job is just to prevent revive by existing. Since she often cuts Straze, I can fish for defense breaks with her S3 if I think it’s safe. However AOEs can be risky depending on who you’re fighting.

Enemy Team 2: Genesis Ras/Yulha with Lady of the Scales, Harsetti, Setsuka

Enemy Team 3: Genesis Ras, Lady of the Scales, Setsuka, Frieren

Solution: Empyrean Ilynav, Shadow Knight Pyllis, Roana, Lionheart Cermia.

I use the same team for auto-battling both of the enemy teams I mentioned, with a very high win rate. Shadow Knight Pyllis is sorta, kinda replaceable in this setup (Boss Arunka, Belian or some other fixed damage knight should work). And maaaybe you could replace Empyrean Ilynav with Diene to stop defense penetration? Haven’t tried it myself.

Empyrean Ilynav

Didn’t understand the hype until I got her. And then still didn’t understand the hype until I fought Genesis Ras first with her, then without her. My knight in shining armor, please protect me forever more. A Protection Set build would be great when going up against Frieren, because your whole team needs to survive her initial S3.

Shadow Knight Pyllis

Shadow Knight Pyllis has two purposes in this comp: to reduce damage through her passive (reduces counterattack damage) and to beat up Frieren using the extra damage from Rocket Punch. You have to outlast Genesis Ras/Yulha’s damage-absorbing phase, but after that Frieren goes down in like two hits max. Getting Collapsed by Genesis Ras can be a real problem, but it only happens once in a blue moon.

Roana 

Eagle-eyed readers will have spotted Roana in last year’s Champion V post as well. She really is evergreen because of her passive that heals from extra attacks and counter attacks. When it works, it REALLY works. Setsuka, Harsetti and Frieren are all about the counters and extras, so Roana has a field day just standing there. Heck, she even heals up all of the damage from Setsuka’s S3, as long as you don’t die from the initial hit. Get Roana from the next RGB selector if you don’t have her already. I think Stella Harpa and Shimadra’s Staff are the best artifacts for this team.

Lionheart Cermia

Also one of my MVPs last year. And this year. And every year. Another evergreen unit due to her passive and recent Exclusive Equipment. As long as enemies insist on spamming counters and extra attacks, there will always be a place for Lionheart Cermia. I recently switched her from a Lifesteal to a Destruction Set build. Her DEF went down but Crit Damage went up so she hits about the same. I intend to pour more resources into making better gear for her, e.g. both the helmet and the armor need urgent replacement.

Enemy Team 4: Lady of the Scales, Harsetti, Setsuka, Blood Blade Karin

Solution: Aram, Argent Waves Hwayoung, Briar Witch Iseria, Silver Blade Aramintha.

In theory, this should also work if there’s a different unit in the front instead of BBK, e.g. Elvira. This team can veeeery occasionally fail if you run into a cockroach Setsuka who dodges and counters absolutely everything, but that’s just how RNG works. Team stats:

Aram

She exists mainly to counter Harsetti by triggering Argent Waves Hwayoung. If there’s no Harsetti, you can use Conqueror Lilias to trigger AHwa, depending on who you’re facing. I haven’t had much luck with my CLilias, so I stick with Harsetti-hunting. Use her S3 on Argent Waves Hwayoung (if she survives) or Silver Blade Aramintha to clean up anyone who survives the initial onslaught.

Argent Waves Hwayoung

Summer Photogenic or go home. AHwa is easy to build and does lots of damage, but you need that artifact to make this work.

Briar Witch Iseria: Stats shown above. In this team, her job is not to prevent revives but to block immortality by applying Unable to Buff to the enemy frontliner. To do so reliably, she needs to soulburn her S3. You either need a souls generating artifact on Aram or a mage carrying Tagehel’s Ancient Book to give you enough souls.

Silver Blade Aramintha

Holding Tagehel’s Book is a must, but she has other important roles. First, her passive pushes her up whenever anyone acts, so she takes a turn pretty quickly without needing a lot of speed. With her high Effectiveness, she also has a good chance of inflicting Burn and Stun on the enemies, even on Lady of the Scales with her high Effect Resistance. And you can use her S3 a second time if AHwa is dead, to fish for more Stuns. I can’t believe I slept on this unit all these years.

Enemy Team 5: Genesis Ras, Lady of the Scales, Setsuka, Rinak

Solution: Yulha, Lady of the Scales, Setsuka, Benimaru.

Rinak reminds me of a little rat scampering about the field. I always get great satisfaction from wiping her off the map. The biggest threat to this team is actually Genesis Ras failing to crit Yulha and get his second turn. If he fires his S3 later on when Yulha has lost her damage-absorbing buff, it can wipe my whole team. I’d say this team has an 80% success rate. 50-50 if I auto, which is why I usually do it manually.

Yulha

I love a good rags-to-riches story. Lady of the Scales plus good EEs resurrected Yulha’s career. On defense, I use the EE that increases her reflect damage. For attacks, you should use the one that resets her S3 cooldown, instead of being too lazy to switch like me. One S3 can kill Rinak easily even with a miss, and a second one should do the same to Setsuka. But the real reason I use Yulha here is to kill Genesis Ras once with her spike damage. I get a kick out of people exploding after attacking Yulha, it’s just a ton of fun to watch.

Lady of the Scales

If you can’t beat them, join them! She’s there to turn Yulha into a roach. I hold back her S3 until the enemy Setsuka blinds everyone, then I cleanse. What is she even wearing, tho…

Setsuka

Needs about 3000 more HP  and 50 more Crit Damage IMO. Her job is to hit everyone with Blind and then just hang out until her Fighting Spirit is full. Her S3 is usually enough to kill or severely maim everyone on the field, though sometimes Yulha + her counters + Benimaru finish the job long before her S3 is ready.

Benimaru

Oh, you missed the Slime collab? Whoops, too bad. Benimaru has increased hit chance in his kit, but his main job is to S3 to trigger Genesis Ras’s immortality so that GRas can kill himself against Yulha in his first turn. Once GRas loses his damage-absorbing buff, Benimaru goes after Rinak, Setsuka and Genesis Ras in that order. 4000 attack and 320 crit damage without losing HP is the dream.

Enemy Team 6: Genesis Ras, Lady of the Scales, Bystander Hwayoung, Setsuka

Solution: Boss Arunka, Empyrean Ilynav, Lionheart Cermia, Roana

The enemy team I have the least handle on, and one I avoid unless I’ve refreshed for ages and can’t find anyone easier. I should be able to beat them more reliably with an Empyrean Ilynav on Protection Set and a Boss Arunka with Immunity Set and at least 25,000 HP. Right now it’s around a 60% chance depending on how beastly the Bystander Hwayoung and Setsuka are, and whether Boss Arunka gets sealed by Genesis Ras or not.

Boss Arunka

This HP is way, way too low, and I would like to give her Immunity Set instead of HP, so she has a looong way to go. In my defense, I just got her recently on the 40% discount mystic banner, so I’m still figuring her out. I’ve seen the vision, now I just have to make it work.

Updated Boss Arunka

Much better, and also much better at staying alive against Bystander Hwayoung. Not that it helps when Bwayoung aims for another character, but it’s better than nothing. Just need a better necklace and boots to get rid of the wasted Effectiveness and I’m done. Very simple character to build.

And that’s it for the teams I hunted! If you have any comments, suggestions or tips for other players, leave them down below! Happy hunting!

Despite all our protests, Smilegate went ahead and removed Nightmare of Azmakalis Raid (why remove PVE content?!!) so now it’s either do nothing or do Trial of Constellations like they want us to. On one hand, grrr, I don’t want them to get away with it, but on the other hand, grrr, that is some fine-looking gear in the exchange shop. Gear or principles, gear or principles… of course gear wins hands down. 🥲 I’m so weak.

Luckily the Epic Seven theorycrafters and content creators have been hard at work figuring out the best teams to clear Nightmare and Perdition Trial of Constellation battles. I’ll credit Tristen Wulf and Moriyaism in particular, especially this video from Tristen Wulf and the accompanying comments which helped me come up with my own teams. Trial of Constellation has so many unintuitive gimmicks that I really recommend watching a video FAQ at least for your first time. I’m noting stuff down firstly for my own records, and also because I’m old-fashioned and prefer text FAQs instead of videos.

Note about Perdition battles

Don’t stress yourself trying to do Perdition the first month or two, unless you have great gear or really like a challenge. You only get Perdition rewards once a season, and a season is six months long. You’ll do just fine waiting a month or two, or three to rack up some points and make things easier for yourself. I mean sure, give it a try if you want since there are lots of guides out there now, but don’t tear your hair out or feel like a failure if it’s not working out. You can get the most important rewards just fine with Nightmare trials. That’s what I’m doing for now. I think I have enough points to do Magnar and Aquina pretty easily next month though.

About Blessing of the Stars

Get whatever makes your life easier. This is what my Blessing page currently looks like after Augsut and September:

You’ll fill the whole thing out eventually, but IIRC the advice is to put more points into Gemini and Sagittarius because they’re harder. You can also redistribute points by paying skystones. To actually light up the stars… this is such a pain, but since I’m making a guide, I might as well be thorough. To light up the stars, you click on a constellation, use points from fighting Trials to unlock slots, then put in the required characters. You get points based on to their combined strength. E.g. to light up the stars in Sagittarius you need 800 for level 1, 1660 for level 2, 2600 for level 3 and so on.

Okay, so how do you get those strength points? First you need to have those characters in your active inventory, not your waiting room and not your imagination. Then you need to equip them with your strongest gear regardless of set coherence. They must be fully awakened. And they must have a +30 artifact. Anything will do. Look at this Ocean Breeze Luluca, for example:

So don’t be quick to trash high gear score equipment that you can’t use yet. And, of course, save one copy of every character in the game, which is just normal good advice for Epic Seven but now applies even more with Trial of the Constellations.

Here’s what it looks like in action. It would be higher if I didn’t have characters like Silver Blade Aramintha geared up “properly” for PVP.

Okay, enough set up. Let’s get into the actual constallation battles and teams.

Scion of Hellfire Magnar 

Mechanics: Lol dunno. He casts burns at the beginning of the fight, I think?

Fenne solos, full stop. If you don’t have Fenne, get her. Simplify your life. Apart from this mode, she’s also really useful in Expedition, Abyss, Automaton Tower and general PVE.

I hear you can even solo Scion of Hellfire Magnar Perdition with Fenne, you just need around 23000 HP, and I am not prepared to regear her. Also there’s a spot at which you’ll have to stop and manually do the fight, and I’d rather just press Auto and tab out till later. PC client/emulator for the win.

Apart from Fenne, take a couple of blue characters for the imprints. Zero gear because they’re just there to die. You want a soulweaver in the front to take the first burn for reasons you don’t need to know about because Fenne solos. Best fight ever.

My Fenne

Alternate teams: Just get Fenne already.

Scion of Frostbite Aquina

Boss’s gimmicks

Counterattacks make her slow down, so you need green DPS that spam counterattacks. Counter attacks also reduce that moon thing she has in the corner. In general you never want the moon thing to fill up when fighting Constellation battles because bad things happen when it does.

Aquina also does double attacks, which is where Roana’s passive comes in to keep the team healthy. The whole battle consists of using Ervalen’s S3 and constantly soulburning Charles’ S3 to ensure they have constant uptime on their counterattacks. Ervalen is in front with the Blessing of the Stars that gives boosts to the thief in front. Ignore the boss’s add when she shows up. Young Senya exists to cleanse and push, and occasionally use “No Bullying!” to do some damage. Heal as needed and enjoy your win.

My team: My team was Roana, Young Senya, Ervalen and Charles. Had to build Charles and use a +15 selector for Ervalen to do this, only to be told later that Violet works just fine in place of Ervalen. Nyoron~. Roana is useful in a lot of scenarios, worth using a story summon to get. Young Senya is limited, but I believe Ray and Bernard work fine. Protip for Epic Seven: pull for every limited unit, no exception.

No speed needed for either DPS since they will be working off counters.

Alternate team: Try Violet instead of Ervalen. Try Ray or Bernard or another cleansing healer instead of Young Senya. Try building everyone on Counter set to proc more counters.

Scion of the Verd Herais

Theoretically the most “solved” battle after Fire, with plenty of accessible free-to-play teams that can do even Perdition without breaking a sweat. In practice, I ran the Researcher Carrot, Tamarinne, Mascot Hazel and Achates team that Tristen Wulf recommended and died 10 times out of 10, always right before the battle ended. There’s another team with Fire Tieria, Aram, Mascot Hazel and Achates, but in the end I went with Beehoo and Holiday Yufine, Mascot Hazel and Researcher Carrot because I felt like my problem was not enough burns to keep the moon thingy low. That wasn’t the issue though, the real issue is lack of bulk, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Boss’s gimmicks

You’ve got to stay alive at all costs. And to do so, you have to inflict burns on Herais himself to lower his moon stage and his HP (doesn’t kill him, but reduces the damage you take), and you have to burn the little mandragoras he brings along before they hurt you. Ensure you have enough healing, enough HP to take the hits and enough burns to mitigate damage and clear the adds. If even ONE character in your team dies, the whole team wipes. So if you’re wondering like I did why your runs keep failing, the answer is very likely that someone died. If it’s hard to figure out who, just boost everyone’s HP and defense and use damage reducing artifacts like Proof of Valor. Take Kazran as your guardian and use him if you think his barriers will help.

My team: Holiday Yufine, Beehoo, Researcher Carrot and Mascot Hazel.

Haven’t bothered to awaken her. There’s a Blessing of the Stars that heals when the fire warrior in front uses her S1, so that’s what Holiday Yufine there for. She also casts an extra burn that helps Researcher Carrot stay on top of the adds.

My Researcher Carrot that I use to two-man Rift together with Charlotte. It took me at least an hour of fiddling with gear to get her stats to where she and Charlotte could one-turn Rift, so I don’t dare touch anything on her kit, but IMO she would be safer with about 15000 health.

Standard Beehoos are run with a statline like R. Carrot above but I prioritized staying alive. Beehoo is run with his skills off, S1 only, so he can keep burning Herais and keeping his moon level under control.

Any artifact that boosts healing or survival works. IIRC Mascot Hazel’s healing scales off her attack, so you can easily build her better than this.

Alternative teams: The three soul weavers and Researcher Carrot team I mentioned above. Just build them all like tanks. Other burners like Robin might also work if you have them.

Scion of Aurelight Ethel

Boss’s gimmicks

Super annoying: you have to hit the Forma of Creation and Forma of Destruction mobs in front of her twice to make sure one is dark and one is light at all times. If they are both dark or both light, they give buffs to the boss which can either reduce the damage the boss takes or get you killed. The most likely to kill you is the Constellation buff, which raises her evasion by 70% and hits back with a dangerous attack when she dodges.Worse than that, you start the battle with a number above your characters’ head, called the Essence of Light. Whenever the mobs uses their Mana Emission skill, the number goes down. When a character’s number reaches 0, they die. To manage the mobs, you need to keep them provoked at all times so they can only use their S1 Mystic Flash skill which buffs your party instead.

Long story short, you need at least two provokers for the mobs, one powerful DPS for when you can hit the boss, and one utility player. You don’t need a healer. A typical battle goes like this: the provokers hit the mobs to provoke and color change them, the DPS attacks whenever s/he has a shot. The utility player helps whoever needs help. Do as much damage as quickly as you can, then it’s back to toying with the mobs. Annoying fight, but just constantly provoke the mobs and hit the boss as hard and as often as you can.

My team: Shadow Knight Pyllis, All-Rounder Wanda, Dark Corvus because I have him (otherwise use Assassin Cartuja or any other reliable provoker), and Eligos as main DPS. Wanda and Pyllis are 3-star moonlight characters you should be able to pull and specialty change easily. Other DPS will work instead of Eligos, as long as they have increased hit chance so that they can attack the boss even when her Constellation buff is up.

Shadow Knight Pyllis has a provoke on her S1 and S3, so she’s good at provoke-locking the adds. Her S3 also cleanses one debuff, getting rid of the pesky blind so you can keep hitting Ethel. There’s a Sagittarius blessing that buffs the knight in front with more hit chance and effectiveness, which is Epic Seven‘s way of saying “Just use Pyllis.”

Also my standard PVP Dark Corvus. He’s been out of a job lately with Boss Arunka and Lady of the Scales taking over Guild Wars and the arena, so this gives him something to do. His S1 has a 100% provoke chance and his S3 does good damage whenever you can fire it off.

Song of Stars for Target debuff to Ethel, in addition to Wanda’s own chance to cast Target (increases damage taken by the target by 15%, while decreasing evasion by 15%) on a random enemy at the end of her turn. If you can build her faster and stronger (and you definitely can), she can be a good sub-DPS too.

He naturally has increased (50%?) hit chance, but you can run a hit chance artifact like Symbol of Unity, Air-to-Surface Missile MISHA or Andre’s Crossbow to make extra sure you don’t miss Ethel when she has her constellation (Radiant Energy) buff up. If you attack and miss in that condition, she will decrease your Essence of Light and bad things will happen.

Alternate teams

Many guides recommend Remnant Violet as the DPS here, but unfortunately I don’t have him. I also tried Commander Lorina, but she was too slow and inaccurate. Might be better with her recent buffs, IDK. Zahak might be good, with his inbuilt extra hit chance. Challenger Dominiel has also been recommended in place of All-Rounder Wanda. IMO a ranger that can apply Target and a DPS with increased hit chance will make this battle a whole lot faster.

Scion of the Abyss Rahel

The most gimmicky but not necessarily the hardest. I’ve seen dozens of complaints about not being able to finish Rahel because she has a sliver of health left. That is caused by poor management of her Dusk-Skull Warrior and Warlock mobs and her moon level, though I don’t blame players because the whole thing is poorly explained.BTW, I’ve been typing for a while, but have I mentioned that Trial of the Constellations sucks? No? Well it does. One of the things I liked about Epic Seven was the ability to use different characters in different modes instead of being forced to build particular characters or go home. Slowly but surely, Smilegate is eroding those options and forcing us into playing the way they want us to by locking great rewards behind garbage puzzle bosses. First Rift, then Hall of Trials, then Trial of Constellations. What’s next? Well whatever, they won’t listen until players start uninstalling in droves, and I for one ain’t going nowhere.

Boss’s gimmicks: Focus on deleting her mobs. When they die, she takes damage. When her moon phase goes down to zero once before a wave of mobs dies, she takes extra damage. Her moon phase goes down when you use soulburns. The mobs are weakened and die easily when they are hit with sleep, stun or fear. The flow is this: Rahel summons mobs > you cast sleep/stun/fear on the mobs > attack them while using soulburn where possible to reduce her moon phase to 0% > clear all the mobs > tank Rahel’s hits until she summons the next wave of mobs.

Sounds simple, right? And it is, as long as you have three things. 1) AOE stun, sleep or fear. I tried bonking them one by one and it just wasn’t efficient. 2) A unit with a 100% def pen skill for when Rahel summons an enhanced mob. 3) A way to cleanse the sleep and poison she casts from time to time. And always, always make sure you reduce her moon phase to 0% at least once per wave before killing all the mobs.

My team: Infinite Horizon Achates, Watcher Schuri, Lady of the Scales, Schniel.

For emergency heals and emergency stuns. The unit in front generates souls, so ideally you’d want them fast, but I build IH Achates slower and bulkier because she has to absorb 70% of all the party’s damage due to Lady of the Scales’ passive.

The best character I found for AOE fear, since hers takes just 1 soulburn. The soulburn reduces Rahel’s moonphase, and Lady almost never misses with the Fear, so she’s highly recommmended. If you don’t have her, see the alternative teams below.

Taking time off his busy schedule of shooting Boss Arunka in the face, here’s my PVP Watcher Schuri. Save his S3 for the enhanced mobs, or use the Blessing that resets it whenever you soulburn it.

Eye candy and Banshee solo-er extraordinaire. His passive cleanses Rahel’s poison and sleep like it was never even there. Maybe with a stronger Celestine or other healing artifact, you could run someone else in Infinite Horizon Achates’ place. Schniel doesn’t contribute anything else to the battle except spamming S1 soulburn and S3 to generate more souls.

Alternative teams: Dragon King Sharun for the sleep, if you have her. General Purrgis is apparently really good for the AOE stunning part. You’re much more likely to have him than Silver Blade Aramintha, who I imagine would work really well too. Maybe regular Aramintha too, if you don’t mind the 70% chance screwing you over, or Mort if he is not too slow. For the 100% def pen attack, Jenua comes to mind as a good substitute. If you don’t have him already, you can pull him from Story summons.

Trial pet

You can get a pet to give you extra damage, extra charms, extra gear drops and so on. I’m still using the free one Smilegate gave us while I attempt to build my own, but I’ll update this section when I have the perfect pet. I’m thinking of dispensing with the extra damage entirely in favor of more charms, drops and coins.

What to get from the Trial of the Constellations Exchange

The gear looks amazing at first glance, and in my experience, equipment with a starting score of 42 almost always turns out usable at +15. I’ve bought the ring, and I bought the boots during in the beta. Before the season is out, I’d like more boots, the chest and maybe the helm. The sword and necklace look like traps. However, what I’m really, really starving for right now is not gear but rather charms to roll that gear, so I’ve been buying the Epic Equipment Charms every day. I’m thinking I’ll get one gear piece a month and charms for the rest of the month until the end of the season.

And that’s it for the guide! Let me know if anything is unclear. Definitely let me know if you have better team suggestions, because some of these were very narrow wins. Thanks for reading!

A follow up on the Epic Seven Expedition teams post I made back in July (Blooming Snag Lich, Destructive Gigantes, Brutal Pherus). The rotation finally switched to the two bosses I hadn’t covered: Pain Pursuer Moroi and Hopeless Symaqus. Pain Pursuer Moroi is a complete pain in the ass just as his name suggests. Hopeless Symaqus isn’t too bad as long as you have good earth DPS characters.

Since I made the last post, Smilegate has come out with a Sweep option that lets you automatically complete five of your own expedition posters and five of your friends’ posters every week, using the highest score recorded. This means you don’t really need to Auto the most troublesome bosses. If you can use manual attacks, soulburns, whatever else it takes, and get it complete even once, you can use Sweep to complete the month’s requirements and get all the rewards on the chart.

This is especially possible now that Epic Seven has also added permanent free unequips (FINALLY!!!) and a limited but still useful way to rollback equipment from characters. You can pull all the best equipment and artifacts off other characters, build your strongest team and go to town on the bosses, then roll everything back. Unlike Hunt and Episode sweeps, the game doesn’t play out the battle, so there’s nothing to fear once you clear it even once. That said, there’s still plenty of merit in soloing or even auto-ing your own non-Sweep expos, because that 30-stamina charge for hitting others is steep!

Enough of the intro, let’s get into it. And again, credit goes to the multitude of YouTube content creators for giving me ideas, particularly this video from Tristen Wulf that prompted me to try Fenris instead of Cermia for Pain Pursuer Moroi. The difference was phenomenal.Boss: Pain Pursuer Moroi

Boss mechanics:

• Casts Isolation and Vampirism on your characters. Isolation means they can only heal or buff or CR push themselves, i.e. your Tamarinne has no power here. Vampirism means they can also heal up by doing damage to the boss: more damage = more healing
• However Pain Pursuer Moroi casts defense up on himself when you first attack him in the battle, then whenever you attack him after he has taken a turn.
• He also casts a wyvern-like undispellable barrier on himself that you have to burst down quickly before he attacks, or he will poke the whole party to death.

This means you need buff strips and unbuffable for your party, and either high damage characters or a way to enable high damage. I’ve been using:

Daddy Brieg: Defense buff stripper and defense break lander. Pain Pursuer Moroi will target the knight in front for single attacks, so Daddy Brieg needs to be a bit tanky or do a lot of damage to survive. Any artifact and/or set will do as long as that objective is met.

Zealot Carmainerose: I fought for years to avoid building her, because I didn’t want to build a character just for one game mode. You risk ending up with people like Kane and Suthan who become largely useless once that mode is taken away. Unfortunately the years have come and gone and the fact remains that Zealot Carmainerose is the best in slot DPS for Pain Pursuer Moroi. You can put her in Grace of Growth, or just build her because it doesn’t cost mola. She hits hard, strips the boss and casts unbuffable, and casts an extra vampirism so she’s never in danger of dying. She’s a three-star fire unit, so you can get and specialty change her easily.Destro set should work as well, I just had leftover rage gear after pivoting away from Hunts towards Rift. You should easily be able to get a better one than this if you’re willing to borrow good gear from others. Somehow I’m still not used to being able to switch gear on the fly, I feel like something could go wrong.

Fenris: Crazy Earth DPS. I built him slow and powerful for Hopeless Symaqus, but he works just fine for Moroi at low speed. His attack is high enough that each hit will heal him significantly, no worries. Use Special Strawberry Cake or Our Beautiful Seasons if you have them, or any other damage boosting artifact.I used to use Cermia. Fenris is straight up better and more consistent, but any powerful single attacker should work. That said, Fenne didn’t do too great, so… yeah. Play around and see who works for you.

Double attacker: Cerise or Camilla. I find Cerise annoying for some reason (think it’s because she’s so weak and yet she’s limited and requires good gear to use, like “Know your place, trash” y’know? Also super random but I’m annoyed that her relationship with Pavel has just been kinda there all these years), but she’s probably best for auto-ing. She brings unbuffable, which helps a lot when (not if) Zealot Carmainerose fails. She’s less likely to die because she has Invincible on her S2. And she’s built way faster so she cycles more.

Song of Stars artifact for the target debuff so I can do 15% more damage. All Expedition battles are DPS races, so the more damage the better. You can tell from the half-hearted gear that I don’t actually use her for Pain Pursuer Moroi, despite all the nice things I just said.

I use Camilla instead.Camilla is okay if you’re willing to manually use her S1/S2 to keep up the double attacks. She’s a 3-star unit unlike Cerise the limited 5-star unit. You don’t need molagoras to level her up, and you probably have her built already if you’ve been seriously tackling Abyss.

Unfortunately Benimaru’s Tachi/Strike of Aspiration doesn’t work against Pain-in-the-butt Moroi, probably because Isolation is considered a debuff. Give her whatever artifact she needs to stay alive and producing. Come to think of it, does her Speed Imprint work? Dunno.

And as I was typing this, I just had the idea of ditching Cerise/Camilla entirely and running Zealot, Cermia and Fenris for more dakka. Why hasn’t anyone else tried this brilliant idea so far? Here I go… <and Kina was never heard from again>.Just kidding. I think it would work fine on manual where you can soulburn for extra damage. On Auto, Carmainerose and Brieg missed too many debuffs and strips, so it’s best to have an extra source of debuffs, especially Unable to Buff and Def break.

Boss: Hopeless Symaqus

Boss mechanics:

• Casts “Fatigue” on the unit with the strongest attack at the start of the battle and when his skill bar is full. This makes them unable to move until someone CR pushes them.
• If you hit him six times in a row before he gets a turn, he gets mad and hits you twice, usually cleansing whatever debuffs you’ve put on him.

Maybe Smilegate wants you to take him more slowly and strategically, but most people just rush him down. For that you will need CR pushers, buffers, and debuffers.

Because of Hopeless Symaqus’s extra attack mechanics, Roana makes a good frontline tank against him. I’ve run that before and she’s good at keeping y’all alive but not much else. Daddy Brieg is still my favorite to use against him because of defense break, slow and barrier. Same build as above. Any good artifact works (War Horn sounds good to me), but something protective is best if your people are dying.

Healer and CR pusher: Tamarinne if you don’t use Roana in front. Yes, the boss is Ice against Tamarinne’s Fire, but he’s slow enough and she’s fast enough that she can outheal the damage. She’s not called the Queen of PVE for nothing! Magahara’s Tome artifact just to make sure, but Idol’s Cheer might work well too, maybe even Eternus.

DPS: Same Fenris as above. He gets extra attacks when the boss gets extra attacks, so with that 4900+ damage (more with Lilka and Tamarinne’s imprints) he hits like a truck whenever he gets a turn. He also has a self Attack buff which turns into Greater Attack buff when Tamarinne boosts him. Basically he’s fantastic for the fight.

Before building Fenris, I tried Immortal Wukong and Zahak but they both lacked a bit of oomph. I’ve heard of people using Midnight Gala Lilias, but she didn’t do the trick for me either. Some suggest Rem from Re:Zero collab, or Cidd. And I’ve even seen Fenne used as the DPS (sorry, can’t remember who) and she seems to work as long as her attack is the highest in the party. Try different characters if you don’t have Fenris.

Debuffer and CR pusher: Lilka. I’m told Mercenary Helga can work well as a debuffer, but Lilka pushes Fenris up, slows the boss down, gives attack down, defense breaks if you’re lucky and can carry Song of Stars for the Target debuff. She has a kit tailor-made for Expos, it’s just unfortunate that I can’t find anywhere to use her except here. Oh, and Ancient Inheritance.Hopeless Symaqus can be taken down with lots of flexible builds, so play around with him.

What’s next for me in Epic Seven

Anniversary events are almost over, and normally I would take a break until headhunt, but there’s a Frieren collab coming up, so I’m not going anywhere! I haven’t read or watched Frieren (yet), but Epic Seven collabs are always worth doing. The characters may fall from meta quickly, but some of the artifacts like 3F and Benimaru’s Tachi will have you kicking yourself for years if you miss them. I need, like 10 copies of Frieren’s artifact first off, then we can talk about other things.

Since I’m playing more Epic Seven, I’ll be writing more about it too. I still haven’t gotten round to tackling Trial of the Constellations seriously. IIRC last month I did Fire and Water on Nightmare, Light and Earth on the easiest setting and then ignored Dark altogether. I suppose… ugh, I suppoooose I cooould figure that mode out… ick… Oh, and I had a bit of a wild ride two days ago when I rose from Arena Champion V to Emperor V in about 30 minutes, and then dropped right back down to Champion V in an another 30 minutes. Climbing was easier than expected, so I might post an update to my old Champion V climbing post one of these days.

In other gaming news… there’s no other gaming news. I’m off to play Xenoblade Chronicles X right now, though, will post if anything interesting happens in there.