Dungeon Strategy & Tactics

=General strategy= Aim to activate two save points each day, for 150 titanite and 3 summoning spheres total. This is usually possible with a strong water team, if the odds aren't stacked too unfavorably against you in titan team encounters.

On double doors (numbered *5, *7, and *9,) choose water or mixed, whenever you're given the option.

Divination cards
For Fire-vs-Earth and Earth-vs-Water encounters, where those are inevitable, divination cards seem to give you slightly better outcomes than what you can achieve in a manual battle, so keep enough of them to use on such occasions (see below.)

Don't take the Oracle's first proposal -- back out and retry several times to see if you can get something more favorable. This applies especially to fights where Eden is involved on either side, as the outcomes of those are usually heavily influenced by whom she binds with her Subterranean Prison skill.

For Fire-vs-Earth encounters, if your Araji is at or near full energy, probe the battle manually to see if you can influence the outcome. The problem here is that, in automatic mode, and with (nearly) full energy, he'll cast his Incinerating Ray straight off, which will delay the activation of his Herald of Flame for the 6s of the ray's duration. In manual mode, wait until his Herald of Flame is cast at the start of the battle, after which you can switch the team to auto for the rest of it (as in all manual battles, don't forget to watch out for disaster, and be ready to pull out before one befalls you.)

To progress through the daily dungeon routine as quickly and painlessly as possible, do as follows:
 * On the first two floors, leading down to the activation wheel for the previous day's last activated save point, use divination cards for all hero battles, and for F/E and E/W battles.
 * On the next two floors, leading down to activating the first save point for the day, use divination cards for F/E and E/W battles only. By activation of the first save point, you should weigh your chances of completing two more floors to reach and activate the second one.  A rule of thumb is to go for the second save point if you haven't lost a titan so far, and to stop at the first save point if you have (don't forget to activate it.)
 * On the last two floors, leading up to the activation of the second save point for the day, make sure that, at any particular time, you have enough divination cards to use against all remaining titan teams, doing hero battles if needed to maintain the count balance. Use excess divination cards to skip over hero teams.

=Tactics= The point of doing manual battles with your water(-dominated) team is to time invocation of main skills so that you emerge from each such battle with your titans as close to full health and energy as possible. To this end, you need to employ all of your water titans, in order to maximize the healing effect of your totem.

The team will be spearheaded by Sigurd, who will buff everyone else against basic attacks, as well as against Araji's Incinerating Ray and Vulcan's Erupting Rage. With his shield on, the damage from those attacks will simply be discarded, but with the shield off, he needs to be protected by Mairi's Abyss Curse cast on the opposing team, so that he incurs as little damage as possible until he's charged up to put the shield back on again.

Time Nova's North Wind not just to suppress the opposing back line, but to interrupt the invocation of main skills, particularly Eden's Burden of Creation and Hyperion's Ice Spikes. You can also use it to interrupt Araji's ray, but that's usually better stopped by Sigurd's shield.

Thus, with an eye to protecting the team with a shield - curse - shield - curse - ... pattern from start to end of battle, an acceptable outcome from a W/F or mixed battle is:
 * Sigurd at or near full health + Mairi at or near full energy; or Sigurd at or near full energy.
 * Everyone else at or near full health

Note that it's dangerous to let Sigurd emerge from battle with less than ~1/3 health -- do everything you can to prevent this from happening.

Watch the team's health and energy, and be ready to retreat if things go irreparably bad. Be especially vigilant towards the end of the battle, where the opposing team is hanging by a thread but can still do significant damage.

Water-vs-Fire
W/F battles tend to be short, so Hyperion is best left alone in those. Casting his Frost Needles can end the fight at a very inopportune moment, leaving your team half-healed and half-charged.

A typical sequence with Sigurd at full health might be:
 * Cast Mairi's curse before Sigurd incurs the first hit (wait for as long as possible before casting, in order to cover Sigurd for longer.)
 * Cast Sigurd's shield when he's at ~3/4 health. Do wait until his health drops, if needed, but don't let it drop too much.  Typically, you will want to let him complete a hit before you put the shield on.
 * Cast Nova's North Wind as soon as Sigurd's shield expires; the fight will usually complete shortly after.

A typical sequence with Sigurd significantly below full health, and at full energy:
 * Cast Sigurd's Icy Aegis just before he incurs the first hit.
 * Cast Nova's North Wind as soon as Sigurd's shield expires; the fight will usually complete shortly after.

Notes:
 * Activate the totem as soon as it charges up
 * Usually, you don't want to cast Sigurd's shield a second time, lest he end the battle at half-health and half-energy (or worse.)
 * Towards start and mid-battle, you don't want to cast Sigurd's shield at full health. Waiting for his health to drop to a level that can be safely restored by Hyperion's healing will let you cast the shield later, and thus effectively gain some more time before you have to cast Mairi's curse.
 * If Araji manages to charge up and cast a particularly powerful Incinerating Ray, you can use Nova to interrupt and suppress him.
 * As noted above, you want to hold Hyperion's main skill most of the time, the only exception being where he can prevent a strongly damaging discharge of rage from Vulcan, simply by wiping him out with the spikes. (Wishfully, the same might apply to Araji too, but he's usually at nearly full health until towards the very end of the battle, and thus can't be wiped out in a single cast of spikes -- unlike Vulcan, who's usually badly mauled by the time Hyperion is charged.)
 * With your totem activated, and with only one or two titans left standing from the opposing team, there's usually nothing much to worry about, so don't waste your titans' energy towards the end of the battle.

Mixed battles
(Currently only for Water + Araji; advice for other configurations may come as soon as they're researched; contributions are welcome.)

Water + Araji
Araji is a logical choice for completing a mixed water-based team, as he bestows a +30% speed bonus on the team from the very start of the battle, and can do powerful damage against Earth titans.

Tactics for a Water + Araji team is only a slight variation of the one for a pure Water team: as with pure Water, your primary concern is still maintaining (nearly) continuous protection for Sigurd, by having him enter battles either at full energy, or with full health and backed by Mairi at full energy.

Most of the complications in mixed battles come from having to fight against Eden and/or Hyperion, who can damage the team in depth and thus divert your own Hyperion's healing from the hottest spot (Sigurd.) In addition, Eden can do massive damage to water titans, and also introduces an element of randomness through her Subterranean Prison skill.

Typical sequence:

Start of battle

 * Cast Hyperion's spikes as early as possible
 * Start and maintain the shield (Sigurd) - curse (Mairi) - shield - curse - ... pattern throughout the duration of the battle. With Sigurd at full health, start with the curse, otherwise start with the shield.
 * Wait for Araji to cast Herald of Flame, and only then cast his ray

Mid-battle

 * Cast Hyperion's spikes and Araji's ray, and activate your totem, as often and as soon as each is charged
 * Watch out for Eden's rock, Hyperion's spikes, or Araji's ray being cast on you, and use Nova to interrupt the casting. Sometimes, you can use one rock to kill two birdies, as the whole middle and back lines tend to charge at similar rates, but just as often you need to take a hit from one supertitan or another.  If you have to choose whose casting to interrupt, as a rule of thumb aim for Eden first, then Hyperion, then Araji.  Sometimes it helps to probe the battle first, in order to see which one of them does the most damage.

End of battle
Towards the end of battle, when there are only a couple of opponents standing on the enemy team, spare your team's energy, and watch the team's health. Use Nova, if necessary, mostly to interrupt the casting of stones and spikes, but also to suppress the remains of the enemy team if you have to. Leave the rest of your team to charge-up and heal.

Interrupting casters
It is important to cast Nova's North Wind not just to suppress the targets, but to interrupt an invocation of their main skills that they may be attempting. This goal takes watching them closely and timing the casting of the curse carefully. Timing is only essential against Hyperion and Eden, as the damage from their main skills occurs instantly. Araji doesn't pose the same problem, as the damage from his ray is spread out over 6s, so incurring a single lick of the ray is rarely a major concern.

Eden's casting is easy to spot, as she hunkers down to "pick" a rock -- it actually sort of materializes out of nowhere, an eye-poking clue. Cast Nova's curse when the rock is just off the ground. If you come too late, you'll freeze Eden when the rock has already been launched at your team (once launched, it will do the damage even if she's killed.) Too early, and she'll be able to cast just as soon as she comes back from freezing.

Hyperion is the trickier to spot, because he recoils for casting in roughly the same way as he does for his basic attack. The difference with casting spikes is that a nimbus starts forming around his core -- you'll usually have less than a second to cast from the moment of spotting it. Alternatively, watch the cadence of his basic attack, and see when he starts back out of this cadence. This will consume more of your attention, and sometimes his casting will fall with the cadence of the normal attack too, but when you do get the clue, you will have spotted the casting earlier.

Supercharging the totem
Note that, in some odd arrangements, you won't be able to reach the supertitans with Nova's North Wind. The curse is restricted to the back line, and so it will miss anyone pushed sufficiently far to the fore -- this usually happens when the opposing team has Sylva and/or Ignis in it, who wedge behind the supertitans and push some of them to the middle line. If this happens, all you can count on is more healing.

The only way to get healed at a faster rate is to super-charge your totem, i.e. wait for it to be charged up to more than 100% before activating it, which will result in scaling-up the effects from its activation, supposedly proportional to the factor of super-charging. (Exact proportionality hasn't been measured, nor does there seem to be any authoritative claim to support it -- but a difference in healing rates has been observed, and the assumption makes common sense.)