Following the Black Friday 2015 sale that NetherRealm Studios rolled out for “Mortal Kombat X” Android and iOS, the developer is giving another chance to earn more Souls. The Dark Raiden challenge has just debuted on mobile, giving Android users a chance to win the dark Elder God over to their side.

To participate in the Challenge, players will need to go through five Towers in two levels. This means that players will have a chance to fuse the Dark Raiden card to Fuse Level 1 in the challenge mode alone. In the Difficulty mode, players can also win the Storm Hat Equipment card, which grants a 25 percent Toughness boost for any character equipped with it. When equipped with a Raiden character, it has a 10 percent for the X-ray Damage boost, and upon fusion level X, it provides 20 percent Power generation boost.

As per the usual Challenge Towers, players will need to go through Towers I, II and III, which requires the usual All Bronze, Silver and Bronze and All Silver character teams respectively. For Tower IV, players will need to have an All Gold tiered character team. Finally, for Match V, players will need to use Jax Briggs as one of the team characters.

Players will have a chance to win Dark Raiden until the first week of January. He is worth getting, if only for a very useful and challenging passive. As the Corrupted Elder God, Dark Raiden presents a great opponent against characters that deal damage over time (DOT). These include bleed, fire and poison, which makes him a perfect face-off challenger to the likes of previous challenge characters Mileena and Jason Vorhees, who are both known for their bleed specials.

When he is attacked with a DOT special, Dark Raiden will be healed. As an added bonus, Dark Raiden also has the ability to gain power when he is attacked with a Power draining special.

However, the grind of completing the challenge itself can become a little more complicated and harder to accomplish. The Normal Mode gives most “Mortal Kombat X” players an advantage, because a decent enough roster of strong Silver Cards can take on the stronger opponents in Tower V.

For “Mortal Kombat X” players who have been saving Level Up cards, this may be a great time to make good use of them, especially for Gold Card. Since Tower IV will require all Gold Cards for the team, there are two ways to go about it. The first is to have a team with higher fusion and level rankings. The downside here is that it will take a lot more waiting time to rotate the strong Gold team as the energy regenerates.

Another way is to create grind and upgrade most of the Gold cards that one has, ensuring that the cards are from similar fighting groups. This will serve the double purpose of matching their specific fighter for complementary passives, to better attack the different teams per tier.

This strategy is especially useful for the Tower V in the Difficult Mode. Jax Briggs is required, and in “Mortal Kombat X,” there are only a handful of Jax Briggs cards available, especially for freemium players.

Both Farmer Jax Briggs and Jax Briggs are both Silver Cards. One of the most common ways to make use of the Jax Briggs Spec Ops card, which is not from the Cage family is to pair it with Silver Kenshi. The latter Silver card turns into a stronger bet, especially when paired with another fellow teammate, this time from the Martial Arts faction.

This Martial Arts faction card can be Ninjutsu Scorpion, which adds 30 percent attack power for Martial Artist teammates. This will make “Mortal Kombat X” mobile’s Silver Kenshi an even bigger powerhouse in terms of attacking.

Dark Raiden does not have a power metre like in usual fights, so it is impossible to see how near is towards attacking with specials. Players should also expect sudden attacks of fire for the entire team. This not only bring damage over time even when tagged out, but the current fighter in the roster will not be able to generate power at a steady pace.

One effective way to attack Dark Raiden in Hard Mode is to keep bringing heavy-handed attacks. This means stacking up on combat gears, like Brawler Gloves to bring more damage. If using the Silver Kenshi card, it helps to have it fused to level VII and maxed out to level 50. This way, the card has all possible health and attack power, which will be complemented by attack enhancing gears.

The only Gold Jax Briggs card is the Revenant Jax, which has a passive that boosts the health by 15 percent of all Netherrealm characters. Depending on the kind of cards that a player has, this may not be as advantageous, as there are only a few couple of Netherrealm cards in the roster, particularly for beginners.

Unless both Unstoppable and Slasher Jason Voorhees are already upgraded, or unless a player is able to both upgrade Inferno Scorpion to level 50, fusion level VII, Jax Briggs may not necessarily be the best character to use for the final tower in Difficult Mode.

The Dark Raiden challenge is part of the newest update for “Mortal Kombat X” Android. Dubbed as the 1.6 update, Dark Raiden is part of the trio of new characters coming in as Challenge Characters.

For fans who have yet to update their “Mortal Kombat X” games, the latest version is available on the Google Play Store. The new update brings the darkness in the form of Dark Raiden, Dark Empress Kitana and Revenant Kung Lao, with the latter two slated for a later challenge.

Since it is the holiday update, NetherRealm Studios also offers a daily gift-giving even starting Dec. 11. Additionally, new Booster Packs are coming to the Store. These booster packs are aimed at bringing Klassic Scorpion and Klassic Sub-Zero. The packs are much like the limited Jason Vorhees pack, worth 200 Souls. Already, the Klassic Scorpion Kombat pack is already available in the “Mortal Kombat X” Android App Store. The pack will contain a Gold tier character and two other cards. It will also give players a chance to win Klassic Scorpion.

For premium players, this is a good offer, since it brings a new skin to Scorpion, which is appealing for hardcore “Mortal Kombat” fans. The Dark Raiden Early Access pack is still available in the store for those who want to get the Dark God without having to go through the Challenge. The Dark Raiden Pack offers one Dark Raiden Gold Card, the Storm Hat equipment and three more support cards.

"Mortal Kombat X" Dark Raiden challenge (Credit: YouTube/wbangcaHD)

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