Tracing Hand (Trace Mode) Guide
The Tracing Hand is a special active skill that lets you drag the jewels stacked on the board with your finger and rearrange them. Instead of waiting for the right jewels to fall, you build the chain yourself, so used well it can deal enormous damage in a single hit. It takes practice, so we recommend playing around freely in practice mode first.
- Firing the skill stops the falling jewels and puts the board into an editable state
- "Grab" a jewel and move it, and it swaps places one by one with the jewels along your path
- You get about 4 seconds. Lifting your finger or running out of time locks it in, and the chain fires
- To practice: Home → "More" → "How to Play" → "Trace Practice"
1. Who can use it
The Tracing Hand belongs to Teto (Fire, ★5). She keeps the skill from her base form all the way through her Apex form. The cooldown is 31 drops at skill Lv1, and maxing it out brings that down to 21 drops.
This skill is manual activation only. Auto-activation is off by default, so you fire it by tapping Teto yourself in the roster (the member slots at the bottom of the screen) whenever you want it. It will never go off on its own.
2. How it works, step by step
- Activate
Tap Teto in the roster. The falling jewel stops and the board becomes editable. - Grab a jewel
Press and hold (or start dragging) the jewel you want to move. The timer starts the moment you grab it. - Trace to rearrange
As you slide your finger, the jewel swaps one square at a time with whatever is along the path. The jewel you grabbed follows your finger, so think of it as carrying it to where you want it. - Let go to lock it in
Lift your finger and it locks in: matching values merge and the chain runs. Running out of time locks in the same way, automatically.
3. Rules worth remembering
| Time limit | About 4 seconds from the moment you grab. A bar shows the time remaining. When it runs out, it locks in automatically. |
|---|---|
| Movement | Only to orthogonally adjacent squares — up, down, left, right. No diagonals. |
| Empty squares | Squares with no jewel are not swap targets (you pass straight through them). |
| Gravity after locking in | Whatever merged away is refilled from above. Any new matching values created by that fall will merge as well, on your next landing. |
| Turn cost | One trace counts as one turn (the enemy's attack counter advances too). |
| If you move nothing | The activation is cancelled and your cooldown is refunded. No turn is spent either. A misclick will never cost you anything. |
If you activate a trace while a jewel is still falling and then move at least one square, the jewel that was in mid-air is discarded instead of being placed on the board, and you move on to the next jewel in NEXT (because one trace = one turn = one jewel consumed). That is a waste, so it is better to activate right after you finish placing the previous jewel.
4. Tips for building big chains
- Look for the "one square away" spot: scan the board and find where a single move puts matching values side by side. Four seconds is shorter than you think, so deciding your route before you grab matters more than anything else.
- Build from the bottom: when jewels merge, the ones above fall down. Set up the start of your chain low on the board and that fall naturally triggers the next merge, extending the chain.
- Go for bigger numbers: in this game, jewel value affects damage more than chain count. Creating one big number like 64 or 128 deals more damage than stretching out a chain of small ones.
- Match your elements: only allies whose element matches the merged jewel will attack (the element gate). Prioritize lining up the elements that are actually in your party.
- Don't use it right before a charge attack: a trace costs a turn. When the enemy shows "1 turn until charge attack," defend or heal first.
5. How to open practice mode
There is a free practice mode with no enemies and no damage. Experiment as much as you like there and get comfortable before you take it into a real fight.
In practice mode you can change the following settings and re-deal the board as often as you want.
- Number of jewels: Few / Many / Full
- Create islands: deals a board with gaps in it (for practicing around empty squares)
- Deal again: randomly rebuilds the layout
You can use practice mode even if you don't have Teto. Start by getting a feel for "move one jewel, make a merge," then move on to "deliberately build a 2-chain" — taking it in steps is the fastest way to improve.
Related pages
How Chains and Damage Work / Element Gates and Party Building / Skill List