I have been receiving many questions over the past few months about what is the best way to power-level or grind up rank experience. Truth be told, the best avenues are utilizing Ganesha paired with either another Ganesha or a stronger multiplier leader and mowing through content. However, the most common place this occurs is Monday Dungeon and this is actually a terrible waste overall. For myself, I have never played dungeons with the sole purpose of Rank Experience outside of the stone acquisition or acquiring the last few points of experience for a rank up.
Each subsequent rank up increases the experience required for the next level and by rushing through, you are losing out on numerous opportunities to develop and actually progress within Puzzle and Dragons.
This article will focus on why purely farming rank experience is a poor investment of your stamina along with the justifications to this stance. While there are some exceptions, it is largely a poor avenue of stamina spending for the average player.
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What is rank farming
Rank farming is essentially what it sounds like: repeatedly playing a dungeon that has an exceptionally high rank experience to stamina ratio. Often times, these dungeons are meant to be fast and easy to play and can help players rank up at an unprecedented rate.
Unfortunately, there are actually many drawbacks to ranking up this fast as you often waste stamina, lose out on actual puzzling skills, losing out on the opportunity to develop your monster box, hitting a wall faster, and the inability to chain rank ups from valuable dungeons. Continue reading Why not to Purely Farm/Grind Rank Experience→
Like you favourite monsters, dungeons are evolving in complexity and difficulty. Forgone are the days of simply having to survive a single 8,000 damage hit and instead it almost feels like you have to have an advanced degree in Puzzle and Dragons to decipher or interpret the dungeon at hand. Thankfully, we have access to two great resources and this post will focus not only on how to understand and comprehend the information presented, but how to also theory craft counters to each mechanic.
I plan to do a subsequent post that will teach you how to intelligently build a team that will use topics discussed in this article so stay tuned.
This article will focus on how to overcome various hurdles presented in a dungeon along with a specific example of the current One Shot Challenge and subsequent video clear with Yomi Dragon .
The Evangelion Collab is one of the oldest Collabs in Puzzle and Dragons. This is generally a bad thing as older cards are poorly positioned against Powercreep and to keep the Collab interesting, GungHo has released several new cards. Unfortunately, most are disappointing reskins of existing REM monsters with noticeable downgrades.
To make matter worse, the Collab has low value outside of the 6-star category and has little to offer for the average player.
All players above rank 50 will receive 1 free pull on the Evaangelion Collab Rare Egg Machine.
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Rolls overview
Evangelion Collab Egg Machine Overview
6 star rolls
5 star rolls
4 star rolls
Evangelion Collab Egg Machine Overview
6 star rolls
Myr Regalia, Rei
Attacker / Dragon / Machine
4,210 HP / 1,775 ATK / 523 RCV
950 Total
Active Skill:
7
+7 seconds orb movement time for 1 turn
10 turn cooldown
Leader Skill: 3x ATK when matching 4 colours, 6x with 5 colours. 3x ATK & 50% damage reduction with a heart cross 324x ATK / 75% damage reduction
Pros
Cons
Bind immune
950 weighted stats
Leader skill is amazing on paper
TPA-based team
Not loli
Poor sub value
Leader skill is impractical
no viable board changer
Low value active
Cannot use orb changers except single orb
Lower consistency than Myr
Needs rainbow activation and heart cross
No sub element
Impressions
Rei Myr looks gamebreaking on paper if you only look at her multiplier without taking into consideration the activation requirements. However, upon closer inspection, she is far from easy to utilize and is impractical in end game content. Continue reading Evangelion Collab Rare Egg Machine Review and Analysis→
The “hot” topic of the month is Monster Point cards and which one to buy. I created a helpful reference guide and tier list (which can be found HERE and generally speaking, you can simply go down the tier list until you find a card that best fits your box); however, I felt that showcasing what I am doing along with my rationale behind my decision may be beneficial for people to see.
I want to stress that my decisions are the best for myself and my own situation and may not apply to everyone. What you should try and take away from here is the thought process behind the decisions and try to see if you undergo a similar method for coming to your own conclusions.
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My purchase history
When Yomi Dragon was first released, she caused quite a stir as she was one of the most universally accessible and powerful leaders at the time along with providing wonderful utility as a sub. As such, I decided to make the investment as I had a modestly diverse dark box and the potential to clear more content with her. You could read more about my initial purchase from a year ago HERE. Continue reading My Monster Point Situation and what I am Doing→
With the announcement of free 390,000 Monster Points being given out to all players over the course of March along with the highly anticipated evolutions for the original 5 MP Dragons, many players are excited to take the next step in their Puzzling adventure. However, these evolutions are challenging to perform and very few players are actually able to clear Arena 3 and acquire the Radar Dragon they need. Thankfully, we will now gain the ability to “easily” acquire any Radar Dragon of our choosing through a special hourly dungeon.
While this is great for the most part, these dungeons are actually very challenging and feature their respective Radar Dragon in a buffed form compared to their Arena 3 counterpart. However, the dungeon is quite short in nature and there are many different strategies for efficiently dealing with each encounter along with the option to simply stone to continue if you badly need the drop.
I plan to clear and record all of the dungeons and will upload the team/video to this post as they are released.
If you want to read more about which MP card to purchase, please refer to my guide HERE.
Player 2: 1 combo
Player 1: PASS Player 2: Raphael swipe Player 1: 1 combo Player 2: Sun Quan , Hermes or Blue Sonia Player 1: 0 combo, do not kill Player 2: Kill via ping as Apollo is at 1 HP
Floor 3
Player 1: Mori , Sarasvati & try to push below 50% Player 2: Push below 50% if triggered resolve. Use any actives Player 1: Blue Sonia , Sarasvati Kill
Karin has God and Dragon Killer which enables her to deal incredible burst damage against all 3 floors and 9x to Heph.
You should plan out who will be receiving the 15 turn skill delay and try your best to use actives from that side wherever possible. In my case, Player 2 is delayed.
On the final floor, you can trigger the resolve as it will heal him to 50% HP and 1 health. You simply need to ping with any source of damage to remove the resolve.
Sarasvati could easily be replaced by any high damage glass cannon leader. You should prioritize heavy orb changers as it is simply a burst and kill scenario.
If unable to inherit Raphael , can simply use him as a sub or use a large shielding sub to survive. Do your best to return to full health every turn.
Killer awakenings are very powerful here as there is no absorption mechanic and the resolves are not too hazardous. You can hit Heph into resolve and then have him resurrect without taking any damage.
Noah Dragon
NOAH DRAGON HAS 52 MILLION AND PADX HAD IT DISPLAYING A VERY INCORRECT AMOUNT. SHOULD BE FIXED SOON
Do not bring a dark team. Also, find a team that has very high damage output. Pretty much the only hard requirements. You can simply stall the 99 turns, but that is quite a grueling experience and if you want to kill faster, you need to have appropriate damage control. Do not use Killer awakenings.
Noah Dragon VOIDS all damage above 5 million. Void means it will deal 0 damage when dealing more than 5 million damage and means cards like Fujin have no effect.
Player 1: 1 combo Player 2: Raphael -> Dios Swipe Player 1: PASS Player 2: Ping for 1 damage
Floor 2
Player 1: Green Odin -> Dios Swipe
Floor 3
Player 2: Famiel -> Sakuya -> Hades -> PASS Player 1: Sakuya -> Yomi -> Dios Swipe
Assuming the team is at least +99 attack, you will always kill Zeus Dragon even with 1 combo:
This comes out to around 50-51 million damage and you only need 48 million to kill Zeus after the Gravities. Tengu will have a tiny bit more attack when I inherit Green Odin.
I had to make an adjustment to my team as people have pointed out that 20 million damage from the Sakuya Gravity would be voided (I thought 20 million was safe) so I am using Famiel to tickle for 100,000 damage then proceeding as normal. You must use Gravities in the order that is listed.
For some reason my Hera-Beorc is missing from my box so I am doing this strategy instead of using her 10% gravity.
Player 2: Hera-Is , Zeus/Hera , Hades , Meri 7 combo, kill
Floor 3
Player 1: Indra when going to be hit. Genie after
Make a row + 2-5 combos based on your own damage output
Player 2 can have dark cards as the binds only hit the Player 1. I have 3 SDR on most of my Player 1 cards and the 2 turn haste from Mori help brings those cards back up.
You cannot use a 50% damage reduction shield as this Hera Dragon hits significantly harder than the Arena 3 version. On Hera Dragon, you must never match more than 6 connected water orbs in a row formation. You can go for 7+, but it has to be in a blob. The amount of combos you make is dependent on the number of your Orb Enhances and Row awakenings your team has.
The three Gravities push Ceres below her 30% resolve right away and any combination you can configure that achieves the same result is fine.
A very popular strategy is to use Reincarnated Hades and his massive dark damage reduction to cheese your way through. Just make sure you bring a 10 turn bind clear for the first floor.
Conclusion
I will continue to update and populate the team rosters as I do more research and actually play the dungeons along with uploading the videos right away.
When making the decision to roll or save your magic stones, you need to determine if the featured pantheons can benefit or compliment your teams. Chasing for one specific monster is unwise as you will most likely be disappointed and should ideally have Godfests that overlap with many target cards. Remember all monsters that come out of the REM will qualify for Skill Inheritance so do not be too hasty when selling dupes. For a more detailed team building help, please refer to my full list Popular Leader’s and their Full Sub List Post. Lastly, to find more information about a specific pantheon or monster, refer to my Master List to better refine your search. If you are considering to purchase any of the Monster Point cards, please refer to my updated Tier List for help and advice.
Introduction
To mark the special 60 million worldwide downloads, GungHo has blessed us with a rather exciting Godfest that not only features desirable pantheons, but also 5x GFE and +20 to all stats (60 pluses in total). This is probably one of the best Godfests in recent memory and will be very tempting to roll for the majority of players. However, many people are speculating the release of Fujin and Raijin who both posses gamebreaking new active skills. Unfortunately, both of these cards are 6* GFE so the chances of you rolling them will remain low. Furthermore, GungHo has a tendency to release new cards alongside poor Godfests and it may be a long time before we are fortunate enough to this desirable of a roster again.
With this post, I am going to once again tinker with my formatting in order to streamline the information delivered as my previous tier lists/checkmark reference tables proved successful. As such, I will rank all the cards featured with an explanation/justification for each placement. This will yield a faster posting for me and more condensed information as people tend to enjoy a quick reference table.
Gala of Tides
—- — — —
Day 1
Japanese 1
Indian 1
GFE
— — — —
Day 2
Three Kingdoms
Indian 2
GFE
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Ranking the cards – Pantheons & GFE
As part of my new format for Godfest posts, I will try my best to tier the featured pantheon cards along with GFE and then combine the two to showcase how strong of a day it is to roll. These opinions are my own and take into consideration the card’s value as a leader, sub, inherit, and possibly any niche role they fulfill. In order to rank in the highest tier, the card has to excel in their respective role and cannot feasibly be replaced by anyone else. This can also be thought of as a Best in Slot card and tends to have applications on the top tier teams.
After months of deliberation, I have finally decided to implement and launch my Patreon page. Paetron is a medium akin to GoFundMe, but for content creators such as artists, musicians, and pretty much anything you can imagine. However, Patreon differs in that your support is pledged on a monthly basis and has a meaningful impact moving forward as I will continue to have sizable medical expenses for the foreseeable future.
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Why I created a Patreon page
I created my Patreon page to provide my readers with another medium to support me as content creation is a time consuming process. What may take you minutes to read usually takes hours to produce as there is great deal of effort involved with researching, formatting, commenting and writing each article
When I first started Mantastic PAD, my goal was to help other players as this is the game I am most passionate about. I am well aware that Puzzle and Dragons is a relatively small game in North America and Europe and it is somewhat unreasonable to make a living from content creation when compared to larger games like Hearthstone. However, PAD is my favourite game and it is still my goal to help as many people as possible.
My real life situation is less than Mantastic as I have been battling severe health issues since July 2014 along with a strong likelyhood of a cancerous lump in my eye that has involved a failed surgery. I better explain my situation in a previous website posting (Feb 2017 & Sept 2016) should you wish to read more about it. In essence, I spend the majority of my time and money with various doctors and specialists that leaves very little time or resources for normal activities. Unfortunately, I see doctors on average 4-5 times a week and many of the treatments take days-weeks to recover from and has left me unable to work.
My most recent Lidocaine procedure (Feb 21, 2017) has provided a noticeable reduction of base-level pain, but I am far from out of the woods as I will probably require “booster” infusions at a reduced cost ($500-550) at unspecified intervals (most likely monthly?). While this may not feel like a massive sum of money to some individuals, it is massive for me as I already have other doctors/healthcare practitioner expenses that already overstretches my disability benefit.
How you can make a difference
Even something as small as $5/month can make a world of a difference if even 1% of my readership base participates. $5/month translates into about 17 cents a day or can be viewed as about 35-50 cents per article as I usually produce something new every 2-3 days (you could also view $5 as a failed silver egg from the REM!). Regardless of Paetron participation, I will still continue to produce high quality content that will help you advance through your Puzzle and Dragons journey.
I am well aware that this is not something that everyone can do, but what everyone can do to help is simply disable/whitelist AdBlocker for my various platforms. This will have a dramatic impact overall as my website alone is visited around 10,000 times a day for the past several months.
The finer details for Patrons
Reward tiers
In order to further show my gratification to all my Patrons, I have created a fun-rewards tier that will grant you various benefits. These benefits will reset on a monthly basis (where applicable) and some will require coordination on both ends to fulfill.
For those Patrons at or above $5/month will gain special perks in my Discord server and you have to go into User Settings to sync your Patron account to your Discord account. This cannot be completed by anyone else, but feel free to ask for help if needed.
You cannot sync your two accounts until after the first of the month as that is when Patron officially recognizes you.
Coordination can be completed via Discord or my Facebook messaging system.
When will I be charged?
You will be charged on the first of the month and that will also trigger all the reward tiers. If you pledge support part way through a month, you will have to wait until the next month for your rewards.
Conclusion
I do appreciate you taking the time to read and visit my Paetron page and I hope to continue to be a valuable resource moving forward. Support is by no means mandatory and I simply wanted to provide a medium for individuals who want to go the extra mile.
As a follow up to my debut Question Time Post, here are the promised answers. I feel that this style of posting is beneficial and will try to do this on a monthly basis moving forward. Some questions may have been lumped together if there was a certain degree of overlap.
I enjoy the diverse questions and also helps provide me with inspiration for future posts as some topics are more popular/requiring more research to better answer.
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Questions and answers
Here is a simple question for farming. If you do not own a button team, what other cards could you use to speed farm a dungeon? (R.E.M. Cards included)
-Anubis32
For the most part, almost every player can utilize an Awoken Liu Bei alternative (Green Odin , Perseus , and Australis ) with numerous Zeus Dios as subs to button through most content in the game. However, barring those REM leads, you can still use Dios as a leader as he does offer 49x ATK when below full HP. One of my mods created this Dios Guide and I strongly encourage you to check it out. You can also go onto my Discord server and PM Rawrzcookie for more clarification.
Super Ultimate Colosseum is the hardest dungeon to date as it features an incredible array of dangerous spawns who have buffed up stats and abilities. There are many hurdles that plague this dungeon including massive HP pools, numerous resolves, combo shields, lethal mechanics, and repeated dangerous spawns. it is not for the feint of heart and only the most invested team and skilled players have a chance of conquering the Colosseum.
While Arena 3 has randomized spawns, the encounters in Colosseum are much harder by comparison and have dramatically larger health pools (there is some variance in appearances, but not as much). This presents a wonderful challenge and has injected a new sense of excitement into my Puzzle and Dragons life.
0-Stone Meridionalis clear
As this was my first time clear, I played quite cautious along with having several hundred people tuning into my Twitch stream. Playing under a large audience can be intimidating as your every move is critiqued and my conservative playstyle probably reflects that. As I play and clear Colosseum more, I will most likely improve my clear times and refine my set up. I will probably make an effort to stream everyday that Colosseum is available as it is the most exciting dungeon to play.
Thank you to everyone for your support during this challenging time. I am still combating a modest amount of the normal side effects so it may take some time for appropriate responses or new content to be released. Normal side effects include nausea, fatigue/drowsiness, and disorientation with it being most severe for the first 24 hours.
Overall the procedure went well and I was able to tolerate the entire procedure without any complications. I am currently experiencing a noticeable improvement in baseline pain levels, but I have been very cautious this past 48 hours and did have one unusual flare up. I am still by no means cured and have a very long road ahead, but hopefully it will be shorter and less painful moving forward.
I will most likely need repeat infusions for Lidocaine (how frequently remains to be unseen), but these would at least be available for only $500-550 per treatment as I would be taking it home with me and having it slowly released into my bloodstream over the course of about 4 days.
Once again, thank you to everyone for your continued support. You have made this whole week bearable through your encouragement, prayers, and well wishes. I also want to thank everyone who contributed financially for funding my procedure. Within a week’s time, you were able to pay for the procedure in full and this makes a world of a difference moving forward as I still have many hurdles to overcome and my eye cancer follow up next week as well.
It is often easier to update my social media platforms as they are better suited towards quicker posts so feel free to follow along:
paired with either another Ganesha or a stronger multiplier leader and mowing through content. However, the most common place this occurs is Monday Dungeon and this is actually a terrible waste overall. For myself, I have never played dungeons with the sole purpose of Rank Experience outside of the stone acquisition or acquiring the last few points of experience for a rank up.
swipe
, Hades 
Patreon
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