What is Danger Close?
Danger Close is a competitive PvE game mode where players compete by fighting 2 bosses every other week. Each boss has 3 difficulty modes, and on the last difficulty, the players may choose additional risks for the fight to increase their score. Every season, each boss also comes with a set of units buffed and a debuff. Units, operators, and ships used on one boss CANNOT be used on the other, but duplicates may be used.
Is it worth competing in?
For the most part - it’s only for bragging rights, or if you’re desperate for Set Binaries. Clearing just the 10.5k score rewards - which should be doable even for casuals, gives 200 DC points and some other rewards, while a gear in the DC shop costs 400 points. Along with season rewards, semi-competitive players will be able to buy gear almost every week.
Risks and scoring
The base score on killing a DC boss is based on the time left after killing the boss. On the third difficulty of each boss, the kill rewards 10000 points with additional points being rewarded for the time remaining, with 1 second roughly giving 16 points and 1 minute giving 1000. The game tracks the kill time to milliseconds, making the base score very precise to the last digit. Only the highest score is recorded per boss.
Risks are a vital part of DC, being the main score source after being able to kill the boss.
| Risk | Tier 1 | Score Bonus | Tier 2 | Score Bonus | Tier 3 | Score Bonus |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Decreased ATK | -10% | +3% | -25% | +6% | -50% | +10% |
| Decreased HP | -10% | +3% | -25% | +6% | -50% | +10% |
| Decreased ASPD | -10% | +3% | -25% | +10% | -40% | +15% |
| Decreased Skill Haste | -10% | +3% | -25% | +10% | -40% | +15% |
| Increased Enemy HP | +15% | +3% | +30% | +6% | +50% | +10% |
| Increased Enemy ATK | +15% | +3% | +30% | +10% | +50% | +15% |
| Decreased Deployment Resource | -30% | +10% | - | - | - | - |
| Awakened Unit ATK, DEF, HP Decrease | -20% | +5% | -40% | +10% | - | - |
The player may choose as many debuffs as they like, but only one per type - you cannot pick both ATK -10% and ATK -25% in the same run.
Now that we have the risks listed out, which ones are worth using?
- Decreased ATK and ASPD are taken when the player has enough damage to comfortably hamper themselves while still being able to kill the boss.
- Decreased HP and increased enemy ATK are taken when the player’s units are able to survive the boss well enough.
- Decreased skill haste is often used as long as there are no mechanics in which a certain level of haste is required for some units, such as healers needing to heal at a specific time.
- Decreased deployment resource is used when the player does not have a strict cost restraint on their team; while this risk gives a heavy score bonus, it also heavily changes strategies in some bosses, so be careful when picking it!
- Awakened unit stat decrease is the most commonly used risk because awakened units are not prevalent in Danger Close top runs; however, newer players may struggle to kill bosses without the help of awakened units. Generally, this buff is used when there is no awakened unit on the team.
- Increased enemy HP debuff makes the boss absurdly tanky and gives a feeble amount of bonus points. It’s rarely ever worth taking.
Now you may be wondering: is it worth killing a boss slower if you can do it with a higher bonus from risks? The answer is simply, try it yourself and see which strategy scores higher! If you can estimate a kill time for the boss, you can also estimate your score for it, which would be calculated as:
Score=[time left(in seconds) * (50 / 3) + 10000] * (1 + score bonus %)
Bosses
In total there are 9 Danger Close bosses. Each requires a specific approach, or rather tactic, to kill. Check the below guides to learn what the bosses weak points are and how to deal with them!
