Dive 60 guide
Introduction
On 20 September 2023, Bside added Dive levels 56-60 to the game. While the enemies in these dive floors are not very unique, some of them have been designed to directly counter common strategies used to easily auto branch dive spawns.
Since the main Dive levels of 56-60 only have to be done once (so manual-playing them is reasonably easy), this guide will focus completely on explaining stable full-auto strategies for Dive 60 (Lvl 140) spawns from your branch offices.
Brief Explanation of Dive Auto Mechanics
As explained in a previous Dive guide, the game will try to use the least number of teams possible for the dive when playing on auto. To do this, the game prioritises using the team with the ship that has the highest health (in percentage). However, if there are multiple teams with ships that have the exact same health percentage, the game will prioritise using teams in the order that you put them in. In other words, it is possible to use only one team for auto diving if you can consistently maintain your first team's ship health at 100% throughout the dive.
Why is this important?
In all previous dive floors, it was quite easy to keep your first team's ship on full health. With a proper team comp, pretty much every enemy would have absolutely zero chance of even getting a single hit on your ship.
However, Bside is probably not very happy with us cheesing dives in this manner, because in the new dive floors, there are enemies that have been designed to directly attack your ship. Nonetheless, I have still managed to figure out how to properly auto Dive 60 spawns using the special strategies that I designed and will explain below.
Enemies to Look Out For in Dive 60
In the hard difficulty yellow node (marked by a red exclamation mark), there will be an extremely tanky enemy Rhino which spawns at about 2:53 on the in-game timer. This Rhino spawns almost directly in front of your ship, and because it is a Siege type unit, it will immediately drive past your units and start directly attacking your ship. Due to its tankiness, it is physically impossible to kill it before it reaches your ship. The best strategy I have found to counter this is to use units like Harim, Arius, Rearmed Kaci (set to leader for her leader skill), and Awakened Shin Jia, and Operators like Sigma and Villeta, to shield your ship and absorb incoming damage from Rhino.
In both the normal and hard difficulty red node, there will be an enemy Estaque which spawns all the way at the other end of the map at about 2:51 on the in-game timer. This enemy Estaque is a tower type unit that can hit enemies across the entire map, and prioritises attacking the furthest enemy it can find. As you might have already figured out, these mechanics mean that the enemy Estaque will be able to directly attack your ship the moment it spawns. In addition, the enemy Estaque cannot be stunned, hitstunned, or distracted (because you physically cannot place a targetable unit further away from Estaque than your own ship), making it extremely difficult to deal with it properly. Once again, I have found that the most reliable method of protecting your ship is shielding it with units and operators.
The boss node is essentially the same as the red node, but with enemies that are both tankier and do a lot more damage.
Good Units and Operators to Use
As mentioned previously, units and operators that shield your ship (e.g. Harim, Arius, Operator Sigma, Operator Villeta, etc.) are very good to have in your squad.
For DPS units, cheap and reliable units like rearmed Gaeun and Old Administration Rifleman are good choices.
In terms of frontliners, Awakened Yuna is by far the best and most stable choice. There are multiple enemies with extremely high hp pools, so her hp drain aura is very helpful, while also having good AOE on her attacks and skills. Her buff lock (preventing enemies from getting buffs) and buff strip are also very helpful, because there is an enemy called "Valeriy" (who appears as a large Old Administration Shieldman) in the boss node who gives himself an extremely large shield upon reaching half health, which delays match runtime significantly.
To round out the rest of your team, use a variety of buffers, debuffers, or more dps units if you need.
With all that being said, let us move on to strategies themselves.
First Strategy: One Main Team + Supports
Despite Bside's attempt at preventing players from using one team to clear all nodes, I have still managed to find a team comp that can do exactly that.
The team I made for this strategy revolves around using Arius, Harim, Rearmed Kaci, and Operator Sigma to provide an unbreaking chain of shields on the ship. Arius and Operator Sigma are especially important here, because Arius' ult and Sigma's skill trigger can shield the ship even while there are no units near the ship (important for the red nodes with Estaque, because your shielders will not stay near your ship, unlike the yellow node with Rhino).
Refer to the video below for a look at the full team comp, and a demonstration of how the team works in a Dive on full auto (only the first two nodes were manually selected, to demonstrate the stability of the team comp without useful artifacts on the hard difficulty yellow and red nodes). Timestamps for important fights are in the video description.
For reference, Arius, Harim, and A.Yuna all had T7 76.2% CDR sets.
Second Strategy: Double the Teams, Double the Trouble
This second strategy that I designed deals with the chip damage on your ships via another method: Rather than using constant shields to absorb every bit of chip damage, the damage is instead split up between two (or more) teams.
This strategy is a lot more intensive on your gear and your units, because you need at least two fully equipped teams which can still efficiently deal with enemy nodes, whereas the previous strategy mentioned only needs one fully equipped team + some support leaders to deal with every single enemy node. As such, I do not recommend this second strategy over the first one, but it is still a viable strategy that works. Refer to my video below for an example of how a double team run can work. As noted previously, this strategy is not limited to just using two teams, but the more teams you use, the heavier the strain on your gear.
Other Strategies to Consider
There is another potential strategy, where you bring just one team and leave all the other team slots empty, so that even if your first team takes damage to its ship, the game will not switch to another team, because there is literally no other team to switch to. However, I do not recommend this team for two reasons:
You cannot just abandon the idea of protecting your ship from chip damage. If you do not protect your ship, it will very likely eventually explode, due to accumulating damage over time from red nodes before dying in the boss node.
Since you have to still protect the ship no matter what, you might as well just use the first strategy I mentioned in this guide anyway, since that strategy already focuses on perfectly protecting the ship, which then allows you to use leader supports on other teams to make your run easier. With a solo ship strategy, you do not have to pay as much attention to chip damage prevention, but you have no supports whatsoever to make the run easier and faster.
The final strategy to consider is to just... sweep the Dive. No need to worry about chip damage if you are only doing one fight.
Closing Remarks
That is all I have to say for this Dive guide. If you were struggling with finding a stable auto comp for Dive 60, I hope this guide helped you out.
Thank you for reading, and I will catch you guys in another time and place!
~TripBitShooter