I thought we would have had more time to rest and relax after the last ranking dungeon, but the North American GungHo staff may have been affected by the 3 minute stamina buff and are firing out content left right and centre. Regardless, the Noah Tournament Ranking Dungeon is the fourth in the ranking dungeon series and has the No Dupes restriction. No Dupes has become easier to manage as the restrictions only apply to your own team and not your friend’s leader. This means you can still bring matching leaders and has eased team building and theory crafting. However, with ranking dungeons, we are not simply concerned with finishing the dungeon, but with scoring as high as possible. I failed to achieve the top 1% from the Cauchemar Tournament, but averaged top 2% over the course all 3 ranking dungeons to date. As such I wish to share my thoughts and strategies to help my fellow Puzzle and Dragoners in achieving a new personal best.In a ranking dungeon we are scored based on 4 parameters:

• Average Combos
• Time Remaining
• Max Damage (caps at 10,000 at 40 million damage)
• Skill Only Defeat (lose 5,000 points per floor)

Comparing my 2 different scores, it becomes apparent that your time remaining is the dominating factor when determining a score. Average combos and maximum damage will be what pushes you a few percentage points higher, especially if aiming for the top 1% and crown.

Therefore we wish to create a team that can handle the mechanics of the dungeon along with minimizing time spent and ideally sweeping each floor in one turn.

Noah Tournament consists of 7 floors with a couple of key mechanics that you should be aware of:

Floor	Monster & Health	Notes
1	70k  560k	1,316 pre-emptive attack which prevents the usage of teams that rely on being at full health to achieve damage
2	1,011,812	+15% blue orb skyfall. Encourages blue heavy teams/subs to maximize damage
3	1,080,972	No special mechanic
4	x2 10 million defence, 45 health	Must bring a poison or active to kill immediately. Team needs to have sufficient skill boosts to have ready in time (Active skill cooldown minus 3)
5	1,078,542	No special mechanic
6	937,404	Pre-emptive heal player to full health. This prevents you using teams that require being at under 100% health for maximum damage
Boss	3,205,173	Pre-emptive heal player to full health. This prevents you using teams that require being at under 100% health for maximum damage

The damage threshold for this tournament is significantly higher than the Zeus Tournament as you need to find a team that can consistently generate 1 million damage leading up to the boss floor. Furthermore, the boss has 3.2 million health and starts in the blue element. This will make it challenging for fire based teams who are not heavily plus egged. Light and dark teams have no resistances nor floors in which they deal double damage in hopes of padding their numbers. In addition, you cannot use teams that rely on being at a specific health thresholds due to pre-emptive attacks and heals.

A significant advantage we have playing on the North American server is being able to see the top teams used by Japanese players and can cut down on our planning as we have a template to work with. Link can be found HERE.

It is not surprising to see Shiva  and Ra  Dragon dominating the top 10 as  can mindlessly sweep the floors and  can achieve consistency as well as nearing the 40 million damage threshold for 10,000 bonus points. Due note these players most likely using hypermaxed monsters and this gives more flexibility when dealing damage (especially fire teams versus water bosses). In addition, none of the  featured a full board changer and instead relied on sweeping every floor while prioritizing blue subs to capitalize on the second floor’s pre-emptive of enhanced water skyfalls mechanic for additional damage. In addition, they chose to bring Awoken Ra  as their PreDRA  floor killer. This will reduce your score by 5,000 (as it instantly kills the floor, poison will not decrease your score, but you need to move orbs to trigger the damage) but does save time and helps preserve your average combos made. Red Odin  is better suited to  teams as he contributes 4 fire rows  to help bolster your damage. His active is a poison so it requires you to move orbs to trigger the damage, but you will not be penalized.

The staple farmable poison is Lilith  who can be max skilled to 10 turns. This means you only require 7 skill boost  awakenings to have ready in time for the 4th floor. This can be a daunting task as most teams may find it challenging to have enough skill boosts. Conversely, you can also use the lesser seen Swallowtail  who can be acquired in the Dark Insect Dragon right NOW as the evolved form of the boss drop.  is superior to  in that he starts at 10 turns and can be max skilled to 6 as well as coming with a single  awakening. This may alleviate stress in team building and is another option to consider.

Most players do not own the specific teams pictured in the top 10 and I want to provide some other options of viable teams that can achieve high scores provided you can sweep each floor and minimize downtime thinking of your board arrangements. As such, teams with more unconditional multipliers have an advantage over rainbow teams as you are much less likely to encounter orb troll. Whenever a mono colour team encounters insufficient orbs, they simply need to use an orb changer to correct their problem and this thinking can be done in between floors. However, rainbow teams would need to use a board refresher and you do not gain the precious few seconds of downtime when moving from one floor to the next to plan your move.

For Mantastic, I plan to try both my Awoken Sakuya  and Yomi Dragon  teams as they have the most investment in terms of plus eggs and skill ups.

Unfortunately neither team gains colour typing advantage to better pad my max damage; however, these 2 teams have the most plus egg investment.   team simply consists of many orb changers to hasten my progress through the dungeon and to prevent dark orb fatigue.  will mostly be relying on my comboing skills to maximize my output as well as light orb changer in Valkyrie  .

I lack plussed out blue subs, but may be able to still take advantage of the enhanced water skyfalls. I would be able to heavily stack enhanced water orb  awakenings to maximize damage along with I&I  for more burst.

As such, Sumire  may be another viable lead to use as he does bring 2  awakenings and can pad their max damage on the 6th floor as my max skilled I&I  will be ready just in time. I should have sufficient damage to burst through the green fifth floor without an enhance and can always use an orb changer if needed. It is a shame that there is no ideal and quick based water lead that can shine with the skyfall active.

Bastet  teams are powerful for mono green, but my main concern is the 16x may not be sufficient for some players as a large component of your damage is tied to active skill usage. Every active increases your total elapsed time and may negatively impact your score. As such, minimize active usage unless absolutely necessary.

In addition, another farmable option we can use (that many players may have tried for Cauchemar) is Dark Izanami  . Because we are not concerned about taking any hits, the HP nerf is irrelevant and dual  can create a 16x unconditional god team. You can customize the colours as you please, but you can also pair with a friend’s Shiva Dragon  to form a 20x red god team.

Also, remember to turn off the skill confirmation animations through Others -> Options -> Dungeon -> Skills Off to save a couple extra seconds!

If you have a better team composition or strategy, please leave a comment and lend me your insight and I can update this post accordingly =)

Happy Puzzling!