Chaos Zero Nightmare (CZN)CassiusBuild and Guide

Quests

Cassius’ Pop Eyed Popper upgrade randomly starts one of four Quests, which last until the end of battle. These Quests can be completed just by playing cards, and they grant free Quest Cards with decent effects.

• Triple 0: Play 3 cards that cost 0 AP.
• Deals 40% damage per Attack card used this turn..
• Triple 0 is very difficult for Cassius to complete on his own, as all of his cards cost ≥1 AP at base; Dice Trick can be discounted to 0…but only if you complete 2 Quests first, creating a catch-22 situation. If you don’t have the right teammates, this Quest can brick for the entire fight. The Quest Card works as a nice single-target finisher after spamming a lot of 0-cost attacks.
• Triple 1: Play 3 cards that cost 1 AP.
• Deals 90% damage, and heals for 90%.
• Triple 1 is relatively easy to complete, but its Quest Card is quite weak. Healing is very situational and the damage isn’t great, making Triple 1 one of Cassius’s less powerful Quests.
• Straight: Play cards costing 0, 1, and 2 AP.
• For 1 turn(s), gain 2 stacks of Morale, Resolve, and Fortitude.
• Straight is also a difficult Quest to complete, as playing 2 AP cards isn’t something you can do particularly often unless you have access to AP generation. Because both Morale and Resolve affect card multipliers, you want to complete this Quest at the start of your turn to take full advantage of its effects. Quest progress carries over between turns, so we recommend leaving the 0-cost or 1-cost card until last so you can complete the Quest at the start of a turn.
• Full House: Play 1 card from each combatant.
• Draw 1 card.
• Full House is the best option here—if you’re lucky enough to get it. Its activation condition is extremely easy to fulfill, and getting a free Draw 1 is great.

Morale Down

-Morale causes enemies to lose -20% damage multiplier per stack of -Morale they have. This is especially effective at mitigating damage from enemy Consecutive Attacks.

4

Death Trick

Ego Skill

Create 2 Quest Card(s).
Decrease Morale of all enemies by 3 for 1 turn.

Show Effects

Death Trick

One of the most expensive Ego Skills in the game, Death Trick is a potent defensive tool. Its Morale -5 debuff on all enemies is especially powerful on enemies that deal multiple hits with Consecutive Attacks, sometimes reducing the amount of damage you take to 0. The generated Quest Cards are random, so you’ll usually want to activate this at the start of your turn so you know what you’re working with.

1

Card

Attack

100% Damage.​

Card

Cassius’ basic attack card. Its 1 AP cost can help complete the Triple 1 or Straight Quests. Potential 3-1 grants this a 30% chance to Draw 1.

2

Wild Card

Attack

220% Damage.​

Wild Card

Cassius’ other basic attack card. Its 2 AP cost can help complete the Straight quest. If you don’t have another 2-cost card in your deck, it may be worth keeping this until you find a better activator. Potential 3-1 grants this a 30% chance to Draw 1.

1

Mana Field

Skill

Heal 100%.​

Show Effects

Mana Field

Cassius’ basic healing card. Not very important for Cassius’ gameplay.

1

Pop Eyed Popper

Upgrade

Start a random 1 out of 4 Quests.

Pop Eyed Popper

Cassius’ main source of Quest Cards. [Pop Eyed Popper] randomly starts 1 of 4 Quests, which generate their associated Quest Cards upon completion. Play this as early as possible and reap the rewards.

1

Devil Dice

Attack

160% Damage.
Draw 1.​

Devil Dice

A single-target attack that also Draws 1. A good cycling card that also helps complete 1-cost Quest requirements.

1

Shuffle

Skill

[Exhaust]

Discard all cards in hand.
Draw for each.

Show Effects

Shuffle

Great card at base. Discards all your cards, draws an equal number of cards, and Exhausts. Shuffle can bail you out whenever you draw poorly or need to cycle through your deck faster. Note that Shuffle doesn’t include itself in the card count, so you’ll end up with one fewer card in hand than when you started.

2

Dice Trick

Attack

240% Damage.
Decrease cost by the number of completed Quests.​

Dice Trick

An expensive attack card that discounts itself by 1 every time you complete a Quest. Generally, a dead card until you can make it cheaper, but its 2 AP cost can help complete the Straight quest.

1

Joker

Skill

Choose 1 card(s) from Draw Pile to Draw.

Joker

Joker is Cassius’ signature card. It allows him to search the whole Draw Pile to draw a card of your choice. Extremely flexible and improves your consistency significantly, and it doesn’t even Exhaust like Shuffle! It’s much stronger at E1 because it also allows you to search the Discard Pile. At E0, you’re a bit sad if you draw this with nothing in your Draw Pile. Regardless, it’s an incredibly powerful card at base.

• 3-1: Grants a 30% chance to Draw 1 to both of Cassius’ basic attacks. 30% isn’t enough to count on, but it can help a little bit early in your run if you draw poorly. It’s not as impactful as some other Combatants’ 3-1s can be.
• 5-1: Increases his basic attacks’ damage. Makes them a little better to play in conjunction with 3-1, but you’ll likely still end up removing them from your deck.
• 7: Incredible. Getting Morale and Fortitude for a turn every time you complete a Quest makes Cassius an even more potent support. You already want to complete Quests early in a turn, but this makes it even more important if you want to take advantage of Morale.

Standard Playstyle

Cassius likes to start by setting up his Quest with Pop Eyed Popper, so you can get rewarded for playing cards for the rest of the battle. After that, you can use Cassius’ vast arsenal of draw effects to curate your hand. Draw more cards with Devil Dice, cycle out your hand with Shuffle, and draw the perfect card with Joker. All the while, you can complete Quests to generate Quest Cards and discount Dice Trick. If you’re facing down more damage than you can block, use his Ego Skill to reduce the enemy’s attack damage.

Tips:

• Quest Cards do not count towards Quest progression.
• Progress on a Quest, which is displayed below Cassius’ icon, carries over between turns.
• Always play your Draw effects first so you can plan out your turn with the most information.
• His Nightmare mode debuff inflicts 4 Stress every time he acquires equipment. Consider saving his slots until stronger late-run equipment becomes available.

Note

For every Epiphany, we're colored their name based on how useful we think it is compared to the other variants. Here's the key to the colors:

• Epiphany Name - the best variant,
• Epiphany Name - a good variant,
• Epiphany Name - a niche variant.

Recommended Loadout

1

Tetra's Authority [2-PC]

[2-PC]: +12% Defense.

Healer's Journey [2-PC]

[2-PC]: +12% Max HP.

Flex

Full Support Cassius is best equipped with 2P Tetra’s Authority to boost healing, as well as 2P Healer’s Journey to maximize survivability. After that you can either use 2P

Seth's Scarab [2-PC]

to boost his potential in Zero System or 2P

Black Wing [2-PC]

if you want to raise his damage a bit.

2-PC Bonuses

• 

  Tetra's Authority [2-PC]

  - 12% defense passively, which boosts healing a good amount but also contributes to the whole team's tankiness. Best 2P option for Support Cassius.
• 

  Healer's Journey [2-PC]

  - A solid boost to overall team survivability via a 12% HP boost, not game-changing, but will help survive large one shots.
• 

  Seth's Scarab [2-PC]

  - Boosts Basic Heal, Shield, and Damage cards by +20% multiplicatively. Strong if you’re leaving in any of Cassius’s basic cards, but solid even if you’re not when playing Zero System. Mainly used because there are very few viable set options left.
• 

  Black Wing [2-PC]

  - Black Wing can be used as an alternative to Seth’s Scarab if you’d prefer to boost Cassius’s damage slightly in endgame instead of gaining an edge in Zero System.

Weapon

• Flex

Armor

• 

  Reinforced Combat Suit
• 

  Assault Boots
• 

  Survivor's Hood
• 

  Standard Gas Mask

Trinket

• 

  Water Drops of the Goddess
• 

  Grey Orb
• 

  Magic-Infused Sapphire

Comments - Weapons

1. Flex - Some Cassius builds are capable of dealing significant damage, while others are mostly dedicated to support. Support Cassius doesn’t have much synergy with any of the shop weapons. Instead, use an Event/World item, fill it with a selection of your choice, or when focusing on offense, lean into a damage boosting choice instead.

Comments - Armor

1. 

   Reinforced Combat Suit
   - Grants a 60% fixed shield at the end of every turn as long as you have no shield before clicking the end turn button. Solid for granting a little extra sustain every turn in shieldless teams. Multiple instances of this equipment also work and stack together, allowing for up to 180% end-of-turn fixed shield. Useless when run with active shielders, though.
2. 

   Assault Boots
   - Deploys a 200% fixed shield on the 2nd turn of combat. A strong one-off shielding option that triggers on a turn when enemies are very likely to be attacking you. An okay option in short fights, but loses value in longer ones.
3. 

   Survivor's Hood
   - Offers a 140% fixed shield on the 1st turn of combat. A smaller shield than Assault boots, which, when combined with the fact that many enemies use their first turn to buff themself or debuff you, makes it slightly less appealing. Still a reasonable choice, though, and better than nothing.
4. 

   Standard Gas Mask
   - A non-shield option that grants 1 stack of immunity, blocking a debuff incoming from enemies. If you’re having no issues with survivability, it can actually be more beneficial than shielding, also stacks with other characters using it, granting up to 3 immunity at the start of battle.

Comments - Trinkets

1. 

   Water Drops of the Goddess
   - Applies one stack of the Save buff at the start of battle, which preserves AP for as long as it persists, but one stack is removed at the end of each turn you conserve any AP. Unless you always perfectly spend your AP will eventually net you at least 1 spare AP. It can also be stacked if you have it on multiple characters, allowing you to start with multiple save stacks, therefore saving AP across multiple turns.
2. 

   Grey Orb
   - An always useful option which grants you 3 stacks of damage reduction at the start of the fight, reducing the first 3 hits you take by 15%. Strongest against single-hit bosses, not as useful against many small or multi-hit foes.
3. 

   Magic-Infused Sapphire
   - Inflicts 1 full bar of Tenacity to all enemies at the start of the battle, assuming you have an Initiation card in your hand, regardless of which combatant it belongs to. A good way to accelerate breaking enemies and accessing extra AP, also stacks between multiple combatants, allowing you to inflict up to 3 bars at the start of the battle if all your characters have it. Some Cassius epiphanies have Initiation, but even without them, he can still trigger this off of other characters' cards.

Important!

CZN is a game of randomness; sometimes you’ll be offered generic or Divine epiphanies that are stronger than a character's standard five options. In these cases, breaking the listed build can result in an even more powerful save. Adjust as you see fit!

Card Removal Priority

• Mana Field: Mana Field is a great removal option since we are focused on card draw with Cass in general.
• Cards: Cards can be great early in a pinch as a card draw option, but will need to be removed for better options later on.
• Wild Card: Wild Card is way too expensive for a chance to draw 1 card and needs to be removed fairly quickly once you start having access to some of his other cards.

Card Dupe Priority

Devil Dice, Shuffle, and Joker are your 3 Dupe priority targets, depending on your playstyle and build you are going for.

• Joker is great if you need to select specific cards to get your build or combo off, acting as essentially a dupe for an extra AP for your team.
• Devil Dice can be a great dupe option as well if you just want more general card draw in your deck, especially if you are duplicating Devil Dice II with the Retrieve 3 option on it for Devil Dice IV, if you want to discard things like Dirge Bullets with Renoa.
• Shuffle is also a strong dupe option, allowing you to essentially draw a new hand, due to its Exhaust tag. Having multiple of these can be very handy.
• An honorable mention would be duping the upgrades for Dice Trick IV and V, but they are generally expensive and take away using AP from your main DPS, and usually require you to build heavily around the quest mechanic.

Epiphany Alternatives

• Pop Eyed Popper: Pop Eyed Popper I and II are generally the second-best options outside of Pop Eyed Popper IV. You lose the option to select the quest, but gain either Initiation to start with it in your hand or Retain, which can be good if you wanna save your Quest cards for when you need them.
• Devil Dice: Devil Dice I, II, III, and IV are all pretty even in terms of use, and it becomes more of a situational decision. Devil Dice II is great to use multiple times in a turn if you have access to a lot of extra AP. Devil Dice III is great to draw a lot of cards in stages with multiple enemies or with bosses that spawn enemies. Devil Dice IV provides the most consistent upfront card draw for the cost and can synergize well with certain DPS with the Discard mechanic. Devil Dice V is strong in high AP cost decks, allowing for a 0-cost card draw option with some DMG to go along with it.
• Shuffle: Shuffle has 3 very strong epiphanies with Shuffle I, II, and III, each providing strong ways to refill your hand depending on the build and need you have. Shuffle I allows for 2 uses, which is a nice addition to have in your deck, as for Shuffle II allows specific hand manipulation by only discarding the cards you don't want. Shuffle III even allows you to have no cards in your hand and just draw 5 cards after moving all the cards from your hand and discard back to the draw pile for the cost of 1 AP. Shuffle IV is not bad, but it's a little more Niche. It allows for a bit of top deck manipulation as long as you have another card draw option to get them with a big benefit, which is its 0 AP cost. Shuffle V is probably the weakest due to how niche it is; a lot of units hover around 1 and 0 cost cards, so reaching the 4 requirement consistently might be hard to do. If you build around this and are using Cass in a high AP cost team and can hit the 4 AP cost requirement consistently, then this becomes a great epiphany option due to it being a 0-cost and having no exhaust.
• Dice Trick: The average 2 cost of these epiphanies makes it really hard to justify when you need your AP for so many other cards in your deck for what some of these upgrades offer. In the case of Dice Trick IV and V, the upgrade tag solves this problem since you only need to use them once, and allows you to either generate an extra quest card (which is good with some combo) or to get passive healing and DMG, which is never bad to have. Dice Trick I and II are a bit on the weaker end for the AP cost, Dice Trick II is slightly better do to it being AOE. Most main DPS are single target, so having an AOE option on your Cass if you are building him as a bit of a secondary DPS can come in handy. Lastly, we have Dice Trick III, which costs 0 and builds DMG based on the number of quests completed. This is a great passive DPS option for Cass that won't take away from your AP budget for your main DPS.

Renoa

• Can search out Renoa’s most important combo pieces with Joker.
• Adds another potential combo piece to Renoa’s combos with Shuffle, which reloads the hand at the same time as dumping dirge bullets.
• Low or no-cost card draw combined with upgrades and a thin deck size makes Renoa’s combos more accessible.

Nia

• Both Nia and Cassius have incredible card draw, which, when combined, grants supreme accessibility to your deck.
• Nia scales off of active card discards, which Cassius’s Shuffle does on the entire hand. This combo adds a potent burst effect to whatever build you’re playing.

Mika

• Mika, in general, is strong in pretty much any team and generates more AP to allow us to draw more or use the cards we just finished acquiring.

Important!

If you’re losing runs when playing a damage-focused composition either to sanity or dying, consider using a team with more defensive characters - so including both a shielder and healer. This is especially important in the Zero System mode.

Renoa + Cassius Team

Damage

Support

Support

Mika + Cassius Triple 0 Team

Due to Cass's strong flexibility, he can synergize with lots of DPS. Each DPS usually wants to play around with different aspects of Cass’s kit, especially his quest mechanic. In the case of Triple 0, you want to use a DPS like Tressa or Luke to use a bunch of 0-cost ATK cards so you can generate multiple Triple 0 cards, which stack off the amount of ATK cards used for some very explosive turns.

Damage

Support

Support

Mika + Cassius Good Stuff Team

Like Mika and Cass triple 0, this is another variation on that core that specializes around different DPS, such as Rin and Mei Lin. The goal here is for Cass to just provide good value for these self-sufficient DPS options, like playing around Full house to draw more cards and get your combo pieces quicker, or you can play around Straight, which is risky due to requiring a 2-cost card but offers some great buffs to combo with if played out correctly.

Damage

Support

Support