Introduction

I hit rank 600 around July 22nd and it only took me around five and half months to acquire about 121 million more rank experience to unlock my thirteenth team slot. Rank 700 is around 286.5 million lifetime experience and even with the enhanced mediums to rank up, it still take a very long time. In fact, it took me just under 1,200 days to achieve. 

I have never been a player who solely pursed rank as it does not achieve much outside of some personal satisfaction. In fact, the bulk of my rank experience has come from Arena 3 as I was around rank 612 when I achieved my first clear. This has led to an excessive amount of Pys (and a lower dependency on playing Tan Infestation); however, it has left my Maniac Quest log relatively incomplete as I lack the required pluses or Tamadras for additional badges.

This post will take your through a tour of my beloved Monster Box, highlights of notable moments, and my thoughts and goals moving forward.

Rank 700 Box tour

—box tour goes here—

How much playing is rank 700?

Rank experience has less prestige than it used to due to Ganesha, Monday Dungeon, and now the experience boost to Arena. However, it is still a massive amount of play time and here are a few ways to visualize my lifetime experience. Rank 700 is about 286.5 million experience which is equivalent to either:

• 4,659 Monday Dungeons
• 2,070 Dual Ganesha Monday Dungeons
• 2,367 Special Descend Rushes
• 1,701 Super Ultimate Dragon Rushes
• 191,000 Tower of Giants – Dragons of the Tower

Notable moments

My Puzzle and Dragons life from rank 600-700 has been exciting as it gave me my first taste of Arena 3 along with a few new cards in my Monster Box. Granted my REM luck is usually on the lower end of the normal distribution curve, I still have some functioning teams for our current content.

Arena 3

My first Arena 3 clear was done with a less than ideal Myr team as I was running two heart breakers along with being unsure as to the ideal set up along with how to actually solve heart cross boards. Despite all that, the sheer potency of her leader skill and gentle team building requirements have enabled me to repeatedly farm Arena 3.
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As time went on, I began to diversify the leaders I use to clear Arena 3 to add another dimension of excitement as well as a way to utilize different playstyles. If you wish to read about the teams I have used in greater detail, please feel free to take a look at my previous post HERE.

One of the main reasons to play Arena 3 is for the Radar Dragons and there are a total of 5 to collect. To make your journey even more frustrating, the drop rate is around 30%, but I feel that the rates only improved after around 30-40 clears as I kept leaving empty handed. However, the largest hurdle to overcome was completing the collection as Hephaestus Dragon  would continue to elude me and it took over a 100 clears for him to finally land in my box on Christmas Day. He was my 31st Radar Dragon drop so you can only imagine the sheer amount of frustration I had in the pursuit of my collection.

New cards

For anyone who watches my Godfest rolls, you should be quite familiar with my amazing lack of luck as I tend to pull silvers and troll golds while having a distressingly low amount of GFE. As such, the only new cards I actually acquired in the past 100 ranks that have helped me are Krishna , Liu Bei , Ra , and Paimon .

Krishna gave me access to a new leader that has not actually helped me clear new content, but gave another viable end game team to play with should Myr become stale. Liu Bei was rolled from the most recent 5x GFE Godfest (in which I couldn’t roll any) and has allowed me to gloriously farm challenging content at the push of a button. Ra has given Mantastic access to an inheritable solution to PreDRAs/high defense encounters along with an easier team to farm Machine Zeus. Finally, Paimon was significant as he acts as a stronger sub than Apollo  for Myr. However, Paimon is not perfect nor ideal, but at least he does not remove heart orbs, but he does present problems with Parvati in Arena.

These are all the 6* GFE I own and it is mostly duplicates of cards that have fallen out of the meta as the lack of Kaede , Dark Kali , and Kanna  prevent me from playing any of the other exciting and powerful leaders.

Cleared all content

For the most part, I have always been able to at least clear all the current content within a reasonable time period of a new dungeon’s release. However, achieving a one time clear is not always sufficient and the real challenge becomes finding the most efficient way to repeatedly conquer a dungeon. Unfortunately, I do not have much else that requires repeated clears as we are in a bit of a slump in terms of end game content for the top tier of players.

Future PAD goals

As Puzzle and Dragons is a game without a true “end” or means to complete when compared to conventional games, I find the need to assign goals to keep myself moving forward and interested. My goal for the past several months was to complete my Radar Dragon collection, but with that finally accomplished, I have to turn my focus elsewhere.

Presently speaking, Puzzle and Dragons is a bit stale for players at the top. We have actually not had any major releases in the past several months and repeatedly farming Arena 3 is only so interesting prior to the new Latent Tamadra invades. This is not healthy for the elite as it is my understanding that these players tend to invest the most into the game from a time and momentary point of view. As such, many have turned to grinding out ranks via Ganesha or simply stocking up on Skill Delay Resist Tamadras  while waiting for new content.

In terms of new content on the horizon, we will be having the new Latents invading in Arena 3 along with the Coliseum dungeon. The Coliseum will effectively be a much harder Arena 3 as it features new and dangerous spawns that require exotic and invested teams to succeed. Furthermore, with the advent of numerous high combo shield bosses, it may become problematic for heart cross leaders to succeed. The anticipation of Coliseum being released is my main driving factor and I should have my tentative teams ready for it’s release.

While I (im)patiently wait, I have mostly been loading up on Skill Delay Resist Tamadras in case I pull new cards. This process has been greatly accelerated by gaining Awoken Liu Bei (was using Sarasvati  beforehand) and within a couple of days, I already recuperated my SDR Tamadra investment into the team. In addition, I am also skilling up my Machine Zeus  due to my newly acquired Ra (can read about my set up HERE) as the team has more consistency than Sarasvati. In between this, I tend to use Arena to rank up more quickly to continue playing.

The need to roll better cards

Giving all players access to Myr  was one of the best things to happen in my PAD life. Myr’s team building is amazingly flexible as she tends to utilize older pantheon cards as opposed to countless 6* GFE. Presently, all of the strongest teams are either heavily focused on 6* GFE or rare Collab pulls. This is saddening as it is pushing many people away from being able to tackle end game content or simply narrowing the scope of leaders used.

Unfortunately, my life situation does not allow me to IAP as all my funding goes to medical expenses and any additional stones I do gain are from donations or gifts. While the external help is amazing, it sadly cannot correct my poor rolling luck.

We have all seen from the most recent Player’s Choice Godfest that there is an overwhelming need to acquire 6* GFE as essentially any end game oriented team requires them and there are few/no feasible replacements.

I personally feel that this is an unhealthy direction to take as it will exclude the majority from enjoying all the game has to offer. I am not saying 6* GFE should not be the best cards available, but we need a slight modification to the viability of pantheon rolls, 5* GFEs, farmable monsters, and MP cards. The Powercreep used to be restricted to MP Cards and this was problematic at first as MP was scarce; however, with newer mediums to acquire Monster Points it is more feasible for a player to farm up and save.

The gap between 6* GFE and all other cards needs to narrow as it can be irritating to be unable to utilize the vast majority of end game teams.

Another saddening component to poor rolling luck is lower motivation to write about all the new and exciting cards I will probably not obtain along with lacking the intimacy for those particular teams as all my knowledge is gained via research and not playing.

Conclusion

Puzzle and Dragons is still my favourite game despite having played for nearly 1,200 days. There may be a lack of new content or exciting rolls in the past few months, but I am looking forward to what will be released in the coming months. I had wanted to discuss the various changes I hope to see for Puzzle and Dragons for 2017, but will do so in a future post to keep my thoughts more organized.

Happy Puzzling!