Puzzle & Dragons

[BrianC]

Part of the reason I got the 3DS game is because I heard support for iOS 5 with PAD is ending soon, though there was an update recently. While it's easier, at least initially, I like having versions where I don't have to be online to play.

I do plan to keep playing the iOS PAD while it's still available, though. I'm having a blast with it and like how there are a variety of different dungeons to choose from.

[cave hermit]

I'm more interested in the mario edition than puzzle and dragons z, mainly just for the novelty of it.

The thing I'm worried about with padz is that since there are no micro-transactions, the game is far more straightforward: I'm worried that if the difficulty level wasn't bumped up to match the lack of arbitrary f2p progression blockers the game will be trivially easy.

So can anybody here say whether or not Padz is difficult?

(also that story and character art is so generic it physically pains me.)

edit: I read a gamespot review from a person who plays the mobile version religiously, and he pretty much brought up the exact concerns I had.
He also mentioned that Padz came out in japan in 2013, and the mario edition is very recent, which explains why the mario edition seems more polished and padz seems so watered down.

[cave hermit]

Still not sure which ult evo path to send bastet down: light healer makes more immediate sense since I have the materials and she would work well on my Leilan team, but I don't know if moonlit bastet is somehow better in a way I don't understand. However I also don't have the mythical tier mask needed for moonlit bastet.

I guess a better question to ask might be which evo path is supposed to be a leader and which one is the sub path? If possible I would like to use bastet as both since it would probably be a waste of her potential to just use her as a sub...

In either case I'll switch to awoken bastet when the opportunity arises, but for the time being I gotta decide between the first 2 ult evos.


Edit: another possible point in light healer bastet's favor is that I have a light metatron now, and I might be looking into building a healer team. Although if I do that bastet will probably be the only green monster on the team... So hard to decide...

[Aisha]

I should have clarified that the leader/sub distinction doesn't apply to all ultimate evolution branches.

Bastet is a tried and true leader, but if she fulfills a requirement as a sub then go ahead. If I were interested in making a Bastet team I'd head towards G/D. Its leader skill is more difficult to activate, but it has a higher damage ceiling in 20.25x versus 16x; it also has a TPA awakening, which I think is easier to trigger when using a combo lead compared to G/L Bastet's enhanced green row. There are also a lot of great green cards with TPA awakenings, which makes for some nice synergy. G/D Bastet also has more in common with Awoken Bastet, and if the latter is the end goal then you may as well get used to it.

If you need time to gather the materials for G/D, then feel free to go with G/L. G/L is also better if you think you'll struggle to reliably activate G/D's leader skill.

[guigui]

Ok, the Lightseeker dungeon is over, figures :

Code: Select all

Master runs   : 4
Expert runs   : 40, 30 of whose were x2 drop rates
Nenekos drops : 16
Skill-ups     : 1

YES, you read it right : 3 days of farming and 760 stamina spent gave ONE skill-up. Gungtrolled.


Anyway, forget about the bad weekend and think about Friday Mythical now.

Cave Hermit's Amaterasu Okhami will help me make this team :
Cao Cao/ Red Odin / Red Odin / Laila / King Flamie / Amaterasu Okhami (attacker uevo)

Amaterasu is the absolute key to cheese the dungeon :
-Floor 1 : pray for three reds, kill the colored lits, leave at least one mythlit alive. Mythlit will start spawning bind, Amaterasu will resist bind and auto-heal if necessary.
Stall and arrange the two or three bottom lines to stock up on red and blue orbs. When all skills are active, unbind with Amaterasu and proceed.
-Floor 2 : Odin's poison
-Floor 3 : Odin's poison
-Floor 4 : Flamie -> Laila -> Cao Cao give enough reds, if you stocked up correctly on previous floor, to one shot Devilit and Angelit.

Note that I can also do it with Necro's Awoken Neptune, and that Hermit might also do it by adapting a little since only one poison is really needed if you stall again on floor 3.

Will that work or am I overlooking something ?

[Aisha]

Ok, the Lightseeker dungeon is over, figures :

Code: Select all

Master runs   : 4
Expert runs   : 40, 30 of whose were x2 drop rates
Nenekos drops : 16
Skill-ups     : 1

YES, you read it right : 3 days of farming and 760 stamina spent gave ONE skill-up. Gungtrolled.


Anyway, forget about the bad weekend and think about Friday Mythical now.

Cave Hermit's Amaterasu Okhami will help me make this team :
Cao Cao/ Red Odin / Red Odin / Laila / King Flamie / Amaterasu Okhami (attacker uevo)

Amaterasu is the absolute key to cheese the dungeon :
-Floor 1 : pray for three reds, kill the colored lits, leave at least one mythlit alive. Mythlit will start spawning bind, Amaterasu will resist bind and auto-heal if necessary.
Stall and arrange the two or three bottom lines to stock up on red and blue orbs. When all skills are active, unbind with Amaterasu and proceed.
-Floor 2 : Odin's poison
-Floor 3 : Odin's poison
-Floor 4 : Flamie -> Laila -> Cao Cao give enough reds, if you stocked up correctly on previous floor, to one shot Devilit and Angelit.

Note that I can also do it with Necro's Awoken Neptune, and that Hermit might also do it by adapting a little since only one poison is really needed if you stall again on floor 3.

Will that work or am I overlooking something ?

Here is a remedy that makes me feel better every time I have a bad string of skill-ups:

1) Study how difficult it is to make this guy: Heavy Metal Dragon is a 33% drop from a 99-Stamina dungeon. It takes 900,000 experience to max-level him. To evolve, fuse with Red, Green, Blue, Gold, and Black Pirate Dragons, which come from time-limited dungeons.

2) Watch this video.

As for your Friday Mythical plan, I think it could work. How much HP does your team have? There's a preemptive attack on Floor 3 that deals 12024 damage. Floor 1 will also be tricky. Three red orbs might not be enough to kill all the regular Spirits; you'll probably need to experiment and fail a few times to find the right combination of orbs. You also need to stall for a long time, which could result in an unfortunate sky fall.

It's also helpful to know that you always get at least one turn to stall on Floor 2. You can also kill the TAMADRA on Floor 3 and get a few more turns of stalling there. Finally on Floor 4, if you only manage to kill the Angelit or the Devilit, then the survivor will use Angerlit, giving you one more turn.

[guigui]

Here is a remedy that makes me feel better every time I have a bad string of skill-ups:

1) Study how difficult it is to make this guy: Heavy Metal Dragon is a 33% drop from a 99-Stamina dungeon. It takes 900,000 experience to max-level him. To evolve, fuse with Red, Green, Blue, Gold, and Black Pirate Dragons, which come from time-limited dungeons.

2) Watch this video.

I love the different expressions on his face as he fuses. Most time wasted ever, indeed.
Also, will he try to skill-up the new Zaerog infinity ultimate ? http://www.puzzledragonx.com/en/news.asp?nid=314

As for your Friday Mythical plan, I think it could work. How much HP does your team have? There's a preemptive attack on Floor 3 that deals 12024 damage. Floor 1 will also be tricky. Three red orbs might not be enough to kill all the regular Spirits; you'll probably need to experiment and fail a few times to find the right combination of orbs. You also need to stall for a long time, which could result in an unfortunate sky fall.

My team has 20000+ HP.
Also, replacing King Flamie by Freyr, I get 9 skill boosts total which means Laila is active first turn and I have my red orbs if trolled. I might then get short on damage for final boss since Freyr only gives x1.5 ATK, but this team already proved it can deal over 3.5millions with two lines, and I can set up a board for three here.
Finally, I'm not that scared about unfortunate skyfall since all my cards, except amaterasu, are bound when I stall. Thus no risk of killing everything not on purpose.

Now let that Friday Mythical come, I'm ready. Especially considering the fact that, as to ease my pain from bad skill-up luck, I jsut received an attacker Amaterasu friend invite, tadam !

[BrianC]

That review seems legit, but I usually take Gamespot with a grain of salt. Also, PADZ does have 2 colored monsters, but they are stupidly rare (only one for each element), so the mistake in the review is understandable. From what I heard PADZ doesn't get much harder until post game. Mario I heard, gets harder closer to the end and gets much harder post game. Funny how the Mario version is actually the harder of the 3DS games.

[guigui]

Celebration, Athena Descends cleared ! Team :
Cao Cao / Red Odin / Red Odin / Laila / Freyr / Urd

Floor 1 Gigas : stall three turns and kill him.

Floor 2 enormous defense Cu Chulain : after Assassin's dagger, I'm left with 5 HP. I have to kill him right now, which I can't, or to heal 8347 HP to survive his next Finale attack, which is quite hard with attacker team... But I have 7 heart orbs on the board. So I match 4+3 and set up two other combos, heal 8352 HP (that IS > 8347 if you read carefully). Survive Finale attack, kill and proceed.

Floor 3 Siegfred the stupid : stupid because this guy does not attack when his HP is full, he "strikes an imposive stance" instead. This allows me to stock 6 red orbs at the bottom, activate Laila to get 6 more at the top, activate Freyr to boost attack, activate both Odin to begin its blue bar, match, one shot.

Floor 4 Athena : Urd-Cao Cao boosted by the previous Freyr as usual, one shot.


Now that was a fight, best time with a videogame I had since, what ? Ornstein & Smough fight in Dark Souls maybe.

[cave hermit]

After running green sprite god knows how many times, I finally managed to max skill my Guan Yu!

...Now if only I had any subs for him.

As it stands, I have a red toy dragon, a lil red dragon, a fire starter dragon, and flamedragon Muspelheim (from legendary dragon footprints).
I suppose I could build a somewhat passable Guan Yu team with those, but I'll still have to put in the effort to level them and evolve them (not to mention I still need a fire spirit jewel for the fire starter dragon).

[guigui]

Congulatulations on your first fully skilled-up card.

As I see him, Guan Yu is not that good as a leader since dragon team do not seem to be the most effective around (except for dragons-restricted dungeon of course).
Also note that you can make a balanced team around him, but that seems to be even harder.

But he might be pretty good as a red sub : decent stats, awakening, active, especially with 7 turns cooldown !
Get an Urd friend and activate Urd -> Guan Yu : you're left with a full blue/red board in which you can easily make 2 or 3 red lines, boosted but your awakenings.

[Necronopticous]

Now that was a fight, best time with a videogame I had since, what ? Ornstein & Smough fight in Dark Souls maybe.

That's what it's about, man! Congrats! I've had a hard time introducing people to Puzzle & Dragons because, in my experience, most non-casual gamers have trouble accepting/believing a freemium mobile game can provide what you mention here. It's a tough road getting to where you're at now, but super satisfying to finally put it all together and start clearing high level content with no continues. Keep going!

I haven't been playing quite as frequently lately due to Bloodborne and now Witcher 3 taking up basically all of my free time, but I did evo the new Parvati last night and gave her a try as lead. Very interesting play style. I unsuccessfully tried to explain to my wife the strategy behind playing her leader skill effectively which was a total reality check on how deep the game really is at a high level. Super fun. I'm looking forward to trying her out in some real dungeons--maybe when the new challenge series comes around.

[cave hermit]

Just evolved my Lu Bu after leveling it with some Super king metal dragons, and Ult evolved it!

Move over tiny lu bu, Bigger Lu Bu is leading this devil team now!

Maybe I'll pop a Noir snow globe dragon on it as well...

[guigui]

Necro, be glad you have a wife you can talk about PAD to !

Just evolved my Lu Bu after leveling it with some Super king metal dragons, and Ult evolved it!

Move over tiny lu bu, Bigger Lu Bu is leading this devil team now!

Maybe I'll pop a Noir snow globe dragon on it as well...

I did exactly that, and bumped Lu Bu to level 89 in one shot, too bad I did not get that Great though. Now I need lotta TAMADRAs to awaken cards for a decent Lu Bu team...

[Necronopticous]

Now I need lotta TAMADRAs to awaken cards for a decent Lu Bu team...

Looks like we're getting TAMADRA Retreat for an hour tomorrow. Get in there!

[guigui]

Now I need lotta TAMADRAs to awaken cards for a decent Lu Bu team...

Looks like we're getting TAMADRA Retreat for an hour tomorrow. Get in there!

I know but I bet that, as usual, this will be up at 4am here in France.
Since the new kid in the house lets us sleep from 1am to 6am, I WONT get up at 4 for this game.
Also, the coin tamadra dungeon seems to be less efficient to farm tamadra, isn't it ?

[Aisha]

I miss the days where I had dozens of TAMADRA in my mail. I now need around 40 of them to fully awaken the two teams that I'm building. Evolving them is also going to be brutal.

From the discussion I've seen, TAMADRA Village is better than Retreat if you're willing to spend Magic Stones on Stamina refreshes, and if you have a lot of Stamina in the first place -- 198 or more seems to be the minimum that's often recommended.

[Necronopticous]

198 or more seems to be the minimum that's often recommended.

Not nearly as important to hit exact breakpoints like 198 now that we have stamina overflow, but the more the better, certainly.

[guigui]

Cave Hermit's Amaterasu Okhami will help me make this team :
Cao Cao/ Red Odin / Red Odin / Laila / King Flamie / Amaterasu Okhami (attacker uevo)

Amaterasu is the absolute key to cheese the dungeon :
-Floor 1 : pray for three reds, kill the colored lits, leave at least one mythlit alive. Mythlit will start spawning bind, Amaterasu will resist bind and auto-heal if necessary.
Stall and arrange the two or three bottom lines to stock up on red and blue orbs. When all skills are active, unbind with Amaterasu and proceed.
-Floor 2 : Odin's poison
-Floor 3 : Odin's poison
-Floor 4 : Flamie -> Laila -> Cao Cao give enough reds, if you stocked up correctly on previous floor, to one shot Devilit and Angelit.

Note that I can also do it with Necro's Awoken Neptune, and that Hermit might also do it by adapting a little since only one poison is really needed if you stall again on floor 3.

Will that work or am I overlooking something ?

I just tried this method for Friday Mythical. Success the first time, failure the second one.
Aisha was right : first floor is indeed where it's all at. I left 3 mythlits after first strike and, since they do not bind that often, they killed me. I need to hit harder on the go, I'd say 2x3 reds plus some combo is a good balance to leave only one or two mythlit.

Now I have no good friends left to help me do that again, will some very high ranked player here put Big-Badass-Neptune as a helper up ?

EDIT : Victory ! TAMADRA retreat happens at 1am this night, here I come. Gotta prepare my rank up for this one...

[cave hermit]

North American PCGF starts this Sunday!

I'm starting to grind some challenge dungeons for stones; I already have 16 stones, so I'll probably have enough stones for 4 rolls by the time sunday comes.

Hopefully there isn't a connection between putting serious effort into getting stones and only rolling Grimrocks

[Necronopticous]

Now I have no good friends left to help me do that again, will some very high ranked player here put Big-Badass-Neptune as a helper up ?

I put Awoken Neptune up for you. Do you already have me on your friends list? (362 268 225)

[guigui]

Thanks for the help Necro, I'll use Neptune right now for Friday Mythical. You're already on my list and your Kagutsuchi regularly burns pengdras for me.

Also, that PCGF will see me do IAP for the second time (the first was the 5 stones for $1 pack), think I'll buy 30 stones for $23.

[Necronopticous]

Also, that PCGF will see me do IAP for the second time (the first was the 5 stones for $1 pack), think I'll buy 30 stones for $23.

Maybe I'm a bad influence, but the first time I decided to buy a large pack was during a particularly good Godfest at the time (Chinese gods just came out for the first time). I went ahead with the 85 stone pack with the justification to myself that by that point I'd been playing the game for a long time and had already gotten more enjoyment out of it than many $60 console games that I'd purchased in the past. To this day I still use many of the gods I rolled during that, and have no regrets. My only advice would be, regardless of how many stones you decide to buy, try to do it before the Godfest starts and force yourself use some amount of them on expanding your monster box before you start rolling. It's extremely addicting to roll that damn machine, and very difficult to stop once you've started. Monster box expansion is one of the only 100% assured good investments in the game that will continue to benefit you for as long as you choose to play, and it is especially comforting to have done so if you just don't get very lucky in your rolls (it happens!).

[cave hermit]

Sent an invite your way Necronopticous

As much as this game has consumed my life, I still refuse to use IAP; I just don't like the idea of paying money to make a game easier (or potentially make a game easier in this case; if I pay $5 for stones I have just as much of a chance of getting another Grimrock as I would have if I used free magic stones).

[Necronopticous]

I accepted your invite. I will be primarily using the new Parvati evolution as my main leader until Awoken Ra drops, but feel free to let me know if you need me to put anything else up.

[BrianC]

One thing I noticed with P&Z Mario is that it has a scoring system and a score attack mode. I'm not sure if that is important since I only played a bit of Mario, but it's a good sign.

[guigui]

Necro, I'll take the advice from a veteran : IAP 30 stones, spend 5 to increase my box size, Godfest rolls, and spend the remaining to increase box again.
This shall take my size up to 250, which is good enough for now I think.

The TAMADRA retreat from this night net me 11 babies, 2 TAMADRAS, and 3 Chibidras. Now where do I farm those Gold Dragons effectively to evolve babies ?

One thing I noticed with P&Z Mario is that it has a scoring system and a score attack mode. I'm not sure if that is important since I only played a bit of Mario, but it's a good sign.

I also noticed the score and score attack modes. In the phone version, getting an S-rank on score levels gives you a free TAMADRA, which actually is a pretty good reward !
I dont know what it does in the Mario version though, but I'd like to have more time for that game. The 3 or 4 hours I spent with it were very enjoyable. Please let us know.

[Jon]

Other than the rotating dungeon of gold dragons I thing your best bet is Dragons of the Tower in ToG. Not exactly "effective" seeing as how just getting one to appear can be a hassle.

Wow guigui, I only started playing a short time after you and recently you've really managed to leave me in the dust rank wise. Hell, it was only a few days ago that I finally buckled down and grinded Mechdragons Fortress to fuse 5 como Hadar for my Ronia team. I did at least take the time to feed vanilla Hadar 4 of his own kind prior to evolution so he came out fully awoken.

I really need to focus using my stamina on progressing rather than daily super king dungeons and farming.

Good luck to all of you on tomorrow's PCGF!

[BrianC]

I also noticed the score and score attack modes. In the phone version, getting an S-rank on score levels gives you a free TAMADRA, which actually is a pretty good reward !
I dont know what it does in the Mario version though, but I'd like to have more time for that game. The 3 or 4 hours I spent with it were very enjoyable. Please let us know.

I'm playing through Z first, but I'll give it a try when I get a chance. Tamadra actually makes an appeaence in one of the upgrade areas in the Mario version.

[guigui]

Wow guigui, I only started playing a short time after you and recently you've really managed to leave me in the dust rank wise. Hell, it was only a few days ago that I finally buckled down and grinded Mechdragons Fortress to fuse 5 como Hadar for my Ronia team. I did at least take the time to feed vanilla Hadar 4 of his own kind prior to evolution so he came out fully awoken.

I really need to focus using my stamina on progressing rather than daily super king dungeons and farming.

Dont be jealous, I play way too much of this game. Hadar and Canopus have also been created here, and Hadar is almost fully skilled. I find Mechdragon's Massive Fortress is a good farming place : XP, fooder, + eggs, skill up fr Hadar.
Also, I find farming Super King Dungeon way less effective than farming technical for Pengdras. At our rank and by devoting some efforts to it, we can create 50+ evolved pengdras in about two days. That is more than 2 millions XP. Not that effective for Dark or Light monsters though.