List of special rooms in Mahjong Soul

Special Rooms are offered in Mahjong Soul. They provide players with alternative rooms either with a different ruleset, or used for specific purpose. Most of them are temporarily available during events.

Melee Room

Melee Room 「乱闘の間」 (Rantou no ma) is a special room with a predefined subset of local yakus. In Melee Room, players can score a hand with those local yaku, where some of them are not valid under regular riichi mahjong.

Casual Room

Casual Room 「交流の間」 (Kouryuu no ma) provides a casual gameplay, without requiring creating a friendly room and find sufficient players manually. The ruleset is identical to normal gameplay, while both ranking and copper-coin requirements are not applied, as well as no bonding value or chest for reward.

Casual Room is long-term available.

DoraDorara

DoraDorara 「ドラさんモード」 (Dorasan moudo) is a special room with 3 dora indicators revealed in advance. That being said, there're always at least three doras in each round, making it much easier to score a larger hand. The amount of kan as well as four-kan abortion still share the same restriction to the regular game, though only first two kans can reveal kandora indicator, while the last two cannot. The maximum amount of dora still remains 5 (or 10 with ura) in total.

Battle of Asura

Battle of Asura 「修羅の戦」 (Shura no sen) is a special mode with a very distinct set of rules. The two main differences: the charleston and game resumption. The charleston is a feature offered in American mahjong. In this version, players exchange three tiles only once per hand before the intial discard. Unlike traditional rules to mahjong, the hand continues even after a player wins the hand. Instead, the hand ends if three players won their hands, a player falls into a negative score, or the tiles are drawn into ryuukyoku.

Bloodshed Skirmish

Bloodshed Skirmish 「赤血の戦」 (Sekketsu no sen) is a special room applying gameplay of Sichuan Bloody Rules: Battle to the Bloody End (血战到底). As described, the room has a unique scoring system completely different from riichi mahjong. Unlike riichi, aggressive strats are more preferred, while many defensive strats under riichi are no longer useful, sometimes even leads to a heavy penalty if trying to do so.

Gameplay

Each match has and only has four rounds. Instead of rotating towards each player, the dealership is determined by the first winner in the previous round, or keeps if nobody wins. Honor tiles are not used, meaning only suited tiles are available, 108 tiles in total. Each player are forced to make valid hands with at most two of the suits (Voided Suit 「絶一門」 (zetsuichimon)), failing to do so leads to a heavy penalty in exhaustive draw. Similar to most mahjong variants, furiten is not applied.

A complete round is processed as follows:

• Choose three tiles in a same suit and switch between players, similarly to Charleston.
• Determine and declare the voided suit.
• Make winning hands without using any tiles from the voided suit.
• End a round if either condition is achieved:
  • Three players declared winning. (Ends normally.)
  • Running out of tiles from the wall. (Exhaustive draw, triggers hand rechecking.)
  • Any player is bankrupted. (A match is also ended in this case.)

Scoring

Generally speaking, the score of a hand is only determined by han value:

Points = 1000 * 2 ^ Han

The upper bound of han value is 6 han. The scoring table can be simply listed as follows:

• (1 han) 1,000 points
• (2 han) 2,000 points
• (3 han) 4,000 points
• (4 han) 8,000 points
• (5 han) 16,000 points
• (6 han) 32,000 points

The payment is applied differently to riichi. In brief, it's more encouraged to win by Tsumo, as the total payment is huge compared to Ron. More specifically, payments are counted as follows:

• Ron: Only the deal-in player needs to pay exactly the points to the winner.
• Tsumo: Every current non-winners should pay exactly the points to the winner, with 1,000 points each in addition.

Additionally, when a kan is called, an instant bonus is applied to each kan immediately.

• Straight kan (Daiminkan): Kan-feeder pays 2,000 points to kan-claimer.
• Added kan from draw (Tsumogiri kakan): Each non-winners pay 1,000 points towards kan-claimer. However, if the tile deals into others, no payment will be applied.
• Added kan from hand (Tedashi kakan): No payment.
• Concealed kan (Ankan): Each non-winners pay 2,000 points towards kan-claimer.

However, if the round ends by exhaustive draw, while some of them fails on hand rechecking, kan bonuses from those players will be refunded in ryuukyoku.

Yaku list

There're two types of yakus.

Base yakus are the main yaku. Only one of them can be chosen for each hand, with their han value as high as possible.

Bonus yakus are additional. They can be stacked arbitrarily as long as the condition is satisfied. Usually those are occasional yakus aside from Root.

Base yaku

• (1 han) Yakuless Win 「無番和」 (Uufanhou): As described, neither of other yaku is satisfied. This can be treated as matching the lowest winning condition: Voided Suit is satisfied.
• (2 han) All triplets 「対々和」 (Toitoi): All of the sets are triplets or quads.
• (3 han) Full Flush 「清一色」 (Chinitsu): All tiles made with only one suit.
• (3 han) Seven Pairs 「七対子」 (Chiitoitsu): Hand made by seven pairs.
• (3 han) Terminals in All Sets 「帯么九」 (Taiyaochuu): All sets and the pair both containing terminal tiles.
• (3 han) Single Wait after 4 Triplets 「金勾釣」 (Kinkoutyao): All four sets are melded, waiting on a single tile.
• (4 han) Pure Triplets 「清対」 (Chintoi): Full Flush with All Triplets.
• (4 han) 2/5/8 Triplets 「将対」 (Jantoi): All Triplets hand with all tiles made by 2, 5, or 8.
• (4 han) Seven Pairs with One Duplicate 「龍七対」 (Ronchiitoi): Seven Pairs with two pairs identical. Decreases one Root counting from total root amounts when achieved.
• (5 han) Pure Seven Pairs 「清七対」 (Chinchiitoi): Full Flush with Seven Pairs.
• (5 han) All terminals 「清么九」 (Chinyaochuu): Full Flush with Terminals in All Sets.
• (5 han) Pure Single Wait after 4 Triplets 「清金勾釣」 (Chin Kinkoutyao): Full Flush with Single Wait after 4 Triplets.
• (6 han) Blessing of Heaven 「天和」 (Tenhou): Winning a hand by Tsumo as a dealer in the first turn with the first draw.
• (6 han) Blessing of Earth 「地和」 (Chiihou): Winning a hand by Tsumo as a non-dealer in the first turn before any tiles are called.
• (6 han) Pure Seven Pairs with One Duplicate 「清龍七対」 (Chin Ryuuchiitoi): Full Flush with Seven Pairs with One Duplicate. Also decreases one Root counting from total root amounts when achieved.
• (6 han) Four Quads 「十八羅漢」 (Juuhachi Rakan): Calling kan for 4 times. Root counting is not applied.
• (6 han) Pure Four Quads 「清十八羅漢」 (Chin Juuhachi Rakan): Full Flush with Four Quads. Root counting is also not applied.

Bonus yaku

• (1 han) Root 「根」 (Ruuto): Having four identical tiles in a hand, counting both melded and concealed parts. Not necessarily to be a kan.
• (1 han) After a Kan 「嶺上開花」 (Rinshan Kaihou): Winning by the tile drawn from dead wall (rinshanpai) right after declaring a kan.
• (1 han) Dealing into Win after Kan 「嶺上放銃」 (Rinshan Houjuu): Winning by the discards from other players who just called a kan.
• (1 han) Robbing a Kan 「槍槓」 (Chankan): Winning by the tile from other player's added kan (kakan).
• (1 han) Under the Sea 「海底摸月」 (Haitei): Winning a hand in the last turn, by either Tsumo with the last drawn, or Ron with the last discard.

Penalty

When a round goes to a natural end by running out wall tiles, a special hand rechecking is applied to all non-winners. In this case, non-winner's hands will be checked if the following condition is satisfied:

• Ready / Tenpai: Incomplete hand is winnable with one extra tile.
• Voided Suit: All of the tiles of declared voided suit are fully discarded.

Failing to achieve those conditions will lead to a heavy penalty. In this case, failed players should pay for the highest possible score (takame) towards ready players, as if they dealed into others in game (occasional yakus won't be counted). In addition, if a failed player contains any tiles from the voided suit, a lower bound is applied: the payment will be at 4 han at minimum, meanwhile, such payment will be applied to each opponents regardless of whether they are ready.

With such a high penalty, it's always recommended to try keeping tenpai near the exhaustive draw. Moreover, trying to hold a tile from voided suit is always risky and unrecommended. Strats like complete defense (betaori) are no longer useful, as such method tries to give up tenpai and only discard safe tiles, while it only leads to a final penalty as huge as deal-in payment.