Little Fade

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**Little Fade** is the Exiled Champion  of the Melting Remnant .

Her Starter Card is Primitive Mold.

## Lore

*For all that I've learned of these Exiles, it should be no surprise to me that the Exile of the Melting Remnant is a thieving child. My visions with her have been brief, but she looks to be free of the wax for which her Ring is known. Perhaps her sacrifice, and the sacrifice of each Exile, granted immortality to the clans.*

### Battle Quotes

* *Who you callin' Little, featherface?*
* *Come a little closer, I want to show you me pointy friend!*
* *Come here, you!*
* *Me knife's mighty sharp, wanna see?*
* *This metal box ain't containing Fade for long, you'll see!*
* *I was swiping feathers off your grandpappies backside before you were even a twinkle in his eye!*
* *Now where's that ol' faker Flicker at these days, eh?*
* *What are you so angry about?*
* *You best watch your mouth!*
* *Me fingers are light, best be careful!*
* *Little in body, large in brains, I always say!*
* *You best mind your manners 'round your elders!*
* *Careful or I'll knick ya!*
* *All this dripping wax is making me stomach all tumbly.*
* *Oi! You go any o' them shinies lying about?*
* *Oh come on, I won't hurt you that much!*

## Upgrades

**Slay:** Gain +2 and **Spikes 2** permanently.
**Slay:** Gain +3 and **Spikes 3** permanently.
 Fire Light
 Eternal Flame
**Extinguish:** +15 and +1.
**Extinguish:** +30 and +2.
**Extinguish:** +60 and +3.

## Strategy

Although she can be difficult to play in the hands of newer players, **Little Fade** is one of the strongest Champions in the game, and arguably the strongest overall. This is due to the fact that all three of her paths have incredible late-game carry potential with run-defining power. Between the incredibly quick floor-wide scaling of **Fire Light**, the frontline- and **Relentless**-crushing power of **Eternal Flame**, and the snowball potential of **Little Icarus**, there is no Little Fade path that cannot win given correct play. She also comes packed with Primitive Molds, which immediately opens up **Reform** and  **Burnout** strategies from the very start of the game regardless of the path chosen, not only for herself but for other units in the Melting Remnant clan.

The challenge, then, is navigating Fade runs to put yourself in a position where you can leverage these strengths. For all of her power in the later rings, Little Fade has an inconsistent early-game, and it is easy for players who know of her potential to tempt themselves into taking too many Pact Shards or aggressive trials early. Without the proper cards to take advantage of her abilities, this can lead to very quick deaths or massive Pyre damage taken in the early rings. Instead, you should hold back in the early-game, only taking on challenges and shards if you are absolutely certain that you can handle the increased difficulty, *and* the reward justifies the risk taken.

### Little Icarus

**Little Icarus** grants Fade with permanent  and  **Spikes** with every kill she makes (note that **Spikes** kills will count for the **Slay** trigger), with the challenge of this path being acquiring these kills in the first place due to her low starting statline. With this path, it is of vital importance to find kills for Little Fade as often as possible, especially in early levels. If her damage output falls too much behind, it can create a death spiral where it's too difficult to let her kill, causing her to continue growing slowly. **Little Icarus** is best when you are shown some form of survivability in your opening cards and artifacts (such as  **Armor**,  **Damage Shield**, or even just  increases), as it will allow her to kill backline units before you Reform her, thus streamlining combats significantly. Such openers also allow you to even benefit off of Mark of Invasion trials, scoring a massive amount of early kills that can begin the snowballing process.

Ensure that you have a plan for winning **Relentless**, especially in the early- and mid-game. **Little Icarus** is excellent at wave-clearing, but it will not win **Relentless** by itself due to Fade's low  and potential  **Burnout** on her from Reforming her. One strategy that can be employed is making sure that you can Reform her every turn and "elevator" her upwards, tacking on decent chunks of damage to the boss to soften them up for your top floor to finish off. On said floor, she can be placed in front of high damage units to buy one or two extra turns while dealing significant **Spikes** damage, or in the back of defensive units to leverage her high  for as long as her **Burnout** timer allows.

Crosspathing into **Eternal Flame** will essentially ensure two kills on any floor on every turn (as Fade will attack first with her massive meta-scaled  and then kill another enemy on the way out with her high **Spikes**), at the cost of not being able to reach high  values over longer fights through Reforming. There is not too much of an opportunity cost, either, as the second and third levels of Little Icarus provide only as much value combined as the first level.

The Awoken clan has a number of synergies with **Spikes**, making them a very effective ally clan for this upgrade path. Bramble Lash can easily do thousands of damage because of Little Fade's high spike count and can sometimes win battles prematurely if a hit can be landed on a flying boss (rings 3, 6, 8 or 9). The Shard Channeler unit can amplify the damage done by spikes, especially if you can duplicate the unit multiple times. Gnarled Root and Petrified Crucible are artifacts that can make good use of Little Fade's high spike count. However, the biggest hit in Awoken is not any of those, but rather Adaptive Mutation, which changes her potentially astronomical  value into extremely high . This lets her take multiple hits from enemies, while each enemy receives the full brunt of her **Spikes**, allowing Little Fade to clear entire waves and even win **Relentless** on her own while getting stronger in the process. The effect lasts for the entire battle so even if Little Fade dies, bringing her back via  **Endless** or **Reform** spells keeps her at the same high HP. Therefore it is highly desirable to upgrade Adaptive Mutation with  Seekstone to give it **Intrinsic**, in order to play this combo immediately as each combat starts. This often lets Little Fade score every single kill for that battle, further amplifying her strength for future combats.

It is not recommended to crosspath into **Little Icarus**, especially on the third Dark Forge, as it will be too difficult to amass enough kills with the limited combats left to justify the path over more levels of **Eternal Flame** (**Fire Light** has no synergy with this path, and thus this should be avoided by default).

### Fire Light

**Fire Light** turns Little Fade into an incredibly strong supportive unit that can scale an entire floor at once, granting additional , , and  **Burnout** with each death. While it may initially seem cumbersome to set up such a floor, Fade's Primitive Molds can bring her back consistently on almost every turn to be killed every turn, provided that you keep the **Reform** pool clean. Even if the backline units behind Fade die, they can be immediately brought back with the molds along with Fade, and will retain all of the stat buffs that were given. This minimizes the risk of the applied **Burnout**; in fact, the **Burnout** can often be turned into an advantage. If you are playing Melting Remnant units with **Burnout** counters already, **Fire Light**'s application of it is strictly positive; additionally, it opens you up to drafting and playing strong **Burnout** spells such as Wicklash even outside of Melting lines, as the path will manage the **Burnout** for you.

Be wary of letting too many units die if they aren't part of your main floor, especially in the early-game when you have a large number of Train Stewards; they will clog your Primitive Mold **Reforms**, preventing you from scaling and potentially forcing your main floor to succumb to **Burnout**. This can quickly spiral into death, as your carry units will now be in the pool with the extra units that you shouldn't have played, essentially leaving the rest of the combat up to pure chance as to whether or not you will see the units you need again. Unless you find a source of  **Endless** for Little Fade (and even still most of the time), **Fire Light** is ideally played with a single floor such that the Primitive Molds will bring back every unit on that floor consistently, without you being forced into drafting targeted **Reform** cards such as Molded or Wicked Blaze (although those are still good pickups if you need the Reform density).

When playing **Fire Light**, you should try to set up as many hits on your floor as possible to multiply the potency of the  buff, whether that's through units with  **Multistrike** or simply cramming a large number of low- units onto the floor. Draff especially becomes an incredibly powerful card with **Fire Light** as it possesses both - it is a 1 unit and has **Multistrike**, making it the perfect recipient for this path's buffs. If draw priority is a concern, Draff can be infused into any banner unit of your choice, with its application of **Burnout 1** now carrying no risk at all due to **Fire Light** being able to extend it. Units with  **Sweep** are also excellent recipients of the buffs from **Fire Light**. Consider duplicating your strongest units with the most amount of hits at Hellvents and taking a Light of Seraph if needed.

Because **Fire Light** Little Fade wants to die as often as possible to impart its stat buffs, cards that can deal damage to your own units are also incredibly potent, especially if you can Reform Fade on the same turn. Torch and Echo Break starters from allied clans allow you to get ahead of the curve, and Subsuming Blade in-clan can kill Fade as well while also scaling its own damage permanently in the process. Subsuming Blade can continue to score kills on Fade even as she climbs to higher  values through constantly being brought back, making it an especially strong pickup if shown early enough. Hallowed Halls can also be a game-winning pickup, especially in a  **Harvest** line, as it will wipe the entire floor clean while scaling them all, killing Little Fade in the process and allowing her to impart her buffs to whichever units were behind her. Putting a  Keepstone to give **Holdover** to Subsuming Blade or Hallowed Halls can quickly put your floor out of control.

Crosspathing **Fire Light** with **Eternal Flame** is sometimes a worthwhile trade-off. **Eternal Flame** grants **Endless** and does not scale  as quickly as **Reforms** do, allowing Fade to be killed and brought back more consistently, which can be a benefit if your **Reform** density is low. This, however, comes at the cost of significantly decreased damage scaling to the floor, as well as decreasing the value of Primitive Mold. Waxer Snuffer can offset this drawback by a significant amount, and it is much more recommended to use this strategy if shown that artifact. This crosspath also works well if you require the **Burnout** management of **Fire Light** more than the  buff itself, such as if your line includes a Paraffin Enforcer or its infusion (as the amount of  **Rage** they will scale will dwarf the **Fire Light** buffs in comparison).

### Eternal Flame

The main draw of **Eternal Flame** is its self-sufficiency and ease of use compared to Little Fade's other two paths, providing a simple, yet powerful complement to the vast majority of strategies you might be using.

The highest priority in this path is ensuring that Little Fade dies as frequently as possible (until the final waves come), as she will scale  incredibly quickly with each death. Early on in the combat, you should place Fade directly in harm's way, allowing her to die repeatedly while chipping away at the incoming waves. Eventually, her  will hit a critical mass where she is one-shotting frontline tanks, allowing easier cleanup on higher floors. In most combats, Fade will even *continue* to die to the backlines behind the tank, allowing you to continue scaling her even past the point of beating the tanks to crush the boss even faster when **Relentless** arrives.

When the combat enters **Relentless** phase, the strategy to best use Eternal Flame becomes almost the opposite. Her incredible damage output can kill most bosses, but doing so requires keeping her alive for as much of the fight as possible by putting her in the back and using any defensive buffs. Delaying the  **Extinguish** trigger will not cause a problem, because you will not be able to play her until the fight on the current floor is resolved. If you cannot kill the boss on one floor, try to leave room to place her on the next floor so she can continue doing damage. If you do not have lower floors established, you can opt to "elevator" her upwards to simply chunk the boss once per floor (which is made easier by the  **Endless** that she comes with), before you then place her behind your carries on top floor to secure the combat.

Alternatively, once you have decided that **Eternal Flame** has scaled enough, you can place Little Fade at the back of your main floor earlier and start stacking force multipliers onto her. Giving her  **Multistrike** through Furnace Tap or Onehorn's Tome, or  **Trample** through Umbra Stone, can allow her to cleave through entire waves and save defensive resources on the rest of your floor.

**Eternal Flame** synergizes particularly well with several artifacts, including Resin Block, Waxer Snuffer, and Mark of a Champion. Resin Block and Mark of a Champion will cause her to grow in power even more quickly (particularly the latter, as the 50% attack bonus will be re-applied to her new base  every time she comes back), whereas Waxer Snuffer doubles the scaling on the trigger itself. Having these artifacts while playing another path can potentially open up crosspathing into **Eternal Flame** as they will compensate for the lack of an extra level. Penitent Remains can also be very useful provided you can manage the extra Deadweights, for similar reasons to Mark of a Champion.

#### Eternal Flame, prior to 2.0.0

Prior to update 2.0.0, due to her increasing Ember cost, Little Fade was best to kill repeatedly, and then stick behind a bulky tank on your first floor when she is 2 deaths away from capping out your Ember generation.

Due to her lack of  **Quick** prior to 2.0.0, she *needed* appropriate defense to be viable. Using units like Entombed Explosive, Molten Encasement, or other forms of damage mitigation (be it damage sponges, damage shields, etc.) could help prevent her untimely death. Waxer Snuffer synergized poorly with **Eternal Flame** prior to 2.0.0, because it *also* doubled the ember cost increase. This could cause difficulty timing your placements on Little Fade, and reduced her overall "effectiveness" in the final wave.

## History

*See: Version History*

As with all other exiled Champions, Little Fade was added with the Friends and Foes Update. In 2.0.0 her Eternal Flame path was overhauled.

 Fire Light (1.2.6)
 Fire Light (1.4)
 Eternal Flame (1.2.5)
**Extinguish:** +20, +5, and +1 cost.
**Extinguish:** +60, +5, and +1 cost.
 Eternal Flame (1.2.6)
**Extinguish:** +25, +5, and +1 cost.
**Extinguish:** +70, +5, and +1 cost.
 Eternal Flame (2.0)
**Extinguish:** +20 and +1.
**Extinguish:** +40 and +2.
**Extinguish:** +60 and +3.

 1.2.6
 1.4.0
 2.0.0
 2.1
* Eternal Flame Little Fade Extinguish attack progression reduced 20/40/60 to 15/30/60.