Element Gates and Team Building
The first thing that trips up most new players is the element gate. If your puzzle play looks great but you aren't dealing damage, this is almost always why.
Element gates: no matching ally, no attack
When you merge jewels, only the allies whose element matches those jewels attack. If there's no Fire ally on your team, merging Fire jewels does zero damage no matter how many you clear (chains and score still progress as normal).
Put the other way around, the core tactic is to prioritize clearing jewels of the elements you actually fielded. Since all five elements keep falling onto the board, treat the ones you don't use as stepping stones for chains.
The elemental triangle, plus Light and Dark
| Attacker | Strong against (1.5x) | Weak against (0.7x) |
|---|---|---|
| Fire | Wind | Water |
| Water | Fire | Wind |
| Wind | Water | Fire |
| Light | Dark | — |
| Dark | Light | — |
Light and Dark hit each other for 1.5x and have no bad matchup at all. That makes them an easy pair to use when you can't tell what element you'll be facing.
Ether: the trump card that ignores element gates
Merging a Light jewel with a Dark jewel always creates Ether. Any merge involving Ether gets special treatment:
- It ignores the element gate, so your entire party attacks
- The matchup multiplier is always 1.5x (treated as a weakness hit)
- It hits every enemy on screen
That makes it extremely strong against enemies that nullify a specific element, and on stages where several enemies appear at once. Keeping Light and Dark in your team is what unlocks this option.
The basic team template
Out of your five slots, there are three things worth thinking about.
- Leader and sub-leader: their multipliers multiply together, so this is the foundation of your damage. Two skills that boost the same element are the easiest way to maximize it
- Your attacking element: always field an ally for the element you're targeting. The more you lean into a single color, the harder each attack lands
- A healer or defender: charge attacks from raid bosses and chapter bosses can be lethal if you have no answer. Reserve one slot for damage reduction, a barrier, or healing
Note that there are also leader skills built around multi-color teams, where the multiplier scales with how many different elements you field. With those, you deliberately spread across all five elements. Check the exact conditions on the Skill List.