Limbus Company Beginner & Intermediate Strategy Guide

Here’s a quick speedrun of important game facts!

Increasing the level of your units will make them stronger (raising HP & defense level increases survivability, while offense level increases damage & can influence clashes), but that’s it. You can be 5 levels lower than recommended and still EX clear with a reasonable team.
Getting units to uptie 3 will:

• Increase their base skill power
• add/increase effects on coins or the skill itself
• unlock passives
• all of the above are also true for EGO skills: get uptie 2 to unlock the passive if you want to use it.
• allow you to use uptie 3 units in mirror dungeon normal mode without leveling them up at all!
• give you small amounts of lunacy (40 per uptie 3 character)

Uptie cost scales with rarity (0/00/000 for units, rank for EGO)

The long story short is that for most of the game, clash power is the most important aspect. Winning clashes means you don’t take damage, so using good clashers (high speed & coin power) is often more useful than picking units that are good at dealing damage.
The only times this isn’t true are when you’re going for EX clears or the railway, where speed matters, and even then you just need both high damage & high clash power.

EGO passives will not activate until the turn after they have been used. They do not activate upon being equipped.

Honestly, it’s not super worth it. While it does give you daily/weekly pass exp, the amount is tiny compared to the mirror dungeons. If you don’t have an excess of enkephalin modules, and you don’t particularly need thread or exp, don’t bother.
That being said:
If you need exp, the luxcavation is incomparably better than any story combat level.
If you have lots of enkephalin, absolutely get thread 3x a day for the bonuses. Thread is your most important resource in almost all cases, and having more is always better, but the mirror dungeon is definitely more bang for your buck.

yes and no. 000 units are objectively better but they are not better than proper team building and are definitely not better at low uptie tiers. A full team of 000’s at uptie 1 will be crushed by the starting units after they become uptie 3.
Generally speaking, higher rarity units have more status effects, coin effects, and coins than lower rarity units, and slightly better offensive/defensive levels (at the moment, the offense level system is changing)

TL;DR: if you have a couple of 000 units, focus on getting them uptied rather than saving up shards to buy more in the shop. If you suddenly get a new 000 unit, double check that they will be useful in a team before pouring resources into them.

The only basically universally agreed upon bad 000 unit is W. corp Meursault, and Sunshower Heathcliff is also pretty weak. They are of course still useful in the right team though.
See the sections on notable units for more info.

yes, it’s a gacha game, so they do want your money to get those units. But the game’s pretty generous:

• 300 lunacy is gifted after maintenance every week (only lasts in mailbox for a week)
• 1000 lunacy is gifted whenever a big issue is found/hotfixed
• 750 lunacy (5.7 pulls) can be acquired from mirror dungeon every week (250 * 3)
• chapter completion & EX clears give a decent amount of lunacy
• events and the limbus pass will give both lunacy & draw tickets
• the 10 pull is slightly better than the 1 pull because you get a guaranteed 00 unit
• if you really want a unit, I’d recommend buying them from the store with shards, but only if you already have a good team of 5 at minimum (as shards can be turned into thread to uptie)
• if you really want an EGO, you can also buy it from the store, but remember that EGO are never extracted twice: This system kind of screws over new players, as they have the full EGO table, but you’ll eventually get whatever EGO you want (Note that EGO in the current and previous season are not in the draw table, you must buy them with shards or with the pass)

There are 3 reasons to buy the pass:
1) paid EGO that you would otherwise have to wait months for

• When the next season starts, all EGO in the pass you don’t have will become available in the shop, not the draw table. If you want to be able to get them through gacha draws, you will have to wait two seasons for them to appear in the draw table.

2) improved EX pass level rewards

• Every level past 60 will give you 2 extra nominable egoshard crates, which is crazy, especially with mirror dungeon #2 hard giving 75 pass exp. Basically, buying the pass will allow you to buy several more things from the store per season.

3) wanting to support the developers

The actual paid rewards for pass levels 1-60 aren’t incredible, but they aren’t that shabby either, considering fulfilling the daily missions & mirror dungeon will get you to level 60 in like a month. Most notably, a 000 unit extraction ticket, level boost III ticket, and several cosmetic items (announcers & profile customization).

I’d say its much more worth it than just buying lunacy, as the egoshard creates it unlocks are probably more useful, if that’s what the debate is.

There are a lot of things in this game that are poorly explained, or just not stated at all. This section is just about those bits, and hopefully it will help everything make a bit more sense.

currently (July 2023), the way offense/defense level works is about to change

If you’ve ever started a clash, only to see the final coin value change without any effects, and then suddenly change back again when the actual damage roll happens, this is why!!
TL;DR: if you have a significantly higher offense level than the opponent, your clash power goes up. If you have a significantly lower defense level, your clash power goes down. However, this does nothing to final power.
Currently, the effect is +/- 1 clash power per every 5 differences between offensive levels. It will change to be +/- 1 final power every 3 differences, when the IV uptie update comes out (probably).

Here, we can see that Faust’s clash range should be 6-12, but it isn’t. There is a 14 level difference between offense levels, so 14/5 = +2 clash power, bringing the range to 8-14. clearly, the 4 extra doesn’t get rounded up. Remember, the final skill power (for damage dealing) will still be 6-12.

This is also the reason why you need to level up your characters: you start losing clash power if the enemies are stronger than you. Or, in mirror dungeon #2, you effectively always lose a certain amount of clash power without buffs due to the strengthening of enemy offense levels.

This honestly doesn’t matter too much, because the clash UI automatically does all of these calculations for you, as seen above. Trust it more than anything else! …usually.

This, of course, only applies to units that use negative coins, especially he who shall grip Sinclair.
The reason for this is pretty obvious: the “dominating” to “hopeless” messages are calculated based on statistics. I don’t know what specific statistics, but it’s easy to see the problem, so i’ll use the simplest possible calculation.

Self destructive purge has a range from 0-30. But in a clash, this range changes based on the number of coins: 3 coins: 0-30 2 coins: 6-30 1 coin: 18-30. Clash power goes up as coins break! This fact actually makes N corp sinclair a really good clasher, regardless of sanity (ignoring his first skill).

Let’s say we have Nclair using self-destructive purge at max (45) sanity. So a clash win calculation would look something like clash power = 30 + (-12 *95%)*3 (30 base power, changed by the coin power * heads chance * number of coins). This calculation gives a result of clash power = 30 + (-11.4)*3 = 30 -34.2 = 0 (as negative clash power isn’t a thing).
You get similarly low clash power calculations at most sanity levels. at a sanity of -3 (as in the picture), the calculation would be clash power = 30 + (-12 *47%)*3 = 13.1, which explains the following image:
The game has decided that Nclair’s chance of winning this clash is “normal” but we know he can’t lose, because once he’s down to one coin, his minimum clash power is over the enemy’s maximum. This is incredibly useful for clashing!

The real issue is that the “win rate” auto button will follow the game’s clash calculations, meaning that it will often avoid powerful negative coin skills in favor of weaker skills that have higher minimum rolls. Now that you know, double check if a negative coin skill will really lose a clash.

There are several strange things about the status effect system that can be confusing, notably:

• A skill that adds +1 count often appears to do nothing: for sinking & rupture, the act of hitting them subtracts the count that is immediately added. Skills that add poise to self often also do nothing, as it immediately expires after the move takes place.
• Coins that add both effect & +1 effect count at the same time for rupture/sinking are amazing, as they increase potency while keeping the count the same.
• Skills that add effect or effect count next turn DO NOT ACTIVATE EGO GIFTS
• Most buff icons (haste, fragility, sloth damage up, etc) don’t have a count marker, and are applied/removed based on passives & skill descriptions, so get reading. I wish I could tell you why this is, because you can’t actually assume they will expire at the end of the turn.

let me know in the comments if there are other basically unknown mechanics I missed!

Here are 5 of the best 00 units, if you’re wondering which ones to consider leveling up.

(bleed/paralyze)
Basically a 000 unit.
His second skill is incredible: its a +4 coin power skill that effectively has 4 coins if the target has less than 4 bleed (potency). Considering bleed is very hard to keep on an opponent, it will basically always be a 4 coin skill while dealing damage.
His third skill is also high damage
basically a requirement for bleed teams: even if he’s not in the team, his passive adds bleed count.

first skill is absolute garbage
will have some trouble clashing in super hard battles, as currently his highest offense level is 35 (at level 35). This is basically only noticeable when comparing to 000 units

(rupture/tremor/paralyze/fragile)
Like all ammo units, she deals incredibly high damage & status effects until she’s out of ammo and then she’s basically useless (at around turn 6). One of the best units for mirror dungeons, as she can apply 16 +4 count tremor, and then burst it while adding 8 +2 count rupture and 5 fragile. Getting some tremor or rupture ego gifts will let her oneshot or bare minimum stagger most regular enemies. If she’s levelled properly, she’s also a great unit for EX clearing.

first skill is weak: it’s bad at clashing but applies paralyze
low offense level
low speed range (2-6) means that the 5 fragile she applies can be the last hit of the turn

(poise)
A unit that can be very strong, but has to be at less than 50% HP. The real challenge is getting her HP where you want it, and then after that she’s a unit that can stack poise on herself, and then use poise crits to heal. This makes her one of the only poise units that work alone, and her damage/clash output is good.

support passive is bad
you have to be very careful with her HP management. I personally don’t want to deal with the hassle.
(if you think it’s unfair that Ishmael has 2 good 00 units, don’t worry, her third is the worst unit in the game)

(rupture/fragile/pierce fragility)
Third skill inflicts pierce fragility, giving up to +30% pierce damage next turn. Passives need a lot of gluttony, but give clash power bonuses. One of the fastest units in the game (5-8). Generally considered to be better than blade lineage Yi Sang (who is 000).

first skill will again lose clashes
low offense level

(rupture/poise/haste)
very powerful 3rd skill that gains coin power if she didn’t take damage last turn, and can massively speed herself up. Gains bonus points because Faust’s base ego is very good.

first skill will lose clashes
passives aren’t that useful, especially support passive.

There are a lot of 000 units, so I’m going to rapid fire this! I will also put which season the units come from. Remember that units from season 1 are currently not obtainable, except for on character banners (I think). I will put units that are “standard fare” as S0 for clarity.

Several times I reference “max power.” By this, I mean the max total power an attack can deal, if all the coins land perfectly. For example, One who Grips Faust has a skill 3 with a base power of 6 and 3 +2 coins, meaning that her 3rd skill’s max power is (6+2) + (6+2+2) + (6+2+2+2) = 8 + 10 + 12 = 30. I only really talk about the super high skill 3’s.

They get their own section because I am NOT nonpartisan, and because you ideally want to use them together.

The One who Grips Faust (S1) – (bleed/nails/damage bonuses) Has pretty great clash power, sure, and nail synergies, but they are really great for two reasons: Gaze, a unique status effect that gives +20% blunt and pierce damage, and more significantly, Massive SP gain, both from passives and from on-kill with skill 3 (as well as some damage up). That’s right! we’ve got buffing, high damage, and sanity management on Faust (which means there’s more sanity management from base ego!). The best SP recovery unit in the game.

The One who Shall Grip SInclair (S1) – (burn/nails/bleed) Meet the unit that singlehandedly started powercreep discussions! A negative coin only unit that is also one of the best damage dealers in the game: his third skill has a maximum final power of 90! All used skills decrease SP, the passive decreases SP gain, and the defense skill regains some SP. Toe the line of insanity to deal crazy high damage, or just use him as a shockingly good clasher. Currently, Sinclair doesn’t have a strong enough EGO to make the high chance of corrosion a major issue (although lifetime stew (S1 event) can wipe your team). Any tweaking to SP messes with his kit a lot though.

Spicebush Yi Sang (S2) – (sinking/tremor) The first unit to have a (very conditional) multi-target skill! More importantly, all skills have 3 coins, and are high damage. It’s pretty hard to make a sinking team right now, but this unit can basically be a sinking team by himself if he has enough moves. (or more accurately, the sinking is a bonus to the scary amounts of damage he does). Very good for long battles, as stacking tremor count on himself is used to make a skill multi target. Passives up multi-target damage, which is great because his sin affinities almost let him cast wishing carin and sunshower alone (both of which can be multi-target).

Seven Association Section 6 Outis (S0)- (rupture/defense/offense down/paralyze) The best clasher in the game. Fast, and all skills reduce opponent’s clash power by 2. Uses a pile of debuffs that occur next turn, which is very good (and also rare). Passives allow for more damage to be done against weak/fatal targets, and has very good synergy with Ebony stem ego. Almost good rupture support. stick ’em on any team, because the clash power is worth it.

W corp Don (S0) – (charge/rupture/fragile) As long as you have EGO that give charge count, one of the highest damage dealing units in the game, with a skill 3 max power of 91. She’s still good if you don’t have her telepole ego, but not that good, sorry. Also kind of the only reason to use Don Quixote currently. Needs longer battles to be able to pour out damage.

R corp Rabbit Heathcliff (S0) – (charge/bleed/fragile/rupture) Uses charge to get faster, and uses that speed to deal incredible damage with skill 3. An ammo unit, aka. he will become almost useless after turn 5, but skill 3 (quick suppression) is a max 63 power move that inflicts 4 fragile in the first 2 hits, making its actual max power more like 88. Great for mirror dungeon runs.

R corp Rhino Meursault (S0) – (charge/haste/bleed) Uses charge to get faster, and uses haste to deal more damage & effects (and improve his abysmal 3-5 speed). Doesn’t have super high offense levels, but is plenty scary nonetheless. good for bleed teams as he has bleed count. Also greatly benefits from charge support. very tanky.

R corp Reindeer Ishmael (S0) – (charge/sinking/stagger threshold) Ah yes the meme identity. Don’t get me wrong, she’s really good, she’s also just really good at liquefying her teammates. Her first two skills are pretty good at clashing and dealing damage (and sinking), but her third skill, mind whip, is a 52 max power skill that will become unclashable and target a random opponent. Compared to some of the other max power skills, that may seem low, but each hit of damage also massively increases stagger threshold. Regardless of who it hits, as long as they aren’t resistant to blunt/wrath, they’ll probably get double to triple staggered. The “let’s press the auto button” team destroyer. More seriously, she can’t gain charge that fast herself, meaning that you have to hold onto her 3rd skill like a live grenade and wait without other EGO or ego gift support. Also pretty tanky.
(I’ve put her in “the great” section because I do think her moves are great, and I view the charge management much like negative coin identity SP management: your own fault.)

Liu South Section 4 Ishmael (S0) – (burn/more burn/burn damage bonuses) Guess what guys! Burn teams are viable now! If she’s in a team without other burn Identities, she’s still pretty good. If she’s in a team with burn identities, her damage and clash power take a big jump up, with her first two skills getting coin power bonuses and her third getting a solid 30% damage boost, with her passive giving her another +30% boost for all moves as long as the enemy has 9+ stacks of burn. Offense and defense levels are middling, with neither being particularly great, but it doesn’t really matter.

R.B. Chef Ryoshu (S1 Event) – (bleed/bind/Healing Down/damage bonuses) Best skill 2 in the game, imo, with skill 3 being a massive damage dealer in a weird way. Her passives heal the team, making her quite useful in regular enemy battles, but the healing only activates upon enemy kill, making the passives useless in boss fights. Skill 1 is decent, skill 2 is a 3-18 clash power skill that inflicts HP healing down, reducing healing from passives, skills, and coins. Currently the only identity with this status effect. Great for chapter 4 and for several abnormality fights. Her 3rd skill is a 42 max power skill without effects, and coin effects / missing enemy HP can boost it by up to 40%, putting it somewhere in the 60s. Not the highest damage dealer in the game, but not shabby by any means.

Kurokumo Ryoshu (S0) – (Bleed/paralyze) the best bleed identity in the game! generally worse clash/damage than R.B chef, but much better bleed support. Good at fighting bosses, and passives can really rack up the bleed.

TingTang Gangleader Hong Lu (S1) – (bleed/damage bonuses) Passives heal his own SP, which is great, because his skill 3 is a +25 coin skill that, on kill, will be reused with +100% damage. Skill 2 also has a coin reuse if the enemy is almost dead, making this identity great at speedrunning/mop-up. Basically a pure damage identity, great for mirror dungeons.

Rosespanner workshop Rodion (S2) – (tremor/charge) Skills give charge & all inflict tremor & tremor count. Passives convert 3 charge into +40% tremor burst stagger threshold increase, which is just massive on a tremor team. Skill 2 can also reuse a coin repeatedly if it lands on heads, dealing more damage, adding more tremor, and bursting more tremor. The only 000 tremor identity currently.

A list of perfectly good 000 units with even less to say about them!

G corp Gregor (S1) – (rupture/healing/damage bonuses) good damage, self healing

K corp Excision Staff Hong Liu (S2) – (rupture/healing) best tank in the game! The only issue is that tanking hits is not a winning strategy. Very interesting support passive

N corp Meursault (S1) – (nails/bind/stagger/heal) A good tank with a lot of nails, a skill that heals himself, and a low damage skill 1 that raises stagger threshold. Hard to stagger.

Kurokomo Rodion (S0) – (poise/bleed) Good for a poise identity! Can’t stack poise on self properly, but does pretty well solo and inflicts a good amount of bleed. Can clash well.

Blade Lineage Yi Sang (S0) – (poise) Can actually stack poise on self!! this is great, except the second he also starts triggering poise, he will use it all up. All skills give poise/poise count next turn. Offense level is extremely high. Clash power isn’t bad, but isn’t amazing either.

blade lineage Sinclair (S0) – (poise/paralyze/bleed) Clashes worse than base Sinclair. Can’t really keep poise on themselves, and his entire kit is set up to deal high damage with skill 3 — which has a max power of 22 (it’s a 1 coin skill). :/

Sunshower EGO Heathcliff (S2) – (sinking/rupture/tremor/fragile/paralyze/protection??) A very awkward negative coin identity that doesn’t lose SP directly, but instead stacks sinking on himself and uses his passive to trigger sinking without being hit. The problem is that only his 3rd skill gives a good amount of sinking, but his second skill will immediately eat it all to increase the final hit of damage by 20%. The status effects of his skills are also all over the place, making him halfway decent on a sinking or rupture team, on the condition that you get his sanity low enough somehow. Doesn’t have a super high defense level, but can get up to a 50% damage reduction based on, you guessed it, current sinking stacks. Half of his status effects (the good ones) are locked behind tails hits. 3rd skill max power is 54. 2nd skill max power is 40. He’s got the strength to be a good unit, it’s just so weird.

W corp Meursault (S0) – (charge/defense down/rupture) Has amazing debuffs, but just can’t gain charge to use them. Putting him in a charge team w/ Telepole Don or giving him a pile of charge ego gifts would fix this, but he still has bad clash power and really bad damage (his offense level is 33. most 000 units have offense levels at 40, +/- ~4). There are more useful tanks.

There are several ways to build teams, and I think one of the main problems that happens is people end up focusing on just one (cough EGO maximizing team cough).

This is the team building method that I would actually recommend to start with. There are several reasons for this:

• A lot of units that share status effect types also share sin affinities. For example, N corp identities use nails and have a lust skill.
• If you aren’t spamming EGO, having messy status effect synergies basically makes everything past the damage you are dealing worthless. You can technically also make an all damage team, but the damage dealt by status effects is absolutely significant.
• You don’t actually need to have a team dedicated to one status effect: I’d recommend 2, such as nails and bleed, or tremor and rupture. This is mostly because there aren’t enough (good) units to make a perfect team around one status effect right now. Burn teams became viable though!
• you can also make a debuff-centric team, or focus on one status effect and add several debuff characters, like 000 Outis.

Building a team this way is pretty quick and easy to do, just make sure you aren’t caught up in maximizing one status effect too much, as you have to have some functional EGO and good clash power. Remember your passives! many identities will cause your active units to inflict more status effects, or deal more damage around those status effects. Use them!! It is true that support passives often contribute very little to the fight, but that problem lies with you more than it does with the support passives.

Check out the section on status effects for more info / advice (it’s much too long to fit here)

Making a team based on damage type

Once again, self-explanatory, albeit annoying. There is no way to see the damage type of the three moves without clicking in to each identity, nor is there a way to see resistances. These teams are especially useful in the story chapters, as most human enemies don’t have specific sin resistances/weaknesses. There are two ways to build these teams:

• Use identities that deal “fatal” damage most or all of the time
• use identities that have “ineffective” defense type to most/all of the enemy attacks.
• use some multi-target EGO of that damage type

Ideally, you want all of the above. The hardest thing about team building this way is figuring out the enemy types, aka. getting bodied at least once. Unfortunately, this doesn’t work great in mirror dungeons or railway, as you have to be able to deal and take all damage types, at least a little bit.
Several passives add bonus damage to specific damage types!

Here’s a fun trick to make a good resonance team! Take a team you like, and try to make it use only 6 or 5 types of sin affinities. That’s the whole exercise! Making teams this way has a few benefits:

• Whichever EGO you can still cast will be easier to cast without trying to teambuild for EGO
• it will be way easier to get high resonance / absolute resonance rates, which can be really good for passives
• tbh it’s really hard to figure out what the resonance damage boosts are, but they are definitely there.

Also a couple of cons:

• You will be unable to use several EGO, and that may be a problem
• If something is weak to the sin(s) you are missing, you’re screwed
• In mirror dungeon or railway, where EGO resources are saved forever, the limitations are often worse than having a team that deals slightly lower damage but can build up all EGO resources for later

First off, there’s nothing wrong with EGO based teams, and they are some of the most powerful teams in the game. The issue is that they tend to absolutely 100% require a pile of max rarity units and EGOs that people can’t be expected to have.
The most notable example of this is W corp Don Quixote + telepole, R corp Reindeer Ish, R corp Heathcliff + telepole, faust + telepole, etc. Unless you want to drop a pile of money or already have the units, that kind of team building info won’t help you anyways.

Here’s how to build an EGO focused team:

• Pick a multi-target EGO, ideally one that targets 5 slots (Faust fluid sac, Yi Sang sunshower, Outis Ebony Stem, etc. 3-slot targeting EGO will also work)
• Build a team around the resources required for that expensive multi-target ego
• Make sure that one or two base egos will easily be fulfilled (this will probably happen anyways), and equip any other EGO that can be fulfilled by the resulting team comp.
• Ideally, make a team that only uses 6 types of EGO resource
• Double ideally, have a lot of skills in the same sin type as your main EGOs so you can give them a resonance boost.
• The general strategy is to spend the first wave building up EGO resources, before using multi-target EGO to sweep later waves. Use base EGOs when you need to against hard clashes.
• Some EGO have really good passives that you may want to activate as soon as possible, regardless of how much damage they deal or if you need them for a clash, such as Ishmael’s base EGO that basically makes favored clashes a guaranteed victory.
• If you’re making this team for a boss fight, you can swap the starting EGO out for a high damage one specific to the boss’s weaknesses, rinse, and repeat. However, a lot of bosses summon minions anyways, or have a lot of parts, so multi target may still be more useful.

Here’s a neat trick to actually make this process easier for you! Your team screen probably looks something like this:

Look at those huge numbers off to the right! Each sin has some numbers by it: the first is the number of moves in the team that have the sin (each sinner has 6 moves). The second number is the total number of resources to use every EGO in one turn.

So if you’re trying to team build around a specific EGO, I recommend going into each character and unequipping all of their EGO (or go to a different team preset. This is the easier option, if you still haven’t changed them all)

Here’s the same screen with only Outis (with Ebony Stem & base EGO equipped) is in the team:
Now you can add characters and see what’s happening! Remember that adding a unit will also add their base EGO cost on the right side, which can get a bit confusing. Once the team is built, you can go through and try equipping other EGOs to see what would or wouldn’t work.

The obvious downside to EGO teams is constant SP drain! Use overclocking’s frequent negative coins to your advantage if it’s starting to be an issue. With the current way SP works, clash victories and having EGO kill enemies tends to make up for the EGO cost.

Burn is great, but only if you can get burn count up. Honestly, its damage potential is lower than rupture or bleed, but it’s easier to handle. For whatever reason, burn-related ego gifts are generally worse than their bleed/rupture/sinking counterparts. All Burn identities have wrath skills. There are several good burn EGOs and characters now:

• 000 He who Shall grip Sinclair (S1) + lifetime stew’s burn from tail coins (S1 Event)
• 000 Liu South Section 4 Ishmael + Ardor Blossom Star (S0, more burn if target has burn) + Capote (S2, adds burn, abilities & passive buff wrath damage
• 00 Liu South Section 6 Meursault + Capote (S2, again burn & wrath damage)
• 00 Liu South Hong Lu & Gregor (S0, these burn identities don’t have burn EGO)
• All 3 4th Match Flame EGO (S1, but none of these characters have a burn identity yet)

Rupture causes constant bonus damage, but because it activates on hit, it’s incredibly hard to get high stacks without carefully controlling who your attackers are (ex. LCCB Ishmael & Ebony Stem passive can get it up there). If you do get high rupture stacks, the damage is incredible. Rupture Ego gifts are always good because they basically add fixed damage to anyone, and those that add rupture count allow you to finally rack up high counts. Honestly, there aren’t that many pure rupture units, which makes teambuilding a little tricky. Most Rupture units have Gluttony (or Sloth)

• 00 LCCB Ishmael (S0) is your best unit for a rupture team.
• 000 Seven Association Outis (S0) adds rupture count (which doesn’t increase or decrease rupture stacks), and the Ebony Stem (S1) passive adds rupture count next turn.
• 000 K corp Hong Lu (S2) actually has 2 moves that inflict rupture! That’s better than most, but no rupture count, sorry. Dimension Shredder EGO (S0) also can inflict some rupture through the “dimensional rift” status.
• 00 Red Sheet Sinclair (S2) uses high (3-5+) rupture stacks to deal bonus damage, and Sinclair base EGO is one of the best ways to add high rupture stacks (it adds 12)
• There’s a huge number of identities that have a single move that adds rupture. Not very many EGO though.

Bleed is probably the hardest to keep on an enemy, because of how frequently coins are flipped. That being said, A bleed team can liquify a boss in a turn or two, as long as you manage to stagger it, giving you time to get bleed count & potency up. This is especially true with mirror dungeon ego gifts, as they make getting 99 bleed potency incredibly possible (lots of doubling bleed or increasing bleed / bleed count on bleed skills. If you have a bleed team and you get the “Red-Stained Gossypium” gift (that adds 15 bleed count), you basically win.)
Nails cause bleed stacks, as well as many N corp identities dealing bonus damage/effects at certain numbers of nails. Teams of half nails half bleed identities is very effective, as many N corp identities also deal bleed. All bleed & nail identities have either Pride or Lust skills.

• Bleed is particularly effective on bosses you can stagger a lot. Because bosses take like 5 moves a turn, as long as you have the bleed count they will kill themselves without too much trouble
• Blade lineage & Kurokomo identities (S0) are the basic bleed identities (pride skills)
• N corp (S1) identities all either inflict bleed or use bleed/nail count in their skills (lust skills)
• R.B. chef (S1 Event) identities inflict bleed & bonuses on bleeding targets (lust skills)
• there are basically no bleed EGO skills past a few base EGO….

Tremor is pretty easy to stack on enemies, and harder to burst. Dealing stagger damage rather than real damage is very useful in certain circumstances, and literally worthless in others (already recovered from the only stagger threshold? lol, sucks to be you) Tremor Ego gifts are middling: the main issue with tremor is getting tremor count high enough, because you never want to burst tremor in the single digits. The Downpour ego gift is amazing because of this. Most tremor identities have pride or gloom (or both)

• Rosepanner Workshop identities (S2) are the best tremor identities
• LCCB Ishmael (S0) again can deal the highest single-turn tremor/tremor count (just like rupture)
• N corp Don (S1) is really good tremor support, but needs nails on her enemies, which is awkward.
• A surprising number of EGO can burst tremor, which is quite nice. Examples include Rime Shank Rodion (S1), both Capote corrosion’s (S2), Pursuance Meursault (S0), Sunshower Outis (S2), etc.
• At this point, there’s a growing population of identities and moves that raise stagger threshold based on damage dealt without using tremor. This means at high levels, they tend to raise the stagger threshold more than a tremor team can, because 40% of 40 damage is the equivalent of bursting 16 tremor.

I think Sinking is underrated, largely because there aren’t a lot of identities that use it. The point of sinking is to cripple opponent’s SP, tanking their clashing ability, which of course tanks their SP faster. Look out for negative coin skills! This status effect works way better on human enemies, as its values are too low for the gloom damage it deals to identities to matter much. Every unit of sinking is a 1% decrease in heads chance, so you don’t really need super high values to be useful. Sinking ego gifts are kind of amazing, as they keep opponents in negative SP. Lowest Star has excellent sinking synergy. All sinking identities have sloth or gloom or both.

• 000 Spicebush Yi Sang (S2) adds sinking and sinking count, and has “sinking deluge,” a skill that basically bursts sinking, dealing all the possible SP damage at once.
• 000 R corp Ishmael (S0) adds sinking & sinking count. Does good SP damage alone.
• Base Hong Lu & Yi Sang, 00 G corp Outis (S1), and 00 maraca Sinclair (S1) are the other sinking units. that’s all of them!
• A couple EGO add sinking: base Hong Lu, Rime Shank Rodion (S1), Fluid Sac Don (S1), Sunshower Outis (S2).

• Poise needs to be buffed. It just falls off of characters too fast to be useful. This can be seen easily in mirror dungeon, where a few poise ego gifts can cause some identities to become killing machines.
• Paralyze is in theory amazing, but in practice almost unnoticeable. Every individual coin removes one paralyze to land on tails, meaning that a 3-coin move will burn through 6 paralyze in a clash, regardless of if that was useful to you. A 4-coin move burns through 11 paralyze in a clash. Moves that add paralyze add 1-5.
• Bind is always good: increases your clashing options. Also a lot of bind/haste EGO.
• Fragile and all forms of weapon/sin fragility are always good, and can allow for nuke strategies. It does make specific units and EGO super useful against specific bosses, but I don’t really see an issue with that.

~ Sorry, still in progress ~

What you want:

• Uptie III (espeically for dungeon #2)
• A reasonable amount of EGO skills. You can clear both with base EGO only, but it will be more difficult. EGO resources are kept between battles, so save em up!
• This is a great place to test team compositions! I’d recommend building a team around whatever your initial ego gift is.

You will start to notice the difference between unit rarities in mirror dungeon 2.

What you actually need, regardless of what the game says:

• Uptie III
• identity levels between 30 and 35
• Team synergy from that starting 5 character team
• Like… 3 unlocks on the skill tree. More will make it easier, but it’s not actually required.
• Use the free EGO perks to pull in as many EGO skills as you can as soon as you can

The hardest part of hard mode is actually the beginning. You don’t have ego gifts to back you up, you don’t have sin resources to spend in a pinch, and you only have 2-3 high clash power 000 units. Here’s some general advice:

• If a clash is hopeless, Guard. This reduces the damage you take more than you think. Counter & dodge skills, on the other hand, kind of suck due to the increased power of the enemies.
• The second you get to a shop, “buy” as many free units as you can. Free passives, free EGO! The units don’t even need to be high level, you can use them for their passives alone.
• Healing ego gifts & passives are very useful now! Unlike mirror dungeon normal modes, you CANNOT make your way through this dungeon without taking damage.

Ego gifts will have a (1) or (2) by their name, to indicate if they are found in dungeons 1 or 2. Remember that every ego gift in dungeon 1 also appears in mirror dungeon 2.
There are other, more complete lists of ego gifts and their perks. I’m just covering the ones that are particularly notable.

The overpowered ones that are supposed to be overpowered:

• (2) Lunar Memory – All sin & damage affinities of all enemies are changed to fatal. Congrats, you win! (this is the rarest ego gift)
• (2) Red-Stained Gossypium – At the start of battle, all enemies get +15 bleed count. Enemies have both offensive and defensive levels lowered by (bleed potency)/3. This is ridiculous, and if you give it to a bleed team they will rack up bleed stacks, dealing lots of damage and tanking the opponent’s combat ability. Absolutely demolishes bosses, especially if you have a couple other bleed ego gifts.
• (2) Downpour – At the start of the turn, inflict (turn count*2) tremor and + 2 tremor count. At the end of the turn, burst tremor. This ego gift is great, regardless of if you have a tremor team or not. Honestly, the tremor it applies (which climbs quickly) is secondary to the fact that it slowly raises tremor count & bursts tremor every turn.
• (2) Charge-type gloves – max charge count is now 30. Start battle with 5 charge count on all allies. Just broken for charge teams. Because several other charge ego gifts give charge related buffs, can be quite useful for teams that don’t use charge as well.
• (2) Glimpse of Flames – at the start of the turn, enemies with 30+ burn take damage by burn*burn count (this does not lower burn count). A burn team will obliterate everything now.

The overpowered ones that aren’t that hard to get:

• (1) Rusty Commemorative Coin – Repeat the first single-coin skill that doesn’t kill each turn. This skill is a free (multi-target) EGO doubler! This is especially true if you aren’t using that many characters with single coin skills (which is probably true, because single coin skills are almost always bad). Be careful though, reusing the EGO also doubles the sanity cost.
• (1) Lithograph – When an enemy is staggered, ally with lowest health heals 5% max HP. This quantity seems bad, until you remember how many units you stagger in mirror dungeons. 4 enemies? That’s 4-8 staggers, or 20-40% HP healing, split up into units of 5% that will each heal the target with the lowest HP. And most fights have 6 enemies.
• (1) Wound Clerid – Wrath or bleed effect skills inflict 3 additional bleed. Self explanatory. This basically doubles or triples the bleed you inflict. It’s per hit, not per skill.
• (1) Thunderbranch – inflict +1 rupture count whenever you inflict rupture w/ a skill. Congrats! you can get rupture stacks now!
• (1) Standard Duty Battery – inflict 3 rupture on every hit (+2 for envy skills). Basically a free damage up. Amazing synergy with other rupture ego gifts.
• (1) Lowest Star – Deal 5 SP damage when you deal blunt damage (pride bonus). Really useful to tank the high clash power of hard mode fights.
• (1) Coffee and Cranes – As long as you used a lust skill, gain at least 1 of every sin resource type that turn. I like this sin resource skill the most because I’m always using lust skills, and it fills in any sin-shaped holes in your team.
• (1) Little and to-be-naughty plushie – Deal more and take less damage from enemies with bleed (pride bonus). Great for bleed teams, synergies with bleed ego gifts.