Aether

After evolving, Aether unlocks a new alternative art. After completing 50 fights against the special boss, Delirious Essence of the Forgotten, another alternative art is unlocked, symbolizing Aether's ascension into a powerful pet.

=Generic Campaign Bonus/Malus= Aether begins with a modifier to all campaigns of -99%. This is mitigated by 10% per Delirious Essence battle: $$\text{Campaign Modifier} = -99\% + \text{Essence Fights Completed} \times 10\%$$ This maxes at 10 fights for a total bonus of 1%.

=Growth Campaign Bonus= Aether receives a growth campaign bonus according to its total growth, number of Delirious Essence battles completed, and the number of Elemental-class pets (Undine, Gnome, Salamander, Sylph, and Aether) you have unlocked. This is added to its generic campaign bonus/malus.

The bonus is equal to: $$\frac{\text{Elementals Unlocked} + 5}{10} \times \text{Aether Fights Completed} \times \left( 1 + 0.57 \times \frac{\log \text{Aether Growth}}{\log 1000}\right) \%$$

If Aether's growth is negative, the game will use a value of 1 for Aether's growth instead.

=Important Note=

The negative growth that scales with your challenge points only continues to scale until Aether is unlocked. Therefore, it is technically optimal to unlock Aether as soon into your game as is feasible. Ultimately, unlocking Aether is a judgement call to make. Be sure to plan around the evo's of pets which require a minimum growth/level/stat requirement of every pet you own ie., Robot, Shark, Phoenix, Slime, and Bag.

= Delirious Essence of the Forgotten = When you go into newbie ground with Aether Ring in your party items, you will fight this boss. It becomes stronger each time it is defeated. Each time it is defeated it will improve the Aether Ring, which improves the Aether pet. The ring's item name changes to Aether Ring +n, and the pet improves its growth campaign penalties/bonuses and also gains a growth bonus of (0.2 * Total Challenge Points).

You will need to defeat it 10 times to make Aether's campaign bonus positive, and 25 times to evolve Aether. Additional fights after that are to further increase its growth and growth campaign bonus. Aether will no longer gain additional growth after fight 50; it will still receive the growth campaign bonus, however. Growth gained from Delirious Essence fights is increased by PGC (this is also retroactive).

If you do not have pets over the required 55,555 growth to evolve Aether, it is a good idea to grow Aether until the Delirious Essence fights will give you enough growth to evolve them. To figure out how many Total Challenge Points you need to evo Aether, use the formula: CHP = (55555 - Current Growth) / (remaining fights * 0.2). This saves you from having an Aether that has 25 fights, but doesn't have the required evolve growth. A good strategy would be to unlock Aether as soon as possible, and wait to start the boss fights until you have gained quite a bit of Challenge Points -- and/or have taken the time to grow Aether in a growth campaign before starting the fights.

You do not need to bring Aether along when you go to fight the boss.

One strategy for newer players is to unlock Aether as soon as possible, do the first 10 battles against Delirious Essence to make Aether's campaign bonus positive, and then save the rest of the fights for later when you can evolve it and have built up more Challenge Points to maximize growth gain from fights. This has the trade-off of losing out on growth gain when you could be saving the initial 10 fights for later when you have more Challenge Points, but having an Aether with non-negative campaign multis.

For mid to late players, you should also unlock Aether asap and grow it in your growth campaign until the desired growth. Then, clear out as many fights as possible/wanted given you have enough ChP to evolve.

Strategy
Fighting the boss, you should bring along your strongest pets with preferably all Elements >0. Having a team of 2 Defenders, 2 Supporters, and 2 DPS (Assassin or Mage) will get you through most of the fights. You non-DPS pets will benefit from being Neutral element, while your DPS can be any element as long as they can make up for their innate negative element. Note: Elephant's burn effect does not work against Delirious Essence.

For equipment, gear defensively for all pets except maybe 1 or both of your DPS. Having knives to shred through defenses is important - the more the merrier. If using 2 Assassins as your damage-dealers, try swapping a Defender or Supporter for a Blacksmith with the Rune Patch armor to increase damage output. Neutral pets will be your best defensive option, but on-element pets like Balrog, Sylph, Witch, Ape, Succubus, etc., will have higher damage potential (depending on multiple factors, just a rule of thumb). Hourglass is a good option as a Supporter to help mitigate the speed damage done by Delirious Essence, but will take more damage being a non-Neutral pet.

Delirious Essence has a special ability to deal partially unmitigated damage when it attacks, equal to an additional X% damage per attack where X is the current fight number you are on. So for example if you are on fight 10, Essence will deal an additional 10% damage per attack that bypasses the Supporter damage reduction aura. This extra damage shows up in the logs as "extra" after the initial damage, but before speed damage.

Stats for the boss are as follows. Essence is Neutral element, which means it will target the weakest element on your pets. For this reason, it is important to have them all fairly high with >0 as a minimum.

= Team Examples =

Some players were generous enough to give me screenshots of the teams they used to complete certain floors, these teams will be listed at roughly the last fight they were able to win. If you would like to use these as a comparison to make your own team, remember certain gear/gems/items could change your teams outcome. If you would like to add a screenshot of your own please message Skyshatter on discord.

Fight 25
Defeated with 1 S Potion in 40 turns

Fight 27




Fight 33
Used 32 Phoenix Feathers