Puzzle & Dragons - US IOS-P&D Google Play Store
I'm going to mostly copy/pasta the OP from the SomethingAwful thread, written by poster Vanilla Mint Ice. I've asked for his permission but not got a reply yet after a couple of day, if he says no I'll edit this out and put something else in myself which will be much worse no doubt! I believe the Games subforum is behind the SA paywall now so this link won't work unless you are already a member -P & D - SA
Puzzle & Dragons Friend List
Anyways, wtf is Puzzle & Dragons? (Vanilla Mint Ice post from now on)
--------------
Puzzle & Dragons is a SOCIAL, FREENIUM game from JAPAN where you kill monsters, take their eggs, hatch them and fuse them to your other monsters, and then finally evolve them by jamming seeds and plants down their throat to create dragons. The main part of this game takes place on bejeweled style board except you can drag an orb to any location on the board while displacing orbs to create combos. Just watch it yourself:
Intrigued? The puzzle part is pretty neat and centric and you NEED to get good at it later on but there's actually a huge non obvious hidden depth to this game. And that is the management. Once your training wheels are taken off the enemies start showing up with defenses in the thousands, can you hit you for thousands, and will probably appear in groups of three attacking you in the same turn. A normal gamer would say this is a bullshit paywall and uninstall the app, which is the proper reaction for freenium games like these but there are actually many ways to get around these challenges outside of 'more numbers'. In the special limited time dungeons, where most of the good stuff in this game drops, what kind of team you go in with will decide whether or not you even have a chance of beating it before the match started.
IAP is not required to win. It is possible to pay to win. but at such a ridiculous rate, it's not even worth considering.
The five fundamental puzzle patterns
Memorize this and be able to recognize these patterns on the board. These are the basic 3-orb patterns that will pop up and you need to be able to quickly string them all together to create sick combos.
Which starter should I pick? Fire, water or wood?
Pick whichever you want. Pick the one you always or never take in pok?mon. There are minor differences between them like the fire starter has a higher ATK(Attack), the green starter has a higher RCV(Recovery), and the blue starter is balanced between them but it really doesn't matter. The Red, Blue, and Green Starter Dragons are available from many different places, so this starting choice is not particularly important.
If you have decided to go without In App Purchases, I suggest starting with the Red starter dragon as the Red Orb Changer (Gigas/Titan) is readily available whereas the Blue and Green Orb Changer's are from a much more difficult dungeon and much more difficult to skill up. Orb Changers and Skill ups? What are you talking about. we will get to that later.
How do I get magic stones?
:tenbux:
Otherwise, you get a magic stone for beating all the stages in a given dungeon. You also get magic stones for logging in x amount of days like 3 stones after playing for ten days and 5 stones after playing for thirty days. There are also special occasions where everybody gets a free magic stone from the devs.
How should I spend my magic stones? Should I replenish my st
NO. Unless you are a :thousandbux: player do not spend your stones on stamina refills. Yes, I know it takes ten minutes to get back one stamina. Yes I know you are puzzlin' for some drag'uns right now but chill out. This is a long term game with already enough content to fill 3 months+ even with iap usage. In the long term it is not worth wasting stones on stamina. There are very few exceptions to this. if you can think of one, you do not need to be reading this anymore.
That said, there are four other uses for magic stone besides stamina refill:
1. 5 stones for a rare egg roll
2. Expand your monster boxes by 5
3. Expand your friends list
4. To continue a battle when you die
Unless you are a :thousandbux: player, magic stones will be a limiting resource for you. The optimal usage of these stones are as follows.
1. Rare Egg Machine (REM) roll. Rare Egg Machine rolls should only be done during Godfests. Period. We will go over possible REM rolls in a later section.
2. Expanded monster box. The optimal monster box size for a NON IAP player is between 50 and 100. (20 stones)
3. Expand your friends list. There is no point in expanding your friends list if you are NON IAP.
4. Continue a battle after death. Whether or not to continue is a personal choice. However, there are very few circumstances in which you should continue...
Although eschewed by some, spending stones to continue in a dungeon for a guaranteed rare monster may be a very good investment. Of course, not all rare monsters are useful so the utility of the monster for the user's team needs to be evaluated. Spending up to five stones (equivalent of a REM pull) may be a worthwhile investment for a monster that is guaranteed to drop and will dramatically improve the team. If more stones need to be spent, one may need to reconsider if the current team setup is ready for this dungeon.
My team sucks. I'm rank 40 and it takes me forever to kill things. Can you take a look at my team and tell me whats wrong?
Yeah, your team is trash. You got 90 monster boxes even though the only things of value on your team are your water starter and a lil black dragon. Also did you fuse/sell all your rare egg pulls or something?? You should reroll.
Since you're reading this OP I hope you wouldn't end up in that situation. I highly, highly recommend that if you find out that you really like this game and can see yourself playing for a long time to then 'reroll' until you have a good rare pull. Now what do people mean when they say reroll? We are saying that you should delete the app, reinstall it, and play through the tutorial again and see what you get with the free rare egg pull. Yeah it's tedious, watch a movie or a hockey game or something while you do it. Additionally, there's a way to get around the uninstall/reinstall: Android users can go into settings and clear the app data, and iOS users can connect their device to their computer and use iFunBox to delete data48.bin.
So what should I keep rerolling to get?
Godliest God Tier - Archangel Lucifer
He is just so far beyond everything else... at the current stage of the game, its ridiculous. For clearing all content in the game from Newbies to Pros... He just does it all. Has a ridiculously easy to farm team at all stages of the game.
0 Tier - Astaroth
Astaroth is NOT Lucifer. BUT he is a very flexible 4 0 4 leader. I do not list him as Tier 1 but hes not God Tier. so he sits here. 2x HP and RCV for Demons along with Green Damage Return. Cool. Requires some very specific monsters to be useful.
1st Tier - Horus(4x) /Kirin (5x) / Ra(6x) / Kunino?(4x)
These are all "burst" leaders. Each has a special matching requirement to activate their damage multiplier. Beginners will NOT do well with these leaders until their matching ability gets very good.
Horus needs any 4 colors which gives great flexibility in team building. His active is amazing as a sub for Goemon team... but pretty crappy as a leader.
Kirin needs 4 colors too... but Light, Red, Blue, Green, which is both better and worse at the same time. Her active ability is 20% HP Reduction! Nice.
Ra needs all 5 colors... to get great damage... you need godly matching skills and lots of luck. Even I cannot pull off Ra as much as I would want to and I can pull off Anubis! (10+combos for 10x dmg!) His active is 7777dmg that ignores armor, has very few niche uses for a sub.
Kunino?... Match 6+ combos and get 4x attack! A different playstyle than the Rainbow Burst... but not available on the US yet... His active skill... is super awesome and he gets nice stats but no RCV... His active skill is a one turn delay with 11 turn cooldown. Due to NO RCV on him... its tough to say where he ranks but... at my level of the game, I would favor him over Horus...
Tier 2 Isis(3x) / Bastet(2.5x but getting upgrade)
Isis... match 3 colors get 3x damage. Her quick heal is also useful for beginners... Mediocre Stats... you outgrow her quickly and she is not a good sub.
Bastet... make 4+ combos and get 2.5x dmg... Also yawn. but upgrade happening on JP side to supposed 4x dmg and buff to her active... Her active makes every attack hit all targets for 3 turns. Also a useful sub sometimes...
Apart from those leaders... Everything else is just about the same... You can beat everything up to Castle of Satan regular with any team.
The reason we make such a big deal of starting roll is this... Every roll after your starting roll costs you Magic Stones and you will never know what you will get from the REM... except for Toy Dragons. You will always get toy dragons...
If your time is valuable to you and you dont enjoy rerolling... Dont. Just buy stones and then wait for a godfest that lists ArchAngel Lucifer and then buy stones till you get him. Could cost you 5 bucks, could cost you 1000. RANDOM.
My advice is this...
If you are brand new to the game, go with any roll and play until you cleared Tower of Giants. If you like it... start a second account and begin rerolling until you get one of the listed Gods.
If you know you like the game already... and dont want to feel like a Ranger in Vanilla EQ... or umm whats a more current comparison... reroll until you get one of the listed Gods.
If you know you want to be a power game... reroll until you get Archangel Lucifer.
The last thing I will say about rerolling for Archangel Lucifer... You will spend much more time not being able to beat content or descends and wishing you had gotten one than you will spend rerolling until you get one.
Dyvim had this to say about Baal:
I think you are missing out Baal in your god ranking list. Dam x 2.5 and all you need is HP bar above 50%. He helped me out quite well and he gets picked when i have him up (more than when I up GOdin *shrug*).
What are these Evo Material? Enhance Material??
Evo materials are monsters used for evolving your other monsters. Enhance materials are monsters who give alot of experience when fed to your monsters.
Help I'm broke. How come it is so expensive to power up/enhance my monsters?
You're broke because you're dum (and haven't read this OP). Monsters need more and more experience as they level while that flamie you are using to feed will always give the same amount of experience points. The idea is that you have to start feeding better monsters as your monster level or you will stay broke.
An early strategy once the monster you want to level is over 10 is to feed your 'feeders' to carbuncles, and then feed your carbuncles to your monster. Evolved knights are also accepted. Around 30 you want to switch to evolved pengdras. Colored Pengdras are found in the technical dungeons, which are unlocked after the Castle of Satan. They max at level 10 with exactly 2556 experience points and will give 9000 experience points when fed to a monster of the same color. But if you evolve them with 1 dragon plant and 2 same colored metallic dragon they will give 45k exp to a same color monster. However there are no pengdras for light and dark.
There are also special metallic dragon events that appears three times a day for an hour and are spaced five hours apart. They are super easy dungeons that cost 15/20 stamina and will give you a chance to get metallic dragons that can give 1500+, 15000+, or 75000+(!) experience points to the same color monsters. It's these same events where you will find the small metallic dragons to evolve the pengdras. Unless you got other more pressing needs for your stamina, I recommend you spend your stamina on these events when they appear.
Also if you haven't unlocked technical dungeons yet then don't stress yourself out too much trying to level up that sweet god you got from your first pull. You'll go broke and not have much to show for it.
Where do I farm xxx Evo Material?
Rubylit, Sapphilit, etc: Dungeon of Fire to Dungeon of Dark. I recommend doing it during a 1/2 stamina bonus.
Red Evolve Mask, Blue Evolve Mask, etc: Volcano of Vulcan to Pluto Valley.
Crimson Demon Mask, Indigo Demon Mask, etc: Fire Forest Nerva to Twin Temple Diana. I recommend doing it during a 1.5x item drop bonus.
Divine Carmine Mask, Divine Indigo Mask, etc: I recommend farming them in the second stage of the first set of the technical dungeons.
Keeper of Fire, Keeper of Light, etc: The red, blue and green keepers are the bosses of their level in the Tuesday Dungeons. The light and dark keeper are random encounters in the tuesday dungeons.
Dub-rubylit, Dub-sapphiiit, etc: Friday Dungeon on expert.
Dragon Seed: Thursday Dungeon. Otherwise Departure Tower.
Dragon Plant: Thursday Dungeon. Otherwise The Tower of Trials.
Dragon Flower: Thursday Dungeon. Otherwise Tower of Giants.
Dragon Fruit: Thursday Dungeon.
Where do I get the ~special~ evo materials?
Mythlit: He's the boss of the Friday dungeon on Adept. Otherwise he appears onwards from the fourth set of normal of dungeons and also in the technical dungeons.
Mystic Mask: Wednesday Dungeon on Expert.
Keeper of ~Rainbow~: He has his own special Tuesday Dungeon.
Dub-mythlit: Friday Dungeon on Expert.
Extremely valuable and farmable monsters
When you don't have anything better to do, I recommend you fill out your rosters by farming for one of these:
A Healer who at 5 stars will heal you every turn for three times their RCV as long as you matched an orb: Mermaid(water). Mermaids have an active skill that will change fire orbs to heal orbs. The 5* Mermaids aka Siren the Enchanter is absolutely amazing at all stages of the game. Mermaid's active skill is also 'easily' leveled up by fusing the evolved water goblins to her. You can farm these in the second and third set of dungeons where they appear as bosses. Mermaid evolves to Siren evolves to Siren, the Enchanter.
Naga, the fire 'Healer'. She has the valuable active skill 'Menace' which delays all enemy attack by 3 turns. Her leader skill is trash though. Her skill is so powerful that all new dungeons have mechanics designed to negate her skill. but she is still that good! Naga is farmed in the second and third set of dungeons. Nage evolves to Echidna evolves to Echidna, the Red Empress. Sometimes referred to as Enchilada due to iOS autocorrect.
Vampire. He's a dark monster with a leader skill that 2x dark attacks and an active skill changes heal orbs to dark orbs. Orb changers are highly regarded in this game and the evolved vampire, Vampire Lord, is a key anchor in all dark teams. Their active skill is also 'easily' leveled using big baddies. They are an random encounters in the Castle of Satan. Farm for one during a 1.5x item bonus.
Titan. He has the leader skill 'Resolve' which allows you to survive with 1hp if you get killed while you have 70% hp or more, similar the one ogres all have. Note it only works once per turn so you will still die when fatally hit twice in the same turn. Their active skill changes heal orbs to fire orbs and are 'easily' leveled up by using the evolved fire goblins. Titans are farmable in the Tower of Giants and the Tower of Trials.
What is this about leveling your skill?
When you fuse a monster to your monster that both have the same skill, there is a supposedly 20% chance it will get a skill up. When you evolve it the skill levels will stay the same if the evolved form have the same skill. It does not matter when you are fusing whether you use one or five at the same time. Leveling your skill level reduces the active skill's cooldown by 1 turn per level.
I just got a lil dragon from the PAL machine. What are these? Are they any good? They don't even give good exp so should I just sell them?
Lil dragons start out at 2* but when they are evolved three times and into their 5* form their leader skill gives a 50% damage reduction to their color and their active skill is a 20000 colored nuke to all enemies. Their stats are also very good. In fact having a full squad of all five colors is recommended.
Friends? I don't need Friends! Friends, What is it good for?
Absolutely everything. Friends will be a key part of your team composition because your friend's leader skill will activate and in almost all cases, stack with your own leader skill. If you followed my advice to reroll until you got a kicking rad elite monster then everyone in the world will want to be your friend. In that situation you will have to be selective in choosing who are your friends (because you have limited friends slots). Don't just look at the attack stats but also their active skill, leader skill, hp and rcv. Note that you can't reuse a friend until they log back in. Another note, they have to first accept your friend request and be your friend before their leader skill will activate.
What is this gift trading people are talking about?
Once you hit rank 20 you can choose one friend to give a present to. You and your chosen friend will each get one of the three starter dragons or the equivalent light or dark dragon. The idea is to do this with someone who will also use their present on you so you will both have two chances. So just ask to gift trade with someone in this thread by posting your friend code (find it in Friend->ID Search). By the way there's no way to actually trade stuff between users.
I just got an egg with a big plus sign on it, what is this?
That means that monster has a stat bonus on one of their stat. You can see which one it is by looking at their stats; +1 in hp gives 5hp, +1 in atk gives +5atk, and +1 in rcv gives +3rcv. More importantly, you can transfer this stat bonus to one of your more useful monsters by fusing it to them. I recommend fusing your +1 hp bonuses to monsters you use the most. I recommend fusing your +1 atk bonuses to monsters who are part of your main attack team and/or has an active skill that is based off of their atk stat like dragons and poisoners. I recommend fusing your +1 rcv to your healer and if you have multiple, prioritize all of them to Amaterasu >>> Mermaid > Cupid/Dryad. The maximum +1 bonuses a monster can have is +99 to each stat to a total of +297. Note that fusing plus bonuses increases fusing costs dependent on how many pluses the monster you're fusing to already have.
I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know who or where I am. Please recommend me a team formation.
A good, classic, and basic team is a team of the same color where you and your friend's leader have a leader skill that boosts your color of choice's attack. Some sort of orb changer in these teams are a must at advance levels. Mystic knights, the orb changer who changes your color's weakness to your color (for example fire to wood) are farmable in expert and master levels of the special dungeons. The second type of orb changer is the Attack Stance orb changers who changes heal orbs to your color, and they are either very easy or hard to impossible to get depending on the color. Fire and dark (Titan and Vampire) can farm for theirs in the normal dungeons. Water and wood (Berserker and Highlander) are only farmable through an endgame dungeon. Light (Valkyrie) are currently only obtainable through rare egg pulls.
Another good basic team is basically just one that has either you or your friend's leader as one of the three 5* healer (Archangel, Siren the Enchanter, Alarune). Get some attacking power or maybe a leader with a 30/50% colored damage reduction and you'll be set for a good part of the early and middle game.
When do the metallic dragons appear? Is the time each day always the same?
Join the unofficial facebook group,http://www.facebook.com/groups/PADGlobal/, and look at their pinned post for the US dragon time tables. Now go to Friend->ID Search and look at your own ID. The third digit of your ID to the left tells you which 'group' you belong to. For example mine is 303,xyz,xyz so I belong on the D group. Now that you know your group, look at the time table to see when dragons appear for you. The time may change from day to day so just check daily. Note that no matter what they always appear 5 hours apart for a total of 3 times daily.
Favorite all your important monsters
Go to monster box and favorite all the stuff you don't want to accidentally sell and fuse when you go drunk puzzle and dragoning.
The timer doesn't not start ticking until you move an orb
Take your time to examine the board and plan out your point of attack and where to go from there.
Backup
Remember to back up your app data files, specially data48.bin. There is no login or anything so if you uninstall this game or wipe out your phone then you would not be able to access your old account anymore. iOS users should backup with itunes and use a 3rd party tool like iFunBox just to be safe. Android users should backup with a 3rd party tool like Titanium Backup.
Resources
http://zh.pad.wikia.com/wiki/Puzzle_...BB%B4%E5%9F%BA- The Chinese wiki that everybody uses
http://www18.atwiki.jp/pazdra/pages/35.html- Japanese wiki
Both of them have information and numbers on all the monsters and dungeons so just use whichever you find funnier translated through google babelfish or whatever but do use one of them.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/PADGlobal/- English facebook group, has a work in progress english monster book, FAQ, and metal dragon time tables.
http://puzzledragonsus.blogspot.ca/- English blog about the game, has advanced strategy on the special dungeons[/I][/I]
Puzzle Dragon X- English wiki which is coming along very nicely, has almost all the US versions data in it.
http://puzzleanddragonsforum.com/index.php- An English discussion forum
--------------
Personally the reroll info above might be a little too OTT, I guess it depends on how much time you mind spending deleting/reinstalling etc. I did it for a while on a quiet day and got a Neptune on my 7th restart. You get a stone for every dungeon set you clear, it doesn't take too long to finish the first five dungeons so if you are on the fence about your first rare egg roll after the tutorial, try rattling off the first few and see what your second egg gives you. If its something terrible then it might be worth rerolling again. If you decide to plug away at this game you'll be in it for the long haul and after a while will be planning stuff a week ahead to get specific drops from once a week dungeons. That's why I was prepared to do some rerolling to start with, I figured a bit of a pain early on will be rewarded down the road.
Can't recommend enough you friend people as fast as you can early on, especially healers like Siren/Angel etc as they will heal you every time you match orbs even if you don't do any damage. You only get access to their leader skill when friended.
Team Cost - This can catch you out early on, every unit has a cost and it's pretty much what you'd think - The better the unit the more it costs to use it in your team. The team total you can deploy goes up every few levels, mine at rank 54 is 62 points of which I'm currently using 59. The main way you can be caught out early on is finally levelling a nice unit to max, evolving it to the next level and suddenly it costs 11 instead of 6 and bam, your team needs changing. Hell early on you can get the super rare 5* + drops from the rare egg machine and can't even use them until you've played a while as they cost 20+ to deploy!
Puzzle & Dragons Friend List
If you have the opportunity to special evolve your unit with an additional colour, the damage is calculated thus: If the sub colour is a different sub colour, the sub colour does 30% damage. If you have one of the rare units you can evolve to dual the same colour, you only get 10% extra damage instead of 30% from it so it's probably better to dual colour unless you will always be mono teaming that unit. However there is usually extra reasons to sub the extra colour, more resists in Neptune's case etc.
When it comes to overall damage, more combos is better than more orbs! It sounds strange but the way the damage is added up it's true! You get +25% damage per orb added on so you may thank 175% (a 6 orb match) vs 200% ( 2 x 3 orb matches) is close BUT what you should take into account is the combo bonus which 2 matches give you. The combo bonus is another 25% so the comparison is now 175% for a 6 match vs 250% for 2 x 3 matches. Add in any leader bonuses etc and you can see how that gap is just going to keep climbing.
With multiple targets you only need to make one 5x line to get the multiple attack counted, all the others for that colour can be any amount of 3+ and they will be added the same way.
None of this takes resists etc into account either but the basic strategy holds, more combos = more damage!
=====================
Edited 3rd Oct with changes passed over from DF~ Thank him for helping keep this OP useful to everyone hopefully!
I'm going to mostly copy/pasta the OP from the SomethingAwful thread, written by poster Vanilla Mint Ice. I've asked for his permission but not got a reply yet after a couple of day, if he says no I'll edit this out and put something else in myself which will be much worse no doubt! I believe the Games subforum is behind the SA paywall now so this link won't work unless you are already a member -P & D - SA
Puzzle & Dragons Friend List
Anyways, wtf is Puzzle & Dragons? (Vanilla Mint Ice post from now on)
--------------
Puzzle & Dragons is a SOCIAL, FREENIUM game from JAPAN where you kill monsters, take their eggs, hatch them and fuse them to your other monsters, and then finally evolve them by jamming seeds and plants down their throat to create dragons. The main part of this game takes place on bejeweled style board except you can drag an orb to any location on the board while displacing orbs to create combos. Just watch it yourself:
Intrigued? The puzzle part is pretty neat and centric and you NEED to get good at it later on but there's actually a huge non obvious hidden depth to this game. And that is the management. Once your training wheels are taken off the enemies start showing up with defenses in the thousands, can you hit you for thousands, and will probably appear in groups of three attacking you in the same turn. A normal gamer would say this is a bullshit paywall and uninstall the app, which is the proper reaction for freenium games like these but there are actually many ways to get around these challenges outside of 'more numbers'. In the special limited time dungeons, where most of the good stuff in this game drops, what kind of team you go in with will decide whether or not you even have a chance of beating it before the match started.
IAP is not required to win. It is possible to pay to win. but at such a ridiculous rate, it's not even worth considering.
The five fundamental puzzle patterns
Memorize this and be able to recognize these patterns on the board. These are the basic 3-orb patterns that will pop up and you need to be able to quickly string them all together to create sick combos.
Which starter should I pick? Fire, water or wood?
Pick whichever you want. Pick the one you always or never take in pok?mon. There are minor differences between them like the fire starter has a higher ATK(Attack), the green starter has a higher RCV(Recovery), and the blue starter is balanced between them but it really doesn't matter. The Red, Blue, and Green Starter Dragons are available from many different places, so this starting choice is not particularly important.
If you have decided to go without In App Purchases, I suggest starting with the Red starter dragon as the Red Orb Changer (Gigas/Titan) is readily available whereas the Blue and Green Orb Changer's are from a much more difficult dungeon and much more difficult to skill up. Orb Changers and Skill ups? What are you talking about. we will get to that later.
How do I get magic stones?
:tenbux:
Otherwise, you get a magic stone for beating all the stages in a given dungeon. You also get magic stones for logging in x amount of days like 3 stones after playing for ten days and 5 stones after playing for thirty days. There are also special occasions where everybody gets a free magic stone from the devs.
How should I spend my magic stones? Should I replenish my st
NO. Unless you are a :thousandbux: player do not spend your stones on stamina refills. Yes, I know it takes ten minutes to get back one stamina. Yes I know you are puzzlin' for some drag'uns right now but chill out. This is a long term game with already enough content to fill 3 months+ even with iap usage. In the long term it is not worth wasting stones on stamina. There are very few exceptions to this. if you can think of one, you do not need to be reading this anymore.
That said, there are four other uses for magic stone besides stamina refill:
1. 5 stones for a rare egg roll
2. Expand your monster boxes by 5
3. Expand your friends list
4. To continue a battle when you die
Unless you are a :thousandbux: player, magic stones will be a limiting resource for you. The optimal usage of these stones are as follows.
1. Rare Egg Machine (REM) roll. Rare Egg Machine rolls should only be done during Godfests. Period. We will go over possible REM rolls in a later section.
2. Expanded monster box. The optimal monster box size for a NON IAP player is between 50 and 100. (20 stones)
3. Expand your friends list. There is no point in expanding your friends list if you are NON IAP.
4. Continue a battle after death. Whether or not to continue is a personal choice. However, there are very few circumstances in which you should continue...
Although eschewed by some, spending stones to continue in a dungeon for a guaranteed rare monster may be a very good investment. Of course, not all rare monsters are useful so the utility of the monster for the user's team needs to be evaluated. Spending up to five stones (equivalent of a REM pull) may be a worthwhile investment for a monster that is guaranteed to drop and will dramatically improve the team. If more stones need to be spent, one may need to reconsider if the current team setup is ready for this dungeon.
My team sucks. I'm rank 40 and it takes me forever to kill things. Can you take a look at my team and tell me whats wrong?
Yeah, your team is trash. You got 90 monster boxes even though the only things of value on your team are your water starter and a lil black dragon. Also did you fuse/sell all your rare egg pulls or something?? You should reroll.
Since you're reading this OP I hope you wouldn't end up in that situation. I highly, highly recommend that if you find out that you really like this game and can see yourself playing for a long time to then 'reroll' until you have a good rare pull. Now what do people mean when they say reroll? We are saying that you should delete the app, reinstall it, and play through the tutorial again and see what you get with the free rare egg pull. Yeah it's tedious, watch a movie or a hockey game or something while you do it. Additionally, there's a way to get around the uninstall/reinstall: Android users can go into settings and clear the app data, and iOS users can connect their device to their computer and use iFunBox to delete data48.bin.
So what should I keep rerolling to get?
Godliest God Tier - Archangel Lucifer
He is just so far beyond everything else... at the current stage of the game, its ridiculous. For clearing all content in the game from Newbies to Pros... He just does it all. Has a ridiculously easy to farm team at all stages of the game.
0 Tier - Astaroth
Astaroth is NOT Lucifer. BUT he is a very flexible 4 0 4 leader. I do not list him as Tier 1 but hes not God Tier. so he sits here. 2x HP and RCV for Demons along with Green Damage Return. Cool. Requires some very specific monsters to be useful.
1st Tier - Horus(4x) /Kirin (5x) / Ra(6x) / Kunino?(4x)
These are all "burst" leaders. Each has a special matching requirement to activate their damage multiplier. Beginners will NOT do well with these leaders until their matching ability gets very good.
Horus needs any 4 colors which gives great flexibility in team building. His active is amazing as a sub for Goemon team... but pretty crappy as a leader.
Kirin needs 4 colors too... but Light, Red, Blue, Green, which is both better and worse at the same time. Her active ability is 20% HP Reduction! Nice.
Ra needs all 5 colors... to get great damage... you need godly matching skills and lots of luck. Even I cannot pull off Ra as much as I would want to and I can pull off Anubis! (10+combos for 10x dmg!) His active is 7777dmg that ignores armor, has very few niche uses for a sub.
Kunino?... Match 6+ combos and get 4x attack! A different playstyle than the Rainbow Burst... but not available on the US yet... His active skill... is super awesome and he gets nice stats but no RCV... His active skill is a one turn delay with 11 turn cooldown. Due to NO RCV on him... its tough to say where he ranks but... at my level of the game, I would favor him over Horus...
Tier 2 Isis(3x) / Bastet(2.5x but getting upgrade)
Isis... match 3 colors get 3x damage. Her quick heal is also useful for beginners... Mediocre Stats... you outgrow her quickly and she is not a good sub.
Bastet... make 4+ combos and get 2.5x dmg... Also yawn. but upgrade happening on JP side to supposed 4x dmg and buff to her active... Her active makes every attack hit all targets for 3 turns. Also a useful sub sometimes...
Apart from those leaders... Everything else is just about the same... You can beat everything up to Castle of Satan regular with any team.
The reason we make such a big deal of starting roll is this... Every roll after your starting roll costs you Magic Stones and you will never know what you will get from the REM... except for Toy Dragons. You will always get toy dragons...
If your time is valuable to you and you dont enjoy rerolling... Dont. Just buy stones and then wait for a godfest that lists ArchAngel Lucifer and then buy stones till you get him. Could cost you 5 bucks, could cost you 1000. RANDOM.
My advice is this...
If you are brand new to the game, go with any roll and play until you cleared Tower of Giants. If you like it... start a second account and begin rerolling until you get one of the listed Gods.
If you know you like the game already... and dont want to feel like a Ranger in Vanilla EQ... or umm whats a more current comparison... reroll until you get one of the listed Gods.
If you know you want to be a power game... reroll until you get Archangel Lucifer.
The last thing I will say about rerolling for Archangel Lucifer... You will spend much more time not being able to beat content or descends and wishing you had gotten one than you will spend rerolling until you get one.
Dyvim had this to say about Baal:
I think you are missing out Baal in your god ranking list. Dam x 2.5 and all you need is HP bar above 50%. He helped me out quite well and he gets picked when i have him up (more than when I up GOdin *shrug*).
What are these Evo Material? Enhance Material??
Evo materials are monsters used for evolving your other monsters. Enhance materials are monsters who give alot of experience when fed to your monsters.
Help I'm broke. How come it is so expensive to power up/enhance my monsters?
You're broke because you're dum (and haven't read this OP). Monsters need more and more experience as they level while that flamie you are using to feed will always give the same amount of experience points. The idea is that you have to start feeding better monsters as your monster level or you will stay broke.
An early strategy once the monster you want to level is over 10 is to feed your 'feeders' to carbuncles, and then feed your carbuncles to your monster. Evolved knights are also accepted. Around 30 you want to switch to evolved pengdras. Colored Pengdras are found in the technical dungeons, which are unlocked after the Castle of Satan. They max at level 10 with exactly 2556 experience points and will give 9000 experience points when fed to a monster of the same color. But if you evolve them with 1 dragon plant and 2 same colored metallic dragon they will give 45k exp to a same color monster. However there are no pengdras for light and dark.
There are also special metallic dragon events that appears three times a day for an hour and are spaced five hours apart. They are super easy dungeons that cost 15/20 stamina and will give you a chance to get metallic dragons that can give 1500+, 15000+, or 75000+(!) experience points to the same color monsters. It's these same events where you will find the small metallic dragons to evolve the pengdras. Unless you got other more pressing needs for your stamina, I recommend you spend your stamina on these events when they appear.
Also if you haven't unlocked technical dungeons yet then don't stress yourself out too much trying to level up that sweet god you got from your first pull. You'll go broke and not have much to show for it.
Where do I farm xxx Evo Material?
Rubylit, Sapphilit, etc: Dungeon of Fire to Dungeon of Dark. I recommend doing it during a 1/2 stamina bonus.
Red Evolve Mask, Blue Evolve Mask, etc: Volcano of Vulcan to Pluto Valley.
Crimson Demon Mask, Indigo Demon Mask, etc: Fire Forest Nerva to Twin Temple Diana. I recommend doing it during a 1.5x item drop bonus.
Divine Carmine Mask, Divine Indigo Mask, etc: I recommend farming them in the second stage of the first set of the technical dungeons.
Keeper of Fire, Keeper of Light, etc: The red, blue and green keepers are the bosses of their level in the Tuesday Dungeons. The light and dark keeper are random encounters in the tuesday dungeons.
Dub-rubylit, Dub-sapphiiit, etc: Friday Dungeon on expert.
Dragon Seed: Thursday Dungeon. Otherwise Departure Tower.
Dragon Plant: Thursday Dungeon. Otherwise The Tower of Trials.
Dragon Flower: Thursday Dungeon. Otherwise Tower of Giants.
Dragon Fruit: Thursday Dungeon.
Where do I get the ~special~ evo materials?
Mythlit: He's the boss of the Friday dungeon on Adept. Otherwise he appears onwards from the fourth set of normal of dungeons and also in the technical dungeons.
Mystic Mask: Wednesday Dungeon on Expert.
Keeper of ~Rainbow~: He has his own special Tuesday Dungeon.
Dub-mythlit: Friday Dungeon on Expert.
Extremely valuable and farmable monsters
When you don't have anything better to do, I recommend you fill out your rosters by farming for one of these:
A Healer who at 5 stars will heal you every turn for three times their RCV as long as you matched an orb: Mermaid(water). Mermaids have an active skill that will change fire orbs to heal orbs. The 5* Mermaids aka Siren the Enchanter is absolutely amazing at all stages of the game. Mermaid's active skill is also 'easily' leveled up by fusing the evolved water goblins to her. You can farm these in the second and third set of dungeons where they appear as bosses. Mermaid evolves to Siren evolves to Siren, the Enchanter.
Naga, the fire 'Healer'. She has the valuable active skill 'Menace' which delays all enemy attack by 3 turns. Her leader skill is trash though. Her skill is so powerful that all new dungeons have mechanics designed to negate her skill. but she is still that good! Naga is farmed in the second and third set of dungeons. Nage evolves to Echidna evolves to Echidna, the Red Empress. Sometimes referred to as Enchilada due to iOS autocorrect.
Vampire. He's a dark monster with a leader skill that 2x dark attacks and an active skill changes heal orbs to dark orbs. Orb changers are highly regarded in this game and the evolved vampire, Vampire Lord, is a key anchor in all dark teams. Their active skill is also 'easily' leveled using big baddies. They are an random encounters in the Castle of Satan. Farm for one during a 1.5x item bonus.
Titan. He has the leader skill 'Resolve' which allows you to survive with 1hp if you get killed while you have 70% hp or more, similar the one ogres all have. Note it only works once per turn so you will still die when fatally hit twice in the same turn. Their active skill changes heal orbs to fire orbs and are 'easily' leveled up by using the evolved fire goblins. Titans are farmable in the Tower of Giants and the Tower of Trials.
What is this about leveling your skill?
When you fuse a monster to your monster that both have the same skill, there is a supposedly 20% chance it will get a skill up. When you evolve it the skill levels will stay the same if the evolved form have the same skill. It does not matter when you are fusing whether you use one or five at the same time. Leveling your skill level reduces the active skill's cooldown by 1 turn per level.
I just got a lil dragon from the PAL machine. What are these? Are they any good? They don't even give good exp so should I just sell them?
Lil dragons start out at 2* but when they are evolved three times and into their 5* form their leader skill gives a 50% damage reduction to their color and their active skill is a 20000 colored nuke to all enemies. Their stats are also very good. In fact having a full squad of all five colors is recommended.
Friends? I don't need Friends! Friends, What is it good for?
Absolutely everything. Friends will be a key part of your team composition because your friend's leader skill will activate and in almost all cases, stack with your own leader skill. If you followed my advice to reroll until you got a kicking rad elite monster then everyone in the world will want to be your friend. In that situation you will have to be selective in choosing who are your friends (because you have limited friends slots). Don't just look at the attack stats but also their active skill, leader skill, hp and rcv. Note that you can't reuse a friend until they log back in. Another note, they have to first accept your friend request and be your friend before their leader skill will activate.
What is this gift trading people are talking about?
Once you hit rank 20 you can choose one friend to give a present to. You and your chosen friend will each get one of the three starter dragons or the equivalent light or dark dragon. The idea is to do this with someone who will also use their present on you so you will both have two chances. So just ask to gift trade with someone in this thread by posting your friend code (find it in Friend->ID Search). By the way there's no way to actually trade stuff between users.
I just got an egg with a big plus sign on it, what is this?
That means that monster has a stat bonus on one of their stat. You can see which one it is by looking at their stats; +1 in hp gives 5hp, +1 in atk gives +5atk, and +1 in rcv gives +3rcv. More importantly, you can transfer this stat bonus to one of your more useful monsters by fusing it to them. I recommend fusing your +1 hp bonuses to monsters you use the most. I recommend fusing your +1 atk bonuses to monsters who are part of your main attack team and/or has an active skill that is based off of their atk stat like dragons and poisoners. I recommend fusing your +1 rcv to your healer and if you have multiple, prioritize all of them to Amaterasu >>> Mermaid > Cupid/Dryad. The maximum +1 bonuses a monster can have is +99 to each stat to a total of +297. Note that fusing plus bonuses increases fusing costs dependent on how many pluses the monster you're fusing to already have.
I don't know what I'm doing. I don't know who or where I am. Please recommend me a team formation.
A good, classic, and basic team is a team of the same color where you and your friend's leader have a leader skill that boosts your color of choice's attack. Some sort of orb changer in these teams are a must at advance levels. Mystic knights, the orb changer who changes your color's weakness to your color (for example fire to wood) are farmable in expert and master levels of the special dungeons. The second type of orb changer is the Attack Stance orb changers who changes heal orbs to your color, and they are either very easy or hard to impossible to get depending on the color. Fire and dark (Titan and Vampire) can farm for theirs in the normal dungeons. Water and wood (Berserker and Highlander) are only farmable through an endgame dungeon. Light (Valkyrie) are currently only obtainable through rare egg pulls.
Another good basic team is basically just one that has either you or your friend's leader as one of the three 5* healer (Archangel, Siren the Enchanter, Alarune). Get some attacking power or maybe a leader with a 30/50% colored damage reduction and you'll be set for a good part of the early and middle game.
When do the metallic dragons appear? Is the time each day always the same?
Join the unofficial facebook group,http://www.facebook.com/groups/PADGlobal/, and look at their pinned post for the US dragon time tables. Now go to Friend->ID Search and look at your own ID. The third digit of your ID to the left tells you which 'group' you belong to. For example mine is 303,xyz,xyz so I belong on the D group. Now that you know your group, look at the time table to see when dragons appear for you. The time may change from day to day so just check daily. Note that no matter what they always appear 5 hours apart for a total of 3 times daily.
Favorite all your important monsters
Go to monster box and favorite all the stuff you don't want to accidentally sell and fuse when you go drunk puzzle and dragoning.
The timer doesn't not start ticking until you move an orb
Take your time to examine the board and plan out your point of attack and where to go from there.
Backup
Remember to back up your app data files, specially data48.bin. There is no login or anything so if you uninstall this game or wipe out your phone then you would not be able to access your old account anymore. iOS users should backup with itunes and use a 3rd party tool like iFunBox just to be safe. Android users should backup with a 3rd party tool like Titanium Backup.
Resources
http://zh.pad.wikia.com/wiki/Puzzle_...BB%B4%E5%9F%BA- The Chinese wiki that everybody uses
http://www18.atwiki.jp/pazdra/pages/35.html- Japanese wiki
Both of them have information and numbers on all the monsters and dungeons so just use whichever you find funnier translated through google babelfish or whatever but do use one of them.
http://www.facebook.com/groups/PADGlobal/- English facebook group, has a work in progress english monster book, FAQ, and metal dragon time tables.
http://puzzledragonsus.blogspot.ca/- English blog about the game, has advanced strategy on the special dungeons[/I][/I]
Puzzle Dragon X- English wiki which is coming along very nicely, has almost all the US versions data in it.
http://puzzleanddragonsforum.com/index.php- An English discussion forum
--------------
Personally the reroll info above might be a little too OTT, I guess it depends on how much time you mind spending deleting/reinstalling etc. I did it for a while on a quiet day and got a Neptune on my 7th restart. You get a stone for every dungeon set you clear, it doesn't take too long to finish the first five dungeons so if you are on the fence about your first rare egg roll after the tutorial, try rattling off the first few and see what your second egg gives you. If its something terrible then it might be worth rerolling again. If you decide to plug away at this game you'll be in it for the long haul and after a while will be planning stuff a week ahead to get specific drops from once a week dungeons. That's why I was prepared to do some rerolling to start with, I figured a bit of a pain early on will be rewarded down the road.
Can't recommend enough you friend people as fast as you can early on, especially healers like Siren/Angel etc as they will heal you every time you match orbs even if you don't do any damage. You only get access to their leader skill when friended.
Team Cost - This can catch you out early on, every unit has a cost and it's pretty much what you'd think - The better the unit the more it costs to use it in your team. The team total you can deploy goes up every few levels, mine at rank 54 is 62 points of which I'm currently using 59. The main way you can be caught out early on is finally levelling a nice unit to max, evolving it to the next level and suddenly it costs 11 instead of 6 and bam, your team needs changing. Hell early on you can get the super rare 5* + drops from the rare egg machine and can't even use them until you've played a while as they cost 20+ to deploy!
Puzzle & Dragons Friend List
If you have the opportunity to special evolve your unit with an additional colour, the damage is calculated thus: If the sub colour is a different sub colour, the sub colour does 30% damage. If you have one of the rare units you can evolve to dual the same colour, you only get 10% extra damage instead of 30% from it so it's probably better to dual colour unless you will always be mono teaming that unit. However there is usually extra reasons to sub the extra colour, more resists in Neptune's case etc.
When it comes to overall damage, more combos is better than more orbs! It sounds strange but the way the damage is added up it's true! You get +25% damage per orb added on so you may thank 175% (a 6 orb match) vs 200% ( 2 x 3 orb matches) is close BUT what you should take into account is the combo bonus which 2 matches give you. The combo bonus is another 25% so the comparison is now 175% for a 6 match vs 250% for 2 x 3 matches. Add in any leader bonuses etc and you can see how that gap is just going to keep climbing.
With multiple targets you only need to make one 5x line to get the multiple attack counted, all the others for that colour can be any amount of 3+ and they will be added the same way.
None of this takes resists etc into account either but the basic strategy holds, more combos = more damage!
=====================
Edited 3rd Oct with changes passed over from DF~ Thank him for helping keep this OP useful to everyone hopefully!
