The Athena Trial in Saint Seiya Awakening is one of the easiest ways to get tons of resources (especially experience, but also growth tome shards and more) for your characters. It’s also a great system to test the mettle of your lineup. As soon as you get in, you cannot help but notice the fact that you’re constantly climbing to a higher level. This is because the trials themselves take place on the Holy Mountain, an interesting take on the Greek Mount Athos.

To the extent of our current knowledge, the Holy Mountain has an infinite number of Floors, each of them with four stages. If you want to advance to the next floor, you have to complete all four trials. The mechanic is even better than you might initially think – just one of the many reasons why we love this game. Each stage has a Trial of Courage and Trial of Justice. The second one is unlocked once you reach the 5^th floor.

If you get to a stage where both types of challenges are activated, you have to complete both of them before being able to move on. This is a neat way of saying: “if you talk the talk, you need to walk the walk, or else you’ll be lying in chalk”.

Trial of Justice or Courage?

You might be tempted to think: “No problem, I’ll just deploy my same OP lineup in both ToJ and ToC.” Well, you can’t. The compositions have to be different for each and once a saint is deployed on one side, you can’t use them on the other. It’s still a choice you can make, so if you think you don’t have 10 individual characters that can pass the bar, you shouldn’t go for it to begin with. However, achieving both is immensely rewarding.

You’re not all on your own either. Athena will give your team a random bonus on each side once the challenge is activated. Sometimes, it doesn’t make a world of a difference, but it definitely helps. For example, in a lineup that is focused on dealing physical attack damage, +10% PATK is a great buff to have. Still, we wouldn’t rely on it to carry you through the hard stuff.

Quick Tips to Improve Your Athena Trial

#1. Order. Throughout your fights, always be aware of the play order, namely who goes ahead of whom. This is especially important if you have energy ramp potential, as it can allow you to kill an enemy before they act twice or even once. If you don’t know how to tell, just look at the number next to the health bar of everyone on the battlefield. The lower it is, the faster they get their turn. While in combat, the line of hero icons on the bottom of your screen fulfills the same role.

#2. Go Easy. Always try the easiest side first with your weaker Saints. Try to anticipate what enemy you will be facing based on the information you get. Are they single-target damage, AoE, or a control-focused line-up?

#3. Hindsight is 20-20. Watch the replays of other people if you find that you’re struggling. The Camera button that says “Spectate” will let you see how the pros managed to overcome the challenge that brought your progression to a halt. You may be surprised to see how simple solutions can get you through the most difficult enemies. Sometimes, however, it’s all about having your Saints levelled past a certain point.

#4. Bonuses Are Your Friends. Since you’re getting a bonus anyways, try to maximize its value during the encounter. For example, -1 energy will greatly enhance your combo potential, so Kanon or Aphrodite are very good in this situation, whereas +100% critical damage pretty much guarantees your Aiolos kills everything. Improvise, adapt, overcome.

Play Saint Seiya Awakening on BlueStacks

#5. Back Out Instead of Giving Up. Let’s say you thought you could clear both sides but found out that you’re falling short. It might be worth resetting to free your characters and make just one good line-up instead. Sure, you’ll have to do both fights again, but it’s better than nothing.

#6. No-no Matchups. Never, but we mean never, use Isaak against Jabu unless you can finish or control him really fast. The same is true of Pavo Mayura.

#7. The Tank. Sometimes, enemies will always attack the highest health Saint in your line-up. Take advantage of this mechanic and use a high HP, high defense character in your composition, such as June, Moses, etc.

Best Saints for Athena Trial

Given the unique nature of the PvE encounters, certain Saints are better at acing these floors than others. June, for instance, is tremendously useful against single-target DPSers. As you already know from our guide on Saints, she will link everybody in your party and split the damage that any of them take. Likewise, Marin’s heal will provide incredible sustain through tough situations. We can’t even count how many times she saved our hides.

Isaac and Scylla. AI will often target their spawns before the heroes themselves, which means you can keep spawning these little helpers to keep the bosses at bay. Neither of summoned creatures are affected by Cassios’ taunt ability. Io is a bit more RNG because you don’t know how many times Scylla will attack (sometimes it’s once, other times it’s up to 4-5). Daidalos might not be one of the highest quality characters in the game, but his physical and cosmo attack boost, alongside the enemy debuff, is totally worth it.

Luna and Kiki. These units seem to be indispensable, regardless of the game mode you’re in. While Kiki is mandatory for combo set-ups, such as Aphrodite or Kanon, Luna will give anybody in your party a second chance to act during the same turn.

Still having a hard time? Playing Saint Seiya Awakening on BlueStacks is a great way to improve your performance in Athena Trials. One last important thing you should not loose track of is the fact that you only get 5 attempts at the AT every day. This is why it’s important to do the trials every time you log in. If you do get left behind, it’ll take a lot of effort on your part to make up for the lost time.

Download BlueStacks Now