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Epiphany Bonus
When entering Chaos, obtain 1 random Rare Card with an activated Epiphany.
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Best Build Guide
Passion
RangerLast updated: 01/May/2026
Check all the starting cards & the EGO Card available for Heidemarie
Sword Flash
Attack
Sword Barrier
Skill
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Sword Rain
Attack
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Elysium of Blades
Ego Skill
Check all the epiphany cards available for Heidemarie
Hero to All
Skill
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Thread of Light
Attack
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Effulgent Expansion
Skill
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Effulgent Compression
Skill
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Epiphany cards are special evolutions for the cards you can obtain while playing the roguelike mode. Only some cards in the character's deck can get Epiphany effects. Since there's quite a lot of them, we don't display them by default — press the button below to show them.
Check all the generated cards available for Heidemarie
Effulgent Blade
Attack
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Effulgent Release
Attack
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Doesn’t clog the deck with generated cards due to them remaining in the discard pile.
Offers solid AP efficiency due to [Quietus].
Able to self-enable her discard mechanics thanks to the [Linked] tag.
Strong single-target damage.
Inbuilt card draw and search options, baseline and through epiphanies.
Limited AoE outside of specific epiphanies.
Card draw comes with caveats that can limit its usage.
Generates a large amount of cards per turn, which unless managed well, can lead to wastage.
Heidemarie’s game plan is fairly straightforward and is focused on generating as many copies of her Effulgent Blade to then discard to trigger damage through their discard effect. This is made far easier through her signature mechanic [Linked], which causes all other [Linked] cards to discard themself when a [Linked] card is used manually. So use one [Linked] card, then automatically discard the rest for free! Through the combination of [Linked] cards, which either have discard effects or the [Quietus] tag (which plays them when discarded), Heidemarie can quickly dump all her cards into play without having to spend much AP at all.
The other major part of Heidemarie’s kit is her exclusive resource Effulgent Light, which is accumulated every time her Mythic Unique card Effulgent Compression is discarded. After gaining 3 Effulgent Light, Effulgent Compression transforms into Effulgent Release, a 0-cost attack which deals a large burst of damage based on how many Effulgent Blades you’ve recently played. Discarding a card 3 times to gain one attack card might sound hard, but Effulgent Compression has both the [Linked] and [Retrieve 3] tags, meaning as soon as you draw it, as long as you can trigger 3 [Linked] discards, you can gain all three stacks in a turn without much trouble, thanks to it constantly being added back through [Retrieve].
Between her many triggers on discard effects and cards with the [Quietus] tag, it should be no surprise that Heidemarie works best with other combatants that can discard cards for their own benefit, such as Nia and Cassius. In addition to her discard synergies when building around Heidemarie, it’s also a good idea to be on the lookout for additive sources of damage, as in her most common decks, she focuses on launching a large amount of smaller hits with relatively low initial multipliers, making buffs like Morale incredibly valuable. In terms of resources, most Heidemarie decks don’t require a heap of AP (although some need more than others), and while she does have some card draw options herself, it’s not generic or unconditional and often has caveats like applying [Linked] to all the cards drawn or having exhaust, so bringing card draw to her teams can still be beneficial and even recommended.
As for weaknesses, Heidemarie’s base kit has a distinct lack of AoE damage; however, she does have the option to deal some solid AoE damage with some of the Epiphinies offered on her cards, but not enough to align her as an AoE unit. Her other major weakness is associated with her being a card generation typed character, easily capable of generating 10+ cards a turn, which can lead to hand-size issues in certain team compositions and deck styles, especially when playing her alongside another card generation-based character.
Putting this all together, Heidemarie at a base has a very straightforward playstyle: create as many Effulgent Blades as possible, discard them from your hand using the [Linked] mechanic, and unleash big burst damage after gaining access to Effulgent Release. As a discard unit without mandatory high AP requirements, she functions well alone or with other Damage Dealers, allowing her to play as both a Hyper Carry or Sub Damage Dealer, with the catch being you’ll need to watch out for your hand size when generating large amounts of Efflugent Blades.
Linked: When a card has the [Linked] tag, when that card is played manually, it will discard all other cards in your hand that also have the [Linked] tag.
Effulgent Blade: Effulgent Blade is a 1-Cost Attack card that has the [Linked] tag. When played directly from the hand, it deals 120% damage to an enemy. When discarded, it deals a 120% Damage Extra-Attack to a random enemy. Additionally, when shuffling your discard pile into your deck, all Effulgent Blades will remain in your discard pile. This is a good thing as they won't clog your deck. Effulgent Blade is Heidemarie’s key card to play around and where the majority of her damage comes from, with the majority of her strategies built around generating as many of them as possible and buffing them to the max.
Effulgent Light: Heidemarie gains a stack of Effulgent Light whenever her Mythic card “Effulgent Compression” is moved to the graveyard. When Heidemarie gains 3 stacks of Effulgent Light, it transforms Effulgent Compression into “Effulgent Release” and removes all stacks of Effulgent Light.
Quietus : [Quietus] is a keyword that causes the tagged card to activate when discarded. When doing so, that card is no longer able to be moved out of the Used Card pile for the rest of the turn. Cards discarded by [Quietus] always get their full effect. [Quietus] cards with both an on-play effect and a discard effect will activate both effects when discarded.
Note : [Quietus] does NOT activate if discarded during the end of the turn; [Quietus] will only activate when a card has been discarded via a card effect.
Attunement: Attunement is an additional effect that activates whenever the card is moved from the draw pile to the hand. The effect that triggers is the wording that immediately follows “Attunement:” on the card, and does not additionally activate when the card is played.
Sword Rain III
Skill
Sword Rain III
Skill
Hero to All IV
Skill
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Effulgent Expansion IV
Skill
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Effulgent Compression
Skill
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Persona
Attack
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Sword Rain III
Skill
Sword Rain III
Skill
Hero to All IV
Skill
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Effulgent Expansion IV
Skill
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Effulgent Compression
Skill
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Persona
Skill
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Hero to All IV
Skill
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Effulgent Expansion IV
Skill
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Effulgent Expansion IV
Skill
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Effulgent Compression
Skill
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Flame of Eternity
Upgrade
Sword Rain
Attack
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Hero to All IV
Skill
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Effulgent Expansion IV
Skill
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Effulgent Expansion IV
Skill
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Persona
Skill
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Nia supports the discard play-style Heidemarie revolves around with her [Linked] cards well. Her deck contains multiple discard outlets and payoffs allowing for substantial consistency and damage boosts.
Passion
Passion
Instinct Passion
Order InstinctSylviaE4SylviaE0
SoliaE4
MarinE0SoliaE0
RosariaE4
NakiaE4RosariaE0
CRIT Rate > CRIT DMG = ATK%
ATK% > Passion DMG%
ATK%
Extra DMG% > CRIT Rate% = CRIT DMG% > ATK% >= ATK
CRIT RATE% = CRIT DMG% >= Unique Card DMG% > Common Card DMG% = Basic Card DMG%
3-1: Heidemaries 3-1 potential adds an additional effect to her Basic attack card, granting an additional +30% damage to Effulgent Blade for 1 turn. This is mostly some extra power in Chaos-based game modes and usually isn’t enough to allow the card to see play in Save Data-based modes. Cheap enough to unlock, there is no reason not to do so.
5-1: Her 5-1 Potential node increases the damage dealt by her Basic Attack Card “Sword Flash” by an additional +5%, and if her attack is greater than 500, it adds an additional +5%. Again, mostly providing utility in Chaos-style content, as basics are usually removed in Save-based modes. Not a must-have potential for Heidemary and should only be unlocked for chaos power or if you want the Divine Epiphany chance behind it.
7: Heidemarie’s potential 7 increases her Passion Attribute damage by +5%. Additionally, for each 20 Attack above 600, it adds an additional +2% to this value up to an additional 10% for a total of +15% Passion damage at 700 Attack. This is a great potential node to invest in and is extremely easy to reach, requiring only 700 Attack, which should be very obtainable even with sub-par Memory Fragments. A must-have unlock to get as soon as possible.
Introduces Desire Cards. Desire Cards are cards that primarily exist to give a strong passive buff from meeting certain Desire Thresholds (3/5/7) which can only be done by having multiple ally decks also made in Season-4.
For Desire Threshold, it’s common to run 1 Claim / 1 Survival / 1 Inquiry for use in a variety of builds; however, it's also common to just do 3 ‘X’ to meet effect easier or do 2 'X' / 1 Inquiry (to keep Sample Collection as Card Effect). This is extremely dependent on ally desire cards and individual team building goal.
’X’ refers to a ‘Placeholder for Specific Desire Threshold Goal’, i.e. if you are building your team for 7 Claim then you might do 2 Claim / 1 Inquiry.
Introduces Persona Cards and Engravings. Persona Cards are powerful cards that introduce new playstyles or ways of buffing/debuffing. Engravings are effects that can be applied to both the Persona Cards and Equipment, functioning near identically to Refinements of Season-2 but with new effects.
The most common Card Engraving to take for Attack Persona Cards is [For each Lux Engraving, 1 Mark to random enemies ] or [Attunement: Decrease Cost by 1 until used].
For Skill Persona Cards [When this card is Discarded, activate this card] is the recommended choice, provided you are playing this unit with a way to facilitate its discard.
The most common Equipment Engraving to optimize for is [When 5 or more cards have been created through abilities by allies, +30% Damage Amount to Extra Attacks of this unit (1 time per turn)]. This effect stacks. But, other damage increase effects are viable just significantly worse for Extra Attack units than the dedicated Engraving.
Introduces Refinements, effects on Equipment that allow one to get additional Equipment effects for no Faint-Cost (post-S2), and God’s Hammer, a powerful effect that gives a random copy of any other Equipment effect on-top of current Equipment but costs 10 Faint Memory and is only gained from the Boss.
Increase Damage Amount of Extra Attacks by 25%.
Increase Damage Amount of Attack Cards by 20%.
+30% Damage Amount of 1-cost or lower Attack Cards.
If doing Nuke, her best Season is technically Season 2 (w/ Decent God Hammer) and best refine is: When an Attack Card is activated on a target in a Vulnerable state, +15% Critical Chance. This playstyle and build has been heavily nerfed for several patches, though.
Because God’s Hammer is completely RNG at the end of the run, we do not have a specific recommendation since the player has very little control over the decision but for ATK-based Attackers usually ATK% gear is considered best and DEF-based Attackers DEF% gear is considered best.
Introduces Forbidden Cards, powerful cards that create new synergies and can only be acquired once per run (can be duped at one event or via save data editing).
Forbidden: Gesture of Freedom. Permanent Cost-Reduction to one card, can be manipulated.
Forbidden: Portrait of Fury. ++Draw, +Damage
Forbidden: Ecstasy of Violence. +Damage
Forbidden: Eternal Hunger. +Draw, ++AP (Ally Reliant)
Sword Rain
Attack
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Sword Rain I
Attack
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Sword Rain II
Attack
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Sword Rain III
Skill
Sword Rain IV
Skill
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Sword Rain V
Attack
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Hero to All
Skill
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Hero to All I
Skill
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Hero to All II
Skill
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Hero to All III
Skill
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Hero to All IV
Skill
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Hero to All V
Skill
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Hero to All I: An all-around solid card with basically no downsides. As long as you can discard it for the [Quietus] proc, it's a free to play search card that also can act as a discard engine when used for her own cards or allies who want that (like Diana).
Hero to All II: Changes to apply [Link] to 1-cost cards. This can be good for supporting Renoa or other 1-cost attack discarders, but she will likely be usurped by other units for supporting this specific role.
Hero to All III: Changes to apply [Link] to [Quietus] cards. This can be quite strong and is great for supporting Diana, specifically as a combo enabler. However, for herself, the value is much lower since her [Quietus] cards generally also have [Link] innately. Despite being situational the upside to this epiphany is that it has no downside having [Haste], costing 0 and also replacing itself with its card draw.
Hero to All IV: Now has [Exhaust 2] and can target-move a card and apply [Link] to it permanently. This card effectively becomes a card that searches any card from the deck or alternatively the discard pile too. The fact it applies [Linked] permanently also means it can act as a long-term combo enabler for some decks that require [Linked] on very specific cards. The downside of this epiphany is [Exhaust 2] meaning after the start of fights it loses value outside of the lingering [Linked] you’ve applied, this makes it good as a set-up tool or consistency piece for shorter fights.
Hero to All V: Draws 2 Attack Cards of Heidemaries and applies [Link] to all attacks in hand. This epiphany is an alternative consistency card to Hero to All I but instead of generic draws targets Heidemaries cards. The fact it applies [Linked] to all attack cards in hand can also make it a combo piece for certain decks however this effect can also limit its usage in decks without strong discard synergy making it more niche outside of discard based strategies. It also can be used in certain decks that want to target draw/cycle Heidemarie attack cards, like ones that utilize ‘Attunement:’ or other reusable effects (like Thread of Light V) being able to be replayed.
Neutral: Target Neutral Epiphany: 1 AP Neutral Epiphanies can be used with this card, and definitely improve its AP/Draw efficiency with effects similar to divines with no save data point cost.
Divine: The card is perfectly playable without divines, so it is recommended to use your save data points elsewhere.
Thread of Light
Attack
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Thread of Light I
Attack
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Thread of Light II
Attack
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Thread of Light III
Attack
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Thread of Light IV
Skill
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Thread of Light V
Attack
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Thread of Light I: This epiphany is just the base card with higher multipliers. Stand alone this card hits incredibly hard assuming you have even a basic set-up of [Linked] cards in your hand, however in most optimized decks built to maximize Effulgent Blade activations its value cannot compete with buffing cards such as Thread of Light III.
Thread of Light II: Base ratio on this now triples if at least 3 [Linked] cards are in hand. This is a premiere option for nuke Heidemarie builds, but these builds require a very specific set-up that most Heidemarie teams aren’t built for (multiplicative buffs, AP, draw, etc.).
Thread of Light III: Now gives a passive buff if in hand OR graveyard. This is a very easy passive buff to get, and it also does a free attack on-top of it thanks to the card gaining [Quietus]. Always a good option for any Effulgent Blade or high hit count [Linked] focused deck.
Thread of Light IV: Activates cards with [Linked] in hand. This card still moves them to used pile and effectively just plays the [Linked] cards in hand for free. For this card to be efficient and worth using you need a hand stacked with [Linked] cards, else its high cost of 3 is difficult to justify, additionally the fact it has [Exhaust] means this can
Thread of Light V: Becomes a 2-cost [Unique] card that either does a decent 2x multihit (manual) or an AOE extra attack (discarded). Since this card can be drawn multiple times a turn, you can potentially redraw and re-discard it for a lot of AOE hits. However, it requires specific set-ups to maximize its value and even then you’ll need to trigger it multiple times per turn in this way for it to beat out other options consistently.
Neutral: Target Neutral Epiphany: Draw 1 Neutral Epiphanies can be used with this card, and definitely improve its AP/Draw efficiency with effects similar to divines with no save data point cost.
Divine: Divine Epiphanies provide negligible value on this card; therefore, an Epiphany that synergizes with your build should be prioritized over divines.
Effulgent Expansion
Skill
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Effulgent Expansion I
Skill
Effulgent Expansion II
Skill
Effulgent Expansion III
Skill
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Effulgent Expansion IV
Skill
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Effulgent Expansion V
Upgrade
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Effulgent Expansion I: This Epiphany boosts the 1 turn buff from the base version and grants it [Linked] making it much easier to trigger without paying its steep 2 AP cost. Not as consistent an option as V due to its 1 turn duration, it also requires you to continually play the card to acquire its Effulgent Blades. Duplicating this only increases turn-duration.
Effulgent Expansion II: Now makes 2 effulgent blades and gives a strong additive buff for only the next 2 effulgent blade hits (a total card damage boost of 400%). The upside of this epiphany is that its buff can be gained and consumed multiple times in a turn whereas Effulgent I and V buffs can only be effectively gained once per turn, however the fact its buff only lasts for 2 Effulgent Blades instead of all blades for the turn holds it back.
Effulgent Expansion III: Creates an effulgent blade for each [Link] card in hand. Can create up to 5 blades (if half of hand is [Link] cards and has decently high potential, but is very hard to execute in practice. In the event you generate the full 5 blades with 5 [Linked] cards in hand the next card you play will discard your whole hand likely leaving you with no cards. To get around this you could generate only 3 or 4 but this is hard to consistently achieve and manage for a questionable damage increase at best.
Effulgent Expansion IV: Card now creates 6 Effulgent Blades in discard. This option is the go-to if using Sword Rain III or a nuke (Sword Rain V or Effulgent Light) set-up, but is otherwise not particularly good or recommended.
Effulgent Expansion V: Creates 2 effulgent blades at the start-of-turn and causes the additive passive card damage buff to all Effulgent Blades to linger permanently. Works in basically any build, provided you don't have a lot of retains or start-of-turn effects which could result in the start of turn swords causing hand size issues. Just a passive +2 blades every turn and passive permanent buff throughout the combat making it a no downside choice.
Neutral: Target Neutral Epiphany: Draw 1 Neutral Epiphanies can be used with this card, and definitely improve its AP/Draw efficiency with effects similar to divines with no save data point cost.
Divine: Which Divine Epiphany to go for will depend on what your team needs and which Epiphany you chose, but here are the main ones to look out for if you have spare Save Data: Draw 1
Sword Rain I: Card gains [Quietus] and now makes 2 effulgent blades. This card is close to the best in damage potential, while also being effectively 0-cost because of the [Quietus] tag. The main downside is that it requires 3 handspace when drawn (and likely at all times) to get its full value as you won't have space for the creations otherwise.
Sword Rain II: Now does 1 hit for every effulgent blade in hand giving it worthwhile damage potentials in carry set-ups, but at a great cost (pun intended) because it now costs 2 and doesn't have [Quietus]. All up it requires significant amounts of set-up and hand size to work on top of being more expensive and generating less blades than a choice like Sword Rain I.
Sword Rain III: Now launches 5 extra attacks, if you have at least 5 effulgent blades in discard/graveyard. This is another option that can be higher damage than Sword Rain I thanks to it offering both a higher hit count and all its attacks being Extra Attacks which have superior scaling. The cost of running this epiphany though is that it requires set-up to work and doesn’t have any inbuilt discard synergy from either quietus or link meaning it often requires a very different deck and team strategy to work effectively. However, it has a very high synergy and potential with Hugo because of its ability to activate his extra attacks off it, making it a premiere option for Hugo teams and a few other supportive/sub-DPS setups.
Sword Rain IV: Now makes 2 effulgent blades manually with [Retrieve]. This is a damage option that is similar or better than Sword Rain I in terms of raw output, and easier to use with handspace, but will cost you 1AP instead of Sword Rain I's [Quietus] free-play. It also lacks any damage effect itself and instead relies on double triggers of Effulgent Blade to compete.
Sword Rain V: It has every tag under the sun now, including [Exhaust], and does a bunch of damage based on the number of blades in graveyard. This card is worse in all situations not AOE than Effulgent Light (her signature card) while also being [Exhaust] and getting rid of your Effulgent Light, which makes it so you would rather just play around Effulgent Light.
Neutral: Target Neutral: You may take any neutral epiphany that appeals as the main reason to take the neutral version of this card is to drop the [Quietus] tag allowing you to loop (for as much draw and discard you have) this card to make a mass amount of effulgent blades off of only one copy of it (similar to Forbidden: Hunger on Nia). While a strong application it requires other cards and synergies to function.
Divine: Which Divine Epiphany to go for will depend on what your team needs and which Epiphany you chose, but here are the main ones to look out for if you have spare Save Data: Vulnerable 2 (Situational) Weakness Attack (For non-passion enemies) Treated as common card, draw 1 common card Draw 1 (Sword Rain IV) Cost-Reduction (Sword Rain III, IV)