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+80 Box Space, I mean Version 9.4.2 Update Review

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Introduction

Upon waking up today, thousands of Puzzle and Dragoners were greeted with an additional 80 box space and team cost that came with the 9.4.2 update. In this article, I wish to highlight all the noteworthy changes along with how I feel they will impact our PAD life.

You should always refer to the official patch notes as I may gloss over certain updates etc. This can be found HERE.

Video Commentary

New evolutions

9.4.2 comes with new split evolutions for Spica, Mitsunari, and Akechi that better defines them as either leaders or subs.

Spica

3058 3057

Unless you love the art work or in desperate need for the sub colour, the Wood/Water Spica 3058 is the strongest option as she comes with a wonderful God Killer God Killer and dual Skill Boost Skill Boost awakenings. Spica may have new found usage (despite the Heart Cross meta) as a sub for Machine Athena 3074 due to her Machine typing. She is also phenomenally pretty.

Mitsunari

3105 mitsuaria-evo

Mitsunari is an often forgotten card as he struggled to find a team to call home. Even his leader form of Wood/Dark is lackluster due to the active skill clause. Thus, we lose the mask and bring 4 wood row Wood Row awakenings with an active that converts the whole board to wood, dark, and heart orbs along with 2 turns of haste on a 13 turn cooldown. This can be useful as either an inherit for mono wood or dark teams or as a stellar sub on wood teams that are row based.

One interesting option for using Mitsunari is on Awoken Liu Bei A Liu Bei teams if you are struggling to farm up numerous Dios Ult Zeus Dios as a Mitsunari + Liu Bei active results in a full board of wood orbs. However, this does take more time due to pressing an additional button and going through the haste animation. Conversely, you can also use Mitsunari as a means to help overcome combo shields with his tri-colour board active.

Akechi

d-d-akechi 3110

Akechi is regarded as one of the strongest dark cards in the game due to his overwhelming active that forms dark and heart orbs along with enhancing all dark orbs. This combines two mechanics into one and allowed for spectacular burst damage when used in conjunction with Haku Haku. In addition, it also means you can save a sub slot as you combine an enhance and orb change. Unfortunately, Akechi’s own base stats and awakenings were lackluster until his new ultimate evolution!

Most players will have already evolved him into his D/D d-d-akechi as he now brings a spectacular 4 dark row Dark row awakenings and 750 base stats. Amusingly, the other Akechi evolution allows him to achieve 64x ATK with a 5o1e and dark+light match. However, this is impractical as your choices of board refreshes are limited and you are almost always better of going with the D/D evolution.

Notable monster buffs

Myr Miru along with Green Odin Green Odin / Odin Dragon Odin Dragon received significant upgrades to their leader or active skill. However, I already wrote posts on both those topics which you should read for more information:

Descend Quests

The Quest system was for the most part free rewards for longstanding players. This is because they had already cleared all the required content and did leave many players yearning for more. Unfortunately, the Descend Quests may not necessarily offer more to do for more veteran players, but certainly gives newer players something fun to work towards. In addition, the rewards are quite lucrative:

quest-rewardss

In addition to these one-time rewards, players will be able to permanently unlock various Rushes in Coop/Multiplayer that should award another stone for clearing. You can still purchase these from the coin dungeon and thus able to acquire yet another stone.

new-dungeons

As a small update, quests do not darken once the reward is claimed so it is at least easier to read.

+80 box space & team cost

This is perhaps the most exciting change that was made and universally helps all players (RIP 20-box space challengers) as this is equivalent to 16 magic stones and 80 ranks. The additional team cost in conjunction with the team cost badge should allow new players to use any monster they please and team cost should never be an issue again.

For myself, I can now procrastinate selling or fusing for a longer time =)

Multiplayer updates

These are mostly quality of life improvements and are positive overall.

  • Able to re-match after a failed dungeon. Saves some time for those flubbed combos
  • Something about befriending someone post play, it is worded quite badly

Ultimate Devil Rush adjustments

Ultimate Devil Rush has been adjusted. In which way I am not sure….

capture

In other news, the sky is blue.

Tamadra Village buff

Tamadra Village – Hunt for Tamadra! is the 99-stamina dungeon and now will guarantee at least 1 adult Tamadra per clear. This means that the worst possible outcome is now 3 babies and 1 adult. In coop, this costs 50 stamina and is at least a bit more appealing to play compared to the other difficulty. I still fuse my baby Tamadras and pray for the awakening as it is more stamina efficient than evolving as you will probably spend more stamina trying to acquire the evo mats compared to simply re-running Tamadra Village.

Monster Book menu update

Your Monster Book will now display the number of cards you have unlocked. To unlock a monster you have to either receive them as a drop or complete the respective evolution and will be fully highlighted. Monsters that you have encountered in dungeons, but not acquired will be visible, but will not be fully lit up.

Mailbox sorting

For players who use their mailbox as additional inventory space, this update will be a blessing as you can now quickly and more easily find the type of mail you are looking for. We still lack an actual search bar (here and for your actual Monster Box), but this is at least a step in the right direction

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Devolutions are no longer highlighted

Before the 9.4.2 patch, monsters that only had a Devolution available would also be highlighted and would become bothersome for players as irrelevant information was being highlighted. Thankfully, we will now only have monsters that have a ready to use evolution highlighted which significantly improves the quality of life for PAD.

Conclusion

The 9.4.2 patch brought about numerous quality of life improvements along with some highly anticipated evolutions.

What are you most excited about and how do you plan to use your additional 80 box space?

Happy Puzzling!

28 thoughts on “+80 Box Space, I mean Version 9.4.2 Update Review”

  2. I think I recall reading somewhere that the update to Devil Rush is that Dark Knight or w/e it’s called was added to floor 1. Would explain why it’s part of the requirements to unlock the coop dungeon.

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      1. Nice!! Once I ran through and figured out I could still clear it with ALB, I didn’t stick around to figure out the differences. 🙂 Thanks for the insight!

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  3. I’m definitely looking forward to using at least one of my two Mitsunaris as an ALB sub, but I’m also kinda considering him as an imperfect placeholder on a Typhon-Ana or Ronove team until I pick up something better. I fully realize it’s scraping the barrel in both instances. Speaking of Typhon Ana, I suppose Akechi’s Melancholic form might find a sub-home there for the extra 1.35x HP and ATK bump from being Balance type. I already evolved mine to Meticulous form, but I’ll have to look closer at that decision if I start running a Typhon-Ana team.

    Cheers!

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    1. Actually, using Pandora to fix/improve/enhance Mitsunari’s board on Typhon-Ana would be decent, and give about the same effect as a Haku to Akechi active combo.

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      1. Mitsunari may be better off as an assistant to inherit for Tyhpon- Ana unless you are lacking subs. If I am not mistaken, Pandora is also not a balance/dragon so she would not be benefiting from the full multiplier but at least has the wombo-combo effect. Who else do you plan to use on Anaphon?

        On ALB he is okay, but usually Dios is better unless avoiding combo shields

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        1. Good point on using as an assist. You’re right about Pandora (that active is just so perfect though). I don’t have many of what I presume to be the more ideal-type subs for Anaphon (more Typhon, Christmas Haku, Ryune, SOC Lucifer, Yomi Dragon etc.), but I could patch together something like: Anaphon-Haku/Akechi/A.Okuninushi/Grape Dragon-Anaphon. That has some haste, heart-making, delay and 100% SBR. If I re-evo’d Haku and Akechi to their less ideal D/R(Dragon) and D/L(Balanced) forms respectively, I would gain the 1.35x ATK and HP bonus on all subs as well as having “rainbow in the dark” full sub-type elemental coverage on an otherwise mono-dark team (since that heart cross and passive type bonus buffs all elemental type damage). With some creative SI’s it might be at the very least fun and viable for a decent range of content.

          As for Mitsunari and ALB, yes he will be used at first as a place holder while I work on my Dios subs, and later as a niche sub for combo shields (also a possible super niche use on a Linthia farming team).

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          1. Anaphon teams are tricky to build, especially if you are lacking numerous Plums (purple 4 gentlemen) as your sub pool is limited. To be most efficient, you have to run balance/dragons with proper inherits and be ready to stall as needed

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            1. Plums you say… *conducts research*

              Okay, I can see that being an optimal sub. Thanks for the tip. Unfortunately that’s a bit out of my non/low-IAP price range, especially if we’re talking some kind of system team. I think I would look to upgrade that Grape Dragon as priority one, and then possibly use a mix of fruit dragon actives as assists.

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  4. I had two Akechi, so I was happy to get both versions today. I’m using the D/L version on my Lucifer team. The team already had 12 Dark rows, so I figured the enhance orbs were more useful at the moment.

    I could finally run Wednesday dungeon without having to sell off most of the evolution masks and the demon masks thanks to the extra space.

    I’m so happy the Devolution highlight is gone.

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  5. I think you meant that you *fuse* baby tamadra rather than evolve them.

    You said evolve twice by accident.

    I get most of my tamadra from tamadra infestation ( it comes up actually rather frequently) and then I actually do farm up the mats, but you are correct that it isn’t stamina efficient. I wind up spending all thus day trying to get dragon fruit and it doesn’t leave much stam to try out the special dungeons.

    Gold dragons are also a pain to farm if there are no chance gold dragon infests. Of course with this new +80 box space I can horde a lot more of them now 😉

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        1. I was confused. I thought they were referring to the video (where evolve was used correctly iir) and suggesting that instead of evolving baby tamadras into adult tamadras, that one would fuse baby tamadras with something, probably other baby tamadras (which I would assume results in a waste of baby tamadras).

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          1. My apologies for the poorly worded content =(

            I meant to say I fuse baby tamadras and pray for the awakenings instead of going through the hassle of evolving them for the guaranteed awakening =)

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    2. You are correct DigitalSocrates! I meant to write fuse XD

      I gave up trying to evolve them when Tamadras became more frequent along with coop as you were limited in farming them before whereas now we nearly have unlimited access

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  7. I was reading these comments about enhance orbs and green subs and thinking of building Ronove team without Kaede (Cuz you know, I don’t have a single one)…. I think that the Revo Pavrati is actually an ideal sub for Ronove.

    I managed to farm up 300K MP on Z8 so now on to farming for the 2nd Rag. Dragon.

    I figure I’ll get 2 Rag. Drag for my main so it can build an MAthena team as well as for my Ronove team. That way, it’ll complement my alt acct. Hopefully I’ll roll a Ronove on my alt tomorrow.

    Should I do it or should I wait? These MP rotations doesn’t go by that fast…. Help?~

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    1. I’d wait for pcgf to roll on your alt as you will get a lot more value compared to the spice of life

      Double rag drag is strong for you prescribed teams and as long as you have the resources and a good light sub for ronove it does work =)

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