Hunter Contest Guide: Levels, Divisions & the Protocore Trap
The tournament challenge mode with a locked-team rule that resets your progress if you're not careful.
Hunter Contest is Love and Deepspace's tournament-style challenge mode, hosted by the Hunters Association across venues in Linkon City. It has 3 levels — Primary, Junior, Senior — each split into 3 divisions of 4 rounds each. Senior only unlocks after you clear every stage of Primary and Junior, and its challenges plus bonus memories rotate every two weeks. Two rules trip up new players: you can't swap teams mid-division without resetting that division's progress, and a Protocore can only be used once per level, though the same Protocore can be reused across different levels.
Hunter Contest is described in-game as a self-improvement challenge via tournament hosted by the Hunters Association, with venues set up throughout Linkon City and open to all active Deepspace Hunters. It's one of the Battle-menu features, sitting alongside Bounty Hunts, Deepspace Trials, Core Hunts, UNICORNS Operations and Abyssal Chaos.
Hunter Contest splits into three levels — Primary, Junior and Senior — and each level has three divisions of four rounds apiece. Primary's divisions are Team A: Bloomshore, Team B: Philee and Team C: Begonia. Junior's are Team A: Empyreal Ring, Team B: Newport and Team C: Eterno. Senior's are Team A: Silverbay, Team B: Goldbird and Team C: Soaria — so in total there are 9 divisions across the three levels, 36 rounds if you count them all.
Primary and Junior stay fixed once released; Senior is the one that keeps changing. It only unlocks after you've cleared every stage in both Primary and Junior first.
You pick one team per division, and that choice sticks: you cannot switch teams between rounds within the same division. If you do choose a new team for a division, every stage you already cleared in that division resets and has to be cleared again with the new team. This is the single easiest way to accidentally lose progress in Hunter Contest, so treat your division team pick as a real commitment, not a trial run.
Protocores can only be used once per level — meaning the same Protocore cannot sit on a Memory used in both Primary's division 1 team and Primary's division 2 team at the same time. But the restriction doesn't cross levels: that same Protocore can be used on a Memory in Primary division 1 and also on a Memory in Junior division 1. In other words, the limit resets when you move up a level, it just doesn't reset between divisions inside the same level. Plan your gear-sharing with that boundary in mind rather than assuming one Protocore is locked to one team forever.
Every level has its own reward track built on star milestones, and each stage caps out at 3 stars. As an example, Primary's track pays 30 Diamonds at every milestone from 6 to 30 stars, then adds an Empyrean Wish on top of the Diamonds at the 33 and 36-star milestones; Junior's equivalent milestones pay 40 Diamonds instead of 30. Senior's reward track resets every new season alongside its rotating challenges.
Senior also carries a reward the other two levels don't: a special, dynamic Avatar Frame that visibly displays how many times you've fully cleared the Senior Hunter Contest — a long-term flex reward rather than a one-off prize.
- Decide your division teams before you start clearing rounds — since switching mid-division wipes that division's progress, indecision costs you real re-clears, not just time.
- If a Memory's Protocore is doing good work in a Primary team, you can safely put the same Protocore to work again in a Junior or Senior team — the level boundary is what matters, not the division boundary.
- Rush to clear every Primary and Junior stage once if Senior's current rotation looks good for your roster — Senior is where the Empyrean Wishes, seasonal rewards and the Avatar Frame progress actually live.
- Check the bonus assisting Memories for the current Senior season before building your team — they change every two weeks and can shift which team is actually optimal.