Tower of Saviors: Challenge Mission Lv.9 (2026 Jan, Powercreep Edition)

Описание: It's been a LONG time since I last posted anything Tower of Saviors-related, eh? I heard it - "This IP sounds familiar!" May I remind you that the game had a collab with the Battle Cats back in mid-2024? Does the memories come back to you? Good.

And I hear you loud and clear as well: Yeah, yeah, I should do another Real Racing 3 lap, I'm working on it, man. Gimme a break (and I also have to make up for the missing Spa week as well - I'm on a well-deserved New Year's off last week). On a side note, this game actually *OUTLIVED Real Racing 3* - it is approaching its 13th anniversary in 2026. **CRIKEY**. I hope I didn't jinx anything... This also means that should Real Racing 3 went out for real this coming March, I will not be struggling to find anything to make videos on. Switching lanes and diversifying my content is hard, but I don't blame you if you find Battle Cats and ToS not your cup of tea.

Anyways, where have I been outside of Real Racing 3? I was planning to do more ToS videos with my Joestars collection (as evident in my Adjutant on the top middle of the screen, I have Stone Ocean Jotaro, and sometime in 2025 I got myself Stardust Crusaders Jotaro as well), but none really 'hit' my sweetspot. I also have the B-Komachi trio as well, but again, none really hit me as much. I might even have some ToS backlogged videos waiting to be released from my figurative basement. Once the stage returns the videos will escape the basement.

That is, until this week. I have managed to get my hands on the New Year's Pajamas Amaterasu. Some test stages showed optimism on the damage side, and that got me tickling - there is SOMEONE that can benefit from this new ally choice as well. Of course, it will be my (self-proclaimed) best girl - _History Marker - Shamash_!

See, the hardest stage in this month's Challenge Mission as of writing (Lv. 10) could be a bit too tough for her given that she was added to the game ~6 yrs ago and her leader stats are deprecated across the years, so I settled with Lv. 9 instead (despite its difficulty being reduced to mere cakewalk by 2025 meta). But even then, this took me at least 5 tries as well. In the end, technology, powercreep, and brute force emerged victorious. Hurrah! My girl is meta now!

The only issue is Wave 5 being a massive survival challenge, with the enemy feeding Sombre Marks (that kills should they went unchecked and starts accumulating on the board AND in your status column), this team having *one and only ONE* shot of temporarily ridding them (best girl's skill with cooldown of 10 rounds), and you cannot stall indefinitely due to the AWFUL HP this team has (whilst Amaterasu's skill is within cooldown, meaning that you temporarily lost access to her damage absorption). You cannot avoid stalling either as the enemy will clear your skill effects (i.e. your deactivatable attack multipliers), meaning that you have to wait for your skills and multipliers to return. Of course, I can leave it to RNG and hopefully get the multipliers back in one round, but I would like to take the steady route and dodge attacks with Dragon Tamer to pad out the short waiting period - Nesoi, Amaterasu, and Tsukuyomi resists skill CD reset in some way, which means you don't have to stall for long before your attacks are strong enough again.

All in all, this is the reason why I still play ToS after all these years (despite the occasional dev goof-ups and apart from nostalgia vibes and collabs) - bringing a team filled with your favourite characters (or powercreep) to break stages. Fun.
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Text version of team composition:

Members (with numbers provided for reference, as well as usages and enemy skills countered):

Shamash (2329) - Leader, best girl, Sombre Mark removal (explode), add combos

Refinement (Ref.) Nesoi (10967) - Attack multiplier, board cleanup (unused here)

Ref. Giemsa (2913) - Add combos, combo nullifying, HP buff, fatigue state proofing, extra attacks, modifying first batch dropped runestones

Morning Amaterasu (11090) - Attack multipliers, absorb enemy damage, groups of attr. runestones shield (first batch)

New Verthandi (11013) - Generate protected runestones

Night Tsukuyomi (11091) - Ally, fixed bottom 3 rows, unlimited movement without dissolving, defensive shield, attack multipliers, add combos, disregarding smog areas

Equipped Crafts: 6x Auspicious Pillow

Chronon Card: Dragon Tamer (Maxed out)