This mechanic guide will focus on board effects

Table of contents

Jammer Orbs

These prickly guys are there to fill up your board. When matched, they provide no effect (positive or negative). Some leads use these for activation such as Fenrir but otherwise they don’t do anything but waste space.

Jammers cannot be enhanced and enhanced orbs converted to jammers will result in unenhanced jammers.

Can be blocked with the Jammer Resist Awakening: However, the resist only works on orb converts and not on skyfall effects being applied.

Poison Orbs

Matching poisons has no positive outcomes but does have negative outcomes. Matching 3 poisons does 20% of your max HP (BIG NOTE: It’s of your MAX HP, NOT CURRENT HP LIKE ENEMY GRAVITIES). Each additional poison linked to the original 3 adds 5% more damage. So 4 poisons together does 25% of your MAX HP. 6 Poisons linked together does 35% of your max HP. Meanwhile, matching two separate combos of 3 poisons each will deal 40% of your max HP. Basically, linking poisons together benefits you in that you save the damage of 1 poison orb versus matching the combos separately.

The damage from matching poisons is calculated at the same time as RCV from a combo, healing effects, and autoheal awakenings / latents. This means active skills like Awoken Raphael’s which heal at the end of the turn will offset poison damage, however, shields active or leader skills will not reduce poison damage. For example, if you have 1HP left and you match hearts along with 3 poisons, you can still survive. Let’s say you have 10,000 MAX HP and match 30 poisons, this will do 15,500 damage. If you have Awoken Raphael (who heals 30% of max HP per turn) and heal 3,000 HP from combos, you will survive with 500 HP.

Healing for the turn = RCV from combos + autoheal awakenings and latents + active effects (Awoken Raph) – hazards (poison, mortal and bombs). If this result is negative, you lose HP. If positive, you heal.

All this to say that, if it’s easier to think of it this way, your HP value can be negative from poisons before healing kicks in.

Poisons cannot be enhanced and enhanced orbs converted to poisons will result in unenhanced poisons.

Can be blocked by the poison resist awakening: However, the resist only works on orb converts and not on skyfall effects being applied.

Mortal Poison Orbs

These mean looking poison orbs work in the same way as poisons so I won’t go into it more. The only difference is the amount of damage they deal.

The first 3 orbs do 50% of your MAX HP. Each additional linked orb does 12.5% of your max HP. So that means 7 mortals linked will do 100% of your MAX HP. Ever wonder why Grisar spawns 2 then after his gravity makes 5 more? Two mortal poison combos of 3 mortals will deal 100% of your HP as well. These orbs are nasty.

Can be blocked by the poison resist awakening:

Bomb Orbs

The worst of the worst. Bombs explode if they are not matched. When they explode, each one deals a whopping 25% of your MAX HP and it also destroys all orbs in the same row and column. The bombs exploding take priority over combos being matched in terms of the orb destruction, therefore, THEY CANNOT BE CASCADED. However, the damage is included in the healing for the turn formula and therefore if you cascade hearts (or matched them outside of the blast zone) then you can still survive an explosion that would otherwise kill you.

Bombs cannot be enhanced and enhanced orbs converted to bombs will result in unenhanced bombs.

Here’s a picture where jammers represent the orbs that are destroyed from a bomb:

Can be blocked with the Jammer Resist Awakening:

However, make no mistake! Actives that change jammers to another orb type DO NOT INCLUDE BOMBS IN THE ORB CHANGE.

Blinds

Applied to the entire board. Turns all orbs black. You can pick them up to see the orb underneath without starting a match. Alternatively, enhanced orbs also shine at different times based on their color. During matching, blind orbs will become unblinded when the places are swapped with another orb (basically when you move to combo, the path you take will be unblinded).

Can be blocked with the Blind Resist Awakening:

Board refreshes like Maeda Keiji will remove blinds.

Super Blinds

Follows similar mechanics to blinds so read the paragraph above, watch the Twitch clip. You can see me picking up the orbs to see them without starting the combo. You can also see how the lights flash at different times from the fires.

The differences with super blinds:

Super blinds no longer hit the entire board at the same time, instead it will be based on the enemy’s attack. It could be a single orb or the entire board like Nyarlathotep’s premptive. Super Blind is applied with a turn timer on each orb. The orb will only be revealed after X number of turns passes or the orbs are matched.

Can be blocked with the Blind Resist Awakening:

Board refreshes like Maeda will remove Super Blinds.

Cloud

These clouds act like Super Blind Orbs except they don’t follow the orb and are not removed when orbs under them are matched. Similar to the other blinds, you can pick up orbs under the clouds to see the color. However, you will be unable to see locks / enhances under the cloud during matching which is a key difference to blinds.

CANNOT BE REMOVED WITH REFRESH.

Can be blocked with the Super Cloud Resist Awakening: (This means it’s not available in NA yet and will only be available through limit breaking in solo)

Ribbon Lock

Also known as scroll or rolling locks (because Khepri, the first to feature it, “rolls” over the parts of the board).

These are board effects that completely stop you from picking up orbs or moving orbs into those spots during the combo phase. When applied to a board there will be a number on the scroll that signifies the number of turns it is active for. Orbs can be cleared / combod / converted / cascaded as normal.

CANNOT BE REMOVED WITH REFRESH.

Can be blocked with the Super Scroll Resist Awakening: (This means it’s not available in NA yet and will only be available through limit breaking in solo)

Enhanced Orbs

Denoted by a little + symbol on the bottom right orb, this is a positive orb effect that can be introduced with active skills or by skyfalls with enhanced orb awakenings.

The following awakenings give 20% chance per orb that skyfalls to be enhanced. Each of these also adds 5% damage to the combo but that’s covered in the damage calculation page.

Only Fire, Water, Wood, Light, Dark, and Heart orbs can be enhanced. If the orb is converted to anything besides the 6 enhanceable orbs will result in the enhance being lost.

Enhanced orbs converted to other enhanceable orbs will remain enhanced.

Locked Orbs

This hazard is added onto ANY ORB (YES! EVEN HAZARDS!) and can be in the form of orbs fall as locked, or enemies will lock specific orbs on the board. Technically you can lock orbs yourself with specific actives like Ilsix.

When orbs are locked you or the enemy cannot convert them away. Locked orbs can be matched like any other orb.

There are no resists against this.

Can be removed with orb refreshes like Maeda Keiji and orb unlock actives.

Attribute Lock

This effect is a debuff where the timer is on the bottom right of the screen. You can see the orbs with a big red X on them as such:

Orbs that are attribute locked cannot be matched under any circumstances. However, the attribute locked orbs can otherwise be moved / changed like normal orbs. If you skyfall / generate more of the locked attribute, those will be locked as well. Orbs on the board will all become available for matching after the debuff expires. Since the debuff expires after the combo phase, you can have combos / blobs of orbs already formed for the turn after.

There are no resists against this.

Cannot be removed with orb refreshes.

Casino Orbs

Probably one of the most hated of the mechanics now.

On the left you see the Casino, Rotating or Spinner orb (I’ve seen it called all of those) and on the right is just a normal orb. The Casino orb has a different border around it. You’ll also notice a timer circling around the orb to signify the next change. Timers are dependent on the enemy. Some enemies have 0.5 second timers while others have as long as 2 seconds. If you hold the orb, the orb will not change colors but the timer will continue. You can do this to make combos out of multiple casino orbs linked together as shown in the video below (not mine):



Locked orbs will not change in the casino orbs.

Casino orbs will continue to rotate throughout a combo and therefore will change orbs as you match! Moving in non-rbgldh orbs will cause the orb to change to Fire on the next rotation. So that means bombs / jammers / poisons / mortals. This can be used in complex matching paths to convert hazards away without having to match them! After your combo is over (meaning you let go of the orb or ran out of time to move) the rotations stop until the next combo phase.

The casino orbs will not be removed by matching orbs over them, they will only be removed when the turn timer is up (you can see it on the bottom right in the video). The borders will disappear before the matching / combo phase starts again leaving you with the skyfall you had from the prior matching.

There are no resists against this.

Cannot be removed with orb refreshes.

Fixed Start

This is a board effect that forces you to start your combo with a specific orb on the board. The rest of the orbs will look darkened.

There are no resists against this.

Can be removed by board refreshes like Maeda Keiji. Can be worked around with a Change the World (CTW) active such as Myr or Non-awoken Yomi. When using a CTW active, you will still be forced to move the fixed start orb first, however, once moving it even one position will allow you to continue the timer with any other orbs.

Hopefully this helped and feel free to stop by the Puzzles and Kupo Carry Server for PAD discussions, help, coop and of course carries by clicking the banner below!