RINNE
SAMSARA
Three towers, a deck of relics, and a set of rules that comes off a piece at a time the further up you get.
The three towers
Each one is a separate climb with its own floor count and its own level bracket. What you meet gets heavier the higher you go, and it never gets lighter again.
| Tower | Floors | Levels |
|---|---|---|
| The Ascent | 25 | 5 to 25 |
| The Zenith | 40 | 25 to 40 |
| The Apex | 50 | 40 to 50 |
How a climb goes
A weekly climb using your Daycare Pokemon rather than a run team. Every trainer faces the same opponents on the same floor of the same tower all week, so it is a fair race to see who gets furthest. Lose a battle and the climb ends there. It resets on Monday with new opponents.
The brackets overlap on purpose: a level 25 belongs to both The Ascent and The Zenith, so a Pokemon graduates on your schedule rather than being thrown out the moment it levels. Reaching a tower last floor unlocks the next. A bracket says a Pokemon is ready; clearing a tower says you are.
Opponent levels barely move inside a tower, about six from its first floor to its last. That is deliberate. Level is the ticket into a bracket, and the climb gets harder through bigger squads, stronger species and the damage you carry with you, not through the opposing level running away from you.
Damage carries between floors. Whatever HP a Pokemon walks off a floor with is what it starts the next one on, and anything that faints stays fainted for the rest of the climb. This is the real difficulty of the mode: there is no healing between floors except the Quick Patch relic, which restores a fraction of what is missing.
Boss floors land every tenth floor and always on the last floor of a tower. They are led by a Gym Leader and field one more Pokemon than the floors around them.
Experience is paid for knockouts, to whichever Pokemon actually put the opponent down, credited the moment it happens rather than at the end. Being sent out and beating nothing earns nothing. A very low level beating something far above it still earns more than a high level would, the way the main series pays catch-up experience. One knockout is worth at most one level, and anything past that is not carried over, so finishing off something another Pokemon softened cannot be farmed.
Relics
Three cards are dealt every 3 floors, and a card that could no longer do anything is never on the table. Every relic, at the size the Spire deals it.
The shard shop
Shards are earned per floor and spent between them. Each item has a hard limit per climb.
| Item | Shards | Max | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reroll | 40 | 2 | Redraw the three relics on offer, once, at a blessing screen. |
| Recall | 60 | 2 | Force the opponent to swap out. Spend it from your bag, mid battle. |
| Reforge | 120 | 2 | Give back your most recent relic and draft a new one in its place. |
| Antidote Kit | 25 | 3 | Clears every status your squad is carrying. |
| Scout | 30 | 3 | Names the next floor and everything standing on it. |
| Master Key | 250 | 1 | The next relic you take ignores its cap. |
Modifiers
The towers do not stop at their last floor. Past it the climb becomes an endgame, and one new rule arrives every five floors and stays for the rest of the run. They arrive in a fixed order per tower, so a climb is the same shape every time even though the relics are not, and each one announces itself on the floor it lands.
The Ascent
| Step | Modifier | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thin Takings | Shards from each floor are cut by a third. |
| 2 | Weak Patches | Quick Patch restores 10% of missing HP instead of 20%. |
| 3 | No Repeats | Your lead cannot open two floors in a row. |
| 4 | Lingering Wounds | Status conditions carry between floors instead of clearing. |
| 5 | Cracked Relics | Every two of your Pokemon that faint burns one relic at random. |
| 6 | The Long Dark | Every floor cleared costs each survivor HP equal to 3% of its max. |
| 7 | Exhaustion | A Pokemon tires as it leads and recovers on the bench. Too tired and it cannot be sent out. |
| 8 | Thin Takings | Shards from each floor are cut by a third. |
| 9 | Weak Patches | Quick Patch restores 10% of missing HP instead of 20%. |
| 10 | The Long Dark | Every floor cleared costs each survivor HP equal to 3% of its max. |
| 11 | Ferocity | Every floor from here on, the enemy hits 1% harder than the floor before. It does not stop. |
The Zenith
| Step | Modifier | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Thin Takings | Shards from each floor are cut by a third. |
| 2 | Weak Patches | Quick Patch restores 10% of missing HP instead of 20%. |
| 3 | No Repeats | Your lead cannot open two floors in a row. |
| 4 | Lingering Wounds | Status conditions carry between floors instead of clearing. |
| 5 | Cracked Relics | Every two of your Pokemon that faint burns one relic at random. |
| 6 | The Long Dark | Every floor cleared costs each survivor HP equal to 3% of its max. |
| 7 | Exhaustion | A Pokemon tires as it leads and recovers on the bench. Too tired and it cannot be sent out. |
| 8 | Thin Takings | Shards from each floor are cut by a third. |
| 9 | Weak Patches | Quick Patch restores 10% of missing HP instead of 20%. |
| 10 | The Long Dark | Every floor cleared costs each survivor HP equal to 3% of its max. |
| 11 | Ferocity | Every floor from here on, the enemy hits 1% harder than the floor before. It does not stop. |
The Apex
| Step | Modifier | What changes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Exhaustion | A Pokemon tires as it leads and recovers on the bench. Too tired and it cannot be sent out. |
| 2 | Thin Takings | Shards from each floor are cut by a third. |
| 3 | Weak Patches | Quick Patch restores 10% of missing HP instead of 20%. |
| 4 | No Repeats | Your lead cannot open two floors in a row. |
| 5 | Lingering Wounds | Status conditions carry between floors instead of clearing. |
| 6 | Cracked Relics | Every two of your Pokemon that faint burns one relic at random. |
| 7 | The Long Dark | Every floor cleared costs each survivor HP equal to 3% of its max. |
| 8 | Thin Takings | Shards from each floor are cut by a third. |
| 9 | Weak Patches | Quick Patch restores 10% of missing HP instead of 20%. |
| 10 | The Long Dark | Every floor cleared costs each survivor HP equal to 3% of its max. |
| 11 | Ferocity | Every floor from here on, the enemy hits 1% harder than the floor before. It does not stop. |
Past the first lap
A climb that goes round again picks these up on top.
| Modifier | What changes |
|---|---|
| Thin Takings | Shards from each floor are cut in half now. |
| Weak Patches | Quick Patch restores 5% of missing HP now. |
| The Long Dark | Every floor cleared now costs each survivor HP equal to 5% of its max. |
The weekly podium
Each tower has its own weekly ranking and its own payout. The top three take a Shiny Egg and Kibble, first place an ordinary Egg on top. The Tower Master ribbon is won in The Apex only, so there is one a week rather than three.
| Place | Kibble |
|---|---|
| First | 1,000 |
| Second | 500 |
| Third | 100 |