Puzzle and Dragons in the Playground XVII: Cross Your Hearts and Make Things Die

[Jurai]

Quick question: What is the encounter rate on the jewel invades? I've run Hera-Ur Mythical difficulty 9 times so far and have not gotten a single invade, it's driving me nuts! I need green jewels for some evo's.

Edit: Sigh, the #'s I found were 15-20%, but I didn't have any sort of experience like that. 0/17 runs >< All of them successful, not a single one yielded me a jewel invade.

Check in your Quest rewards. The quests that give access to Hera Rush as a Multiplayer dungeon give a jewel of each color as sub-rewards. I used that and one other quest reward to finish out evolving my Beelzebub to Crazed King of Purgatory, Beelzebub, and my Wood Dominion, Michael to Archangel of Annihilation, Michael.

[gooddragon1]

I'm not sure if this counts as power creep, but is there any reason you wouldn't just run 5 yamamoto's with an ally yamamoto?

Also, wowza... Aizen 6x multiplier for free... and primary dark attribute when you need it.

[obryn]

I'm not sure if this counts as power creep, but is there any reason you wouldn't just run 5 yamamoto's with an ally yamamoto?

Also, wowza... Aizen 6x multiplier for free... and primary dark attribute when you need it.

Yes and no. For farming? They're definitely power-creep. Aizen in particular is crazy good, with no-effort x36 and easy x144. He has a slight gimmick downside, but still. Thing is, they are glass cannon leads, without any defensive capabilities and won't be able to clear the very hardest content.

These are, in a word, whalebait. I don't see them changing the meta, only changing farming and ranking dungeon speed runs. They're super-rare cards from a collab REM. And one big reason you don't run 5 of anything is because you aren't a crazy whale and don't have 5 of them. You're looking at probably thousands of real-world dollars, there.

[Starwulf]

Check in your Quest rewards. The quests that give access to Hera Rush as a Multiplayer dungeon give a jewel of each color as sub-rewards. I used that and one other quest reward to finish out evolving my Beelzebub to Crazed King of Purgatory, Beelzebub, and my Wood Dominion, Michael to Archangel of Annihilation, Michael.

Sadly I got those a while back, like...the day they introduced them, lol. It was odd too, as I hadn't even known about it, I had just gotten bored while waiting for one last stamina for something or another, and was looking through all the "option" stuff and saw "QUESTS" in bold neon-green so I clicked and was like "oooh, sweet! Free stuff!".

Still haven't gotten the damnable Multiplayer thing done, it's the only one I'm missing from "expert" set of dungeon stuff. The others I doubt I'll get anytime soon, I can't clear the Legend+/Mythical+ stuff yet. Close on Legend+, if I stoned I'd get it, but myth+ destroys me.

[Anarion]

I'm not sure if this counts as power creep, but is there any reason you wouldn't just run 5 yamamoto's with an ally yamamoto?

Also, wowza... Aizen 6x multiplier for free... and primary dark attribute when you need it.

Yes and no. For farming? They're definitely power-creep. Aizen in particular is crazy good, with no-effort x36 and easy x144. He has a slight gimmick downside, but still. Thing is, they are glass cannon leads, without any defensive capabilities and won't be able to clear the very hardest content.

These are, in a word, whalebait. I don't see them changing the meta, only changing farming and ranking dungeon speed runs. They're super-rare cards from a collab REM. And one big reason you don't run 5 of anything is because you aren't a crazy whale and don't have 5 of them. You're looking at probably thousands of real-world dollars, there.

In addition to what Obryn says, it's worth remembering that in PAD, damage is a yes or no question. You either kill the target or not. 6 Aizen's would certainly do an absurd amount of damage with a fire row, but there's effectively no difference past a certain point. Several teams can get past x100 right now, and if you're putting out 100 million damage, you're killing literally everything there is to kill. Even when the full Zeus Dragon descend comes out stateside, he's got a 20 million damage absorb, so doing more than 100 million across the team is counterproductive.

Glass cannon teams can be great though. I've been having a lot of success with You Yu including clearing both arena 1 and 2, Legendary Sea of Stars, and the Zeus dragon one shot challenge, and I'm just short of having a setup to solo clear Machine Hera (I think I can do it with the Hermes I pulled this last godfest). But the critical thing there is sub choice. You Yu has so much damage that many of my subs are focused on defense: my legendary sea of stars clear used Orochi and Sun Quan, and Isis with inherited Indra, so the only orb fixers were one full field change on Skuld and the You Yu leads themselves.

[obryn]

So wow. I don't know how much better I will be able to get than my current 11.5% on that ranking dungeon. I am hating the match-4-minimum playstyle.

[Anarion]

So wow. I don't know how much better I will be able to get than my current 11.5% on that ranking dungeon. I am hating the match-4-minimum playstyle.

The boss makes me so angry. Must match 4 plus boss that requires at least 6 combos. Even with the lead skill, you've got to match at least 20/30 orbs in ways that don't overlap or mess each other up.

[obryn]

The boss makes me so angry. Must match 4 plus boss that requires at least 6 combos. Even with the lead skill, you've got to match at least 20/30 orbs in ways that don't overlap or mess each other up.

Yeah, I've been using a combo of ... whoever Sub 1 is, the knight guy maybe? ... and the lead skill. It's incredibly aggravating and the leader skill basically requires me to un-learn everything I've been learning for the past ... whoa, almost 3 years?

Also, Yuna's skill is effectively useless for the fixed team in this dungeon, and Lightning's is only vaguely better.

I'll check back in and see if I get pushed up in the rankings or down. I'm close enough that there's a chance I'll magically levitate into the 10% group eventually.

[Anarion]

Yeah, I've been using a combo of ... whoever Sub 1 is, the knight guy maybe? ... and the lead skill. It's incredibly aggravating and the leader skill basically requires me to un-learn everything I've been learning for the past ... whoa, almost 3 years?

That you don't know who Cecil is, is the greatest tragedy of this whole affair.

Edit: Btw, what was your 10-11% time? My best after 5 tries is top 21% with 97.9k finishing with 128 seconds left. My only miss was not one-shotting the 4th floor, and I had to orb fix on 3 because there were no dark orbs in the skyfall.

[obryn]

That you don't know who Cecil is, is the greatest tragedy of this whole affair.

Edit: Btw, what was your 10-11% time? My best after 5 tries is top 21% with 97.9k finishing with 128 seconds left. My only miss was not one-shotting the 4th floor, and I had to orb fix on 3 because there were no dark orbs in the skyfall.

I think I had 141 seconds remaining which was seriously 30 seconds better than my second-best time.

4th floor is bad. Both that and 5th are orb-hungry, and match-only-4+ tends to eat my dark orbs super fast.

e: typo!

[Jurai]

Glauca is just the WORST.

[obryn]

Myr is real good.

I just 1-stoned the one shot challenge and this team is nowhere remotely hypermax yet. Sadly, I got noahdrag, since I'm fire starter. I'm going to need zeusdra, but I feel good about the next one coming around. :)

[Anarion]

Myr is real good.

I just 1-stoned the one shot challenge and this team is nowhere remotely hypermax yet. Sadly, I got noahdrag, since I'm fire starter. I'm going to need zeusdra, but I feel good about the next one coming around. :)

Top 15.6% with 106.4k points on the ranking dungeon. I'm calling it at that, I think. It was 1-round everything, pretty much perfect orbs and 150 seconds left, but my combo count was a tad too low and/or my orb moving time was a tad too high for that combo count, I think. Considering that the entire remaining 15% is only a spread of 10k points, I think I'm just gonna call it at that.

Also, ditto for 1-shot challenge. Had to stone Gaia dragon. I used Krishna this time, though. Man, new ult Krishna is amazing.

[obryn]

Top 15.6% with 106.4k points on the ranking dungeon. I'm calling it at that, I think. It was 1-round everything, pretty much perfect orbs and 150 seconds left, but my combo count was a tad too low and/or my orb moving time was a tad too high for that combo count, I think. Considering that the entire remaining 15% is only a spread of 10k points, I think I'm just gonna call it at that.

Also, ditto for 1-shot challenge. Had to stone Gaia dragon. I used Krishna this time, though. Man, new ult Krishna is amazing.

Krishna is the only one in that series I don't have.

I think I'm right around that same score, and yeah, same. I don't know how many more seconds I could squeeze out of that dungeon. It's going to be just hoping for the right boards from here.

[gooddragon1]

What if any active skill or leader skill could be transferred to anything else without a tan (though the new active would be the only active available)?

Spoiler: Cheating Daydreaming

Show

Zeemuss
Max Lvl 1
HP: 1
ATK: -9001
RCV: -9001
Awakenings: None.
Active Skill: None.
Leader Skill: No dark, fire, light, water, wood orb spawn. No skyfall combos. Enemies lose all abilities*. 100% gravity to all enemies when matching orbs.
*Normal dungeon effectively.

Don't even need to press a button (which has a yes/no confirmation), just move a heart orb and win each round. More interactive than a leader skill of Enemy HP x 0.

[Mystic Muse]

What is the point of that exactly?

[Anarion]

Krishna is the only one in that series I don't have.

I think I'm right around that same score, and yeah, same. I don't know how many more seconds I could squeeze out of that dungeon. It's going to be just hoping for the right boards from here.

Krishna is just about the same amount of damage as Shiva on average, though you need at least 6 fire orbs to do anything unlike Shiva's 4. But then you have 60-70k hp and the recovery to keep it topped up depending on your exact team setup. I'm running him with Awoken Cao Cao/Awoken Hino/Awoken Ame/Ult Urd. I have Freyr on standby, but that team just handled Gaia dragon and the only reason I had to stone was because I did too much damage and ate the 500% gravity so...seems fine.

What if any active skill or leader skill could be transferred to anything else without a tan (though the new active would be the only active available)?

We'll just pretend this is 100% of the content of your post, shall we? Skill transfer like this would, I think, actually be stronger than the current system with Tans, or at least equal. There's a bit less flexibility than having two skills, but a monster with any skill without the delay of stacking it on a second means there are combinations that have stuff like damage reduction or damage boosts enabled right out of the gate with no need to stall. You'd be more vulnerable to skill delays though.

[obryn]

What if any active skill or leader skill could be transferred to anything else without a tan (though the new active would be the only active available)?

No, leader skills should not be transferable. You'd load your best leader skill onto the best 'body' you have, and even the mild differentiation between colors that we have today would be lost.

Spoiler: Cheating Daydreaming

Show

Zeemuss
Max Lvl 1
HP: 1
ATK: -9001
RCV: -9001
Awakenings: None.
Active Skill: None.
Leader Skill: No dark, fire, light, water, wood orb spawn. No skyfall combos. Enemies lose all abilities*. 100% gravity to all enemies when matching orbs.
*Normal dungeon effectively.

Don't even need to press a button (which has a yes/no confirmation), just move a heart orb and win each round. More interactive than a leader skill of Enemy HP x 0.

[/QUOTE]
Come on, man.

[gooddragon1]

Come on, man.

At least I spoilered it :P

But how about this:
What team would you take into a dungeon that didn't allow leader skills, and how much of a challenge could you handle?

[obryn]

At least I spoilered it :P

But how about this:
What team would you take into a dungeon that didn't allow leader skills, and how much of a challenge could you handle?

These already exist - Forbidden Tower, in the Technicals.

And really, it's pretty boring.

[Anarion]

At least I spoilered it :P

But how about this:
What team would you take into a dungeon that didn't allow leader skills, and how much of a challenge could you handle?

These already exist - Forbidden Tower, in the Technicals.

And really, it's pretty boring.

What Obryn said, but let me explain a little more. When there are no leader skills, you've got very few options in terms of gameplay variety. Some monsters have TPA awakenings and some have rows, so you might be incentivized to make combos of 4 or 6 orbs instead of 3. But that's it. You can run pretty much anything since leader skill isn't relevant, so you just pick the biggest bodies and make as many combos as you can. It's not awful because the basic gameplay of PAD is fun, but it doesn't have any variety.

[obryn]

Forbidden Tower is also much easier now with rows and prongs, than when it was released.

It's never really tough though. It's basically populated with Nerf monsters. The only difficulties come in with high-defense monsters (treants, hippocampi, and the fireball guys), but we have ways now of blowing through them, too.


So I didn't have anything better to do and got 9.8% on the ranking dungeon last night. (I'm out of the top 10% as of this evening, though. )

It's all luck past this point, I'm convinced - and therefore, really, stamina and the willingness to stone.

[Mystic Muse]

I'm disappointed Reincarnated Hades wasn't released in the U.S. with Minerva, Ceres, and Neptune.

[obryn]

Up to 4.6%....

[gooddragon1]

Planned team for Friday Expert Dungeon:

Moogle (lvl 44) leader
Ancient Green Sacred Mask lv max
Blue Carbuncle lvl 1
Red Carbuncle lvl 2
Yellow Carbuncle lvl 3

EDIT: Just need 1 Dub-Amelit to evo Vajrabhairava (A.K.A. Drava (what I call him)).

[Rynjin]

Been playing this game for a few months now and really enjoying it (though I seem to hit stall periods every couple of weeks). Nowhere near as powerful as the things you guys have been posting, but hey, who knows how long it'll take that to happen. Apparently I have a pretty good roster of monsters but very few of them properly synergize with each other (I have the Red and Green Sonias, but none of the "recommended subs" from most guides, for example).

Been having fun with a team of Light Metatron/Idun&Idunna/BWNP Hatsume/Valkyrie Reine/Enchantress Siren (or Ruka on occasions) with Sarasvati as a lead lately. A little bit more work than my previous "Tank smash" Avalon Drake plus all the Wood I can handle team, but way more fun, and I've actually been able to beat some of the lower level Descends (though Mythical Grimoires is giving me slight trouble ATM for an indicator of where I'm at, exactly). Whole team seems to fall apart whenever I get hit with something that Skill Binds.

Small potatoes compared to "100 million damage is overkill" territory, but you gotta start somewhere.

[Mystic Muse]

*Looks to see how close she is to evolving Sonia Gran Reverse.*

*Looks at the evo materials for Apex Blue Flower Dragon Starling.*

*Passes out from lack of breathing due to screaming in rage*

[obryn]

Been playing this game for a few months now and really enjoying it (though I seem to hit stall periods every couple of weeks). Nowhere near as powerful as the things you guys have been posting, but hey, who knows how long it'll take that to happen. Apparently I have a pretty good roster of monsters but very few of them properly synergize with each other (I have the Red and Green Sonias, but none of the "recommended subs" from most guides, for example).

Been having fun with a team of Light Metatron/Idun&Idunna/BWNP Hatsume/Valkyrie Reine/Enchantress Siren (or Ruka on occasions) with Sarasvati as a lead lately. A little bit more work than my previous "Tank smash" Avalon Drake plus all the Wood I can handle team, but way more fun, and I've actually been able to beat some of the lower level Descends (though Mythical Grimoires is giving me slight trouble ATM for an indicator of where I'm at, exactly). Whole team seems to fall apart whenever I get hit with something that Skill Binds.

Small potatoes compared to "100 million damage is overkill" territory, but you gotta start somewhere.

Hiya!

Glad you're enjoying it. :) Feel free to add us from the OP; we can carry you for some of the dungeons! There's no shame in filling your teams with farmable and less-than-ideal subs. Get what you can, and go for it.


Oh, and for you and everyone - this PAL machine is legit awesome. Roll them all. Open up old Pal Point emails and roll them, too. I 297'd 2 monsters off my puzzdroid and all the pal points I had saved up.

[Anarion]

*Looks to see how close she is to evolving Sonia Gran Reverse.*

*Looks at the evo materials for Apex Blue Flower Dragon Starling.*

*Passes out from lack of breathing due to screaming in rage*

This is probably an old refrain, but buy box space. I try to hold on to one of everything as much as I can (although that period where they were giving away 10x MP for descend bosses kinda ruined my stash). Every 5 box slots is 5 random things you've probably already farmed that you don't have to waste stamina getting again.

You'll get there though, just hang in there. Actually, I'm curious what you want Gran Reverse for. I haven't even considered using her on a team.

Been playing this game for a few months now and really enjoying it (though I seem to hit stall periods every couple of weeks). Nowhere near as powerful as the things you guys have been posting, but hey, who knows how long it'll take that to happen. Apparently I have a pretty good roster of monsters but very few of them properly synergize with each other (I have the Red and Green Sonias, but none of the "recommended subs" from most guides, for example).

Been having fun with a team of Light Metatron/Idun&Idunna/BWNP Hatsume/Valkyrie Reine/Enchantress Siren (or Ruka on occasions) with Sarasvati as a lead lately. A little bit more work than my previous "Tank smash" Avalon Drake plus all the Wood I can handle team, but way more fun, and I've actually been able to beat some of the lower level Descends (though Mythical Grimoires is giving me slight trouble ATM for an indicator of where I'm at, exactly). Whole team seems to fall apart whenever I get hit with something that Skill Binds.

Small potatoes compared to "100 million damage is overkill" territory, but you gotta start somewhere.

Well, I'm the one who said that, so let me also say that there's no such thing as small potatoes. The nice thing about PAD is that it's fun almost all the time. The main gameplay of matching orbs is an enjoyable activity and one that you can constantly improve for yourself over time.

There are a few challenge points though. I'm glad to hear that you're already doing well beating some of the legendary level descends. My biggest frustration was early on when I couldn't clear the harder normal dungeons or any descends and had to spend a long time farming to get my team in shape. Clearing those early descends can let you build up some team members or the evolution materials you need to get better monsters.

If you're using Sarasvati, you should definitely friend me, I've got You Yu showing a good amount of the time (a very strong blue lead who pairs well with Sarasvati). Sarasvati is a tough leader though, she's very orb hungry and may take a lot of practice to use well. On average, how many combos do you make a round?

Hiya!

Glad you're enjoying it. :) Feel free to add us from the OP; we can carry you for some of the dungeons! There's no shame in filling your teams with farmable and less-than-ideal subs. Get what you can, and go for it.

True story. I had a moment today where I realized that red golem was potentially the solution to all my Machine Hera problems (although I then proceeded to skill inherit awoken Susano-o instead because I have to pretend that all those REM pulls actually meant something )

Oh, and for you and everyone - this PAL machine is legit awesome. Roll them all. Open up old Pal Point emails and roll them, too. I 297'd 2 monsters off my puzzdroid and all the pal points I had saved up.

Truth.

[gooddragon1]

*Looks to see how close she is to evolving Sonia Gran Reverse.*

*Looks at the evo materials for Apex Blue Flower Dragon Starling.*

*Passes out from lack of breathing due to screaming in rage*

This is partly why I picked DRava instead of HinoKagutsuchi as my initial reroll target. Reincarnated Hino has a 40x mult and can reach over 100k damage compared to DRava, but DRava has much easier evo materials (and can get 70k damage without needing latents). Speaking of which, my previously mentioned team worked exactly as I planned and now it's just a matter of XP till I'm freefarming the metal dragons.

Made another farmable(ish) team to deal with extreme king though: Alraune (need to get this one), Shadow Lord, Zeromus, Zeromus, Zeromus.