How to play against the Leaf Crystal as 5th Crystal in Lost Temple

Each time your troop starts battling the crystals in lost temple, the elemental crystals will appear in a random order.  The difficulty of each crystal increases when it appears later in the ordering, and the danger bars or actives tend to change as well.  The best guide for the Lost Temple crystals is Battle Camp Manual's guide, which details what you'll face from each crystal depending on its order in the weekly sequence.

This blog post aims to provide a bit more information on defeating the final boss of the leaf crystal (Parasite Leaves) when it appears as the 5th crystal in the sequence.  The information provided on this crystal by Battle Camp Manual is shown in the image below.

From Battle Camp Manual's Guide to Lost Temple

When leaf crystal appears in anything but the first crystal, the active of the final boss is leech.  Leech attacks your team but also heals the boss.  For many players this causes instant defeat of your team with negative overall damage, making your raid percentage go backwards. Leeching during a leaf crystal can cause frustrations to the rest of your troop as they'll need to battle again to compensate for the negative damage of your turn.  An example of a player accidentally leeching when we'd almost finished the leaf crystal is shown below.

Example of negative damage through leeching

When leaf appears as 2nd-4th in the crystal ordering, the danger bar goes up with damage from any element and down with turns.  This changes completely for the 5th crystal, as the danger bar will now quickly go up with time and down with fire attacks.  Leaf crush is still highly recommended for all these leaf crystals, however as a 5th crystal you will also need to use fire monsters in your team.

My method for playing against the leaf crystal as 5th is detailed below. There may be many other methods for playing against the leaf crystal as 5th, and I welcome players to add their methods to the comments below to help others. (Thank you in advance!)

My playing method

Team required: 1 leaf crush, 1 fire lacerate/blast (or other active with only a 3 turn initial countdown), 3 other fire monsters (ideally single target offensive actives).

The timer bar is very quick, so my aim is to get to my leaf crush as fast as possible while avoiding the danger bar from being triggered.

Turn 1: Match any 3 gems that will not attack.
(An element that you do not use on your team)

Turn 2: Match 3 fire gems to cause a fire attack. If there are no fire gems to match, do not make a turn but instead let the minute timer run out. This will prevent the leech activating and causing you to have negative damage.

Turn 3: Match any 3 gems. Your lacerate/blast will activate at the end of your turn to reduce the danger bar.

Turn 4+: Your leaf crush will activate at the end of your 4th turn so you can take your time or make more matches, depending on your own playing strategy.

Note that shield activates after your first turn. To slightly increase your damage, swap turns 1 and 2 over so that your fire damage is in your first turn and isn't reduced by the shield. However make sure that you are quick on your second turn to avoid the danger bar triggering as this ordering doesn't allow much room for error.

My method is shown in the video below. The recording unfortunately starts after my first turn (non attack 3 gem match) but before the shield activates.

(Please excuse some bad gem matching after crush activates... stage fright hit while knowing it was being recorded. ;)  )

A Quick Guide to Leaf as 2nd-4th Crystal
(Full blog post to follow soon!)

The leaf crystal in this ordering will have a danger bar that goes up with damage from all elements and down with turns.  The key is to have a small amount of damage each turn.  The downfall of most players is that they will have an active that does too much damage and triggers the leech of the boss.

1. Make sure to have leaf crush on your team. The easiest leaf crush to obtain is a peepsqueek from farming rare pieces in the lost temple map area.
2. Avoid any actives that will activate before leaf crush, or turn their autocast off.
3. Keep your damage in the first three turns (before leaf crush protects you) as low as possible by matching only 3 gems each turn. Avoid combinations until leaf crush is ready to activate.
4. After leaf crush activates, continue to play with maximum damage.

Without leaf crush on your team, turn the autocast of all your offensive actives off. Make only a small amount of damage each turn.  If you use swap/element-swap, activate it in the last few seconds of the battle so that you finish in overtime and the boss will not be able to leech you.