In the near future, North America will begin to receive the first wave of Reincarnated evolutions. This is a new type of evolution that provides a new layer of power and I wish to explain the process along with the pros and cons in this article. The thoughts explained below apply to the REM monsters who require an awoken evolution. Moving forward, you may begin to see monsters with the prefix R or Re and that simply designates their reincarnated form.
As a forewarning, you are unable to reverse this process so you must exercise caution before committing to a reincarnated evolution.
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What is a reincarnated evolution?
A reincarnated evolution is a new type of evolution that upgrades an existing awoken evolution. This will increase their rarity (number of stars), grant them a third typing, and retain their original active. In addition, the required materials are easy to obtain, but unlike an ultimate evolution, reincarnation can only occur if your monster is max level.
Forewarning
In the above image, a level 99 Awoken Minerva can be reincarnated with those five masks. She will be unable to revert back to her awoken form and her level will be reset back to 1. This is usually not a problem with the abundant snowglobes or king infestations floating around; however, reincarnated forms require 16 million experience to max level (as opposed to their normal 4 million curve). Continue reading Reincarnated Evolution 101→
I normally do not provide much thoughts on future JP news as it does not apply to NA for usually 1-2 months. However, the most recent JP stream showcased numerous new evolutions, quality of life changes, and new game mechanics. I wish to take the time to review all of the new things coming to Puzzle and Dragons.
The Final Fantasy buffs will be covered in a separate post and the review will be updated accordingly. I will be reviewing Bleach whenever it is scheduled to come to NA.
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Skill Inheritance changes
Puzzle and Dragons is by nature a grind-oriented game. However, there is fun grinding and there is tedious grinding. GungHo is doing their best to cut down on the more boring aspects so you can focus your stamina playing fun content.
Skill Inheritance has been a well received mechanic and it has given viability for cards that had lackluster bodies and powerful actives. Unfortunately, the process is somewhat costly to perform as each transfer costs 2 million coins and requires 4 tans. The coins were usually not too much of an issue, but collecting the right colour tans is mostly a stamina sink/loss as the dungeon is not fun to play and is more of a chore than pleasure. Continue reading JP Stream Changes & New Evolutions Review→
Skill Delay Resist Tamadras (SDR) are now invading Special Descend Rush (SDR), from the coin dungeons, which makes for confusing abbreviations and a wonderful opportunity to acquire the strongest Latent Tamadra. Special Descend Rush features 6 Rogue Descend Bosses along with the leveling up mechanic to further hinder your progress. However, SDR has very predictable mechanics and is able to be cleared with a Glass Cannon team as there are no lethal preemptives. Many players are using Awoken Liu Bei to mindlessly farm, but not everyone is fortunate enough to have him nor the fully invested Dioses and niche inherits.
As such, I wish to illustrate how Sarasvati or any other glass cannon leader can quickly clear this dungeon provided you have already invested in that team.
Video clear
My older clear from when Sarasvati was first released and required 12 orbs for 100x
Teams used
I have used Sarasvati since her release when she was a more orb hungry leader that required 12 water orbs for 100x. This would cause additional pressure to use orb changers and slows down the overall process. Thankfully, in her current form, Sarasvati is able to achieve 100x without a connected 6 water. Team A starts the dungeon and does not bring a dark sub to avoid the preemptive bind.
Team A
Team B
There can be many variations to these teams and you mostly have to counter a few mechanics:
Floor 3 requires a Delay or Poison to kill Volsung
Floor 4 requires a Delay or Awakenings Bind clear (aka Green Odin )
Floor 6 requires either a bind clear or a buff to be dispelled
6 kill actives for all the floors
Using a delay instead of a Poison or Awakenings Bind clear allows for some stalling/setting up your board. This conserves actives along with letting your floor 1 and 2 abilities to possibly recharge in time.
Other than this, it is a pretty straight forward dungeon: kill before being killed. You have 6 floors and a total of 10 actives so you will have at least 1 to spare at the end. Keep this in mind when team building and remember to take advantage of Skill Inheritance.
Sarasvati strategy
Based on the skyfall luck and locked orb spawns, you may have to adjust on the fly; however, this is the general strategy used:
Floor 1 Awoken Hermes , kill (A)
Floor 2 B/L Hermes if required, only need 9 water orbs (B)
Floor 3 is done in 3 steps:
Awoken Sun Quan , Sarasvati , set up board (A)
Use 9+ water orbs, kill and trigger resolve (B)
Finish off Volusung as he is at 1 HP, Conserve heal orbs (A)
Floor 4 abuses Orochi’s delay to wait out the awakenings bind
Move heart orbs out of the left and rightmost columns (B)
Orochi and heal as much as possible (A)
Remove locked fire orbs, conserve water orbs, and heal (B)
Remove locked fire orbs, conserve water orbs, and heal (A)
Remove locked fire orbs, conserve water orbs, and heal (B)
Mori to remove poisons and sweep with 2 water rows and 100x (A)
Floor 5 Blue Sonia and sweep (B)
Floor 6 is the boss floor
Remove locked orbs and make sure Sarasvati’s active is rolling to bait out the status void instead of bind (A)
Ryune + Hermes (may have to pass turns) and sweep
If you get an invade, you can either delay it or burst through or stall. You have to use your judgement.
Conclusion
Now is the best time to farm for Skill Delay Resist Latent Tamadras. Special Descend Rush may be challenging, but is doable with an invested team and a solid strategy.
Let me know how you have been farming this dungeon and what was your set up.
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.
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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→
The recently concluded maintenance came with a few new evolutions, active/leader skill changes, and buffs to various cards. You should always read the full patch notes for a full breakdown of the changes as this post will be used to share my thoughts on how the new changes will impact players.
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New evolutions
Durga
Durga has been somewhat forgotten with amidst the crazy pace of powercreep as she was at one point a respectable 25x leader. However, the other rainbow counterparts all began receiving new evolutions and buffs which left Durga behind as she had a measly 4 awakenings and the same 25x ATK. However, with her new evolution, Durga has now achieved 9 awakenings along with a 56.25x ATK / 2.25x RCV leader skill for devil types. This is reasonable, but you still have to bear in mind that this is a rainbow team which means your damage will be somewhat diluted due to matching other colours and your inability to effectively stack offensive awakenings outside of TPA or enhanced orbs. This buff was needed about a year ago and would have given Durga relevance, but she is still behind compared to easier to activate leaders who deal more damage.
However, with all that being said, Durga has gained more relevance as a sub (and assistant) due to the 9 awakenings and active skill buff. The dual TPA combined with high base attack makes her more appealing and the double SBR will make her a somewhat dream Sephiroth sub.
Durga’s active skill now grants 2.5x ATK to Gods and Devils for 2 turns and can somewhat function like a Norse God with a lower cooldown. Just keep in mind the health reset. Continue reading October 26th New Content Overview→
I made a quick tutorial on how a System team works and decided it would be best to have it as a stand alone article. I will most likely reference it in the future as a way to explain how haste is valuable in certain monster reviews.
How does a system work?
A system is a term given to a team that is able to utilize haste actives on multiple cards to repeatedly chain multiple actives together. This allows you to cycle your actives quickly as a turn of haste reduces the remaining cooldown of all over actives. Do note that haste will only help your team and not your partner’s subs. Thus, haste has diminishing returns in coop. The two most common systems rely on having cards with a 7 turn cooldown and a single turn of haste in varying amounts.
4 haste actives
The first team has 4 total cards (friend leader is included) that possess haste and a 7-turn cooldown. Your two other cards can be anything you like and will have their skills charged very quickly. In essence, you use one haste active every turn and would then be able to use your first active on your fifth turn again as the haste from the other three would have been able to recharge you. Thus, the cycle continues.
Turn 1: use haste #1
Turn 2: use haste #2
Turn 3: use haste #3
Turn 4: use haste #4
Turn 5: use haste #1
repeat
This system allows you to easily charge up your two other cards as their actives are not being used. This strategy is common on Xiang Mei , Sumire , Kaede , and Awoken Cao Cao with 4 Scarlet subs.
6 haste actives
A team consisting of 6 haste actives is not very practical, but is mostly worth mentioning to showcase how it functions. Essentially, you use 3 actives every turn and this will cause enough haste to loop back to using the original 3 by the third turn.
Turn 1: use haste #1, 2, and 3
Turn 2: use haste #4, 5, and 6
Turn 3: use haste #1, 2, and 3
repeat
This was mostly used by the Scarlet System and does not have too many applications currently. Mostly just something to keep in mind.
Conclusion
Systems a powerful way to cycle your actives and can transforms what appears to be a lackluster team/leader into a more formidable one.
The title kind of says it all and North America will be receiving a 4x Skill Up event to mark GungHo’s Fantastic trip to PAX Prime this weekend (September 2-11/early 12). Normally I would not make a posting dedicated to a basic announcement; however, this is the first time we have ever received a 4x Skill Up event (highest ever was 3x) and everyone should do their best to try and take advantage for this duration. Even with the advent of 3 min / stamina and coop play, skill ups are still a resource demanding venture. Skill ups are the most frusterating and sometimes rewarding experiences I have had while playing Puzzle and Dragons and being able to successfully skill up a monster every 4/10 times will feel Myraculous.
Planning ahead
This may seem like common sense, but you should hold off on any skill up attempts for another day to better increase your odds. Furthermore, you should also start mapping out who you want to skill up and how you can go about doing it. Is their dungeon available via coins (eg. Water Insect Dragon for Sarasvati ), descend rotation, or are they a permanent fixture? In addition, you should also take note of the skill up rotation that is occurring on September 7th and do your fusing accordingly.
For myself, I do not have too many things to actually skill up (as I am swimming in 30+ Py of each colour); however, I will probably take this opportunity to expedite my Machine Hera skill ups:
Your move
How do you plan on capitalizing on our first 4x Skill Up event? What cards do you have at the top of your priority list and how are you going to go about in achieving those goals?
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.
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. Continue reading Thoughts and Summary of the Patch 9.3.1 Updates→
The 9.3.1 came with a whole host of exciting updates, evolutions, quality of life improvements, and the Badge/Quest system. However, I will only be covering the Badge System in this article as I wish to clarify and explain how it works and how it will have an impact on your game play.
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This post will always contain the most up to date information as I cannot edit a video XD
Badge System 101
With the advent of coop holding countless advantages such as an augmented health pool, more actives, and half stamina, solo play has begun to feel a little lackluster. Thus, GungHo has introduced a system to help even the scales and reward those who choose to puzzle solo. The Badge system consists of a series of quests to unlock varying rewards:
Team Cost +100 – Increases Max Team Cost by 100
Move time +1 second – Extends Orb move time by 1 second
Mass Attack – Attacks become Mass Attacks
Team RCV +25% – Increases Team RCV by 25%
Team HP +5% – Increases Team HP by 5%
Team ATK +5% – Increases Team ATK by 5%
Skillboost – Team’s skills charged by 1 turn
Leaders Bind immune – Team Leaders become Bind immune
In solo mode, you can choose to use any one of those badges; however, with the exception of +100 team cost, none can be used in multiplayer.
In addition to the badge for your teams, you will also unlock rewards periodically when you complete quests:
These rewards will be sent to your mailbox and will be held there for 365 days. However, it appears you can let them sit in the quest menu indefinitely. Continue reading Badge/Quest System Explained→
Myr is the strongest farmable monster released to date and is also considered one of the best leaders in the game. This is mostly due to her unbindability, 75% damage reduction shield, and 49x ATK multiplier. All of these combine beautifully into one Myraculous monster. However, due to a recent tournament held by GungHo that featured various iconic community members, Myr will be receiving a buff thanks to the puzzling skills of Luka. As such, Myr (and Beach Myr ) will be buffed to a 7.7x ATK lead which results in a 59.29x ATK team along with some minor stat improvements.
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How does this make me feel
Initial reactions
Aside from the strange heading, this buff comes with somewhat mixed emotions. First off, Myr did not need the buff. In the past, GungHo has done player surveys to determine who should receive the next wave of buffs and time after time, people vote for something that is already strong/in a good place. As such, the buffs they receive are small at best and we lose out on the opportunity to improve someone who is in need of improvements. I was hoping Zaerog Infinity would have received the buff as he was once heralded as the strongest farmable monster and only needs a bit of improvement to see more playtime as a leader or sub. Continue reading Thoughts on the Myr Buffs→
Mantastic Puzzle and Dragons 