Status Effects
Status effects in Anime Expeditions fall into a few functional categories rather than being a random grab-bag. Damage-over-time effects such as Bleed, Burn, Austere Flames, and Mana Burn tick repeated damage across a fixed duration, and several of them stack, meaning multiple applications compound rather than simply refreshing the timer. Bleed is the most punishing of the group since it also cancels the target's health regeneration while it ticks.
Crowd control is split into hard and soft categories that interact through lockout tags. Hard crowd control, covering Stun, Freeze, Stagger, Knockback, Rewind, and the stronger Shadow Rewind, fully prevents actions or movement and is tracked under shared lockout tags so that certain hard-CC effects cannot be chained infinitely onto the same target. Soft crowd control, covering Slow and the permanent Dismember effect, reduces movement speed without fully locking the target down, letting damage-focused units still function while soft-CC is active.
A handful of effects are tied to specific units rather than being general-purpose tools. Crimson Mark is tied to Crimson's own kit, Puppet Mark is tied to Puppet's kit, and True Saint has its own namesake mark, each applying a unit-specific tag used to trigger that unit's follow-up abilities or passives. Bounty Mark rewards bonus Yen when a marked enemy is killed. These marks share the same underlying stacking and duration framework as the generic effects, but their gameplay purpose is narrower and tied directly to one unit's kit.
Details
Damage-over-time effects
Bleed and Austere Flames both deal damage scaled to 65% of a reference value across their duration and can stack from repeated applications, making them strong tools against tanky enemies that stay in range long enough to eat multiple stacks. Burn deals a lighter 50% scaling over a shorter 4-second window, and Mana Burn extends the damage-over-time formula to a full 8-second, 8-tick duration, making it the slowest but most sustained of the group.
Hard vs. soft crowd control
Hard crowd control effects share lockout tags specifically to prevent a single enemy from being permanently chain-stunned by overlapping sources, a common balance safeguard in tower-defense-style games. Rewind and Shadow Rewind are a special case within hard CC, since instead of simply freezing a target in place they physically move it backward along its path, with Shadow Rewind being the more severe version that teleports the target all the way back toward the enemy spawn. Soft crowd control effects like Slow and the permanent Dismember trade full lockdown for a lasting speed penalty, useful for keeping fast enemies within a defense line's effective range longer.
Unit-specific marks
Crimson Mark, Puppet Mark, and True Saint Mark all work the same way structurally: they are applied by that specific unit's kit and then consumed or referenced by one of that same unit's other abilities, turning the mark into a built-in combo piece rather than a standalone debuff. Bounty Mark is different in purpose, rewarding bonus Yen on a kill rather than enabling a follow-up attack, making it more of an economy tool than a damage tool even though it shares the same tagging system as the combat-focused marks.
Reading a status effect's icon
Because damage-over-time effects, hard crowd control, soft crowd control, and unit-specific marks all share the same tag framework, a new player can generally tell a status effect's category by what it does rather than needing to memorize every name individually: anything ticking damage over time is a DoT, anything stopping an enemy outright is hard CC, anything slowing without stopping is soft CC, and anything unique to one unit's kit is almost certainly a character-specific mark.
FAQ
What does Bleed do in Anime Expeditions?
Bleed deals damage over 6 ticks across 6 seconds, can stack from repeated applications, and cancels the target's health regeneration for the duration, making it especially effective against enemies with regen mechanics.
What is the difference between hard and soft crowd control?
Hard crowd control (Stun, Freeze, Stagger, Knockback, Rewind, Shadow Rewind) fully prevents actions and movement, while soft crowd control (Slow, Dismember) only reduces movement speed without stopping the target entirely.
What is the Crimson Mark?
Crimson Mark is a unit-specific status effect applied by Crimson's own kit, used to trigger follow-up interactions with Crimson's other abilities rather than functioning as a general debuff.
Can enemies be permanently stunned?
No. Hard crowd control effects share lockout tags that prevent certain effects from being chained back-to-back on the same target indefinitely.
What is the Puppet Mark?
Puppet Mark is a unit-specific status effect tied to Puppet's kit, following the same tag-based framework as other character-specific marks like Crimson Mark and True Saint Mark.
What is the strongest damage-over-time effect?
Bleed and Austere Flames both scale to 65% of a reference value across their duration and can stack, making them the heaviest-hitting DoT effects, ahead of Burn's lighter 50% scaling and Mana Burn's slower but longer 8-tick duration.
What does Bounty Mark do?
Bounty Mark rewards bonus Yen when a marked enemy is killed, making it a currency-focused effect rather than a damage or crowd-control tool, even though it uses the same underlying tagging system.
Other systems
Source-checked
Extracted from Anime Expeditions client data (status-effects.json, keywords.json). Earlier drafts of this page attributed Crimson Mark and Puppet Mark to character names not present in current unit data; this version attributes each mark to its actual in-game unit, Crimson and Puppet respectively. updated · GuideDex staff. Report a correction.