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.

Open Hand Match

Open Hand Match 「配牌公開」 (Haipai koukai) is a special room with the starting hand (haipai) revealed in the beginning. When a round begins, each player's starting hand is revealed, and the starting tiles remain visible in the rest of round. Drawn tiles are concealed as usual, and can be used to swap out visible starting tiles in order to keep the hand unrevealed. With this behavior, attempting to make specific hands will lead to a leak of information by reading opponent's remaining visible tiles, making it harder to achieve hands by Ron. On the contrary, this can also help to decrease the difficulty of defensing, by excluding impossible groups or yaku.

Chaotic Wall Break

Chaotic Wall Break 「龍の割目」 (Ryuu no wareme) is a special room with three dora indicators revealed in advance, as well as applying a special wareme rule. The way of revealing dora indicators goes the same to DoraDorara. Due to the lack of physical wall position, the game determines wareme player in a different way. In each round, one random player gets a wareme marker, switching randomly every five turns. A same player can be chosen upon marker switching. Similar to regular wareme rule, the payment from wareme player is always doubled (excludes honba and riichi bet).

Path of Trial

Path of Trial 「試練の道」 (Shiren no michi) provides a gameplay with ruleset identical to Ranked Rooms. Instead of ranking, player's goal is to complete several missions in a mission card, and try to accomplish mission cards as much as possible. Each card is restricted to be finished in at most 5 matches. An internal ranking is available, ordered by Trial Level. By completing more cards, player's level gets promoted, while the mission difficulty is also increased simultaneously.

Types of mission are listed as follows:

• Complete ____ matches
• Win ____ hands
• Win with ____ doras (including akadora and uradora)
• Complete ____ matches in 3rd place or above
• Complete ____ matches with ____ points or above
• Complete ____ matches without dealing into others
• Win ____ hands above Mangan/Haneman/Baiman

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) applies gameplay of Sichuan Bloody Rules: Battle to the Bloody End (血战到底). The ruleset and the scoring system are completely different from riichi mahjong. Unlike riichi, it's more preferred for an aggresive gameplay, while many defensive strats are no longer useful, sometimes even with a heavy penalty.

Gameplay

Each match has only 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, including 108 tiles in total. Each player is forced to make valid hands in at most two suits (Voided Suit 「絶一門」 (Zetsuichimon)), while failing to do so leads to a heavy penalty in exhaustive draw. Similar to most mahjong variants, furiten, reserving tiles from dead wall (wanpai) and dora are 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 unwanted suit.
• Make winning hands without using any tiles from the unwanted suit.
• End a round if either condition is achieved:
  • Three players declared a win. (Ends a round normally.)
  • Running out of tiles from the wall. (Exhaustive draw, triggers hand rechecking.)
  • Any player is bankrupted. (Also ends a match in this case.)

Scoring

Generally speaking, the score of a hand is only determined by han value, capped at 6 han in maximum.

Formula: Score = 1000 * 2 ^ (Han - 1)

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. Meanwhile, dealership does not provide more income, with neither a higher rate nor extra tips.

More specifically, payments are counted as follows:

• Deal-in win (Ron): Only the deal-in player needs to pay exactly the score to the winner.

  Formula: RonPoints = Score

• Self-draw win (Tsumo): Every current non-winners should pay the score to the winner, with 1,000 points each in addition.

  Formula: TsumoPoints = (Score + 1000) * CurrentPlayers

Additionally, when a kan is declared, 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-winner pays 1,000 points towards kan-claimer. However, if this tile deals into others, the bonus is cancelled and no payment will be applied.
• Added kan from hand (Tedashi kakan): No payment. This avoids the strat to make a pon first and kakan after then, in order to attempt more bonus than daiminkan directly.
• Concealed kan (Ankan): Each non-winner pays 2,000 points towards kan-claimer.

Nevertheless, if the round ends by exhaustive draw, while some of them fails on his hand rechecking, a refund of kan bonuses from those players will be applied.

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. These yaku cannot be stacked together, neither can a player score them with more han by combining base yaku together.

Bonus yakus are additional. They can be stacked arbitrarily as long as the condition is satisfied. Usually those are occasional yakus aside from Root. However, if some bonus yaku can be always guaranteed by the base yaku, these bonus yaku will be deducted when counting.

Base yaku

• (1 han) Yakuless Win 「無番和」 (Uufanhou):

  As described, neither of other yaku is satisfied.

  This can be treated as satisfying the minimum winning condition: Voided Suit.

• (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 hand with two pairs identical.

  Decreases one root from total root amount.

• (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 Ronchiitoi):

  Full Flush with Seven Pairs with One Duplicate.

  Also decreases one root from total root amount.

• (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.

Memorizing base yaku

Overall, base yaku can be classified under several variants. The following rules can help to memorize the list by decomposing the yaku.

• Flushing: Full-Flush hand values +2 han based on their regular version.
• Triplet-based: All Triplets values 2 han → with +1 han for All Melded → with +3 han more for All Quads.
• Pair-based: Seven Pairs values 3 han → with +1 han for One Duplicate.
• 2/5/8: 4 han. Only triplet version is available. Pair version is not included. Not applicable to flush.
• Outside-hand: 3 han. Can be upgraded with flushing. Not applicable to triplets or paired.
• Occasional: Tenhou/Chiihou, goes to 6 han in maximum.

Penalty

When a round goes to an exhaustive draw, a special hand rechecking is applied to all non-winners. In this case, non-winner's hands will be rechecked if the following condition is satisfied:

• Ready / Tenpai: Incomplete hand is winnable with one extra tile.
• Voided Suit: All tiles of unwanted 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 already dealed into others in game (occasional yakus won't be counted, of course). In addition, if a failed player keeps any tile from unwanted suit, a heavier penalty will be applied: the payment is lower-capped at 4 han at minimum; meanwhile, applies to every opponents regardless of their ready state.

With such a high penalty, it's always recommended to try to keep tenpai before the exhaustive draw. Moreover, trying to hold a tile from unwanted suit is always risky and is never recommended. Strategies like complete defense (betaori) are no longer useful, as such method tries to give up tenpai and only discard safe tiles, while this only leads to a final penalty as huge as deal-in payment.