The Lethal Blade that Severed the Sky is a trial event where players upgrade the signature unit by accumulating tier rewards in the form of total map stars. There will also be side rewards in the form of Spirits and Armors. This event rewards the first Swordmaster of the game.

The Unit: Swordmaster Sandra

Swordmasters are single blockers that solely rely on their skills to achieve specific purposes. All-in skill classes aren’t new in Aigis, with units like Pupuru being firstly introduced into the game as a unit that performs one-time specific interaction on the map as her skill activation effect. Swordmasters function in similar fashion and their skills generally dictates the overall strategy of the map; players want to build around Swordmasters instead of the other way round.

Sandra is one of the 5 Swordmasters that are already known in the game of which three of those representing the Cosmic Trinity, with Sandra representing the Heaven side of the Trinity. Her skill reflects such representation in a way that it does flat 1.5 times more damage to air monsters plus another base attack multiplier that is multiplicative and scales across skill level. The skill range covers a cross(+) pattern with Sandra as the focal point and is not affected by weather conditions or status ailments. At max skill level Sandra can deal 2.7 times more damage, multipliable to 4.05 times against air enemies which means she can dish out approximately 2.7k damage against air monsters on skill use subject to reduction by magic resistance as the skill damage is magic based.(Correction: True Damage as noted by Urizithar.)

Map Preview:

The Lethal Blade that Severed the Sky spans 8 maps, offering up to 24 stars for players to obtain. Maxing out Sandra requires 21 stars, while side rewards such as Spirits/Demon Crystals/Armors are available as well. A minimum of 5 stars are required to obtain Sandra.

Given the nature of Sandra’s skill it is not surprising that the new monsters for this event are mostly air monsters. New monsters from the demon group are added, this include flying demons that are ranged and a new boss-tier monster known as Archdemon that hits like a truck. Otherwise the old monster groups return, including Desert themed mummies, Halloween pumpkins and bats to name a few.

The maps are pretty rush focused, this means that you will be expecting packs of monsters pushing towards the exit in numbers either in a very short time or stretched across a period of continuous monster movement. In many cases the monsters are air units so ranged superiority is pretty important for this event. There are also specific map mods that creates disadvantages such as attrition. All in all though, the challenges lies on juggling monster aggro and protecting your DPS units utilizing good rods in tight UP situations, paralysis threats and taking down the air monsters as soon as possible.

Team Preparation:

Archers, Mages, Bishops to name a few. You can also use long range DPS like Pirates or Cannoneers for the new air demons given their longer lingering period and holding pattern on air. Given the balance between the number of air monsters to ground you want very well-developed range units, this include consideration on Awakening them as well as affection bonuses.

Otherwise, the setup is pretty standard; a couple of healers for attrition based maps and for occasions where tanking is required and a few short trade specialists like Valkyrie to deal with ground squishy targets. Against the ArchDemon a solid tank is required due to its high damage and the lack of slots to really provide sustain. Kiting is however possible, utilizing units like Karma/Eden to provide extra utility bonus as well as buying time although the more effective option is most likely bruteforceing through anyway.

Other Important Stuff:
1)Flavor of the Month
Sandra is one of the very few experimental units that developers tried to introduce into the game that is critical to skill use and actually requires players to be keen on timing in the maps especially when repetitive skill use is required. Swordmasters in general are pretty one-dimensional; they are mostly plug-and-play due to how reliant they are to their skill levels, does not require too much resources to be relevant and absolutely garbage on everything else apart from skill activation period where they definitely can be a game-changer.

Specifically on Sandra, her skill can be considered one of its kind due to the coverage pattern resembling a cross contrary to most AOE units that covers a radius. The cross covers the entire map and as such provides opportunity for Sandra to conduct long range snipes subject to her placement location, especially with a high multiplier on skill which is her major source of damage to begin with.

Unfortunately for her, or Swordmasters in general, their disadvantages are magnified as the game progresses as better units are introduced and their advantage in high damage multiplier is gradually overshadowed by the emergence of quality black event units or broken Platinums. New monsters like trolls and angels that regenerate life over time also means that burst mechanics which Swordmasters can easily achieve is no longer effective, again putting them in a bad place. Swordmasters are pretty bad single-blockers due to their high cost and does not provide extra options on normal attacks in contrast to other single-blocks thus rendering them extremely pointless to use on that regard apart from being a skill bot. Most importantly, their one-dimensional use puts players in a situation where building strategies with Swordmasters as a support type unit is difficult; they requires player attention and as such will most likely be the unit that players build a composition around, not the other way round.

That being said, until the said situation arrives Swordmasters are still extremely strong in specific maps at this stage, more so with how Nutaku Aigis is being run and there is no telling which units will arrive and which will be blocked. Especially for Sandra, she will always have a place in maps like Crystal Keeper G and Skyfallen Gift G as she provides reliability in securing all the kills on these maps and they are always relevant to farm. Compounded by the lack of rotation on Trading Post limiting access to Gianna the options to AFK these maps are relatively limited especially from a free player’s perspective so Sandra will always remain relevant despite the bad spot Swordmasters are in for now. There is also chances for them to improve considering their Skill and 2nd Awakening is yet to be known, although there is also the chance that the developers completely leave them aside to rot like many other niche classes overall.

2)Swordmasters in Domination
Swordmasters generally perform well in Domination for various reasons. Their skill cooldowns are relatively acceptable in Domination context, and further Domination missions can come with weather conditions which Swordmaster skills ignore. Most importantly Swordmasters provide the capability to reset the map by taking out massive amount of squishy monsters that serve as distractions both to your blockers(exhausting their block count) or DPS units(target selection). Sandra in particular also has a small window to reset target since she briefly loses her block during skill animation allowing for possible target swapping if the monsters did not die after the skill cast. This however is an extremely short window and most likely will not work in intended situations such as dropping aggro from a boss.

Conclusion:

Swordmasters are in a pretty bad spot right now; that however does not take away their potential of becoming great again. The event itself is pretty challenging like most Trial Events are, but with proper units in place there shouldn’t be too much of an issue to get a fully developed Sandra in your possession.

Vampire’s Counterattack is a Trial Event where the event specific unit is rewarded at the conclusion of the event. During the event players achieve the necessary tier goals to improve the unit’s cost and skill levels, mostly determined by the number of stars accumulated from event maps. This event rewards the only free Vampire class in the game.

The Unit: Vampire Eden

Eden is the one and only free Vampire available in the game. Vampire is a rare unit class that is most known for its ability to paralyse enemies. This is a pretty strong mechanic when used well which is why Eden is highly prized as a great unit to have overall.

The class is an undead class and thus like Karma, Eden is not targetable by healers. In many sense undead classes share similar properties in that they are not happy dealing with ads and are mainly used against medium or megabosses considering their uptime. Eden however is slightly different; her Awakening grants her leech that scales with her HP, which is another strong powerspike for her as it gives her more up time to deal with melee ads overall, especially monsters with low DPS either in the base attack or attack speed department. Her skill also contributes to better DPS and thus better leech which then increases her up time and overall survivability. Given her pretty solid HP pool and attack Eden is undoubtedly one strong single blocker that a free player can get their hands on.

Map Preview:

Vampire’s Counterattack spans 8 maps, offering 24 stars up for grab. You only need 21 stars to achieve full upgrade on Eden; this means 3 starring at least 6 maps, which is pretty important because a couple of the maps on this event is going to be pretty difficult for players a couple of months into the game especially if you have no solid tanks.

Most of the maps coming from the event requires two different mechanics; facetanking effectively when big damage sources are apparent from multiple area, as well as paralysis. In general the paralysis mechanics won’t be new to veterans who have played Karma. Monsters like zombies all have paralysis equipped to them and your units can only tank 6 successive hits from these regardless of sources to be paralyzed, which isn’t the worst of paralysis since they don’t cost you to lose block and only suffers 50% defense reduction as well as depending on types of paralysis, silence (activation skills are cancelled, units cannot use skill during paralysis). The inclusion of a new boss namely a Vampire Duke is not the hardest thing is the world but certainly one of the more annoying one to deal with given his 2-phase transition with some pretty substantial DPS. Finally there is the G tier map that rewards spirits, this comes with an assorted Vampire Hunters including Khuri, Fran, Elizabeth and Sue, which requires knowledge in positioning more than anything else due to their high burst.

Team Preparation:

There are more options for paralysis counterplay now compared to Karma’s period. Units like AW Rowanna/Lilia offers paralysis immunity in general with the former’s immunity up time being infinite, while standard evasion units like Rogues/Monks can also be used to dodge successive attacks as another form of paralysis prevention. Liana is a big ask but she also provides paralysis removal with her skill, and AW healers generally aid in reduce paralysis duration.

Against the stone golem you have to facetank a couple of them. Understanding how the golems travel on the map is crucial due to their ranged attacks basically one shotting any ranged units you have. In many cases you are looking for a Princess here, and preferably a defensive based Princess such as Themis/Anya for instance for better defensive options since you really want to just wipe out the golems faster and at the same time not strain your healers. Other options also include Magic Armor/Dragon Riders like Lucille, though these will require skill activation to achieve the sort of damage needed to kill the golems and depending on your positioning might be better as they are AOE based.

Ideally you don’t want to tank the Duke due to his second phase attack spike given the sort of attack speed he has and the number of usable slots to provide sustain it is pretty risky unless you have something like Gellius/Elyse. Dealing with the magic attack is usually better, this means tank swapping and let your other damage source do the job, of which units like Nanaly/Bashira can perform very well due to the relatively low defense on the Duke. Like the Black Dragon however, utilizing such mechanics will require you to control your damage output against the Duke during first phase since killing him too fast will activate his second phase at undesirable times which might end up killing your entire setup.

Other Important Stuff:
1)Vampire?
Eden isn’t exactly like what a Vampire is usually linked to; the unit class is obviously designed with paralysis as the primary strength in mind, while leech only comes in as a secondary benefit despite what is generally perceived about Vampires.

What makes Eden so exquisite is her powerspike after AW. The combination of leech with paralysis opens up many ways to play Eden on the map, and each fits a specific purpose and will work out well. Eden’s general build of better attack intervals with skill activation, paralysis and leech at this stage further improves her versatility, both in dealing with different situations and improving up time. The one thing Eden fears is ranged attacks when she has no access to melee units for leeching, but this is a standard weakness for undead classes in general. She also can’t deal with one-shot bosses; anything that deals 4000 damage and higher in one hit and she will struggle even with buff units around.

Eden’s use is wide due to how paralysis works, general properties of the undead class and Eden herself. She can be a single blocker covering healer starved routes since she has no need of an external healing source and relies on her self-healing, but you can also place her in heal-intensive regions and she will provide what you want her to without distracting your healers. The use of Eden in heal-intensive regions transforms her role to a strong crowd control unit that also provides utility. Paralysis means she can effectively stop units that she can’t kill in 6 hits to freeze for 12 seconds, and during this duration the monster suffers the same 50% defense reduction, perfect for your physical attack units to then pile their damage onto the monster. This puts Eden as one of the best mid-tier boss support class, especially in situations where you need to kill the boss fast. The defense reduction is also stackable with Alchemist’s defensive debuff to further weaken the monster’s defense if you so choose to use both in a combo.

Depending on skill levels Eden can also work with burst or sustained paralysis. Higher skill levels can allow Eden to proc skill activation in the middle of a paralysis state, this allows for more attacks to be performed in the middle of paralysis, giving her more HP gain on hit and increased damage onto the monster. This is the burst play. If the boss is too hard to kill then sustained utility can be achieved by timing skill activation just about the ending of first paralysis, this allows immediate stacking of 6 hits after the monster comes out of paralysis to immediately put it to paralysis state again.

2)Farm Targets
At this point most veterans would know specifics, but for new players you generally want to farm earlier maps like Map 2 and 3, these gives you potential Soldier/Archer/Witch at a pretty low stamina expense. Also since revivals are now swapped into what previously known as break weeks scheduling farm periods can also be tweaked; unless you are in urgency for a series of Awakening/CC, farming low-cost maps for silvers then work on dailies will be more efficient in terms of your overall unit training program than completely tunnelling on silver unit farm alone.

Conclusion:

Eden is very hot; I am not a pedophile. While her use may still be limited to a small window you won’t get another cheaper paralysis option than her, so it is going to be worth the extra mile to get her fully strengthened. And free SC for the win.