Introduction

August 24th marks the debut of patch 9.3.1 which brings forth a whole host of new changes and i would like to use this post to highlight the ones of most importance. This will not be a full list of every single updates and you still should read the patch notes in full. The Badge System will be detailed in a separate posting due to the sheer size and can be found HERE.

Video commentary

Overview

• Skill Improvements
• New Evolutions
• Quality of Life Improvements

Skill Improvements

In this update, numerous cards received various buffs that may enhance their viability or usage.

Izanagi 

Izanagi was the recipient of a special JP buff that allows him to achieve 110.25x ATK for God types when above 80% HP AND matching 3+ light combos. That is a lot of effort and impractical for everyday usage. In addition, he also gained a SBR  awakening and -1 turn on his max cooldown for active. However, all of this is largely irrelvant due to his Awoken form  being the better option in almost every scenario as he becomes a 49x ATK / 4x RCV / 75% damage reduction heart-cross leader.

Diadem 

Diadem was also part of the special JP buff and gained an additional skill boost  and dark row . This makes him a more appealing sub, but still not top tier as he lacks God or Devil typing.

Fafnir 

Fafnir is perhaps the most perplexing of all the buffed characters as he is now a 36x ATK / 75% damage reduction heart cross leader who can use wood rows . However, in order to make efficient heart crosses, you need ample time extend and ideally a wood or heart orb generating active. Fafnir has neither. Giving him 4 rows and no SBR does not solve the problem. However, he does does become a modest sub with all his additional rows.

Red Riding Hood 

Red Riding Hood has a buff that is something to get excited about! Xiang Mei  is still a very powerful leader and one of her main drawbacks is a limted pool of strong fire healers. However, with Red Riding Hood gaining an additional 2 fire rows , she may see a lot more usage as she is a relatively common roll. She also received a heart cross mechanic buff that is nothing to get excited about.

New Evolutions

Sarasvati 

Sarasvati received a new Uuevo that propelled her into a 100x water leader that is heavily row based. This allows her to hit astronomical damage and I extensively analyze her and provide team building advice in my guide HERE.

Cao Cao 

Cao Cao is trying to follow in the footsteps of Awoken Liu Bei  as he has a similar leader skill of 64x when linking 9+ connected fire orbs along with 4x RCV when using an active skill. However, Cao Cao will not be the same Multiplayer powerhouse due to having no equivalent to Zeus Dios . Dios has two vital Skill Boosts  and coop multiplier  that allows him to deal 50% more damage and be able to have his 16-turn full wood board active ready by floor 1. As such, Cao Cao would have to either use the more poverty options of Surtr (who may get an evolution one day) or Beach Goemon . However, Goemon resets your HP to 1 and this can be problematic for dungeons with preemptives.

Thus, Cao Cao will have to be played in a more traditional leadership manner: actually puzzling and matching orbs (gasp). He is currently the strongest fire row leader (outside of Xiang Mei) and does have some strong points: mostly his high damage and ability to recover quickly. Unfortuantely, most of this is tied to active usage and that has always been problematic when you encounter floors you have to stall, skill delays, or times when you should not be using an active. Thankfully, Cao Cao is somewhat saved by the modestly outdated Scarlet System! Scarlet  is able to randomly spawn 4 fire orbs along with a single turn of haste on a 7-turn cooldown. This means you can use one active every turn and with a full sub roster of Scarlet, be able to form a system. This means you will always be at 64x ATK / 4x RCV along with the opportunity to use Cao Cao’s active on a much more frequent basis.

Mechanical Gods      

The Mechanical Gods finally received their highly anticipated evolutions and feature a split evo tree to better cater to your needs. They are roughly broken up into a Leader evolution (  ) and Sub evolution (  ) with the leaders receiving a buffed leader skill to become a 1.69x HP / 42.25x ATK for machine types when matching a 5o1e. This quite underwhelming and they only gained one Skill Boost awakening .

On the other hand, the sub evolution received 2 skill boosts and the coveted God Killer  awakening. This is a huge upgrade and grants even more demand for using them on your favourite teams.

When choosing which evolution to make, you should almost always go for the God Killer form unless you need that sub attribute for a rainbow team (mostly thinking of Pollux here). And speaking of Pollux , she becomes superstar Awoken DQXQ  that rivals or surpasses Baal  as the best dark coverage option.

Quality of Life Improvements

These are perhaps the most exciting changes as they impact everyone’s game play and experience. Granted the mail expiration is a nerf, but the others are nice.

Mail expiration

From now on, all mail sent by GungHo will have a 365 expiration date before it is deleted. This includes and Magic Stones, Pal Points, rewards, etc. and they will be deleted if not opened within a year. This does not feel nice, especially when we got the mail preview buff in an earlier patch. However, you have to keep in mind 365 days is a very long time (possibly longer than some of you have been playing). And it is 365 days starting on patch day, not when it arrived (future mail will expire 1 year after arriving in your mail box). Thus, in all honesty, you should not have anything to fear and the oldest rewards I have no claimed are only around 200 days old.

New Awoken skills sorting

Now when you filter by awoken skills, it will display all cards that have that ability, regardless if you have used a Tamadra on them or not.

Quest / Badge System

This is one of the best thing so far; however, I cover it in my other article HERE as it is very long and expansive.

Replay after coop match

This feature was badly needed to improve the quality of life for coop play. Essentially, after every coop match, you will be asked if you wish to reconnect with the same partner in the same dungeon. This is Fantastic as it bypasses the whole room creation process and potential room sniping. This is automatically cancelled if one player has a full monster box.

Conclusion

The 9.3.1 patch brought a lot of new and exciting changes. For new players, the Badge System gives you another thing to work towards while veterans will simply collect a large number of rewards. The newly released evolutions breathe life into somewhat dated cards and give you new tools to play around with. Hopefully you found this overview helpful and let me know what you are most excited for.

Happy Puzzling!