Masquerade

in-game name: Dance BattleFree guideRankings coming soon

Masquerade (also called Dance Battle) is a five-on-five duel between masks. You pick five masks, set the order, and the floor does the rest: front against front, one duel at a time, until one side has no dancers left.

Teams and lineup order

Five dancers a side, each wearing a different mask.
The leftmost living dancer is the front. The two fronts duel each other.
When a dancer falls it leaves the floor, and the next mask in line steps up.
Order is a real decision. Where a mask stands decides who it fights, which neighbour it protects or follows, and when its leave-the-floor skill fires. The same five masks can play out very differently in a different order.
Some masks summon Dance Partners: a fresh dancer enters the floor in a free slot. A side never goes past five dancers, so a summon needs an empty slot to land.

Masks and stats

Technique is attack, Popularity is health. A hit takes Technique off the target’s Popularity.
The mask is the whole statline. The lover wearing it adds nothing.
Both stats are hard-capped at 70, even after buffs.
The event has 62 masks: 15 legendary, 26 epic, 21 rare.

Duels and damage

Damage is simultaneous. Both fronts strike in the same exchange, and a dancer that dies still lands its blow, so mutual knockouts are normal.
Popularity carries over between duels. Nothing heals between one duel and the next.
Percentages round down: a 50% effect costing 7 Popularity costs 3, not 3.5.
You win when the other floor is empty. If both sides are wiped in the same exchange the battle is a draw, and so is any battle that goes past the 200-round limit.

Anxiety and Partner Protection

Anxiety makes a dancer lose extra Popularity every time it takes damage, for a limited number of hits. Whale, Goblin King and Raccoon apply it.
Partner Protection nullifies one whole damage instance. Turtle grants it to the allies to its right when it falls; Snow Dragon keeps it for itself.

Death and the bench

One rule covers masks that are already down: a mask that has left the floor can still fire skills whose trigger is its own departure, and nothing else. It does not react to later hits or later deaths. Death is the busiest trigger in the event, which is why leave-the-floor skills decide so many battles.

Trigger order

When several skills react to the same event, the game resolves them in a fixed order:

higher skill priority first,
then front of the lineup before the back,
then the side with the higher combined mask levels,
then the side with the higher combined stats.

Position breaks most of the ties you will actually meet.

Levels and progression

Masks level from 1 to 6, and stats and skills upgrade on different levels:

Level	What changes
L2	statline rises (skill unchanged)
L3	skill upgrade (stats unchanged)
L4	statline rises
L5	final skill upgrade
L6	final statline

That is four stat tiers and three skill texts per mask. A level-5 mask already has its strongest skill; level 6 only adds stats.

Conflicts

13 pairs of masks cannot be fielded together.
Every conflict is an epic mask and its legendary counterpart: the same skill at two rarities, with the legendary as the stronger copy.
No rare mask conflicts with anything, and no two legendaries conflict.

Strategy basics

Plan the deaths. Your front mask is often the first to fall, which is exactly when some skills do their best work.
Small numbers decide trades. On a floor where most duels trade evenly, +1 or +2 Technique or Popularity is what turns a trade into a win.
Body count wins wars of attrition. Every extra dancer from a summon can break a run of one-for-one trades.
Chip beats stacking. Pre-damaging a target converts a trade into a win and leaves your dancer standing.

Free tools

Mask reference: every mask’s stats and skill text, level by level.
Matchup simulator: set two lineups and a seed, read the result.
Live battle: watch a full battle play out.

Ranked lineups are coming soon.