MDE15 50 Adv Smol Brain Strat

Context: started playing August this year, new to Project Moon in general. FTP. Zero reading comprehension until Ricardo, then learnt to at least read passives of bosses and occasionally tips on reddit. Still haven’t read what each status effect does (but the more the better, right? :^D)

Since Canto IX is coming up, I thought that this Mirror Dungeon is coming to an end. And I really want to at least reach level 15 ONCE before then (50 Adversity is just me winging it). Once before I reached lvl15, spooked by my first ever hidden boss Ricardo, and had to retire there :’(

But I finally did it!! With 2 hidden bosses too that drains away all my purple ego resource and nearly made me lose to crabs yay.

Screenshots: https://www.yogile.com/3z814xd2hka/21t/share/?vsc=981905673

So to all smol brainers out there who ever wondered how to clear Lvl 15, no brain to read full blown guide on the game but have the almighty Heishou team, I wanted to share a guide from a fellow smol brainer to show that it is possible. You just trade off the pain of reading to the pain of brute forcing:

• Get all them starlight blessings. One can never be too buffed.
• Throughout the run, I focus on trying to get keywordless gifts since you can’t target them in fusion. I started ones that can help with clash or help me recover from death like Emergency Investigator Badge and I keep refreshing to get stages that offer me keywordless gifts at the end, or in general leans towards keywordless. The one that lets 1 skill coin run 2x is great for Kong Lu. Especially try to seek Piece of Relationship that when enhanced, gives 10 level up!
• Farm for that purple ego resource from the very beginning, while the stages are still easy. Faust’s Fluid Sac will be an absolute life saver down the road. Having a secondary emergency healer helps too (mine is Sinclair’s Lantern).
• Fuse mainly for slash, rupture and poise, for me in that order. There are some slash gifts that help with clash. If a gift says something like ‘for sinner #3’, immediately check if enhancing can expand the coverage.
• For non full rupture/heishou team like mine, I also keep an eye on pierce gifts. Blunt gifts are surprisingly useful too since a lot of useful egos (fluid sac) are blunt.
• Charge gifts surprisingly are not all garbage, even for a zero charge team. Some gifts give charge counts. Then there’s this one gift that converts charge count to offence level up iirc. Anything that require skill to consume charge however are garbage.
• Speaking of other ego gifts, keep anything that may be useful even if it doesn’t correlate to your team. So anything that doesn’t have ‘only sinner#1,#2’, ‘this ego only if you have 5 of the same type’, and maybe ‘when using skill with this status’. Also don’t take the bleed one that removes stagger.
• When getting the floor rewards, try to avoid anything that says clash power. And pick +1 level when available.
• During lvl 5-10, some LINE stages will give +3 levels. Take them with moderation (because less nodes = less gifts to buy)
• Fuse and enhance what you want/can before entering EXTREME and the cost gets really high.
• When you no longer have any specific ego gifts in mind but you have too much of that only-for-fusion clear bottle thing, go for 2 item fusion. Worst case you get garbage, best case you might get keywordless at a discount.
• Upon entering EXTREME, immediately seek Line 3 Unhatched Embers. With smol brain strat at least 1 person will die in the first round. This will at least potentially save 1 sinner.
• SP when entering the boss battle is very important. It’s worth burning that cost to just get everyone up to 30SP.
• At some point during lvl 10-15 I ended up getting Shatterbound Cannon. Before this I always got rid of it, but turns out…it really helps. You can actually deal decent damage thanks to this. In return when your sinner kindly do that first free attack after substituting and it’s to an enemy with a counter, they will also be instantly obliterated :D
• If you like pain, go for the Cathy stage. If you like bloody long fight, go for Merry Go Round. Otherwise, stick with: N-corp, walpurg bug, SEA, Line 3, and either the other walpurg or Efflorescing. For this purpose I recommend having that keywordless gift that gives 20% damage to unfocused encounter.
• For the packs above, I also recommend doing the N-corp, Efflorescing, or Line 3 earlier than later. Or as I’ve learnt, Gubo will one shot everyone willy nilly.
• Also if you’re doing crab or anything with plenty enemies and find yourself unable to clash, spam unopposed AOEs as much as you can, and pray that most of the enemies will be too staggered to one shot your team.

Extra:

If you’re lucky (unlucky?) like me, and encounter 2 hidden bosses on your precious road to Lvl 15:

Papa Quixote, lvl 13

Papa Quixote is not too bad. The bleed gifts that I left behind probably helped. This one need a bit of reading actually: spam AOE to make sure things don’t explode in your face, and whenever Papa Quixote does that one skill AOE, use defensive skill even if one sided. One time I couldn’t clash with his normal AOE skill and I slapped morositas. Idk if it’s thanks to that, but at least my team didn’t get completely wiped.

Lei Heng, lvl 14

This one however, drove me nuts. Doesn’t help that I was depleted in SP after having my team nearly wiped from previous floor, and I didn’t want to wait another day to use double the morositas (would it even work?). So how to brute force it:

• Retry 200x until he’s targeting 3-4 sinners at most. Select the 2-3 sinners that you’d like to sacrifice by having them hopelessly clash, and let everyone else do unopposed.
• The first 2x he takes off his hat should be ok. If everything goes well, you should still be able to clash his skill. For insurance, keep your precious sinner (Faust fluid sac) as unopposed because one bad luck will obliterate her.
• From the 3rd hat onwards… His clashing went nuts EVEN THOUGH the thing says ‘dominating’, and I died at least 5 times because I believed in it. Protect your main damage dealer (HongLu), and anyone else that is not the subject of his attention by letting them do unopposed. Let the sinner with the most attention clash - best case, they won the clash. Worst case, they’re gone but everyone else gets to see the next turn :D
• From then it’s just a long battle of praying that your sinner doesn’t lose clash, and keeping them healed if your healer is still alive.

TLDR: General strategy for smol brain, sacrifice a sinner per turn or so and let everyone else do unopposed. Also hunt for keywordless gift they’re great.

(big brain peeps out there, feel free to actually add the correct strat :D)