Idol Erika:

For the low price of $20, I bought 3 brand new SS Memorias -- Idol Erika, Blazing Ignition Ruka, and Wedding Dress Ichiko.  They're all fire type, so I had to make a lot of Oubliette of Tears runs to get them their fire tear enhancements.  But I got lucky and lots of fire tears came my way, so I was able to upgrade all three of them to full.  I now regularly go down to floor 35 then back up to floor 50.  The strategy has shifted away from saving energy for the last boss.  Instead I use 3 bonus rounds from overdrive and kill the boss while at 0 energy.  I'm so much stronger than the boss now that I can actually do that.  It makes the Tears runs very low stress when before they had me on adrenaline the whole run.

I also got enough Protean shards to purchase Yuina's level 3 limit break.  Sadly it still isn't enough to challenge Amon W with.  It might be easier to take on the dark Orb Boss with my fire crew and just ignore the elemental vulnerability.  Though that would make all my work promoting this group completely wasted. . .

The Protean shards were a reward for the latest event.  This event is a comical take on Erika's life set in an alternate universe.  In this version she becomes an idol and sings the Crimson Vertex into pacification, and then we all live happily ever after.  It was pretty funny but I prefer the real setting.  The biggest benefit from this event wasn't the story but the new SS Memorias that look great.

Idol Erika has an awesome exclusive ability that rewards all the other members of her squad (so long as they're also fire elementalists) +5 sp.  Tama is already awesome with an ability that does the same for +3 sp, so +5 is crazy.  I already have so many powerful fire users but now I want to somehow squeeze in Idol Erika too.  She also gives the entire party +50% defense for the first 4 turns of a fight.  For Orb Boss III's that might not mean much, but for most fights that's the entire fight, or at least a large portion of it.  With that kind of defense who needs healing?

I don't think wedding dress Ichiko or Burning Ignition Ruka are playable, but Burning Ignition can be introjected and skill evolutioned -- so you're not supposed to actually play her, just scavenge her ability and give it to another, stronger Ruka.  And who doesn't want to look at Ichiko in a wedding dress?

The event also expanded the floors of the clock tower.  This let me climb to the new top floor and unlock the Memento Mori skill evolution.  Now it adds an extra buff to skill attack buffs, and more importantly the price has been reduced from 12 to 10 sp.  That might not sound like much but it means I can use it on turn 2, and then follow up with a silky flare attack on turn 3, when before I would have had to choose one or the other technique.  In the clock tower every extra turn wasted counts and reduces your score, so the skill evolution proved very useful.

I also got a new high score on the score challenge boss, over 473k.  That's almost the max score of 500k.  You only get a pointless trophy if you reach that score, you actually get all the loot available at 450k, so basically I smashed the score challenge this time.  It's because the boss was vulnerable to fire and fire is my strongest crew.

Thanks to the new event I was able to play Heaven all day and get stronger in a myriad of ways.  It really is Heaven on Earth.