Extreme Damage Theory: Beating Raid Bosses & the Final Boss

Limited-time raid bosses have 72–102 million HP, and the final boss of the main story (Stage 89) has 40 million HP. Attack them the way you would a normal stage and you simply will not chew through that health bar. To beat them you need to land three things in the same drop: multipliers, high-value jewels, and tracing. This page breaks down all three pillars with the real formulas and numbers.

0. Why normal attacking falls short

Damage is determined by roughly the following product (for the exact formula, see How Chains and Damage Work).

The key point is that this is a multiplication. Doubling any single term only doubles your damage, but raising all four at once compounds and changes the order of magnitude. Raid boss HP is tuned so that you can only reach it by lining everything up at the same time.

Put another way, extending your chain alone will not raise your damage. The chain bonus is only 2.2x at 6 chains and still just 2.8x at 12, so it grows very slowly. Jewel value, on the other hand, keeps climbing: 3.2x at 128, 8.2x at 512, 13.1x at 1024. "Bigger numbers" beats "longer chains" every time.

1. Pillar 1: Stacking 8x–10x leader skills

Leader and sub-leader multipliers stack multiplicatively, with no cap on the total. The top-tier leader skills are worth 8x–10x on their own, so pairing two of them reaches 64x–80x. That is the foundation of extreme damage.

The highest-multiplier leader skills

Two ways to combine them

"Merge 6 elements" and "5 different elements in your party" are fully compatible. Put the multi-element skill on your leader and the rainbow-party skill on your sub-leader and you get 10x × 8x = 80x. That is the ceiling.

That raises an obvious question: your party only has 5 slots, so how do you merge 6 elements? The answer is Ether. Merging Light and Dark always creates an Ether jewel, and because Ether ignores the element gate and attacks with your entire party, it counts as a sixth element. In other words, a 5-element party plus a Light/Dark merge equals 6 elements, which satisfies the condition.

The other option is doubling up on mono-element. Put allies with the mono-element skill in both the leader and sub-leader slots for 8x × 8x = 64x. It loses to the multi-element build on raw multiplier, but you only need to line up one color, so it is much easier to hit and the tracing is far simpler. Until you are comfortable, this is the realistic choice.

2. Pillar 2: Build high-value jewels fast

An 80x multiplier does nothing if the jewels you merge are small. Here is how much weight jewel value carries.

Past 64 the curve accelerates, and there is no upper limit. Bigger jewels are purely stronger, so raid fights come down to "how fast can I build a 512-class jewel?" You have three kinds of support for that.

(a) Double up instantly with a wild jewel

A wild jewel absorbs the jewel next to it regardless of value and becomes double that value. Place one beside a 256 and you have a 512 on the spot. Normally only one jewel in twenty is wild, but Wild Summon (summons a wild jewel into your next piece) lets you call one up whenever you want.

Use it next to the biggest jewel on the board. Spending it on a small jewel wastes most of the doubling. With a 30–45 turn cooldown, treat it as a trump card you get to play once or twice per boss fight.

(b) Make the falling jewels bigger

In raid boss fights, falling jewels are already allowed to reach 512 by default. You can push that further with the following support.

• Bounty Wave (active): raises the maximum value of falling jewels by two tiers for 4 drops
• Boundless Cascade (leader, always on): raises the maximum value of falling jewels
• Rising Tide (leader, always on): raises the minimum value of falling jewels, so you get less junk
• Falling max/min value boosts (passive leader effects): they work just by having the ally in your party

It is easy to overlook, but the minimum-value boost matters most. When small 2s and 4s pile up on the board they get in the way when you trace, blocking the paths you need to bring big jewels together.

(c) Lift or clean the whole board

• Grand Ascension: upgrades every jewel on the board by one tier (doubling it). A board full of 256s becomes a board full of 512s instantly — the single most powerful way to manufacture high-value jewels
• Purge Wave: wipes out every small jewel of value 16 or below. Use it to reset when the board is clogged and you cannot move
• Culling Hand: lets you pick the jewels you want gone yourself. This is your finishing touch for building an exact shape

None of these board effects trigger a chain on the spot. Any matching values they leave adjacent are all merged the moment you drop your next jewel. So it becomes a two-step play: "set up the board, then detonate it with your next move." That setup step is the crucial part.

3. Pillar 3: Use the Tracing Hand to satisfy everything at once

At this point you have the 80x conditions and the big jewels. But you will never satisfy the 80x conditions by luck. Six elements, six chains, and big numbers all at once is simply not realistic if you leave it to whatever falls.

The Tracing Hand is a skill that lets you drag stacked jewels around with your finger to rearrange them. It is the only tool that lets you build the conditions with your own hands, and it sits at the heart of raid boss strategy.

Shapes to aim for when tracing

• Put big jewels next to each other: making 1024 out of 512 + 512 is your top priority. A single one of those is worth 13.1x
• Build chains from the bottom up: merging low on the board makes the jewels above fall, which triggers the next merge automatically. The standard way to reach 6 chains is to stack them from the bottom
• Always put Light next to Dark: this is the only place the sixth element (Ether) comes from for a multi-element build. Set up one Light + Dark pair at the end of your trace
• Get all 5 of your party's elements into the chain: merging a color you have no ally for deals 0 damage and does not count toward the element total. Only go for colors that are in your party

4. Real damage: let's do the math

Here is the total damage from a single drop with a Lv99 Apex-evolved 5-element party (10x leader + 8x sub = 80x), building a chain that merges all 6 elements. One Ether hit is included.

Raid bosses have 72–102 million HP. As you can see, one hit with a multiplier active running puts you in range to finish them in a single big play. Without the multiplier active, you would need two or three of those plays, and the damage you take in between will break you. The right approach is to funnel everything into the drop where you fire your multiplier active.

Also notice how little separates the "6 chains" and "8 chains" rows. There is almost no value in pushing past 6 chains. Six chains is only there as the trigger condition for that 80x — it is not the source of your damage. Turning a 512 into a 1024 gains you far more.

5. Party recipes

Recipe A: Multi-element (max damage, advanced)

All 5 elements are covered, and since Light and Dark are both present you can create Ether as your sixth. The two copies of Iris Cascade (color scattering) are there to repaint the board across the 5 elements and set up a 6-element merge. The skill paints so that adjacent jewels are always different colors, which makes it a superb fit for the multi-element condition.

Recipe B: Mono-element (easier to land, 64x)

Put allies with the mono-element leader skill in the leader and sub-leader slots, and build your whole party around a single element. The 64x multiplier is a step below the multi-element build, but you only need to line up 5 jewels of one color when you trace, so your success rate is in a different league. Against an enemy you have an elemental advantage over, another 1.5x pushes you close to the multi-element numbers.

Whichever you choose, always include one multiplier active. Active multipliers do not stack — only the highest one applies — so instead of loading up on several, run one with the highest multiplier and spend the rest of your slots on support and healing.

6. How the fight plays out

1. Early on: focus entirely on setup
   Do not force attacks. Grow big jewels on the board. This is where you use your drop-value boost skills. Ride out the enemy's charge attacks with defense and healing.
2. Tidy the board
   Double everything with Grand Ascension, or sweep away small jewels with Purge Wave, to give yourself a board that is easy to trace on.
3. Create your biggest jewel with a wild
   Drop Wild Summon next to the biggest jewel on the board. This is where your 512 or 1024 core is born.
4. Fire your multiplier active
   Activate the 10x active. Everything goes into the drop right after this.
5. Build it with a trace
   Activate the Tracing Hand, bring your big jewels together, build a 6-chain from the bottom, and set up one Light + Dark pair. When you lift your finger, 80x and 10x land in the same hit.

7. Common mistakes

• Obsessing over longer chains: a 12-chain is only 1.27x a 6-chain. Build one bigger jewel instead
• Running several multiplier actives: only the highest one applies at a time. The rest are wasted slots
• Merging a color that is not in your party: it deals 0 damage and does not count toward the multi-element condition either
• Tracing before firing your multiplier active: that is backwards. Put the multiplier up first, then trace
• Using a wild on a small jewel: the rule is always "next to the biggest jewel on the board"

Related pages

Tracing Hand Guide / How Chains and Damage Work / Choosing a Leader Skill / Element Gates and Party Building / Raid Boss List

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