Chaos Zero Nightmare Great Rift no longer has four difficulty settings. The 11 November update replaces Easy, Normal, Hard and Hell with two battle types: Subjugation for practising and earning grades, and Merit for chasing ranked rewards.
If you’re coming back after the update, don’t expect Merit Battle to be available straight away. You have to defeat the Rearguard boss in Subjugation first, and the new ranked Rearguard has much stricter Save Data rules. Here’s how to choose the right mode, unlock the other one and understand which scores count towards weekly rewards.
Chaos Zero Nightmare Great Rift: Subjugation vs Merit explained
Subjugation Battle allows you to fight both Vanguard and Rearguard bosses. You can use Save Data from any season, which makes this the better place to try an old favourite build or experiment with a new team. Your performance earns a grade from B up to SSS, but that grade does not enter the competitive Merit ranking.
Merit Battle keeps the competitive side of the Great Rift. Your recorded performance is ranked against other players, and the final rank determines settlement rewards. In its Rearguard fight the boss has infinite HP, so there isn’t a normal kill to chase. The fight ends after a set number of turns, making damage and score during that window the real objective.
The most important restriction is on Merit Rearguard Save Data. Only current-season and Basic Save Data may be used there, and the seasonal card and equipment restrictions also apply. Subjugation does not impose those Save Data limits, so the strongest setup in one mode might not be eligible in the other.
How to unlock Merit Battle in Chaos Zero Nightmare Great Rift
Start in Subjugation Battle and clear its Rearguard boss. The developer states that defeating that boss for the first time unlocks Merit Battle. It does not say that you need to achieve an SSS rating, complete every possible difficulty or place on a leaderboard before switching modes.
Once Merit is open, pick a permitted setup for the Rearguard encounter instead of relying on a saved older-season deck. You can also inspect the Boss Strategy page, introduced alongside the overhaul, for attack patterns and countermeasures before going in. That’s more reliable than copying a general deck without knowing what the boss does.
The Recommended Formation feature offers example Combatant combinations and Save Data configurations for Vanguard and Rearguard. You can copy those combinations or save them as presets. They should make it quicker to test a plan, but they are recommendations, not a guaranteed top score.
Chaos Zero Nightmare Great Rift weekly cumulative reward thresholds
Weekly cumulative rewards are separate from the Subjugation grade and the Merit leaderboard. Both battle types can contribute score towards the cumulative weekly total, so a player who prefers unranked fights still has a reason to take part.
| Previous threshold | New weekly threshold |
|---|---|
| 50,000 | 100,000 |
| 100,000 | 200,000 |
| 200,000 | 400,000 |
| 300,000 | 600,000 |
The weekly cumulative thresholds have doubled. You now need 600,000 points for the highest tier shown here, not the old 300,000. Weekly cumulative progress is separate from your Merit leaderboard rank.
Great Rift record-score rewards are separate
There is a second set of record-score reward tiers in addition to the weekly cumulative targets above. The 11 November update moves the old 25,000-point record tier to 30,000 and the old 60,000 tier to 50,000. It also adds a 120,000-point record tier. The 20,000, 40,000, 80,000, 100,000, 150,000, 200,000, 250,000 and 300,000 record thresholds remain listed. Don’t confuse these with the 100,000 to 600,000 weekly cumulative milestones.
Herald of Judgment and the new Boss Strategy guide
Herald of Judgment puts Original Sin cards into play, each with a condition to complete. The developer’s preview describes clearing Sin stacks through actions such as drawing or creating cards and playing non-Attack Cards. Read the current card’s condition and plan a turn around it rather than only dealing damage.
If stacks remain when the Second Original Sin card reaches zero cost, or certain turns pass, the boss can clear your hand and hit hard. That makes reading the card’s condition important. Don’t waste turns firing off damage without checking whether the boss is about to punish you for ignoring Original Sin.
The current Great Rift runs from 11 November until maintenance on 2 December, then continues in a second half until maintenance on 23 December. The active fight and countdown are shown in the event, so check those before squeezing in a late score attempt.
Which Great Rift mode should you play?
Use Subjugation if you want to learn mechanics, play with older Save Data or work towards a good grade without leaderboard pressure. Once you’ve cleared its Rearguard, move to Merit if you want a ranked position and settlement rewards. You can still earn cumulative weekly score from both, so neither is wasted time.
The Chaos Zero Nightmare Great Rift overhaul is easiest to understand as three different results: an unranked grade, a competitive Merit rank and a separate weekly score total. Keep those apart when checking your progress. They decide different rewards and don’t automatically substitute for one another.
Official publisher source: Smilegate’s official 11 November 2026 Season 5 update press release.
