Reverse: 1999 Guide | Lucy

Lucy can be counted as the second true limited unit in Reverse: 1999. Lucy is a beast when it comes to clear mobs, dominating almost any scenario when paired with the right squad. But there’s a little catch. You’ll get to see two different versions of Lucy. Firstly, you got the pre-upgraded Lucy, and then there is the fully upgraded Lucy, who is completely on another level.

Dynamo

To maximize her potential, you need to master her dynamo and fully understand how her Incantation Advancement system works. Dynamo is a special resource that stands at the heart of Lucy’s kit. Dynamo mainly does two things for her:

It powers up her skills – all of her incantations can consume Dynamo to deal extra damage.

Each time Lucy and her team accumulate 20 Dynamo, she can advance one of her skills, making them way more useful

So, how do we actually get those precious dynamo stacks? Here’s how:

Every time Lucy gains Moxie, she picks up 2 Dynamo stacks, and if one of her allies gets Moxie or Eureka, Lucy gets 1 stack of her Dynamo. Pairing with characters like Getian, 37, 6, or Marcus can boost her Dynamo generation early on, making them some of her best teammates possible.

The second method is to take down enemies. When Lucy defeats an enemy, several things happen. She gains 10 Dynamo and a stack of Data Iteration, a 4% attack buff that can stack up to five times. 

Outside of the buffs, she will also cast Conservation of Energy, a special AoE attack that counts as a rank 2 incantation and a follow-up attack. This attack can consume 10 dynamos and can trigger up to twice per turn.

One thing to keep in mind is that if an enemy has a passive that revives them, they won’t actually be counted as being “defeated”. But in battles like the Manes Bulletin, where the boss replaces mobs after changing HP bars, the replaced mobs are considered defeated. So you still get those benefits in most mane’s bulletins.

Kit Overview

There is one more way Lucy gains Dynamo, but before we get into that, let's break down how her skill works and how her advancement mechanic fits in. Outside of the two skills and ultimate, Conservation of Energy also counts as a skill for Lucy. 

Every time her team accumulates 20 Dynamos, Lucy can advance one of her skills. Once both of her active incantations and Conservation of Energy are advanced, the next advancement will upgrade her ultimate. If you're not sure if Lucy's ultimate is Advanced, just check for the glowing rings behind her.

Each ring represents a skill advancement. Before advancement, Lucy’s skill 1 is a simple single Target skill with no frill, but if you spend 10 dynamos, it boosts the damage to above average. Once you advance the skill, the Dynamo costs drop to 5, and it becomes an AOE attack. While the second target does not take the full amount of damage, its multipliers are still very high for an AOE skill overall. 

Her skill two starts as a regular AOE attack that hits two targets. Spending 10 dynamos lets her hit three Targets or increase the damage multiplied if there are fewer than three enemies. Once advanced, the Dynamo cost again drops to five, and the skill will also deal additional Genesis damage. Conservation of Energy is an AOE attack that hits all enemies. 

By spending 10 Dynamo, it gains 50% penetration. When advanced, it does 50% more damage to the enemy below 50% health and ignores Dodge and counter mechanics. Lucy's ultimate is quite a bit of a game-changer for her. 

First, it grants her Pragmatist for two turns, making all her damage count as Afflatus Advantaged, with an Afflatus Advantage multiplier boosted to 140%. Then, she gains leadership, which boosts the entire team's Afflatus multiplier by the same amount. Her ultimate also triggers one cast of Conservation of Energy and gives her a stack of Data Iteration. 

Finally, it grants her two uses of charge animations, which gives her 5 Dynamo before attacking. When her ultimate is Advanced, she gets Overcharge Ammunition instead, which Grants 10 Dynamo per use, and she will also start with 1 Moxy after the ultimate cast.

How to play Lucy effectively

Lucy essentially has two phases in every Battle. When Lucy enters combat, she's in the first phase, during this stage where she struggles a bit with Dynamo management since both of her skills need 10 Dynamos to be truly impactful. Your main focus during this phase should be generating as much Dynamo as possible to advance her skills quickly. 

If you're up against an enemy that can be easily defeated, Lucy can breeze through the stage by accumulating Dynamo and triggering her Conservation of Energy AoE attack. However, if there aren’t many easy kills, you'll need to rely more on team Synergy - using allies to generate Eureka and Moxie to help boost her Dynamo Count. 

A good strategy in this early phase is to Fuse Lucy’s skills. Since both of her basic skills are pretty underwhelming without Dynamo, fusing them isn't a huge sacrifice; compared to using them at rank one but only having enough Dynamo to upgrade one of them, using a Dynamo-boosted rank 2 skill is much better.

Plus, this will get her closer to her ultimate, which not only gives her stacking Buffs but also provides more Dynamo to speed up her skill advancement. In the case of stages where Lucy gets a lot of free dynamos with advancement, you'll pretty much want to just Advance the skill Lucy has more in hand. 

But for stages where Lucy can get resets, you should look to upgrade her skill one first if there are less than two enemies and skill two if there are more enemies or if they're tailored to Genesis damage. The only time you'll need to advance her skill three first is if there are a lot of chances to reset, and the enemy also has Dodge or counter mechanic that you need to mitigate.

After Warming Up 

Once Lucy gets her enhanced ultimate, she'll reach Dynamo Freedom and enter phase two. With all of Lucy's skills Advanced, her rotation simplifies dramatically. She only needs to use 4 skills per rotation now, thanks to the free Moxy from her Advanced Ultimate. With the cast of conservation of energy from her ultimate, the total cost per rotation is 30 Dynamos. 

Lucy's overcharged ammo from her ultimate gives her 20 Dynamos in total. Then, she also gets another 10 Dynamos from the five Moxies she generates. That's exactly what she needs to fuel her rotation without relying on any outside help. At this point, she no longer needs the team’s support to generate Dynamos, and she'll also be taking up most of the action points during the battle to maximize her damage.

This is one reason why it's preferable to use Getian as her Dynamo generator over other characters. Getian can still provide value through his buff, even after Lucy no longer needs help with Dynamo generation. 

Another great thing about Lucy in Phase Two is that since she only needs four actions to get her ultimate back, you pretty much use her ultimate every two turns; this means you can keep her Afflatus to buff almost permanently.

Teammate Options

When it comes to picking the right team for Lucy, let's start with the healers. Of course, the top choices are Tooth Fairy and Villa, but Tooth Fairy edges out as the better option when supporting Lucy since Lucy is a reality unit. Tooth Fairy is also easier to use when using the new tuning that came with the anniversary. 

The new tuning set gives up the stability of being able to refresh everyone's card with its skill. However, it allows you to discard the right incantation and return to speed up rotation and also allow you to summon two pre-cast incantations of the selected character. As a result, you will be able to use more of Lucy’s incantations and also have relatively fast rotation. 

For the support slot, especially in a three-unit team, Eureka Generation characters are still your go-to Choice. Getian is hands down the best choice for Lucy, but 37 can somewhat perform as well, particularly if you're able to rack up a good number of kills. This triggers more follow-up attacks from Lucy and also 37, making her even more deadly.

If you'd rather put another DPS in the slot, you can still make it work by using Lucy as a sub-DPS. In this role, she can help clear mobs while boosting the team's Afflatus Advantage damage. Now, for the third slot, I recommend a supporting character who doesn't hog action points - anyone like 6 or Kakania, depending on the situation.

6 is especially useful, as he can also generate additional Eurekas for cheap, helping Lucy warm up even faster and providing incantation rank-up once in a while. But overall, Lucy's team is actually pretty flexible since she doesn't need help with warming up, so any good support can honestly work here.

Psychube and Resonance

For her Psychubes, it’s better to use her signature. It's significantly better than any other Psychubes out there, and it also has all the multiplier she needs. It's definitely worth amplifying as well, especially if you're planning to get her portraits. 

Portraits Value

Every single one of Lucy's portraits is pretty influential. Some will influence her rotation and also skill usage priority. P1 and P4 both increase the damage of her follow-up attacks, and P3, P4, and P5 all speed up how quickly Lucy can ramp Up while also increasing the power of Data Iteration. 

P5 is especially game-changing as it doubles Lucy's Dynamo generation from allies. With the right team, this completely removes any issue with her ramp-up. For example, with Getian, you could generate six Dynamo Stacks with just a single skill and get Lucy going faster than ever. 

Also, check our Reverse: 1999 review and other guides below:

• Reverse: 1999 Guide | Mercuria
• Reverse: 1999 Guide | Kakania
• Reverse: 1999 Guide | Windsong
• Reverse: 1999 Guide | Charlie
• Reverse: 1999 Guide | Isolde
• Reverse: 1999 Guide | Jessica
• Reverse: 1999 Guide | Kaalaa Baunaa
• Reverse: 1999 Guide | Shamane
• Reverse: 1999 Guide | Ezra