Tournament Guide: Brackets & Rewards

The Anime Adventures Tournament is a weekly competitive mode where your damage output is scored against everyone else in your bracket, and your final placement decides what you walk away with. If you have been grinding Story and Infinite maps without ever touching it, you are leaving trophies, gems, Star Remnants, and exclusive units on the table — plus the fastest route to a rank-specific title. This guide breaks down how the Anime Adventures Tournament is structured, what the current rotation asks of your team, and how to squeeze every point out of a 20-minute run.

How the Weekly Anime Adventures Tournament Is Structured

Tournament mode arrived in Update 10, and it plays nothing like the rest of the game. Instead of pushing waves until your team collapses, you are dropped into a bracket with other players and scored against them. When the week closes, everyone in that bracket is ranked by performance and paid out based on where they landed.

The part that catches most players off guard is the assignment system. Brackets are randomized every tournament, which means you never get to scout a soft lobby or hand-pick your rivals. Your only real control is the quality of your own run.

Getting in is straightforward once you know the landmark. Head for the yellow tournament board next to Zen-o, right of the stairs that lead up to the Play area, and the mode menu opens from there. Everything else — the map, the rules, your standing — is handled inside that menu.

What This Week's Anime Adventures Tournament Demands

The current rotation sends you to Storm Hideout for a 20-minute run scored on Most DMG, with a 500% Aqua damage buff layered on top. There are no modifiers attached this week, which is genuinely good news: nothing is scrambling enemy speed or stacking extra restrictions beyond the standing trait rule.

Two things deserve emphasis. First, "Most DMG" measures damage dealt, not how cleanly you finish. A defensive setup that survives comfortably but ticks along slowly will lose to a greedy lineup that pours out damage. Second, the 500% Aqua bonus is the single largest multiplier available right now, and it dwarfs anything you can stack elsewhere. If your usual carries are not Aqua-type, this is the week to rebuild around units that are.

Reward Bands: What Your Rank Actually Pays

Payouts scale with your finishing percentile, and the two highest bands are where the meaningful jumps happen. Here is how the top of the bracket is rewarded:

The gap between those two rows looks small on paper, but it adds up quickly: five trophies, 500 gems, ten Star Remnants, and an upgrade from a Special Unit to a Special Shiny Unit. If you can see the top band from where you are sitting, the extra attempts are almost always worth it.

Only those two bands have clear figures attached, so the honest takeaway is simpler than a spreadsheet: finish as high inside your bracket as you possibly can. Trophies accumulate across tournaments as a currency in their own right, which means a strong finish this week keeps paying forward in later weeks even after the rank resets.

Traits, Relics, and the Rule Change to Plan Around

The most important structural rule in the mode is the trait shutoff. From the second tournament onward, unit traits are disabled — but relics remain allowed. That single change decides how you should build.

Practically, this means any unit that earns its slot on your normal team purely because of a strong trait loses that advantage in the tournament. Relics become your main lever for pushing past a damage ceiling, so treat the relic loadout as a core part of the plan rather than an afterthought. If you have been coasting on trait synergy everywhere else, the tournament is where that habit gets exposed.

Past Tournaments and What the Rotation Teaches

Looking at how earlier weeks were set up makes the mode's patterns easier to read — and easier to prepare for.

Three lessons stand out. The 20-minute cap has held every single week, so build a damage curve that peaks inside that window instead of one that needs half an hour to warm up. Damage buffs are not guaranteed — the first two tournaments had none at all, while the current one hands out a massive Aqua bonus — so a roster that only functions with a buff is a fragile roster. And modifiers do escalate: Marine Ford stacked Fast Enemies on top of disabled traits, which punishes slow, static setups.

The recurring Special Unit slot also matters. Tattermo appeared as the special reward in both of the first two tournaments, which suggests the special unit pool can repeat rather than rotate completely fresh every week.

How to Climb Your Bracket: Practical Tips

Ranking well in the Anime Adventures Tournament is mostly about preparation, since you cannot influence who else lands in your bracket.

• Match your damage type to the weekly buff. With a 500% Aqua bonus live, an Aqua-heavy lineup simply out-scales anything else you can assemble this week.
• Build for the scoring type, not for comfort. Most DMG rewards aggression. Cut units that exist only to stall.
• Re-plan your relics. With traits disabled, relics are the remaining lever for raw output, so upgrade them before you spend on anything cosmetic.
• Use the full 20 minutes. Every second inside the window is score; a run you cut short is damage you donated to your rivals.
• Learn the map on an early attempt. Storm Hideout's layout decides where your damage actually lands, and a scouting run costs you nothing but time.
• Save your best attempts for before the bracket closes. Rankings lock at the end of the week, so a late push still counts.

Chase the Title, Not Just the Loot

Finishing first in your bracket earns the [Tournament # Champion] title, with the number tied to that specific weekly tournament. It sits above your head permanently and cannot be bought, traded, or earned any other way — which makes a single well-timed week of preparation worth more than several mediocre ones.

FAQ

How often does a new Anime Adventures Tournament start? Each tournament runs for exactly one week. When it ends, rankings close, payouts go out, and a fresh round begins with newly randomized brackets.

Where do I find the tournament board? It is the yellow board next to Zen-o, positioned to the right of the stairs that lead up to the Play area. Interacting with it opens the mode menu.

Do unit traits work in the Anime Adventures Tournament? They worked in the first tournament, but from the second week onward traits are disabled. Relics stay allowed, so plan your build around relic output instead of trait synergy.

How do I earn the Tournament Champion title? Finish rank #1 in your weekly bracket when it ends. The title includes the tournament's number, so each week's champion gets a distinct version.

What happens if I finish outside the top two percentile bands? The highest bands carry the detailed figures — 50 or 45 trophies, thousands of gems, Star Remnants, and a special unit. Beyond that, the practical goal is the same: climb as high as your roster allows before the week closes.