Synchro: 7 sourced pairings, three kinds, four rules

Team building in this game is mostly a coverage exercise. Pick six units, cover your elements and roles, and each unit's value is a property of that unit alone. Synchro is the one mechanic that breaks that, because it makes the value of a unit depend on who else is on the field with it.

It arrived in Update 2.5. It is worth saying that clearly, because a great deal of coverage of this game, including an earlier version of this page, credited Update 4.0 with introducing it. Update 4.0 is real, and it is what renamed the game from X to Z, but Synchro predates it by a long way.

Pro Game Guides splits the mechanic into named kinds, and we use its words rather than inventing our own:

• Synchro Clash. A joint attack. Both units stay on the board, keep their own names, and keep doing their normal job in between clashes. The clash fires automatically and repeatedly once the placement conditions are met. 2 pairs.
• Synchro Drive. Also a joint effect, also with both units left standing. 2 pairs. Pro Game Guides names them without publishing damage figures, so neither do we.
• Merge. The two units become one. This is the kind people care most about and the kind most lied about, because a merge produces a unit with a name, and a name is the thing you farm toward. 3 pairs are documented; 1 of them has its result named.

Nothing here costs currency and nothing needs unlocking, which makes Synchro the only power increase in the game you cannot waste resources on.

1. Both units must be placed on the same field.
2. They must be within each other’s attack range.
3. Both must be fully upgraded, or at least upgraded equally.
4. The clash then fires automatically, with no button to press.

The third one is the condition players trip over. Both units equally upgraded, or both fully upgraded. A half-upgraded partner does not simply produce a weaker clash. On Deltia's reading of the mechanic, it does not produce one at all, which means the cheapest way to break your own Synchro is to lavish upgrades on the unit you like and leave the other one where it stands.

The range condition is the one that shapes your board. Two towers that must sit inside each other's attack range cannot cover two ends of a map. On a long or split path that is a real cost, and it is paid in coverage rather than in currency.

That is the whole list. 2 Clashes, 2 Drives, 3 Merges. Pro Game Guides is behind all but the first, which comes from Deltia's Gaming, and where a source stops short of naming the resulting unit the table says so rather than filling the gap.

Two things jump out of the table. Human Spider (Responsible) appears in two separate merges, which makes him the single most Synchro-relevant unit on the roster. And Pro Game Guides is explicit about what that means for your spending: both Synchros inherit Human Spider's Trait and stats, so his build directly affects their damage. The investment goes into him, not into the partner.

Mimicry Sorcerer (Cursed Love) + Jane Juliet (Larper), per Deltia's Gaming:

• Damage. 500% of the average damage between the two units.
• Cooldown. 60 seconds.
• Attack type. Water (Ground).

Pirate King (Voyage) + Quake Warlord (Destroyer), per Pro Game Guides:

• Damage. Hits the entire map for massive averaged damage.
• Cooldown. 300 seconds.

The cooldowns differ by a factor of five, and the second clash hits the whole map rather than a stretch of path, so the two are not really the same tool. We attribute each to the source that published it instead of blending them into one tidy figure, because a blended figure would be true of neither.

Read the damage wording carefully in both, because it is doing more work than it looks. A clash deals a multiple of the average damage between the two units, not a multiple of the stronger one. Pair a heavily invested unit with a neglected one and the average drags the clash down toward the weaker half. That, combined with the equal-upgrade condition, is the whole investment lesson of this page: a Clash pair is a joint investment or it is nothing.

Both halves of the Deltia's pair sit at B on Pro Game Guides' tier list, which is worth knowing before you rearrange your team around them. A free 500% combo on a 60-second timer is a genuine addition to a board. It is not a reason to bench an S+ unit that is clearing your waves.

A Merge is the only kind where the two units become one, so it is the only kind with a result worth naming. Pro Game Guides documents 3 of them and names the resulting unit for exactly 1: Super Goku (Third Ascension) with Limit Breaker Prince (Marked) produces Vegito Super.

The other 2 both involve Human Spider (Responsible), pairing him with Symbiotic Alien (Apex) and with Iron Billionaire (Genius). Pro Game Guides confirms the pairings and states that both Synchros inherit Human Spider's Trait and stats, so his build directly affects their damage, which is the practically useful part. What it does not do is name the units they produce. Neither does anybody else, so neither do we, and the result column on those two rows stays empty on purpose.

Search for Synchro in this game and you will find confident lists of nine pairs with a named result on every one: Symbiote Spider, Mechanical Spider, Unparalleled Armor, Majestic Armor, Underworld God (Synchro), Revolutionary Chief (Spade), Fused Warrior (Super). This page used to print that list. It was wrong, and here is the shape of the error, because the shape matters.

• The pairs were mostly real. The result names were not. Pro Game Guides genuinely documents the Human Spider merges and the Goku merge. What it never does is name the units that come out of the first two. Six names on that list, Symbiote Spider, Mechanical Spider, Unparalleled Armor, Majestic Armor, Underworld God (Synchro) and Revolutionary Chief (Spade), appear in no source at all.
• The seventh was the right pair with the wrong name. "Fused Warrior (Super)" was our label for the Goku and Vegeta merge. Pro Game Guides calls the result Vegito Super. A wrong result name is worse than no result name, because a player can search for it and find nothing, and conclude the fault is theirs.
• "Fuse" was never a word in this game. It was ours. Pro Game Guides says Clash, Drive and merge. We have adopted its vocabulary.
• Two pairings appear in no source. Nutaru with Sasku, and Underworld God with Water God. They are dropped rather than hedged, because a hedge on an invented pair is still an invented pair.

A result name is the single worst thing to invent in a game guide, because it is the thing a player farms toward. Someone reads "Symbiote Spider", spends a fortnight and a shard stock chasing it, and finds out at the end that it was never in the game. So the invented results are gone, the count is 7 rather than nine, and the one result anybody names is printed with the name its source gives it.

Every one of the 7 pairings names a specific evolution stage on each side. Not Mimicry Sorcerer. Mimicry Sorcerer (Cursed Love). Not Jane Juliet. Jane Juliet (Larper). Not Super Goku. Super Goku (Third Ascension).

This is the practical payoff of understanding that the bracket is an evolution stage rather than a rarity, which we cover in full on the Evolve page. A player who reads brackets as rarity tiers has no reason to care which version of a unit they are holding, and will scroll past the pairing without registering it. A player who reads them as evolution stages knows at once that the stage is part of the pair's identity, and plans their evolution order accordingly.

A team has six slots, and a Clash pair takes two of them. You keep both towers, so your board is as wide as it was and nothing is consumed. What you give up is placement freedom, and on some maps that is expensive.

Both halves have to sit within each other's attack range, which means they cover roughly the same stretch of path. Six towers spread across a long route is coverage. Six towers where two of them are welded to the same corner is five towers of coverage plus a periodic burst. On a short, looping map that trade is obviously worth it. On a long or split path, it is a real decision rather than a free win.

The second cost is the upgrade condition. Because the pair has to be evenly or fully upgraded, you cannot run a Clash on the cheap: the weaker half has to be brought up to the stronger one before the clash happens at all, and the damage formula averages them anyway. Budget for both units or field neither.

We compile sources. We do not play this game, so we cannot run this for you, and the person who can settle the open questions on this page is whoever owns both halves of a pair. Here is the comparison that would do it.

1. Fix the map and the wave. One stage you clear comfortably, one wave you measure on. Same stage every run, or you are measuring the stage instead of the pair.
2. Fix the other four slots. Same units, same levels, same placements, same upgrade timings.
3. Run A: the pair broken. Place the two units far apart, out of each other's range, so the clash cannot fire. Record the damage at the end of your chosen wave, three times, because one run is noise.
4. Run B: the pair active. Same two units, now in range of each other and evenly upgraded. Record again, three times.
5. Compare medians, not best runs. If B is consistently clear of A beyond the spread of your three runs, you have a real effect and a rough magnitude.
6. Then break the equal-upgrade rule on purpose. Bring one half back down and see whether the clash still fires. That single observation would confirm or kill the third of Deltia's four conditions, and nobody has published it.

If you run this, tell us what you got, including the runs that misbehaved. We will publish it with your sample size attached, with your name on it, and say plainly if it contradicts this page.