Crimson Corridor

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Floor: 4
Type: Combat
Spine of Epoch:
• Regular: 0
• Emergency: 0
• Catastrophes: +1

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Stage Analysis by oyana ▼

Regular Difficulty 6/10

Crimson corridor is the most difficult floor 4 pre-dlc stage, and it still holds up to this day. The stage constantly throws out waves of Touches and Gifts of Sanguinarch (from hereon referred to as ‘slugs’ that immediately go to the blue box. The waves of slugs approach as soon as the map begins, but there are roadblocks in the way to hold the enemies off for some time. On the regular version of this stage, the biggest problem of the stage is mainly the slugs as the waves are spaced out between slugs and non-slug enemies. Sarkaz tanks spawn on the top left side of the stage and these enemies can hit ranged tiles but is manageable as they don’t spawn until later in the stage.

Emergency 9/10

On the emergency variant, this stage ramps up the difficulty even further by spawning 2 Sarkaz Heirbearer ASV’s at the start of the stage which further increases the damage of the slugs and gives the slugs necrosis damage on hit. The roadblocks on the emergency variant falls even faster and without a good solution to initial onslaught of slugs, this stage is a run ender. The Sarkaz Tanks are also a big problem as they spawn on both left and right sides of the map. These tanks lock out the of the ranged tiles on the right side of the map right away, while the ones that spawn on the left will slowly move up and progressively add pressure.

Notable Enemies:

• Touch of the Sanguinarch / Gift of the Sanguinarch: Even though these enemies do not have much health (3323 and 6646 HP respectively), they boast a 90% damage reduction against both physical and arts damage, increasing their effective HP tenfold against these damage types. Furthermore, the stage is designed to pressure the player early with a swarm of these enemies, meaning that they must quickly be dealt with.

• Sarkaz Heirbearer ASV (mark of epoch): Sarkaz Heirbearer ASVs increase the damage of the Touches and Gifts of the Sanguinarch, and make them deal necrosis injury as well. This means that it is important to deal with them as quickly to reduce the damage that the other enemies do against the roadblocks.

Stage Variants/Permutations:

• This stage has no notable stage permutations

Finale Cadence

The Cadence adds a lot of pressure to this stage. Players already don’t start with much DP to handle the waves, but the cadence adds a timer to the operators deployed as they take constant damage from the cadence. Despite the opener being difficult, this stage is a good stage to kill the cadence as it idles for a long time. With usual strategies of bringing crowd-control, the cadence will easily follow the fate of the slugs.

Deadly Epochs and debuffs

Oddities

• Oddities make this stage extremely difficult as the slugs go from 3323 HP to 4985 HP on the normal version and 4985 HP to 7477 HP on the emergency variant. With the 90% damage reduction, it will allow the slugs to survive longer and potentially break past your defenses. Lastly, the increased HP decreases the effectiveness of True damage sources, such as Amiya (Medic) S2.

• This means that strong relics and operators are required when entering this stage.

Commerce

• The +5 DP costs to every operator makes the initial barrage of slugs very difficult to deal with especially without initial DP.

• Delays the opener enough to render it ineffective against the initial wave (without relics)

Catastrophes

• The spine on the stage locks out the right side of the stage and makes positioning ranged operators very awkward and difficult. The base version of the stage has limited ranged tiles, and the addition of the Spine of Epoch will limit these further.

Yliš’s Ravings

• The -20 SP on deploy debuff makes certain operators not viable for the stage as their windup for the skill activation is too long and can cause issues. This debuff can be played around with proper drafting/deployment order but can be deadly in this stage.

Gul’dul’s Silence

• This relic renders physical damage dealers useless at the beginning of the stage, and delays the killing of the slugs, making them more dangerous and more likely to break through the roadblocks.

Foresight Mystery

• Since the swarm at the beginning consists of a large group of enemies, the odds of one of them having the Dreadkaz Mark is very likely. This will generate a Mark of Epoch that both decreases the damage taken by enemies and potentially disrupts the activation of certain key skills.

Blood Tax Mystery

• While the reduced max HP can be annoying for your operators’ survivability, the benefit of reducing the effective HP of the Touches from 3323 to 2160 (4985 to 3240 on EM) makes them more vulnerable to true and aoe damage sources.

Tranquil Mystery

• The -25% ATK multiplier works both in favor and against the stage. For your operators, it will reduce their ATK, meaning the rate that they can take out the wave of slugs reduces significantly. On the other hand, it will reduce the ATK of the swarm, essentially giving you more time to deal with the wave before it overwhelms you.

Recommendations

• It is highly recommended to be lucid(green toil limit) for this stage on higher difficulties as the stage demands an answer to the slugs from the get go. In addition, the initial DP cost and potentially slower SP regen might not allow operators to activate their skills timely.

• True and elemental damage is highly recommended for this stage, as these damage types ignore the 90% phys/arts damage reduction of the slugs, making their effective HP 3300 instead of 33000. AOE damage is also recommended as the enemies are usually stacked on top of each other. Crowd-control is also recommended over tanking the slugs as though they have lower ATK compared to other enemies, the sheer numbers that blockers have to handle plus the low amount of viable range tiles makes it basically impossible to set up.

Good Operators

• Amiya (Medic) - Amiya S2 can be deployed as the first operator and she can handle the initial wave of slugs all by herself while her S2 is active

• Virtuosa - elemental damage is very good against the slugs and her true aoe application makes her a premium afk solution to the stage

• Flingers - Wisadel/GreyyAlter/Rosmontis are all very good operators in this stage as they all do triple hit true aoe damage to the slugs and with their good range can cover both lanes towards the blue boxes.

• Logos - Logos’ S1, once activated, can deal with the slugs indefinitely and eases the burden of the stage.

• Ela - Ela S2 on this stage is a very strong pick for the aoe stun and synergy with the Torment inspire.

• Ascalon and Ethan - Ambushers with 0 block and crowd-control are especially strong in this stage as they do not contest your ranged tiles and can be deployed on the clusters of enemies without dying.