Dark Team Guide — Verdant Blade Mantis, Infernowolf and Dreamwing

The dark-element team is the launch window's most-coached composition — it has a clear main DPS, a self-sufficient Breaker, the best Battery in the game and a fourth slot that flexes by content difficulty. This page is the full build: allocations, ranks, gear and the rotation habits that make it click. Read the team building guide first if the role vocabulary is new.

The roster

Slot	Creature	Role
Main DPS	Verdant Blade Mantis	Attacker
Breaker	Infernowolf	Breaker
Battery	Dreamwing	Battery
Fourth	Iridescent Cloudwool (damage) or Iridescent Glaciva (sustain)	Flex

Main DPS — Verdant Blade Mantis

The dark mantis is the engine. Three things define its build:

Inherit, don't duplicate. If you leveled the electric Spark Mantis, the investment inherits to the Verdant Blade Mantis — stars, potential unlocks and potential fruits all carry over. Carried gear does not inherit, so plan gear separately. (Mechanics: carried gear & pacts.)

Potential allocation: Attack and Energy first, Break next, then dump the remainder into Health. Stop Health the moment it starts consuming gold materials, then round out physical and magic defense. This "gold-wall stop" rule repeats across every slot — it is the difference between a funded team and a broke one.

Carried gear: the Beast's Fang. Skill pairing: run one core damage skill plus one damage-amplifier skill, and enhance both. Rotation rule that defines the build:

• Boss above 50% health → use the amplifier skill first to ramp damage.
• Boss below 50% health → switch to the core skill and dump rotations.

Breaker — Infernowolf

Infernowolf is the Breaker with a story attached — unlock it via the three-day Fighter questline in Wolffang Ridge and evolve it with Undying Wolf Souls (the full walkthrough is on its dex page). Build notes:

Resonance: rank 5 is enough. Do not push rank 6 — the Cosmos Crystals are better saved, and the Break math barely moves.

Potential allocation: Break and Energy first, Attack next, remainder into Health.

Carried gear: the Behemoth Horn — the standard Breaker item (get your first from the Training Program's Rune Pouch selection; see Training Program picks).

Skills: run Undying Wolf Soul + Cross, and take the enhancement on Undying Wolf Soul when available — its soul-bounce applies a break-vulnerability stack per hit, which is exactly what the mantis wants to exploit.

The iridescent pivot: once the iridescent Infernowolf arrives via its limited event (dates on the event news post), the form pivots the creature into fire — letting it double as an amplifier alongside its Break role. Inheritance carries your investment over; only shiny and appearance costs do not transfer, which is why you should not pre-spend shiny resources on the base form.

Battery — Dreamwing

Dreamwing is the launch meta's gold standard for energy regeneration — the piece that makes the whole team feel like it has infinite skills.

Resonance: rank 5, and stop. Same Cosmos Crystal logic as the Breaker.

Potential: energy only — push it to the gold-material wall, and if late-game surplus allows, to 20.

Carried gear: any energy-type item; nothing exotic required.

Skills: run energy skills only, and do not spend enhancement materials — the base kit does the entire job.

The fourth slot — pick by difficulty

The last seat has two community-standard answers, and the choice is about the content in front of you:

Iridescent Cloudwool — pure damage

• Use when: low-to-mid difficulty content where you do not need extra sustain — fast clears, farming routes, easier dungeons.
• Skills: its dark-amplifying exclusive skill; no enhancement needed.
• Carried gear: Beast's Fang.
• Potential: attack until the gold wall.

Iridescent Glaciva — heal and amplify

• Use when: high-difficulty dungeons and bosses where the squad needs to live between Break windows.
• Value: group healing plus the team-wide 15% damage amplification — with the amplifier and the mantis's ramp, windows hit like trucks.
• Carried gear: the Healing Scarf.
• Potential: health-first.
• Skills: skip enhancement early; revisit only when materials are surplus (protect your Champion's Seals and strong-token economy — see carried gear & pacts).

Putting the rotation together

1. Open with Infernowolf — pressure the Break gauge, land Undying Wolf Soul bounces to stack break-vulnerability.
2. Break → swap to the mantis, amplifier skill first (boss above half), then core-skill dump inside the window.
3. Refill — Dreamwing's energy keeps step 2 repeatable every window without downtime.
4. Sustain or surge — Glaciva heals and amplifies between windows on hard content; Cloudwool simply adds damage on easy content.
5. Repeat — the loop is stable because the Battery never lets the Attacker starve and the Breaker's window always comes back.

What this team does not need

• Pact on Helmbrave or other low-value targets — the seals are precious; the meta's only urgent pact is Beast's Fang → Spark Mantis, which this team indirectly benefits from through inheritance.
• Rank-6 resonance anywhere — the wall is real and early.
• Shiny spends on pre-event forms — the Infernowolf event is the standing example: inheritance covers growth, not cosmetics.

Built as described, this roster clears the launch dungeon catalogue, farms bosses on one-minute respawns, and never begs the shop. That is what a good comp is supposed to do.