Crusaders Quest Goddesses Guide

Crusaders Quest Goddesses Guide by bluenpc

I’ve been noticing that many players do not fully understand how to use the goddesses. This guide will aim to offer an in depth analysis on how and when to use each goddess.

In order of appearance:

1. Sera
2. Prestina
3. Anut
4. Aubrey
5. Bella
6. Dionne
7. The Seventh Goddess?!

Sera

The very first goddess you’ll use and she’s good all the way up to extreme late game.

Upon activation, your heroes will be protected by a shield for two seconds. This shield blocks all damage for the first second, and half of it for the next second.

This ability is extremely useful in places where there is a threat of a huge single nuke:

• World Boss (This is almost a necessity as most World Bosses carry instakill attacks and until you build a more advanced team this is the best defence mechanism you can get)
• PVP against huge 1-shotters (Leon, Mondrain, Hikari, Dorothy, and Giparang come to mind — watch their SP bar. The moment it increases by 60, use Sera. In the case of Hikari, watch for the blue flash)
• PVP against skills with casting times and huge damage output (Overdrive, Phoenix Feather and Lapis & Lazuli for example)
• PVP against backline hitters when you’re running a ranged DPS unit (E.g. if you run into a Sigruna and you cannot afford to have your Archon knocked out)

Sera, however, does not remove nor prevent debuffs such as stun or armour reduction.

Prestina

The second goddess you’ll meet is a personal favourite of mine, and is one of the most versatile goddesses in the game. She does not have an exact window of effectiveness, rather it is up to you to capitalise on situations where her abilities would help you the most.

Activating her ability instantly entangles all enemies regardless of distance. This disable lasts 3 seconds and any damage done during this window comes with a “30% lifesteal” flag.

Casting your skills before or after activating Prestina’s ability is irrelevant. What matters is that they are entangled when the damage connects.

Enemies will not be able to attack if you are out of their range while rooted.

She is useful in situations where you want to buy yourself time:

• Quest maps where your healing is insufficient
• Quest maps where enemies are doing too much damage
• Quest maps where you farm with one single attacker and no heal (Leon with 2 weak units)
• Quest maps where you run ranged units (Entangling them from afar helps to buy you time for more attacks and blocks)
• FOS where you need regeneration but do not have enough Priests (Use Prestina in the first few floors, her pseudo-healing will not suffice for the later stages).

Prestina is not as effective in PVP as you would mainly want to burst down enemies rather than outlast them. Refer to the Bella chapter for a more detailed explanation.

Anut

The desert goddess, and feared by many PVP teams. She does not seem to be as good as Prestina in the early stages, but come late game she becomes an integral part to your PVP success.

Anut’s ability instantly reduces all enemies’ attack power by 50%, and removes all purgable buffs. This mainly includes the attack and defence buffs; the “sword” and “shield” icons near each unit’s HP bar. She does not usually remove buffs that count as block enhancements, the “shoe” icon. She also does not remove “activation buffs”, such as the blue flash that Robin Hood gives off when an ally activates a chain-3.

She does not prevent buffs after activation, meaning if an enemy reactivates a buff during the sandstorm, you’ll have to wait to the next sandstorm to remove it.

The attack reduction is the icing on the cake; you’ll mainly use her for the ability to counter specific units in PVP:

• Archon (This is a huge one. The moment she activates a chain-3, she buffs the entire team. Immediately cast sandstorm! It will remove all the bonuses granted, meaning you’ll take a less painful set of meteors. Also, she’ll have to use another 6 blocks to get her spheres out)
• Alex/Joan (Once you cast your attack blocks, check if your opponent’s Alex or Joan have a defence buff on. Purge it, and they won’t be able to soak up damage for their team)
• Mundeok (Sandstorm can’t cancel Mundeok’s charge, but it will purge the “count-as-chain-3” bonuses for the other two heroes, and usually this screws them over HARD)
• Thor (Purge him the moment you see his shield, and you will be safe from his counter attacks)
• Korin (Purge removes her party’s shield)
• When only the last healer is left (50% attack power reduction means less heal, letting you win faster)

She is also useful in certain situations where enemies have strong buffs:

• DioNemesis’ different buff modes

Aubrey

If you’re scratching your head as to who this goddess is, you’re not alone. She is so rarely used people tend to forget about her.

Activating her will purge all debuffs from your team, and extend and improve the effects of buffs by 3 seconds and 25% respectively. This is multiplicative and not additive. This means that a 50% attack increase would translate to 50%*1.25= 62.5% increase under Aubrey’s ability.

Prior to one of the previous patches, buff stacking was a strategy used by many players (though not so many since it required time to set up). Since buffs are not stackable anymore, Aubrey is now almost solely used to purge Dionne’s miss debuff in PVP.

Should you use Aubrey, use her against teams that are likely to run Dionne:

• Teams with Stanya, Nazrune or both. (These teams rely on keeping their opponents in the air for as long as possible. Consider running Bella against Nazrune though, because she is extremely easy to kill)
• 2x Priest, 1x DPS (This is a very common World Boss team, except on Fridays and Saturdays, they will usually run Bella to farm the bread dungeon)

Do not run Aubrey against the following World Boss team though:

• Mundeok, Yeowoodong, 1x DPS (A common world Boss team that relies on Dionne spamming along with Shield of Invincibility. It is more effective to run Anut to purge Mundeok’s buff and stop them from gaining perma-invincibility.)

That said, you are generally better off using Bella to try and KO your opponents ASAP. The AI for Dionne is currently rigged and often activates it much faster than you can purge it. Unless it is the miss chance that really screws you over, Aubrey is usually not the optimal choice and she comes with little more compared to other Goddesses.

Currently, there are players who use Aubrey to run through FoS with Korin’s shield to varying levels of success. I’ll leave this bit here until I get more information.

Bella

So many people swear by her I’m surprised there isn’t merchandise for her. Or is there already?

She does half a point of neutral damage per point of damage done during her activation. As with Prestina, it does not matter when you casted your skills, it only matters the damage is done during its activation. Neutral damage is not reduced by any form of armour, resistance, or immunity, meaning even if a boss is “immune to physical damage”, Bella’s extra 50% damage will bypass and still hit as normal.

What makes her so useful is the ability to quickly dispose of enemies; simply put, death is the ultimate form of crowd control, and there is no better example in a goddess. Many times you’ll realise that while Prestina helps you to survive an extra 3 seconds, but if you’re not able to remove the threats quickly enough you’ll still end up losing.

An extra effect that Bella applies is increasing the size of your heroes and attacks. This helps in increasing the effective range of your attacks. It is especially useful when using certain units and skills, such as Leon, whose sword even at chain-3 will usually not hit the backline.

Expect to see a lot see and use a lot of her in places such as:

• PVP when running an all-out attack team
• PVP when running fragile attack heroes (Mondrain, Sneak, etc)
• PVP when using skills or heroes with somewhat limited range (Most notably Leon, warriors running Avatar of Protection, and mages running Thunderbolt or Magic Storm)
• PVP when you won’t be able to tank your opponent’s damage anyway
• Quest/FOS maps where the solution is to kill the enemies before they kill you
• Quest maps where you run one solo AOE attacker
• Quest maps where monsters have immunities to certain kinds of damage
• World Boss where you can solo and you’re aiming for MVP
• Bread Dungeon since you won’t be killed anyway
• Faster farming (With the right heroes and Bella, you can instakill an entire wave or even two at the same time)

Dionne

Expect to see more of her now that she is much easier to obtain. Loved by many and hated by many more (especially when facing her in PVP), she brings a whole lot of utility to the table.

Dionne, when ordered to cast her ability, slams into the opponent’s team and deals 5% of their maximum HP as damnage. The impact knocks them up in the air for approximately a second, and when they land they suffer a miss chance of 70% for 2 seconds.

There are many things to note about this ability.

First off, unlike the other goddesses, her ability is not activated instantly. Instead, it comes with a 1 second cast time which you should factor in. This means that activating it when you’re almost dying would not save you — you should use it a second before you are in danger.

Secondly, knocking your opponents up in the air is a unique defense mechanism available only to a few other units and mages running Magic Storm. Units, while in the air, are able to attack. But if there is no target within range, their attacks will miss. This is similar to using a block in a quest map in between waves and hitting nothing. This is especially effective against hunters and archers. Their projectiles will fly above you, and with the right timing, skills such as Lapis & Lazuli and Phoenix Feather will miss entirely because they were fired while airborne.

Thirdly, the miss chance that they suffer is indicated by a debuff with a question mark. This lasts for 2 seconds and you should wait for a second if you’re looking to chain another slam right after.

You’ll usually want to use Dionne in the following situations:

• World Boss (5% of the boss’s maximum HP is very significant, and the miss chance helps you to survive its attacks)
• PVP against heroes that attack projectiles move horizontally (D’artagnan, Sneak, users of Lapis & Lazuli and Phoenix Feather, etc)
• PVP when running teams that rely on continually knocking opponents up (Stanya, Nazrune, Mages with Magic Storm or any combination of these)
• Tundra (You should generally use Dionne in the Tundra stages since she offers both offensive and defensive utility, unless you know what you’re doing)

Me

The last goddess which wrote this. I kid, I hope this has helped fellow crusaders understand which Goddess is useful for which situation. Feel free to suggest add-ons to the specific scenarios!