Awoken Kushinadahime and Umisachi & Yamasachi Sample Gameplay in Arena 1

November 17, 2016 Mantastic 4 Comments

Introduction

Due to the high volume of new content being rapidly released in Puzzle and Dragons, I have not had a chance to do a full article for either Awoken Kushinadahime or Umisachi & Yamasachi . In an attempt to quench your thirst, here is my two clears of Arena 1 using them on the first day of their release to give you a better understanding of their respective play styles. Guides will come soon and the teams used are most likely non-optimal.

Arena 1 is a nice place to test and showcase new leaders as there are enough mechanics to present a modest challenge along with highlighting different scenarios and how to overcome them.

Awoken Kushinadahime

Awoken Kushinadahime is a purely skill based combo leader who is unable to gain benefits from skyfalls. In addition, her leader skill is directly tied to the number of combos she is able to form so she is not for the feint of heart. Maxes out at 169x for 10 combos.
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Umisachi & Yamasachi

The wonder twins were Fantastic’s main leader back in the day and I was thrilled when they finally got the buff they deserved. They are still a rainbow based leader, but has the potential to achieve 400x with 3 water combos alongside their three other elements. They are still a glass cannon, but are able to dish out spectacular damage with relatively few orbs.
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Conclusion

Both Kushinadahime and Umisachi & Yamasachi are fun to play leaders with unique twists on current leader skills. Neither are able to form top tier leaders, but provide a breath of fresh air amidst all the rows and heart cross leaders.

Happy Puzzling!

Game Meta

9.5.2 Update Thoughts and Review

November 17, 2016 Mantastic 14 Comments

Introduction

Version 9.5.2 was released today and brings numerous quality of life features along with additional quests, evolutions, 150/250 memorial pulls, and a Best Friend reset. This post will highlight the new changes as well as explaining how they work alongside their overall impact on Puzzle and Dragons.

Video commentary

New quests and badges

Version 9.5.2 introduces a new series of quests to complete along with more powerful badges. One major complaint about the first wave of quests was that they were too “easy” to obtain as many veteran players had already auto-completed them upon release. However, Maniac quests will challenge even the most seasoned players as the requirements are somewhat outrageous and will take a long time to complete.

The first two are relatively easy to complete as Special dungeons simply means you have to either played for a long time (to have seen all the niche limited time rotations) or able to clear every hard dungeon upon release. Total Monsters in Monster Book counts for both REM and farmable drops so simply go out and play more. You can also bolster your count by evolving cards as that will unlock additional progress.

On the other hand, you require 100 +297 monsters for the +35% RCV badge while total crowns is unobtainable at the moment (and not very feasible in general). Finally, the Total Awoken Skills refers to the number of awakenings you have unlocked. This means you require a huge number of Tamadras, but I also presume you can use farmable boss drops to unlock additional awakenings by feeding to themselves (eg. fusing a second form Tengu to another second form Tengu for a free awakenings unlock). Continue reading 9.5.2 Update Thoughts and Review →

New Player Help

Best Friend Guide

November 15, 2016 Mantastic 70 Comments

Introduction

This Best Friend Guide will help you find more friends, explain how the process works, helping you improve your friends list, along with what you can use Pal Points for. Building up a strong friend base will allow you to choose from a variety of powerful leaders, have constant access to your favourite monsters, and passively generate pal points to spend on the Pal Egg Machine (PEM).

Even with the introduction of coop, it is still advantageous to have best friends as you may play in solo mode and best friends provide more pal points when used in multiplayer.

Video commentary

Finding Friends

The first step to Pal Point domination is to find friends to populate your list. As you rank up, your friends list will max out at 50 players. You can add 5 additional friend slots for 1 magic stone, up to a maximum of 300 friends. In all honesty, the sooner you add space and expand your friend list, the more pal points you will be rolling in. You can view this as an opportunity cost as for each day you have more friends, the more pal points you will generate in future days. Because PAD is very much a patience game, the sooner you invest, the more you will be rewarded. Thankfully, making friends in PAD is quite easy and I have found the community to be incredibly warm and welcoming. We can find friends via:

Posting your ID on various forums, Reddit threads, and Facebook groups (@PG, @US, @HG)
Typing in a player’s ID under Friends -> ID search
Choosing Users from the helper selection list

Continue reading Best Friend Guide →

Random Thoughts

One Shot Challenge 4 Clear Videos: Gaia & Zeus

November 14, 2016 Mantastic 17 Comments

Introduction

As a follow up to my One Shot Challenge 4 Guide, here are my clear videos for Mantastic and hopefully Fantastic (pending recording). Mantastic has to fight Gaia Dragon while Fantastic gets Zeus.

Mantastic clear

Was a pretty much flawless run and the only real hiccup was when I used DQXQ and failed to produce enough heart orbs.

Mantastic team

I used the same core team as I do for farming Arena 3. The only change was adding an enhance component (as there was no inherit there before) to ensure a smoother Gaia Dragon kill. I paired myself with Fantastic to gain access to Wedding Akechi .

Mantastic’s Team
Card	Inherit	Latents	Comments
			Combos with Wedding Akechi
			Protects against skill delays
			Using for recover bind Burst for Gaia
			Combos with Wedding Akechi Using Venus for superior stats
			Stronger base

Fantastic’s clear

It makes me sad when the gameplay is slightly choppy as it does make my life a bit harder when matching. Still a Fantastic clear!

Fantastic team

His team is still up in the air, but I am fairly certain it will be nearly identical to my Arena 3 team:

Fantastic’s Team
Card	Inherit	Latents	Comments
			Combos with Saria
			May inherit something here
	–		It’s DQXQ
			Skill delay protection
			Venus has a much better body

Conclusion

Heart cross leaders are still the most powerful mechanic in the game and are well equipped to deal with all the mechanics presented in this One Shot Challenge.

Let me know who you used to clear this with and what strategies did you utilize.

Happy Puzzling!

Challenge Dungeons

One Shot Challenge 4 Guide and How to deal with Gaia, Zeus, or Noah Dragon

November 13, 2016 Mantastic 46 Comments

Important change

You will not face the same Radar Dragon as you did the first time through as these challenges rotate so everyone will eventually face all three.

Introduction

This set of One Shot Challenges will allow players to acquire a Radar Dragon outside of Arena 3. This is Fantastic for the general population as these dragons are required for the new evolutions for the original 5 Monster Point cards (Shiva, Neptune, Odin, Ra, and Yomi Dragon) as Arena 3 is out of reach for most teams. In addition, you have to encounter the correct dragon AND have it drop which can prove a frustrating experience. Conversely, this set of Challenges provides a fixed spawn and a guaranteed drop. However, you do not get to choose your encounter and are instead assigned one based on your starter dragon choice. This can be easily found as the coloured orb beside your in-game name. Finally, this challenge must be completed in solo mode, but you are able to stone to continue.

Just be aware that this is meant to be an end game challenge and many players will be unable to successfully clear it. With that being said, a wide variety of teams are capable of clearing this dungeon, but it is vital to be fully plussed, latented, and inherited where required.

If you wish to see my clears on Fantastic and Mantastic for Gaia and Zeus Dragon, check out my next post HERE to see the full team set up/latents/inherits.

For this set, I will be using Krishna on both accounts and will upload the videos when completed.

Video commentary

Which Radar Dragon do I fight?

Players are assigned a specific Radar Dragon to fight on floor 20 based on their starter dragon choice. This choice is indicated by the coloured icon beside your in-game name.

Fire fights Noah Dragon
Water fights Gaia Dragon
Wood fights Zeus Dragon

For example, Mantastic started with fire and will fight Noah (Fantastic has Gaia):

Hurdles of solo mode and no duplicates

This Challenge must be completed in solo mode along with imposing Continue reading One Shot Challenge 4 Guide and How to deal with Gaia, Zeus, or Noah Dragon →

Challenge Dungeons, Videos

Khepri Descended Snowglobe Challenge with Awoken Persephone

November 12, 2016 Mantastic 32 Comments

Introduction

Khepri Descended is the newest dungeon to be released in Puzzle and Dragons and comes with the wonderful Snowglobe challenge component. In order to successfully clear the challenge, you will have to beat the dungeon in solo mode with no continues and have the Snowglobe as a sub on any difficulty. This can be a daunting task as you are essentially losing a sub slot. Thankfully, you are able to inherit a skill onto your Snowglobe as there are quite a few new mechanics you will need to overcome.

There will not be any indication you successfully cleared the challenge component and I do not know when you will have the additional Snowglobes distributed. It will probably happen a week or so after the challenge finishes.

Video clear

Dungeon overview

Khepri Descended imposes the unique restriction of 4 seconds to move orbs. This means all of your time extend awakenings, leader skills that add time, and time extension badge are all worthless. As such, players will have to be able to carefully plan their moves and be prepared for less combos as you are not able to casually match orbs. Continue reading Khepri Descended Snowglobe Challenge with Awoken Persephone →

Godfest

10-Stone GFE Machine: Thoughts and Stats

November 10, 2016 Mantastic 63 Comments

Introduction

As part of the 4 year Puzzle and Dragons Anniversary event, GungHo is giving their North American and European servers the magical 10-stone Godfest Exclusive Rare Egg Machine. This machine was released to great fanfare in Japan some time ago as it guarantees a GFE on every single roll for double the magic stones. This means you will be acquiring 15,000 Monster Points from the troll Light Metatrons instead of 3,000 from sad Silvers. Naturally, this presents the question: to roll or not to roll?

Video commentary

A sample video of an IAP-Friendly JP player:

Rare Egg Machine background

The Rare Egg Machine (REM) is one of the more frustrating and exhilarating aspects of Puzzle and Dragons as it is essentially a form of gambling. To use the REM, you have to pay 5 Magic Stones and then you will be allowed to shake the golden dragon’s hand. After doing a little foreplay of either tummy rubbing or head patting, you will be awarded a special monster that can range in value/rarity from pointless to awe-inspiring. Sadly, what you get is completely random with the stronger rolls being far more elusive than the mundane.

How the 10-stone GFE REM varies

By comparison, the 10-stone GFE REM has double the price tag, but will never produce a silver or pantheon gold egg and will instead only awarded with a Godfest Exclusive monster. Godfest Exclusive monsters are only available during Godfests and are harder to acquire than the regular REM cards. Continue reading 10-Stone GFE Machine: Thoughts and Stats →

Team Building Guides

Help! I do not have 2 Dark Kali for Ra Dragon

November 9, 2016 Mantastic 60 Comments

Introduction

Super Ultimate Ra Dragon has been released in JP and will be released in North America shortly. The delay in release can be advantageous as we have adequate time to prepare for his challenging evolution along with deciding how to team build the spiciest of all the fried chicken. I go into detail examining Ra Dragon as a whole in my previous post and I encourage you to read it in conjunction with this article HERE.

As the title implies, this post will be dedicated into discussing how Ra Dragon functions if you do not own two Dark Kalis (or any of her seasonal variations) as well as helping you decide if it is worthwhile to spend 300,000 MP to purchase him.

Video commentary

—video goes here—-

How Ra Dragon works

Ra Dragon is a rainbow leader who utilizes all 6 elements to deal up to 144x ATK. Furthermore, God type cards benefit from 2.25x HP / RCV and it is this added bulk that makes him powerful and relevant in an era of heart crosses. If you choose to use a non-God card, that monster will only be benefiting from a lackluster 64x ATK.

Leader Skill:
2x ATK when matching 4 elements. 3x ATK for each additional orb type. 8x with all 6 elements. 1.5x HP/ATK/RCV for God types
2.25x HP / 144x ATK / 2.25x RCV

Ra Dragon Scaling Leader Skill
# Elements	4	5	6
Multiplier	9x	56.25x	144x

As such, you should do your best to use God type cards, even if they have irrelevant actives as you can correct them with Skill Inheritance. Continue reading Help! I do not have 2 Dark Kali for Ra Dragon →

Monster Analysis, New Evolutions

Ultimate Ra Dragon: Review and Analysis

November 7, 2016 Mantastic 46 Comments

Introduction

The original 5 Monster Point Dragons were some of the most powerful cards in Puzzle and Dragons at the time of their release. However, Powercreep has not been kind to the majority of them with only Ra Dragon staying relevant in today’s meta as a leader. Thankfully, GungHo has decided to release a new evolutions for all 5 of themi n hopes of resurrecting their viability. Unfortunately for North America, the evolution requirements for these MP Dragons will prove troublesome as the only way to currently acquire the Radar Dragons is to clear Arena 3 or the One Shot Challenges.

If you are considering the possibility of purchasing Ra Dragon or any other MP card, I strongly encourage you to refer to my MP Card Tier List for further explanation and analysis.

Video commentary

Evolution requirements

We still do not have the full details of any other card outside of Ra Dragon, but here are the current evolution requirements:

Perhaps one of the main benefits of playing in North America is that we are given additional time to prepare for new evolutions as both of these require a large investment of resources.

Ultimate Evolution Ra Dragon

The Super-Ultimate Fried Chicken has now been electrified to even greater heights with his new evolution. Super Ra Dragon has had his leader skill and base stats buffed to allow him to better compete with the heart cross meta.

Ra Dragon

God / Dragon
5,605 HP / 1,880 ATK / 340 RCV
1,050 Total

Active Skill:
+5s to orb movement for 1 turn
2 turns haste
13 turn CD

Leader Skill:
2x ATK when matching 4 elements. 3x ATK for each additional orb type. 8x with all 6 elements. 1.5x HP/ATK/RCV for God types
2.25x HP / 144x ATK / 2.25x RCV

Pros	Cons
2.25x HP / 144x ATK / 2.25x RCV Very safe and consistent Ample room for utility Can build full bind immune team Can overcome combo shields Less ugly than before	Restrictive team building Slow to play Lackluster base active No sub potential Reliant on Gemstones Still ugly

Ra Dragon Scaling Leader Skill
# Elements	4	5	6
Multiplier	9x	56.25x	144x

Continue reading Ultimate Ra Dragon: Review and Analysis →

New Player Help

Heart Cross Matching Guide

November 3, 2016 Mantastic 14 Comments

Introduction

I have been playing Myr since her release and is my go-to leader for end game content provided I do not need to hit outrageous damage on a regular basis. As such, I have a strong understanding of how to form heart crosses along with the strategies used to successfully clear various dungeons. Thus, I wish to take this opportunity to share my thought process when trying to form heart crosses while matching offensive orbs in conjunction. As with any combo/matching guide, everyone’s approach may vary and while my methods are successful for me, they may not be always work for you. In addition, all of my heart cross experience comes from Myr as the only other leader I own is Anaphon who has no sub support.

I highly encourage you to check out my Cascading Combo Guide as I will be referencing strategies outlined there. I also regularly broadcast my Arena 3 clears on my Twitch Channel and it is a great way to see my gameplay and thought process live.

Video commentary

A written guide is great, but it may also help to see the video guide that goes alongside this article as you can see the heart crosses matched in real time.
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What is a heart cross?

The heart cross mechanic is currently the strongest ability in Puzzle and Dragons as it combines a survivability and offensive component when matching exactly 5 heart orbs in a cross formation. This allows you to survive gravity/percent based attacks along with having the ability to deal spectacular damage. This has proven to be amazingly powerful as you combine the ability to stall along with burst potential provided you have at least 5 heart orbs present on the board.

Acceptable heart crosses

The following images will show you the acceptable patterns for forming a heart cross. You can only match exactly 5 heart orbs to trigger your leader skill and will have a shielding animation pop up on screen if done successfully.