Tethys Titansbane

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**Tethys Titansbane** is the Original Champion  of the Stygian Guard .

Her Starter Card is Frozen Lance.

## Lore

*Do not be fooled by her harmless demeanor. Tethys was the first to agree to the containment of the Titan for our Covenant's sake. She has since become the most revered member of the Stygian Guard and my most helpful supporter in the defense of Hell.*

### Battle Quotes

* *Where are my scales?*
* *The Titan will wake soon.*
* *We can't keep the Titan asleep forever.*
* *If this train could go underwater, I'd be much happier.*
* *Our trust was in the Covenant, what now?*
* *This air is all too dry for me.*
* *The Covenant was necessary. Now removing Seraph is.*
* *Feel the Titan's wrath!*
* *Yahaha!*
* *Even if the Covenant is broken we cannot falter in our calling.*
* *The Stygian know no mercy.*
* *Unnamed give me power!*
* *Taste the arcane!*
* *We must protect the Titan, no matter what.*
* *Does the Titan still sleep?*
* *Yaaargh!*
* *Titan's might!*

## Upgrades

**Strike:** Apply **Frostbite 10** to the attacked unit.

**Strike:** Apply **Frostbite 20** to the attacked unit.

 Conduit

Damage spells cast on this floor cost -1.

Damage spells cast on this floor cost -2.

 Handheld Totem

**Sweep.**
**Strike:** Apply **Spell Weakness 1** to the attacked unit.

**Sweep.**
**Strike:** Apply **Spell Weakness 2** to the attacked unit.

**Sweep.**
**Strike:** Apply **Spell Weakness 3** to the attacked unit.

## Strategy

Tethys, being a 1 unit with strong effects in each path, is a versatile unit for most of the game that can slot into most strategies, particularly in-clan with the **Stygian Guard**. However, in The Last Divinity DLC, she becomes much less effective, requiring huge amounts of support to be able to contribute meaningfully against The Last Divinity as well as enemy units enhanced by Pact Shards. This is due to her low  across all paths, making her particularly vulnerable to  **Spikes** and  **Sweep** upgrades and enemies. Most notoriously, the Divinity's top-floor **Sweep** auto-kills her on any path at high Covenant Ranks except for **Handheld Totem III**.

Tethys will thus often be a cornerstone of your runs in the base game, but will require serious justification to invest into on DLC runs - if you do not need her, it is often more beneficial to throw her away. If Tethys is required for your winning line, keeping her alive can be a challenge - she cannot be upgraded or have units infused into her, and **Stygian Guard** only offers Guardian Stone as a way to increase her survivability. You will often have to look for specific cards from the other clan that give  **Armor** or , and be able to generate those consistently throughout a fight. Bringing Tethys back every turn through **Reforms** or applying  **Endless** to her can also be a viable solution.

### Chillwind

**Chillwind** gives Tethys a huge damage boost, turning her into a tank and boss shredder through the large amount of  **Frostbite** it applies, up to an impressive 40 **Frostbite** per hit at Level 3. This path is often the strongest option in the early-game and maintains value into the mid- and late-game as well. It requires only a sturdy frontline unit as support; given enough survivability up front and backline reach to defeat the enemy waves, **Chillwind** will solve your damage output in most **Relentless** combats up to Ring 7, and can even support on damaging Seraph as well. You will need to ensure that you can answer  **Sweep** bosses, however, as they can kill Tethys before she has a chance to swing.

If you don't have enough backline reach in your run, taking a point into **Handheld Totem** can be a strong play, as 10 or 20 **Frostbite** is usually enough to kill even upgraded backlines. This path otherwise requires very little support beyond that; because most of your damage is coming from **Frostbite**, you do not need  buffs on Tethys, making her a relatively self-sufficient unit.

As with most **Frostbite** strategies, **Chillwind** is best played on the bottom floor if you can support it, as enemies will continue being damaged as they walk up the train. If your run has a Titan Sentry, **Chillwind** is best deployed with it, allowing you to soften up the frontline even more for your main floor to finish off. **Chillwind** also somewhat shores up Titan Sentry's weakness of not significantly impacting thinner waves with few enemies. However, **Chillwind** is still perfectly functional as a damage supplement on higher floors as well.

Unfortunately, **Chillwind** hits a serious late-game wall against The Last Divinity, where it as a standalone path is almost completely ineffective. The waves in that combat are far too dense for the single hit of **Chillwind** to make much impact on the floor, and the frontline tanks are too sturdy for **Frostbite** alone to kill. Even if Tethys can somehow connect with the Divinity itself, the boss has  **Purify** to rid itself of all **Frostbite** at the end of the turn, significantly decreasing your effective damage. Thus, against The Last Divinity, you cannot rely on **Chillwind** as your damage plan. If you want Tethys to retain value in the fight as a supporter, it is often correct to pivot away at the third Dark Forge. Even these pivots have their issues, however; **Conduit** may not make sense for your run if you aren't playing an **Incant** line, and the aforementioned **Handheld Totem** pivot will cause Tethys to kill herself on the first  **Spikes** wave.

Thus, **Chillwind** is a strong path in the base game but should be seen more as early- and mid-game security in the DLC due to its weaknesses in the Divinity combat, helping you hold down **Relentless** phases while you power up and solve your run through other means.

### Conduit

**Conduit** has the highest ceiling out of all Tethys paths, allowing you to play expensive, high-impact spells for free with its  reduction. In the late-game, this can potentially allow you to shred entire waves, crushing tanks with **Stygian Guard**'s strong frontline blasts and defeating backlines with multi-hitting or AoE spells, likely enhanced by cards and artifacts that increase **Magic Power** that go well with **Conduit**. Even if you do not find these synergies, **Conduit** can simply sit in the back of an **Incant** floor and still provide massive value, turning the mediocre Frozen Lance starters that Tethys comes with (and any other damage spells you may have) into rapid stat scaling. In such runs, this allows you to load up on damage upgrades into your spells instead of cost reductions to make them even stronger, a playstyle well-supported by **Stygian Guard** due to their plentiful access to **Attuned** spells and multi-hitting spells that will multiply the potency of any such upgrades.

However, it also has among the most inconsistent early-game starts, as the only cards that will be decremented in the base deck are the Frozen Lances, which are low-impact by themselves (or potentially Torch and Echo Break from allied clans, which you may want to be playing on other floors). **Conduit** does not otherwise have enough stats to carry you through a **Relentless** phase, which can be a serious problem when you only have Train Stewards and/or unupgraded units in the early rings.

Because of this, and the fact that **Conduit III** is often overkill (you will very rarely need a -3 discount on any spell and can simply put an  Emberstone upgrade on the ones that do), **Conduit** is best taken later on in the game for only 1 or 2 levels to support the aforementioned heavy spell damage or **Incant** floors. **Conduit** is only best as a starter if you are shown high-damage spells such as Titan's Gratitude or Helical Crystalis in your random starting cards, or a way to enhance your **Magic Power** such as with Molluscmage. Otherwise, you may need to take one of the other paths to survive the early-game, especially on higher Covenant Ranks.

**Conduit**, like all Tethys paths, struggles into The Last Divinity. **Incant** lines usually want to set up on top floor to be able to scale up to defeat the first few waves of enemies, which Tethys cannot survive on without support. Depending on draw order, you may not be able to get away with playing on other floors with spell damage builds, either, due to how dense the Divinity waves are. If you rely on **Conduit** to be able to reach a critical mass of **Incants**, you must be able to keep Tethys alive through all of these challenges, although the rewards will be huge if you manage to do so. It is overall a path that starts off shaky and is often best chosen in the middle of the run rather than the start, but can carry a run by itself given the proper support.

### Handheld Totem

**Handheld Totem** turns Tethys into a  **Sweep** unit that gives her backline reach as well as the ability to apply  **Spell Weakness** to an entire floor. The idea of this path is that Tethys will barely manage to kill backline enemies, leaving only the frontlines left with **Spell Weakness** that you then blast with high-powered spells on a later floor. Higher levels of **Handheld Totem** apply more **Spell Weakness**, up to 3 stacks at Level 3. If you are able to keep Tethys alive on the bottom floor, **Handheld Totem** can help you control waves while also significantly softening up frontline heavies to be dealt with later through high spell damage.

Alternatively, in rare instances, you may want to lean in on the fact that **Handheld Totem** turns Tethys into a **Sweeper**, and make her your main damage unit by buffing her  and giving her  **Multistrike** or  **Trample** through card effects. This is not always recommended as Tethys is largely inferior to every other **Sweeper** in the game for this role, given that you cannot upgrade her through shops or infusions, but it can serve as an emergency line in a pinch if your run would otherwise lose to a specific challenge without strong **Sweep** damage.

The challenge with this path, then, is finding a setup that works for **Handheld Totem** without spreading your deck too thin. Going all-in on this path requires that you play high-damage spells off the floor, which may take away spell plays from an **Incant** setup, and the **Spell Weakness** applied cannot always solve **Relentless** combats (where statistically, **Handheld Totem** performs poorly in), forcing you to also have a **Relentless** solution on another floor. Unlike **Chillwind**, **Handheld Totem** by itself does not complement Titan Sentry as well without actually pivoting to said path, which would theoretically be the lowest-investment way to play her, as there is no point in sweeping the backline units that are already dying to **Frostbite**.

**Handheld Totem** is perhaps the path that suffered the most in the DLC. Alongside the omnipresent **Spikes** and **Sweep** upgrades on enemies, **Handheld Totem** simply did not have its numbers adjusted to be able to deal with Pact Shards-enhanced support-class backline units, which have more health than Tethys has damage at each stage of the game, as well as occasionally  **Spell Shield** to prevent attempts to snipe them with the applied **Spell Weakness**. This makes **Handheld Totem** a sweeper that cannot actually control waves, and requires a pivot to **Chillwind** to be able to have a chance to kill those units. Although the Divinity itself doesn't clear **Spell Weakness** with its **Purify**, the waves in the fight are so dense that you cannot always connect those spells, not to mention the several full **Spikes** waves that Tethys will kill herself on if not properly supported. Thus, it is considered the least consistent path in the DLC overall, offering little value for how many weaknesses it has and requiring cross-pathing to make work.

## History

*See: Version History*

**Strike:** Apply **Frostbite 10** to the attacked unit.

**Strike:** Apply **Frostbite 20** to the attacked unit.

 Conduit (1.0.0)

Damage spells cast on this floor cost -1.

Damage spells cast on this floor cost -2.

 Handheld Totem (1.0.0)

**Sweep.**
**Strike:** Apply **Spell Weakness 1** to the attacked unit.

**Sweep.**
**Strike:** Apply **Spell Weakness 2** to the attacked unit.

**Sweep.**
**Strike:** Apply **Spell Weakness 3** to the attacked unit.

 2.0.0