Sense Level
Sense level affects your base attack, health, and armor.
You gain +1 Base Attack, +10 Health and +10 Armor for every 10 Sense Levels you have.
For large-example, if you are at Sense Level 655, you'll have +65 (205 Total) Base Attack, +650 Health and +650 Armor.
It also determines if you deal/take more or less damage in a mission based on its Recommended Sense, which is known as Sense Suppression.
Currently, the ultimate goal is to reach the Max Enhancement Level. You can view this on the mission select screen on the bottom-left.
Increasing Your Sense Level
You can increase your Sense Level by consuming other Souljades in the Showdown Souljade Enhance section.
Consuming Souljades less than 15 levels below your selected Souljade's Sense will yield diminished XP.
The ideal range for maximum XP gain is within 5 Sense Levels.
It's best to level all 6 equipped Souljades evenly to minimize wasted XP.
However, using Souljades over 20 Sense Levels higher than your selected Souljade will yield massively boosted XP.
This allows you to quickly catch up any Souljades you may have left unleveled, bringing them on par with your main Souljades, as the image below demonstrates.
Optimize Sense Leveling
Choose a core set of 6 Souljades (e.g. Blue Attack II's) to share between your 3 main heroes as you level up Sense.
You can replace these as you get better Souljades, but only if they are close in level so you don't lose progress.
Try to quickly unlock Nirriti's Ruins by completing its unlock quest.
Ruins stages drop Souljades at the max drop global drop level. However, each full Ruins run consumes 45 fatigue instead of 15, so manage accordingly.
Once you're sufficiently strong enough, you can challenge Enigma Domain • Topaz and if you're able to fully complete it, then you have access to the most efficient Sense Leveling mission.
Hero Level
There are two methods to increase your hero's level: by completing Showdown missions and by using Alchemical Crystallized Souls. Note that each hero has a maximum level cap of 20.
Mission Experience
The experience gained from missions scales with your Sense level relative to the mission's recommended Sense level. Having a much higher Sense than recommended will reduce the experience earned. Therefore, it's advisable to farm missions within 25-50 Sense levels of your current Sense if your goal is to efficiently gain hero levels. In terms of the best mission to farm, it is believed to be early Stages of Yama's Abyss.
Alchemical Crystallized Souls
Alchemical Crystallized Souls (ACS) are acquired by beating Showdown missions for the first time with certain heroes.
They are useful for boosting hero levels on characters outside your main three that you don't plan to grind heavily.
However, I don't recommend using ACS on characters you intend to play frequently, as you'll naturally gain their levels over time.
To max a hero from level 1 to 20, it requires a total of 117 ACS.
Level Unlocks
Every 2 hero levels, starting at level 4, you will acquire a major upgrade, with every other level being a minor upgrade. These upgrades are permanent, but only affect the corresponding hero.
Level 4: AoE Attack
Hero unlocks their AOE attack that generally helps a lot with clearing out smaller enemies.
Level 6: Armor Upgrade
Hero's armor is upgraded from blue to purple permanently, giving an additional 250 armor.
Level 8: Ranged Weapon Enhancement
Hero receives their first ranged weapon skill, usually making their ranged weapon more efficient at what it does.
Level 10: Weapon Upgrade
Hero's melee weapon is upgraded from blue to purple permanently, giving a 16.7% damage increase.
Level 12: Aegis-Break Martial Skill
Hero will be able to use a melee attack that greatly damages enemies' astral aegis.
Level 14: Ranged Weapon Upgrade
Hero's ranged weapon is upgraded from blue to purple permanently, giving a 16.7% damage increase.
Level 16: Ranged Weapon Enhancement
Hero's ranged weapon will no longer suffer from a range penalty from any range.
Level 18: Defuse Attack
Hero will be able to use a special dodge that when successful at nullifying an attack, enables a melee attack that greatly damages astral aegis.
Souljades
Epic and Legendary Souljades can only drop from one of two loot pools. These loot pools are the Common Pool and the Special Pool.
Common Pool
The Common Pool contains a majority of all Epics and a small portion of Legendaries currently in Showdown. These souljades can be dropped from any mission and are recommended to be farmed in:
- Any Stronghold Assault mission
- Enigma Domain - Topaz
- Yama's Abyss
- Any Speedrun mission you can complete consistently
You can see all of the Souljades that can drop from a mission by clicking the
icon next to the mission's name in the mission select screen.
Special Pool
The special pool contains Epics and Legendary Souljades that can only be dropped from specific missions at certain difficulties. You can also acquire them from Souljade Conversions, but to increase your chances it is best to farm their specific mission.
You can see the special pool of a mission in the stage select screen to the left of the confirm button and hovering over the Souljades displayed.
For Souljades you haven't acquired before, you can check them out in the Narakapedia section to see where they drop.
Element Wielding
Element Wielding is the acquisition of Souljades with either +1 Ice-Wielding, +1 Thunder-Wielding or +1 Poison-Wielding. By equipping one with an element, it gives you unique effects. These effects stack up to +6.
Ice-Wielding
Ice-Wielding can be quite confusing, but it can be very helpful to have built up as you enter Holoroth. It does 2 things:
- Makes it harder for you to be frozen, by decreasing your Frostbite acquisition from all sources including Frost Omens, Matron of Yushan's attacks, or certain Souljades.
- Increases the damage of your Ice Blasts by 100% per stack. Ice Blasts occur occasionally as you damage an enemy, with Ice-Wielding specific attacks building them up quicker.
Thunder-Wielding
Thunder-Wielding is quite similar, but differs in that it:
- Makes it take longer for you to suffer from Divine Thunder, by decreasing your Thundershock acquisition rate.
- Increases the damage of your Divine Thunder to enemies by 100% per stack. Think of Divine Thunder as the Thunder equivalent to Ice Blasts.
- Increases the damage to enemies from countered Divine Thunder (Thunder Counter).
Poison-Wielding
Poison-Wielding acts differently than the others in that it only:
- Increases the damage of your Poison attacks by 100% per stack and increases your accumulation rate of Poison on enemies.
Attributes
Located below your Souljade's effects will be your Attributes. The number of Attributes present by default varies depending on the Souljade's rarity.
- Common Rarity = 0 Attributes
- Rare Rarity = 1 Attribute
- Epic Rarity = 2 Attributes
- Legendary Rarity = 3 Attributes
You can acquire up to 4 Attributes on a Souljade through a process known as Recasting. In terms of Attributes you want to go for, generally you want to go for what ever increases your damage. [Windfall] if you can manage to acquire it is one of the best Attributes currently in the game. It will work with any build regardless of what you're aiming for.
Attributes of Interest
Attack is a reliable Attribute to use on any build. For Elemental Builds, you'll want to go the Elemental DMG Bonus that matches. So for example, an Ice build, would often want to focus on Ice Blast DMG. Despite its name, it applies to everything that is Ice Element Damage.
Rare Attributes
Rare Attributes are Attributes with '[]' brackets around them. As the name suggests, they are much rarer to acquire than normal Attributes. However, they tend to have more active effects than other Attributes. They can be acquired in all the same ways as normal Attributes, however, are most common from Flux Shards and Recasting Expansions.
- [Windfall] makes all of the other Attributes on the same Souljade stronger by 30-50%.
Example: Attack +4% with Windfall +30% will be equal to Attack +5.2% - [Moderation] reduces the cooldown of your ability by 15-25%
whenever you activate an Ice Blast or Divine Thunder on an enemy.
Adds up to a cap of 100% from multiple [Moderation]s for instant cooldown on activation. - [Scorching] makes your next melee attack following a successful parry apply an explosive burning effect to nearby enemies. Scales in levels, with a total cap at level 12 and a cap per Souljade at level 3.
Souljade Conversion
The Showdown Souljade Conversion menu allows you to convert Souljades you don't want
into Souljades that you would possibly want at random.
You can only receive Souljades from conversion that you have unlocked from completing their corresponding mission.
You can see what you have unlocked by clicking on the 
button next to the convert button.
There are two forms of conversion: Basic and Advanced
Basic Conversion
Basic Conversion allows you to convert 20 rare and common rarity Souljades into Epics or Legendaries.
Chance of Epic = 90%
Chance of Legendary = 10%
Advanced Conversion
Advanced Conversion allows you to convert 3 Epics into a random Epic Souljade or 3 Legendaries into a random Legendary Souljade.
Recasting
Recasting is the process of shuffling Attributes from two Souljades to put onto one.
Recasting Strategy
Recasting should be done after exhausting other progression methods,
as it consumes valuable Epic & Legendary Souljades and
Carved Crystals, making it a resource-intensive process.
When approaching Recasting, particularly when you're aiming for [Windfall] you want to go through a 3-step process. These steps are: Commencement, Transposition and Concentration.
Commencement
Acquiring a Souljade with a good foundation.
Steps:
- Select a Souljade Set Up that you want to work towards.
- Repeatedly complete the mission that those Souljades drop from.
- Keep running those missions until Souljades drop with at least two Attributes at 80% or more of their max value.
- This step is important since it'll save you lots of resources in the future trying to recast the value up.
Transposition
Selecting Attributes you want on your Souljade.
Steps:
- Use Shrouded Jades to increase the number of Attributes on a Souljade up to 4.
- Begin with Recasting the Attribute with the closest value to the max into your main damage attribute.
- For Elemental Builds, this will be Elemental DMG.
- For Burn builds, this will be Health.
- If you acquire a Rare Attribute at any point during this step, if it is one you don't want, you can decide whether to Deconstruct the Souljade or you can attempt to recast that Rare Attribute into a max Attribute.
- Recast the Attribute that is the 2nd closest to max into Attack.
- Now aim for your lowest Attribute and try to keep Recasting it until it turns into a Rare Attribute if you don't already have one.
- If you reach the Attribute Choice after 60 Recasts, you can use it to fix one of the Attributes you don't want into the correct one.
- For Builds where having the right Rare Attributes are the most important (such as Moderation and Scorching Builds), you can go right towards aiming for Rare Attributes on your lowest Attribute.
Concentration
Maximizing the potency of your Attributes.
Steps:
- Use Recast Value to increase the %'s of your Attributes gradually.
- Beware! The closer an Attribute is to its max, the less the chance of it increasing.
- Repeat these steps until your Souljade is as potent as you want it to be.
Key Notes
- The % value of an Attribute that is Recasted onto a Souljade is influenced by the prior Attribute's value.
Example: Attack +3.2% will convert into Health +12% which is 80% of the max value. - Try to recast on Souljades with the Element Wielding type that you want to preserve Elemental Essence consumption.
- Save Flux Shards for when you're going for more than one Rare Attribute, as you can't Recast more than one Rare Attribute on the same Souljade.
- Rare Attributes are assigned a random % when you acquire them. When you Recast them away they give a random % Attribute as well.