Ares Realm Guide

Stages 1-9 (Beginnings)
Stages 1-9 should be easily accomplished by even new players with basic knowledge of the game. If you are struggling with these stages, I highly suggest diverting your attention to brushing up on game mechanics. Resources can be found in the guides section of the wiki.

Stage 10 (Boss 1)
Stage 10 will be your first true boss battle in Ares Realm. There is a boss at stage 5, but that one is near negligible for nearly all players. If this is the first major boss battle you’ve encountered, then you may want to read on to get a good grasp of how to tackle one. Showdown/deathmatch battles usually consist of one wave with a boss or two that attack often and do considerable damage. These battles are usually referred to as sustained battles. They take longer and require some form of HP restoration to stay in the fight. Because these battles are drawn out, you will often times be encouraged to use a party leader that enhances the HP of most of your units. This allows you to take more damage before needing to heal and allow healing artes or active skills to potentially heal you for more.

Often times during these battles, bosses will have an HP threshold called “desperation” where the boss will unleash their ultimate move, more than likely annihilating your team’s HP regardless of how high it is. If a boss does indeed have a desperation attack, your main goal will be to build as much LC as possible before reaching the threshold and unleashing as powerful an attack as you can manage before being completely decimated. The average threshold for desperation attacks usually hovers around 50-60% HP.

To achieve an attack powerful enough to do 50-60% of a boss’s HP, you will need to concentrate as many resources into boosting the last unit in a chain as possible. This unit, also known as the finisher, will receive the most damage multipliers.


 * 9th in chain: 6.0x
 * Overlink Arte: 1.5x
 * Mystic Arte: (2.0x ~  5.0x) x2

In addition to these multipliers, you can further enhance the damage your unit inflicts by manipulating elements to your advantage. By equipping a unit with a weapon of an element that is advantageous against an enemy, their damage is multiplied by 1.5x or increased by 50%. By using a unit that also has a hidden element that is advantageous to the enemy, you can increase the damage again by 1.5x. These multipliers are multiplicative, so your total damage will actually be multiplied by 1.5 x 1.5 = 2.25x or an increase of 125% damage!

There are other ways to increase your damage, but we will discuss those later.

Stages 11-16 (Lichs)
Each stage here will contain a boss known as a Lich after 4 waves of enemies. Lichs are enemies that will often use status-inducing attacks such as sleep or poison. There are support guardians that help reduce the chance of your units being susceptible to these status effects such as Teepo or Paraiba. The basic strategy here is to accumulate as much LC as possible in the waves of enemies before the Lich, and then attempt an OLA or MA as quickly as possible. If your team is at a much higher threshold of strength, you can easily just kill the Lich with a few powerful chains/links.

Stage 17 (Boss 2)
This will be your second boss battle within Ares Realm. You learned in the last boss battle that your finisher’s damage is key to winning a battle, especially against an enemy that hits hard and often. However, against certain enemies, you won’t have the luxury of building LC at your leisure. Enemies with much higher levels of HP will require a much stronger attack to finish them off. In this case, players refer to using a “boosted” finishing attack. There are three types of boosts: type, tile, and HP reduction. All three can be used in conjunction, but not with themselves. That means you can use a type and tile boost together, but not a tile boost with another tile boost and vice versa. “Tile boosters” are more accessible and widely available so players will often use these first. If more damage is necessary they will use a “double boosted” finishing move for more damage. At the moment a "triple boost" that uses all three types of boost isn't very necessary, but possible for those who feel the need.

Unfortunately, as you may have guessed, a longer fight also means a higher potential of dying. You can only take so much damage before your health hits an uncomfortable level. There are various ways to remedy this. Most importantly you’ll want to accumulate as much HP as possible to delay the possibility of death. The biggest recommendation for this is to equip HP enhancing gear on as many of your units as possible. Remember to take into consideration that some units are better suited for offense than defense, such as arte healers who will heal you based on damage dealt and, of course, your finisher.

Another type of unit you’ll want to take advantage of are “delayers”. These units have artes that, when triggered, will delay the next turn of an enemy by a certain amount of turns. These types of artes are especially useful for helping avoid tile-targeting attacks, attacks that require a wind-up and attack certain types of tiles, or simply to allow yourself more turns before being attacked. To “dodge” a tile-attack means to leave non-targeted tiles on the board when the attack is initiated. If you have very little or no tiles of the targeted type on the board, you will take minimal or no damage.

Compiling everything you’ve learned up to this point should net you success in your encounter with stage 15's boss. If you’re still having a hard time, you may simply need to strengthen your team a bit more, look for friends that boost your team, or make up for something you lack such as arte healers. Something to look into to boost your team’s overall damage as well is to match your Guardians to your finisher.

Stage 18-23 (Centaurs/Quentilas)
Much like the Lichs, Centaurs are fought after 6 waves of enemies and focus heavily on freeze and paralyzing attacks. There are no support guardians that actively prevent freeze or paralysis. Battling against an enemy that utilizes these status effects will be more difficult than the Lichs that use poison and sleep. The usual recommendation from Lichs still applies here. You want to build LC quickly in the waves before the boss, and then finish them quickly before the debilitating statuses affect your ability to win the battle. Of course, as always, you want to maximize your damage the same way you’ve done for your previous battles.

If, for whatever reason, you cannot finish the Centaurs quickly enough, and require a bit more time to build LC, you can use various status negating equips to aid in battling against freeze and paralysis.

These bosses are a build up for the bosses you’ll soon face in upcoming stages that will truly test your ability to utilize this strategy.

Stage 24 (Boss 3)
This will be the third boss you face within Ares Realm. Let’s review the strategies we’ve used in the previous battles.


 * Maximize finisher damage
 * 9-chain OLA/MA
 * Weapon of advantageous element
 * Hero of advantageous element (optional)
 * Maximize HP
 * Use a leader that enhances both HP/ATK
 * Equip HP increasing armors on units with passives:
 * Armor Boost
 * Double Boost
 * Life Gain
 * Arte healers
 * With advantageous weapon and/or element
 * Delayers

Although the basic flow of this battle doesn’t change from the previous two, the difference in strength can cause problems for newer challengers. On top of our previous strategy, let’s now add in our defensive ability into the mix. As anyone who has made it to this point, I’m sure you’re aware of guardians. In case you don’t fully understand, however, remember that a DEF guardian applies to *all* of your units, regardless of their element. So a guardian that reduces damage from an oncoming element by 25% reduces **all** damage from that element by 25%.

On top of this, be aware that all units that are of an advantageous element to incoming damage also take 25% reduced damage. This means that having a guardian that reduces damage by 25% and a unit of the advantageous element reduces damage by 43.75%, nearly half! The opposite also holds true, however. If a unit of the disadvantaged element takes damage, you’ll take a whopping 150% so an attack that normally deals 10k will do 15k. Make sure not to equip a guardian of a disadvantaged element unless absolutely necessary!

Knowing this, if you’re having trouble, attempt to make a team with units that are of the advantaged element and as little as possible of the disadvantaged if their elements are activated. You don’t have to worry if their elements are not activated.

Lastly, make sure to also take advantage of gear that may reduce incoming elemental damage as well!


 * Fire Shield
 * Water Shield
 * Earth Shield
 * Wind Shield
 * Dark Shield
 * Light Shield
 * Elemental Shield

Stages 25-28 (Cerberus)
These next several battles will be the culmination of what you’ve learned against the Lichs and Centaurs. Like the Centaurs, the Cerberus will be preceded by 6 waves of enemies in which you’ll want to build LC on. The recommendation is that you use weak chains until a monster is almost dead, and then finish with a longer chain. Instead of the usual 4-5 chain to kill an enemy, you can net about 7-10 LC by doing this. Be aware that each Cerberus will be slightly stronger and have more HP than the last.

On top of this, you will want to use a team with absolute focus on damage. The most common party setup is two leaders that boost ATK to 2.0x when > 50% HP. This means that you must attack swiftly and with as little incoming damage as possible. Make sure to also switch your guardians to an appropriate offense/defensive setup so that you take as little damage as possible while having your finisher deal as much as possible.

In the most optimal setup, you should be able to defeat the Cerberus with just one MA. However, if that is not possible, you may need to test your luck with RNG and hope to go into the battle with the Cerberus with a natural OLA-capable board and boost it with an appropriate boost for more damage.

If you feel that strategy is not possible, perhaps not having a 2.0x leader, you may have to resort to the ultra-tanky strategy. The Cerberus, if not defeated quickly, will target all tiles and the only way to survive the massive damage is to have about 50k-60k HP. This requirement is lowered if you have damage reduction, but you will also need to use a boosted MA to win the battle this way. That means building anywhere from 65 to 80 LC to win this battle. Obviously that’s not exactly always possible in such a short amount of time, so this strategy should be resorted to last.

At this phase of the game, I would suggest beginning to experiment with your setup to see what works best for you. Everyone is different, and some strategies work better for different people. Luckily Ares Realm costs minimal stamina in comparison to other events, so you’re allowed to try often without too much drawback. Don’t feel bad if you lose.

Stages 29-35 (Boss Gauntlet)
These next few bosses will be the true test of your team’s ability to tackle an enemy that can both take a punch and punch back even harder.

Once again let’s review what’s needed here:


 * Maximize finisher damage
 * 9-chain OLA/MA
 * Weapon of advantageous element
 * Hidden element of advantageous element (optional)
 * Equip guardian that increases finisher ATK
 * Maximize HP
 * Use a leader that enhances both HP/ATK
 * Equip HP increasing gear on units with passives like:
 * Armor Boost
 * Double Boost
 * Life Gain
 * Maximize defense
 * Equip guardian that reduces enemy elemental damage
 * Equip gear that reduces enemy elemental damage
 * Have as many viable units of the advantageous element
 * Arte healers
 * With advantageous weapon and/or element
 * Delayers
 * ATK is optional. HP is recommended.

The next “tip” we’ll use in this section is advanced tile management and the “aura” trick. No doubt if you’ve been around long enough, you’ve heard stories of giving your arte healers auras. Well look no further as this should help you figure out what you need to do.

So your team consists of 9 units and you get 3 from your friends. That's 12 units that consistently move in and out of the field. This number goes up more if you have guests, so that can also factor in, but the math doesn't change too much.

Imagine that all the units off the screen are in a queue/line waiting to come onto the field like so

12 11 10 NEXT ->

So combined with the field, your "unit pool" looks like this

12 11 10 NEXT -> 7 4 1 8 5 2                    9 6 3

Imagine your arte healer is number 1. You know that using a link of 4 hearts will cause the next non-heart tile to come onto the board to have an aura. What you want to do is move 1 off the board. That will make your "unit pool" look like this.

1 12 11 NEXT -> 10 7 4 8 5 2                    9 6 3

As you can see, 1 (your arte healer) is now at number 3 in the NEXT queue. After that you move 2 units off your board. Let's say 2 and 3. Your "unit pool" looks like this.

3 2 1 NEXT -> 10 7 4 11 8 5                  12 9 6

Now if you connect 4 hearts and 1 is not a heart, it will appear with an aura on your next turn.

Remember that you have to change this a bit if you have a guest(s) on your team though. They add one more to the NEXT queue, so you'll have to move more units to make sure your arte healer is next in the queue.

As an extension of this system, you’ve probably given some thought to how to make your arte healers proc more often. Of course it’s great that your arte healer would fully heal you at the end of a chain, but doing this will leave your arte healer offscreen for at least another turn. What does this mean?

Let’s say your arte healer, with correct weapons and fully herbed, heals you for about 15-25k in an early chain. Let’s say it heals you for 50k in a longer chain, obviously much higher in a very long chain, but we can set that aside for the moment since it happens less often. At a 25% chance, your arte healer has a 75% chance of *not* activating, healing you for 0. However, if you start the chain with your arte healer, they will have a 25% chance of healing you, and most importantly will return to the board if your chain is long enough. That means you will be able to, if RNG is reasonable, avoid dealing with the possibility of healing nothing by giving your arte healers more opportunities to activate their arte. On average, you would most likely heal for the same amount in a longer battle, but the risk of getting a lower output of healing is much lower this way than relying on your arte healers at the end of a chain.

The same applies for delayers as well. Generally this strategy is useful for trying to have anyone activate their artes more often.

Take these bosses as your chance to put all that you’ve learned into action. You will need everything that you can muster to defeat the final boss of Ares Realm which we will cover next.

Stage 36 (The “Boss”)
This will be the ultimate test of everything you’ve learned in Ares Realm so far. This battle usually lasts the longest and will require the utmost ability from your team. This boss usually has extremely high HP. Many players will have a hard time hitting enough damage to finish in one blow, so you’ll often hear players using an “unboosted” MA before doing a “full-boosted” MA. What this means is that some players will need to use a regular MA with no additional damage boosts to drive the boss’s HP low enough that one additional "double (or even triple) boosted" attack will finish the boss. Please keep in mind that you may even have to do some more damage on top of this if your damage is not high enough. Additional hazards will pop up as you whittle down the boss’s HP, however. The AI will begin to use stronger attacks such as “all-tile attacks” that hit all 9 units instantly or tile-attacks with a small windup of 2 turns.

Once you figure out what you need to finish the boss, you simply need to gather enough LC and boost your MA user as far as you can and go for the finish. I apologize that there is no “secret method” for this battle. This battle is a true test for any player to utilize all that they’ve learned up until this point in Ares Realm. I’m confident that if you’ve managed to get this far that you will find a way to win this battle on your own. Experiment and push yourself. For some the battle may be harsh, but it is a necessary stepping stone in becoming better.

If you do win, however, then congratulations on your summon crystal(s)! Soon, or if the summon is already available, you will have a new 6-star unit to join your party! You can now enjoy clearing Ares 10 to gain ranks or Ares 31 to farm herbs and guardian summon tickets!

Additional resources you may find helpful can be found below:

Damage Calculator



List of Arte Healers

List of Delayers