Most of this guide is formatted and pasted from a series of Reddit posts by Effective-Engine6745! They didn't express any interest in uploading the guide themselves, but gave me permission to do so in their stead. Each thread will be linked at the bottom of its respective section. I will be doing some editorializing, but will make sure to note where my own input comes in where it makes sense to.

For clarity, I will be changing all first person references from the original text and will instead only use first person when it's something that I have written myself. If you see words like "I" or "my", that's me writing, not the original author.

4/29/2024: Hey! I know I haven't updated the guide in a while. I didn't really know how to go about keeping teams up to date on a near weekly basis, and aside from that, this guide was originally designed without a need to be updated, as it aimed to teach you the fundamentals of team building more than actually telling you what teams to build, and beyond the second Walpurgisnacht, there weren't really any new units that changed the game for their respective teams too radically except maybe Oufi Heathcliff and... well all of sinking I suppose. Certain units, like Pequod Ishmael or Liu Rodion, certainly provided new (and generally better) options, but this guide was first and foremost meant to teach you how to figure that out for yourself.

MD4 is on the horizon, and with it, 3 new keywords to build teams with, but also importantly, much more fine tuned control over what types of encounters you have. These will radically change the team building strategies outlined in this guide, and honestly, might deserve a fully new guide depending on how impactful theme packs are.

I will try to update this guide in the next few days to restore the example team images (I do not know why or how they disappeared) and making notes of what things are core to a strategy and what things are simply extremely strong to a strategy. Most of that is already done anyway. If you wish to have an ongoing updated list of suggested teams, the original author keeps that going and people usually throw updates in the comments. I will too from time to time.

As for MD4, none of the existing teams should be made irrelevant by it, and once we've had time to play with it and thoroughly understand theme packs, I'll figure out what I'm doing from there.

5/13/2024: MD4 changes far too much for this guide to really be relevant at this point. While a lot of the basics are still applicable, a new guide that teaches people how to build teams from the ground up would be far more useful, both for any future MD changes and other content as well.

MD3 is a week old as of writing. Starlight looks to be in high demand, so this here's a guide to help y'all accrue it. Not every strategy that'll be covered was developed specifically for this guide, and inspirations/sources will be listed where appropriate.

This guide is aimed at players with a decent number of IDs. Maximizing starlight via rest bonuses necessitates having several to cycle between each run, forming at least 6 disjoint teams (Editor's Note: This does mean you have to own literally every Outis ID if you want to maximize the rest bonus). Of course, feel free to make modifications to fit what you currently own, or avoid IDs you don't enjoy playing, etc. The aim here is more to highlight that all status teams are strong/viable when built correctly - thus the IDs in this guide are arranged non-repeatedly (as strategically as possible) into 7 teams. All of them take roughly 30 mins per full run, with very little variance (possibly shorter with the complete starter buffs).

The first things to cover are the general principles/goals that we're aiming for in this guide. Each run aims to:

1. Minimize effort spent - stable/repeatable strategies (e.g. team X can winrate everything).
   
2. Minimize run time - real world duration of run.
   
3. Maximize resource gain efficiency - battle pass (BP) exp/starlight per module.

This brings us to tackle the first of many common axiomatic traps gripping this community.

Misinformation/mal-opinions tend to calcify in most communities, but in Limbus, we see a trend of public opinion being set easily early on, from which point it gets regularly restated as fact (though we do see efforts to debunk them at times, be it narrative or gameplay opinions). "Top Reddit Comment Response Syndrome" if you will, but in an effort to maintain conciseness, this point won't be belabored going forward.

That is to say, in these guides, there will be times when the proposed strategy runs counter to popular takes. Each of these teams have been run casually in the background since day 1 of MD3, timing most to check their run time, and the strategies seem sound. So try seeing past preconceived notions, give it a try yourselves, and hopefully it serves you well.

So let's first have this as a preface (more so for newer players looking for guidance):

Precept 0: You don't really need to be -that- efficient. (Editor's Note: I disagree, but I have an abundance of time and I go way too hard at this game)

You can easily get a lot of modules in Limbus. If you've played for longer than a few weeks, you easily hit a point where 2-3 enkephalin refreshes are theoretically more lunacy-efficient than extracting, even when you're not 100% module-efficient with regards to spending them (yes, these numbers assumes paid BP, simply adjust the thresholds accordingly if you're entirely F2P).

Module-efficiency really isn't the deal breaker for getting the most out of the game, or in other words, there are other things you might prefer to optimize for instead of modules.

MD3 is (slightly) faster than MD2 - if you forfeit after clearing floor 3. You miss out only about 3.5 shards per run if you bounce after you trounce the F3 boss, easily shaving 10 mins or more. The EGO gift tailoring allows for very quick runs, so if time-efficiency is a focus, this should really be the go-to farming method for most players.

If you prefer to optimize for inattentiveness, simply preset 6 teams with the same 6 deployed sinners (winraters), with only the benched members swapping between runs.

In fact, if your only concern is starlight acquisition, there is a more absurd limit of time-efficiency (that can't be recommended earnestly): start a run, choose a fully rested team, forfeit run. You've just spend 5 modules to collect 70+ starlight, in about 20 secs (but netting 0 BP exp).

The Starlight calculation is 25 Starlight for clearing Floor 4, 1 Starlight for each cleared node, 2 Starlight for each encounter, and 1 Starlight for each EGO gift obtained. You also gain 12 Starlight for choosing a different EGO gift category than your last run and 60 Starlight for a full roster of fully rested IDs. This means your average Floor 4 clear will net you around 150 to 175 Starlight, with an extra 25 to 50 for hard mode.

With that out of the way, the strategies described in this guide still extend to a full F4 clear.

Universally good EGO Gifts:

Prioritize enhancing "stacking EGO gifts" of the team's status effect. The rate of potency/count application is usually incredible. Following that, below are EGO gifts that are good to take on any run:

• The "free damage" group:
  Eclipse of Scarlet Moths, Carmilla, Special Contract, Phantom Pain, Rusty Coin, Sunshower, Grey Coat, Illusory Hunt.
  
• Bloody Gadget - also free damage, amazing if you have a unit with lust skills. Upgrade it.
  
• Voodoo Doll - Cheap way to win clashes. -2 power down.
  
• Nebulizer - Cheap potential crits. (Editor's Note: Nebulizer++ is absolutely busted. Did you have a Poise team? You do now!)
  
• Cost gainers are better if gotten early, but do fuse/sell at final floor for something better.
  
• Bell of Truth, Melty Eyeball - many EGOs incidentally have tremor bursts on them, so free fragile(s)/def downs.
  
• Tomorrow's Fortune - This EGO gift was rarely worth taking for MD2, but with the changes to how reliably you can get EGO gift choices in difficult and focused encounters, along with the ability to sell or fuse gifts, Tomorrow's Fortune is now extremely good.

The Teams:
I've moved team screenshots down to their respective sections, but the general information regarding them will remain here.

Blue starred units/EGOs in the images are considered "necessary" to that team's strategy. Yellow starred ones help the strategy - include as many as you can. Of the 7 teams, when choosing one to opt out of the rotation (as you only need 6 rotating teams), the sinking team is at the top of the list. It is the team that requires the most (relative) micromanaging if aiming for F4 clears. All of them still breeze through F3 of course.

It's important to note that you WILL have to choose one team to pull out of the rotation. There are only 6 IDs each of Ryoshu, Don, and Outis, so any attempt to run 7 teams would result in not getting maximum rest bonuses. The units that belong to the unused team in your lineup can be salvaged and used across the rest of your teams wherever duplicates become an issue. None of the repeating IDs for Ryoshu, Don, or Outis will be marked as mandatory on more than one team.

Source for this section: https://redd.it/18nvuos

Burn has been getting meme'd on a lot lately, but it is actually one of the fastest clearing teams in this guide. It's strange, 7 Yi Sang is somehow the best Burn unit in the game. (Editor's Note: Burn teams have been amazing since MD2H. Anyone who's surprised by this information hasn't been paying attention to some of the "bad" IDs)

Necessary Tools / EGO Gifts (explanation in Analysis):

• 7 Yi Sang
  
• 4th Match Flame (Yi Sang) [UT4]
  
• Liu Hong Lu
  
• All burn stacking EGO gifts (especially Fiery Down & Hellterfly's Dream, upgrade these asap).

Powerful Tools / EGO Gifts (nice to haves):

• 9:2 (Faust) - Def down debuff (only used for F3/F4 boss).
  
• Lifetime Stew (Sinclair) - Lotsa burn, Stew corrosion gives count in a pinch.
  
• All other burn EGOs - the more the merrier, so as to stack 99 potency turn 1 on final boss.
  
• Liu Gregor at [UT4] - with stacking EGO gifts (Hellterfly), even his S1 applies so much potency.

Analysis

The main conceptual mistake with how players have been using burn is putting all the burn count on one target. While yes, you could think of burn as having low DPS for ticking only once at turn end, it is precisely because burn only ticks once per turn, unlike for example rupture, that it really doesn't matter if the enemy has 2 count or 9. This is why Liu Hong Lu isn't particularly useful on field as a burn unit: his schtick is the "burn count supplier".

However, because his support passive is "highest SP ally applies 1 more burn count", Yi Sang, with the only 5 weight burn AoE, suddenly is able to take that previously "low DPS" and multiply it by 5 in mob fights (ironically lore accurate to what Liu Association is stated to specialize in). Helps that it's possibly the fastest EGO animation in the game too. For this to work he needs to be "first" in the sinner selection screen. Though we set N Clair as "first" to get the earliest double slot, his sanity is usually not 45, so Yi Sang still always gets the passive (just throw out a Lifetime Stew if he ever hit 45 - that's a lot of targets too).

Not even the ideal setup, only had Hellterfly's:


Why 7 Yi Sang?

• Easy gluttony sin generation (for his 4th Match Flame).
  
• Fastest Yi Sang, applies the burn before all the Liu's (who gets +coin power if enemy has enough burn). Likewise, Crow's Eye View can nerf enemies before the other clashes.

Why N Faust?

• Also fast - on the final boss fight, lets you apply the defense down first with 9:2.
  
• Applies burn w/ EGO Gifts: Pinpoint Logic Circuit (Envy applies burn), Fiery Down (Lust applies burn)
  
• Gripping boosts Blunt, most of team is blunt
  
• Whistles passive keep Sinclair sane - any time he's above 0 sanity is EGO time.

So a typical non-boss encounter looks something like this:

Yi Sang EGOs, applying 2 burn count to 5 targets, they also get 10~40ish potency due to stacking EGO gifts. Then the Liu Gang dashes in with boosted coins (and applies even more burn). Turn ends, they'll probably be at 50~80-ish burn with 2 count. Most regular encounters up to floor 4 have less than 200 HP per enemy, burn damage + regular damage + quick staggers usually mean most fights end in 2-3 turns.

Another strength of burn is that it does fixed damage (ignores def level, etc). So even during pre-nerf MD3, most of the non-boss fights were really easy with this build. F4 boss still took a while of course.

Quick Strategy Outline

• Floor 1/2: Winrate.
  
• Floor 3/4: Set 4th Match Flame on Yi Sang, then winrate.
  
• Floor 4 Boss: Swap Yi Sang out, Ryoshu in.
  
  • T1: Faust Fluid Sac, Rest use burn EGOs. Ryoshu base EGO.
    
  • T2+: Faust 9:2 if she goes early, Ryoshu S3 if its up, else use any burn EGO.
    

That's it for the burn section, this guide will hopefully be updated daily to complete the other team's explanations ASAP. Fortunately other parts should be less intensive than the burn analysis, or are ideas that are already noticed/pointed out by other people, so it would be more familiar, thus shorter.

Source for this section: https://redd.it/18nvuos

By now, most players know how to make bleed builds work (and how powerful they can get). For those unfamiliar, you pretty much only need the Wound Clerid EGO gift. Enhancing twice, it makes bleed (and wrath) skills also apply count. Big stacks, enemies implode. For this strategy variant, the build was found on this post (which in turn cites Usami Gumi - but I didn't dig deep into its provenance):

https://redd.it/18iquhs

Necessary Tools / EGO Gifts (explanation in Analysis):

• Wound Clerid - Tier 2 EGO gift, easy to reroll/reset for at the start of run. Upgrade it ASAP.
  
• Base Ishmael
  
• Blind Obsession (Ishmael) [UT4] - I'll abbreviate it to B.O. from here on.
  
• Hook Hong Lu / Middle Don - Bleed potency applicators.

Powerful Tools / EGO Gifts (nice to haves):

• Queecliff / R Sault - Backup bleed count applicators.
  
• KK Ryoshu - Support passive, free bleed potency.
  
• Grimy Iron Stake - Synergy with turn 1 B.O., free AoE def down.
  
• White Gossypium - Some have noticed this already but maxing this is quite impressive now. With such high offense/def level downs being applied, it doesn't even matter if the enemy is staggered or not (your damage is still boosted), and you'll either win the clashes (whilst bleeding them out), or can ignore them and just face tank their enfeebled hits.
  
• Naturally, all other bleed EGO gifts are good.

Analysis

Much like with burn, many player's primary misstep with bleed is also overstacking - but on potency instead. When bleed count is stable, and with potency capping at 99, the bottleneck of bleed's DPS is typically the number of enemy attack coins (barring some edge cases). In mirror dungeons, where status stacking is already so rapid, the relative time-save between reaching this 99 bleed potency limit a turn or two earlier is small. One common terminology for this is "win-more".

A good analogy is to imagine two cars, one of which accelerates only 80% as fast as the other (bleed stacking rate). However, there is a speed limit both cars abide (99 potency). The faster car covers more ground of course (total damage), but when both eventually hit that speed limit, they move at the same speed thereafter (DPS). The ratio between their distance covered becomes progressively insignificant when either the driving time increases (longer fights), or if the speed limit is achieved earlier (potency stacks/reaches cap faster).

In other words, in MD, bleed is really powerful, but the best MD bleed teams are necessarily hybrids, because even a few bleed applicator/maintainers is enough to almost rival the effective bleed DPS of an all-bleed team. Outside of MD, bleed application is much slower, so a full team dedicated to applying potency makes sense (plus things usually die before even hitting that cap). By freeing up the requirements/design space, we can fit in other synergies that optimize areas where the bleed strategy is lacking.

While bleed is strongest at melting down single targets (e.g. bosses), the reality of an MD run is that you're spending most of it's run time killing mobs. That's where Ishmael's B.O. comes in. The posted team comp's sin distribution focuses generation for it. From floor 3 onwards, Ishmael's B.O. is used practically every round: set B.O., then winrate absentmindedly.

Why Base Ishmael?

• Speed - this is her fastest ID. This lets her go early often, using B.O. before the team. This serves several purposes:
  
  • Damage of course, it's a high damaging 7-weight EGO. Even enemies with full HP regularly stagger with one use of this skill. So her teammates can sweep them up after.
    
  • 2 Pierce Power Up, 2 Damage Up. Don't let the "Struggling"/"Neutral"s fool you, they typically get upgraded to winning clashes after the B.O. hits.
    
  • She'll clash someone 99% of the time, making B.O. SP neutral.
• Wrath S1 - triggers Wound Clerid, so acts as a bleed applicator.
  
• Decent stats - good HP, decent clashing.

Another thing helping this team's carefree winrate-ing is that it's also a decent Envy Res team comp, getting Heath's 4+ coin and Don's clash bonuses (on top of the offense levels from Res itself). If you want to force it, R Sault's def skill, Soda (Hong Lu) and Hex Nail (Faust) can easily fill any missing Envy in a chain, but it's really not necessary most of the time.

Finally if all else fails and you lose a clash, team's pretty tanky anyway.

Overall, this team hybridizes 3+ strategies. None requiring micromanagement, so you get very relaxed, reliable, low brainpower runs. It has the means of clearing both mob nodes and bosses quickly. A useful perspective to have is: If you shorten each mob fight by 1 minute, even if you take 5 minutes longer on the boss, the 5 mobs you fought before it already made up for it.

Quick Strategy Outline

• Reroll/Restart MD to find Wound Clerid, max it ASAP (save ~300 cost for this)
  
• Floor 1/2: Winrate.
  
• Floor 3/4: Set B.O. on Ishmael, then winrate.

Source for this section: https://redd.it/18oyc55

Tremor gets a bad rap most of the time, and whilst the popular sentiments orbiting it aren't necessarily true, this guide won't really cover that in this post as our focus is solely tremor as it pertains to MD3N (and conciseness is important). As for tremor in MD, it's incredible - and many players seem to have recently caught on to this. It's actually one of the fastest clearing teams in the lineup most of the time, but is certainly one with the most variance runtime-wise, because the EGO gifts are the real star of this show.

Necessary Tools / EGO Gifts (explanation in Analysis):

• Regret Faust / Roseya / Molar Outis - The 3 best tremor units (amusingly also the 3 000 units).
  
• Eff. Corrosion (Rodion) - Despite corrosion in name, use the regular side. AoE tremor count/burst.
  
• EGO gifts - None strictly "required"; get as many as possible, but there is a power hierarchy.
  
• A critical mass of tremor burst sources - other tremor IDs, EGOs, etc. N Don is the best fill-in ID if you don't have the top 6 (S2 burst).

Powerful Tools / EGO Gifts (nice to haves):

• Molar Yi Sang / LCCB Ishmael - great ID choices, discard means better skills more frequently, LCCB Ishmael is one of the best applicators.
  
• Rosesault - N Don would've made this slot if not for the existence of his Regret EGO. He's a good potency applicator, but only bursts on S3, making it less frequent than N Don.
  
• Molar Clair - Good on support; same logic w/ Rosesault regarding lack of burst skill in rotation.

Analysis

The IDs side of things are quite straightforward - winrate. Most fights are nothing special, sometimes enemies stagger sooner due to tremor. The only skill replacement you should get in shops is Ishmael S1>S2. As the key to the team's power in MD are the EGO gifts, I'll focus on those instead.

EGO Gifts:

1. Bell of Truth / Melty Eyeball - Both Tier 3, so slightly rarer, but they are the biggest reason to run tremor now. Their debuffs pretty much debilitate most enemies/bosses. With Bell of Truth (and its fused Tier 4 counterpart) bosses almost have permanent 10 fragile. With Melty Eyeball, the enemies take so much more damage, and with offense level downs as well, don't be surprised to see them rolling 1's.
   
2. Green Spirit / Oscillating Bracelet / Nixie Divergence - These are your bread and butter status stacking EGOs. Easy to obtain, nothing much to think about, they're good.
   
3. Reverberation / Blood, Sweat and Tears - Nice-to-have passive debuffs.
   
4. Downpour / Coupled Oscillator (fuse Nixie + Bell) - Downpour is convenient, makes everything permanently tremored + bursting, Oscillator is a nice upgrade if you have both Nixie + Bell, but neither of these are really required.

If you have any of the tremor burst EGO gifts, just remember to use as many bursts as possible turn 1 on bosses, this includes EGOs (a lesser known fact: Ishmael uptie 4 base EGO also gains tremor burst).

Quick Strategy Outline

• Aim is to find Bell or Eyeball - Restart/rerolls not required, but you can do so if you prefer certainty.
  
• Floor 1/2/3/4: Winrate. Still focusing on finding those tremor burst EGO gifts if possible.
  
• Floor 4 Boss: Burst with as many EGOs/skills as possible turn 1, it should die quickly enough.

Source for this section: https://redd.it/18oyc55

This part of the guide needs to be broken down into two sections, because there is a lot of ground to cover for rupture.

Perhaps the earliest status synergy the community managed to crack, rupture is simultaneously one of the best supported, yet often seen as the "almost there" strategy. In MD it's definitely "here".

In previous parts, this guide typically narrowed the scope of my elaboration to just MD3N, making assumptions of prior knowledge (or assuming players will learn a tactic naturally simply using the build). This avoids writing an entire thesis paper's worth of a post. But rupture is finicky, and normally requires at least some prerequisite knowledge to even get going, so when originally writing this part, there was a "quick guide" to playing rupture in general. It was not quick, so it has been omitted entirely.

In practice, the strategy we'll look at was designed to minimize rupture micromanagement to begin with. Do note that there are great guides out there on how to master playing rupture, and it is a viable and variable strategy even outside of the context of MDs as well. Seek out those resources if you can.

In any case, let's finally get into the MD3 Rupture strategy proper.

Necessary Tools / EGO Gifts (explanation in Analysis):

• Talisman Bundle - Tier 1 EGO gift, easy to reroll/reset for at the start of run. Upgrade ASAP.
  
• K Corp Hong Lu - Focal point of the build. UT4 not needed, but nice.
  
• Dimension Shredder (Hong Lu) [UT4] - UT4 turns it AoE, that's important.
  
• Talisman Sinclair - UT3 is sufficient.
  
• 7 Faust / 7 Heath / W Yi Sang - UT4 needed for consistency.
  
• 7 Outis / Rose Greg - UT4 preferred, but UT3 works. Bring all their glut EGOs.

Powerful Tools / EGO Gifts (nice to haves):

• Thunderbranch - The holy grail of rupture EGO gifts. Instantly trivializes stack management.
  
• Thrill - Mass "Rupture Deluge" pretty much. Very powerful, but rare.
  
• Gregor's AEDD - Makes gloom skills not deplete rupture count.
  
• W Meursault / 7 Ryoshu / Sloshmael - Small bonus potency passively.
  
• Lightning Rod / Portable Battery Socket - Secret rupture gems. Keep Rod at base level, but enhance Battery once.
  
• Sticky Muck - This team is very heavy on glut skills, so this are some heavy debuffings. Amazing against bosses. Also good to have in pocket as a green item for fusing.
  
• Grand Welcome - Perfect fit for this strategy; pride sin generation.
  
• All other rupture EGO gifts - Self explanatory.

A note on Enrapturing Trance, the fusion EGO gift - Overall this w recommend against getting it on this team. Since one of our strategies involve maxing out Talisman Bundle ASAP, fusing it off with its counterpart actually results in the final rupture application being slower overall. The stack preservation effect also isn't worth the tradeoff, because we've also lost the count gain from slash skills from Talisman Bundle++. It's not inherently bad however, as there are other builds where it's great on.

Analysis

Let's properly assess rupture as a status within the context of MD first. Unlike previously discussed statuses, the theoretical limiting factor to rupture's effective damage is actually the quantity of your attack coins, as opposed to bleed's which is based on the enemy's (if the enemy only has 1 single coin AoE each turn, bleed effectively turns into burn); this is thus something more within a player's control. Handwaving aside any issues on maintaining stacks for now (we'll imagine a target with 99 rupture potency and 99 count), a rupture player's wet dream is an ID with S1 of base power 1, but has 10 +1 coins with the effect "On Hit: Inflict +1 Rupture count". You still max roll an 11, like many typical S1s, but you do literally over a thousand damage with that S1 on our theoretical target. Our build aims to reach a natural equilibrium of rupture count, so that if there exists an ongoing stack, we don't lose it.

Now while the issue of maintaining stacks is still the central difficulty of playing rupture in general, if we were to examine the characteristics of rupture in action (in practical/real scenarios), the main shortcomings of its (strategic) performance are as follows:

1. Shortcoming #1: Rupture is an accelerating/buildup strategy. The effective extra damage rupture provides starts small, but quickly grows to become significant (triangular numbers, etc). This problem is pretty much nullified in MD. With so many (and powerful) on-hit stacking EGO gifts, potency easily maxes out within a turn or two (if rupture count wasn't an issue).
   
2. Shortcoming #2: The rupture count keeps going to 0 (thus dropping the stack). This problem is only nullified ~50% by EGO gifts, so we need to bump that number up. We'll employ a few strategies when the situations call for it, allowing us to switch gears on recognizing that a fight requires the "stacking damage" effect for a faster clear (i.e. harder nodes, abno battles, and of course, boss fights).
   
3. Shortcoming #3: Single target bias. Much like with bleed (or the more typical ways players have been applying burn), when dealing with groups of enemies (i.e. 90% of the MD run), rupture struggles much more to effectively distribute a noticeable effect. There was barely enough count for maintaining stacks on 1 target, so naturally a group of targets is a challenge. For this problem we take a sort of "accept it" approach of handling it, where most of the time we'll merely treat rupture as "extra damage". Does this mean that rupture is bad in this "one time use" context? I would say it's actually pretty decent amounts of fixed damage (which bypasses later floor's high def/dmg resistance as well). With just the easily accessible EGO gifts at the start, many sinners can do upwards of 30~60 extra damage turn 1. Sometimes however, the count/stack also does go up naturally, but usually the fight is over by 2-3 turns anyway.

The EGO gifts will be covered later referencing these shortcomings, but first let's talk strategy... in the next section.

Source for this section: https://redd.it/18r5onx

As one could tell from the previous section, playing rupture "normally" requires a lot of attention. Our goal with this build is to create a situation where stacks just naturally happen, or to have a stable strategy of forcing rupture stacking when we require it (without spending too much time tracking number of coins or rupture count skills). To achieve this we will use a variation on the more standard rupture strategy: we're benching Talisman Sinclair.

This guide is not the source of this idea - and it may not even be a particularly niche strategy. A good number of rupture players probably prefer this as their default configuration, even in non-MD content.

In any case, instead of trying to pass the Talisman debuff onto the boss via a fielded Sinclair, we aim to chain glut Res to force Talismans onto K Lu instead. That way he rapidly applies tons of rupture even from turn 1.

Sinclair's support passive activates at 4 glut Res. and gives highest Res * 2 Talisman stacks to the ally with the most HP, which is always K Lu. This team's skills are also heavily glut, so even when you're just winrate-ing, you'll catch a few triggers of it regardless (but "match green" every now and then is pretty low maintenance too). We select K Lu first in sinner selection so that he gets the second skill slot earliest in regular fights.

For example, if we only do the minimum 4 Res, K Lu gains 8 Talismans. Now with every hit he applies 8 rupture potency (on top of his regular rupture application, even before considering EGO gifts). With his two coin moves, or with AoE EGOs (we'll get to that), and also because he gets the second skill slot, he can easily dish out a good quantity of damage via rupture. Gregor and Outis also have cheap rupture enabling glut EGOs to help the chain out in a pinch.

But what about count? Is all that rupture always just wasted instantly? Yes and no. We have a few tricks for when we need to stack it higher against stronger enemies. Here we'll also cover the other helpful EGO gifts and synergies as well.

1. First is the AoE EGO in question, Dimension Shredder. Using it applies 4 Dimensional Rifts to 3 targets, then next turn, those rifts get converted to rupture count. In fact, we have a small synergy/trick with K Lu + Sinclair's passive. Because K Lu is often slow/last to act: equip him with Dim. Shredder, chain a glut Res, then with his AoE he'll apply 12+ rupture and 4 rifts to those targets, setting them up quite nicely to be melted next turn. And because of how targeting works in regular fights, overlapped targets likely took their other hits earlier on, so the applied rupture potency stack is safe. [Reduces shortcoming #1, 2, 3].
   
2. Talisman Bundle EGO gift adds a lot of incidental "preserving" of the rupture count once upgraded (as well as an amazing 3~5 rupture potency per hit). At max enhancement, any Slash skills you do now also add a rupture count; and this whole team is mostly Slash. With an upgraded Talisman Bundle, the above Dim. Shredder strategy can easily apply upwards of 15 rupture to 3 targets (with each of them starting the next turn with minimum 6 count as well: convoluted interaction to explain, but that's how it works). [Reduces shortcoming #1, 2].
   
3. Lightning Rod / Portable Battery Socket EGO gift makes it so that Yi Sang/Greg start fights with at least 3 charge (battery needs enhancing once). This lets their S2/S3 immediately start applying rupture count. There's also a funky combo that's great against bosses regarding Lightning Rod + Gregor's AEDD + K Lu's Dim Shred. As long as Gregor goes first: AEDD then Dim Shred T1, making sure it hits the part Gregor targeted. Turn 2 you can now corrode Dim Shred meeting the charge requirement. [Reduces shortcoming #2].
   
4. Grand Welcome EGO gift - In most of the other strategies you typically only pick up sin resource generators if it's found free along the way. From shops they're underwhelming for the cost most of the time. But for this build, it's the exception. Though not crucial to the build enough that I'd list it as "necessary", this thing fuels Dim. Shredder and Ebony Stem well.
   
5. Thrill EGO gift - Rarest to get normally, but it just does immense damage overall.
   
6. Last but not least: Thunderbranch EGO gift - Getting this pretty much changes your whole run. With it you basically can just winrate, the rupture stacks show up on their own.
   
   Once Talisman Bundle is fully upgraded, and with one or two other rupture EGO gifts (or the secret charge ones), we're mostly at equilibrium with regards to count. So in tougher/boss fights, we have a few interesting combos to build that initial count buffer.
   
   Stack kickstarting methods:
   
   1. Of course we have the afore-explained Dim Shred + Sinclair's passive. Using both/either Dim Shreds is actually a good way to kickstart the stacking process.
      
   2. Gregor AEDD combo: Gregor's AEDD applies a debuff that makes any gloom skills hitting that target, maintain it's rupture count. Many of the team has either skills or EGOs that meet that condition, just make sure Gregor hits first.
      
   3. Outis Corroded Sunshower spam: Use this turn 1, and anytime she's doesn't have a skill 2 after. Adds some nice potency, but if she crits with this, she adds rupture count. Also remember that in part 0, nebulizer is recommended as an "always useful" EGO gift; this EGO is one of the reasons.
      
   4. You can also simply focus all rupture count applicators on one target and choosing the boss' other body parts as the "dump" for anything that doesn't add rupture count. Don't worry about taking a few hits, K Lu quickly generates Aggro, and he's not dying anytime soon.
   Identifying what encounters requires switching gears to "stacking" mode is the primary skill you'll need to really make this team fast. Or just reroll for Thunderbranch - really, that trivializes everything. Hopefully one day we get some sort of "Rupt Shank". That'll make starting the chain way easier.
   
   Quick Strategy Outline
   
   1. Reroll/Restart MD to find either Talisman Bundle or Thunderbranch, max it ASAP.
      
      
   2. Floor 1/2/3/4: Winrate, but recognize when you need to switch gears to "stacking" mode, usually you'll do Dim Shred (K Lu) + glut Res (Talisman Sinclair passive).
      
      
   3. Bosses: "Stacking" mode; try any of the "stack kickstarting methods", it's possible to do all at once.
   Finally, a note on the upcoming event. It includes a new gluttony EGO for Heathcliff. This new EGO belongs in this team, regardless of it's final stats. Having yet another way to force glut Res for Sinclair's passive will add even more consistency, and it does look capable of aiding rupture application too.
   
   Source for this section: https://redd.it/18r5onx

Sinking. Is it just blue rupture? Mechanically, to some degree yes, and that's why this part of the guide will also be split into two sections. The stacking rules are the same, and against sanity-less targets, the only difference is that "rupture damage" counts as gloom damage (unless you have the Artistic Sense EGO gift). But how it plays overall, and also how we'll build for it, actually resembles our Tremor team more.

Necessary Tools / EGO Gifts (explanation in Analysis):

• Thorny Path - Tier 1 EGO gift, easy to reroll/reset for at the start of run. Upgrade it ASAP.
  
• Rime Shank (Rodion) [UT4] - Mandatory.
  
• Dieci Rodion [UT4] - Best overall sinking stacker.
  
• Molar Ishmael [UT4] - Second best overall sinking stacker.
  
• Spicebush Yi Sang [UT3+] + Sunshower EGO [UT4] - Not strictly necessary, but really good to have.
  
• Sin resource generating EGO Gifts - Get at least one of them early on in the run if possible. We want to stack gloom and envy.

Powerful Tools / EGO Gifts (nice to haves):

• Other sinking EGOs: Fluid Sac (Don) [UT3+], Sunshower (Outis) [UT3+], Land of Illus. (HongLu) [UT3].
  
• Cinq Don - Good primary gloom resource generator.
  
• Midwinter Nightmare - Tier 3 EGO gift. It's rarer, so take this over Thorny path if it's in your opener.You just need either at the start; get the other from shop if possible.
  
• Headless portrait - Good to have, can be fused with Midwinter to trivialize sinking stacking.
  
• Skeletal Crumbs / Blood, Sweat, and Tears / Lowest Star - Damage multipliers, boosts clear speed.
  
• Nixie Divergence / Oscillating Bracelet - Slight tremor application, explained below.
  
• Every other sinking EGO gift, as usual.

The fused EGO gift for sinking is like Thunderbranch - fully trivializes sinking stacking. Get it if you can.

Analysis

Sinking, as mentioned earlier, is very similar to rupture. To avoid making what is essentially 90% of the same analysis, if you've skipped straight into this one, read the top half of that analysis first (replacing the words) to get the gist of the strategic evaluations on how these stacking statuses perform.

Now while mechanically the two "work" almost the same way, the few differences they do have completely change how their team building/strategy goes. Most notably, the quantity (and style) of tools available to both statuses are very different. The problem, and this section, will be split into two parts, because the regular and boss fight strategies are different again as well.

Source for this section: https://redd.it/18r5onx

Regular fights - Winrate

In the rupture section, when describing the strategy of regular fights, one thing that was mentioned mentioned was how sometimes we'll just treat what it's doing as "extra damage". Against sanity-having enemies however, they don't actually take health damage, but sanity damage instead. Whilst at first glance this seems like a bad thing: what's typically worse for your sinners? Having 30 less health, or being at -30 sanity? That's the crux of our strategy here: much like our tremor strategy, where enemies stagger so quickly that they're basically free kills, enemies are practically permanently panicked versus our team. So for regular encounters, we can simply winrate.

Fortunately, the sinking team is stacked with some of the best individually strong IDs for clearing regular nodes: Spicebush Yi Sang (incidental AoEs are great value), Dieci Rodion (one of the highest damaging blunt IDs) and Cinq Don (the Cinq units are some of the most consistent pierce damage dealers with the fastest animations).

Why N Sault?

Our strategy involves having N Sault in our party for F1, after which he gets swapped for Cinq Don. This is to generate enough wrath sin resources for the final fight (you only need about 4). He's not particularly great at clearing mobs, and originally Sun Heath was used in this slot for the same purpose (using his wrath counter), but it turned out that N Sault generates it faster, meaning you can swap him to Don earlier. Of course, if you happen to pick up a suitable early sin resource generating EGO gift, make the swap earlier.

Why Base Hong Lu?

There isn't any clever reason why we picked his base ID. He applies sinking, clashes decently, and there's not many better options for sinking IDs. Sometimes we can use his S3 or Roseate Desire to trigger Thorny Path's lust Res with Cinq Don, but that's not central to our strategy. We do care about his base EGO however, which is part of the boss strategy we'll talk about later.

Why G Outis?

G Outis herself also isn't that great for the sinking strategy. Her S3 natively applies 5~9 sinking potency on use, but that's pretty much it. Her job mainly is to spam uncorroded Sunshower for the final fight, which we'll get into later. In normal encounters, she's does a decent job, clashing high and boosting damage for allies, so during those phases of the run, she's a great asset.

Why Nixie Divergence / Oscillating Bracelet EGO gift?

Molar Ishmael's passive. She adds sinking count when hitting targets with tremor. Nixie making that active from T1, or Bracelet for T2 onwards is really strong in most scenarios. We don't really need tremor to actually stack up, so just having either will do. Sometimes it even saves you a turn if your team's order/setup isn't perfect for bosses (because otherwise T1 at times ends up merely as a "setup" phase).

Why sin resource EGO gifts?

We'll need a lot of sin resources for when we get to the final boss.

Boss fights - EGO Combo

For bosses, we'll aim to combo them to death with EGOs. Because there's some slight variance with regards to what order our sinners start the fight (and which EGO gifts we've gotten), this guide will detail a somewhat general flowchart on how to choose your moves.

Here's an neat factoid about MD3N's (and actually MD2's) list of bosses: almost all of them are weak to gloom. So even the EGO's themselves do significant damage as they're hitting multiple body parts (as well as the sinking fixed damage being amplified).

EGO Sinking Combo

1. First take stock of what you have. If you have a few poise ego gifts, keep Outis in, otherwise she sits it out to give Rodya another skill slot. If Outis is in, anytime you're not S3-ing you'll want to be using her regular Sunshower.
   
2. [T1]: Start by equipping corroded Rime Shank on Rodya, drag to see if it'll clash anything.If "Dominating", set it to target that, otherwise we want that to go through unopposed.
   
3. Next, because we'll need constant sanity to continue spamming these EGOs, we use Yi Sang's Sunshower T1. Even if it replaces his S3, that's fine, Sunshower anyway; T1 is only time we use it.
   
4. Don uses corroded Fluid Sac. Hong Lu uses Land of Illusions. If G Outis has S3, use that, otherwise use Sunshower. Ishmael uses preferably S1/S3 (same target as Rodya if possible), but S2 is fine.
   
5. [T2]: Check which body part has the most sinking count, that'll be our main stack target. Rodya regular Rime Shanks it. If she has a 2nd skill slot, use Rime Shank + S2/S3. Have everyone before Rodya use defensive skills (or single target skills on other body parts). Everyone after her attacks normally/repeat T1's moves - Yi Sang save S3 if possible, else S1/S2.If you're familiar with managing the sinking stack and have the right moves before Rime Shank (e.g. Ishmael's S1/S3), you can use them accordingly, but it's not necessary.
   
6. [T3]: Your sinners are now probably low on SP (but Rodya's not negative due to Yi Sang's T1 play). Here's where the wrath we collected earlier comes in. We use our old friend: Ishmael's B.O.
   
7. Repeat until boss has ~14 count with 70+ potency on one part, then we either use Yi Sang's S3 on it, or just hit it unopposed with all our skills (clicking the "damage" button tends to work). Usually the boss dies somewhere before we even get to this point (and you can skip straight to this "finishing move" with smaller stacks if you're good at estimating the math).

For F3 boss, using just one corroded Rime Shank is typically sufficient. Those bosses are weak enough to die by normal damage even if the stacks never happen.

Finally, let's demystify Sinking Deluge, applied by Spicebush Yi Sang's S3. Using it inflicts (Sinking Potency x Count) gloom damage to the boss, then removes the stack. At first glance, this seems really powerful; the big numbers certainly look impressive. But it's actually just the equivalent "stored" damage in that stack to begin with. To put it another way: if we hit the target multiple times until that sinking count goes to 0, the total damage from sinking is equivalent to deluge's lump sum damage. There are scenarios when it's better of course, notably if we cap out on sinking, or want to harvest that damage immediately (e.g. to stagger). But whilst it's not yet maxed out, regular hits continue to stack the potency higher, so it would end up as more damage overall (if you hit enough times after).

Quick Strategy Outline

1. Reroll/Restart MD to find Thorny Path or Midwinter Nightmare, max it ASAP.
   
2. Floor 1: Winrate; Swap N Sault to Cinq Don after collecting 4+ wrath sin resource.
   
3. Floor 2/3/4: Winrate.
   
4. Floor 3 Boss: Corroded Rime Shank once, then winrate till it's dead.
   
5. Floor 4 Boss: Use the EGO sinking combo.

Source for this section: https://redd.it/18r5onx

Poise is perhaps the most straightforward status to utilize in MD. Though the damage boost from crits isn't colossal, more damage is always welcomed. There are some nice optimizations we can employ for our build, and by the end of it, we're left with one of the fastest clearing teams in MD.

Necessary Tools / EGO Gifts (explanation in Analysis):

• Shi Heathcliff [UT4] - The only "real" requirement for this strategy.
  
• 2-3 poise generating EGO gifts (best: Nebulizer + Four Leaf Clover) - See below.
  
• 2-3 damage increasing EGO gifts (best: Bloody Gadget + Cigarette Holder) - See below.

Powerful Tools / EGO Gifts (nice to haves):

• Shi Ishmael [UT3+] - Good DPS, utilizes Bloody Gadget well.
  
• Strong poise payoff units - See below.
  
• Bleed EGO gifts (best: Wound Clerid / Rusted Muzzle + L.a.T.B.N. Plushie) - See below.

The Fused EGO Gift for poise, Lucky Pouch (Horseshoe + Clover) is incredibly powerful. Having it in this party pretty much makes Heathcliff's S3 become "delete 2 enemies this turn". Get it if possible.

Analysis

Let's begin by taking a close look at poise as a mechanic. Each potency gives +5% crit chance, and every time you crit, you lose a poise count (crits do ~20% bonus damage) - thus poise effectively caps at 20 potency (100% crit). Most units benefit having this as "free damage" (some poise EGO gifts are thus "universally useful"), but poise-based IDs usually have a bonus for landing crits, or for reaching a threshold of the status. Ultimately, like bleed, poise is a status that is easily hybridized into any team.

Poise IDs also tend to build poise rather slowly, through their skills. However because crits can happen on any hit, there's a level of RNG involved. For example, on multi-plus-coin moves, we ideally don't want to "finish up" all our poise count on earlier coins, as those are the lower numbers. There are also skills that care which specific coin crits (to trigger its effect). Poise count reaching 0 also resets the potency stack, which of course isn't preferred.

In MD, this is a solved issue. The selection of EGO gifts available enable poise units to be online even starting turn 1, and to be able to crit on every hit. Eventually, once fully built, our units start hitting really hard, but remember: when evaluating clear speed, two hits dealing 50% HP on a single target is equivalent to two hits that deal 90%; that overflow is somewhat wasted.

Enter Shi Heathcliff. As noted by other community members lately, his natural AoE aids with finishing off those low HP stragglers, as well as being a strong DPS in general - get more S3s for him in shops. We also field Shi Ishmael, since if we're taking the effort priming Shi Heath already, it's easy to set her up too (for her powerful S2). Use their counters on early rounds till they're at 50% HP; I also visit the first abno/strong node for faster setups. Middle Meursault on the bench will help them keep up in SP gain, and of course, don't take healing EGO gifts.

It should be noted that Heath's S3 lowers his own health as well, so you could let it drop naturally. But I find the run shorter overall if he's primed earlier. Another thing of note: EGOs can crit. Multi-hit EGOs crit across all targets, consuming only 1 count, so once you've gotten enough poise EGO gifts, something like Yi Sang's Sunshower hurt.

Well lets talk about those EGO gifts, because they're the difference maker for run speed.

EGO Gifts:

1. Cigarette Holder - Always get it. Nebulizer + this is a powerful universal combo on any build. Reroll for this at start of run if you want an easier time.
   
2. Nebulizer / Pendant of Nostalgia / Ornamental Horseshoe / Four Leaf Clover / Endorphin Kit / Stone Tomb - Poise gain gifts, get just enough to crit reliably; as there's diminishing returns at some point. Pendant's "random" ally is not random; it prioritizes IDs with gloom + poise skills, following sinner selection order in the deployment screen.
   
3. Clean Mirror, Calm Water (Tier 4) / Lucky Pouch (Fusion: Clover + Horseshoe) - Incredible damage increasers. We're always looking to find these, but we can win fast even without it.
   
4. Bloody Gadget - Already listed in Part 0 as "universally good" but really bears repeating here due to how good it is on this team. Both Shi units have lust skills (making them the two targets of the +4 Dmg Up), they're also getting the first 2 extra slots and have multi-coin-AoE/coin reuse. It's quite ridiculous.
   
5. Bleed EGO Gifts - Many of our units also apply bleed, so it's easy to splash a bleed subtheme if you find a Wound Clerid / Rusted Muzzle. Finding Plushie is amazing too, multiplying damage.

Our poise payoff units are:

1. Pequod Yi Sang [UT4] - His S2 coin reuses on crit. It's a little low on clash power, so careful using it to clash bigger moves. Once you're all poised up, the damage is top tier.
   
2. Pirate Gregor [UT3+] - His S3 hits hard, especially after letting his passive stack up.
   
3. Cinq Sinclair [UT3+] - Poise EGO gifts makes him very fast, which translates to higher coins.
   
4. KK Rodion [UT4] - S3 does substantial damage. Get to 10 poise and start using her counter.

Quick Strategy Outline

1. Floor 1: Lower Shi IDs to 50% hp (97 hp), then winrate.
   
   
2. Floor 2/3/4: Winrate.
   
   
3. Try to get the poise fusion gift if possible (Clover + Horseshoe).

Finally, we'll eventually want all the max speed buffs at the top of the starlight tree. Not a priority of course, but that's a sore spot of the Shi unit: being too slow to counter, thus taking longer to get to the 50% HP threshold. Cinq Sinclair also cares about having more speed. Fastest team indeed.

Source for this section: https://redd.it/18trh5i

Charge itself needs no introduction. While there are certainly some mischaracterizations of the status floating around, it isn't in the scope of this guide to address such sentiments. So instead, let us focus on the question: is charge good in MD? The answer is yes, but in a somewhat roundabout way.

Necessary Tools / EGO Gifts (explanation in Analysis):

• W Corp Ryoshu [UT4] - Highest DPS in the team.
  
• 2-3 charge generating EGO gifts.
  
• As many damage amplifying EGO gifts as possible (Wrist Guard / Bloody Gadget).

Powerful Tools / EGO Gifts (nice to haves):

• W Don [UT3+] / R Heath [UT3] - Powerful DPS units.
  
• Ebony Stem - Anti-drifting fox kit. Shores up a weakness of this team.
  
• Other damage multipliers (Blood, Sweat and Tears, Poise EGO gifts, etc) - see below.

Getting T-1 Perpetual Motion Machine (Wrist Guards + Force Field), the Fused EGO Gift for charge, is NOT recommended. Losing wrist guards (especially if it's maxed) lowers our damage output substantially.

Analysis

A while back there was a post challenging the idea of "charge" as a status. In it, they argue for seeing charge as a "resource" rather than a "status effect". This idea is spot on. Charge, outside of MD, acts typically as a gate that throttles a unit's power level in the early turns. Because the status itself doesn't confer any intrinsic effect, all concerns of an ID utilizing this resource is in either it's ability to spend it, or checking if it's above a particular threshold.

This fact has two consequences in MD. Firstly, unlike other effects with a more cumulative power output, charge is fixed in it's effectiveness. If our unit has no max charge cap and is at 99 charge, we don't typically see a straightforward benefit to having it be that high. Secondly, because of that lack of intrinsic effect, this means that non-charge IDs struggle to generate value from having charge.

Charge IDs are inherently powerful IDs, boasting some of the best direct damage/coinage. However, contrasted to prior MDs, MD3 eschews the previous meta of "biggest coins = fastest clears" for a more "compounding effects" style of power, where the stacking of various EGO gifts turn your team into damage monsters. This is why if you know how to minmax your EGO gift acquisitions, MD3 can be as fast as MD2. Therein lies the weakness of the charge status in MD. They're (mostly) capped by the ID's own max power output - once you can Rip Space turn 1, getting more charge doesn't do much.

How do we build against this weakness? By selecting as many damage multiplier EGO gifts as reasonable - even those outside of the typical charge archetype. Let's cover these, but also the charge EGO gifts themselves.

Charge generators:

• Lightning Rod / Charge-type Gloves / Portable Battery Socket - Turn 1 charged moves enabler. Get enough to hit your skills' threshold.
  
• Material Interference Force Field - It's a shield, but just treat it as charge gain for turn 2.
  
• Employee Card - Boosts charge gain. Unneeded if your units are at UT4, otherwise get it, best charge gain EGO gift for longer fights (most of our time is spend on short fights).

Charge checkers:

• Wrist Guard - Best charge gift bar none. I use it on non-charge teams too, just pick up a random charge generator to power it (Lightning Rod works best). Incredible when maxed, but keep it base level if you can't max it: the first upgrade doesn't boost much. Reroll for this if possible.
  
• Curriculum Vitae - Worse Wrist Guard (but still powerful). Get it if you see it, particularly good for guarantee-ing R Heath's speed thresholds are met.
  
• Nightvision Goggles - Small damage up, typically not worth the cost.

Non-charge Damage boosters:

• All generic damage boosters fit here of course (things like Phantom Pain, Scarlet Moths, etc).
  
• Bloody Gadget - Much like the poise team, it bears mentioning separately here again. W Ryoshu gets such a boost from this that if you have it maxed out, you do more DPS giving her 1 extra slot on the final boss.
  
• Blood, Sweat and Tears - Good damage up, buy but don't upgrade: cost better spent elsewhere.
  
• Combo items - These are good to get in pairs, usually when you already have one randomly:
  
  • Cigarette Holder + Poise Generator (Nebulizer would be the best option)
    
  • Skeletal Crumbs + Headless Portrait
    
  • Little and To-Be-Naughty Plushie + Rusted Muzzle / Red-stained Gossypium
    
• Grimy Iron Stake - Combos with Plushie too, but has some really nice synergy with AoE EGOs.

Quick Strategy Outline:

1. Floor 1/2/3/4: Manually fight till Ishmael is max sanity (avoid Mind Whip-ing allies), then swap her for Outis. Winrate. If permanent 8+ charge T1 (Gloves + Rod), we can bring Ish back in.
   
   
2. Replace skills as you see fit, balancing to your charge gain (from EGO gifts).
   
   
3. Floor 4 Boss: If we have Bloody Gadget, remove Outis/Ish (give Ryoshu the extra slot), otherwise, bring Ish. If final boss is Fox, keep Outis, overload Ebony Stem T1.

Overall, charge does well on account of its IDs being powerful to begin with. They'll slow down in later floors without at least some damage ups, but clashing will still be easy, so the floor itself isn't difficult. Lastly, if you can get a poise subtheme going (by getting a few poise generating EGO gifts), that helps also with the damage boosting wants of this build.

Source for this section: https://redd.it/18trh5i

By now, it should become apparent that this guide's aim lies beyond simply presenting 7 status teams. The aim here was to plant a seed (of light, if you will) in this community, illuminating a road of self learning. Through the 7 parts, hopefully the reader's mindsets have slowly grown, and eagerness to think deeply about the systems of this game, with which we engage and experience, have developed.

Across those 7 parts, we've not only made each status viable. We've looked at unconventional tools that go beyond prescribed archetypes. We've dissected strengths and weaknesses of strategies, and found solutions for them. We've examined the surrounding context that frame a team's effectiveness. We've seen how to chain effects and synergies, creating powerful results. And we've looked at how sometimes, there's diminishing returns to being too singleminded in how we build.

To break from the chains of others, to cross those rigid borders that line the outskirts of our preconceptions; I quote from a recent chapter:

"Out of fear, humans drew borders even to the Outskirts that lie beyond the City limits. Beyond it are stars that lie beyond the edge of understanding, beyond even the concept of fear itself."

We've come far, but we can go further.

Our teams so far have mostly been optimized for MD3N speed, and also for minimal mental effort. They're what one might call "stable" strategies: they're designed to always work.

But there's more going on in these teams than their primary strategies make apparent (that I've omitted from explicitly mentioning). Teams that need incidental healing have passive healers. Teams heavily using EGOs have constant SP recovery. Most relevant damage passives are active one way or another. Sin resource ratios are optimized. There are bespoke tactics for specific bosses trivializing them, etc. These are the nuances of these teams that overall contribute to making them "stable".

But what if we destabilized it. A little chaos for a lot more fun - let's transform our teams.

Transformational Teams

In another strategy-focused game (MtG), one interesting tactic is called the "transformational sideboard". It allows someone mid-game to, by just swapping a few game pieces, play a completely different strategy more suited to the challenges they face. Most of our proposed teams can do that as well, though some better than others of course. e.g. I've had great success suddenly pivoting my charge team into a rupture team mid-run, or my bleed team into poise.

Much of this can be credited to the efficacy (and ubiquity) of bleed and poise; being such strong splash-able strategies. I've lost count of how many times I've seen Wound Clerid in my first shop and go, "alright, we're also a bleed team now" (editor's note: The poise gift for this is Nebulizer. Please do not sleep on Nebulizer++ go look up what it does every team is a poise team). This is further compounded by the elephant in the room since the start of these guides: the fusion EGO gifts. Bleed and Poise's are so overwhelmingly strong that there are times when it's optimal to switch entirely to a bleed strategy, simply because you see the two component parts in the shop.

So let us trek back up this mountain before us, and explore some of the other interesting ways our teams can play (and the ways we can adapt our game plans as the situation presents itself).

Source for this section: https://redd.it/18vsbnr

Part 8.7: Zap Dos (Electric Bugaloo)

Pivoting units (Rupture):

• Faust > Outis
  
• Ishmael > Gregor (optional)

Starting off with one of the least recommended (but viable) pivots, our charge team can moonlight as a rupture team. Many of the charge units are also slash units, which triggers Talisman Bundle. Barbed Snare also works really nicely here, because we have a much easier time activating lust Abs Res.

We're still mostly in the realm of "extra damage" rupture for this team, but during bosses, we can actually maintain stacks well with Gregor's AEDD. The stacking is slower than the true rupture team of course, but with maxed Talisman Bundle + gloom skills/EGOs to keep the count up, we do get to high stacks very quickly. For this team however, Thunderbranch isn't as great, so you can skip it.

The true reason to dabble in rupture for this team is Fluorescent Lamp. With Talisman Bundle as the primary way to fulfill it's conditions (sadly Barbed Snare applies after Lamp's check), this thing pumps out so much Damage Ups that one S3s can half the boss HP sometimes.

Rupture Fusion EGO gift: Enrapturing Trance (Standard-duty Battery + Talisman Bundle):

• Candidates for 5-member condition: Outis, Gregor, Hong Lu, Heath, Don.
  
  
• Overall this gift is pretty good on this team. Our IDs have a lot of multi-coin moves, so upgrading the Bundle's rupture application from per-skill to per-hit leads to a lot of potency application.
  
  
• This translates to lots of extra damage, but don't count on it exclusively to maintain your stack.

Part 8.6: Critical Injury

Pivoting units (Bleed):

• Sinclair > Meursault
  
• Ishmael > Hong Lu (a certain future unit might make this swap no longer necessary)

This one is a no-brainer. The team is already simultaneously a bleed strategy to begin with. I don't think there's much need to elaborate on this switch-up too thoroughly, but I'll say that you should experience both Bleed and Poise fusion EGO gifts active on the same team at least once in your Limbus life.

This team is currently short a member to do that dual-fusion setup specifically, but speculatively, there's a spot reserved for a certain captain we're likely to be getting. Otherwise, if you want to aim for that on this team with currently available IDs, simply swap around Cinq Sinclair with BL Sinclair from the bleed team - but for runs where you don't get both fuse gifts, that's slower than our current setup.

Most bleed stacking gifts should already be part of your buy list, even before any strategic switch-up, but as usual: special mention to Wound Clerid++.

Poise Fusion EGO gift: Lucky Pouch (Ornamental Horseshoe + Four-Leaf Clover):

• Candidates for 5-member condition: Default lineup.
  
  
• Makes your S3s ridicuous. Get it if you can.

Bleed Fusion EGO gift: Bloody Mist (Smoke and Wires + Rusted Muzzle):

• Candidates for 5-member condition: Gregor, Yi Sang, Rodion, Meursault, Hong Lu.
  
  
• Get it if you see it. Most of the time you'll want to pick up one half of it regardless, then at any point you see the other half, you can immediately swap to the bleed strategy.

If you already have the poise fusion EGO gift when you find the second half of the bleed's, I'd favor running the poise gift for this set of IDs (i.e. you can buy the blood gift's component, but just don't fuse it later). But of course, again, in the near future we can probably run both effortlessly.

Part 8.5: Sunk Cost

Pivoting units (Solo):

• All? > Heathcliff / Rodion / Meursault

I'll be blunt: this team's pivoting isn't for run speed or power. There's no fusion pieces we can stumble onto with this team that makes us consider switching for a faster/stronger game plan. If anything, we're only switching things up for personal enjoyment or fun, because what we do have in this team are some of the funniest solo/self-powerful units in the game.

This team's alternative strategies are either:

1. Sloth EGO spam: Spice Sang is the most damaging AoE spammer in the game, and our team tends to generates more sloth resource than we know what to do with. Boost it even more with Ebony Stem (Outis), Pursuance (Rodion), or with itself: Sunshower T1 > corroded Sunshower T2. And if you've been getting the bleed Plushie EGO gift as per recommended, Ebony Stem into Sunshower is devastating.
   
2. Sunshower Heath: A lot's been written about this ID. I won't cover how to play him here - there are good resources out there for that. Soloing with him is fun, but not necessarily strong.
   
3. Dieci Rodion: This one should be self evident. Notoriously good solo unit, with great damage and is practically unkillable after the first two rounds.
   
4. N Sault: Even more unkillable than Rodion, but less damaging. With multiple skill slots he can become completely immune to regular damage (10 protection).

Naturally, none of these are optimal for speed farming (they're slower than our main sinking strategy), but sometimes switching things up helps keeps things fresh.

Sinking Fusion EGO gift: Black Sheet Music (Midwinter Nightmare + Headless Portrait):

• Candidates for 5-member condition: Default lineup.
  
  
• Powerful gift, makes sinking maintenance automatic. Get it whenever possible.
  
  
• Sunshower Heath is very good fielded if we find it, because he has so many coins.

Part 8.4: Core Rupt

This team also does not have a "hard" pivot, but that's because this team is already so powerful.

We do, however, have a higher shot of benefiting from some of the charge EGO gifts. This is because we want to get some charge gen gifts for our rupture count appliers (Yi Sang/Gregor) to begin with. Thus, we're more primed to pick up Wrist Guards (and even CV; both those IDs have gloom skills).

We also have the option to switch Talisman Sinclair in, if you want a change of pace.

Rupture Fusion EGO gift: Enrapturing Trance (Standard-duty Battery + Talisman Bundle):

• Candidates for 5-member condition: Default lineup.
  
  
• As mentioned in Part 4, this team doesn't want this gift if we already have Bundle maxed.
  
  
• But in future, with new rupture IDs (that inflict overflowing rupture count), it'll likely shine.

Part 8.3: Resonance Cascade

Much like the sinking team, we have a sub-strategy of Yi Sang's Sunshower spam here too.

The tremor team is strong T1 vs blunt weak nodes. But if they resist blunt, Yi Sang's AoE T1 puts them within staggering range for your other units. You can equip 4th Match Flame too if you want to diversify your AoE damage types, but the Sunshower idea works well even on pierce neutral nodes.

Tremor Fusion EGO gift: Coupled Oscillation (Nixie Divergence + Bell of Truth):

• Candidates for 5-member condition: Default lineup.
  
  
• A fully enhanced Bell is generally preferred over the fusion gift, as you get double the fragile application. But with our team, it really doesn't matter, since we're built to tremor burst regularly to begin with. So beyond turn 1, the target is likely stuck with high fragile permanently. The stagger when 3x bursts bonus is nice, but not really necessary with this team.
  
  
• Overall it's somewhat just a sidegrade, so anything goes. Get it if you enjoy it.

Source for this section: https://redd.it/18vsbnr

Part 8.2: Bleeding Edge

Pivoting units (Bleed):

• Faust > Ryoshu
  
• Ishmael > Sinclair (optional)

Pivoting units (Poise):

• Meursault > Sinclair
  
• Hong Lu > Yi Sang
  
• Ishmael > Rodion / Outis

The default lineup has a poise sub-theme going on. This is on top of the previously explained B.O., bleed and envy Res elements to the team. A few IDs here can gain poise themselves, as well as B.O. applying poise count to allies. So, picking up a Pendant (or Nebulizer of course), adds a lot of mileage to these incidental gains. Generally, we'll pick up any poise gift if its suitable (most are).

What's interesting about this team is that, despite being the base "bleed strategy", it wants to swap an ID out if we find the bleed fusion EGO gift. We're only at 4 bleed IDs in the default configuration (from testing, I've confirmed that Meursault counts as one), so if we find the gift, we switch Faust > Ryoshu to get our 5th bleed ID. The bonus from activating that EGO gift is so immense, you could even find it justifiable to swap Ishmael > Sinclair for a 6th member, but only his S3 benefits from it.

Likewise, if we find the poise fuse gift, we'll want to get to 5 poise units to activate it: Sinclair and Yi Sang in; Meursault and Hong Lu out. Then we'll still need 1 more to replace Ishmael: Outis or Rodion takes this slot depending on how stacked on poise gifts you are at that point. Outis if all you've got is the fused gift, Rodion if you're very poise heavy.

Bleed Fusion EGO gift: Bloody Mist (Smoke and Wires + Rusted Muzzle):

• Candidates for 5-member condition: Don, Hong Lu, Heathcliff, Meursault, Ryoshu.

Poise Fusion EGO gift: Lucky Pouch (Ornamental Horseshoe + Four-Leaf Clover):

• Candidates for 5-member condition: Heathcliff, Faust, Sinclair, Yi Sang, Rodion/Outis.

If you have to choose between the fusion gift setups for this team in a run, pick the bleed one. The poise IDs in this 12-sinner team aren't as first-rate as the bleed IDs.

Part 8.1: Burning Heart

Pivoting units (Burn):

• Yi Sang > Hong Lu

Pivoting units (Bleed):

• Yi Sang > Rodion
  
• Meursault > Ryoshu
  
• Gregor > Heathcliff

And finally, back at the top, our burn team is capable of pivoting into bleed as well, but it's probably the most suspect of these listed strategic pivots.

We only have some small, incidental bleed application in our default configuration (with Faust and Sinclair). But because we favor using wrath skills (generating resource for 4MF), Wound Clerid++ once again shines here, making all those skills apply bleed too. Furthermore, as with most strategies that wants to start with an AoE opener, we want to pick up Grimy Iron Stake.

Bleed is the perfect complementary strategy to burn: easily stacked and strong on bosses. Ultimately, as far as investments into bleed EGO gifts for this team, I'd recommend keeping it to a minimum, taking only those that are applicable to non-bleed-applying skills (e.g. Muzzle yes, Cutting Knife no).

Oh, and of course, if we find the Burn fusion EGO gift, we'll swap Yi Sang out for Hong Lu, as we'll need all 5 burn IDs to meet it's condition. Liu gang hits really hard if you can find it.

Burn Fusion EGO gift: Soothe the Dead (Ashes to Ashes + Dust to Dust):

• Candidates for 5-member condition: Ishmael, Sinclair, Gregor, Meursault, Hong Lu.
  
  
• Levels up the coins of our Liu units pretty nicely. Does what 4MF was doing: mass burn count T1.
  
  
• Aim for this if possible.

Bleed Fusion EGO gift: Bloody Mist (Smoke and Wires + Rusted Muzzle):

• Candidates for 5-member condition: Sinclair, Faust, Rodion, Ryoshu, Heathcliff.
  
  
• Overall this guide would recommend against actually pursuing this fusion EGO gift on this team. Just stick to a few basic bleed EGO gifts (e.g. Clerid++) with the incidental bleed stacking of Faust + Sinclair.
  
  
• But the option to go all in is there if you want to have fun with it. To that end, a fun fact: base Don at UT4 counts as a bleed unit for this EGO gift's condition as well.

And of course, goes without saying, the burn fusion gift is preferred over the bleed one for this lineup.

The Summit

And there we have it, we've reached the top. You've conquered Mount Purgatory.

I'm not sure if anything more will be added to these guides beyond this post - or if adding run-footage to these guides would be desired. There is some cleanup to do; some of the older images are a little messy/low res, and there have been the swap-around of the Rodions, but overall we've reached the end of what this guide wishes to convey.

Perhaps the only other thing to add is that there was a reply professing slow/difficult regular fights for rupture/sinking teams. Taking some time to think about why that may be (whilst scrubbing through some recordings), as no issue was ever had across 50+ runs with those strategies. Fights typically stay under 2 minutes, even on harder nodes when just winrate-ing.

Ultimately, the likely reason seems to be: Perhaps some players undervalue damage ups. Damage ups have a compounding effect typically: it's why Heathcliff's QS do so much damage, the fragile + the stagger from the earlier hits have a multiplicative effect leading to those last few coins hitting so hard. Same goes here.

All those Sticky Mucks or Grey Coats that's being passed up might've been the key to make your runs go fast. In fact, during runs, it is advised to always aim to get off-status boost effects (Pipe + Nebulizer, Plushie + Stake, Lightning Rod + Wrist Guards, etc.), and Blood, Sweat and Tears is practically an instant pickup every time. Hopefully this helps players who may still be struggling with that. (Or perhaps, they just have the usual stack of PMoon Player Perusal Passive, thinking this guide's for MD3H.)

That being said, there is one final thing: even though these guides started with showing how to build the statuses more effectively, the mindset of "statuses" itself is in actuality, a distraction. The better perspective to have is that "everything is interlocking systems". i.e. If it works, it works.

In any case, let's fly our wings.

Dear manager,

you've seen the temporary fire and the eternal fire;

you have reached the place past which my powers cannot see.

I've brought you here through intellect and art;

from now on, let your pleasure be your guide;

Source for this section: https://redd.it/18vsbnr

So where do we go from here? Limbus Company is a game with immense potential in it's systems (it's incredible in it's narrative as well of course, but that's outside the scope of this writeup).

Though seemingly simple right now, the pieces that are already in place have lots of room to grow, affording many interesting angles of exploration that open up novel, emergent gameplay patterns; the design space is wide open. We're also already seeing some ramping up of sophistication recently. Who knows what shakeups we'll see in the future.

Maybe we'll see an ID with [Next turn: Temporarily sets SP to -45 and enter corrosion] for its S3, or a mixed positive/negative coin IDs that uses Res passives to control their rolls. Or maybe we'll have an EGO with [For 2 highest SP allies: that ally loses 40 SP, then reuse this coin]. These sorts of funky designs that play with the borders of what we've already seen, will likely eventually become commonplace in Limbus, as we're still pretty much only barely past the beginning stages for the game.

Hopefully when those times come, we'll be able to enjoy thoroughly the many intricacies of engaging with these new systems, as well as all the avenues of creative expression that it brings, together.

Thank you for taking the time to follow this guide, it does get ramble-y at times. And despite all of the pretentions and aesthetic self-amusement writing the guide in this convoluted way: It is an honor to have been your attendant throughout this journey.

I wish you well, Manager.

Await no further word or sign from me:

your will is free, erect, and whole-- to act

against that will would be to err: therefore

I crown and miter you over yourself

Thank You.

Source for this section: https://redd.it/18vsbnr

Each section of the guide will have it's own credits, but I'll also list them out here for easy access.

Introduction + Burn: https://redd.it/18nvuos
Bleed + Tremor: https://redd.it/18oyc55
Rupture + Sinking: https://redd.it/18r5onx
Poise + Charge: https://redd.it/18trh5i
Purgatorio + Paradiso: https://redd.it/18vsbnr


Permission: https://www.reddit.com/r/limbuscompany/comments/18nvuos/md3_farming_strategy_deep_diveguide_part_0_1/kegaiwx/