Anomaly Arbitration

Unlock requirements

The steepest gate of the four: must complete the quest «Trial of Equilibrium: Part Six» AND have historically achieved 3 stars on all three of — Memory of Chaos stage 12, Pure Fiction stage 4, Apocalyptic Shadow difficulty 4 (a lifetime record, not something that must be currently held) — before receiving the gating quest «Knot-Tier Saga» that opens Anomaly Arbitration. This is why AA is always the last of the four modes a new player unlocks, since it requires having already 'graduated' from the other three.

How it plays & how scoring works

Anomaly Arbitration is a series of extremely difficult challenges.

In Anomaly Arbitration, you will play against powerful enemies to bring equilibrium back to the world.

Each period of Anomaly Arbitration will feature 3 Knight stages and 1 King stage. Protected by the Knight stages, the King's strength will be greatly enhanced, making it difficult to defeat. Completing the 3 Knight stages will return the King stage to its regular difficulty.

Complete the battles to claim rich rewards, and meet specific conditions to earn additional Star Rewards.

The difficulty and rewards of Anomaly Arbitration are not affected by your Equilibrium Level.

Stages and rewards in Anomaly Arbitration are regularly updated.

You will be temporarily cut off from the outside world when entering the Anomaly Arbitration, with the following actions temporarily disabled:

Changing team setups Changing, leveling up, or ascending Light Cones and Relics Leveling up or ascending characters Using Consumables in your Inventory

Enemy Traits

In Anomaly Arbitration, enemy materializations will have slight differences between them and regular enemies. Trailblazers can check out the details by reading about the enemies' traits when the battle begins.

Arbitral Quadrant

After each period of Anomaly Arbitration updates, several Arbitral Quadrant buff effects will be added to each King's challenge.

Before challenging the King, you can choose one of these buff effects for the team.

Cycles

In Anomaly Arbitration, every battle in the stage has its own independent Cycle limit. If the limit is exceeded during a challenge, it will be considered a failure. Clearing the battle within the designated number of Cycles and fulfilling specific conditions will grant a star rating for that stage.

In Anomaly Arbitration battles, the total action value of the first Cycle will be greatly increased, and the Cycle countdown will not reset when waves change.

When only a few Cycles remain, the team will be granted an additional combat buff at the start of each Cycle.

Knight Stages

The 3 Knight Stages must be challenged using 3 different character teams, and you can decide the order in which you challenge them.

After completing each Knight Stage, a record of the team will be saved. You can then use this fixed team to re-challenge that stage, with the following rules for repeat challenges:

You can also reassemble your team lineup, swapping out characters, Light Cones, and Relics to re-challenge a Knight Stage, which will reset the challenge's progress.

Characters, Light Cones, and Relics on unchallenged teams can be freely changed, but they cannot duplicate those on a cleared team. If they do, the cleared team's challenge progress will be reset.

When a challenge's progress is reset, the team record for that Knight Stage will be erased, and the score for that stage will be invalidated.

Each Knight Stage's rating is calculated independently upon completion.

When you clear the same Knight Stage multiple times, the different ratings you acquire will not be combined.

The best battle record is calculated based on the highest total rating from all three Knight Stages at the same time. This record is then used to determine your Star Rewards, and resetting challenge progress will not affect this best record.

Team members are fixed. Their Path, Level, Traces, and Eidolons are updated when re-challenging. If you replace a team member's Light Cone or Relics with a Light Cone or Relics that were recorded from another team's successful run, the challenge progress for the Knight Stage that has a record of that Light Cone or Relic will be reset. If you replace a team member's Light Cone or Relics with those of another member of the same team, or with a Light Cone or Relics that do not exist in any of the recorded successful runs, you can proceed directly with the Knight Stage challenge. In this case, you can choose upon successful completion whether to replace the old Battle Records and team information with the new ones.

King Stage

In each Period's Anomaly Arbitration, there is only 1 King Stage, which can be challenged with any team.

It is recommended that you complete the Knight Stages first to restore the King Stage to its regular difficulty before challenging it.

If you directly defeat the King Stage on Plight difficulty, it will be considered as having cleared all three Knight Stages with 3 stars, and you will receive all the rewards from the Knight Stages.

Reward Details

Limited-time avatar frames and medals matching the star rating you achieve in the King Stage will be awarded.

These limited-time avatar frames can be used during the current "Anomaly Arbitration" event. Medals can be equipped and displayed from the Collection Showcase in the Trailblazer's room. Medals will remain valid for 3 Anomaly Arbitration periods (including the current one). The specific validity is determined by the duration of the corresponding Anomaly Arbitration period.

Refresh cycle

Distinctly different from the other three: it does NOT run on a fixed weekly cadence but 'refreshes with each Version update,' per the official announcement. Since an HSR version typically spans ~6 weeks, AA currently lines up with roughly the same real-world cadence as Pure Fiction/Apocalyptic Shadow, but the underlying mechanism differs: it's tied to a release build, not an independent weekly timer. Historical records show only around 7-8 AA seasons exist so far, far fewer than Apocalyptic Shadow's 19-20, reflecting that AA is a much newer mode.

What makes it different

A structure unlike the other three: 4 fixed stages per season — 3 separate 'Knight' stages each requiring its own team, with NO Relic or Light Cone allowed to repeat across those three teams — plus 1 boss stage, 'King in Check', with two difficulties: the harder one appears first, and clearing it auto-grants max score on all three Knight stages (no need to fight them separately); failing it means falling back to the normal difficulty only after all three Knight stages are cleared individually. This is AA's core distinguishing trait versus MoC/PF/AS: it rewards owning MULTIPLE deep, non-overlapping-gear teams rather than one single strongest team carrying everything.

This period's 3 Knight stages + 1 King stage

Knight stages each use a different team; the King stage can use any team — clearing all 3 Knights first lowers the King's difficulty.

Knight (I)

Characters

Knight (II)

Characters

Knight (III)

Characters

King in Check

King stage

King's name at full difficulty (after clearing all 3 Knights): King in Check: Plight

Arbitral Quadrant — buff pick before fighting the King

Navigator's Oath — Increases the All-Type RES PEN for the Skill DMG and Ultimate DMG dealt by the character in position 1 in the lineup by 50%.

Add Insult to Injury — After an enemy target is hit by an ally's Follow-Up ATK, DMG taken by them increases by 15% for 2 turn(s). This effect can stack up to 3 time(s).

Endless Euphoria — All ally targets' All-Type RES PEN increases by 20%, and the All-Type RES PEN of Elation DMG dealt additionally increases by 20%.

Rewards by star/score milestone

Pulled straight from game data — more stars/score means bigger reward tiers. Items we could not map to a display name are labeled honestly, not invented.

Clear Knight #1

Lone Stardust ×100

Clear Knight #2

Lone Stardust ×100

Clear Knight #3

Lone Stardust ×100

Total of 3 stars across the 3 Knight stages

Lone Stardust ×200

Self-Modeling Resin ×1

Total of 6 stars across the 3 Knight stages

Lone Stardust ×200

Self-Modeling Resin ×1

Total of 9 stars across the 3 Knight stages

Lone Stardust ×200

Self-Modeling Resin ×1

King stage reaches 1 stars

Lone Stardust ×100

Interference Key ×1

King stage reaches 2 stars

Lone Stardust ×100

King stage reaches 3 stars

Lone Stardust ×100

Limited-time medal, tier 1

Anomaly Arbitration: Pawn ×1

Limited-time medal, tier 2

Anomaly Arbitration: Knight ×1

Limited-time medal, tier 3

Anomaly Arbitration: Castle ×1

King's special medal

Anomaly Arbitration: King ×1

Past seasons

7 seasons so far, taken directly from game data (ordered as in the source file, not necessarily real release order — see the note below).

Show all 7 seasons

#	Season name
1	Intellitron Endgame
2	Illusory Realm of the Blazing Sun
3	Dissonance
4	Cyber Crisis
5	Don't Mess With Pom-Pom
6	Happiness Syntax
7	The Humming Laughter

This list is taken directly from the official game data, ordered by the sequence in the source file — not necessarily real-world release order, since the data has no start/end date per season. Some VERY OLD seasons (from before the Equilibrium Level system unified all difficulty tiers) shared the same name across multiple season codes — duplicate-named rows have been merged down to one row per distinct season name. The newest season, not yet publicly named by the studio, has been excluded from the list to avoid guessing.

Characters suited to this mode

Derived directly from the Weakness elements that show up most across this season's floors/stages — characters sharing that damage element break those Weaknesses cleanly.