Sephiria Tablet Layouts: Five Worked Examples

Sephiria's inventory is a build because every cell carries a number, and tablets are what put numbers on cells. The tablet families page explains the four kinds of tablet and the solver page explains the tool that optimises them. This page is the step between: five layouts that documented builds actually use, worked cell by cell, so the abstract rules — reach 3, cap +5, line buffs, edge anchors, parity — turn into something you can reproduce on your own grid tonight.

All grids below assume the launch 6-wide rows; the starter bag is 6×4 and the Destiny Inscription's Expanding Pouch adds one full row.

Layout 1 — the free row: Endure 5's Foundation

Foundation is a line tablet: +1 to its entire row. The Endure talent at level 5 hands you one at the start of every run, before you have found anything, which is why three separate build routes call Endure 5 "nearly free value."

The layout is trivial but the decision is not: put Foundation in the row where your max-level-1 and max-level-2 artifacts will live. A +1 row lifts every level-0 item in it by one, and for an item whose maximum is 1 that is a maxed item for free. Do not spend the row on artifacts that cap at 4 or 5 — they want the layouts below.

Layout 2 — the tallest cell: Requital under Conviction

Requital is the strongest single line effect (+3 to its whole row — +18 of distributed value on a 6-wide grid). Conviction holds the largest single-cell buff in the game, +5. Stack them:

`` Row A: [ . ][ R ][ . ][ X ][ . ][ . ] ← Requital's row: every cell +3; X also receives Conviction's +5 Row B: [ . ][ . ][ . ][ C ][ . ][ . ] ← Conviction, placed so its target cell is X ``

If Conviction's target cell sits in Requital's row, that cell reads +8 — enough to max almost anything, since max level varies per artifact and few go above 5. Everything else in the row still gets +3. This is the "line first, then discrete on top" rule from the tablet families page in one picture, and it is how the Ilonica staff build holds its four core items at exact levels of 3 / 4 / 5 / 5.

Check the target with the in-game Q / E preview before you commit: Conviction's offset is fixed relative to its own cell, and a +8 on a max-3 artifact wastes five levels.

Layout 3 — the reserved top row: Multipurpose Belt

The Multipurpose Belt grants +1 to all three elemental stats per artifact in the top row, up to +6 each. The Ilonica staff build's author — the same person who maintains the solver — reserves the entire top row for it and warns that "not maxing [the core items] hurts the build drastically."

This is a layout driven by an artifact rule rather than a tablet rule, and it changes where your tablets go: line tablets that would normally sit on the top row move down one, and a top-row Shade (an edge-anchored tablet that only works on the top edge) is suddenly competing with six artifact slots. The solver's Items Update added exactly these grid-dependent artifacts to its Rulesets so you can ask for "top row full" and let it place the rest.

Layout 4 — the damage line: compasses under a spellbook

The lightning boomerang guide's core trick is positional: place compasses in a contiguous line directly under the boomerang spellbook, "connected with nothing in between," each adding +35% by the author's count — six in a row is +210%. Any tablet that breaks the line breaks the bonus.

So the tablets on that build go around the compass row, not through it: Requital on a different row, Foundation where the low-cap support items live, and nothing at all on the cells between compasses. It is the clearest case of a build where the combo tags and the grid geometry are the same decision.

Layout 5 — the whole-board flip: Curse

Curse, from the Skeleton costume, is the only parity tablet: odd cells +1, even cells −1 across the entire grid, regardless of where it sits — and moving it one cell in any direction inverts which colour is buffed. Rotation does nothing.

The worked use: put your maxable artifacts on one colour and your cannot-be-helped items (already maxed, or level-0 filler) on the other, then place Curse so the buffed colour is the one that matters. Two Curses on same-parity cells stack to +2 / −2; on opposite parity they cancel exactly, which is a real way to switch the effect off without discarding a tablet. The solver models it (added at a Skeleton player's request), so you can test both parities in a second rather than re-placing in-game.

The two mistakes that waste a grid

Edge tablets off their edge. Good Will (bottom), Shade (top), Flag (left) and Justice (left or right) do nothing anywhere else while still eating a cell. Place them first or leave them on the floor.

Reach. Maximum discrete reach is 3 cells (Manhattan distance). A tablet in a corner aiming at the far side of a 6-wide row is aiming at nothing — which is why the solver never proposes it.

Why a whole extra row is worth more than any tablet

The tier 50 guide's rule was "take bag slots — every successful run I've had at higher difficulties had me getting an entire row." Every layout above gets easier with one more row: Requital's +3 covers six more cells, the Belt's reserved row stops competing with your line tablets, and a compass line has somewhere to go. Slots come from the Destiny Inscription (+6, one full row), Ingenuity 5 (+2) and Survival 10 (+3); Survival 20's Tablet Imprinting frees cells by consuming tablets, and since 1.0.30 a failed imprint no longer eats the tablet — but it costs 12 slots up front, which is two of these layouts gone. The talents page has that trade in full.