Tetris Effect Advanced Techniques Community Guide (2024)

Phases

An important feature in Zone battle is the phases. As the game progresses, the garbage will get messier, making survival harder. Below is a table about how each phase changes things.

Phase-transition garbages

Even if you are underpowered by your opponent, you can still make a comeback in between the phases.

The strategy is simple: when either you or your opponent are close to the phase threshold (20k and 60k), activate the zone. After the zone attack is sent, if you do enter the next phase, the garbage messiness will be the messiness of the phase you are entering, forcing the opponent to use Zone to block the damage immediately (especially in phase 3), giving them less time to stack.

Zone damage

The formula for zone damage is

The damage you would normally send + line bonuses

So either creating a good pre-zone stack or doing high-line clears will help you do more damage.

The line-clear bonuses table is as follows:

It should be noted that, while high line clear is good, time spent in Zone is also important. Leaving long zone time means your opponent gets more time to clear up the board/stacking to defend more damage.

Stacking for zones

Before entering zone, there are a few ways to stack your board to get an optimal attack.

• Combos

Using Combo setups (2-, 3-, 4-wide) are not as effective due to their lower attack output; as such, a focus on efficient T-Spin and Tetris setups would be better suited for Zone damage. However, combo setups, if performed fast, will result in a quicker Zone finish, giving your opponent less time to react.

• Tetris-T-Spin hybrid

Such stacks would usually involve a Tetris well ready, with some sort of T-Spin ready to be used, and starts zone when you are able to do at least one of them. It is also important to note that you would want to stack high (but not too high in case of a drought), to use both more zone time to clear lines and plan out a high zone line-clear attack.

• Templates

Templates are well, use templates in the building. TST towers and ST stacking are common.

Tetrises on the save

In some circ*mstances, your zone attack will lose to your opponent, maybe by a large amount. If you can see this happening, start doing Tetrises to replenish your zone charges. Tetris Effect: Connected is one of the few games where Tetris has some benefits over T-Spins. Since Tetris clears 4 lines in a row and has no need to soft drop, it makes the perfect candidate to make zone charges fast.

Zone strategy

The zone strategy usually shifts depending on both your opponents’ speed and efficiency, as well as what progression you are in. Generally, you would want to use a full zone whenever possible, as it grants you a higher bonus and more time to plan things out. In this full zone, you want to stack it with Tetrises and T-Spins, and generally finish it off with a high zone line clear. Anything above 18 is good, and anything at or above 20 is great. In addition, you can also zone when being sent too much garbage; you’d want to do this if you’re about ⅔ to ¾ of the way up and are receiving incoming garbage you cannot properly deal with there.

• In Phase 1, there is no best strategy, just use zone whenever you are getting pushed too high up by your opponent. This might result in a weaker zone attack that your opponent can easily overtake, but because of how quick zone charging is here, you would usually have another zone attack ready to counter. If you are able to get a good pre-zone setup and a full zone meter, then a high-zone line clear attack can be devastating if your opponent can’t counter it. Pairing this during the phase change can help.
• Entering and during Phase 2 would be the major focus of a lot of high zone line clears, which is discussed above. Because of the change in garbage, your Tetris wells might start shifting around, so knowing how to downstack would help.
• Phase 3 makes zoning trickier. Garbage gets extremely messy, and the importance of making T-Spins out of that garbage becomes key. Efficient downstacking becomes a plus, as the combos can add some extra damage to your attack. Feel free to use zone whenever you are high up, as that can avoid top-outs/block-outs, and if you can pull off a good downstack, get you back to a more leveled playing field. If your opponent is higher up than you and you have the advantage in the amount of zone, do use it to send a stronger attack — since it takes longer to charge zone and weaker zones are so short, your opponent would have a harder time countering any of it.