Is it even possible to beat Rivaleux with a friendly team?

[sircul2]

I've only gotten as far as the lost island, which seems to be the easiest as far 5* expeditions go, but not a one for shangri la. Meanwhile I can casually slap him around with a devious or aggressive team. What gives?

[Flamestalker]

Yes its easily possible, Friendly teams even do really well at the start of the fight as his minions are each weak to a Friendly attack. Rivaleux himself is pretty resistant though, so it can take some time if you're only using friendly attacks against him.

But that's the entire thing with the fight against Rivaleux, you shouldn't stick to one mood the entire fight and switch moods when he does. Aggressive Rivaleux hits hard so staying in disadvantage for the entire fight would be foolish, as long as you finish him friendly it count as a friendly win (unless you got way to many points in the other moods, but that's a topic for another conversation)

Generally for Friendly teams against Rivaleux I open the fight with the Devious-Devious opening option and try to get rid of Tommy and Amir as quickly as possible, the 25% extra damage from Devious-Devious makes bursting those two down easier and switching to friendly from the devious start buys you an extra turn before Rivaleux will switch moods. Cassandra isn't very threatening outside of her friendly attacks so she can be saved for last.

Rivaleux will switch to aggressive after two turns of you being friendly, either match it or go devious depending on what works best for your team, If Cassandra is still up by that point aggressive is generally the better option. Once all the minions are down you can work on Rivaleux himself, if you have good enrage skills use those to get him on low health before switching back to friendly to finish the job.

Hope that gives you a general idea of how to fight him using a friendly team, the most important to do is to get rid of Tommy and Amir quickly as friendly teams generally dont last long if they have to deal with multiple strong aggressive attacks.